Presidents Club Charity Dinner

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that question. Never miss an opportunity, I say, to mention the gender pay gap. She is absolutely right that every single business and organisation that attended that dinner should report that data at least by the end of this week.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

The Fawcett Society recently published a report stating that violence and harassment against women was endemic in our country, with two thirds of women over 16 reporting that they have suffered sexual harassment. Does the Minister note that the employment contracts and notes for the women attending the event as hostesses asked them to be “tall, thin and pretty” and that they had to deal with what was expected to be harassment? That is surely against the law. Will she look at employment law protections and make it certain that the law is enforced, that the Equality and Human Rights Commission looks at the event and that we get some protection for vulnerable women?

[Anne Milton]

The hon. Lady makes an important point, and I will certainly ensure that the situation is looked at with regard to employment law. I commend the Fawcett Society, which does brilliant cross-party work to further women’s rights and women’s political representation. But clearly—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady asks me from a sedentary position whether these women were self-employed. I do not know anything about the Presidents Club—[Interruption.] Let me finish. I know nothing about the Presidents Club, but we will clearly look into it, particularly if there is a suggestion that the law was broken. If any hon. Member knows of something that they think should be investigated, it would probably be helpful if they used me as a conduit and sent me their emails. I will investigate and ensure that, if any law has been broken, the full force of the law will come down on those who have broken it.

Social Mobility Commission

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Monday 4th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

I will comment briefly. The home learning environment is one of the toughest nuts to crack. Many children start their early education without the basic skills that they need. Much of that is due to the fact that they are not read to, that televisions may not be turned off and that they are not communicated with. That is a real challenge, and I hope that the new commission will give us pointers on how we can continue to address it.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

The Minister is doing his best to ignore the fact that the entire board of the social mobility commission has resigned. Why does he think that is? Can he give us an answer?

[Mr Goodwill]

If the hon. Lady looks back over the past five years, she will see that Alan has been supportive of much of the action that we are taking to improve social mobility, such as the Department for Education’s opportunity areas. We welcome constructive challenge as we all work together to tackle social mobility.

This will give us an opportunity to refresh the commission and improve its diversity. I assure the House that we are not in the position of employing a patsy for the Government: I want somebody who will continue to challenge the Government, continue to hold our feet to the fire and engage constructively—not only with central Government but with local government, which is charged with delivering many of the solutions.

Education Funding: Wirral

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 31st October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered education funding in Wirral.

I am grateful to have obtained this debate about such a critical issue for my constituents ahead of the Chancellor’s crucial autumn Budget on 22 November. I trust that the Minister, who represents the Government, will listen to what I have to say and convey to the Chancellor as he deliberates on the content of his Budget the anxiety of so many people who are involved in education at all levels. The reality is that the overall funding pot for schools is too small. Whatever claims the Minister may make, the lived experience of my constituents—parents, teachers, support staff and pupils—is that school budgets are not enough to keep up with rising running costs. The consequences are huge pressures and deteriorating education opportunities for Wallasey’s kids.

In the 25 years that I have represented Wallasey in this place, I have paid regular visits to local schools and met many teachers, support staff, pupils and parents, and I have to tell the Minister that the warning lights are flashing. In all my time in Parliament, I have never heard expressed such wide-ranging concern about funding pressure as I hear now about the pressure that all Wallasey’s schools are experiencing. That pressure extends right across the Wirral. It came up forcefully during the general election, and the Government subsequently had to find extra funding. Although that is to be welcomed as a good start, it is not enough to alleviate existing pressures, and the Government’s decisions about how to distribute it disadvantaged further those who were already struggling from significant disadvantage.

This funding crisis hits the most vulnerable hardest. This crisis is happening now; schools in Wallasey are being forced now to cut back on staff, on the curriculum and on teaching materials. A National Audit Office report last year concluded that schools will need to reduce spending by an average of 8% per pupil by 2020. That would be the largest real-terms cut since the 1970s. School budgets have been cut by £2.8 billion since 2015 at a time of rising and additional costs, and schools are struggling to cope.

[Frank Field (Birkenhead) (Lab)]

I very much endorse what my hon. Friend is saying about the crisis we are facing. Thanks to Feeding Birkenhead, Wirral adopted a policy of using its housing benefit data to identify those pupils who are eligible for free school meals and the pupil premium, resulting in another £750,000 for Wirral schools. However, despite that additional funding, which the council activated by using its IT sensibly, everything my hon. Friend says stands.

[Ms Eagle]

My right hon. Friend points out the layers of disadvantage that are often not taken into account by the Government’s distributive mechanisms. The proposed new national funding formula is one such mechanism, and it will do nothing to alleviate the crisis in Wirral schools.

What is particularly insulting is the Government’s persistent claim that the national funding formula is based on the principle of fairness and the frankly ludicrous claim that schools will see an increase in funding as a result of it. No one believes that there are no flaws in the current system—we all recognise that—but, rather than rectifying them, the new national funding formula simply creates new ones. It shifts an already inadequate sum of money from one area of the country to another, with some of the most deprived areas losing out. I do not know about the Minister, but that is not my definition of fairness.

I have no doubt that we will be told by the Minister about the additional £1.3 billion over two years announced in September by the Education Secretary. First, that is not new money but rather a sum that has been assumed to be available from unrealistic, so-called efficiency savings and cannibalised from other parts of the budget. Secondly, it will do little to compensate for the £2.8 billion of cuts schools have suffered since 2015. Ask any teacher in my constituency, or any school governor, and they will talk about the cutbacks that schools are already having to make as a result of the real-terms reductions in their budgets at a time of spiralling costs.

Lord Harris of Peckham, a Conservative party donor who runs a large academy chain, let the cat out of the bag recently. He said that the schools he runs are facing a 20% cut in funding by 2020 and that the Government should put more funding into schools. I agree with him.

I turn to the specific impact that the funding pressures are having on schools in the Wirral. As I mentioned at the outset, I have maintained a frequent dialogue with schools in my constituency throughout my time as an MP. Everyone I speak to tells me the same story: funding from the Government has failed to keep pace with running costs in schools. According to figures from the National Education Union, my constituency is set to lose an average of £149 per pupil in real terms between 2015-16 and 2019-20, with a total loss of 29 teachers. Wirral as a whole will lose on average £111 per pupil and 108 teachers.

The cuts come at a time of additional pressures on school budgets such as rises in national insurance contributions and pension contributions and, most recently, the apprentice levy. There are also growing demands on schools to offer social services support and family support and to deal with increasingly complex mental health issues. Meanwhile, cuts to local authority budgets have made matters even worse, because they have decimated the support that the local authority used to provide to our local schools.

Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council has lost £150 million since 2010 and is set to lose a further £132 million by 2020-21. That amounts to a 40% cut in its budget. As a consequence, local authority support for schools has been cut drastically. In Wirral, cuts to the education services grant have left the council with a £1 million shortfall. That grant funds areas such as mental health support, fire safety and the maintenance of school buildings and playing fields. Likewise, social services and family support have been decimated by the huge cuts to local authority budgets. To make up for the shortfall, the council will have to absorb it into its already shrinking budget, cut services or force schools to pay up themselves, heaping more pressure on their already stretched finances.

Adrian Whitely, headteacher at The Mosslands School in my constituency, told me about the impact of funding cuts on his school. His quote is worth reading out in full, and I do so with his permission. He says:

“Five years ago, The Mosslands School, an 11-to-19 boys school with approximately 1000 pupils on roll, had 79 teaching staff and 18 teaching assistants. Due to budget reduction and rises in running costs, today it has 60 teachers and 8 teaching assistants. Average class size has risen with the majority of pupils now taught in classes of over 30. Over 40% of its pupils are entitled to free school meals at some stage; 26% of the students are identified as having additional special education needs; the number of children meeting the threshold for social services intervention has doubled in 24 months; and there are a further 20 pupils who are in the care of a Local Authority. It is a popular school and was deemed to be a good school when it was inspected last year. This year, it had to make a further 6 redundancies to balance its budget. This clearly cannot continue.”

Cuts such as those cannot simply be dismissed by the Government as efficiency savings. I note that the Government are increasingly fond of claiming, despite all the evidence to the contrary, that the cuts are actually increases. I intend to deal with that argument in detail a little later in my speech, but the fact is that the cuts are having a tangible effect on the breadth and standard of education that schools in Wallasey can provide.

I recently visited Birkenhead Sixth Form College, which as its name suggests sits just outside Wallasey in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), but it is attended by many of my constituents. In advance of the meeting, the principal, Mike Kilbride, wrote to me to outline the funding shortage faced by the college. He stated:

“At Birkenhead Sixth Form College we currently educate over 1,300 young people and passionately believe that every student deserves a first class education. Unfortunately, funding cuts and cost increases are making this increasingly difficult to provide. In the last year we have had to make many tough decisions including the withdrawal of some provision.”

Birkenhead Sixth Form College has had to reduce its curriculum in areas such as performance art and music. Perhaps the Government believe that such subjects are surplus to requirements, but I believe they are an integral part of a well-rounded education. The UK performs particularly well in music and the arts, and that success earns the country worldwide recognition and plenty of economic benefits. Those benefits are being put in jeopardy by short-sighted policies.

One headteacher of another school told me that funding for special educational needs children was becoming a cause for concern. There are statistically a high number of special needs pupils in the Wirral, and many of those needs are very complex. Many pupils have needs that require one-to-one attention from teachers with specific expertise. The funding that schools receive per SEN child does not always provide for that. The headteacher said that SEN funding “disappears in an instant”.

The vast majority of school spending goes on staff. With pay progression, the best teachers receive pay rises and older teachers tend to be paid more. However, as one headteacher pointed out to me, the national funding system takes no account of that. Schools are therefore struggling to fund pay increases as well as significant increases in national insurance contributions. One headteacher told me that

“teachers are teaching bigger and bigger classes”.

Not only does that create more work in the classroom; it also leads to more marking and more admin, and it is putting a bigger strain on them.

As figures from the National Education Union reveal, the pattern of funding cuts is being replicated in schools all over Wallasey and the Wirral. Most worryingly of all, some of the most deprived areas are being hit the hardest. To be clear, the figures I use take 2015 as their base year and reveal that, despite the Government’s attempted sleight of hand with what they like to call new money for schools, the funding given to schools has been cut by 4.6% overall between 2015 and 2020.

I will now deal with how that reality affects schools in Wallasey. The Oldershaw Academy, a school where 64% of pupils are on free school meals, is set to lose £233,000 in total by 2020, or £455 per pupil. St Mary’s Catholic College, where 53% of pupils are on free school meals, will lose £224,000, the equivalent of £186 per pupil. Primary schools in Wallasey are also being hit, and small schools, which can least afford to absorb huge funding reductions, are among the worst affected. Kingsway Primary School, where 53% of pupils receive free school meals, will see a real-terms cut of 19% per pupil. Eastway Primary School, where 52% of pupils are on free school meals, will see a cut of 10%.

As I outlined earlier, these figures do not tell the full story. They are accompanied by rising costs and additional sources of expenditure, such as the apprenticeship levy and national insurance contributions. There have been numerous press reports of state schools asking parents for donations to keep their school afloat—a double disadvantage for those schools that serve poor communities, where the parents simply cannot afford to fork out the extra money that schools now routinely ask for.

Many parts of Wallasey and the Wirral have high levels of deprivation. In Wallasey, a total of 41% of pupils are in receipt of free school meals, but we will lose £149 of funding per pupil by 2020. I do not call that an increase, even if the Minister is going to claim in his reply that it is. By contrast, the constituency of Bournemouth East will gain £36 per pupil, despite only having 19% of pupils on free school meals. North East Hampshire will see a small gain, despite only having 10% of pupils on free school meals. How can the Minister possibly justify that?

Another of the Government’s flagship education policies is multi-academy trusts, which have implications for, and give rise to questions about, funding and accountability. In June this year, just after the general election, the Government took the decision to close the Kingsway Academy in Leasowe, in my constituency. The school will close on a phased basis by the end of the 2017-18 academic year, and many pupils have already been forced to move on to neighbouring schools. The school, formerly known as the Wallasey School, has a long and proud history, and provided an education for pupils in Wirral for generations. It is astonishing that the multi-academy trust, the Northern Schools Trust, was allowed to walk away as soon as it became clear that it could no longer turn a profit, just three years after taking over the school. That was after it had summarily closed down the sixth form a couple of years ago, leaving 80 pupils high and dry.

I cannot stress enough how much anxiety the announcement caused parents, pupils and staff when it appeared out of the blue just four weeks before the end of the academic year, but that was par for the course with the Northern Schools Trust. The decision was taken behind everyone’s back and the local community was kept in the dark throughout the process. As soon as I heard rumours of the school’s closure, I asked the Minister to meet me. By the time he had agreed to do so, he had already taken the decision to close the school. I believe that the episode exposed a worrying lack of transparency and accountability at the heart of the Government’s policy on multi-academy trusts. Had Kingsway been a maintained school, it would have been obliged to conduct a 12 to 18-month consultation, involving parents, trade unions and the local community, before a closure; yet there is no such obligation on academies to consult.

When we look at the list of income allocated to schools, we find that the only school in Wallasey that has had an increase, at £524 per pupil, and a 9% uplift in its funding, was the Kingsway Academy, which is now being closed. The Northern Schools Trust essentially announced closure within four weeks, having left council officials, unions and other stakeholders in the dark. The multi-academy trust seems to be free to walk away from the school, leaving the local authority to pick up the pieces, with the future of pupils’ education left in the balance.

The lack of accountability was highlighted in the Education Committee’s report on multi-academy trusts, published in February this year. With a multi-academy trust, the accountability is transferred from local governing boards to a central trustee board that holds the decision-making responsibilities. The report noted:

“We were told by parents that MATs are not sufficiently accountable to their local community and they feel disconnected from decision making at trustee board level. There is too much emphasis on ‘upward’ accountability and not enough on local engagement.”

The report went on to recommend:

“MATs should demonstrate a sincere commitment to outreach and engagement with the local community.”

In my experience, they are a long way from doing so. That is certainly advice that the Northern Schools Trust should have heeded during the Kingsway debacle.

Multi-academy trusts are recipients of huge amounts of public money, but they do not seem to be subject to the same standards of accountability. When school budgets are being squeezed as they are, and when schools are having to reduce staff numbers and are struggling to purchase equipment, is it right for MATs to pay their chief executive officers an annual salary of £160,000, as the Northern Schools Trust does? If multi-academy trusts were an unrivalled success, there might be at least a case for it, but when they are allowed to take over a school, fail to turn it around and walk away with no public consultation and little in the way of repercussions, the Government should ask themselves whether the policy is acceptable.

I have no doubt that the Minister has come armed with the Government’s own figures, giving the impression that Wirral schools will receive funding increases as part of the new national funding formula. After all, he has been going round claiming that cash increases are actually real increases, and hoping that nobody would notice the huge rise in running costs that all schools have to cope with, which more than wipe out any of the so-called gains for which the Minister is spuriously claiming credit. If the claim of increases were remotely true, does the Minister imagine that Wallasey’s headteachers, staff, parents and pupils would be complaining so much about the funding pressures that are causing them to cut back on the curriculum, sack teachers and increase class sizes?

Let us take a moment to interrogate these figures before the Minister brandishes them about in his reply. The Government’s figures show that in 2018-19, Wirral schools will receive, on average, a 1.6% increase in cash terms. Government figures also show that they will then receive a further 0.8% cash-terms increase in 2019-20. Schools in my own constituency in Wallasey will receive a 1.5% cash-terms increase—slightly less than the average for Wirral—in the first year, and an additional 0.6% the following year. Again, that is slightly below average. I note, however, that revealing ministerial phrase, “cash terms”. It does not take an economic genius to work out that, with inflation running close to 3%, that amounts to a significant real-terms cut.

The Government’s wilful and convenient confusion between a cash-terms and real-terms increase is only part of the story. The Minister’s figures show modest cash-terms rises from 2017-18, using that year as a baseline. By choosing that baseline, the Government are entirely and deliberately ignoring the cuts that took place before that—cuts that even as I speak are already being felt in classrooms across the country. That is pretty shoddy, but there is even more bad practice to come. The Minister’s figures also overlook the additional pressures on school budgets that I outlined earlier: the apprenticeship levy, national insurance contributions, pension contributions, any increases in staff pay, loss of education services provided by local authorities and any additional help on issues such as mental health and social services support, which used to be provided by local authorities but have now been decimated by the swingeing cuts this Government have made to local authority budgets.

Despite this accumulation of budget cuts and cost increases, the Government insist on perpetuating the ridiculous and false claim that schools are actually receiving more money. I suppose they are, but only in the most meaningless, technical sense. Actually, they are not really. I hope that the Minister will be reasonable enough to not treat us to another bout of that nonsense. How can he claim that schools are getting more money when they are sacking staff, increasing class sizes and cutting subjects from the curriculum? Frankly, Ministers are living in a parallel universe if they think that their farcical claims bear any relation to the situation confronting headteachers and staff on the ground, where the effects of austerity are being felt in classrooms all over Wallasey and all over Wirral.

I encourage the Minister to visit the schools in my constituency and across the Wirral to observe the real-terms cuts that schools are having to make, and the very real consequences that those cuts are having on our schools’ capacity to provide an outstanding education for all. Perhaps he may then see the error of his ways and realise that he has to persuade the Chancellor to put our children first and finally agree to the real-terms increases needed to give the next generation the educational chances they really deserve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

I am happy to write to the right hon. Gentleman, but these issues are being considered as we speak.

Given the significance of this reform, it was vital that we took into account as many views as possible, and the consultation process generated over 26,000 individual responses and responses from representative organisations, and we considered all of those views. The existing system is out of date. It is based on data and decisions from over a decade ago. Funding for each area has been determined by simply rolling forward the previous years’ allocation, adjusting only for changes in the total number of pupils in each area and ignoring all the other changes.

[Ms Angela Eagle]

I have read some of the right hon. Gentleman’s responses to other debates like this and he spends a great deal of time not responding to the actual questions that have been raised, by telling us in great technical detail about what the national funding formula is meant to do. Will he address some of the issues that I raised about the unfairness of Kingsway Primary School, which has 53% of pupils on free school meals, having a 19% cut in its funding, under the system that he is praising? How can that kind of result possibly be right or fair?

[Nick Gibb]

If the hon. Lady will be patient, I will come to each of those issues and specifically talk about the funding position of Kingsway Primary School, among the other schools that she mentioned, but I want to put this debate in the context of the reality of the situation that we are seeking to address.

When the proportion of secondary school pupils eligible for free school meals in London fell by more than 5% between 2007 and 2017, more than 25 times the decline nationally, the funding system did not respond to that change in the wealth level of London as the capital city. Addressing these damaging inequalities in the current system represents the biggest improvement in the school funding system for a decade, and from April 2018 we will introduce a national funding formula, which will, for the first time, put the funding system firmly on track to deliver resources on a consistent and transparent basis to every school in the country.

In September we published full details of the school and high needs national funding formula and the impact that it will have for every local authority. We have also published notional school-level allocations showing what each school would attract through the formula. This means that for the first time everyone can see what the national funding formula will mean for them and understand why. Alongside addressing these historical injustices, the importance of ensuring stability for all schools was also a consistent message throughout the consultation process. In recognition of that, over the next two years local authorities will continue to set their own local formula in consultation with the schools in their areas, which will determine each individual school’s budget. This will provide a small but important element of flexibility for local authorities, to allow them to respond to the changes as they come through.

School funding, as the hon. Member for Wallasey acknowledged, is at a record high because of the choices we have made to protect and increase school funding, even as we faced difficult decisions elsewhere, across Whitehall, to restore our country’s finances, and to address the historic budget deficit that we inherited in 2010. We understand that just like other public services, schools are facing cost pressures, and in recognition of this we announced in July an additional £1.3 billion for schools and high needs across 2018-19 and 2019-20—over and above the funding confirmed at the 2015 spending review. This additional funding means that the total schools budget will increase by over 6% between this year and 2019-20. As the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has confirmed, that will mean that funding per pupil for schools and high needs will now be maintained in real terms for the remaining two years of the spending review.

[Ms Angela Eagle]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Nick Gibb]

I will give way briefly, but I want to come in a moment to Kingsway.

[Ms Eagle]

The right hon. Gentleman is taking as his baseline this financial year, yet there have been real terms cuts in schools for the last two years, as I thought I had explained, so he is trying to claim that there has been an increase, when in fact he is discounting the cuts that have already happened. He knows that it is not an accurate way of talking about what happened. Why doesn’t he just admit it?

[Nick Gibb]

There have been no cuts in funding to schools. There have been cost pressures, as I have acknowledged time and time again, that schools have absorbed, as have other parts of the public sector and parts of the private sector. There have been cost pressures of higher taxes, higher employer’s national insurance contributions and higher employer’s contribution to the teachers’ pension scheme, because we believe it is right that teachers’ pensions are properly funded, but I am telling the hon. Lady and this House that spending will rise in real terms on a per pupil basis.

I will now come to the issue she raised about her schools. As a consequence of the consultation process, we introduced a de minimis funding level for the very lowest funded schools. We introduced a de minimis funding level of £4,800 per pupil for the very lowest funded secondary schools in the country. St Mary’s College in the hon. Lady’s constituency received £5,625 per pupil, and that will rise by 1% to £5,680 according to the national funding formula. The national average under the national funding formula for a secondary school is £5,389. On top of that, the school will also receive £935 per pupil for every pupil who qualifies or has ever qualified for free school meals over the past six years.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

No, it is not receiving any cuts in funding at all. Its funding will increase from £5,376 per pupil to £5,422 per pupil. That is an increase of 0.8%. It is an increase in funding, not a cut. I acknowledge there are cost pressures facing schools, but to go around saying that schools have had their funding cut is simply not true. If I can refer to Eastway Primary School—

[Ms Angela Eagle]

They have had it cut.

[Nick Gibb]

They have not had their funding cut.

[Ms Eagle]

In real terms, they have had it cut.

[Mr Nigel Evans (in the Chair)]

Order.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Angela Eagle]

The Minister is living in a parallel universe. He says that schools are getting increases. Kingsway Primary School is going to lose £131,306—a 19% fall in what it would have expected—and three teachers. St Mary’s College will lose £223,778—a 3% fall in funding—and four teachers. Fender Primary School, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood), will lose £109,000 on what it could have expected by 2020—that is £452 per pupil—and two teachers. If the Minister insists on calling those “increases”, I do not think that he is fit to be in the job that he is in.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered education funding in Wirral.

Education: Public Funding

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

We will do our best to convey the message that no school will lose funding under the new national funding formula, and I will rely on my hon. Friend to do the same in his constituency.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Yesterday, parents of pupils at the Kingsway Academy received a text message referring them to the website of the Northern Schools Trust, where they were told that their school would be closing. The Northern Schools Trust says that the school is not financially viable. Its sudden closure leaves a black hole of a quarter of a million pounds in the local authority’s financing, and there is great disruption across the area. Is that any way to run a school system?

[Nick Gibb]

I will look into the specific case that the hon. Lady has raised. Schools have to consult before any closure occurs, and there is a process that schools have to go through. I will look at the matter, and I am very happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss it.

Education

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2016 Ministerial Corrections

[Robert Halfon]

It is good news about the performance of the hon. Lady’s college—I thank her for expressing it—but it is worth mentioning that we are investing £7 billion in 2016-17 to ensure that every 16 to 19-year-old has a place in education or training and that we have protected the funding base rate of £4,000 per student. It is also worth remembering that we have the lowest level of youth unemployment on record and the lowest number of those not in education, employment or training. This shows that our investment in further education is working.

[Official Report, 14 November 2016, Vol. 617, c. 16.]

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Over the next four years, funding for education is due to fall by 8% per head, although I note that Ministers have been describing this as “protecting” core funding, which is a funny use of language. So low is funding for sixth forms that schools that have formed academies are increasingly getting rid of their sixth forms because they are not profitable, thereby cutting off large numbers of opportunities for people, often in poorer areas.

[Robert Halfon]

As I said, by 2020 we will be giving more funding to further education than at any time in our island’s history. It will have increased by 40%, which is something we should be proud of. Our investment is working. As I said, we have the lowest youth unemployment and the lowest number of NEETs on record. The hon. Lady should be celebrating that.

[Official Report, 14 November 2016, Vol. 617, c. 17.]

Letter of correction from Robert Halfon.

Errors have been identified in the responses I gave to the hon. Members for Makerfield (Yvonne Fovargue) and for Wallasey (Ms Eagle).

The correct responses should have been:

Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

Either I or the Minister for School Standards would be pleased to meet my hon. Friend.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Over the next four years, funding for education is due to fall by 8% per head, although I note that Ministers have been describing this as “protecting” core funding, which is a funny use of language. So low is funding for sixth forms that schools that have formed academies are increasingly getting rid of their sixth forms because they are not profitable, thereby cutting off large numbers of opportunities for people, often in poorer areas.

[Robert Halfon]

As I said, by 2020 we will be giving more funding to further education than at any time in our island’s history. It will have increased by 40%, which we should be proud of. Our investment is working. As I said, we have the lowest youth unemployment and the lowest number of NEETs on record. The hon. Lady should be celebrating that.[Official Report, 20 December 2016, Vol. 618, c. 12MC.]

Education, Skills and Training

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

I beg to move an amendment, at the end of the Question to add:

“but respectfully regret that the Gracious Speech contained proposals to enable further increases in tuition fees; believe that there should be no further increases in tuition fees; and further believe that no good or outstanding school should be forced to become an academy.”.

I am reeling from the prospect of public hair playing and from considering whether we should have a rule against it in this House.

Last Wednesday, we saw the age-old ceremony of the State Opening of Parliament. It was all done with the usual pageantry, and it was timed and executed to perfection as we have all come to expect. The only flaw was the one thing over which Her Majesty has absolutely no control, and that is the actual content of the Gracious Speech. When the Speech was finally unveiled, after all the build-up and ceremony, it was yet another anti-climax. It outlined a mere 21 Bills—this from a majority Government barely one year into their five-year term of office. They are running out of steam before our eyes.

We could sense the dismay on the Government Benches. The Speech was hastily described as “sparse”, “bland”, “threadbare”, “pretty thin gruel”, “uninspiring”, “managerial” and “vacuous”, and that was the verdict of the Government’s own underwhelmed Back Benchers. Others were less diplomatic. The right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), so recently a senior Cabinet Minister, called it “watered down”, blaming a Government who have surrendered to the “helter-skelter” of the EU referendum campaign. Former Tory Cabinet Minister Michael Portillo was even more scathing about the first majority Conservative Government elected since 1992. He told Andrew Neil:

“After 23 years of careful thought about what they would like to do in power, and the answer is nothing.”

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady think that the introduction of the national living wage is nothing?

[Ms Eagle]

The introduction of the national living wage is a con, because it is not a living wage. An increase in wages is obviously welcome, but it does not apply to those who are under 25. The national living wage describes itself as something that it is not, so we have a healthy degree of scepticism about how useful it will be.

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady consider as “nothing” fairer funding for our schools, which will affect many Members not only on the Government Benches, but on the Opposition Benches? The Labour party once supported this policy. What is its position now?

[Ms Eagle]

We must look at the policy on schools against what the Institute for Fiscal Studies has called a real-terms cut of 8% in budgets over this Parliament. We have to judge it with that as a background.

[John Pugh (Southport) (LD)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that the volume of legislation is not an indicator of the quality of government, and a little legislation on schools would not go amiss now?

[Ms Eagle]

I certainly agree that quantity is not all. I will come on to some of the detail of those Bills as I make progress with my speech.

Michael Portillo went on to say:

“The Government is in total paralysis, because the only thing that matters to the Government now is the saving of the Prime Minister’s career”—

by—

“winning the referendum.”

In what will be a damning epitaph of this Tory Administration, he said that the majority that the Prime Minister secured last year is “all for nothing”. He said:

“The Government has nothing to do, nothing to say and thinks nothing.”

We have this “nothing” Queen’s Speech before us. We have a few eye-catching announcements designed to distract attention from the emptiness of the Government’s programme. We were presented with the possibility of driverless cars on our roads in four years’ time and even private spaceports, but there is still no sign of a decision on the much more pressing issue of airport capacity for the travel that millions must now undertake.

We were told that there would be a legal right to access digital broadband, but there is no clear route to resolve the scandal of this Government’s total failure to provide adequate digital infrastructure for all. Despite being the fifth largest economy, we still languish at 18th in the world for broadband speed.

Perhaps it is a sign of just how toxic things are in the Conservative party that even this self-described “uninspiring, managerial and vacuous” legislative programme has already caused yet another Tory Back-Bench rebellion.

[Lucy Frazer (South East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Eagle]

No.

The Government have already caved in by agreeing to an amendment to the motion which will exempt the NHS from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership. We on the Labour Benches have long called for the Government to exempt the NHS from trade deals, and we are glad that they have now agreed with us.

It is interesting to see what this divided shower of a Government are now able to agree on. The only things on which they seem to be able to unite are flogging off valuable public assets such as the Land Registry, which actually makes us money, and unleashing the full force of the market in higher education. This rebellion on TTIP follows other Government U-turns and defeats on areas such as: forced academisation; cuts to tax credits for the low paid; cuts to personal independence payments for the disabled; pension tax relief reform; the solar tax; the tampon tax; Sunday trading; watering down the fox hunting ban; closing the wildlife crime unit; scrapping their own criminal courts charge; welcoming some child refugees to this country; and housing. The list does not even include the Chancellor’s latest Budget fiasco, which remains unresolved, and seems to be a £4 billion hole in its arithmetic.

[Lucy Frazer]

I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. I am surprised that, six minutes into her speech on the subject of education, skills and training, she has failed to mention that the first paragraph of the Queen’s Speech was about life chances. Given that the Queen’s Speech talks about education in prisons, when we know that half of the young people in prison have no education at all, a fairer funding formula for schools and social care, it is clear that it has some real substance.

[Ms Eagle]

I will get on to those points, but this is a debate on the entirety of the Queen’s Speech, and I am entitled to say what I like about any little bit of it. The hon. and learned Lady can make her own speech if she catches the Speaker’s eye, and I will thank her if she lets me make mine. I am here to make the point that I want to make, and I intend to do so.

The emptiness of the current Conservative agenda outlined in the Queen’s Speech is apparent in the public relations hyperbole that accompanied its announcement. Once more, we have to “mind the gap” between rhetoric and reality. Although the Government boast about their credentials as a “one nation Government”, they are cutting support for working people and giving the richest a tax cut. They think £450,000 for a starter home is affordable, and they are doing nothing effective to solve the housing crisis or the problem of soaring rents. They boast of a life chances agenda, as indeed the hon. and learned Lady has just done, but this is what is happening in 2016 in Tory Britain: homelessness is soaring; millions are forced to resort to food banks just to eat; Sure Start centres are closing; the attainment gap is widening between different areas of the country; and millions more are struggling to see their doctor, and cuts to funding mean that that is likely to get worse.

The Prime Minister’s self-proclaimed life chances agenda is either a joke or a con. How do the Tories improve life chances by abolishing student maintenance grants for the poorest, increasing tuition fees and barely mentioning further education colleges in their plans? How do they create opportunity by underfunding education and constantly fiddling with school structures while ignoring low morale, the chronic teacher shortages and the growing pressure on school places? The Government’s proposals for improving life chances must be judged in the context of their funding settlements for education, as I mentioned earlier. The 16-to-19 age group has seen a real-terms fall of 14% in its funding provision since 2010, and education capital spend has fallen by 34%.

[Bill Wiggin (North Herefordshire) (Con)]

I hesitate to interrupt such an enthusiastic and positive speech. The hon. Lady is having a busy day. Perhaps she would be kind enough to rally a little support for the Hereford university project, which will deliver the life chances that I know that she and I can unite in supporting.

[Ms Eagle]

The hon. Gentleman should invite me to come and visit the university. We can go together so that I can see what is going on in Herefordshire.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that there is likely to be an 8% fall in funding per pupil between now and 2020 in the schools sector, after a modest 0.6% rise in funding per pupil in the previous Parliament. It cannot be said that I do not put the figures accurately on the record and give the Government credit where it is due—0.6% for the first five years of the coalition, and minus 8% for the next period. Both adult and part-time education have seen huge falls in numbers participating because people cannot afford to pay.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

One of the things that this Government are trying to do through their new Bills is to introduce new universities, which will give so many more people an opportunity to get the education they need. Students across the country are concerned about the current threat to our universities, with unions going on strike and disrupting teaching and exams. One of my daughters is about to take her finals. Does the hon. Lady agree that such strikes are not acceptable behaviour?

[Ms Eagle]

The first thing to say is that some of the threats are from the so-called new providers, which are untried and untested. We will have to look closely at the detail of the Bill when it is debated, and I am sure we will talk about that aspect.

By the way, I would like to acknowledge the fact that the Minister for Universities and Science has taken the place of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, who is on his way to Mumbai to help talk to Tata about the crisis facing the steel industry in our country. It is about time. I wish the Secretary of State all the best with the work that he is doing. It is a pleasure to welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box in his stead.

There is nothing in this Queen’s Speech on the growing funding crisis affecting schools. There is no mention of adult up-skilling, which is a particularly difficult omission. Without action in these areas, we will not tackle the critical skills emergency which is holding back our economy. Unfilled vacancies have risen 130% since 2011, with skills shortages accounting for over a third of unfilled vacancies in key industries.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady, not least for once describing me on the Floor of the House as a Eurosceptic martyr. On skills and technical and vocational education, why does she think it has taken a Conservative Government to open a new university technical college in Peterborough—it is opening in September—whereas in benign economic times we saw under Labour massive increases in youth unemployment and the young people who did not want to go to university left on the sidelines?

[Ms Eagle]

I am glad to see that despite being a Eurosceptic martyr, the hon. Gentleman is still alive and kicking and doing his thing on the Tory Back Benches. It was the Labour Government who started university technical colleges, and I am glad that he will have one in his own area. He is being rather churlish in talking about our record, when we created the university technical college concept.

The Government have a very large target for apprenticeships, but 30% of those starting do not finish the course, and 96% are level 2 or 3 apprenticeships, with very low numbers attaining higher degree level apprenticeships. I understand and recognise that level 2 and 3 are very important to attain, but even more important for the future health and wellbeing of our economy is expanding the higher degree level apprenticeships, and quickly.

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will remember that in the previous Parliament I introduced a private Member’s Bill, the Apprenticeships and Skills (Public Procurement Contracts) Bill. Is not a real opportunity being missed? With public procurement and major engineering projects in particular, we ought to be getting more bang for our taxpayers’ buck, with proper, decent, high-quality advanced and further level apprenticeships tied into those procurement contracts.

[Ms Eagle]

I could not agree more. I am an admirer of my hon. Friend, especially as I have seen the recent pictures of him abseiling down a very tall building, so my admiration has grown even more. His Bill was an extremely good one. It is important that the Government think much more carefully than they have done to date about how they can tie in the money that they spend on public procurement with skills creation. The Business Secretary will have to do that if he is to deliver a prosperous future for British steel, and he should think about doing it in many more areas. There is a taboo that needs to be broken.

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share the concern of those who are worried that the Government’s 3 million apprenticeships target will be achieved only if the quality of what is offered in those apprenticeships is diminished?

[Ms Eagle]

I am afraid I do share that worry about the very large quantitative target that the Government have set and, by all accounts, want to pass. When I talk to business, which I do regularly up and down the country, that obsession with quantity rather than quality causes some real worries. I hope the Minister will be able to tell us today that he has ways of dealing with that. I have come across some extremely dubious practice, if I may put it that way, in relation to the term “apprenticeship”. I am glad that the Enterprise Act 2016 has closed that loophole. We now need to see pretty effective enforcement or we will carry on seeing misuse and abuse in that area.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

Does the hon. Lady accept that social clauses within public sector contracts, which have worked very effectively in Northern Ireland and Scotland, could be used much more widely? They do not contradict EU rules so that excuse cannot be used, and they could be a way of ensuring that public money is used to ensure that the country’s skills base is increased.

[Ms Eagle]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman’s comments. It is right that social clauses in procurement contracts have an important role to play. I make one observation, which I have made over my time in Parliament: those involved in public procurement can be very risk-averse. All too often they do not think about the extra things that they can get out of the money that the Government are spending and committing to particular projects, and they often use the excuse of EU procurement rules as a reason for not being creative enough in the way that they pursue procurement.

No one argues with the stated aim in the Higher Education and Research Bill of widening access and participation in higher education. That is what we all want to see. However, the Opposition object strongly to the approach that the Government have taken in both the White Paper and the accompanying Bill. The Business Secretary appears to believe that the solution to widening participation is to inject market forces into the provision of higher education, allowing new untried, untested providers to start up, achieve degree-awarding powers and secure university status, and he wants to force students to pay for it all through higher tuition fees.

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a really excellent speech. Does she agree that these reforms to higher education and this deregulation put at risk the excellent reputation of UK higher education institutions internationally—a reputation that helps us to attract so many international students to this country?

[Ms Eagle]

There is, if I may call it this, a “brand issue” with particular suggestions in the White Paper and the Bill. Again, the Opposition will want to study in great detail, and ask a lot of serious questions about, the potential consequences of what the Minister has suggested in the White Paper and the Bill.

There is absolutely no evidence that such competition will lead to higher standards or a better solution for students; indeed, it is likely to entrench privilege and elitism even more in the system. The proposal before us in the Queen’s Speech deregulates entry to what the Government clearly now see as a market in higher education. As my hon. Friend said, that is taking a gamble with the UK’s international reputation for providing the highest standards of degree education. It also means that any student studying at one of these probationary degree-awarding institutions—whatever they are going to be—will be taking a very personal gamble too. It is unclear what will happen if it all goes wrong or who will pick up the pieces.

After trebling tuition fees to £9,000 a year, the Government now wish to raise them again. They have chosen to remove the cap on tuition fees and to tie the capacity to raise fees to very dubious proxies for what they have called “teaching excellence”. Nobody objects to teaching excellence; it is like motherhood and apple pie, except that motherhood and apple pie are a lot easier to define. We can see motherhood, fairly obviously, and we can see apple pie—usually we have cut it open to check there are no blackberries in it—but it is a lot harder to know what teaching excellence is.

The Government have chosen various proxies, such as graduates’ subsequent employment records, student retention and satisfaction surveys. There are many reasons why people have good or bad subsequent employment records, and many of those have absolutely nothing to do with the teaching excellence of the schools or universities those people attended. For example, some people with disabilities are routinely discriminated against in our labour market, and is difficult for them to have a successful subsequent employment record. That may have absolutely nothing to do with the way they were taught or with the excellence of that teaching.

Likewise, many women have very different subsequent employment records from what they might have had if they had not left work early to have a family. It is also well documented that those from the black and ethnic minority communities are discriminated against in our labour market. When one looks at the figures, it is clear that many people from those communities who have exactly the same qualifications as others are discriminated against and have less successful subsequent employment records. So using subsequent employment as a proxy for teaching excellence already begins to break down.

[Amanda Milling (Cannock Chase) (Con)]

Has the hon. Lady seen the clear statement from Universities UK saying that it welcomes the plan to maintain the value of fees and that it looks forward to working with the Government to develop the teaching excellence framework?

[Ms Eagle]

I have talked to Universities UK, and it has grave concerns and reservations about the route the Government are taking—for some of the reasons I am outlining now. Of course Universities UK will work with the Government—it has a White Paper in front of it, and there will be a Bill on the Table of the House, which it will want to make the best it can be—but I would not take that kind of endorsement for blanket agreement.

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the hon. Lady also agree that it will be difficult to sell the concept of higher fees for students when many universities have not got to grips with the inflation in salaries at their higher levels? Many students will simply see fees as a means to fund huge wage increases for people at the top of universities.

[Ms Eagle]

Again, the hon. Gentleman makes an extremely good point, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about it when he replies to the debate.

[Lucy Frazer]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Eagle]

I will give way to the hon. and learned Lady for the last time, because I want to get on and finish.

[Lucy Frazer]

The hon. Lady is being very generous with her time. In circumstances where we know that one of the biggest single factors affecting the education of children and young people is the quality of teaching, does she agree with the principle that it is appropriate to ensure that we have excellence in teaching and that we improve teaching if we can?

[Ms Eagle]

Yes, but I am talking about how we measure excellence and what it means. If the hon. Lady were so concerned about the excellence of teaching, she would be looking at Sure Start and what is happening with early teaching. She would also be looking at the problems we have with teacher recruitment and at a range of other things. Nobody in the House disagrees with the concept of teaching excellence; the question is how one defines and measures it, and that is what I am trying to deal with now.

We have talked about subsequent employment. The other two proxies the Government have chosen are student retention—that is reasonable—and satisfaction surveys. Again, there are reasons why a student is not satisfied with an institution that may have nothing to do with whether it teaches in an excellent way. A lot more work will probably have to be done on these proxies if they are to have any meaning whatever. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say, because the concept is very dubious at the moment.

[Peter Kyle (Hove) (Lab)]

Further to the point made by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling), many people have given evidence to the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee inquiry into the teaching excellence framework. Many of the university vice-chancellors who gave evidence were very clear that they wanted to work with the Government to make sure that they can prove and improve their institutions’ teaching excellence, but they need more time to make sure that the metrics that are chosen are the correct ones. Does my hon. Friend agree that that would be a more sensible way forward for the Government?

[Ms Eagle]

I do. The Select Committee report outlines the sector’s worry that the reforms are being rushed in keeping with a timetable that does not actually reflect best practice. A lot of vice-chancellors and others in the sector are extremely worried about the implications of that.

[Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) (Con)]

The hon. Lady has made an argument about teaching excellence. As someone who taught in university for six years, I can tell her that there was really very little ambiguity in student satisfaction surveys even 15 years ago as to whether someone was doing a decent job of teaching, and there is even less now, given all the other modes of feedback. Even if that was not the case, we would be able to tell what was happening from the aggregate of these surveys, quite irrespective of any particular anecdotes she might be able to tell. There really cannot be much doubt, therefore, that teaching excellence can be evaluated, and it is quite proper that, if it can be, it should properly be included in an evaluation for student fees.

[Ms Eagle]

I am saying not that it cannot be included, but that the proxies the Government have chosen have given cause for concern, and I have tried to explain why. We have to think about how this works through, and I will be interested in what the Minister has to say about that.

[Nicola Blackwood (Oxford West and Abingdon) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Eagle]

Well, let me finish this point first.

If the Minister is not careful, he could end up with a range of results he does not want. There could be paradoxical disincentives for excellence. People who always find it difficult subsequently to get a job in the labour market may become less attractive as students to certain institutions because of the way these measurements are used. That would be a really backward step for the opportunities and life chances of large numbers of people who are already suffering disadvantage in our society. The hon. Gentleman should at least recognise that that is a possibility with some of these measurements.

[Jesse Norman]

rose—

[Ms Eagle]

I will give way to the hon. Gentleman and then to the hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Nicola Blackwood), if she will be a bit patient.

[Jesse Norman]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her kindness. As a consequence of her argument, it would be impossible to assess the teaching at, for example, the Royal National College for the Blind in Hereford, because it teaches disabled people who may suffer in their future life chances, yet no one doubts that that institution can properly evaluate, and indeed it does an excellent job.

[Ms Eagle]

As I understand the White Paper, this also about competition between universities, and there are some paradoxical results there that I would be worried about if I were interested in widening, not narrowing, opportunities. I think the hon. Gentleman ought to accept that.

[Nicola Blackwood]

I am trying to follow the point that the shadow Minister is making. Obviously it is important that the metrics and the process of the teaching excellence framework is right and appropriate, but just as with the research excellence framework, we will go through a process of getting to that point. That is why the White Paper states very clearly that this will be phased in and piloted, and recognises that there will be an important process of consultation and feedback. It is therefore not entirely clear to me why she is expressing the concern that the TEF is going to be imposed with no consultation.

[Ms Eagle]

It is partly about speed. I think that the REF took six years to get into place, and this is all due to be done from a standing start in a couple of years. We have to get it right or there will be consequences that nobody on either side of the House would want to see.

[Ben Howlett (Bath) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Ms Eagle]

I do not want to get into a Second Reading debate on the Bill—that is probably not wise. I want to get on and finish my speech. I have tried to take a lot of interventions, and it is only fair to those who want to speak in the rest of the debate that I get to the end of my speech.

Education should not be about shackling a generation with yet more debt but about unleashing their talents to build a brighter future. That is why Labour Members understand that while there is a cost to higher education, we cannot allow market forces to let rip through our world-leading universities. If these changes went ahead, it is likely that by the end of this Parliament fees will have risen to £10,000 a year and poorer students could face bills of up to £55,000 just to study for a normal three-year degree. That is unacceptable. Labour will oppose the lifting of the cap and continue to argue for a fairer settlement for students.

I now turn to the Government’s education for all Bill. We all know that this was not the education Bill the Prime Minister wished to include in the Queen’s Speech. Just weeks ago, he assured us that it would contain measures to force every school to become an academy against their wishes. Since then, we have witnessed a humiliating climb-down as the Government finally woke up to the fact that their plans were entirely unacceptable to parents, teachers, and the wider public. My hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) has done a fantastic job in her Front-Bench position in pointing that out to the Government. Labour Members welcome this U-turn, and we will continue to challenge the Government on their fixation with the forced academisation of good or outstanding schools.

We support the principle of moving towards a fairer funding formula, although it is essential that measures are put in place to assist the areas that are set to lose out. However, a new funding formula cannot disguise that fact that, over this Parliament, school budgets face the highest real-terms cut since the 1970s. It seems that the Government’s response is not to address the escalating shortage of teachers and school places in their Bill, but to continue down the path of forced academisation. This has nothing to do with improving life chances but shows a Government with a rather dangerous obsession with structures at the expense of standards—a Government who are ideological at the expense of our children’s future.

On the Children and Social Work Bill, we will of course support measures to protect and create opportunity for the most vulnerable children in our society. We will look closely at the detail of this Bill and the proposals the Government are putting forward. We need to ensure that when action is taken, it is high quality, has proper oversight, and has the needs of children at its heart. Labour Members are clear that child protection services should never be run for profit. So far, this Government have failed to provide adequate adoption support. Local authorities are being starved of resources, putting further strain on children’s services and social workers. Every child deserves a fulfilling upbringing that provides a path into adulthood—on that we all agree—and we have a moral duty to tackle abuse and neglect wherever we see it.

This is a Government who have ground to a shuddering halt just one year after they were elected. They are a Government becalmed by a referendum of their own making, too consumed by their own poisonous infighting to present a compelling vision for our country. The Prime Minister is contradicted by his own junior defence and employment Ministers, and the hon. Member for Uxbridge and South Ruislip (Boris Johnson) is taking time off from his “blunder-bus” tour to offer the keys to No. 11 to at least three different people. [Interruption.] I do not know whether the Minister for Universities and Science is one of them; we know of three, but there might be more. No doubt he will tell us whether the hon. Gentleman has approached him when he gets up to speak. This is a Government who resort to PR stunts and gimmicks, and we will call out their behaviour for what it is.

--- Later in debate ---

[Joseph Johnson]

We certainly agree with all that. Universities are at the heart of many of the most successful LEPs, and we want their good work to stimulate economic growth and relevant provision of higher education by universities in their local areas. That is why at the heart of the Bill are powers to make it easier for high-quality new universities and challenger institutions to enter the sector and award degrees, to drive up quality and to give applicants more choice about where and how to study.

Some say, “Close the door to new universities. Put the cap back on student numbers. Restrict the benefits of higher education to a narrow elite.” The same arguments have been made at every period of university expansion. In the 1820s, University College London and King’s were dismissed as “cockney” universities. Today, they are globally renowned. Those arguments were heard when the civic colleges in Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and Bristol became red-brick universities before the first world war, and when the Conservative Government of John Major took through Parliament the 1992 legislation that created a wave of new universities from the polytechnics.

[Ms Angela Eagle]

Will the Minister give way?

[Joseph Johnson]

In a minute. We need more universities again today. Universities are great engines of social mobility and formidable drivers of regional economic growth. That is why I was so pleased to welcome the announcement of the new University of Suffolk, and it is why I am so supportive of the Hereford plans. Those are just two good examples of the challenger institutions that we have in mind to open up the sector to new, high-quality entrants.

We welcome support for our proposals from sensible figures, such as Lord Mandelson—now chancellor of Manchester Metropolitan, which is one of those institutions that gained university status, thanks to a Conservative Government, in 1992—who have recognised the essential contribution that a wide range of institutions can make to our economic success and to social mobility.

[Ms Eagle]

Thank goodness for that. Just to make it clear to the hon. Gentleman, Labour Members do not object to expanding the university sector. We do have questions, and rightly, about the speed with which that will be done, how probationary status will work and what kind of gamble that will represent. We will go on asking those questions, but the hon. Gentleman should not set up a straw man or woman and accuse us of being against expansion. We are not, but it has to be of high quality.

[Joseph Johnson]

I am delighted that the shadow Secretary of State is supportive of new entrants and new challenger institutions. They are exactly what the sector needs, and I am glad that we have established the important point of principle that the Labour party is supportive of new entrants into the sector and believes in competition. That is a good thing, and I am delighted to hear it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that question. May I begin by thanking and paying a huge tribute to everybody who works in this place, especially those in our catering services? They often have to work the most unsocial hours and often do so in the most difficult of conditions, as they suddenly have a huge influx of us going into the Tea Room or wherever it might be. We perhaps underestimate the work they do. My right hon. Friend makes a very good point and I would be more than happy to take this up with the House authorities. In the meantime, I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on rightly launching this consultation, as when someone, in any facility, pays a tip, they expect the person to whom they want that tip to go to receive it—all of it. I think this will allow us to begin to see real progress, so that we do the right thing on this.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Two Select Committees of this House are now preparing to examine the collapse of BHS into administration last week, putting at risk 11,000 jobs. Sir Philip Green bought the company for £200 million, took hundreds of millions of pounds out of it in dividend payments for his own family and then sold it for £1 to a bankrupt with no retail experience. What does the Business Secretary think are the issues for public policy as he contemplates the current situation? Does he think this represents responsible ownership?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady is right to raise that issue. As she said, two Select Committees are already looking into it, and considerable concern has been expressed in Parliament. I share some of those concerns, which is why I can inform her that today I have written to the chief executive of the Insolvency Service and instructed her to commence an investigation immediately. She has agreed to do so, and I will make both those letters—mine and hers—available in the Libraries of both Houses later today.

[Ms Eagle]

That is good news and I certainly welcome the steps that the Business Secretary has taken. During Sir Philip Green’s stewardship of BHS, the pension fund went from a surplus to a black hole of £571 million. What options do the Government and the pensions regulator now have to ensure that Sir Philip Green pays his fair share of that huge liability? Does the Secretary of State agree that the Pension Protection Fund was designed as a lifeboat for staff pensions, not a funding stream for the owner’s luxury yacht?

[Sajid Javid]

Hopefully, the hon. Lady will understand that it would be wrong of me, and of anyone else, to single out any particular individual. That is for independent investigators to look at by examining the evidence in front of them. She will also know that, when it comes to defined benefit pension schemes, there are many in deficit, and just because one is in deficit does not necessarily mean that there has been some kind of wrongdoing. As I have said, I have instructed the Insolvency Service to commence an investigation, but she should also be reassured that the pension regulator will be looking into this matter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I am pleased to see my hon. Friend is wearing an apprenticeship badge today to mark this important week. I recall fondly a number of visits to Telford and meeting local businesses. I join her in warmly congratulating those local businesses, colleges and training providers on the work they have done to boost apprenticeships, which are up 120% over five years in her constituency. That means thousands of young people being helped to achieve their full potential.

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

It is National Apprenticeship Week, British Science Week, Global Consumer Day—and the Ides of March. Today, the CBI has released a survey showing that 80% of its members support the case that staying in the EU is best for jobs, growth and investment. They are right, are they not, Secretary of State?

[Sajid Javid]

The best outcome of the referendum for business, jobs and growth in Britain is that we remain. That provides us with the opportunities we need. The uncertainty of a leave vote would be the enemy of jobs and growth.

[Ms Eagle]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that response. It was not heard brilliantly on parts of his Back Benches. Is his lukewarm response for remaining not now irritating both sides of his divided party and damaging the Government’s case to remain in the EU? When the Prime Minister launched the Conservatives’ “in for Britain” campaign, the Business Secretary conveniently had a prior engagement, announcing that:

“with a heavy heart and no enthusiasm, I will be voting for the UK to remain a member of the European Union.”

He asserted that he would remain a “Brussels basher”, but is he not really increasingly seen in his own party as a Brexit betrayer? With 100 days to go to the EU referendum, does the overwhelming case for remaining in the EU not deserve a Business Secretary who can campaign with his heart as well as his head?

[Sajid Javid]

It is a shame that that is the best the hon. Lady can come up with. One would think she would want to make a positive case. I think she should focus on speaking to her own boss and asking him about the contribution he wants to make to this debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Eagle Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ms Angela Eagle (Wallasey) (Lab)]

Does the Business Secretary believe that the Google tax deal reached by his right hon. Friend the Chancellor is fair and proportionate?

[Sajid Javid]

I think it was a very important deal, not least because it leads to a change in behaviour. It sends out a message that if you do not pay your taxes properly and according to the rules, action will be taken.

[Ms Eagle]

Well, I am not sure from that answer whether the Business Secretary thought it was fair and proportionate, but at the weekend he said that it “wasn’t a glorious moment”, even though the Chancellor had hailed it as a success. Which is it? It cannot be both. Does the Secretary of State not understand how unfair this cosy sweetheart deal with a company that seems to regard paying its fair share of taxes as a voluntary activity must seem to Britain’s millions of small businesses that are now expected to do their tax returns quarterly and have no opportunity to meet Ministers 24 times to negotiate their own private little tax deals?

[Sajid Javid]

When the hon. Lady’s party was last in office, some companies were regularly getting away with 0% tax rates, but Labour took no action whatever. Since the change in Government in 2010, we have closed 40 of Labour’s tax loopholes, which has helped to generate an additional £12 billion in taxation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Menzies]

T7. You caught me off guard there, Mr Speaker, and I apologise.

[Ms Angela Eagle]

Pay attention.

[Mark Menzies]

I apologise to the Labour Front Benchers, too.

The backbone of the north-west economy is built around small and medium-sized enterprises, so will the Secretary of State outline what help his Department is giving to small businesses across the north-west?