Oral Answers to Questions

Angela Watkinson Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

As so often, the hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I recently visited degree apprentices at Gateshead College whose own school refused them a visit in order to talk about apprenticeships, skills and technical education. We are doing a lot of work to ensure that careers guidance in schools properly reflects the options available. We have introduced legislation and we are looking to do more to ensure that students are offered skills and apprenticeships.

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

Would my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating Havering College of Further and Higher Education on its excellent five-week railway skills course from which 85% of students are moving on to apprenticeships in an area where there is a great skills shortage? Would he agree that a five-week course is an ideal way of encouraging less academic students to remain in education?

[Robert Halfon]

I am delighted to see my hon. Friend in her place. Not only do I offer my huge congratulations to Havering College; I would be pleased to visit with my hon. Friend.

Education Funding in London

Angela Watkinson Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ian Mearns]

rose—

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

rose—

[Graham Stuart]

I give way to my hon. Friend.

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that property prices are an element in the formula that must be taken into consideration, particularly in areas such as the London Borough of Havering, which is right on the outside of outer London? Teachers there are paid the outer London allowance, but property prices are very high. Often newly qualified teachers who apply for jobs in our schools find that they cannot afford the accommodation, so they then move inwards towards Barking, Dagenham and other nearby boroughs where the properties are a bit cheaper.

[Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There are all sorts of boroughs across London, and some areas are funded to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds less per classroom than one that might be just a short distance away, yet they are in exactly the same market for teachers—the vital ingredient for raising educational standards. Despite that, when it comes to improving standards, outer London has been part of the London educational transformation.

The suggestion that moving from a situation of gross inequity to one that is fairer to all will undermine quality, when those who have suffered that inequity, such as the constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Hornchurch and Upminster (Dame Angela Watkinson), have none the less managed to improve standards, proves that the issue is not just about money. The money needs to be distributed fairly.

I think the most important thing we should do today as a House is to say that we want a system that is fair to all. We should be discussing the principles and ensuring that the Government do not wriggle on any them for their own partisan or other interests. That is quite right, but let us not scaremonger. Let us not send out messages about dividing communities when the aim of fair funding is right and supported by everyone—including the Labour, Conservative and other major Front-Bench teams. I shall end there.

Skills and Growth

Angela Watkinson Excerpts

Wednesday 17th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Harrington]

The response that people give on television quiz shows when they are not quite sure of the position is “Ask me one on sport.” I may be able to give the hon. Gentleman an answer after listening to the debate on Monday, but perhaps I can help him for the future by saying that he might have asked a better question if he had asked whether I agreed that children who go to UTCs should not really be the kind of children who would consider going to university. I do not agree with that at all.

The advantage of the UTCs is the practical education that they provide. Their pupils are thinking about careers at the age of 12 or 13, which is really good. They can combine an academic education, studying for GCSEs like everyone else, with learning specific skills. The UTC in Watford is geared towards hotel and hospitality management, an area in which there are lots of good skilled jobs available, as well as IT skills, the need for which is universal. It is commendable that there are already 30 UTCs in England, with nearly 6,500 pupils, and by September 2016 there will be 25 more. I have met the principals of various UTCs, including Emma Loveland, the principal of the one in Watford, and their view of education is based on their belief that this country is under-skilled and that conventional education—notwithstanding the academies, which are very good—has been producing quite a lot of children who are either unskilled or not in a position to become skilled.

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the preparation for the world of work needs to involve the acquisition not only of practical or academic skills but also employability skills? Students need interpersonal skills that include good manners and good timekeeping. They need to appear interested and look as though they really want the job when they go for an interview. That is all part of getting on to the first rung of their career ladder.

[Richard Harrington]

I agree with everything that my hon. Friend has said. I am pleased that the UTCs are leading the way for the education system now to include ways of getting a job in the whole process, rather than that being an afterthought at a careers fair, as it used to be in the sixth form.

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[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

May I say what a privilege it is to be called in this debate—first, Mr Deputy Speaker, to welcome you back to the Chair, but also to follow the excellent maiden speech by the hon. Member for Glasgow Central (Alison Thewliss)? She represents a fascinating area of the country and she gave a very good explanation of what has been going on there and her role in it. Her speech comes on the back of an enormous number of excellent maiden speeches, including those of the new broom, the hon. Member for Bradford East (Imran Hussain), and the hon. Member for East Dunbartonshire (John Nicolson), if I may pick out just two. The latter reminded me of my days as an archaeologist at the University of Edinburgh. I am very familiar with the Antonine Wall that he described.

I want to deal with apprenticeships. I can agree with the first bit of the motion—

“That this House notes that improving education is imperative for the future economic growth of the country”—

but not with the rest of it. If the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), who is no longer in his seat, wants a more bipartisan approach, it could start with this motion acknowledging that the apprenticeship programme has been a flagship programme of this Government and we have put £1.5 billion into making sure that it works.

The wording of the motion does not bear comparison with the situation in my constituency, where the advancement of the apprenticeships scheme is having an excellent result. One way of seeing that is to look at the unemployment figures in the constituency. The figures released today show that the total number of people unemployed across the whole constituency amounts to 244. That is a diminution in the number of unemployed on the previous month, and in effect it represents full unemployment and the normal churn of people looking for jobs. Most importantly, in the previous month the number of youth unemployed in the constituency was down to 30. I have every sympathy for those 30, but this represents a very good achievement for the Government. I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Watford (Richard Harrington), who is no longer in the Chamber, to his new position. He is right to stress the role of MPs in driving the process along; each of us has the ability to do that. In my constituency I have Henley College, which is a very strong player in providing training for apprenticeships and has been working hand in hand with companies to promote those apprenticeships.

[Dame Angela Watkinson]

Will my hon. Friend join me in welcoming the increasing number of girls who are taking STEM subjects, which are leading to apprenticeships in engineering and technical subjects, and does he agree that we need more of them?

[John Howell]

I absolutely welcome my hon. Friend’s comments. She makes a very good point that we all need to bear in mind.

At the time when the recession was at its deepest, I took the initiative in my constituency to get together a whole lot of players in this field, including Henley College, to help businesses cope with the fact that they were going into recession. Henley College rose to the challenge very well. It was instructive to find that many people in the room from firms that had done business in the area for 25 years did not know a single soul among the rest of those gathered there. I think that if I were to do the same thing now, that would not be the case. They know where they are going, and they are taking the lead in promoting apprenticeships.

Colleges like Henley can make an important contribution in encouraging the provision of training. This is to do with a lot of the work that companies are undertaking to find the best training providers to help them in delivering apprenticeships. I recently went to see two contrasting companies in the constituency to hear about the work they were doing in apprenticeships. One was DAF, the truck manufacturer, which is one of the biggest companies in my constituency and sits at the centre of a web of apprenticeships that goes right across the country. It has made great efforts to find the right training provider to help it in this—a college down in the west country with which it can work to deliver this training. It has degree-type award ceremonies at the end of the apprenticeship training so that people feel they have got something out of the whole process. I have been invited to the ceremony it will conduct in September, to witness it at first hand.

The other company I went to visit was Williams Performance Tenders. Despite the constituency being landlocked, Williams Performance Tenders is the biggest producer of boats by volume in the whole country. Having been on one of those boats, I know they are extremely fast. This company, too, has a very good apprenticeship scheme that it manages largely by itself. That scheme operates in the most deprived village in the whole of my constituency, and it is making a big difference to people’s lives.

As a result of all this, if we look back to the beginning of 2010, we see that there has been an increase of some 58% in the number of apprenticeships taken up in the constituency. That is an excellent achievement. I put on record my thanks to all the businesses that have participated in and are contributing to this.

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[Dame Angela Watkinson]

Does my hon. Friend attribute that to good co-operation between local education and training providers and local employers, so that the skills that employers need are identified and young people are taking the right courses?

[John Howell]

That is a difficult question to answer. I attribute it partly to that, but the role of schools needs to be worked on further, because they can do more.

During the election campaign, I became aware of the way schools in the constituency still regard apprenticeships in an academic light as providing an academic training rather than a genuine life option for people.

Preparing Young People for Work

Angela Watkinson Excerpts

Wednesday 10th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I know that my hon. Friend had direct teaching experience in colleges before he came here. Returning to my previous answer, we know that the good links, as my hon. Friend says, happen in some schools in some parts of the country. What this company will do through a network of enterprise and employment advisers is to make sure that the links between schools and businesses and employers happen right across the country. Some schools are very fortunate in having a large successful company down the road that offers an excellent scheme, but many schools are not in that position. Yet there are some fantastic businesses out there, often perhaps in the supply chain or in the service sector, looking for the next great generation of employees—and I am absolutely convinced that they are in the schools that my hon. Friend mentions.

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

May I commend to the Secretary of State the excellent schools, colleges and academies in Hornchurch and Upminster, and the pre-apprenticeship and skills training organisations there? They all recognise the importance of employability skills—having good oral, social and interpersonal skills, good timekeeping and good manners. Does she agree that, without those skills, no matter how good a pupil’s qualifications, they are unlikely to compete very well at interview? Will the new organisation take that into consideration?

PISA Results

Angela Watkinson Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is vital that we build on and improve the links between business and schools. The university technical colleges programme is designed to do just that, but there is much more we can do. I have been talking recently to Sir Charlie Mayfield, of the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, to see how we can go even further. Of course, it is vital that we all embed the reforms set out in Alison Wolf’s report, which are designed to improve technical education and ensure that all education is more relevant to the work of business.

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

Last week I attended an inspirational awards evening at Hall Mead academy in my constituency, where the pupils are high achievers not only in academic subjects but in sport, drama, music, art and social and interpersonal skills. Does that not demonstrate how the Secretary of State’s reforms have given head teachers the freedom to enable their standards to rise continuously?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is no tension between academic excellence and a rich range of extra-curricular activities; in fact, they reinforce each other, as the best schools recognise, including the academy in her constituency.

Pupil Premium

Angela Watkinson Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

It is the allocation of the last tranche of pupil premium money, which is additional money. What that says is that having announced almost £1.9 billion of pupil premium money so far, we have taken the very deliberate decision for the final tranche of extra money that we have allocated in the last year to go predominantly to primary schools to support this intervention. It is additional money.

[Dame Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

Children arriving in reception classes without basic speech and language skills face additional challenges, as do their teachers, in working towards secondary transfer. Will the Minister encourage schools to promote public library membership for very young children, as is happening in the London borough of Havering, which has introduced automatic enrolment for reception children and support packages for parents so that children are introduced to books and can take them home to enjoy all the benefits that flow from them?

[Mr Laws]

The hon. Lady makes a crucial point. I think schools should encourage pupils to access libraries. In my experience, many schools are already doing very good work these days in school to make sure that young people are encouraged to read and enjoy books, but the hon. Lady is quite right to point out that we have a very effective public library service, which should also be used by schools.

Autism

Angela Watkinson Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde (Jonathan Reynolds), and I pay tribute to him for his speech. It is good to know that here in Parliament we do not always shout and bray at each other, but sometimes work together with a common purpose and for the common good. In the same spirit, I welcome the Under-Secretary of State for Education my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), the children’s Minister, to the Front Bench. I also welcome you to the Chair, Mr. Speaker: you have taken a great deal of personal interest in this subject, and I pay tribute to you and your work in that regard.

Let me say to my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) that I am delighted that this is the subject on which I am making my first speech from the Back Benches for a very long time. It is a subject close to my heart because of my Private Member’s Bill, which was a truly co-operative affair involving Members in all parts of the House. However, the debate also gives me an opportunity to pay tribute to all the families and parents who sent the hundreds of e-mails that enabled us to secure a Second Reading for the Bill, and to put on the statute book what I think was the first, and is still the only, disability-specific piece of legislation in the country.

One of the hidden heroines of that process was my great friend Baroness Browning, who did so much to further the cause. I talked to her just before the debate. She continues to raise these matters regularly in the other place, and I want the Minister to know about an issue that is challenging her particularly at the moment. She is very concerned—as, I am sure, are many Members of this House—about the assessments that are being conducted for the Government, especially those conducted by Atos. I ask the Minister to acknowledge that concern, and to ensure that people with enough experience of autism spectrum disorders are able to make the fair assessments that we all want.

That concern—along with many others that have been expressed in the two speeches that we have already heard—is reflected across the board. It is felt that there is still a great deal to be done. Research by many organisations, including the Back-Bench all-party group but also the National Autistic Society, indicates that people are still having to battle and fight to secure the right support for family members. This year the NAS celebrates 50 years of providing advice and support, and its research illustrates that ongoing battle. Nearly 50% of the parents who responded to a survey that it conducted recently said that they were still having to wait for more than a year to obtain the right support for their children, and 25% were having to wait for two years. That cannot be right in this day and age, given the knowledge of autism that we now have.

Delays in obtaining access to support can have a significant impact. Nearly 70% of those parents said that the progress of their children’s education had suffered because of the lack of timely support, and I am sure that that is echoed in the experience of some of the parents of children with autism who are in the House today. I also think that such delays always result in poorer outcomes for children and young people with autism. My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon knows that only 15% of adults with autism are in full-time employment, but one of the statistics he gave was 1% short. In fact, the disability task group in Sheffield said 26% of graduates with autism are unemployed, and that is the highest rate for any disability group.

[Angela Watkinson (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

I know my right hon. Friend has long taken an interest in this subject, but may I recommend to her the ROSE—Realistic Opportunities for Supported Employment—project in my constituency, which transfers such students from further education colleges into employment, and provides support that is gradually withdrawn as they become more independent? That is an example of good practice which I am sure my right hon. Friend would like to see copied throughout the country.

[Mrs Gillan]

Certainly one way to maximise the potential of people with autism is to follow such examples of good practice. The all-party group might want to address these issues in the future. If we want to be hard-nosed about this subject, we could refer to a National Audit Office report published when the Autism Act 2009 was going through this House, which showed that if local services identified and supported just 4% of adults with high-functioning autism and Asperger’s syndrome, the outlay would become cost-neutral over time, and if they did the same for just 8% of such adults, that could save the Government some £67 million a year.

I worked very closely with the NAS during the passage of the Autism Bill, so I know that it strongly supports the Government’s proposed reforms to the special educational needs system. It especially welcomes the introduction of joint co-operation and commissioning duties, the extension of SEN law to cover academies and free schools, and the education, health and care plans for young people up to the age of 25, which will replace the statements.

The NAS has raised some concerns, however, and it speaks from a position of great strength. It runs seven schools for children with autism, and it is setting up an autism free school—in our area, Mr Speaker, of the Thames valley. The new NAS Anderson school in Bristol works with children to address the challenges they face, with the specific aim of helping them move back into community-based mainstream provision. The NAS knows from experience that these new schools are set up in response to great local need and are anchored in their communities. It is essential that children with complex needs can have access to such independent special schools, but I understand there is some concern that under the new system parents may not be able to express a preference for such schools in an education, health and care plan. I urge the Minister to ensure that such schools can be accessed by those who need them.

This debate has focused on the SEN reforms, but the Autism Act 2009 was borne out of a recognition that the specific needs of adults with autism were often overlooked by service designers at the local level and therefore they consistently missed out and did not get the help they needed. Unfortunately, that is reflected in recent NAS research. Some two-thirds of adults with autism are not getting the help they need.

It is vital that we get education provision right. Local authorities must ensure that they not only educate themselves, but implement the Department of Health adult autism strategy in a way that addresses local needs. In working with young people with autism and their families, local authorities must plan at the strategic level for local services and develop individually tailored plans to ensure that children with autism are supported into adulthood and can enter employment and live independently in our communities.

The adult strategy will be reviewed in 2013. That gives us an important opportunity to consider these matters. It also gives us a chance to celebrate improvements —there have been improvements—but we must not ignore the fact that there is still so much more that we need to do. I particularly urge the Minister to take on board the fact that he needs to work with his colleagues at the Department of Health and the Department for Work and Pensions, and with many others, including Members of this House, to ensure that the proposals to reform SEN are fully linked to the work on the autism strategy.

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[John McDonnell]

I welcome—everyone welcomes—the longer transition, and my hon. Friend the Member for Stalybridge and Hyde made that point. It would be useful to get it on the record that people want the specific right of the appeal that has existed since the Education Act 1981 to be endorsed in the new legislation as well. We need to give people security that that will happen, and if that is what the Minister is saying, that is incredibly helpful.

Mandatory mediation also came up in the group discussion. I have never known mandatory mediation to work in any walk of life. If people are not willing to go into mediation, it does not usually work. To have mandatory mediation that involves penalties as well is, I think, completely counter-productive, but it has worried people, and on that ground a rethink is needed, and perhaps further clarification about how that will be introduced is needed. The parents, who got a lawyer to take them through what they envisaged the new system would be, wrote to me to say that what they had seen was extremely complex. My hon. Friend made the point about the difficulty of knowing what is referable to a tribunal. Is it now only education matters? What about health and other matters—where can they be referred to and where can parents appeal? Getting some clarity and simplicity in the system is critical.

In some cases in my area we have had to resort to law, using legal aid. There is therefore some anxiety about some of the restrictions on access to legal aid. Some clarity about that would be extremely helpful.

Everyone has their own experience and some of these cases are the most distressing I have ever dealt with, but I read John Harris’s piece in The Guardian a few months ago and recommend it to other hon. Members, because it summarised for me exactly what many of the parents in my area have gone through. They have been fighting their way through the system and then the Government come along and promise the opportunity of improving it, but now many fear that, in fact, we may be going backwards unless we get secure commitments from the Government.

[Angela Watkinson]

The hon. Gentleman may be aware that a problem for families who have a child on the autistic spectrum that often goes unnoticed or unmentioned is the financial burden. Often, because the child has poorly developed gross motor skills and co-ordination, there is lots of accidental damage in the home, with items such as televisions, washing machines and carpets having to be replaced quite frequently, so in addition to all the challenges he has just listed, there is also a hidden financial burden of which most people are unaware.

[John McDonnell]

I am glad that the hon. Lady makes that point, which I should have made earlier, because it is absolutely critical. We can get all these rights, but we need to be able to finance them, and it is not only local authorities and other services that provide that funding, because families often have to complement it. That needs to be taken into account in the benefits system.

I will give another example. When it comes to housing for families with a child on the spectrum—I have families in my constituency who have more than one child on the spectrum—one of the biggest clamours is for a garden so that they can play outside. I have dealt with one such family who were allocated a house by the local authority—it was in the private sector—that was on a busy road near a roundabout and had no front garden. That was a particular problem, because when the door was opened the child could run straight out on to the road.

There are many issues that must be dealt with when addressing the complex needs of individual families. That is why we had hoped that the new legislation would show a broad understanding and acceptance of the complexity of what individuals and families have to go through and at least have a faster and more simplified system that gave greater security. The message I am getting from the parents and local organisations I have met is that they are very fearful that their existing rights, limited though they may be, and the existing system, however difficult it may be, might be undermined and that everything we were hoping for in the new system will not be achieved.

I hope that, as a result of this debate—this is why I welcome it—we can improve some of the Government’s proposals and that they can then take away some of the concerns that have been expressed today to ensure that we get the legislation we all need and want.

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[Jim Shannon]

I thank my hon. Friend for that comment. We want to exchange our ideas and to ensure that if something is not working right, we do it better. Ministers in Northern Ireland would be more than happy to be involved.

I want to highlight some of the elements that must form the foundations of any autism legislation and that have been implemented in Northern Ireland. The Autism Act (Northern Ireland) 2011, unlike the English autism legislation, is equality driven and lifelong focused. We look at the child at an early stage and as they work their way through school and into jobs, which each of the Members who have spoken have mentioned.

The 2011 Act amends the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 to include those with social communication disabilities such as autism. That supersedes the Equality Act 2010 in Great Britain, which provides recognition only in guidance, not in the primary legislation. We have taken that a stage further. The 2011 Act changes the definition of disability in the 1995 Act so that the entitlement to services of people with autism is no longer measured solely by their IQ or their physical ability. Some of the things that a child or young person is asked, such as whether they can walk from A to B, are ridiculous when trying to assess disability. Access to services and benefits also now relates to a person’s level of social and communication impairment or function.

Previously, disability living allowance was disallowed because autism did not clearly fit into the protections and the definition in the 1995 Act. That is no longer the case. I suspect that all Members in the Chamber have fought DLA appeals for young people who have autism. Ten years ago, it was sometimes extremely difficult to explain to the DLA panel that a certain young fellow or girl needed more care and attention than their brother or sister who did not have autism. It is easier now, because there is a better understanding of autism. We have tried to address that issue in Northern Ireland.

We have placed a duty on the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety to act as the lead Government body in producing, reviewing and implementing a cross-departmental strategy for autism. Currently, cross-departmental co-operation is only discretionary. However, we have a strategy in place that brings all the Government bodies together and ensures that they all focus on what it is important to do. We have placed a duty on all Departments to agree a data-collection system to calculate the current and future need for services for people with autism and their families. That helps us to plan for the long term.

[Angela Watkinson]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that any autism strategy should include respite care for the family?

[Jim Shannon]

Absolutely. Anyone who knows such families knows that that is critical. One just has to see the boisterousness of the young person and the distressed look of the mother to know that the mum just needs a bit of respite care to get a break for a wee while. That is an important factor that perhaps we have not mentioned. I thank the hon. Lady for raising it.

In Northern Ireland, we have also placed a duty on the DHSSPS to detail clearly how the needs of families and carers are to be addressed. There is a clear directive in the strategy on the development of family support services. We have placed a duty on the Government of Northern Ireland to implement an effective autism awareness campaign, for example using information websites and poster campaigns. It is important that we take the five points of that strategy together.

It is my belief that the rest of the UK should handle the issue of autism in a similar manner to Northern Ireland. I urge the Minister to interact with Ministers in Northern Ireland to exchange ideas, understand how our system works and find out how the legislation can be improved. If we can do that, we will have achieved a lot.

I also believe that we should implore all those involved to look carefully at the work and outcome of the Autism Act (Northern Ireland) 2011. When the Government consider their draft legislation, to which the hon. Member for South Swindon referred in his introductory remarks, I believe there is no better system, at least to start with, than that in Northern Ireland.

To be forewarned is to be forearmed. Figures indicate that the number of children with autism in Northern Ireland is rising—as in the rest of the United Kingdom—and we sense the effect that is having on society and individuals. It also impacts on people’s financial circumstances as there is a drain on the moneys necessary to deal with this condition. We must prepare and set moneys aside for that purpose.

We all know families who are affected by this issue, and they do not ask for too much or more than they are entitled to. We are being asked to give only what they need and what we can provide, which I believe is support. Above all, we need to help those children and families to have an acceptable quality of life. That has not yet been achieved, but hopefully it will be once the draft legislation is introduced.