Education and Adoption Bill

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

It is an early hour for me to be speaking in such a debate, but I am pleased to have the opportunity to respond on behalf of the Labour Opposition to the Bill.

We have had a very good debate and a great number of contributions—in the end, we had, I think, 30 contributions from the Back Benches. We heard from the right hon. Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), and the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), who is in her place, made her maiden speech. I join those who have congratulated her on it. She told us that, prior to coming to the House, she had been a physics teacher, and had then decided to retrain as a stonemason. She offered her services to the House in the massive refurbishment that is likely to have to take place in years to come. I have to tell her—she may be disappointed—that, if she is not engaged by the House of Commons as a stonemason, unfortunately the Labour party will not be in need of the services of a stonemason for the foreseeable future, and probably never in the future will we need her services. I congratulate her on her maiden speech, which was extremely effective and fluent. I hope she makes many more such contributions during her time in the House.

We heard contributions from the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) and from my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), and a maiden speech from the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry), who is not yet back in his place. I am sure messages are being sent to hon. Members in the various corners of the building and that they are working very hard to return for the winding-up speeches.

The hon. Gentleman’s maiden speech was very fluent. He reminded us that he is not the only Berry in the House. [Interruption.] I welcome him back to his place. Before he arrived, I was just saying how much the House enjoyed his maiden speech, which I congratulate him on. I understand the problem he has been encountering with his parliamentary mail as a result of not being the only Berry in the House. My right hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Kevin Barron) and I share similar but not exactly identical names. On new year’s eve a couple of years ago, I was very briefly knighted by the Daily Mail online as a result of the similarities of our names. I had to explain that I was more shovelry than chivalry, and that the knighthood probably was not intended for me.

We also had a speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne), who movingly told us about the GCSE English teacher who made a great contribution to his life and future prospects. My hon. Friend is right: it is the quality of teaching that counts, so research shows, more than the quality of or the differences between schools. It is the difference between teachers in schools that is even more important, and we should all seek to raise the standing and quality of the teaching workforce. As a former teacher, I often meet ex-pupils in all sorts of places. They have not yet made any complaints, but I doubt that I would ever get as great an endorsement as the one my hon. Friend gave to his English teacher. I am sure that he will be very proud of the mention he got in the House.

We had speeches from the hon. Member for South West Devon (Mr Streeter), who spoke about adoption; from the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown); and from the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (William Wragg), who also told us that he was a former teacher and brought his expertise to the debate. I was going to say “Llongyfarchiadau” to the hon. Member for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts), but she is not yet back in her place—that is not her fault because the wind-up speeches started early. She made an impressive maiden speech and I congratulate her on it. I also congratulate her on her mastery of the Welsh language for someone who was born in London. It is far greater than mine, even though I was born in Wales.

We also had a maiden speech from the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Luke Hall), and he told us of his experience in the retail sector. We have that in common, as I was once a Saturday boy in Marks and Spencer, as well as a warehouse cleaner in Fine Fare, at 48.5p an hour, which shows how long ago it was—long before the Labour Government brought in the minimum wage.

We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), although I must correct her slightly. She referred several times to the Bill as “draft legislation”. It is understandable why, as a new Member, she might think it is a draft Bill, and many hon. Members have pointed out that it has the lack of quality of a draft Bill, but it is the actual Bill. This is what the Government have introduced, and they are asking us to give it a Second Reading. I am not surprised that she has decided not to support it tonight, given that in her eyes it is only a draft Bill.

We had a contribution from the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson)—I am glad to see him in his place—who told us that his wife struggles to get our proceedings on broadband in his constituency, so that she can watch his speeches. I recommend the BBC Parliament channel, where his wife could join dozens of other viewers in enjoying our proceedings. [Laughter.]

My hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) spoke passionately and with great knowledge about adoption. We heard from the hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan), who is not yet in her place. I am sure she will be with us shortly. We heard a very fine speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), who put her finger on the shortfalls in the Bill. In particular, she emphasised its illiberality, and I will return to that issue later.

We had contributions from the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) and from my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), who brought his great experience from the Education Committee, and pointed out that the Bill does not seem to be based on the Committee reports published earlier this year.

The hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond), who is in her place, told us that she had been a lay inspector, and I very much welcome the expertise she brought to the debate. In responding to my intervention, she showed the difficulty with the vagueness of the definition of coasting. She seemed to suggest that only inadequate schools could be deemed to be coasting. Obviously, there is a lot more we need to tease out in Committee on what exactly the Government’s thinking is on this matter. A lot of hon. Members seemed to suggest that they knew what a coasting school was, but there seemed to be very different interpretations of that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) spoke passionately about the importance of education and in particular the quality of teaching, and we heard from the hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer). My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury) emphasised that the Bill is deficient in not dealing with the key issue of teacher shortages, which we predict will be a problem in the next few years. The hon. Member for Fareham (Suella Fernandes) made a very fine speech, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), who spoke passionately about schools in his constituency and the need for all of us to be passionate about school improvement.

We had a contribution from my hon. Friend the Member for City of Chester (Christian Matheson). My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) made a brilliant speech and put his finger right on the problems in the Bill and why it is not worthy to be placed in front of the House of Commons. We had contributions from the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis). He took the trouble to congratulate all hon. Members who have made their maiden speeches by saying: “It’s a lovely feeling when you’ve nailed it—I know what it’s like.” He did not add, “even if I say so myself.” He raised extremely important and powerful points about conflicts of interest and the use of public funds and public resources. I am sure we will hear more about that in the weeks to come.

We had a very fine speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh). There were contributions from my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner), who spoke extremely well about schools in his constituency, and from my hon. Friend the Member for Edmonton (Kate Osamor). There were 30 contributions in all from the Back Benches and it was an excellent debate.

[Mrs Anne-Marie Trevelyan (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (Con)]

Fairer funding is vital to my area. Do the hon. Gentleman and the Labour party back the F40 fairer funding campaign that is so key to my constituents in Northumberland?

[Kevin Brennan]

I recommend to the hon. Lady the very good debate we had on this matter in Westminster Hall just before the end of the previous Parliament. I spoke for the Opposition and said we absolutely support fairer funding. If she would like to consult that debate—it is not the subject under discussion today—she will see our position in more detail.

We have had a very good debate. I will deal principally with the education part of the Bill, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) dealt with the clauses on adoption, but there are a few points in relation to adoption that I would like to put on the record. I understand that the solution put forward in the Bill is extremely similar to the one the Government withdrew last year when the measures were put in front of the House of Lords. If I am wrong about that, I am sure the Minister will correct us in Committee, but it does seem that this is perhaps a second bite of the cherry. We will be interested to know from Ministers, if that is the case, why they have come back with this having withdrawn similar proposals extremely recently.

We are concerned about the impact on small specialist agencies and we are also worried about those children who may not be suitable for adoption. I am disappointed that the Bill has so little to say about special guardianship, kinship care, grandparents and long-term fostering. We will want to take up those issues in Committee.



I hope that Members on both sides of the House agree that, fundamentally, all of us—heads, teachers, support staff, governors, parents and even politicians—want the best for our children. I was going to say “politicians, and even parents”, because parents’ rights have been rubbed out by the Bill, but I decided against that in favour of trying to try to establish a point of consensus at the outset of my speech. If all of us want the best for our children, however, why do the Government consistently pursue paths that are not based on evidence of what is best for our children’s education? We have reached an extraordinary state of affairs. A Bill that was cobbled together during the two weeks after the election has been presented as if it were the answer to all the educational problems in the country, although it patently is not. As the Education Committee said earlier this year,

“the Government should stop exaggerating”.

The Bill has been so rushed and so inadequately drafted that it does not even provide a definition of its central term. Its first clause, on page 1, permits intervention in “Coasting schools”. We agree with the proposition that everyone should seek to tackle underperformance in schools, even schools that may be superficially performing well. Indeed, we championed it in government through, for example, the London Challenge and national challenge programmes. We introduced sponsored academies because we saw them as one way in which entrenched under- performance could be tackled, although not the only way. However, the Government have included the word “coasting” in the Bill without being able to tell anyone what it means. They have not been able to supply draft regulations to explain it in time for this debate, and I understand that they have now announced, through the usual channels, that they will not be able to supply such regulations in time for the start of the Committee stage. Perhaps we should rename this the Adoption and Education Bill, given that Ministers will have to deal with it back to front in Committee owing to their inability to provide a definition of “coasting” in time.

This is no way in which to make law that affects the education of millions of children throughout the country. A Bill should not be introduced when the Government cannot even explain or give a definition of its central term. I am reminded of a scene in the film “The Wrong Trousers”, starring Wallace and Gromit, when Gromit has to lay the track when the train is already racing along apace. If the Government cannot define “coasting” at the point when we are debating the Bill in the Chamber, they obviously deserve their own “inadequate” rating.

Why does the Bill have nothing to say about academies? Everyone who is involved in education knows that a school is a school, and that its success is built not on the nameplate on the sign outside, but on the quality of the leadership and teaching within. If the answer to turning around a failing school is always to make it an academy, what is the answer to turning around a failing academy? As the Secretary of State acknowledged recently, there are many of them—145, at the latest count—including IES Breckland, which is managed by a for-profit provider, and which has been deemed inadequate for more than a year without its sponsor being removed. So much for the right hon. Lady’s statement that

“a day spent in special measures is a day too long where a child’s education is concerned.”

That is not the case, it would seem, when the child attends an academy that is run by a favoured foreign edu-business. A fundamental flaw at the heart of the Government’s approach is that they do not even entertain that question in the Bill.

Why do the Government not listen to the Conservative councillor David Simmonds, the chairman of the Local Government Association’s children and young people board? He recently said:

“Hundreds of schools, often in disadvantaged areas, are being turned around thanks to the intervention of local councils.

It’s clear that strong leadership, outstanding classroom teaching and effective support staff and governors are the crucial factors in transforming standards in struggling schools.

We want to see bureaucratic barriers that have for a long time prevented councils from intervening swept away…We need to ensure that we focus our resources on ensuring there are enough outstanding school leaders, rather than on structures and legal status, as it is this which makes the difference we all want to see.”

That sounds to me like common sense from a Conservative councillor at the sharp end trying to deliver a quality local education, rather than the proclamations of remote Conservative Ministers who take their cue from right-wing think tanks and policy wonks with an ideological axe to grind.