Children and Young People: Restrictive Intervention

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2019 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) and to work with him to try to resolve this problem—a problem that need not exist at all.

We hear the phrase “safeguarding children” all the time, but words mean nothing if they are not matched by commensurate actions. We all know that looking after our children well, getting to know them as they grow and finding ways to make their lives safe, happy and fulfilled, are what every parent aspires to—and, indeed, I hope, every teacher when they embark on their careers. It is not always easy: children can be stubborn, petulant and anxious, much like their parents, probably.

Children have a natural curiosity to discover, to learn, to play, and every good parent or teacher enjoys nothing more than fuelling those interests and having the wonderful satisfaction of watching the child blossom, discover new things, learn about their unique character and gifts, and start their life’s journey with pleasure and excitement. Sadly, for vulnerable children, those with physical, neurological or emotional higher needs than most, that vision of a healthy and nurturing childhood can only be a dream. The reality is that many of those most in need of nurture and care find that they get none of that. By their particular difference, they struggle with the “normal” learning environment, and as those around them fail to realise that their charges are in distress, the children use the only tools they have to demonstrate their anxieties, fears, or even terrors, and display what we call “challenging behaviour”.

I am not a fan of politically correct language, but what does “challenging behaviour” mean? It means lashing out or perhaps hiding away: it means a child has been put under too much stress and so the most basic survival instincts kicked in. The child, fearful of whatever it is that is going on around them or happening to them, tries to protect themselves with the limited tools available to them. As the mother of a now nearly 20-year-old university student, whose Asperger’s was undiagnosed until he was nearly nine years old, learning to provide a world around him so that he could thrive, rather than struggle and suffer from profound anxiety attacks because of the normal environment around him, was a learning curve. But once we found an intervention that worked, having identified the source of the distress, his anxiety and “challenging behaviour”, as it is now called, simply fell away. A bright boy, a happy child, reading for hours at a time; other children near him—not so good. People touching his food—profoundly upsetting; bright lights or unexpected loud noises—meltdown guaranteed.

My son was lucky beyond words. We had teachers who were always willing to learn how to support him, so that he could enjoy school. A beanbag hidden behind a teacher’s desk, to escape to if a lesson was too noisy. An agreement that he only ate certain foods, and an explanation to the other children as to why. Extraordinary staff who learned, with us and with him, how to provide a positive environment. In so doing, they allowed my son to thrive and succeed within mainstream school. Not every child with special needs is so lucky.

I first met the wonderful Ella, one of my younger constituents, when her mother, Elly, contacted me shortly after I was first elected, in a state of profound distress and anger at the long-term physical damage caused to her daughter by the use of physical restraint, leading to violent reactive behaviour which left her with permanent physical damage. There seemed to be no way to empower Ella’s parents to challenge the school, nor to ask for justification for the use of restraint. That family are extraordinary. Nothing—although so many brick walls have been put in their way—has stopped them battling to drive change for their daughter and other vulnerable children.

The school did not help. The council did not really get as stuck in as it should have done to meet its duty of care to this bright young girl. Only Ella’s parents and friends really fought to effect change for their girl, and for others they know need better support and the enactment of what having a duty of care actually means.

We need the Government to help us change the existing—inadequate at best—systems, from basic national guidance for teachers and support staff to evidence-based early intervention support for families. Learning what works for your child’s health and wellbeing is not easy, and every parent is always a novice, so let us share the evidence and best practice, to help each other most effectively. In doing so, positive behaviour support training in schools will quickly change the challenges into good environments for these children, and the adults in loco parentis for them while in their care, from whence reductions in cost to the state and, most important, the reduction of—and hopefully an end to—the unnecessary, unacceptable, irreparable damage to these young people. Be it physical or emotional damage, so much can be avoided with intelligent and supportive environments.

All children are born with great potential, and I always say it is the adults around them who either help them to thrive or allow them to fail. We can do so much better to get this right early on—support parents and thereby help each child to reach their potential. To ensure that we get this right, we need a safeguarding system that is fit for purpose. Ofsted needs to be inspecting specifically for safeguarding outcomes for disabled and special needs children, and for that all schools must have a robust, mandatory recording system of all interventions with their pupils, so that parents, councils and Ofsted can see what is actually going on and hold them to account.

In my work on children’s services on the Public Accounts Committee, I continue to be dismayed that Ofsted seems to have little guidance to inspect the outcomes for our most vulnerable children. In this area of restraint usage and oversight of special needs management, through to foster and kinship care, we need to see clearer inspection rules and a much stronger accountability system, which includes the recording and reporting of restrictive interventions and actions, so that harm to our most precious children can be held to account.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

10. What progress he has made on closing the attainment gap for disadvantaged children.

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

20. What progress he has made on closing the attainment gap for disadvantaged children.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds)]

Our reforms, backed by the £2.4 billion pupil premium, have helped schools to narrow the disadvantage attainment gap by 13% at age 11 and 9% at age 16 since 2011.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend is correct about this; at the early years foundation stage, providers have to make sure that there are sufficient opportunities for children whose home language is not English to learn and reach a good standard in the English language.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

Rural poverty means that children in north Northumberland are doubly disadvantaged in terms of educational opportunities. Headteachers such as Nicola Mathewson at Rothbury First School, in my most sparsely populated rural community, are struggling to balance budgets because of the apprenticeship levy forced on them there. This money cannot be spent on a teaching assistant to help with reading or maths. Will the Minister meet me to discuss how we can free up these funds by correcting what I assume was an oversight in respect of excluding small rural schools when the apprenticeship levy framework was put together?

[Damian Hinds]

Of course, I would be very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss how we can make sure that apprenticeships do work for the Rothbury First School and others in her constituency. Local authorities, which are the levy payers in this case, should ensure that schools can benefit from apprenticeships; they can combine the levy across schools or share apprentices to ensure that the money is best spent.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

The School Standards Minister will have heard my hon. Friend’s question. This is not just about classroom learning—there is no doubt about that. There are all sorts of initiatives that make a difference not only to how much children learn but their readiness to learn.

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

This Wednesday is National Numeracy Day. Speaking as a mathematician—not a historian—I welcome the fantastic work that the Government are doing to increase critical basic maths participation for longer in our schools, especially for girls. Does the Minister agree that, as our all-party group on maths and numeracy report on early years highlighted last year, we need to invest more in basic skills in maths-focused learning and teacher training for early years education, so that through the development of number sense, all children can flourish in maths once they get to school?

[Mr Speaker]

It is also Mental Health Awareness Week, colleagues, as I am sure you will all be aware. I commend the ribbon to you—on top of the important point that the hon. Lady has made.

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We want to make it as simple as possible for schools and local authorities to determine eligibility for free meals, and we are exploring opportunities to make the registration process more efficient.

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

In my constituency and across north Northumberland, the pupil premium and the service pupil premium for my military children are valuable additions to the school budget, as targeted interventions for those pupils. However, they are used more effectively in some schools than others. Will the Minister tell the House what plans the Department has to get Ofsted to look more closely at usage and drive best practice across our schools?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

There are unique challenges for servicemen and women who move around, and the Education Endowment Foundation is looking at that very seriously.

School Funding: North Northumberland

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

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

I thank you, Mr Speaker, and especially so this evening as we find ourselves the last ones standing after a lengthy evening of voting on the important European Union (Withdrawal) Bill.

Northumberland voted to leave the EU, as I did, and as we progress the people’s call, I want to make sure that the children currently coming through the schools in my constituency, and those who will follow, are well prepared academically to take up all the opportunities that the United Kingdom, as a sovereign state once again, will afford them. The reality, however, is that at present north Northumberland’s children are being short-changed on account of years of being right at the bottom of the list in funding formula allocations, exacerbated by, until May of this year, a Labour council that skewed the education grant in favour of the urban-based children in the south-east of the county, to the relative detriment of children in the rural areas of north Northumberland and the market towns of Alnwick, Amble and Berwick.

To help change those children’s destiny, we need to change how we frame the education package across the county. We need to rethink radically how we sustain an effective transport network to get every child to school each day. The House should bear in mind that the catchment area for Glendale valley schools, for instance, is some 250 square miles, so continuing to pay bus companies large sums of money to provide limited services, and charging post-16 students’ families more than £600 per year per pupil for transport passes, is simply unsustainable. It often feels to me that we have cartels operating to ensure that bus companies providing services bid up the costs as a way to underwrite other service provision. That cannot be the way to maximise the effective use of education budgets. Surely this is money that could be spent on frontline teaching, education resources and tools to give our children the very best chance in life, which is what a country such as the United Kingdom should be affording them wherever they live.

The new Conservative leadership at Northumberland County Council is determined to change radically how we provide transport for our kids, but we need the Department’s assistance. The present arrangements with bus companies do not provide value for money to the taxpayer. My councillors want to lead the way in providing innovative solutions on rural transport, including for school pupils, that can provide better and bolder solutions to the problems we face. In Alnwick we have an excellent social enterprise, NEED—North East Equality & Diversity —which provides accessible transport solutions to individuals and organisations. My councillors want to find ways to use this social enterprise model to create appropriate bus size provision across my most rural communities.

To that end, I would like to encourage a new system that will empower schools themselves to no longer have to rely on the big bus companies with a very limited offer, but to create a community transport solution, perhaps something like the yellow bus model we see in the United States. I call on the Minister, therefore, to pump-prime a Northumberland project that puts education and transport needs at its heart. I ask him to sit down with me, councillors and the relevant Transport Minister to help design a community transport hub that can flex to the needs of the most rurally based children and others in communities currently cut off from so much by the lack of public transport.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I sought the hon. Lady’s permission to intervene because I wanted to support her comments. As she will recognise, Northern Ireland had some of its best examination results for a great many years—they were the envy of many parts of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Should the Minister not contact the Northern Ireland Assembly and the Education Department to see how that educational success was delivered within the limits of the available school funding?

[Mrs Trevelyan]

Indeed, we will look into that, and perhaps my hon. Friend will help us make progress.

I hope that the Minister will commit to driving forward—excuse the pun—this rural transport hub project by seeking grant funding to help pump-prime it. We can be so much smarter with the money we have if we do not have to spend it on a double-decker, one-size-fits-all offer. The current provision cannot solve the complex issues in our rural communities, and off-the-shelf approaches do not reflect the realities and problems facing my sparsely populated communities. The project would be an opportunity to show the art of common sense in action both for our school children and for others needing rural transport solutions, and also—I speak always as an accountant—for the taxpayer.

Secondly, I bring to the Minister another radical proposal to improve the educational and future life chances of Northumbrian children. I like to call it “academy plus”. He might recall that back in 2011, when I was a governor of Berwick High School, in the northernmost point of a county of more than 2,000 square miles, we decided that following years of neglect by Labour-run county hall, we should take advantage of the academies offer being driven forward by the new Conservative-led Government. And so we duly did. We had to do so, however, without a sponsor, because none of the world-class universities of the north-east would commit to becoming one—Berwick Academy seemed too remote; it was not big enough, having a school roll of only 800 pupils; it was too difficult to engage with the pupils because of the distance from Tyneside or Durham. It was depressing that we could not get them to take a strong lead and help us to build aspirations.

The county now has several academies, but it has continued to be an enormous challenge to find academy sponsors, or more recently academy chains, to take on those schools. There are a number of reasons for that, but key to the challenge is perhaps that it has proved difficult to make Northumberland a first-choice destination for teachers, given that they also have the option of Newcastle schools or of going over the border to Scottish schools. A primary school in town with a roll of 300 pupils will afford more personal development and career options than a—wonderful, in my opinion—tiny rural school of 50.

How might we find a radical way to provide an excellent education for our rural Northumbrian pupils now and for the long term? How can we create a dynamic offer for teachers to come to Northumberland? Now is the time for bold, challenging thinking. It is the very least our young people deserve. Is the Minister minded to consider how our Conservative council could become the lead partner in building an educational framework similar to that of a traditional academy trust? At the moment, all bar four of our county’s academies are failing to give our children the very best. Those good or outstanding schools are the Duchess’s High School in Alnwick, King Edward VI in Morpeth, Queen Elizabeth in Hexham and Cramlington Learning Village, which until recently was in special measures but is now making great progress. All the others, however, are in the “requiring improvement” category, and the overriding message from Ofsted is repeatedly that the challenges facing the leadership of each school are made more difficult because each teaching group is working in isolation. It means that no one is winning for our children’s future. Our primary, middle and secondary schools across the county will all need more support if they are to climb from their present situation to outstanding reports.

I am proposing a plan to develop in Northumberland a pilot programme for recruitment that can provide support and the right tools to generate educational leaders who can work together under a coherent and cohesive educational outcome framework. I would like to see our schools commissioner on board with this new plan, alongside Northumberland County Council, drawing in the best from university education leaders in the north-east and business leaders on our local enterprise partnership to create an umbrella of educational direction and drive results for all our schools.

I want to see our schools maintain their own heads and governing bodies. That would not be about forcing federations on different communities. What we need is an educational framework that overarches all of them so that, for instance, school readiness is tackled across the patch and parents cannot play schools off against each other. All our kids would be part of one Northumberland partnership, which would create an umbrella framework of higher achievement in all schools. We need to drive standards forward to meet the needs of our children’s future career choices. So this is my second request to the Minister: I ask him to find radical solutions to the unique challenge of providing the very best educational outcomes for Northumberland’s children, and to work with our schools commissioner and my passionate new Conservative county councillors to create the new partnership framework. We think of it as “academisation plus”.

There will be a need for some initial investment to make that happen—my county council will need to set up a back-office management support system, with a few co-ordinators and an educational lead—but for a small investment, long-term positive outcomes for the unique nature of Northumberland education can be driven forward. There can surely be few more positive and beneficial expenditures of taxpayers’ money than expenditure on the future workforce and leaders of our country. Our children deserve to be able to fulfil their dreams. They deserve to have an education that creates possibilities and opens doors, and—regardless of location, class or means—to be equipped with an education that can stand the test of any challenge presented by the world in which they will grow up.

[Jim Shannon]

I have been listening intently to what the hon. Lady has been saying. In my constituency and that of my hon. Friend the Member for North Down (Lady Hermon), there has been collaboration between schools at a certain level of higher education, from the sixth form onwards. Because not every school can deliver certain subjects individually, half a dozen schools have come together. One example is Glastry College, of whose board of governors I am a member; Strangford Integrated College is another. St Columba’s College in Portaferry, a Catholic-controlled maintained school, has joined Bangor Grammar School, Bangor Academy and Sixth Form College and Movilla High School. All those schools are working together for the betterment of the children involved.

[Mrs Trevelyan]

That is exactly the sort of vision that we hope to have in Northumberland. Given the enormous expanse of territory, the challenge for our children is the need to spend hours travelling in order to achieve the flexibility and the breadth of education to which those living in a city, or even in a less sparsely populated county, might have easier access.

If children are indeed to fulfil their dreams, we will need departmental leadership from the Minister to help Northumberland County Council host the new concept. I understand that education action zones used to exist, and I also understand that £77 million has recently been allocated to education output areas, but that will be directed towards the development of education in cities. Northumberland, our most sparsely populated English county, needs such investment too.

I have always been a believer in nudge politics. We humans always respond better to encouragement and carrots than to chastisement and sticks. However, if long-term outcomes for the children of Northumberland are to be as good as they can be, we need university voices to be heard in rural communities where aspiration to a top-quality education, whether it involves apprenticeships in engineering or university studies in the sciences—I speak as a mathematician, and I apologise for the bias—are still not always understood or valued. What is considered elitist and far beyond can become within reach: indeed, education for life can become a passion for all those children. The 21st century, in which they will live, demands that we accept our responsibility to give them the tools and the passion to learn, as well as all the standard basic skills. That should be taken more seriously than it has been in the most northern county of England for too long.

I want to see an educational leadership framework that gives each and every one of my schools the nudge that they need to rise to the educational challenges ahead by supporting them with a coherent educational framework of which everyone is a part. There would be no rivalries, no catchment area battles, no school partnership lines in the sand, but an overarching educational Northumberland nudge partnership. As the Minister himself said in a speech last week,

“a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever does.”

The teachers and councillors of my beautiful, unique and most sparsely populated of English counties wish to do exactly that for the children in their care.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Let us give a nudge to the Minister.

School Funding: North-east of England

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2017 Westminster Hall

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

It is an honour to speak on the last day of Westminster Hall in this Parliament. I congratulate the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) on securing this debate. She was talking about the challenges of school funding, but it was disappointing not to hear about some of the impressive improvements in educational outputs across the north-east over the past few years. Children are getting the benefit of the improvements, which have come through the education framework and through Ofsted’s encouragement for schools to hone in on what is important in ensuring that children get the very best possible education from those early years and all the way through.

Speaking as the Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, which is right up in the northern reaches of our region, we have a different set of challenges to many colleagues here today. I have very many small schools, where the challenges relate not to pressure on places, but to transport and the ability to sustain a school that, by definition, will have small and erratic numbers of children. The arrival of Ofsted can be good in one year and not so good in another, because cohorts vary so dramatically from year to year.

Some years ago, the Minister visited a high school at the very top of the constituency, in Berwick itself. We were pleased to welcome him there. The challenge is that the school, like every senior school, has a fixed cost with a small sixth form. There is no other school to go to—the next high school is 30 miles away. If a young person is choosing college rather than sixth form, the next provider is 60 or 70 miles away in my Labour colleagues’ constituencies. That is a very long way from Berwick. The challenge is to ensure that we can maintain the full provision of education in that far-flung school right up on the Scottish border.

What I would pitch to the Minister on this last day before we head into the election madness is that, in considering how to use continuing education more effectively, the Department needs to think more fully about how we encourage schools to use modern online learning tools. It would probably need capital investment, but it would help children in schools where the challenge is not so much, “Can we find a place?” but, “How can children access the high-tech learning skills they need to work in the industries that the north-east is growing, which will become, and are in some cases already, world-leading?”

I challenge the Minister to think about how we change the nature of the education that we give our children. The pupil-to-teacher ratio is important in younger years, but as children go up the school age groups, there is an opportunity to draw in excellent education from around the world. My son has recently been teaching himself how to write computer code—I cannot remember which one—because, apparently, that was of interest to him. He used a free Stanford University online tool. All he needed was a computer and decent broadband to sit in his room and learn it. He can now speak in a very strange language, none of which makes any sense to me, but he is now able to do stuff at school. The course was not available to him at school, so he did it off his own bat. Access to those tools are not expensive. They require technical investment, and for schools to think more broadly about how they use the funding that the Government provide to give children a chance to jump to another level in their educational attainment. The schools can be world-leading.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way and applaud her recognition of the importance of online learning and the transformative impact of digital technology. Does she therefore agree that the Government’s plans for the universal service obligation for broadband of 10 megabits by 2020 are far too little far too late?

[Mrs Trevelyan]

As the hon. Lady knows, I support the USO and campaigned very hard to ensure that we got it into the Digital Economy Bill. I speak as someone for whom 1 megabit is still a very good day in my house. It is still a challenge for many of my constituents whose children need to do their homework online, but we are getting there. We have kicked the system into a more proactive premise, but I agree that getting access across the board is vital. It will be no good for my constituents to see Newcastle with superfast broadband at 100 megabit or 1 gigabit, because we still cannot download a basic file to do homework. We need to ensure that the universal service obligation spreads across the nation to every home.

The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West raised the issue of the apprenticeship levy, which for small schools in Northumberland is proving to be problematic because councils have been given the freedom to pass the levy fee on. It is an issue for a small school that suddenly got a bill for £10,000 a few weeks ago and will not take up the opportunity of an apprenticeship, and I very much hope the Minister looks at it in more detail.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Schools in my area have contacted me about the apprenticeship levy. The hon. Lady says that the local authorities have the ability to pass the levy fee on to schools. Local authorities in my area have suffered tens of millions of pounds-worth of cuts. Does she expect them to pick up the bill or does she think the Government should offer a concession or do away with it for schools?

[Mrs Trevelyan]

The question is how the levy is used. For some of my larger schools the apprenticeship levy is a reasonable fee to pay because they will have the opportunity to benefit from apprentices and will increase their cohort of staff. We need to be a little more flexible and encourage councils to think more constructively in how they deal with the levy.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I know the hon. Lady’s constituency and she speaks well for the schools that will be affected. On the apprenticeship levy, I mentioned Rickleton Primary School and the letter that Mr Lofthouse wrote to me and the Minister about the cuts he will have to make. He has been in touch with my office this morning to say that it has already started. Today he has had to tell Liam, his apprentice, that he will have to let him go because of the apprenticeship levy. That is exactly the point we are making. It is ludicrous that, because he now has to pay however many thousands of pounds in the apprenticeship levy, he cannot keep the apprentice whom he said was excelling in his apprenticeship. Does the hon. Lady agree that that really needs to be looked at?

[Mrs Trevelyan]

One challenge that I found as a new MP is that, even if a policy is a good one, getting the delivery right on the ground is another thing. A simple phrasing of words need not negate the opportunity to apply what I would call common-sense thinking. If a school is happy to pay into the levy pot but happens to have an apprentice, it does not mean it should be excluded from the programme. I hope that will be resolved at a local level rather than be considered an impossible, insoluble problem, because that would never have been the intention of the policy.

Speaking as a member of the Public Accounts Committee—the report we published yesterday highlights some of the challenges of how money for free schools is being spent—there is an enormous amount of good work going on. In Berwick-upon-Tweed, we are looking to apply for a free school to create an autism school, because there is an enormous gap across the north-east, particularly in rural areas, in provision for our autistic children. I will revert to mentioning my computer-geek son again, who has Asperger’s and gets mentioned more often than he likes in Hansard. We have been fortunate enough to get by in mainstream schools with the extraordinary support of individual teachers, but the reality is that far too many families across the north-east need access to the different levels of teaching that autistic children across the spectrum require. We hope to be able to create a free school through the free school network. The scheme will allow us to do that. It gives flexibility, freedom and support for parents and teachers who understand special needs provision. We hope to reach out across the region to support families whose children have enormous potential, particularly in the IT and engineering spheres, which are and have always been key skill sets of north-east businesses—they continue to grow. We need to ensure we harness all those talents, including those of a growing number of autistic children.

There is a fascinating statistic. The science is as yet not entirely defined, but the more engineers you put together, the more autistic children you have. There is a spectrum and we create more of these young people—they are mostly young men but there are some young women—for whom a different learning pattern is required. If we get that right, we get extraordinary individuals whose great skills we can use for our economy. I therefore encourage the Minister to continue with the free schools system.

International Women’s Day

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Thursday 2nd March 2017 Commons Chamber

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

It is an honour to speak in this debate about International Women’s Day, a privilege that few women across the world are yet able to enjoy. I congratulate our determined and passionate colleague the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) on securing this debate and on continuing her great mission in this House.

I am proud to follow in the footsteps of my predecessor as MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed, Mabel Philipson, who was only the fourth woman to be elected to this place—she was first elected in 1923. I am only the 378th woman ever to be elected to this House, of a total of 456. I very much hope that the number increases sharply in the years to come, and we all have a part to play in encouraging women who are already passionate about their families, their businesses, their communities and their country to play their part in shaping the future of our nation by standing for election to this place. Our latest arrival, No. 456, my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), is a walking example of that, and she is the woman who took us across the line—the total number of women ever elected to this House is now greater than the number of men currently serving in this Parliament.

I shall focus my remarks on the women who serve in our armed forces, often in unsung roles. They work just as hard as their male counterparts, and often harder. Many of us civilians are perhaps unaware of the huge strides that women have made in their crucial roles protecting our nation. We are perhaps already aware of the vital part that women played, through necessity, during the great war and the second world war, when women stepped up, ably and with great passion, to take on the roles left vacant by the men who had gone off to war.

During the first world war, 100,000 women served in the uniformed services, primarily as nurses but with few officially close to combat. The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps was formed in 1917—100 years ago—and provided women with jobs as telephonists, clerks and chauffeurs. The Women’s Royal Naval Service was created in the same year and saw women taking on domestic work within the Navy, freeing up men for combat roles. The Women’s Auxiliary Air Force was formed a year later, with women working as drivers, cooks and record keepers.

Beyond the uniformed services, women took on a range of roles left vacant by the men who had left for war. From working in munitions factories to driving trains, women rose up to fulfil what had been seen as “male” roles. Of course, many of those women were forced out of their job once the surviving men returned to the UK, but their ability to take on such roles demonstrated to society how capable women are and what a valuable resource they are to our economy. Just a year after the end of the war, the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act 1919 made it illegal to exclude women from jobs because of their gender.

Women have played an integral role in our armed forces for a century, but what of their role today? As of October 2016, there are 15,380 women serving in our armed forces, making up just over 10% of the total across the three services, with more women serving in the RAF than in the Army and Navy. That represents an increase of three percentage points over the past decade, but there is clearly much more to do. Just as we need more women serving in this place, the talent of women to serve and defend our nation must be harnessed more effectively.

The value of having more women in our armed forces extends beyond their individual contributions. The female of the species brings a different perspective to the challenges of war fighting and peacekeeping in the modern age. The presence of women during peacekeeping operations brings an opportunity to gain access and insight to local communities that is simply not permissible for our male military personnel.

As they serve, women are quietly proving that they are an invaluable asset to our nation, from Royal Navy officers Captain Ellie Ablett, recently promoted to command HMS Raleigh, and Commander Eleanor Stack, who has taken command of HMS Duncan—one of our Type 45 destroyers which I had the privilege to inspect last year—to Commodore Inga Kennedy, the most senior female officer in the Royal Navy; Major General Susan Ridge, our most senior female Army officer; Brigadier Sharon Nesmith, who was the first woman to command a brigade of 5,000 soldiers; and Air Vice-Marshal Elaine West, the most senior woman in the RAF. Those women, and the 15,000 serving across our three armed services, are an inspiration to girls and women today who, when pondering their future career choices, can be inspired by the leadership of those amazing women in leading roles in the armed forces.

The future of our nation’s great asset, the finest armed forces in the world, is safe in the hands of its women and men, and I look forward to continuing my efforts to encourage more young women to study maths and the sciences and then to take up careers as engineers, medics and musicians, pilots and navigators, submariners and logisticians, linguists and intelligence officers. Those are all rewarding career choices both within the armed forces and as civilians with the extra military skillset of personal self-discipline, commitment and passion for a chosen trade.

This time next year I hope to be able to report that the statistics for women in our political networks and our armed forces have continued to grow, and I also hope to report that my recent application to join the Royal Naval Reserve has been accepted. I encourage other colleagues to consider applying too.

Further Education Colleges (North-east)

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Westminster Hall

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

Thank you, Sir Edward. I will do my best, although I am less practised than my colleagues.

Northumberland is one of our largest counties geographically, covering more than 2,000 square miles, but with a population of only 320,000. More than 50% of the population live in the small south-east corner of the country, where our excellent Northumberland College is situated, in the constituency of the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery). For students in the Hexham or Berwick constituencies, the travel times and distances from local towns such as Alnwick, Hexham, Haltwhistle or Berwick are enormous. From Berwick the journey is more than 50 miles each way. The need for an excellent college to offer courses that the local school cannot is vital.

Northumberland College, under the fantastic leadership of Marcus Clinton, ably supported by a brave and determined board of governors, aims to provide a world-leading college for our students. A network of highly specialist centres is being built to provide a regional centre of excellence for hospitality, for tourism and for land-based training. A technology park, a STEM centre and a wind hub in conjunction with the Port of Blyth are also being created. Northumberland College wants to ensure that every student can access the training that they need in their chosen field, but my constituents face a challenge in even getting to the college.

Since our Labour county council stopped funding post-16 transport some years ago, the college has had to pick up the bill so that no student is lost. It is vital that there is stronger careers advice in our high schools, and that the sixth forms and colleges work together. Unlike in other parts of the country, in rural north Northumberland the pressure on schools is not too many pupils but too few. The schools are therefore keen to persuade their pupils to stay on for A-levels to help their cash flow, even though the college might be the better choice for a pupil. I ask the Minister, as the hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) did, why the area review is not looking at provision in sixth forms as well as colleges and encompassing the whole post-16 sector. It is a small sector in Northumberland, but vital if we are to make the best use of resources and get the best for our students and for the future economic benefit of Northumberland.

A student who wants to specialise in construction, engineering or IT in our new STEM centre, or in land-based studies, which are so important to rural Northumberland, may be better off going to Northumberland College than remaining in a school setting, but that will be a problem as long as the battle for funds is an issue. Our college could not do more on rationalisation and working with local businesses to build apprenticeship programmes, but sparsely populated communities present real challenges, which I hope the area review and the Minister will shortly consider closely.

On apprenticeships, I, like the hon. Member for Hartlepool, would like the Minister to clarify how SMEs, which are the lifeblood of Northumberland—we do not have any large companies, and every company is an SME—will access levy funding to help them take on apprentices. We are struggling to get clarity on that, and I would appreciate having the Minister’s guidance so that we and every SME that wants to be part of the apprenticeship programme can get our heads around the issue.

As the only college in our county, Northumberland College welcomes the recent moves to stabilise funding over the coming period, to introduce 19-plus loans and to support apprenticeship funding—my point about SMEs notwithstanding—and it is keen to discuss that with the Minister. It also welcomes the increase in funding for those studying the land-based industries, and I hope Northumberland will continue to lead the way on innovative and modern thinking about farming practices. Those funding streams are allowing Northumberland College, at Kirkley Hall, near Ponteland—and, soon, I hope, at a satellite campus near Berwick, if we can persuade a local farmer to take on a bunch of students—to maintain a really specialist resource that is important for our agricultural county and for the whole north-east region. I look forward to hearing shortly from the Minister about how we can get some real clarity on that and the other issues I have raised.

Compulsory Emergency First Aid Education (State-funded Secondary Schools) Bill

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Friday 20th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

I will plough on with my remarks, Mr Deputy Speaker; such matters are outside my control. If 100 Members are here we will have a vote come what may, whatever I say or do.

There are the costs of the venue hire, training the teachers and training the replacement teachers—this is according to the British Heart Foundation, which goes on to say:

“The largest consumable cost is the initial supply of resuscitation manikins.”

We have not heard about this in the debate so far. The BHF goes on:

“Ideally, in a class of up to 32 there should be one manikin used between two people (16 in total). Schools should have both standard resuscitation manikins and baby manikins. These are one-off costs for the lifetime of the manikin, with annual costs to maintain the equipment. Per school, we estimate that this costs around £2,200 each year. This takes into account the appropriate learning materials required in a programme to aid teaching these life-saving skills to pupils, in addition to general administration and monitoring costs.”

That opens up a whole can of worms: schools will have to find supply teachers—an immense cost—so that teachers can go on a course for a day to learn the first aid information to teach. Even if the teachers do not go on the course themselves, they still need to find time to be taught the first aid information by other teachers. Furthermore, there is the cost of the manikins, mentioned by the British Heart Foundation, as well.

Earlier, I was discussing the problems that schools have. One problem cited by Ofsted is teacher turnover. Continually being required to send new teachers on to training courses is another burden that schools that are already struggling should not have to suffer. When I spoke to people at my local secondary schools about the Bill, that was one of their main areas of concern. Someone at one of the schools outlined their concerns as follows in an email:

“The Academy currently can probably meet this duty as we have a qualified first aid trainer on the associate staff body; however, this would pose difficulties as it would be a requirement to ensure that there is someone with the appropriate level of training on staff—or have to be a brought in provision, to ensure that all young people receive the correct advice”.

That concern was echoed by other schools in my constituency, which were concerned by not only the staffing implications but the time allocation demanded of the school timetable.

Furthermore, schools would have to be required to find room in their budgets to pay for the provisions. We have heard about the cost of the manikins; I also spoke to some prominent union officials who live in my constituency. One said that making first aid education compulsory might not be cost-effective because at the moment first-aiders get a small allowance and training all teachers would be a massive expense. They would probably have to be retrained every three or four years. Is that cost-effective? Probably not.

[Mrs Trevelyan]

Those of us who support the Bill see it as an opportunity to educate a whole generation about life-saving skills. My hon. Friend is talking interestingly about cost, and he raises an important point. Would he be more inclined to support the Bill’s direction of travel if there were a clear understanding of the savings to the national health service of having life-saving skills among our population that are not there at present?

[Philip Davies]

No, because as I was going on to say, I do not think we could get an accurate figure on the savings; it would be completely arbitrary. How could we measure the savings? I am concerned about the effect on our schools of the Bill—that is what is before us today and I want to focus on it.

How would first aid education be measured in schools? If we make something compulsory in schools, we have to have some way of measuring that the school is doing it, otherwise it becomes complete nonsense. When people do courses elsewhere, they get a certificate or a badge, which gives them recognition. Presumably, at the end of the session, to check that somebody has got through the training—I am sure the promoter of the Bill will correct me if I am wrong—somebody will have to assess that people have met the required standard. If there were a 30-minute lesson without anyone knowing whether anything had been learned, that would be completely pointless. There would have to be some kind of test to work out that what needed to be learned had been learned. That goes without saying.

Would schools be required to provide some form of examination at the end of the training as a formal recognition or qualification? How would that work? Will there be a national model test that everyone will have to pass at the end of their lessons or will schools have to produce their own test? [Interruption.] I detect from the sedentary chuntering around me that there would be no such test. What on earth is the point of a lesson in first aid without testing whether people have learned what they need to in order to save somebody’s life? Surely the whole point is that people should become capable of saving somebody’s life. What is the point if we do not even know that?

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

I should point out to my hon. Friend that, as it happens, sex education is not compulsory in schools, and long may that be the case, but that is a debate for another day; I am not going to get side-tracked.

The final point I want to make in my brief remarks, during which I have been interrupted on a number of occasions, is about the Bill’s legal consequences for schools. That is one of the serious fears that my schools raised with me when I asked them to consider its implications. In its submission to the Social Action, Responsibility and Heroism Public Bill Committee in September 2014, St John Ambulance mentioned that 34% of people said that the primary reason people are deterred from intervening in any situation requiring first aid was concern about the legal repercussions. I am glad to say that we have in the Chamber one of the finest legal brains in the country, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Torridge and West Devon (Mr Cox) —and, I might add in passing, the most expensive.

Such a concern was also raised during my consultation with local schools. One headteacher told me that they

“would have concerns that a school could be liable to be sued or held accountable if a student carried out first aid and ‘got it wrong’ and the school had delivered that training”.

That covers the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall, but it has not been touched on during this debate. We must consider such matters in a Bill before we press ahead with a worthy sentiment.

Clause 1(3) specifies that children will be taught which emergency first aid actions are

“appropriate in each such scenario, including the best management of circumstances where a person is or appears to be…unconscious and not breathing,…unconscious and breathing,…choking,…bleeding severely,…having a heart attack, or…having an episode arising from an underlying condition such as asthma or epilepsy”,

and also taught the appropriate deployment of emergency first aid education

“procedures and equipment including…cardiopulmonary resuscitation, and…defibrillators.”

Given that the text in the Bill explicitly sets out that schools will be responsible for teaching when first aid is appropriate as well as how to administer it, the concern raised by the headteacher of my local school is very real. What securities will be put in place to ensure that headteachers, staff and schools are protected from legal action should any first aid be incorrectly administered by a student, given that the Bill, by making it a compulsory element of education, directly creates a point of responsibility? I cannot find any such protections in the Bill.

[Mrs Trevelyan]

For clarification, is my hon. Friend suggesting that organisations such as St John Ambulance, which presently teaches first aid to large numbers of cadets, are at risk of legal action if one of their students fails to get their first aid right during an emergency?

Oral Answers to Questions

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Commons Chamber

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

I am aware that the Life Sciences Minister is creating a specialist life sciences enterprise zone to support sites across the UK hit by the global pharmaceutical corporate restructuring. Will he commit to providing every possible support to Covance, a pharmaceutical company in Alnwick, in my constituency, where more than 140 scientists’ jobs are at risk?

[George Freeman]

My hon. Friend has raised this matter with me already, and the Office for Life Sciences stands ready and is taking a close interest. We have already made contact with the local authority and will offer every support we can to its bid to make sure the site remains viable and that we protect local jobs.