Crisis in Iran
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Gillian Keegan
I thank my hon. Friend, and I probably ought to congratulate him on being sanctioned—that shows all the efforts that he and many colleagues in the House have made to call out the regime and the terrible actions that are taking place in Iran. The death of Mahsa Amini is a shocking reminder of the repression that women in Iran face.
We condemn the Iranian authorities and have taken very strong action. We condemn the crackdown on protesters, journalists and internet freedom. The use of violence in response to the expression of fundamental rights by women, or any other members of Iranian society, is wholly unjustifiable. We will continue to work, including with our international partners, to explore all options for addressing Iran’s human rights violations. However, as my hon. Friend knows, we will never be able to comment on possible future actions, sanctions or designations.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
For the past six weeks, Iran has seen huge protests following the death of Mahsa Amini at the hands of its brutal morality police. Ms Amini was violently beaten following her arrest for breaching strict hijab rules.
Iranians in huge numbers have bravely said that they will accept this no longer. Women and girls are putting their lives on the line to lead a mass movement calling for nothing more than basic human rights and civil liberties. Braving severe state repression, hundreds of thousands of Iranians have joined protests. Over 12,500 have been arrested and, sadly, over 250 people have died at the hands of the security forces. Britain must support all those who stand up for basic freedoms, including freedom of conscience and religion and the freedom to live one’s life as one chooses.
It is clear that the Iranian regime is restricting information in an attempt to quash the protests. Internet access has been periodically blocked in the country, meaning that details of human rights abuses cannot be shared and protesters cannot organise. Freedom of information is integral to the success of any political movement. The UK must and can play a strong role in supporting an independent press in Iran. Reporters Without Borders has declared Iran one of the worst countries in the world for press freedom: journalists routinely face harassment, detention and threats to their family. What are the UK Government doing to encourage press freedom in Iran? What pressure is the UK putting on Iran to support fundamental human rights and freedom of speech?
The UK can and should lead calls for the UN Human Rights Council to urgently establish an international investigative and accountability mechanism to collect, consolidate, preserve and analyse evidence of the most serious crimes in Iran under international law. Can the Minister assure me that the UK will do so?
Gillian Keegan
There is much that we all agree on in this House, from our condemnation of what is happening in Iran to the actions we take and how we work with others. We are looking at all options to hold Iran to account for its human rights violations, and we are active participants at the UN Human Rights Council. On press freedom, last week we joined a statement of the Media Freedom Coalition condemning Iran’s repression of journalists. We will continue to do so, working with other countries and other groups to call out Iran, as well as taking firm steps, as I laid out in my statement.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(2 years, 1 month ago)
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Kit Malthouse
Notwithstanding the significant increase in the schools budget last year, we are monitoring the impact of those global inflationary forces on schools across the whole country. We are in constant conversation with leadership, unions and headteachers about their finances. Perhaps the hon. Lady does not know this, but we acted immediately when it became clear that schools would be severely impacted by the rise in energy costs, to ensure that they were included in the energy bill relief scheme. We continue to have dynamic conversations with Treasury colleagues on the importance of school funding.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Jonathan Gullis)
The Department is working closely with stakeholders to monitor cost pressures on schools. Our generous 2021 spending review package is supporting schools with a £4 billion increase to core schools funding in this financial year alone and we are protecting schools through the energy bill relief scheme, although schools and trusts remain responsible for setting their own budgets. The Government are also assisting families directly: as well as the energy price guarantee for households, we are providing more than £37 billion to help households in the greatest need, thanks to our new Prime Minister.
Bambos Charalambous
Data from a National Association of Headteachers survey shows that 90% of schools expect to run out of money by the end of the next school year. I have spoken to headteachers who say that while school debt is escalating, demands on schools continue to increase, and the energy crisis is only one element of the funding crisis in education. Can the Minister tell me how the Government expect schools in my constituency to deliver standards and provide additional support when they cannot afford to survive?
Jonathan Gullis
As I said in my earlier answer, we have £7 billion until 2024-25 through the spending review. There is the £5 billion in catch-up to maintain standards and ensure that disadvantaged pupils in particular get high-quality support, particularly in tutoring, so that they can catch up on their lost learning, because we know the pandemic had a detrimental impact. There is also the Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms) Act 2021, which was introduced by a Labour Member, which the Government adopted and sent out as guidance to make sure that the overall cost of uniform comes down. We are taking this all very seriously, and I am more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman and headteachers in his local area to hear from them directly and see what other support we can give.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Gavin Williamson
My hon. Friend will be delighted to know that we will be reviewing the need for children to be doing home testing at the end of September. If there is not a requirement to do that, we will be looking at removing it. It is important that we continue to keep these matters under review. That is why we will be doing so at the end of this month.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Vicky Ford
We have increased the high needs budget by a record £2.3 billion, which is over a third over the past three years. We are also making good progress with the special educational needs and disability review, which has inevitably been a bit frustrated by the pandemic and changed the issues we are looking at, but we absolutely want all pupils to have access to the education they deserve. That is why our recovery funding has also been extra tilted towards those in specialist settings.
Education Route Map: Covid-19
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
I want to begin by saying a big thank you to all the senior leaders, headteachers, teachers, teaching assistants and staff and governors who have helped to ensure that schools have remained open throughout the pandemic. In assessing the suitability of the Government’s education route map out of covid, I asked local headteachers from Enfield to let me have their thoughts on the plan, and these are their three main areas of concern.
The first is the inadequacy of the funding being offered by the Government for primary and secondary schools. A sum of £6,000 per primary school for catch-up funding is paltry. Schools have had to spend significantly more than that on supply cover for teachers who have contracted covid, are shielding or are self-isolating due to the need to maintain bubbles, and on paying for additional laptops and tablets following the Government’s woeful efforts to provide devices for remote learning—and all this having lost significant amounts of revenue in council school lettings. One headteacher told me that her school had not been fully reimbursed for the costs incurred during the summer to make the school safe. Headteachers have also raised concerns about the national tutoring programme, which to date has been very poor. One headteacher told me:
“I have spoken with several providers at length and they are only able to provide staff during the working the day…NTP should be offering additional support over and above what children are receiving in school…my kids need tuition before school, after school and the weekends.”
Secondly, there is the issue of special educational needs and disabilities provision. Many children with special educational needs have fared worse under the pandemic. My hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) mentioned issues around mental health. The charity Mind found that there was a 50% increase in children with diagnosable mental health conditions from 2017 to 2020. There needs to be huge investment in local authority mental health services for children. The Government also need to outline what support they will put in place for children and young people who cannot access child and adolescent mental health services but whose needs are too high for primary care. Without that commitment, children with mental health conditions and other special needs may never catch up.
Thirdly, there is the issue of safeguarding. Some school leaders and headteachers have notified me of a spike in safeguarding cases in their schools. The steep rise in domestic abuse against adults during lockdown is also affecting children. Schools will need additional funding for counselling and safeguarding support, but that is only one side of the equation, with stretched children’s social services departments also in need of help to meet safeguarding demands.
All those who have played a role in keeping educational establishments open throughout the pandemic are among the unsung heroes of the covid crisis, but morale is low. One headteacher told me that a number of members of staff had contracted covid in December, and one in her 50s had died from covid. The Government’s own advisers accept that opening schools fully will increase the R number, which is why I support the call for school staff to be prioritised in getting the vaccine.
In conclusion, unless more financial support is found for schools to plug the gap in their finances for SEND provision and safeguarding, the education route map may not lead to recovery but will be a slow and painful road to a dead end.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Education (Gavin Williamson)
To support schools to open fully from the autumn, we published guidance in July and updated it as necessary. Schools have access to an advice service and supply of test kits. By assessing risk and maximising the use of Public Health England-endorsed control measures, schools reduce risk for pupils and staff.
Bambos Charalambous
Schools are facing huge budget pressures as costs escalate for increased supply cover as teachers self-isolate and from unfunded covid-19 cleaning costs. More than a quarter of all state schools are using reserve budgets to ensure that pupils have devices and access to the internet to study while isolating at home. What assurances can the Secretary of State give that schools will get the funding they need to cover these unforeseen costs?
Gavin Williamson
I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that important point. We know how important it is. We already outlined a package for the summer term, and tens of millions of pounds have been distributed to schools. We have kept this matter under review and will update the House closely in the near future.
Lifetime Skills Guarantee and Post-16 Education
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Gavin Williamson
That is a brilliant example of higher education, further education and local government all working together with a laser-like focus on creating opportunities not only for young people, but for people of all ages. I pay tribute to all those involved, including my hon. Friend, who I know is such a passionate advocate of that and of ensuring that we drive opportunity in every part of the country.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
While I broadly welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement, I want to draw his attention to problems with existing post-16 students. My constituent Linus has just completed his first year of a diploma in arboriculture, tree management and forestry at a local college, and he was able to do that because his fees were waived as a result of his receiving less than the limit of £330 per calendar month on universal credit. However, a top-up to his universal credit this year has increased Linus’s monthly benefit to £342, taking him above the fee waiver limit. Now he must either pay the full fee or leave his course, because the Government’s fee waiver rules have not been updated. Will the Secretary of State help students such as Linus by fixing this anomaly?
Gavin Williamson
If the hon. Gentleman would write with the details on that case, I would be happy to look into it.
Students’ Return to Universities
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Gavin Williamson
A key metric we always look at is what universities are doing to ensure that students do not just learn but can benefit from that learning and study and bring it into the world of work. That should not be neglected at this time, but rather there should be a greater emphasis on it. What is the point, if people go to university and are not given the tools to enter employment and fulfil their dreams and ambitions through the work they get on the back of degrees they have achieved?
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Students from my constituency and elsewhere who are away at university for the first time are being put in the impossible situation of facing huge restrictions on their education and social life, but they are still being expected to pay full fees and rent. That is both grossly unjust and unfair. Will the Secretary of State tell me what plans the Government have to address that issue?
Gavin Williamson
As I am sure the hon. Gentleman is aware, anyone who has not been receiving what they should have been receiving, in terms of education and support from a university, can, through the Office for Students, make a complaint. If they are not getting the support and the study they should be entitled to as part of their contract, they are entitled to be reimbursed.
School Exclusions
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Sarah Jones
That is absolutely right, and the peaks and troughs in the numbers of school exclusions pretty much mirror those for knife crime. We need to understand why those things are happening and actively work to reduce the current peak in school exclusions.
The all-party group, supported by Barnardo’s and Redthread, spoke to young people across the country who had convictions for knife offences. They told us that being excluded had left them with more time to spend on the streets, getting into trouble. We sent a freedom of information request to local authorities, to get a better understanding of the state of provision for children who are excluded. The research revealed a crisis in support for excluded children. We analysed evidence from organisations such as the Institute for Public Policy Research and The Difference, charting the worrying rise in off-rolling and “grey exclusions”, and from the St Giles Trust, whose work with victims of county lines exploitation drew a direct link to those who were excluded from school.
We know that the public are concerned about the issue. Barnardo’s polled the parents of children under 18 and found that three quarters believe that children who are excluded are more at risk of involvement in knife crime. Children have not got 70% naughtier since 2012; something has gone wrong, and it is leaving vulnerable people exposed to involvement in crime. My hope today is that the Minister will listen to the evidence that the all-party group has collected, and the testimony of other Members in the debate, and agree to take some of our recommendations forward.
I will quickly look at the statistics. The latest set of data is for England in the year 2017-18, when there were 7,900 permanent exclusions—that is the 70% increase that I mentioned. The highest levels were in Redcar and Cleveland, and the highest levels for fixed-period exclusions were in Hartlepool. Half of all excluded children have special educational needs, yet support for special educational needs has undergone some of the biggest cuts. According to 2019 figures, it is estimated that there have been cuts to SEN funding of 17% per pupil since 2015. The SEN type most affected by exclusions were people in the social, emotional and mental health categories.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
My hon. Friend referred to the exclusion of children with autism. Another issue is attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. People with ADHD are over-represented in the prison population. The Mayor of London is investing £4.7 million to tackle school exclusions via the violence reduction unit. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government would do well to follow his example and invest more in support for schools and for vulnerable children?
Sarah Jones
My hon. Friend has anticipated something I was going to say later, which is that many organisations are pushing against the tide and trying to address those difficult issues.
There is a link between children’s family income and exclusion: the worse off a child is economically, the more likely they are to be excluded. Children who are eligible for free school meals are four times more likely to be excluded. There is a link with ethnicity: rates are higher among mixed-race and black pupils. There is a link with gender: males are more than twice as likely to be excluded as females. There is also a link with geography: the rate of permanent exclusions for the most deprived areas is higher than for the least deprived ones. We know that there is a link to what then happens in future life: 42% of adult prisoners and 90% of young offenders were excluded from school.
At the same time as the number of exclusions has increased, the number of pupil referral units and alternative provision academies and free schools has decreased. The number of APs has steadily fallen, from 349 in 2013-14 to 328 in 2017-18, yet the number of pupils has risen year on year. The number of fixed-period exclusions in those schools has risen dramatically, from 15,500 in 2013 to 26,500 in 2017, suggesting a growing inability to cope with the pressures internally.
On the issue of knife crime, there were 44,771 offences in the year ending September 2019. That is the highest figure on record, up from 23,751 for the year ending March 2014—an 88.5% increase over that period. For the year ending March 2019, juveniles—those aged 10 to 17—were the offenders in one in five cases.
I want to say something about our research on the link between knife crime and exclusion. Barnardo’s surveyed all local authorities in England, 80% of which responded, and discovered that one in three councils have no vacant places in their pupil referral units. Even where there is space, there is a postcode lottery in relation to the quality of support provided. Nationally, almost one in five spaces are in alternative provision that Ofsted has rated inadequate or requiring improvement.
It is likely that pupils who are not being educated in the state sector are being educated in non-maintained provision and, as many of us will have seen in our case load, families are sometimes strongly encouraged to home educate. The alternative providers may be offering quality provision—many of them do—but there is also the problem that many of them are not full-time, breaking the statutory obligation to our young people. Every excluded child is legally entitled to full-time education in alternative provision, but our investigation found that that is not happening, with some excluded children getting as little as two hours’ schooling a day.
The system is at breaking point, and not just because of the 70% rise in official exclusions. Research from the IPPR and The Difference revealed that the number of children in AP is five times higher than the number of officially permanently excluded pupils; the true number is around 50,000, with the growing use of managed moves and off-rolling that, again, many of us will have heard about in our case load. The report by the St Giles Trust that I referred to earlier was commissioned by the Home Office. It looked at the issue of children running drugs between London and Kent, and found that 100% of those involved were not in mainstream education; they were either in AP or not in any form of education at all.
The Mayor of London produced research that found that excluded pupils are particularly vulnerable to exploitation and criminal gangs, with nine out of 10 young people in custody in London having been excluded. Research by the Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime indicates that pupils in alternative provision are more likely to know someone in a gang or who carries a knife than those in a mainstream setting. Professionals giving evidence to our all-party group believed that criminal gangs are aware of how school exclusions can increase vulnerability and are seeking to exploit this fact. We even heard about pupil referral units where criminals would wait outside and ask people if they wanted to be involved in county lines as they left the unit.
Of course, those strong correlations do not prove that school exclusions are causing knife crime. The fact that someone is excluded does not mean that they will become a criminal, and school exclusion is often a symptom of vulnerability for many years throughout their life. However, there is a common thread running through all the vulnerable children who are being excluded. There is a great deal of commonality between them, because of the issues they face, and those who carry knives. They are not getting the support they need from a system that is catastrophically failing them.
The Timpson review was released last May, but the Government are yet to act on any of its findings. The review had several important findings that chime with those of the all-party group, particularly on off-rolling and the quality of alternative provision. I am sure that the hon. Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) will want to go through that in more detail, but suffice it to say that it is disappointing to see the lack of action on such a crucial issue, having been presented with so many clear recommendations from that report and our all-party group.
The previous Education Secretary, the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), said in 2018 that he would not rule out legislation to ensure more accountability for schools that permanently exclude children and place them in alternative provision. However, there have been no changes to school exclusions legislation in England in the past 12 months. The Government said in response to the Timpson review that they would launch a consultation, but that consultation has yet to be launched. They also said in their response that they would rewrite their guidance on exclusions and behaviour and discipline, which they are yet to do.
Education and Local Government
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
This ambitious Queen’s Speech lists a whole series of draft Bills on wide-ranging areas, but it raises more questions than answers, and there are glaring omissions in respect of local government and education.
The section on education makes much of increased funding for schools. Increased funding is welcome, but after years of austerity not enough is being offered to reverse the damage that has been done. There are now fewer enrichment classes on offer, fewer teaching assistants, fewer student services staff and less funding for building maintenance. Creative arts supplies have also been affected, although I was pleased to hear the Minister’s arts premium proposal, which I look forward to finding out more about.
The truth is that under the Government’s funding plans 83% of schools will be worse off in real terms in April 2020 than they were in 2015. The Government have failed to resolve the even greater crisis in further education and sixth-form colleges, which have suffered real-terms cuts that have run longer and deeper. They have failed even to mention the nursery school sector.
Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that the failure to recognise the difference between a real-terms and cash increase is frustrating for headteachers? In schools in my constituency, headteachers tell me that they do not have a real-terms increase—they have a real-terms decrease, even if, in some schools, it looks like a cash increase. They are frustrated by the Government’s attitude of saying that everything in the garden is rosy because there has been an increase in funding. They have had years of cuts.
Bambos Charalambous
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The Government should come clean—this is a smoke-and-mirrors trick—and put back the money that they took out, in real terms.
The Government must face up to the fact that not enough teachers want to stay in the job. Headteachers across my constituency of Enfield, Southgate regularly tell me how difficult it is to recruit and retain staff. The additional workload and stress generated as a result of being judged on SATs results and Ofsted inspections is one the main reasons given by teachers for leaving the profession, which is why Ofsted and SATs should be replaced by a new system of accountability that gives a true picture of schools and students.
The impact of child poverty on a child’s education is indisputable. Children cannot learn when they are hungry, surviving in cold or damp homes, or enduring severe overcrowding. When I see parents with their children coming to my surgery showing me pictures of serious damp and rodent-infested, overcrowded accommodation I know that unless action is taken their children’s future is at risk. An estimated 4.1 million children are still trapped in poverty, and that figure is expected to rise to 5.2 million by 2022. The Government can make as many promises as they like about school funding but unless they tackle child poverty head-on the education of children will suffer.
If Members want an example of how the Government behave towards schools they need look no further than the announcement last year that teachers would receive a 2.75% pay rise. On the last day before the summer recess, they sneaked out a statement proclaiming that they would fund only 0.75%, leaving schools with strained budgets to find the rest. That is what we have come to expect from Conservative Governments. Local government has been treated exactly the same. I remember the Tory-led coalition Government transferring a raft of responsibilities to local authorities, including the council tax support scheme. However, they gave local authorities only 90% of the funding needed to administer the scheme. Is that what we should expect from the Government under the new funding proposals?
The Queen’s Speech states that the
“Government will invest in the country’s public services and infrastructure”,
but there is little mention of funding for local government. Late last year, the Government released a technical consultation on the review of local authorities’ relative needs and resources—the next stage in the so-called fair funding review—which could be a precursor to the biggest single shift in money from the most deprived areas to the most affluent. That is because the fair funding review proposes to remove the consideration of deprivation from the core foundation formula, despite the Government’s own research, which shows that deprivation is the second-best predictor of the cost of basic services.
In my own area, Enfield Council is a good Labour council that continually strives to protect frontline services. It covers areas of severe deprivation, including some in my constituency of Enfield, Southgate. Central Government have cut funding to Enfield Council by 60% in real terms since 2010. When the Government make those extreme cuts to Enfield Council’s budget, they are making a clear choice—they do not see the needs of local people as a priority.
The Government have tried to mask the cuts by saying that councils can raise money through increases in council tax and the social care precept. First, the amounts that can be raised in that way are nowhere near enough to compensate for the cuts since 2010. Secondly, they hardwire regional inequality into the system, because it is the richer areas that are able to raise more through increases in council tax. Despite being one of the areas where the riots took place in 2011, Enfield Council has been forced by central Government cuts to slash its spending on youth services by 88%, from £3.5 million in 2011-12 to £411,000 in 2018-19. In its last budget, Enfield Council had to make further cuts of £18 million across all services. If Enfield had not had 60% of its budget cut since 2010, the council would be funding those services, our local crime figures would probably be lower and fewer young people in my constituency would feel that their futures had been thrown away before they had even begun. The Government must realise that by acting in haste to cut local government funding they will repent at leisure, because they will have to find more money for the burgeoning prison population and its after-effects.
In short, the Government can promise all they like, but unless they are prepared to fund local government properly again and to undo the damage that has been done since 2010, the promises in the Queen’s Speech ring hollow.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bambos Charalambous Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Gavin Williamson
We have seen a change in attitudes as to what apprenticeships are able to deliver. After a decade and more under the Labour party, when we saw apprenticeships devalued and reduced, we have seen a seismic change in what we are doing, driving up the quality and status of apprenticeships. I know that colleagues on the Conservative Benches take great pride in what has been achieved, but we are always conscious that so much more needs to be done.
Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)
Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)
Bambos Charalambous
The Chancellor’s promise to increase school funding is welcome, but he has given no extra money to schools for this year. School budgets are at breaking point, so will the Minister acknowledge that he is leaving schools on the brink?
Nick Gibb
What the hon. Gentleman says is not actually true. We have given extra money to fund employer pension contributions this year and to partially fund the pay grant over and above the 1%, and now the 2%, that is affordable, so we have provided schools with extra money this financial year.