Electoral Registration

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 4th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jackson]

I will not give way to the hon. Lady.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

You named her.

[Mr Jackson]

I named her, but I have named a lot of people in this debate.

The Labour party’s problem is simple: it is useless Labour councils. Those useless Labour councils are being given a lot of taxpayers’ money to do the job properly. They should be canvassing, registering people, ensuring that the right people are on the register and ensuring that there is electoral integrity in the register. If Labour Members have problems in Bristol, County Durham and the London borough of Merton, all of which are controlled by the Labour party, they should take them up with local people.

Consumer Rights Bill

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

The point is this. Places such as viagogo guarantee the tickets. If someone enters into a transaction on a viagogo site and anything untoward or amiss takes place, viagogo will stand behind the transaction and ensure that no consumer loses out. When it comes to selling something that is fraudulent or counterfeit or selling a ticket that does not exist, there are already laws in place to stop that. We cannot create another law to make something that is already illegal more illegal. If the ticket exists and is genuine, I could not care less who is selling it, as long as it guarantees me my place in the grounds to watch the game I want to watch. I do not care who the original owner was, particularly when the secondary market exists and respectable companies such as viagogo are there, guaranteeing to the buyer that nothing untoward will happen.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

I am going to press on because others want to speak.

If we stop this legitimate market, all the protections that the secondary market has introduced into it will disappear. What will happen is that it will not be possible to go to a legitimate company such as viagogo to buy a ticket and have it guaranteed that nothing can go wrong; rather, everyone will be competing outside with the Arthur Daley types with the mackintosh jackets and trilby hats trying to buy a ticket. Then people are taking their lives into their hands, as some of those tickets might not be what they seem.

If we want to protect the interest of consumers, it is essential to allow the legitimate secondary ticketing market to flourish. An event that I want to go to might come along, but I am not sure whether I can go to it because of my work commitments. All the tickets are sold out. I then find out that I am free to go to the event. Here the secondary market is the only one that allows me the opportunity to go to it. It will ask for a certain price, and if I do not want to pay it, I will not have to pay it. Nobody is fleecing anyone, because I will not pay the price if I do not want to. At least I would have had the opportunity to choose in a way that would not arise if no secondary market was available. That is why the secondary market works in the best interests of consumers. It also means that if someone has a ticket but cannot go, they can get rid of it. Some events do not even accept refunds when a ticket is bought, so it is possible to be left with a ticket and not be able to get shot of it.

The secondary market is good and a price cap does not work. Anybody who believes in the free market could not possibly agree with the amendment to the Lords amendment. I hope that common sense will prevail. I have no doubt that the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West will keep trying to peddle her socialist ideal outcome, with the Government interfering in every single market going just because she thinks certain things are too expensive. When she starts arguing that house prices should be capped because there are too few of them and too many people want to buy them, I will at that point have a little more respect for her. In the meantime, this is just pure political opportunism, which she thinks is populist but it is not in the best interests of anybody.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Robertson]

Therein lies a problem, because sometimes the tickets being sold are not even proper tickets—someone might just have made a very good copy. The person with the £500 would be taking that chance. I do not believe that is right—that is probably why the hon. Gentleman is sat on the other side of the Chamber and I am sat here. If the ticket says £25, £60 or £100—whatever the figure is—I expect to pay that. I do not have a problem if I have to pay a wee bit extra, but I would not be paying £500 or £1,000. The worst case I ever heard of was when two tickets for Wimbledon finals day, which were for disabled people, were being sold on eBay for £2,000 each, and the buyer had to buy the pair. That is not right, and I am talking about only a couple of tickets.

[Jenny Chapman]

Would my hon. Friend like to say something about venues? I understand that millions of pounds are being taken out of the music industry, in particular. I support small venues in my constituency. They really do struggle. I do not mind paying top dollar for a ticket for a band I want to see, but I want to know that that money goes to the person who bought the ticket at a fair price, the venue or the artist.

[John Robertson]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. I like to think that the small venues are for new bands—people who are up and coming and do not have a great following. I have bought a ticket to see AC/DC at Hampden Park, which I had no problem doing because it holds 50,000 people. That was easy, but there is a genuine problem in respect of the small venues. We have a new venue in Glasgow called the Hydro, which holds 13,000 people. I have been there and it is fantastic, but even there, depending on who is coming, the ticket touts are out selling the tickets.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

I know that my hon. Friend has worked tirelessly behind the scenes to ensure early resolution of the problems the school has faced since it went into special measures. We are working closely with the Castle Community Trust, and on securing a strong sponsor for the school quickly. Ofsted’s monitoring inspection on 10 September confirmed that the academy’s plans are fit for purpose, and that necessary improvements are being made.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

Schools in special measures should demand the highest possible standards of their teachers, but the 2011 teaching standards do not apply to such schools if they are academies or free schools. The standards include things such as the management of behaviour. Is it not more important than ever that the standards should apply to schools when they are in special measures, whatever their governance arrangements?

[Mr Gibb]

I do not think that the hon. Lady is right. The teaching standards apply to all qualified teachers. If she is referring to the issue of qualified teacher status, she should be aware that the vast majority of teachers in academies are qualified teachers and so are required to abide by the teaching standards. Even for teachers who are not qualified, who might be lecturers from universities or people who have come from industry to teach physics or science, the head teacher is able to use the teaching standards in assessing them.

Infant Class Sizes

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris). It was interesting to hear him draw on his experiences on the Public Accounts Committee. That was a good contribution.

I disagreed with the hon. Gentleman fundamentally on one point. He said that education should not be the same throughout the country. Of course, he was right about that. However, education never has been the same everywhere in the country and it certainly did not become the same under the last Labour Government. We actively supported specialist schools and introduced academies. Far more choice was generated by the Labour Government than we are given credit for.

Although neither the hon. Gentleman nor the Opposition want education to be exactly the same, one thing that we do want to be the same is the opportunity for all children. That, plainly, is not the case at the moment. Equal opportunity is not afforded to all children regardless of their background. That is why this debate counts. It is not about a very small area of the garden. We are talking not just about infant school class sizes nudging up over 30, but about what that means for the future. We are talking not just about the children who are now experiencing education in very large classes, but about what that means as it continues. I remember being at school in the ’80s under a Tory Government—we are all talking about when we were educated—when class sizes were much larger than they are now. I do not wish to see that for children who are currently in infant schools. When they get to secondary school, will they still be taught in classes that are larger and larger? The detriment is exaggerated as a child gets older.

I am particularly concerned about this matter because I see the huge disparity between the outcomes for the 7% of children who are privately educated, with the opportunities that they can access—they do very well—and the outcomes for the 93% of young people who are educated in state schools. That issue has been well debated. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission has had a huge amount to say about the critical role of education in providing better opportunities to kids from all backgrounds.

According to the OECD, state primary schools have class sizes with four or more pupils larger than those in independent schools. The difference in secondary schools is significantly worse. Average class sizes in UK state secondary schools are more than double those in independent schools at 21.1 compared with 10.

[Justin Tomlinson]

The hon. Lady is giving a characteristically great speech. I agree with absolutely everything that she has said. Will she therefore explain the logic of the last Government cutting 200,000 places, thus denying people opportunity and choice?

[Jenny Chapman]

When I consider the issue I look at what is happening now, and numbers in my constituency have risen by 66%—66% more infant school pupils are being taught in classes of more than 30. That is happening now, and I am interested in what the Government will do to fix it.

I am a bit like some of my colleagues who said that they did not want to upset the shadow Secretary of State—of course I do not want to upset him. I do not think he would be upset by what I am about to say, but I do not produce a lot of antibodies at the mention of a free school. In Darlington we have a school that is a free school in name only. It was established by a local academy that wanted extra provision for pupils with special needs. We are a pragmatic bunch in Darlington and will go where the money is. These days, if we want capital money, we make ourselves a free school—“Thank you very much, we’ll have one of those.” We have that and it is going fine. There was not a peep out of me as a Labour MP or the Labour council. We will get on with it, and if it gets us the outcomes we need for young people in the town, that is what we will do.

We have another free school that is a little more unusual because it is a private school that decided it would like to become a free school. That got me scratching my head a little—I think that finances may have been a little tight, which may have focused its mind on that transition. However, as a good socialist, the opportunity to take away a fee-paying school and make education available to all was not something I was going to let pass by, and I have worked with those trying to set up the free school and wish it every success. It will be relatively small and will help to provide the additional places that we may need in Darlington, particularly for primary education.

I have listened to colleagues from different parts of the country and it is clearly not the experience everywhere that the additional resources—scarce though they are—are following the additional need. That is where our objection lies. This is not about governance. We are quite relaxed about different forms of governance in education, as we can prove by our record. It is about ensuring that we spend the money where it needs to be spent, so that we do not end up with class sizes creeping up slowly over time.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

Everyone would agree that capital spend, limited as it always is, should focus on areas of greatest need, but does the hon. Lady recognise that the problem in Enfield was that the previous Government did not follow that through? They focused on Building Schools for the Future to fund secondary school buildings, and £1 million spent on consultants and not a brick laid to build more. Our primary schools were bursting at the seams, and desperately in need of what they have now achieved in terms of doubling spending and getting more primary school places. That is what the Government are now doing.

[Jenny Chapman]

I do not know the situation in Enfield, obviously, but I recognise the Building Schools for the Future that the hon. Gentleman describes. I tried to get BSF money for Darlington for three schools that badly needed it, and found the process absolutely tortuous. The process was perhaps too heavy and too rigorous, but it was there to ensure that resources went to the schools that needed them most. We had to demonstrate that the places we were creating and building capacity for would be needed, that we were not creating surplus places and there was demand for places in those schools, and that the right decision would not have been to go and expand another popular school somewhere else. I accept the hon. Gentleman’s criticism of BSF up to a point, but this Government have gone too far the other way. There needs to be some kind of procedure to ensure that money is spent where it is needed, and I have not heard any real answer to that throughout the debate.

[Mr Andrew Turner (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady aware that in my constituency there were, I think, six secondary schools, and that from today there are seven? The reason their number has grown—the reason we needed a new school—was that one school was good and five were poor. The creation of a new school will give the other children the chance to do well.

[Jenny Chapman]

I am not familiar with the situation in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, and he did not actually tell me where his constituency was, so I am slightly disadvantaged, but I support the idea of looking at the choices parents make, and where there is pressure on a small but popular school, I favour its expansion to enable parental choice, if that can be done without harming the educational standards of the students already there. Opposition Members have supported that approach in their constituencies for years, so I do not see it as a point of debate.

My concern is about the standard of education afforded to children being taught in extremely large classes. I queried our briefing on this debate, which said there were classes of 70, and I could not believe it possible—it is not something I have ever witnessed—but I was assured that it was happening. If so, it is an urgent problem that must be addressed immediately. It would be galling if hon. Members, such as my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), saw money being spent in other boroughs, while her parents cannot get their children into classes of reasonable sizes.

It might seem like we are picking at a sore just to make a political point, but that is not it; this is about the future and what it signals not just for young people being educated now, but for all children as they progress through their school careers. We must nip this problem in the bud because if it continues it will only get worse, and children’s secondary education will be affected far more. Schools are probably managing quite well now, so this is more about the future than the argument over free schools or what the last Labour Government spent on school buildings. I am proud of what that Government achieved. In 1997, we had outdoor toilets in schools in Darlington, but we rebuilt, I think, every primary school in the town. Outcomes for young people and children there have soared ever since; the achievement gap between the highest and lowest achievers has narrowed, and the achievement of the top kids has got even better. That is a great record, and I am very proud of it, and it would be a shame if we let something like class sizes prevent that opportunity from being afforded to young people growing up now.

Technical and Vocational Education

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 9th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Mid Derbyshire (Pauline Latham). I find myself wishing that you had put us on the clock, Mr Speaker, because I care so much about this matter that I feel I may rattle on. My hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) promises me that he will cough vigorously at about the six-minute mark. I commend the Opposition Front Benchers on securing the debate. We do not spend enough time thinking about what happens to young people who do not choose to follow an academic route post-16.

I associate myself with the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), because in Darlington students do exceptionally well up to GCSE—as well as those just about anywhere else in the country. Yet given those GCSE results, far fewer than we would expect go on to do A-levels and attend university. Very few attend what we have loosely come to term the “top universities”. I will not stop encouraging people from my constituency to go to those universities until we achieve parity with other parts of the country.

In my constituency, there is a sixth-form college and an FE college. I attended one of them, and I visit the other often. When I look at the curriculum on offer and the number of students taking each course, I find that we train more hairdressers per head of population in Darlington than just about anywhere else in Britain. I am not against hairdressers at all—I am a big fan, and in fact I wish I could use them more often. However, it strikes me that there is no incentive in the system for colleges to offer more STEM subjects—science, technology, engineering and maths—and train more technicians. If we want them to do that, they will have to stop doing something else. Some of our colleges have invested heavily in training people in subjects such as hairdressing, beauty therapy, travel and tourism, but they are not leading people into the types of jobs that they hoped for.

I find that it is easy to persuade 15-year-old girls to study hair and beauty, particularly when they are not getting any information, advice and guidance at school that is worth having. Instead, we need to find a way of incentivising FE colleges to restrict the number of students that they recruit to some courses, and expand the number that they recruit on to others that are much more in demand from local employers. We have not cracked that yet. One way of doing so that we might want to consider is payment by results—I hesitate to use the term, because my expertise is more in the field of justice, in which payment by results has been a mixed bag. In education, however, there may be a way that would help colleges to divest themselves from some forms of activity and to invest in others, and until we crack that we will not change the investment behaviour of some of our colleges, which is what we need to do.

Pathways into further education are confused. We know there is no information, advice and guidance worth having—the CBI has stated that advice and careers guidance are on “life support”—but there is no standardised application process or single source of information, and it is difficult for a young person to choose in any sensible way between different providers and courses. So many different funding options, routes and types of qualification are available that it is confusing. Young people are not making decisions in their long-term best interests; they are sometimes enticed to make decisions that may be in the best interests of their local college.

I would like some thought to be given to having a single pathway into FE, just as we do for university. There is a well organised, well established application process for university, but nothing like that for FE. Once we have such a process, we will get some kind of support, and understanding and appreciation of what is on offer, from parents. Parents are key to this issue, and the real test of how successful apprenticeships or vocational qualifications are will be the confidence that parents have in them.

One or two colleagues have mentioned that they went to an FE college. That is great; where we went does matter. Where we send our children, however, will really demonstrate the success or otherwise of these measures. Do we have the confidence to advise our children not to do A-levels or go to university, but to take a risk on some of these other qualifications? I hope we do, and that they are good enough and of a high enough standard for us to have the confidence to advise our young people to make that choice.

Some Government Members have been very pleased with themselves and their Government, but I encourage them not to count their chickens before they are hatched, because the proof of whether these measures work will be seen a long way into the future. This is about parents, confidence, people from working-class backgrounds doing A-levels, and those from middle-class backgrounds studying for vocational qualifications.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

The increase in apprenticeships across the country is helping to tackle youth unemployment. There has been a sharp fall in youth unemployment in many parts of the country—including that of my hon. Friend— with a fall of more than 50% over the past year, which is seriously good news. There are many contributory factors to that, not least colleges that work extremely hard to ensure that young people get jobs, as well as employers who create that prosperity, thanks to our long-term economic plan.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

What will the Government do about the fact that there are more than 4,000 infant school children in classes of more than 30 in the north-east and North Yorkshire?

[Mr Laws]

That is precisely why the Government have doubled the allocation of money for basic need, by complete contrast with the previous Government who cut the number of places in primary schools despite the boom in the birth rate.

Free Schools (Funding)

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the point he makes. It is of course the case that there has been pressure on school places in Enfield. That is why we have been pleased to increase the amount we spend from £20 million under the last Government to £77 million under this Government. It is also why I am delighted that Patricia Sowter, an outstanding head teacher, has been able to increase the number of school places on top of that by expanding her wonderful chain of free schools. When the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) was shadow education spokesman, he paid tribute to Patricia Sowter for her fantastic work. I hope the current shadow spokesman will associate himself with those words.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I represent a constituency in the north-east that, as the Secretary of State knows, is consistently complimented by Ofsted on the standard of its education, and I would like him to bear that in mind when he writes off my region in the way he just did. I want to ask him about private schools converting to free-school status. Although it is welcome to see these private schools become non-fee paying, it seems that a sizeable debt is being written off when they convert. Will the Secretary of State say how much his Department is spending on settling the debts of private schools converting to free schools?

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely shall. The first thing to bear in mind is that, as the hon. Lady rightly points out, Darlington is an exceptionally high-performing local authority. One of the reasons for that is that many of its schools have converted to academy status with the support of the local authority, and Darlington shines out as an enlightened Labour local authority. I will share the exact figures with the hon. Lady, but I should stress that many of the independent schools that have changed to become free schools are now open to all and an excellent standard of education is available to children on a comprehensive basis. Many of those arguing for independent schools to become free schools are Labour MPs such as the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) and the right hon. Member for Blackburn (Mr Straw), and I am delighted to have been able to work with two more Labour MPs supporting our free schools programme.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

To correct the hon. Gentleman slightly, I think the gentleman concerned is employed by UK Trade & Investment, and he wrote this in his personal capacity, and it is perfectly reasonable to do so. I look forward to responding to his essay, which seems to me fundamentally mistaken, but no doubt we will argue about that.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

When I visit schools in my constituency I ask them about the careers information, advice and guidance they receive and, without exception, they say that it is totally dreadful. To be fair to the Government, it was not much better under the previous Government. This is very important for social mobility, so what is the Minister intending to do to make face-to-face guidance available to everybody?

[Matthew Hancock]

That is a very fair question. It is true that careers guidance has not been good enough in Britain for an awfully long time under Governments of all stripes and the new publication today, which I am sure the hon. Lady will want to get a copy of and I am happy to send to her, will strengthen the statutory duty on schools and also, crucially, open schools and colleges up to employers and encourage, and make it easier for, employers to get involved in schools, to inspire and mentor and give guidance to young people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. We will ensure that early-years settings have the necessary information about interventions that make a difference, so that the new money that is going into the system can have an effect, especially for some of the most disadvantaged pupils.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

The Under-Secretary of State rightly says that she is worried about the number of girls taking A-level maths, given that two thirds of A-level maths students are boys. Is she also worried about the fact that level 6 key stage 2 entrants are consistently more often boys than girls? She has announced changes in the maths curriculum, but what elements of that curriculum, or of teaching, will help to deal with this issue?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

I agree that that is an issue. Information provided recently by the OECD’s programme for international student assessment showed that girls have as much confidence as boys at the age of five but begin to lose that confidence as they proceed through the education system, and that that contributes to feelings of anxiety about mathematics. One of the things that we must all do is end the culture in which saying “I am rubbish at maths” is acceptable, whereas it is not OK to say “I am no good at reading.” What is needed is a “can do” approach to mathematics. Our new maths hubs programme—there are 30 hubs across the country—will promote best practice in teaching, so that we can close the gap between girls and boys.

Vocational Qualifications

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 5th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

That is a really important point. Big businesses that have a graduate recruitment round are increasingly moving to having a graduate recruitment system alongside an apprenticeship recruitment system. On Monday, I was at the BBC, which is doubling its apprenticeship intake, and it announced the goal of an apprenticeship intake of the same size as its university intake. The civil service is doing the same in moving towards having both, and all large companies should look at whether that is the right option for them.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is good to hear the Minister speak about quality in FE. My experience is that most middle-class parents would still prefer their children to go on to A-level and university, with vocational options left for everybody else. Until the issue of quality is addressed, parents will guide their children in that way. How will downgrading training, so that teachers no longer need a teaching qualification, help?

[Matthew Hancock]

We are upgrading training to make sure that people who have skills in the workplace can easily transfer them into FE colleges. Making training relevant to what now goes on is a very important part of making sure that provision is high quality. I agree with the hon. Lady that tackling low-quality provision is very important in showing parents that the existing provision for their children is high quality. That important thrust is behind why we are tackling low-quality provision, as well as celebrating high-quality provision where it exists.