Schools that work for Everyone

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his views. As he suggests, there are good and outstanding schools all over our country. This is not a binary choice between getting into a grammar and not having access to a good school. We are simply saying that academic children should have the ability to go to a school that will really stretch them, if that is what they want to do.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

What the Secretary of State has just said goes to the nub of the problem. An 11-year-old source close to me started comprehensive school last week. He does not yet know whether he wants to be a chef, an astronaut, a plasterer or a lawyer. He does not know what he wants to do. Why is the Secretary of State closing off opportunities to young people at such a young age?

[Justine Greening]

We are doing precisely the opposite. For example, the introduction of the EBacc and much of the reform of GCSEs will be about ensuring that children come out of our school system—whatever school they have gone into—having a rigorous, balanced set of GCSE results that are academic in nature, and that all options remain open to them.

Teachers Strike

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 5th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

The problem with education in Wales is that standards are behind those in this country. In fact, yesterday we were asked what advice we could give to the Welsh Government about our academies programme, our reforms to the curriculum, and our reforms of GCSEs and A-levels, which are resulting in higher and improving standards in this country. The gap, I suspect, is widening.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

As we now have a Chancellor talking about post-Brexit largesse, what do Ministers intend to do to ensure that the projected schools funding cuts are prevented?

[Mr Gibb]

We have protected school funding on a per-pupil basis. School funding is now at £40 billion—the highest it has ever been, and £4 billion more than in 2011-12. Because of the decisions that the Chancellor took in his Budgets, particularly the June 2010 Budget, we are not facing, and have not faced, the crisis facing countries such as Greece that had the same deficit as a percentage of the budget. We have not faced their crisis of closing schools, slashing salaries, and cutting numbers of teachers; we have maintained stability in our system. The average class size has remained stable in that period despite the fact that we have also created 600,000 more school places.

Education, Skills and Training

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Anderson (Blaydon) (Lab)]

I always think of the first Queen’s Speech that you and I attended, Madam Deputy Speaker. That was the last occasion on which I spent any real time with my good friend Robin Cook. I think that most Members in all parts of the House would agree that he was a fine parliamentarian, and I wonder what he would make of this shambles of a Government today. A former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions has described the Business Secretary as disappointing, his own Prime Minister as disingenuous, and his own Chancellor as nothing short of a liar, even calling him Pinocchio. Meanwhile, the former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the former Mayor of London and the former Defence Secretary are all saying, “Look out, look out, the Turks are coming!” , although 10 years ago they were saying, “We want Turkey in Europe.”

It is against that background that the most wasteful use of parliamentary time in history went ahead last week. It showed what we are used to in this place: contempt from the leader of this country towards the House of Commons. Worse, however, it showed contempt for our Queen to bring that woman here, in her record-breaking 90th year, to deliver such a piece of rubbish. And even worse than that, it showed contempt for the people who do not just send us here, but pay for the privilege of doing so.

It is that contempt that I want to reflect on now, in relation to something that will have a huge impact on the people in my part of the world. I refer to the ludicrous programme of English devolution. It is a farce, it is a joke, but sadly, it is deadly serious.

The Labour party is and always has been the party of devolution, in Scotland, in Wales, in Northern Ireland and in London, all of which have been given real powers, real democracy and real accountability. Crucially, all those arrangements were agreed through genuine engagement and democratic decision-making involving the people affected. What have we got now? Devolution drawn up on the back of a fag packet; decisions taken behind closed doors by Treasury officials, local government senior officers and leaders of councils; the imposition of elected mayors without asking the local people if they want one, often ignoring the voices of those who have already rejected mayors in their towns and cities; the cobbling together of geographical areas that bear little resemblance to each other; meagre resources being given to areas that have been coerced into signing up—areas where huge sums of money have been taken away from local government as austerity goes on and on; an insistence on getting full agreement on structures even before the legislation has been agreed by this House and the other place; a funding stream that has no basis in fairness or transparency; and locally elected representatives being cajoled into agreeing these poor deals as the only game in town, telling them, “You take this or you get nothing.” All this is being cobbled together under the crass PR tags of the “northern powerhouse”, the “midlands engine”—and God knows who is in the back of the car in the boot.

The people of England deserve better than this, and more and more people are recognising that, as are more and more politicians of all colours. Indeed, I have sat in amazement over the past few weeks as I have heard people I disagree with almost every day on almost every issue saying how concerned they are in their part of the world—in East Anglia, the south-west and the west midlands—about how this is going through the House. People are asking, “Why, oh why, is this happening in this way? Why must we in the north-east be told we can’t have this kind of authority without having a mayor, yet people in Cornwall can?” Why can we not have a proper consultation and a referendum, as has quite rightly happened everywhere else in the UK?

Why have we not got a fair funding system? I will give the House a great example of the need for one in my part of the world. Tees Valley, in the south of the north-east, has agreed to proceed with a mayoral combined authority, as is its right. The north-eastern part of the north-east has not as yet fully agreed to do the same. One of the sticking points is resources. We are asking why the Tees Valley, an area that is much smaller than ours geographically and with about a quarter of the population, is getting £15 million a year dedicated to its so-called powerhouse while we in the northern part are getting only £30 million. It might just be a coincidence that the Tees Valley contains the constituency home of the Minister responsible for the northern powerhouse. Surely that could not have anything to do with this decision. That would be almost as absurd as to suggest that the arrangements in the greater Manchester area have anything to do with the fact that the Chancellor of the Exchequer lives on the fringes of that area. Surely even Pinocchio would not want us to agree to that.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I represent one of the constituencies in the Tees Valley, and I want to make it clear that we deserve that £15 million and will spend it wisely. However, we are also deeply opposed to the imposition of an elected mayor.

[Mr Anderson]

I have no doubt that the people of the Tees Valley should have that money; they deserve a lot more, given what they have gone through over the past 30 years. They have been through deindustrialisation in the 1980s and they have taken other hits lately, and £15 million is meagre corn for the people of the Tees Valley. I am in no way having a go at them. I am asking how it can be fair for a population of that size to get that amount when another area with a population four times the size does not get proportionally more.

I am a huge fan of devolution. I really believe that we in the north-east know what will work for us better than the old Etonians do. I also believe that we should be allowed the freedom to decide what is best for our part of the world, but to do that we need sufficient resources to match the responsibilities that are given to us. We need the funds to meet our needs. We need structures that are transparent and fully accountable, and this should not be negotiated by people with vested interests. The leaders of the council are decent honourable people, but they should not be the ones sitting around the table saying, “Yes, this is what we want and we will agree to it without any recourse to the people in the local area.”

In Gateshead, the council carried out a consultation of 200,000 people, but only 38 people replied. A poll was carried out in the north-east a couple of weeks ago and, out of a population of almost 2 million, only 511 replied. The majority of those who replied said that they did not really know enough about what was going on to make a valid choice. What on earth does that tell us about the way the Government are pushing through this programme, which has nothing to do with real transparency and real democracy? We need genuine buy-in and commitment from the people. Without that, this is going nowhere. We need a range of powers that recognise the vast differences between the needs of people living in, for example, rural Northumberland or the Durham dales and the people living in Tyneside tower blocks. They are different and they will have different demands.

None of these questions has been fully addressed to our satisfaction and, as I said earlier, people in other parts of England are similarly dissatisfied, including those in a number of places that have already signed up to these dodgy deals. I want to make it very clear in relation to my borough of Gateshead, which has refused to sign up to a deal that other people in our part of the world have agreed to, that we are not walking away from this. We want this to work, but we want it to work properly. There is nothing in this Queen’s Speech to make me believe that it will do anything to improve the situation we have been landed with.

--- Later in debate ---

[Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)]

I am grateful for being allowed to speak during this debate on the Queen’s Speech. It was a one nation speech, and I will be speaking mainly about my nation, Scotland, and my hopes to improve legislation here. This is a UK Parliament, I am elected as a Member of a UK Parliament, and—for the benefit of Government Members—I come from Scotland.

There are many things to welcome in the Queen’s Speech, but many more things could be improved on given our experiences in Scotland. It would appear that the Secretary of State for Education’s U-turn is complete and that there should be no forced academisation of schools in England, which is good. However, I have heard it rumoured that cuts to local authority education resource funding might mean that authorities do not have the cash that helps them to improve school services in their areas and that that would lead schools to become academies anyway. No proof has been provided that academisation improves educational attainment—I did not say that; Michael Wilshaw said that. The free schools model came from Sweden, where it has now been decided that such schools are a political failure. I am glad that we have neither academies nor free schools in Scotland.

Turning to the Higher Education and Research Bill, which is mainly for England, it at least has the laudable aim of improving access to higher education, which should be welcomed across the United Kingdom. However, I find it difficult to believe that widening access can actually happen under a Government that have systematically cut funding to poorer students since 2015 and before. Maintenance grants are being abolished. Disabled students’ allowances are being cut. The National Scholarship Programme has been abolished. The educational maintenance allowance, which helps poorer students in both schools and further education, has also been abolished. How can such students possibly move on and access higher education if they are crippled by debt? In England, the number of part-time students has been reduced by 38%, and there are 180,000 fewer mature students in higher education since 2010. As a former further education lecturer, I find that unconscionable. Mature students bring so much to higher and further education, so it is impossible to understand why any Government would want to reduce their chances.

In Scotland, we do not charge fees. We still pay the education maintenance allowance. We actively encourage students to move forward in higher education. We do not simply ask universities to publish information on the types of students from deprived backgrounds who are accessing their services; we have actually legislated that universities must show that they are improving access for our most disadvantaged students. That is an absolute must, and I encourage the Government to look at what Scotland has done. It is important that they not only ask, but tell universities to encourage people from BME backgrounds, disabled people and those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds.

One reason why many disadvantaged students do not go to university is the cost. In Scotland, we believe that students should access university based on ability, not the ability to pay. My right hon. Friend the Member for Gordon (Alex Salmond) has had that sentiment carved into a rock in Edinburgh at Heriot-Watt University—my alma mater. It is a subject with which the majority of people in Scotland totally agree.

[Jenny Chapman]

I am listening carefully to what the hon. Lady is saying, but before she gets too smug, will she promise to go away and read the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission’s report on elitism in Scotland?

[Marion Fellows]

I most certainly will, but I remind the hon. Lady that the First Minister, who has been re-elected on a huge mandate, has put education at the heart of her Government and has asked to be judged on her progress.

Many people in England, Wales and Northern Ireland would agree with me that university fees are a huge barrier to higher and further education.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling), and I enjoyed picturing her as a blonde on a wire. I am sure she will not get stuck, and I admire the gusto with which she undertakes her role as a constituency MP. However, she did make me reflect on the introduction of the National Citizen Service, alongside the demise of our youth service. I wish the NCS well, but I regret that my local community no longer has a targeted, effective resource to deal with real and immediate problems, not just for young people, but for the wider community.

It is also a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), although I wish we had conferred a little earlier because I found myself scratching out large segments of my speech. She did a great job of explaining why the credibility of the life chances strategy will be questionable when it emerges, given the Government’s record.

I find myself pondering the term “life chances”. It is a much better term than “social mobility”, which is not particularly widely understood. I looked it up, and found that “life chances” was initially coined by Max Weber, the famous sociologist, and it is a positive thing that the Tories are taking reference from his work. My concern, however, is that the term “life chances” will become rubbished because the Government will mess things up, and will not deliver any meaningful improvement in life chances to most people in the country. The term could well go the way of “localism”, “the big society” and—increasingly in my part of the country—“the northern powerhouse”. That term is treated with utter derision and contempt, and I would hate that to happen to “life chances”. I am no one’s class warrior, but I am Labour, and we are about life chances and widening equality of opportunity. That is what we are here for—all Labour Members are in the Labour party because they are interested in life chances. [Interruption.] I am happy to take an intervention if someone wishes to make one.

It is difficult to see how the Government intend to proceed with improving life chances. They are still paying for a social mobility and child poverty commission, which writes excellent, first-class reports and commissions superb research, yet there is precious little sight of that in any Government policies. The commission makes specific recommendations that relate directly to the issues under consideration, but the Government ignore them.

We have heard from many Members who are worried about the quality of apprenticeships—I know I am, and I have seen extremely questionable examples of short, poor-quality apprenticeships that do not lead anywhere. According to the commission, we should have a target of around 30,000 higher level, level 3 apprenticeships. Life chances differ depending on what someone does when they are 16. The decisions they make then determine their life chances for the rest of their life. If they take a non-academic route, their chances of doing well later in life are greatly diminished.

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend reminds me of the Aimhigher scheme that operated in my constituency in 2010. It was all about encouraging young people from deprived backgrounds to think that higher education was something for them—basically, it did the things that my mum and dad did to encourage me to go into higher education. Is it not a travesty for those young people that one of this Government’s first actions was to scrap Aimhigher?

[Jenny Chapman]

It is. Our universities do not do nearly enough to encourage a broader range of people to attend their institutions. There are little schemes—I am sure there are some lovely pockets of good practice around the country; I have seen some gorgeous things with primary school children wearing hats around local universities—but their long-term impact is very weak.

We find that the life chances of non-graduates, the people who do not go on to university, are limited. Some 42% do okay: they find themselves in the top half of occupations, are relatively well paid, and receive further training and progression throughout their careers. However, men in lower-half occupations are low paid, with no progression. They make up 16% of non-graduates. They are mostly younger men and they work in lower-paying occupations. There are then the skilled but stuck. Generally, they are women in part-time work. They, too, make up 16% of non-graduates. They are mostly mothers working in low-paying occupations, such as sales and customer service, because they are unable to retrain, get childcare or part-time work in occupations for which they may well be qualified.

About 26% of non-graduates are young, tend to have children and have low qualifications. Again, they are mainly women. They are at real risk of getting stuck. They may have messed up and not done so well in their GCSEs. Perhaps they did not get any advice on what was best for them and made a poor choice. They may have ended up doing hairdressing, beauty therapy or going into another low-paid profession because their friends were doing it and the alternatives were not explained to them. It is now almost impossible for them to get out of that profession and into something with a real chance of progression. If we are talking about life chances, it is this stage in education—if I could fix one thing—that really needs to be addressed. It is underfunded and ignored. There is no decent advice for young people before they make these decisions.

One recommendation from the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission is for a common access point. For young people going to university there is the UCAS system. They make their application and are supported through the process. There are deadlines and they understand the process. There is a whole host of information about the outcomes, routes and destinations available on the internet. There is nothing like that for those trying to get on a further education course and that needs to be addressed.

[Bob Stewart (Beckenham) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making an extremely interesting and apposite speech. As the father of five children who have gone through the age of 16, your point—sorry, the hon. Lady’s point; forgive me, Madam Deputy Speaker, I deserve to be hanged—about the age of 16 being a crucial time for decision making is so very important. I just want to reinforce that point, having watched five children go through the age of 16. It is so incredibly important. People should recognise that 16 is the golden age.

[Jenny Chapman]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. It is great to have support across the House on this point.

On GCSE and A-level results days we send out tweets congratulating young people, schools and parents. In our constituencies and nationally, there is a sense of an event. There is nothing like that attention, celebration or recognition for non-academic, post-16 qualifications. We do not have the same sense of a nation coming together to recognise the achievement of our young people when they receive their NVQ level 3 in whatever it might be.

Such an inequality of status in qualifications at that age is wrong and something we need to address if we are serious about promoting non-graduate routes into the professions. Let us be honest: most of us will be encouraging our children to take a certain route, involving A-levels and university, because we know that that is how a person gets the best chances. Until non-graduate or non-academic qualifications post-16 bring with them the same opportunities, life chances, employment opportunities and pay, life chances will remain desperately unequal and how well someone succeeds will have nothing to do with what they know but will depend on who they know, who advises them and—even worse—who their parents know. We will not have equality of life chances until we address that simple issue.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

The consultation is ongoing and we will report to the hon. Lady and the House in due course.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

There is undeniably a crisis in teacher recruitment in schools. I warn the Minister that it is not confined to schools but is starting to affect early years provision too, and hitting it hard because there is no coherent early years career pathway and no set pay scale, with some providers paying wages for only 35 weeks a year. How can the Government possibly hope to improve quality in early years when they are doing their level best to put people off joining the profession?

[Mr Gibb]

We are not putting people off joining the profession, and we are expanding the early years sector. We acknowledge that when we have a strong economy it is a challenge to recruit highly qualified and highly able people. That is the case in this country, and it is the same in other successful economies around the world. We are doing a huge amount to encourage more professionals to come into the profession. We have a very effective advertising campaign. We have very generous bursaries right across the system; we are spending £1.2 billion on those bursaries. This is working, because we recruited 94% of our target to teacher training last year and we have record numbers of people in teaching. What we do not do, as the hon. Lady and Labour Members are doing, is talk down the profession, because, as my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said, teachers tell us that talk about a recruitment crisis helps to deter people from coming into the profession; it does not encourage them to do so.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. One of the great things about the UK childcare market is the diversity of provision—childminders, nurseries, school nurseries—available to parents, as it means we can meet all parents’ needs, especially when it comes to work. We will make sure that flexibility for parents is at the heart of how the 30 hours is delivered.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It really is all about delivery. The Minister talks about meeting all parents’ needs, but already 59 local authorities say they do not have the places to meet current obligations to three-year-olds, never mind the additional hours. What is he going to do?

[Mr Gyimah]

Once again, I shall give a dose of reality: 99% of four-year-olds and 96% of three-year-olds are accessing the existing 15 hours of childcare. I am happy to compare our record with that of the previous Labour Government. After 13 years in office, it had provided 12.5 hours of free childcare. In half that time, the Conservative party has provided 30 hours of free childcare. Labour never offered anything for disadvantaged two-year-olds; we have a programme for disadvantaged two-year-olds. We are investing more than any previous Government. It might not like it, but it must accept it: the Conservatives are the party of childcare.

[Jenny Chapman]

My party introduced Sure Start. There was no Sure Start and there were no children’s centres—no universal offer for any kind of childcare—prior to the Labour Government in 1997. The test of this will be how many families actually use the additional hours and who those families are. How has the Minister managed to concoct a system where a household with an income of £200,000 a year benefits from the additional hours, whereas 20,000 single parents on the minimum wage will not be eligible? How has he managed to come up with something so deeply unfair?

[Mr Gyimah]

Let me explain the policy to the hon. Lady. She should be familiar with it by now. Our eligibility criteria make absolute sense. To get 30 hours of free childcare, someone needs to be in work and earning more than £107 a week and not more than £100,000 a year—it does not matter if they are a lone parent. That means that if anybody in the family earns more than £100,000 a year, they will not be eligible. I know that Labour Members do not want to hear it, but Labour’s childcare voucher scheme meant that parents earning more than £1 million could get childcare subsidies but the self-employed could not. We are not allowing that to happen in our childcare scheme.

Further Education Colleges (North-east)

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) on securing this important debate, and I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute.

I am not opposed in principle to area reviews, and it is right to assess from time to time the post-16 education on offer to young people and adults in any locality. We need to do that now because resources are scarce and colleges have been under immense pressure—more than they have ever been—in the past five years.

As a result of the environment the Government have created in recent years, I have seen some quite sharp practices taking place between colleges. In my area, we have the ludicrous situation that students have been enticed by offers of free travel to study at colleges further from home, when they could just as easily have studied the same courses in their home towns. That is not a sensible use of public money. Colleges are incorporated, but they are funded by the state, and taxpayers would expect such practices to be discouraged. My fear is that area review actually encourages such a lack of co-ordination and collaboration and that, once colleges agree whatever they agree with the area review team, the situation will deteriorate. I want to know what area review will do to cement collaboration between colleges.

I am all for student choice. I have no objection at all to Darlington students travelling further afield to access courses that are not on offer in the town or that are offered to a higher standard elsewhere. In fact, I would encourage that, and a small number of students from my area travel to Hartlepool to study on the courses mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright). I am pleased that they do that, and it is great that they can, but the lamentable state of public transport in the Tees valley is becoming an ever bigger obstacle to that happening more often. However, I do not like the gimmicky enticement of students who have not had the benefit of independent, well-informed advice about what is best for them.

College funding mechanisms certainly need to be looked at. Currently, colleges can do well as long as they can attract enough students on to their courses and keep them there, but they are not held to account adequately for the destinations of course leavers. Colleges operate in a market, but that market does not work sufficiently well for students.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool was absolutely right to refer to social mobility. There is a lack of quality advice and guidance for young people. Students are therefore not savvy consumers able to shape the market in the way that I am sure the Minister would wish. The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission put it well:

“There is a jungle of qualifications, courses and institutions which students find hard to penetrate. Quality is variable and there is little or no visibility about outcomes. Nor is the system working as well as it should for the economy with skills shortages in precisely those areas—construction, technical and scientific skills—that vocational education is supposed to supply.”

In the north-east, we have seen thousands of older potential students lose their jobs in the public sector—and now in steel, too. How will area review take account of the needs of older learners? I ask that because I looked at what happened in Scotland, which undertook an area review—indeed, I was expecting a Member from Scotland to be here. The number of colleges in Scotland fell from 37 to 20. At the same time, there was a reduction of 48% in the number of part-time students and of 41% in the number of students aged 25 or over. That is deeply concerning to those of us from the north-east, given the job losses I referred to.

[Chi Onwurah]

My hon. Friend makes an important point about adult education and the capacity of our further education colleges to meet a growing demand for which there is less support. As the chair of the all-party group on adult education, I hope that the Minister will be able to give us some reassurance that the destruction of adult education will not continue.

[Jenny Chapman]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. The review could do serious damage if we are not mindful of the impact on older learners, given the experience north of the border.

One of the real problems is the confusion about courses, funding streams and where courses lead. A UCAS-style website could be created for vocational education, so that any learner can see for themselves what progression they are likely to undergo and what employment and earnings opportunities they are likely to have, as a consequence of choosing any course.

It would be remiss of me not to refer to my two local colleges—Darlington College, which is ably led by Kate Roe, and Queen Elizabeth Sixth Form College, which is led by Tim Fisher. The heads of both colleges are fantastic individuals, but they are both grappling like mad with how on earth to take their colleges forward, given the context that we are likely to see. Colleges in Darlington are really struggling with what Darlington needs to look like in the 21st century. What should the course mix look like? Who are the students of the future? What will they want? What will the skills needs be not just in our local area, but in the region, in the country and internationally? I want students in Darlington to get the same opportunities as students in the Minister’s constituency, because that is not the case now. That is what we are meant to be aiming for. Those are the right questions for my colleges to be asking, and the Government should be focused on helping them to find answers.

Many of our colleges collaborate well, but there are too many examples of competition. I fear that the area review process will cement that counterproductive behaviour between colleges. As well as three-year funding security, colleges need external leadership. Unless we cement in some form of governance change—I do not know whether that should be done through city deals or some other means, but we do need strategic leadership on a wider scale—and force colleges to accept a direction that builds in employers’ needs, it is inevitable, given the likely future funding context and the competition for students, that different institutions will embark on wasteful enterprises and use novelty gimmicks to remain viable. That is in nobody’s interests: it is bad for the economy, bad for taxpayers and, worst of all, bad for our students, who need well-informed advice that is given without prejudice and based on a sound knowledge of the jobs market.

I am afraid that so far area review has been conducted away from the gaze of students and parents, and away from employers. That has to change. The colleges are our colleges. They are vital local employers and community resources, and they undertake a vital task. We all feel great ownership of our colleges and do not want that to be lost. As I have said, I am open to change, as are my colleges, but the Minister needs to understand that the rationale for that change must have the students’ best interests at heart.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

It is encouraging to see that the Scottish National party has followed the Conservative party’s lead and is now pledging 30 hours of childcare in the upcoming Scottish elections. The hon. Lady will be aware that we have the childcare element of tax credits in England, so that parents who do not qualify for the second 15 hours can get support for up to 75% of their childcare costs through that policy.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

On 14 April last year, the Prime Minister boasted—I cannot do a David Cameron impression—that with a Conservative Government

“you will get 30 hours of free childcare a week”.

As I recall, there was much rejoicing throughout the land. However, can the Minister now confirm that one in three of the families who he said would get the 30 hours of free childcare—and they believed it because the Prime Minister told them that they would—will receive no additional hours at all?

[Mr Gyimah]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her post. I look forward to her future contributions as vice-chair of Progress, especially as I now understand that to be a front for hard-right views in the Labour party. She will know that for the first 15 hours, the offer is universal— 99% of four-year-olds and 94% of three-year-olds get it. We have been very clear that the second 15 hours is a work incentive. Surely she does not believe that Islington parents on £100,000 a year should be entitled to free childcare. I know that she wants to represent the new core constituency of the Labour party.

Childcare Bill [Lords]

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Mr Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 2—Attainment and development of children—

“(1) In discharging the duty under section 1(1), the Secretary of State must have regard to narrowing the attainment and development gap between young children—

(a) of different genders;

(b) of different ethnic backgrounds;

(c) of different socio-economic backgrounds;

(d) living in different regions; and

(e) who do and do not have a disability.

(2) Within 12 months of the passing of this Act the Secretary of State must lay before both Houses of Parliament a report containing an evaluation of the impact of discharging the duty under section 1(1) on narrowing the attainment and development gap between young children—

(a) of different genders;

(b) of different socio-economic backgrounds;

(c) of different ethnic backgrounds;

(d) living in different regions; and

(e) who do and do not have a disability.”

This new clause would require the Secretary of State, in discharging her duty under this Act, to have regard to the attainment and development gap between different groups of children. The Secretary of State would also have to publish a report on the impact of discharging her duty on such gaps.

Amendment 1, clause 1, page 2, line 8, at end insert—

“(4A) Regulations under subsection (4) must provide for victims of domestic violence who have left paid employment in order to escape such violence to continue to be eligible for 30 hours of free childcare per week under section 1.”

This amendment seeks to ensure that provision is made for people who are suffering domestic violence who leave paid employment in order to escape their situation to continue to receiving 30 hours of free childcare per week.

Amendment 2, page 2, line 8, at end insert—

“(4A) Regulations under subsection (4) must set out in what circumstances a parent or partner who is a student nurse will be considered to meet any conditions relating to paid work.”

This amendment seeks to ensure that provision is made for student nurses to be eligible for 30 hours of childcare per week under this Act.

[Jenny Chapman]

I spent five years on the shadow Justice team and had to speak to many really quite dreadful Bills. It is a soft landing for me to be greeted by the remaining stages of this Bill, which is, essentially, uncontroversial. We enthusiastically support its aims.

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) for her sterling work in challenging the Minister as the Bill made its way through Committee. She is, as everybody here will know, a ferocious champion of quality provision for all children, and she has particular expertise in services for children with disabilities. Having read the Hansard record of the debates in Committee, it is obvious how valuable her contributions were. She will be a miss to the shadow Education team, but in her new role she will be a robust champion and defender of Britain’s membership of the European Union as we approach the forthcoming referendum, whenever that may be.

New clause 1, tabled in my name and those of my hon. Friends, requires the Government to evaluate the implementation and effectiveness of the Bill, should it become an Act. As well as spending five years on the shadow Justice team, I spent five years serving on the Procedure Committee. In that time, we pondered the value of pre-legislative scrutiny and longed for a position in which Governments consulted meaningfully on their plans. I believe post-legislative scrutiny would be of similar value. The principal problem with the Bill is that it does not do what the Prime Minister claimed it would. During the election campaign—I know those are heady moments for all of us and there are those in my party, too, who occasionally get carried away—the Prime Minister, in one particularly effervescent moment, proclaimed in a press release:

“For families with young children, this is not one issue among many—it is the issue. They’re asking ‘How can this work? How can we afford it?’ It shouldn’t have to be this way. It is why we already fund 15 hours of free childcare a week to working parents of three and four-year-olds.”

He said:

“I can tell you today we’re going further a lot further. We’re going to take that free childcare and we’re going to double it.”

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It’s all good stuff.

[Jenny Chapman]

It’s fantastic stuff, isn’t it? There is more:

“With a Conservative Government, you will get 30 hours of free childcare a week”.

Marvellous! Had I believed it, I might just have voted for it myself.

The trouble is that thousands of families did believe the Prime Minister when he promised to double the 15 hours of free childcare per week. How disappointed they will be to discover that the promise was false! Even those who dug deep and read the small print will be disappointed. When he made the promise, there was a caveat in the notes at the bottom of the press release: children will get the free childcare only if their parents are working more than eight hours a week. Thousands of families in which both parents worked more than eight hours a week each could plan on that basis, or so they thought—the Bill says nothing about eight hours. The Government now say that both parents must be working at least 16 hours a week, at the minimum wage, or, just to confuse things a bit more, earning above the equivalent earnings of 16 hours per week on the minimum wage but in fewer hours.

The Government, in their spin, misled the public, then they misled families with the detail, and now they are confusing parents and providers with the implementation. That is why I support new clause 1. It is necessary to ensure the Government examine the Bill after its enactment, which could have some serious unintended consequences. The first potential consequence I would like the Government to monitor is the impact on the supply and quality of childcare places.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

All parties at the last general election promised to increase the free entitlement. Labour promised to increase it from 15 hours to 25 hours for working parents. The Conservative party promised to increase it from 15 hours to 30 hours for working parents. Who would she have included or excluded from Labour’s definition of working parents?

[Jenny Chapman]

As I will explain, the problem is with who the Government are excluding. People earning more than the minimum wage but working fewer hours would be entitled to the Minister’s 15 additional free hours, whereas someone working 15 hours on the minimum wage will not be entitled to them. If I am wrong, I will gladly let him intervene to correct me.

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Lady mentioned the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), who, at the end of the Committee stage, said it was a good Bill and that she could find nothing in it with which to disagree. I hope, in their handover, they had that discussion. The eligibility criteria are very straightforward. Eligibility will be judged on income. If someone is under 25 and earning the national living wage, they will need to earn £107 a week. If they are over 25 and earning the national living wage, which the Government are introducing, the calculation will be the national living wage times the number of hours they can work. It is very straightforward.

[Jenny Chapman]

Well, I am glad that’s as simple as it gets. I said at the outset that I supported the Bill reasonably enthusiastically, but it is a bit arrogant of the Minister to suggest that it is a perfect Bill and that it has no complexity. As he just demonstrated incredibly well, there is huge complexity. Somebody on low earnings and working fewer than 16 hours a week will not qualify, but someone on higher earnings—

[The Exchequer Secretary to the Treasury (Damian Hinds)]

Universal credit.

[Jenny Chapman]

The Minister says that universal credit will help improve the system. I venture to suggest that it might well further complicate the situation.

The new clause is designed to ensure that these perceived and anticipated complications do not have unintended consequences. As I have said, I accept that they are unintended, but the Minister would be rather naive to think that these consequences could never occur.

[Chloe Smith (Norwich North) (Con)]

I am extremely grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, but I struggle somewhat to understand how anything that she has spoken about will be achieved through new clause 1.

[Jenny Chapman]

Is the hon. Lady looking at the wrong piece of paper? I shall go on to explain what is in new clause 1, and if she listens carefully, she will understand what we are trying to get at.

The new analysis by the House of Commons Library reveals a black hole of £480 million in the funding of this childcare offer. That shortfall represents £470 per child each year for those taking up the full 30 hours of free childcare. Independent research undertaken by research company Ceeda, as commissioned by the Pre-School Learning Alliance, suggests that the Department’s funding review has underestimated the cost of delivering childcare. The researchers found that, if funded at the average rate of £4.83 an hour—£4.88 minus the early years pupil premium, which the Department claims is worth 5p an hour—announced by the Government on 25 November, nurseries and pre-schools would face an annual shortfall of £233.70 per child for three and four-year-olds taking up the existing 15-hour entitlement, and £467.40 for those taking up the full 30 hours.

What could be the consequence of that funding gap? Childcare providers will have some difficult choices to make. There is every possibility that in an attempt to make ends meet, the gap will be met through driving down quality, while some providers might leave the market altogether, resulting in less choice for parents and a lack of supply. The Pre-School Learning Alliance warns, rather ominously, that as the existing scheme is significantly underfunded, it is now “crunch time” for the sector. The sector is already in a precarious position, and the Minister needs to reflect on the fact that the Family and Childcare Trust reports that a quarter of local authorities have a shortage of places for children in their existing schemes. There are 40,000 fewer places now than there were in 2010. Given that the Government failed to build capacity in the sector, how are the extra hours going to happen and how does the Minister think providers are going to pay for it? New clause 1 flags up those issues for the Government and asks Ministers to monitor the effect of the new arrangements.

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank the hon. Lady for being so generous in giving way. The Conservative party promised at the election to increase the average funding rate and it is delivering on that promise. The Labour party did not promise to increase the hourly rate. If the hon. Lady is arguing that the funding rate is not enough, will she tell us what the Labour party considers to be the right funding rate for the entitlement?

[Jenny Chapman]

I do wish it was my Bill that we were debating here. I really do, but it is not; it is the Minister’s Bill and it is for him to defend it and to argue against my new clause. That is why we are here. This is not a re-run of the election campaign. I am sure we are all glad about that—I know I am!

New clause 1 also asks the Government to evaluate the impact on parental employment and the administrative burdens placed on parents and providers. What parents want, aside from high-quality and affordable provision, is a scheme that is easy to understand and predictable. After someone has had a baby, deciding when to return to work and for how many hours is a difficult and finely balanced choice. Employers and parents need certainty. As parents fret over the balance between work and family life, employers and co-workers also make choices about their hours and staffing. We want those parents who choose to work to be able to do so. Any opaqueness about eligibility is damaging to take-up of the scheme and harms the confidence that the Government will not move the goalposts once complex family arrangements have been put in place. The proposed scheme, under which someone earning £107 in half a day would be eligible for 30 hours per week of free childcare but someone who works 15 hours a week on the minimum wage is not eligible, will seem bonkers to most people. I therefore urge the Government to do as new clause 1 suggests and monitor the impact of this change, in particular on parental employment patterns.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Lady raises important questions about parents on zero-hours contracts and how they will be monitored. The first point is that parents on zero-hours contracts are self-employed; they are all entitled to the childcare under this scheme. HMRC will check the income levels, and in the case of the self-employed will know how much they earn over a period of time. In addition, and more importantly, there is a grace period so that if someone falls out of work for a period they will not lose their childcare.

[Jenny Chapman]

I am, of course, grateful to the Minister for his intervention, but I might just suggest that he will get the opportunity to make his own speech when I have finished, and he might want to answer some of my questions then. I will move on—

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Jenny Chapman]

I will move on by giving way to my hon. Friend.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am grateful to my constituency near-neighbour for giving way. I was pleased to serve on the Bill Committee and I have never seen a Minister intervene so often during others’ speeches with reassurances such as “the Prime Minister’s promise will be fulfilled,” or “There will be sufficient quality places,” and all manner of other such statements. Would not the Minister be seen to be really reassuring us if he accepted new clause 1 and the scrutiny put down in law?

[Jenny Chapman]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and does so very well. We all like a keen and perky and eager Minister, but it would be good if he were more willing to hold himself to account, after the introduction of this Bill, by adopting new clause 1. However, I shall move on to new clause 2.

This new clause, also in my name and that of my hon. Friends, requires the Government to monitor and report on the state of the attainment gap between young children, and it specifies between “different genders”, “different ethnic backgrounds”, “different socio-economic backgrounds”, those living in different parts of the country, and those

“who do and do not have a disability”.

Our experience tells us that unless Ministers monitor, and are required to report on, the gap, focus will be lost and equality of opportunity for all young people will never be achieved.

I would like to acknowledge the invaluable work of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission in helping us to prepare new clause 2. I believe that setting up the commission was relatively easy for the Government, but listening to it and acting on what it says seem to be a step too far for them. The new clause would provide an opportunity to put that right in a very small way. The commission states that the Britain we should all aspire to help to build is

“one where opportunities are shared equally and are not dependent on the family you were born into, the place where you live or the school you attend. It is a society where being born poor does not condemn someone to a lifetime of poverty. Instead it is a society where your progress in life—the job you do, the income you earn, the lifestyle you enjoy—depends on your aptitude and ability, not your background or your birth.”

The commission’s most recent report warns that Britain is on the verge of becoming a “permanently divided nation”, and exposes some of the deep divisions that characterise our country. Those at the top in Britain today look remarkably similar to those who rose to the top 50 years ago. For example, 71% of senior judges, 62% of senior armed forces personnel and 55% of civil service departmental heads attended private schools, compared with just 7% of the general population.

Britain could become the most open, fair and mobile society in the modern world, but the policy and practice of this Government need to change, and that all starts with the early years. All children, whatever their background, should be school-ready by the age of five. However, less than half of the poorest children in England are ready for school by that age, compared with two thirds of the others, and a deep gender divide means that girls from the poorest families do almost as well as boys from the better-off families at that point. The commission has found that,

“efforts to improve the school-readiness of the poorest children are uncoordinated, confused and patchy.”

It also comments that,

“the complexity of the childcare funding system is hampering efforts to increase maternal employment.”

The commission has some straightforward suggestions for the Government to help to narrow the gap at the age of five. It says that the

“Government should end the strategic vacuum in the early years by introducing two clear, stretching, long-term objectives: to halve the development gap between the poorest children and the rest at age five; and to halve the gap in maternal employment between England and the best-performing nations, both by 2025.”

Further, the commission argues in relation to childcare that the Government

“should radically simplify the multiple streams which finance it”.

New clause 2 tells the Government that willing the gap in attainment and development of children to narrow is not enough. However, I believe that they have the will to do it. I have heard some of their mutterings and comments, and I believe that they have the will—

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

They are not intervening now, though, are they?

[Jenny Chapman]

No, they are very quiet now.

Willing the ends without the means will cause more resentment and division, rather than less. The new clause would force the Government to assess and report on the gap in development and attainment, which would ensure that progress was measured. Unless that happens, opportunities to intervene will be missed and inequality will be further entrenched.

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. As the equality gap widens in Tory Britain in 2016, is not the most important decision for a young person to choose their parents in the womb if they want to get on in life?

[Jenny Chapman]

I dread to think what my kids would say to that.

New clause 2 is a modest request, given the scale of the challenge that we face. It is also something that the Government should be doing anyway. The strategy to narrow the gap with properly co-ordinated policies and regular reporting to Parliament is urgently needed. The measures in the Bill have the potential to diminish the supply and quality of childcare, and we want to know that that gap-widening risk will be closely tracked and acted on by the Government.

New clause 2 encourages the Government to do some of the strategic thinking that we need. If it is adopted, the Government would have carefully to track the take-up of the offer among, say, the 40% most disadvantaged, better to understand the reasons for low take-up, and then they can seek to address them. The key to improving the attainment of the poorest children—high quality early education as opposed simply to childcare—is at risk due to the question marks over funding, which is why I encourage the Government to support the new clause. We know that poorer areas have a higher proportion of providers than the maintained sector, mainly pre-schools and children’s centres. Those providers face particular capacity challenges, and the National Association of Head Teachers has warned that they are unlikely to be able to deliver the increased hours, as they tend to take just two groups of children—one in the morning and one in the afternoon—and physically do not have the space to double their numbers.

Schools have also tended to cross-subsidise the funding of their early years provision from elsewhere in their budgets to ensure quality. The Government have committed £50 million of new capital funding to help with that, thereby acknowledging that there is a problem, but the figure is unlikely to meet the need and may leave some areas without new provision. All this clause does is seek to ensure that this problem does not result in a widening of the attainment gap.

[Alex Cunningham]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister could win his place in education history by accepting this new clause, which has some great ideas? He believes that those ideas will narrow the attainment gap, and that everything will work. What has he got to fear from the scrutiny associated with this particular clause?

[Jenny Chapman]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Not only would the Minister win his place in the history of education teams in Parliament, but it would be the first time ever in Parliament that a Government accepted a new clause tabled by the Opposition on Report. We can live in hope.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies says:

“We have already stumbled a long way in the dark in this policy area. It is time to stop stumbling, shine a light on the policy landscape, and plot an effective route forward.”

If the Government plan to spend £6 billion a year on childcare by 2019-20, I would argue—and I think that they would, too, if they were in opposition—that the risks of an ill-targeted and inefficient system should not be ignored. New clause 2 asks that the Government turn their head to narrowing the gap in early years attainment, and monitor the impact of their policy on this issue to ensure that the nation’s investment is rewarded.

Let me briefly speak to amendment 2, which is a probing amendment and is intended to assess the Government’s appetite for supporting a particular group—in this case, student nurses. This matter arose in Committee, and it is worth flagging up our concern about that particular group and its needs at this time. Members will recall that last week thousands of student nurses and midwives marched through London in protest at plans to scrap training bursaries. Many student nurses already have financial obligations such as mortgages, and many also have children. The Nursing and Midwifery Council requires them to have completed at least 4,600 hours while studying, with half of those in practice. The student nurses work the equivalent of 37 and a half hours a week at least. They work nights, days and weekends. It is very difficult for that particular group to get a part-time job to support dependants while training.

Have the Government made an assessment of the cost of extending the additional entitlement to student nurses with eligible children? I tried to do so, but I do not think that the data exist, so it would be interesting to see whether the Minister has been able to obtain an estimate of the cost. My parents were both nurses, and at the time there were hospital social clubs and a crèche. Obviously that was not recent, but the amendment encourages the Government to work with other Departments to ensure that particular groups—in this case, student nurses—are not disproportionately disadvantaged by a combination of Government policies. I commend new clauses 1 and 2 to the House.

[Mr Gyimah]

I am grateful for the opportunity to hold this important debate, and I once again welcome the hon. Member for Darlington (Jenny Chapman) to her position. The amendments that have been tabled raise a number of interesting issues, which I shall deal with in turn. Let me say at the outset, however, that extending the 15 hours to 30 hours is primarily a work incentive. That is why the first 15 hours are universal, but the second 15 hours are based mainly on economic eligibility criteria. In judging and evaluating the impact of the policy we should bear in mind the work incentive.

[Jenny Chapman]

What the Minister says is correct—that is his intention—but does he accept that in new clause 1 our intention is simply to hold him to that and to assess the success of the Bill in delivering that intention?

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Lady is right to ask the questions. However, I shall resist the new clause, and the main reason is that a number of evaluations, which she has asked for, are under way. There are important programmes, as I shall explain, that focus on reducing the gap between disadvantaged children and other children.

New clause 1 asks us to evaluate the impact of the new entitlement for working parents. That is extremely important and I hope that Members will be reassured to know that we have a very strong evidence base about the impact of free early education entitlements. We know, from studies such as the effective pre-school, primary and secondary education project that early education has a significant impact on child outcomes. Children attending high-quality provision for two or three years before school have a seven or eight-month developmental advantage in literacy compared with their peers.

The Department for Education has commissioned another longitudinal study, if the hon. Member for Darlington will listen: the study of early education and development, which follows 8,000 two-year-olds from across England to the end of key stage 1. It looks at how childcare and early education can help to give children the best start in life and at what is important for high-quality childcare provision. The study is being carried out by NatCen Social Research, working with Frontier Economics, the University of Oxford and 4Children, on behalf of the Department.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend makes a good point about a concern felt by some parents. The first 15 hours is universal, but it is voluntary—parents do not have to take it. The previous Government were very mindful of supporting parents who chose to do something else, so we introduced the marriage tax allowance, which supports those parents. In terms of school readiness, the key thing is that the evidence shows that it is helpful for children to attend an early years setting little and often. The universal part of this offer is 15 hours so that those children do not lose out.

Where a family choose to work because that is right for their family circumstances, it is right that the Government respond to the cry from many parents that childcare is too expensive. That is precisely what this Bill does. Rather than widening divisions in society, as the hon. Member for Darlington suggested, this Bill, by enabling more parents to fulfil their aspirations to work, is helping to narrow the economic gap that she mentioned.

[Jenny Chapman]

The Minister is making quite a bold assertion about the impact of this measure. He does not know that his Bill will narrow the gap, nor does he know that the most disadvantaged children will be able to benefit from the 15 hours, because in fact they will not.

[Mr Gyimah]

The early years foundation stage profile data show that the gap is already being narrowed. Economically enabling more parents to work if they want to is a positive thing for us to do for the growth of our economy.

Funding has been mentioned several times. This Government have invested a record amount—more than any other—in the early years entitlement and in childcare more broadly, but we also know that there are inefficiencies in the system. For example, not all the money that is allocated is distributed fairly to different local authorities, and not all of it reaches the frontline. We will therefore engage in a comprehensive package of reform by introducing a national funding formula for the early years so that funding is transparently and fairly matched to need, and fairly distributed between different types of provider in different parts of the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 10th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

What impact does the Secretary of State think cutting the funding for further education colleges by 40% might have on the availability and quality of apprenticeships?

[Sajid Javid]

I speak as someone who went to an FE college, and no one needs to tell me about their huge importance up and down the country. My priority is to make them stronger, and one way we are going to do that is through local area reviews, which will look at local need.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Tuesday 15th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I know that my hon. Friend is very passionate about this issue. I am happy to congratulate South Devon college on its plans. Degree apprenticeships are a fantastic route to higher level training. I assure my hon. Friend that my Department is working hard with colleges, universities and employers to support what is an increasingly popular route.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

I am afraid that there is an issue not just with quantity, but with quality. With further education in a state that is getting close to desperate, too few apprenticeships are of a high enough quality. I visited Mech-Tool in my constituency, where apprenticeships are four years long and people get good jobs afterwards. What will the Secretary of State do to make sure that we improve quality for the rest of our apprentices?

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. No one wants an increase just in quantity; we at the same time want to see quality improve. I hope that the hon. Lady will, for example, support the Enterprise Bill, when it is introduced in the other place on Thursday, which will for the first time protect the term “apprenticeship”.