Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Bill Esterson Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for his comments. Not long ago, I had the pleasure of visiting a school in Solihull with him and my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman). He is absolutely right to talk about transformative education, which is what Conservative Members want to see. It is a basic right for every young person in this country to have an excellent education. We now have 1.4 million more children in schools rated “good” or “outstanding”.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State realise that many people outside this Chamber will think it extremely odd that, a week after the head of Ofsted described very serious weaknesses in the main academy chains, her answer to that criticism is to force every single school in this country to become an academy?

[Nicky Morgan]

No. I think that what people in the country will want, particularly parents, who often are not spoken about nearly enough in this debate—

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[Nicky Morgan]

No, I am going to draw to a close. Labour’s plans to spend, borrow and tax more are exactly what got us into a mess before, and they led to a rise of almost 45% in youth unemployment. We cannot risk the kind of youth unemployment seen today in places such as Spain and Greece.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. I wonder whether you can give me some guidance. I understood that when a Minister had a major announcement to make on policy, as I think the Secretary of State just said she had about education policy, they are supposed to come to the Chamber and make it first before it is reported elsewhere. Why has she not done that as part of her speech?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Of course, all statements of policy come through this Chamber.

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[Michael Tomlinson]

I disagree with the hon. Gentleman, and I can give him three examples. Local authorities in Doncaster, Barnsley and Leeds will all benefit under a fairer funding scheme. There is no rhyme or reason to the current scheme. I understand what the hon. Gentleman is trying to say, but the present funding formula is in place due to an historical anomaly. The right hon. Member for Enfield North (Joan Ryan) mentioned levels of deprivation, but it must be understood that that is not the basis for the funding formula. For example, funding can differ by up to 50% in two areas that share exactly the same characteristics. That is neither right nor fair. Indeed, the top 10 schools receive £2,000 more per pupil than the bottom 10 schools. If the formula were based on areas of deprivation, I could understand that and I could explain to my constituents why their funding was in the bottom two and in the bottom 11, but that is not the case. I therefore welcome the changes.

I also welcome the fact that there is to be a consultation and I invite Opposition Members, who are still chuntering, to join in the two stages of that consultation and to make their case. I also welcome the announcement on timing, and the fact that 90% of schools can expect to have this funding by the end of this Parliament. I shall be inviting all schools in my area to contribute to the consultation, and I urge all hon. Members to do the same.

Turning to the subject of academies, I am a parent governor at my local primary school and I know that there will be concerns about academisation. I pay tribute to the teachers in Poole and Dorset, who work so hard.

[Bill Esterson]

Has the hon. Gentleman had a chance to read the White Paper? Paragraph 3.30 states that there will no longer be parent governors. Does he realise that he would have to stand down as a parent governor as a result of that?

[Michael Tomlinson]

Doubtless there are many on the governing body who would be relieved if I had to stand down, but I am sure that there would be opportunities for others to step forward. I have not yet had the opportunity to read that paragraph, but I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman to drawing it to my attention. I shall look at it in due course.

I was about to pay tribute to the hard work of our teachers in Poole and Dorset, and indeed across the country. They work tirelessly. The school of which I am a governor recently went through an Ofsted inspection and I saw the hours that the headteacher and everyone else in the school put in. It is right to pay tribute to our hard-working teachers. There is a risk that the rhetoric from the Opposition Benches will come across as talking down the teaching profession, and that must not happen. It will certainly not happen here, because every time I stand up to speak on this subject I pledge to pay tribute to the hard work of our teachers.

However, academisation will be unsettling to our teachers. I urge the Secretary of State to reassure the teaching profession about the structuring and the process involved and to offer support. I know that she will do this. Dare I say that communication will be absolutely vital in this regard, as will setting out the positives—including the financial positives—that can result from academisation. It will be critical for our schools to be supported.

I want to touch briefly on the sugar tax. My hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) went into great detail about a previous sugar levy, but I do not share his pessimism that we risk such disastrous consequences this time round. Instinctively, I too am a low-tax Conservative and therefore cautious about this measure, but I warmly welcome the direction that this money will go in. I am passionate about sport and I believe that the additional funding for sport in primary and secondary schools will be warmly welcomed. I will invite secondary schools in my area to bid for funding so that they can be among the quarter of secondary schools to benefit from these measures.

Sport is vital in our schools. I hugely benefited from playing sport on Wednesday afternoons and on Saturdays, and I miss those days. I miss the opportunity to play sport at the weekends. Perhaps, Madam Deputy Speaker, there should be time on Wednesdays for parliamentarians to play sport and to show the way. I put in that mini-bid to you today in case it is within your gift to make that happen. Perhaps time could be found in our busy lives to play sport. There is a serious point here: sport benefits our children and it can benefit everyone.

I support this Budget. In particular, I support the measures on education, especially those relating to a fairer funding formula for our schools, which will be vital for Poole and for Dorset.

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[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Yesterday I listened intently to both the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, hoping against hope that we would see a Budget for the poor as well as the rich—a Budget that would be not just for private businesses but for local services, and not just for London and the south-east but for the north-east of England.

First, I heard the Prime Minister boast about a very welcome drop in unemployment in the UK, but he did not have a word for the 3,000 more people out of work in the north-east of England than 12 months ago. The Chancellor, apart from mentioning his pet project to impose an extra tier of politicians on an unwilling electorate to deliver devolution of power without devolution of real resources, failed to announce anything that would provide the north-east with the investment in infrastructure—or anything else, for that matter—that would help to create the jobs we need to employ the people this Government have clearly forgotten.

Today’s theme is about education and equality. It is time the Chancellor recognised that there is tremendous inequality between the regions, and that it has been created as a direct result of his policies and those he shared with the Liberal Democrats. Others have already detailed the colossal failures of the Government in missing self-imposed targets, but still the Chancellor maintains that all will be well because he can always squeeze those who have been squeezed before. Sadly, this means that women and less well-off folk are again in his sights.

The Chancellor’s warm words about acting now to protect future generations, about shrinking inequalities and about us all being “in this together” were designed to create an image of fairness and social justice, but they do not paint an accurate picture. They do not, for instance, detail how 81% of the Chancellor’s cuts, totalling £82 billion in tax increases and cuts in social security, have fallen on women. Nor do they mention the fact that the Government’s policies are projected to be even more regressive than those of the coalition that went before, hitting women and lone parents disproportionately hard.

In fact, contrary to what the Chancellor would have us believe, women in Britain are now facing the greatest threat to their financial security and livelihoods for a generation. Never before has a Chancellor upset so many middle-aged women at a stroke of his red pen; the pensions issue for women born in the 1950s is just one area of their income he has attacked. An awful lot of people will remember this, should he ever realise his ambition to lead the Conservative party. He might do that, but his blindness to the anger and upset felt by women on all manner of issues will probably mean that he will not fulfil his second ambition: to win a general election.

I spoke last week to my constituent, Amey-Rose McGrogan, who manages a small but successful independent business in Stockton North. The business is about to celebrate its second birthday. As of this coming Monday, the non-domestic business rates for which the business is liable are set to rise from £157 a month to £581. The business is facing tremendous increases in costs all round. The measures announced yesterday will help a little, but they are perhaps going to be a bit late. As the North East Chamber of Commerce has highlighted, this is just another example of a Government paying lip service to stability and failing to provide businesses with sufficient detail to plan for the future.

The Chancellor is not really doing anything to help our overall economy. He is not using any of the money available to central Government to fund this planned benefit to small businesses. Instead, he is stealing it from the local authorities, which are planning their budgets based on his previous proposals for the localisation of business rates, only to find out that he has cut their income yet again. That simply places further constraints on their ability to deliver the vital services that local people need, and I have no doubt that that will create untold difficulties for local authorities as they strive to cope with cut after cut and change after change.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend is right to point out that the Government are giving to small businesses with one hand and taking away from local government with the other. Does he agree that these measures will take money out of the local economy that those same small businesses were relying on for part of their success, and that the overall package is far less impressive and attractive than the Chancellor has made it out to be?

[Alex Cunningham]

Indeed; I certainly agree with that.

The Minister needs to tell us what assessment has been made of the impact on local economies and on local authority funding of this policy change. In my constituency, Stockton Borough Council has faced funding cuts of £52 million in the last six years, and that is set to continue with a further reduction of £21 million over the next four years. The concessions to businesses are great, but local authorities should not be suffering as a result. Instead of empowering local councils, the Chancellor is undermining their effectiveness. Authorities such as Stockton with low tax bases will lose out as the vast wealth realised by rich councils in the south will no longer be redistributed to provide vital services across the country.

Unemployment is another particularly pertinent issue. When the Chancellor spoke in the House yesterday, he chirped merrily about a labour market delivering the highest employment in our history and unemployment having fallen again. What he did not say, however, was that that is not the case across the whole country. In Stockton North, for example, unemployment has actually increased, adding to the pressures that have been created by a spate of business closures and by Government failures to do more to protect our vital steel industry and related supply chains. As recently as Friday, 40 highly skilled workers at a specialist steel foundry in Stillington in my constituency were told that their jobs would go in May. What did the Budget offer such firms? Simply nothing. This Government stood in the way of EU tariffs on steel produced in the far east and now prefers to use foreign-made steel, rather than home-produced materials, to build Navy ships.

Speaking of materials, despite the hint from the Business Secretary during departmental questions on Tuesday that we would soon hear whether the materials catapult proposed by the Materials Processing Institute would be created, we heard nothing. It is all very unfair. We need fairness for the north-east of England.

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[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) on his excellent speech. He and a number of other Conservative Back Benchers gave the Government fair warning that the proposals in the White Paper will not be accepted without a great deal of scrutiny and challenge. He raised some very serious and correct concerns.

I am a parent of two children who are at secondary schools in my constituency, and a community governor of a primary school, which is also in my constituency. I must say that the primary schools in particular work extremely closely not just with other primary schools, but with the local authority. They view the education proposals with growing horror, as they see the flaws in what is being put forward.

Let us examine the Government’s record on education since 2010. One of their first actions was to cut the Building Schools for the Future programme and to make other cuts in capital spending, with a disastrous effect on the then recovery—yes, it was a recovery, which was happening as a result of the actions of the outgoing Labour Government.

When the Exchequer Secretary responds to the debate, I am sure that, as a former member of the Education Committee, he will want to comment on the Government’s education plans. Over the past nearly six years, we have seen cuts in sixth form college funding, with a third of colleges facing an uncertain future, the forced academisation programme with a likely price tag of half a billion pounds and an extra £500 million cost for extending the school day, which is on top of £4 billion of cuts over the next four years. I have been asked: what will happen to special schools and to children with special educational needs?

[Mr Steve Reed]

Does my hon. Friend share my view that it is hypocritical of the Government to claim that they support localism while forcing schools to academise whether they want to or not?

[Bill Esterson]

Absolutely.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. Just before anyone else gives way or intervenes, it must be noted that there is only a certain amount of time for this debate and that Members who are at the end could be squeezed out altogether. Giving way and adding an extra minute to somebody’s speech does not add any more minutes to the time in a day.

[Bill Esterson]

I was going over the Government’s approach over the past six years. They scrapped compulsory work experience, with the knock-on effect on the economy. The education and business partnership in my borough is a great success, but it has been consistently undermined over that six-year-period. It had established very good working relationships with businesses and employers generally, and there is a profound economic effect of that policy, as there is with the undermining, and almost destruction of, the careers service.

Turning to forced academisation, we have many good and outstanding schools in the maintained sector. We have parents, children, staff and communities that value the partnership between schools and the local authority. We have academies that are successful, so why are the Government hell-bent on making changes?

In an intervention earlier, I referred to the White Paper and the section on removing the requirement to have parents on governing bodies. Parents will be ignored in the forced academisation process, despite the words from the Secretary of State in her foreword expressing confidence in parents and calling on them to join in the process to improve standards, but clearly not so much that the Department wants parents to be involved in the governance of schools in future.

All that is done in the name of localisation. I think not. This is centralising to the Whitehall desk of the Secretary of State and her Ministers, as is the land grab—the biggest land grab since Henry VIII ransacked the monasteries—with the Government taking ownership of all the land. When the Treasury Minister responds, he will have to demonstrate to me that that is not the case. That is what is proposed by transferring ownership of the land to the Secretary of State.

We have a centralising Secretary of State and a centralising Government who do not trust local people, parents or school leaders. At a time when we have a shortage of staff and a great lack of confidence in Government, all they can do is force schools to do things against their wishes. That is not the way education should be run.