Oral Answers to Questions

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

We are making wraparound childcare available for all parents who need it, and we are supporting hard-working parents to balance having a family and a successful career. Our £289 million investment will help schools develop exciting programmes before and after school, which will provide more flexibility for working parents. I am sure the Minister for Children, Families and Wellbeing, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston), will be happy to meet my hon. Friend to keep him updated on progress.

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

Neither the Secretary of State nor any Treasury Minister met representatives of the early years sector in the months before last year’s Budget announcement on childcare. Now, with just three weeks to go, parents, providers and even the Government’s own civil servants are sounding the alarm. More than seven in 10 providers say they will not offer additional places and a quarter say they are likely to close within a year. Will the Secretary of State now guarantee that all parents will be able to access the childcare places that she promised?

[Gillian Keegan]

Absolutely; I set that out in my topical statement. We are working with every local authority to ensure the places are available. I am glad the hon. Lady mentioned childcare, because it is yet another policy area that the Labour party has no plan for. We are delivering the largest expansion of childcare in history so that working parents of children from the age of nine months to the start of school will get 30 hours of childcare a week. The real question is: what is Labour’s plan? Nobody knows, because it does not have one. It is clear that the Conservatives are the only party with a plan for working parents.

[Bridget Phillipson]

There is one way we can find out what the public think: call a general election.

Last week, we heard another promise from the Chancellor for a new funding mechanism for early years providers. There was talk of hundreds of millions of pounds more for the sector, but strangely no news about where the promised £500 million will actually come from—there was nothing at all in the Budget documents. Will the Secretary of State tell us today where the money is coming from, or is this yet another reckless, unfunded pledge without a plan from the Conservatives?

[Gillian Keegan]

There would be no childcare on the table if the Labour party were in charge, so I urge all working parents to support the Conservative party, which has a plan for them. Like everything we do, the £500 million will be fully funded. It secures the rates in the future so that businesses up and down the country have the confidence to invest. The Labour party has absolutely no plan for childcare and for supporting working parents in this country.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

T4. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has rightly championed childcare and early education. I congratulate her on the £500 million in this year’s Budget, on top of the billions committed last year to the sector—

[Bridget Phillipson]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Walker]

It is in the Red Book. I am happy to meet the hon. Lady to show her where it is.

I urge the Secretary of State to keep pressing on some of the Education Committee’s other recommendations, including on extending family hubs, removing rates and VAT from childcare providers, and reforming tax-free childcare to drive take-up.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

Students at St Leonard’s School in Durham are working hard for their exams, but they are facing sustained and ongoing disruption, including challenges to doing practical coursework, off-site teaching and being bussed around the city, all because of RAAC. There is no firm date for the rebuilding to commence, and that is just not good enough. It is putting young people’s futures at risk. Will the Secretary of State now work with the regulator and the exam boards on mitigations for the small number of young people whose life chances are being put at risk by Government failure?

[Gillian Keegan]

As the hon. Lady knows, we have been working closely with St Leonard’s School, and actually with all schools that were impacted by RAAC. I would like to take this moment to thank the headteachers and all the teachers who have done an amazing job to keep 100% of children in face-to-face education. We have spoken to the award bodies. They have been working with schools and have offered some support in terms of assessments and making sure that they can look at what more needs to be done, but exams are there to assess—

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)]

Of course I agree that, on entry requirements, we should ensure that we are comparing like for like and being fair to our brilliant domestic students. I was appalled to see the reporting over the weekend, which clearly showed bad practice in the use of agents. That is not acceptable. As I have said, I met Universities UK and the vice-chancellors yesterday and we are going to sort this out. There is an investigation by the Department for Education.

[Bridget Phillipson]

“It’s not our fault” always seems to be this Government’s catchphrase, and now it applies to childcare too: it is not the Secretary of State’s fault but that of local authorities; it is not her responsibility to deliver on her Government’s own pledge. Even her own civil servants are saying that some parents just will not get their places. Does she agree with the Children’s Minister that no parents will lose out? Will she give that guarantee to the House today—yes or no?

Children Not in School: National Register and Support

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House condemns the Secretary of State for Education for her failure to tackle the crisis of persistent school absence; calls on the Government to immediately introduce legislation to amend the Education Act 1996 in order to establish a mandatory duty on local authorities in England to maintain a register of eligible children not in school, as set out in Part 3 of the Schools Bill [Lords] published in the 2022-23 Parliamentary session; and therefore makes provision as set out in this Order:

(1) On Wednesday 7 February 2024:

(a) Standing Order No. 14(1) (which provides that government business shall have precedence at every sitting save as provided in that order) shall not apply;

(b) any proceedings governed by this order may be proceeded with until any hour, though opposed, and shall not be interrupted;

(c) the Speaker may not propose the question on the previous question, and may not put any question under Standing Order No. 36 (Closure of debate) or Standing Order No. 163 (Motion to sit in private);

(d) at 3.00pm, the Speaker shall interrupt any business prior to the business governed by this order and, notwithstanding the practice of this House as regards to proceeding on a Bill without notice, call the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South or another Member on her behalf to move the order of the day that the Children Not in School (National Register and Support) Bill be now read a second time;

(e) in respect of that Bill, notices of Amendments, new Clauses and new Schedules to be moved in Committee may be accepted by the Clerks at the Table before the Bill has been read a second time.

(f) any proceedings interrupted or superseded by this order may be resumed or (as the case may be) entered upon and proceeded with after the moment of interruption.

(2) The provisions of paragraphs (3) to (18) of this order shall apply to and in connection with the proceedings on the Children Not in School (National Register and Support) Bill in the present Session of Parliament.

Timetable for the Bill on Wednesday 7 February 2024

(3)(a) Proceedings on Second Reading and in Committee of the whole House, any proceedings on Consideration and proceedings up to and including Third Reading shall be taken at the sitting on Wednesday 7 February 2024 in accordance with this Order.

(b) Proceedings on Second Reading shall be brought to a conclusion (so far as not previously concluded) at 5.00pm.

(c) Proceedings on any money resolution which may be moved by a Minister of the Crown in relation to the Bill shall be taken without debate immediately after Second Reading.

(d) Proceedings in Committee of the whole House, any proceedings on Consideration and proceedings up to and including Third Reading shall be brought to a conclusion (so far as not previously concluded) at 7.00pm.

Timing of proceedings and Questions to be put on Wednesday 7 February 2024

(4) When the Bill has been read a second time:

(a) it shall, notwithstanding Standing Order No. 63 (Committal of bills not subject to a programme order), stand committed to a Committee of the whole House without any Question being put;

(b) the Speaker shall leave the Chair whether or not notice of an Instruction has been given.

(5)(a) On the conclusion of proceedings in Committee of the whole House, the Chairman shall report the Bill to the House without putting any Question.

(b) If the Bill is reported with amendments, the House shall proceed to consider the Bill as amended without any Question being put.

(6) For the purpose of bringing any proceedings to a conclusion in accordance with paragraph (3), the Chairman or Speaker shall forthwith put the following Questions in the same order as they would fall to be put if this Order did not apply—

(a) any Question already proposed from the Chair;

(b) any Question necessary to bring to a decision a Question so proposed;

(c) the Question on any amendment, new clause or new schedule selected by the Chairman or Speaker for separate decision;

(d) the Question on any amendment moved or Motion made by a designated Member;

(e) any other Question necessary for the disposal of the business to be concluded;

and shall not put any other Questions, other than the Question on any motion described in paragraph (15) of this Order.

(7) On a Motion made for a new Clause or a new Schedule, the Chairman or Speaker shall put only the Question that the Clause or Schedule be added to the Bill.

Consideration of Lords Amendments and Messages on a subsequent day

(8) If any message on the Bill (other than a message that the House of Lords agrees with the Bill without amendment or agrees with any message from this House) is expected from the House of Lords on any future sitting day, the House shall not adjourn until that message has been received and any proceedings under paragraph (9) have been concluded.

(9) On any day on which such a message is received, if a designated Member indicates to the Speaker an intention to proceed to consider that message—

(a) notwithstanding Standing Order No. 14(1) (which provides that government business shall have precedence at every sitting save as provided in that order), any Lords Amendments to the Bill or any further Message from the Lords on the Bill may be considered forthwith without any Question being put; and any proceedings interrupted for that purpose shall be suspended accordingly;

(b) proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments or on any further Message from the Lords shall (so far as not previously concluded) be brought to a conclusion one hour after their commencement; and any proceedings suspended under subparagraph (a) shall thereupon be resumed;

(c) the Speaker may not propose the question on the previous question, and may not put any question under Standing Order No. 36 (Closure of debate) or Standing Order No. 163 (Motion to sit in private) in the course of those proceedings.

(10) Paragraphs (2) to (7) of Standing Order No. 83F (Programme orders: conclusion of proceedings on consideration of Lords amendments) apply for the purposes of bringing any proceedings on consideration of Lords Amendments to a conclusion as if:

(a) any reference to a Minister of the Crown were a reference to a designated Member;

(b) after paragraph (4)(a) there is inserted—

“(aa) the question on any amendment or motion selected by the Speaker for separate decision;”.

(11) Paragraphs (2) to (5) of Standing Order No. 83G (Programme orders: conclusion of proceedings on further messages from the Lords) apply for the purposes of bringing any proceedings on consideration of a Lords Message to a conclusion as if any reference to a Minister of the Crown were a reference to a designated Member.

Reasons Committee

(12) Paragraphs (2) to (6) of Standing Order No. 83H (Programme orders: reasons committee) apply in relation to any committee to be appointed to draw up reasons after proceedings have been brought to a conclusion in accordance with this Order as if any reference to a Minister of the Crown were a reference to a designated Member.

Miscellaneous

(13) Standing Order No. 82 (Business Committee) shall not apply in relation to any proceedings on the Bill to which this Order applies.

(14)(a) No Motion shall be made, except by a designated Member, to alter the order in which any proceedings on the Bill are taken, to recommit the Bill or to vary or supplement the provisions of this Order.

(b) No notice shall be required of such a Motion.

(c) Such a Motion may be considered forthwith without any Question being put; and any proceedings interrupted for that purpose shall be suspended accordingly.

(d) The Question on such a Motion shall be put forthwith; and any proceedings suspended under sub-paragraph (c) shall thereupon be resumed.

(e) Standing Order No. 15(1) (Exempted business) shall apply to proceedings on such a Motion.

(15)(a) No dilatory Motion shall be made in relation to proceedings on the Bill to which this Order applies except by a designated Member.

(b) The Question on any such Motion shall be put forthwith.

(16) Proceedings to which this Order applies shall not be interrupted under any Standing Order relating to the sittings of the House.

(17) No private business may be considered at any sitting to which the provisions of this order apply.

(18)(a) The start of any debate under Standing Order No. 24 (Emergency debates) to be held on a day on which proceedings to which this Order applies are to take place shall be postponed until the conclusion of any proceedings to which this Order applies.

(b) Standing Order 15(1) (Exempted business) shall apply in respect of any such debate.

(19) In this Order, “a designated Member” means—

(a) the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South; and

(b) any other Member acting on behalf of the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South.

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Today, we seek the permission of the House to make time in the weeks ahead to pass legislation to protect the interests of children who are not in school; to use a day of parliamentary time to put their concerns first and them at the heart of our work; and to make real for one day the promise that only a Labour Government can bring—the promise of a Britain where children come first—because it is a national scandal that every day and every week so many children are not in school.

Absence from school is not simply a problem in itself; it is a symptom of deeper problems and a cause of further problems. While the package of measures that should tackle those problems—and under a Labour Government will tackle those problems—must be detailed and comprehensive, a key part of it is knowing where children who are not in school are instead.

Before I go further, I should emphasise that some parents choose lawfully and properly to educate their children at home. Many of them do so very well, very effectively and to a very high standard. Those children are not the focus of our concern today. Their parents do not have anything to fear from a register of children not in school—the register of the sort that the Leader of the Opposition and I seek the permission of this House to consider in a Bill next month.

Until very recently, support for that register of children not in school was a cross-party endeavour. Politicians across this House agreed with it. It was an element of the Schools Bill, which the Government introduced in the other place in the summer of 2022. The register also received support from professionals in children services. However, the Schools Bill disappeared from Parliament, but I pay particular tribute to the hon. Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) who has pressed this cause so hard among Members of her own party and brought her own Bill to this place.

The hon. Lady’s Bill had wide support outside the House too. Many supportive comments were offered to the hon. Lady on the legislation that she proposed, but the words of Julie McCulloch, the director of policy for the Association of School and College Leaders, bears repetition. She said that

“the Government really should be making the parliamentary time available to ensure that this simple and necessary measure passes into law. Frankly, the public will find it astonishing that there is no such register already.”

It is for exactly that reason that we today seek parliamentary time to put it into law as soon as possible. Of course, the hon. Lady and voices outside this House are not alone in recognising the crucial importance of the register. There were many distinguished supporters of that Bill, including on the Government Benches. I have informed all of the following hon. Members that I intend to reference them in this debate as a courtesy to them. They included the hon. Member for Morley and Outwood (Dame Andrea Jenkyns), the hon. and learned Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis), who all went on to serve as Education Ministers. There was also the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), who is not merely a former Education Minister, but is today Chair of the Education Committee, and the right hon. Member for South Staffordshire (Sir Gavin Williamson), who is one of the Secretary of State’s ample collection of predecessors.

Support for legislation on children not in school is, of course, not limited to supporters of that Bill, none of whom was a Minister at the time. The hon. Member for Colchester (Will Quince), then a Minister in the Department for Education, was clear almost two years ago that he and his colleagues

“intend to legislate to ensure we have a ‘children not in school’ register.”

In respect of parents home educating their children, he rightly observed:

“That is something no parent who is doing the right thing should be concerned about”.—[Official Report, 14 March 2022; Vol. 710, c. 605.]

The right hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb) was admirably honest when still a Minister last summer. He said:

“We think a register of children not in school is important.”

We agree with him.

The right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), who is now back as a Minister, spoke, when launching a consultation, of the Government needing a register of children not in school

“to prevent vulnerable young people from vanishing under the radar.”

I could not put it better myself. Does he still hold to those words? If so, when will the Government get on with it?

The Children’s Commissioner for England, Dame Rachel de Souza, has repeatedly called for a national register. Of course, we know from her words in this place last month, that the current Secretary of State herself takes the view that

“it is my priority and I hope to legislate on it in the very short term.”—[Official Report, 11 December 2023; Vol. 742, c. 607.]

Sadly, she is not here today to lend her support to the motion. It is also sadly the case that she has been unable to convince her own Prime Minister, because he—as he never hesitates to make clear—is never very interested in the welfare of other people’s children. This failure by the Government to address the most serious and urgent barrier to learning in our schools—that children are not there—exemplifies a broader failing and tells a wider story.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate her on exposing this scandal that is affecting children across our country. In my borough, the problem has gone up significantly since 2016-17. Does she agree that, given what happened during the pandemic and the failure of the Government to meet the requirement of additional funding, with a shortfall of £10 billion, young people are suffering? It is vital that there is mental health support along with the register to ensure that young people are supported in going back to school, because mental ill health is a significant barrier to their returning to school.

[Bridget Phillipson]

I agree with my hon. Friend. She makes an important point about the wider pressures that children and young people are facing. I will come on to precisely that point a bit later, but it is why I was so delighted that Sir Kevan Collins, the former Government catch-up commissioner, backed Labour’s long-term plan to ensure that we do address those challenges coming out of the pandemic.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and congratulate her on raising this important issue. Analysis by Labour estimates that more than 1,300 pupils in Wirral will miss half their lessons by 2026. That is an absolutely staggering figure. The National Education Union has pointed out that the scale of the impact of poverty on persistent absence should not be underestimated. I am sure my hon. Friend would agree that this Government have failed massively on child poverty and that they should listen to Labour, cut the cost of school uniforms and provide free breakfast clubs in every primary school.

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her support. Those are precisely the kinds of measures that a Labour Government would take right now to back families, cut child poverty and ensure that children are set up to succeed.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

One reason why children might drop out of the school system and, as my hon. Friend says, go under the radar is because they have had a parent sentenced to imprisonment. The charity Children Heard and Seen tells us that we know exactly how many Labradors are in this country but have no idea how many children are affected by parental imprisonment. We know it is a six-figure sum. Does my hon. Friend agree that we could use a register to try to get some data so that those children get the help they need, whether that is mental or physical support?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for all her campaigning work on the important issue of supporting families and children where imprisonment is a factor in their lives, such as when a parent is spending time in prison or is in the criminal justice system. She raises the important issue—one that I will come to in the debate—of the need to get a better sense of all the information around a child so that we can better support all children and families.

[Ed Davey (Kingston and Surbiton) (LD)]

Will the hon. Member give way?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I will give way one final time, then I must make some progress.

[Ed Davey]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. It is important that she has brought this critical issue to the House. Many groups of young children, as we have heard, are not in school for many reasons. One group that is particularly close to my heart is young carers. I am sure that she will know from all the evidence and analysis that, on average, young carers miss 27 days of school a year. That shows the absolutely urgent need to have a national carers strategy with a focus on young carers. Does the hon. Lady agree and will she commit her party to push that forward in government?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I agree that we absolutely must do more to support young carers, and I give the undertaking that a Labour Government would ensure that young carers’ voices, needs and rights and the support that should be made available to them are taken seriously.

Members on both sides of the House will be familiar with the view widely held by those on the Conservative Benches that whatever damage they might have done to our country, whether it be laughing in the face of voters waiting year after year for NHS treatment, as the Prime Minister did last week, the sewage that fills our rivers and seas, or the growing crisis their party has created in provision for children with special educational needs and disabilities—separate from all that—at least the education that children receive in our country is something the Conservative party has not yet damaged beyond repair. The trouble with that belief is that if it were ever true, today it is no longer.

At the end of last year, the OECD’s programme for international student assessment 2022 results came out. Conservative Members have for many years taken a keen interest in the results, which I should say at the outset are based on such a small sample in England that they may not be altogether robust—a point to which I intend to return. Close observers will have noticed that, over a number of years, the intellectual effort by the Conservative party and its apologists has moved from explaining to concealing what the results show, and from regarding them as a spur to action to taking them as an excuse for complacency. We are in a debate on an education matter, so I hope that Members across the House and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, will forgive me if I briefly adopt a didactic tone.

The PISA score for each country shows how well that country is doing at educating its children across reading, maths and science. The PISA rankings are about how well the children in that country are doing relative to children in other countries. Rather obviously, that ranking is affected by not merely how well children do in other countries, but how many other countries are involved. Going up or down the rankings need be no measure of changing outcomes for children in England, nor of any success for this Government. It is therefore the scores, not the rankings, that are the proper focus of Government attention.

It is not enough that our children are doing better than children elsewhere if they are doing worse than their older siblings, nor is it a comfort that their reading is better than that of children in another country if it is worse than their brothers and sisters. Education is not a contest between nations, but a shared endeavour in every country and across our world to give children the very best start—not some of our children, but all of them.

The PISA results showed that standards in England’s schools are going backwards in science, in reading and in maths. They may not be going backwards as fast as they are elsewhere, but the pace of failure ought not to be a source of pride. Some 14 years into a Conservative Government, they focus carefully on the rankings, not the scores, and their proudest claim is that other children for whom they are not responsible are getting an even worse education overseas.

It beggars belief—and it is no good blaming the pandemic. The pandemic was worldwide, but not every country has gone backwards. That slow failure is not a story of poor teaching, of staff not pulling their weight or of leaders not rising to the challenges they face. It is structural, reflecting choices made in Downing Street and the priorities of the Conservative party: tax breaks for private schools, not standards for state schools, and smaller bills for the super-rich, not better starts for children. The one area in which this Government excel is the creation and maintenance of fresh barriers to learning.

Schools may crumble—indeed, despite the Secretary of State’s well-publicised view of the quality of her own work, the BBC’s “Panorama” programme last night showed powerfully that schools do crumble—but nothing seems to stop Ministers putting fresh barriers in the way of our children getting the education they deserve. There are barriers because the children are neither at school nor in home education; barriers because children are not ready that day, or that year; barriers because children have not slept and cannot concentrate, do not succeed when they should and are not learning when they ought; barriers because children simply are not well; and barriers that speak to the wider failure, and the piling of expectations on schools alone that schools alone can never meet.

Child poverty’s effects do not end as the classroom door closes. The good night’s sleep, the space to do homework and the quiet undisturbed time at home are all missing from far too many of our children’s lives. As I mentioned earlier, the PISA results are based on such a small sample in England that they may not be altogether robust, and that points, indirectly, at the problems we face—the problems with which the next Labour Government will and must contend, because this Government have not, are not and will not. Teaching children who come to school does not help those who do not, supporting children we know about will not bring in the ones we do not, and the results for children who are there are not meaningful for the children who are not. That is true for PISA, true for GCSEs and true for A-levels.

Labour’s belief is simple: excellence is for everyone—not just for those who are in school every day, but for those who are not. High and rising standards must be in every school, in every classroom and for every child, but today, all too clearly, they are not. Across the autumn and spring terms last year, more than 1.5 million children were persistently absent from school. That is, roughly speaking, one in five children, or more than double the number who were absent during the same terms five years ago. If that rise goes on, the number of children persistently absent will rise to more than 2 million in 2025-26, or one in four children missing at least a day each fortnight. That is a disaster, and the Government are doing as close as they can to nothing at all.

Let me quote to the House the words of the headteacher of a state secondary school in the north-east, earlier this month:

“Today, an unremarkable Wednesday in the second week back after a two week holiday, 10% of our students are absent from school. 17% of Year 11 students, those in the most important examination year of their lives, are absent. We’ve become used to these statistics and sadly, these patterns of absence are now considered normal in schools. Indeed, our attendance is higher than national and local averages.”

Ministers will doubtless tell me they are proud of their attendance hubs, and the 10 councils in which they are set to deliver attendance mentoring. The Secretary of State might as well be proud of the water pistol she brings to a wildfire. School leaders know it is a disaster. They can see the catastrophe unfolding around them.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is giving a truly excellent speech. She has talked about barriers; does she agree that one of the big barriers is the fact that children with a neurodivergent condition cannot get a diagnosis and, even if they do, they cannot get an education, health and care plan or a SEND plan? That is creating huge barriers for children with neurodiversity and autism to access school in a safe environment.

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the challenges right across our SEND system—a system that the Secretary of State herself has described as “lose, lose, lose.”

School leaders know that this is a disaster, yet earlier this month the Department updated us all on the work of the workload reduction taskforce. It is not the work of teachers, the taskforce clarifies, to investigate a pupil’s absence. Teachers may do it—it is vital work that needs doing—but it also depends on our amazing support staff.

Labour’s plan to tackle the attendance crisis starts with our smallest children. It includes a childcare system modernised from the end of parental leave to the end of primary school, high-quality early education, a focus on life chances for children—not just on work choices for parents—and high and rising standards right from the start, with early language interventions to identify and remove barriers to learning, and a determination to reform the SEND system, to put money behind children, not lawyers, and to tackle issues before they hold children back, with a new focus on primary numeracy so that children love maths at six, never mind at 16—excellence for everyone; not for some of our children but for all of them. There will be free breakfast clubs in every primary school, because it is about the club, not just the breakfast. Every day, every child, every life and every start.

There will be 6,500 new qualified teachers and a new national voice for our support staff. Ofsted will be reformed and improved. We will end the high-stakes, low-information culture, with annual checks for attendance, safeguarding and off-rolling. There will be mental health councillors in our secondary schools and new community hubs outside them, joining up the information that we have on our children so that every child can be supported between schools and services—every issue caught, shared and addressed. And the cause for which we asked for time today? A law to register and count the children who are out of school.

Labour is clear on how we will fund that package and the change that we need: by ending the tax breaks for private schools and the mega-rich. We will invest in what we most believe in: our children and their futures, excellence for everyone, high and rising standards, and a Britain where background is no barrier to opportunity. The legislation that we will introduce next month, with the House’s permission if today’s motion is agreed to, will be simple: it will be part 3 of the Government’s own Schools Bill from 2022, which provided for a register of children not in school. That is nothing that Conservative Members would not have been prepared to vote for had it been tabled by their own Ministers, so there can be no reason or excuse for Conservative Members who care about this issue not to support the motion today and the Bill next month. They can choose their party or our children. I commend the motion to the House.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

As I said, I will need to put on a time limit if the next debate is to have any kind of parity with this one. The limit will be five minutes, and I will ensure that it is put up on the board so that Members are aware of it.

Funded Childcare

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Monday 22nd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education if she will make a statement on her Department’s plans to roll out 15 hours of funded childcare to 2-year-olds in working families from April 2024.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)]

The Government are rolling out the single largest expansion in childcare in English history. By September 2025, we will provide working parents with 30 hours of free childcare a week from when their child is nine months old, all the way until they start school. By 2027-28, this Government expect to spend in excess of £8 billion every year on free hours in early education—double the amount we are currently spending.

We are introducing that in phases. From April, eligible working parents will be able to access the first 15 hours of free childcare each week for their two-year-olds. In September, they will be able to access the first 15 hours each week for nine-month-olds. A year later in September 2025, they will be able to access the full 30 hours for all eligible children aged nine months upwards.

We want parents to be able to access the new offer as soon as they can. Delivering that ambition includes increasing childcare funding rates, with an additional £204 million in this financial year and an additional £400 million in the coming financial year. We are providing grants to help new childminders enter the sector and, to make it easier for the sector, making changes to the early years foundation stage that it has asked us to make.

We hear every day from families how significant this policy will be for their finances. Once the roll-out is completed, eligible families will save up to £6,500 per year. It will help parents to return to work or increase their hours, and tens of thousands of parents have already successfully applied for their codes, ready to take up their places in April. Parents should visit childcarechoices.gov.uk to see the full range of support they are entitled to.

Regarding tax-free childcare, we will be issuing letters with temporary codes to any parents whose tax-free childcare reconfirmation date falls on or after 15 February and before 1 April. That will ensure that any eligible parent who needs a code to confirm their funded childcare place with their provider will have one, and that no parent should worry that they will lose out.

I welcome this opportunity to correct some misleading stories about the childcare roll-out, and to hear from the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) about whether she supports our childcare policies, and, if not, what her childcare policies would be. I am sure Members on the Labour Benches would like to know as much as we would.

[Mr Speaker]

In which case, it would have been good to have come forward with a statement, rather than me granting an urgent question. So, please bear that in mind before you make a comment.

[Bridget Phillipson]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and thank you for granting the urgent question.

Crumbling school buildings, botched school budgets and now the hat trick: a childcare pledge in tatters because of Conservative bungling. It is not Ministers, but families across the country paying the price for Tory incompetence. How did we get here?

A litany of failures: a pledge without a plan and a Department without a grip, led by Ministers without a clue; families without the certainty of a childcare place they were promised by the Chancellor last March; and meanwhile the Department is facing a further £120 million shortfall because of yet another miscalculation. How are they going to make up that shortfall?

Families are facing a rolling wave of Conservative chaos which wrecks all before it: for providers it is an utter fiasco, where their income after April is still a state secret. When will providers be told about their funding rates? How many families does the Minister estimate will now not be able to access new hours because of this shambles? The Prime Minister’s official spokesman this morning said:

“We are confident that the provision and capability is there, we are confident in the strength of the marketplace.”

But the market is telling them that their plan is simply not deliverable. The chief executive of the Early Years Alliance said that signing up to the new system was “financial suicide” for providers. Mr Speaker, this is not a market, it is an almighty mess and Ministers know it. Government sources are briefing the papers that there will be

“parents that just don’t get their places.”

Let me explain to Ministers in words of one syllable. That is no good. That will not work. They must do more. They need to fix it. If providers cannot price places now, how on earth can they be expected to offer more in September? Can Ministers guarantee to parents now that the roll-out will be delivered on time, yes or no?

It need not be this way. Sir David Bell is leading Labour’s early years review to ensure that childcare is about life chances for children, as well as work choices for parents. Up and down this country families are fed up with this Government, their broken promises and their incompetence. It is time for a general election to end this Tory shambles once and for all.

[David Johnston]

I will try to pick out the questions from the bluster.

On the £120 million, this is a specific issue that affects September 2024 onwards, where we allocated to local authorities 22 weeks of funding because that is the period from September to March. Some then said that they pay 26 weeks to their providers, so we have that money in order that they can provide 26 weeks of funding where that is what they do.

On the funding rates, we announced the funding rates for three and four-year-olds in April last year, and for two-year-olds in November. Given that local authorities have to pass on 95% of the money that we give them, providers have a pretty good idea of what they will receive. However, while the vast majority of authorities will confirm their rates in the coming weeks, a small number leave it until 31 March. We are encouraging them not to do that, and to confirm their rates as early as possible in the same way as the others.

The hon. Lady asked how many families would not be able to access the childcare offer as a result of those two issues. The answer is none. As she knows, we have increased funding rates significantly. Neil Leitch, to whom she referred, is in our stakeholder group, and we value his input. However, I think it will be clear to people watching these exchanges that while we get on with the biggest delivery of childcare ever, the Labour party has no plan, no policy, and no idea how to help families with childcare costs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the shadow Secretary of State.

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

May I start by again sending my condolences and those of the entire Labour party to the family of Ruth Perry? We must all now listen and learn to deliver an inspection system that works in the best interests of children, school staff and communities.

The Education Secretary has said that her Government are doing everything to get children into school, yet this term the attendance rate has declined consistently, hitting a terrible new low in the latest figures. Is not the real truth simply that the Government see attendance as a problem affecting other people’s children?

[Gillian Keegan]

Absolutely not—attendance is my No. 1 priority. I regularly meet and chair the attendance action alliance group, and we are determined to help ensure that children are in school, because that is where they can get the best education. We are working with GPs and other medical professionals to ensure that everybody is aware that, first, school is a good place to be—actually, a better place to be—for those with mild anxiety and, secondly, we are there to give support in school, and we want everybody to be in school. Those efforts are starting to pay off—we now have 380,000 fewer children missing school—but it is very much at the top of my agenda.

[Bridget Phillipson]

If it is the Secretary of State’s No. 1 priority, why is she not legislating for a register of children not in school? That measure has wide support right across this House, but it was missing from the King’s Speech despite the Secretary of State’s repeated promises to legislate, despite it having been in the Government’s abandoned Schools Bill and despite it being in her Department’s submission, according to the permanent secretary at the Department. Will the Secretary of State confirm, as the permanent secretary suggested, that it was blocked by No. 10?

[Gillian Keegan]

No, absolutely not. Of course, more things go into King’s Speeches than there is legislative time; that is a process that the permanent secretary laid out. But it is my priority, and I hope to legislate on it in the very short term.

Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure and a privilege to close today’s debate for the Opposition on what we hope will be the last King’s Speech from a Conservative Government for many years, because the general election cannot come soon enough and the British people should have the opportunity to have their say.

Opening the debate today, my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) powerfully and movingly set out Labour’s case that this Government have let down our country and our people: our schools—crumbling; our skills system—broken; our housing market—failed. Our country cannot go on like this. What we need is change, and the time for change is now. Crucially, the only party to deliver the change that we all need is today’s changed Labour party.

Today’s contributions from so many of my colleagues have spelled out the urgency of that change. We heard from many of my hon. and right hon. Friends on the challenges our country is facing right now and the actions a Labour Government would be taking on the side of working people. My right hon. Friends the Members for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms) and for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), and my hon. Friends the Members for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), for Lewisham, Deptford (Vicky Foxcroft), for Oldham West and Royton (Jim McMahon), for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater), for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for Newport West (Ruth Jones), for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) and for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick) all set out very clearly the difference a Labour Government would make to our country.

One of the divides that such debates show so powerfully is between the core beliefs of our parties. Today it is distinctively Labour to believe that government can be and must be a force for good in people’s lives—not just administration but transformation, and not just keeping the show on the road but defining the road ahead—and only Labour understands that the purpose of government is to extend freedoms, to extend opportunities, for each of us and for all of us.

When we talk about opportunity, we mean that in its widest sense: educational opportunity for all of our children to be ready not just to live and work in our world but to understand and enjoy it. We want a country in which all our children, regardless of background, can achieve and thrive—economic opportunity, setting up our young people to achieve and succeed in the economy of today and tomorrow, with the chance not just to get by but to get on; social opportunity, so that families are not judged but supported, and so children and young people know that the future is for us all to shape together, not to face alone; cultural opportunity, to experience art, music, sport and drama, to get involved, to engage, to write, to participate, to pursue and to perform.

That is what we mean when we talk about opportunity: opportunity for each of us and for all of us. The change that Labour will bring is our determination to ensure that background is no barrier to opportunity, that excellence must be for everyone, and that high and rising standards for all our children and in all our schools are once again reality.

The speeches we heard yesterday from the Prime Minister and earlier from the Education Secretary were not about breaking down barriers to opportunity; they were missed opportunities. Let us think of all the issues that we might have heard about today. After all, the Department for Education’s own risk register, published back in the summer, lists six of them—six issues that the Government know they need to tackle, and on which they refuse to act. What of them? On industrial action, they have overseen some of the most sustained strikes in our schools for decades and have no plans to address the reasons for them. On education recovery after the pandemic, the Prime Minister said in his own words that he had “maxed out,” and the Education Secretary has given up.

On school building collapse, we heard not a word—although the Secretary of State has been keen to tell us that kids love nothing more than a Portakabin. On looked-after children, we heard not a word. On high-needs cost pressures on the special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision system, we heard nothing at all. On cyber-security, we heard zero. On issue after issue, we have seen no evidence that the Government have learnt and no sign that they are ready. They are sleepwalking into disaster.

This goes far wider, as there are no plans for early years education; no plans to tackle the persistent absenteeism in our schools; no plans for a better and more effective school inspection and improvement system; no plans to tackle the growing problem of children who are missing altogether from our schools; no plans to deal with the exodus of qualified teachers from our schools and the growing crisis in recruitment; no plans for children’s social care or to tackle the crisis in provision facing children with special educational needs and disabilities; and no plans for fairer student finance. There is not a thing.

What did the Government give us in that very thin set of priorities? We got just a post-dated cheque on post-16 qualifications—a promise and no plan; an attack on our universities, on the young people who attend them, and on their hopes, dreams and aspirations. The Conservatives’ determination is never clearer and never sharper than when they see the chance to kick at the ambitions of their favourite target: other people’s children. Of course, it would be easy to stand here and say that the answer is simply fiscal, but it is not just about levels of spending—it is also about choices and priorities.

We heard some imaginative and creative storytelling from the Secretary of State about Labour’s record in government, but I am very proud of what we achieved. I saw with my own eyes and experienced the difference that our record in power made in my community and for a generation of children. Millions of children were lifted out of poverty; and we had high standards in our schools, better supported teachers, Sure Start, the education maintenance allowance and Building Schools for the Future.

That is a record of which we are very proud, and the Government have nothing to speak to on this. Thirteen years ago, the share of total public expenditure on education and social protection relating to families was 16.3%, but by last year it had fallen to just 11.6%. There has been an almost 30% drop in the share of Government spending on the next generation. This is a story not of tough decisions for long-term change, but of Conservative Members making easy choices for short-term gain. For 13 long years, they have chipped away at opportunity, Budget after Budget, with law after law, chasing headlines, not tackling issues, and taking chances away from our children, ravaging the opportunities of a generation. I would say that the Government have balanced the books on the backs of our children, but they have not even managed that. Taxes on working people are at the highest level for almost 70 years and public sector net debt has risen to almost 98% of GDP. Theirs is a record of failure and of shame.

Labour’s focus on opportunity will start with our youngest children. The Government’s childcare entitlement expansion comes with no plan for delivery and no workforce to make it happen. Labour is determined that childcare is more than work choices for parents—it is life chances for children. That is why we have asked Sir David Bell, the former chief inspector of Ofsted and former permanent secretary in the Department for Education, to lead our work on setting out the standards and workforce we need for the early education our children deserve. We need high and rising standards, right from the start. We need the best start to every education and every life. We will bring early language interventions—some of the best evidenced of all of our educational approaches—into settings and classrooms across our country. We will bring high and rising standards for all our children, into all our schools. We will bring breakfast clubs to every primary school, in every corner of our country. We are determined to tackle the huge surge in mental ill-health among our children, with mental health support in every secondary school and mental health hubs in every community. We will address the growing challenge of persistent absenteeism, which is now on track to mean 2 million children regularly missing school by 2025—that is one in four of our children.

That is because today there is no greater failing by this Government than standing by, as more and more children miss school for days on end, term after term. They are a lost generation, missing from England’s schools. High and rising standards mean children must be in school for the education they deserve. It means a reset of the relationship between families, schools and government. I pay tribute to the Children’s Commissioner for England, for whom the epidemic of student absence from our schools has rightly been a concern that she has pressed with the Government, and to Sky News, which has been relentless in pursuing the issue.

We will review the curriculum so it is fit for the age we live in and the future we need, filled with the knowledge our children need to achieve and thrive, woven through with the speaking, listening and digital skills that our children need to succeed—high and rising standards in every classroom and every school.

We will use the money raised from ending the tax breaks that private schools enjoy to invest in 6,500 more teachers. We will ensure all new teachers are qualified. We will drive change in how Ofsted reports on our schools, ending one-word summaries and empowering parents to be partners in the push for better. And we will deliver proper careers guidance and worthwhile work experience for all our children, in every school—high and rising standards, through every year of school, so our children are ready for work and ready for life.

We will reform the failed apprenticeships levy into a growth and skills levy. We will devolve skills budgets to combined authorities to bring decisions closer to our local communities and economies. We will bring in a new national body, Skills England, to drive the change we need to see across Government and beyond. And we will reform student finance to bring fairness to a system that punishes new graduates, young workers, those starting a family and those delivering our public services—high and rising standards for all our young people throughout their education and their lives.

By-election after by-election, from Tamworth to Rutherglen, from Selby to Mid Bedfordshire, makes it clear that Britain is longing for change. Speech after speech from Ministers tells us they are out of ideas, out of ambition and out of time. The choice, whenever it comes, in the months ahead, will be a simple one. Today, it is clearer than ever that only Labour can bring the change Britain needs. I call upon Government Members to end the wait, to put country before party and to deliver a general election now.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I encourage the Member leading the Adjournment debate to make themselves available, as I am sure we will be starting that debate in a matter of minutes, before 7 pm. That is not to encourage the Minister not to give us a full response.

Oral Answers to Questions

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

I join the Secretary of State in recognising the impact of the conflict in the middle east on our education system here and the importance of every child being able to attend school safely.

Rates of persistent absence are now double what they were five years ago. Labour’s plan starts with resetting the relationship between families and schools, delivering new mental health hubs, and having counsellors in every secondary school and breakfast clubs for every primary school child. The Prime Minister’s first step was to say that he had maxed out on supporting our children, and now the Secretary of State is blaming parents for keeping children at home with a cold. When are Ministers going to get a grip on this serious problem?

[Gillian Keegan]

We do take this issue extremely seriously; as I said, it is my No. 1 priority. The Attendance Action Alliance includes the Children’s Commissioner, Department of Health and Social Care representatives, social workers and many others working together. The letter was sent to help parents because we have noticed that in some cases there has been a change in attendance as a result of parents not being clear about whether they should send their children to school with minor ailments. Chris Whitty took it upon himself to write, and we very much support his action.

[Bridget Phillipson]

Persistent absence is a symptom of a wider breakdown of trust right across our school system. It is no surprise, given that the Conservatives reopened pubs before they reopened schools, that they have left schools to crumble, and that they have allowed disruptive strike action to drag on for months. Labour’s first priority will be to rebuild that relationship between schools, families and Government. Does the Secretary of State not believe that parents and children deserve a lot better than the sorry mess she is presiding over today?

[Gillian Keegan]

The hon. Lady talks about responsibility and accountability. When Labour were warned about RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—in 1997, 1999, 2002 and 2007, they did nothing. When Labour spent money on school rebuilding, they ignored school conditions altogether. [Interruption.] The hon. Lady needs to listen to this. They even rebuilt three schools and left RAAC within the buildings. A school even collapsed in 2018. What did they do in Wales? Absolutely nothing. We make the tough decisions. Labour cannot even make a single decision.

Core School Budget Allocations

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education if she will make a statement on the 2023-2024 core school budget allocations.

[The Minister for Schools (Nick Gibb)]

As the Government confirmed in a written ministerial statement yesterday, the Department for Education has corrected an error in the notional allocations of the schools national funding formula for 2024-2025. Those allocations were originally published and notified to the House on 17 July 2023. However, the Department has subsequently uncovered an error made by officials during the initial calculations of the national funding formula. Specifically, there was an error processing forecast pupil numbers, which meant that the overall cost of the core schools budget for 2024-25 would be 0.62% greater than allocated. The Department therefore issued new national funding formula allocations on 6 October to rectify that error as quickly as possible.

The permanent secretary has apologised for the error in writing to both the Chair of the Education Committee and the Secretary of State. The Secretary of State has instructed the permanent secretary to conduct a formal review of the quality assurance process surrounding the calculation and quality assurance of the NFF, with external and independent scrutiny. Peter Wyman CBE, the chair of the Institute of Charted Accountants in England and Wales, will lead the review. Improvements have already been identified to ensure that similar mistakes are not made.

I would like to reassure the House that the error does not affect the overall level of school funding, which remains at £59.6 billion for 2024-25. The Government continue to deliver, in full, the core schools budget, which includes funding for mainstream schools and for high needs. As I said, it will remain at £59.6 billion in 2024-25—its highest ever level in real terms and, of course, in cash terms. That is a percentage increase of 3.2% compared with the current year of 2023-24. Through the schools national funding formula, average funding is £5,300 per primary school pupil and £6,830 per secondary school pupil in 2024-25, up from £5,200 and £6,720 respectively in 2023-24.

Schools have not yet received their 2024-25 funding, so the correction of this error does not mean adjusting any funding that schools have already received. Likewise, the error will not impact on the publication of a dedicated schools grant in December, or on when schools will receive their final allocations for 2024-25. The 2024-25 high needs national funding formula allocations, which fund provisions for children with complex special educational needs and disabilities, are also unaffected by the error, as are other funding streams outside the NFF, including the teachers’ pay additional grant announced in the summer.

I also clarify that the recalculation of the NFF for 2024-25 does not affect the affordability of the 2023 teachers’ pay award. There has been no change to the funding that was promised as part of the pay settlement in July and which the unions agreed meant that the pay award is properly funded. The Government recognise that the correction of the NFF error will be difficult for local authorities and frustrating for some school leaders, which is why the Department has rectified the error as quickly as possible.

[Nick Gibb]

This is my final sentence, Mr Speaker.

The Department is working closely with school stakeholders, including unions, to communicate this change and support schools and local authorities.

[Bridget Phillipson]

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker. Since the House returned from the summer recess, Ministers have been forced to come here twice, first to explain how this Government left school buildings in such a parlous state that many are now at risk of collapse, and now to explain that the Conservatives are taking £370 million out of schools’ budget allocations for next year. It is shambolic, it is chaotic, and our children deserve a lot better. I am glad that Ministers have listened to Labour’s call for an independent investigation, but what is the timeline for this review? How will the review be reported to the House, and how will Members have a chance to scrutinise its findings?

We need to know much more, too. We need to know why, when the mistake was first identified in September, it was not until after the Conservative party conference in October that headteachers were finally notified. What support will schools now receive to ensure that children’s education does not suffer as a result of Conservative incompetence? Rather than blaming officials, will the Secretary of State—wherever she is today—finally take some responsibility?

We all know that mistakes happen, but this is not a one-off; this is part of a much bigger pattern of Conservative mismanagement right across the Department and right across Government for 13 long years, and it is our children who are paying the price. It is Conservative mismanagement that brought us the RAAC—reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—crisis in our schools, that kept children at home as Ministers failed to resolve industrial action for months on end, and that is now seeing record numbers of teachers leaving the profession, attainment gaps widening and standards falling. It will fall to the next Labour Government to reset the relationship between Government, families and schools, to show once again that it is Labour that is the party of high and rising standards in our schools.

[Nick Gibb]

The hon. Lady refers to RAAC. We took the only decision that any responsible Government would take when the evidence changed on RAAC in school buildings that surveyors had previously assessed as not in a critical condition and we discovered it was not safe for pupils to stay in those schools. There are 174 schools so far confirmed with RAAC, which we have published details of, and we are taking urgent action to make sure that no child or member of staff in our school buildings will be at risk from this reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete—which, by the way, has been around through successive Administrations, both Labour and Conservative, since the 1950s and 1960s.

The hon. Lady refers to £370 million being taken out of the school budget. No money has been taken out of the school budget. It is £59.6 billion next year, and it will remain at £59.6 billion. What would be irresponsible would be to increase funding for schools by 0.62% solely as a result of an error by officials. That is not how Government spending systems work. It has to go through the proper value for money procedures, and that is how we always conduct our allocation of taxpayers’ money.

The hon. Lady talks about standards in schools. We are rising in the international tables. We are fourth in the world for the reading ability of nine-year-olds, according to the recent progress in international reading literacy study, or PIRLS, of pupils of that age. We are rising in TIMSS, the trends in mathematics and science study, and we are rising in PISA, the programme for international student assessment. That is in direct contrast with what happened under the last Labour Government, when we were falling in those PISA tables.

School Building Closures

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Tuesday 19th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Education if she will make a statement on the number of schools affected by reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete and the impact of building closures on children’s learning.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)]

As I said in my statement to the House on 4 September, this Government are supporting affected schools and colleges to minimise disruption to education. I thank headteachers, staff, local authorities and trusts who continue to provide face-to-face education to their pupils.

Two weeks ago, we published a list of education settings with buildings affected by RAAC. Before I provide an update, I want to reiterate that our view is that parents and children should find out from their school, not from a list on a Government website or from the media. Our approach has always prioritised that, giving schools and colleges the space to focus on what is important: minimising disruption to education.

None the less, we recognise the public interest. On 6 September we published a list of 147 education settings known to be affected by RAAC. Thanks to the hard work of school and college leaders, all of those settings are now offering face-to-face education, with 126 settings offering full-time face-to-face education to all pupils. We have today published an updated list including a further 27 settings with confirmed RAAC. Of the 174 confirmed cases, 148 settings are providing full-time face-to-face education to all pupils.

As I have said before, we will do everything in our power to support schools and colleges in responding to RAAC in their buildings. Every school or college with confirmed RAAC is assigned a dedicated support from our team of 80 caseworkers. A bespoke plan is put in place to ensure they receive the support that suits their circumstances. Project delivery teams are on site to provide support, whether that is ordering or finding alternative accommodation options or putting in place structural solutions.

We will fund these mitigations, including installing alternative classroom space. Where schools and colleges make reasonable requests for additional help with revenue costs, such as transport to locations, those will be approved. We will also fund longer-term refurbishment or rebuilding projects to permanently remove RAAC, through capital grants or rebuilding projects through the school rebuilding programme.

I want to reassure pupils, parents and staff that this Government will do whatever it takes to support our schools and colleges, to keep everybody safe, to respond to RAAC and to minimise disruption to education.

[Bridget Phillipson]

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker.

Before I go any further, let me emphasise that the safety of children should rightly be the priority of every Member of this House. However, the question today is not simply about whether that should be our priority, but about the colossal shambles of a Secretary of State who, as we learned from the Education Committee this morning, did not merely sit on new advice about the safety of school buildings, which she received on 21 August, but did nothing for four days. And then she acted decisively—she went on holiday for the best part of a week. Some 10 days passed from the day she received the crucial advice to the day the headteachers were told to close their schools, causing chaos for parents.

Just a fortnight ago, the Secretary of State’s response to questions about the management of the Department’s own building was simple and proud, the motto she has made her own:

“nothing to do with me”.

She had done a “good job”, while others had been sat on their backsides. Does the Secretary of State still think that is good enough? More simply, even under this Prime Minister, weak as he is, and this Government, how on earth did she think she could get away with going on holiday rather than taking any form of action at all? Will she at last take responsibility for 13 years of failure, three weeks of chaos and the years stretching ahead of the children who are sitting under steel girders? When will all our children be back in their own schools and classrooms? Parents, families, staff and, above all, our children deserve answers, and they deserve better from this Government and better than this Secretary of State.

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her questions. As soon as we had information, we took a decision in every case. When we first saw the incident in 2018, we took a decision and we put out new guidance and warnings. We put out new guidance in 2021-22. We started surveys directly in 2022, when the previous Secretary of State started to get more concerned about RAAC in our school estate. We then sent in surveyors directly, because the responsible bodies were not moving quickly enough.

Let me turn now to the initial advice. Three new cases emerged over the summer, and some were subject to advice, as the hon. Lady says, which came on 21 August. I instructed those involved to get more technical information. The last case is really what tipped us into making a decision. It was a very difficult decision—I am not sure the hon. Lady would have made it because Labour do not tend to make these difficult decisions, and the Labour Government in Wales have still not done so—because of the impact on children and because of the impact on our school leaders and teachers. The last case, which was in another school setting in England, took place on 24 August. We went to investigate that to see what had happened.

On my own decision, I went abroad because that was the first time that I could go abroad. I went abroad for my father’s birthday, knowing that I would still be chairing the meetings, which I did on Saturday, Sunday and Monday, and then I made the decision—as we had now made a decision— to come back from holiday immediately. My return was delayed by one day because of the air traffic control incident, so I got back to announce the decision on Thursday.

When I looked at the new case, I said that we needed to get technical evidence. The second thing I said was that we needed to operationalise this. I knew that this would be difficult. I did not want to put schools in a position where, if I put out a notice via the media or directly, they would be left with the problem. I wanted to stand up caseworkers. I wanted to stand up portacabins. I wanted to speak to utility companies to make sure that everything would be in place so that we could minimise the length of time that it took to put up those portacabins. I wanted to put more structural engineering companies in place, because I knew that we would do more surveys. I also wanted to make sure that we had a nationwide propping company, so that we could put the largely horizontal structural solutions in place to fix everything.

When we have to make a major decision, there is no point creating more issues than we need to. We need to operationalise that decision, which is what I decided to do. The time from the last case to the announcement was one week. That is probably one of the quickest decisions that most people have made in this House and we operationalised it, all while I was still working, as I always do.

Safety of School Buildings

Bridget Phillipson Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That an humble Address be presented to His Majesty, that he will be graciously pleased to give directions that there will be laid before this House by 13 September 2023 the following papers –

(a) submissions from the Department for Education to HM Treasury related to the spending reviews in 2020 and 2021; and

(b) all papers, advice, and correspondence, including submissions and electronic communications (including communications with and from Ministers and Special Advisers) within and between the Cabinet Office (including the Office of the Prime Minister), the Department for Education and HM Treasury relating to these submissions concerned with school buildings.

Today we seek the release of papers that would tell us what has and what has not been happening in our schools—papers that the Government refused again yesterday to release and about which the Prime Minister again evaded questions today. However, this debate is about much more than just the documents. It is about more than reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete. It is about more than school buildings and their safety. This debate quite simply is about responsibility, and whether the Prime Minister will come clean about the allegation that he knew the risks, that he was warned, that he was told.

That is the issue in the motion before the House today: whether the Prime Minister was told that urgent action was needed to secure the safety of schools, but instead he slashed the cost of champagne; whether he will accept responsibility for his choices and whether he will be clear where responsibility lies. All of us are here with deep responsibilities to our constituents, to be open, to be honest, to take decisions objectively and selflessly, to accept accountability, to have integrity and to show leadership.

Let me be clear right from the outset that a Labour Government would have shown leadership on this, not just in the last few weeks but for years on end. That was our record in government. A Labour Secretary of State, faced today with a sudden crisis such as this, would have got those lists of the affected schools out quickly, would have been straight back to London, would have been communicating every day to parents and above all to children, would be taking steps not just to mitigate the immediate challenges around safety—[Interruption.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. She is not giving way. Perhaps she will give way later.

[Bridget Phillipson]

We would remember the lesson from the pandemic that every school day matters. We would be ensuring the continuity of education for every child in school. We would be ensuring in-person learning for all our children. We would be doing that right now, and we would not be looking for plaudits, blaming others, or demanding praise. We would accept responsibility for what had gone wrong on our watch, and we would take responsibility for fixing it—fixing it fast, fixing it to last and fixing it for good.

The Government cannot even fix sending out their suggested interventions for today’s debate to the right set of Back-Benchers. It is hardly a surprise that they cannot fix the chaos in our schools. Here we are today, because of the utter shambles that has accompanied the start of a new school year for so many children. The public realm is literally crumbling around the next generation. The defining image of 13 years of Conservative Government is children cowering under steel props to stop the ceiling literally falling in on their heads.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle (Brighton, Kemptown) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is it not always the case that when the Conservatives are in power, our schools crumble? In 1997 one in five schools were inadequate and needed to be rebuilt by a Labour Government. Because the Conservatives slashed the rebuilding programme, under this Government we are in the same dire situation again, and the only party that can fix it is a Labour party in government.

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Like him, I remember the transformation that that Labour Government delivered. I will come to that in more detail during the debate.

[Hywel Williams (Arfon) (PC)]

The Welsh Labour Government have complained that the briefing they received lacked the technical detail required to take forward the work on schools. Does the hon. Lady agree that the Secretary of State should provide the other Governments with full details from the working group when they become available?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I know that Conservative Members have a keen fascination with all things going on in Wales at the moment, and that Ministers have not always been in full possession of the facts at the Dispatch Box, so I will put a few on the record so that we can all be clear about the situation in Wales. In Wales, school capital funding has increased by around 122% in cash terms, and 23% in real terms, between 2014-15 and 2023-24. Perhaps we can use that as the basis for slightly more informed debate during today’s discussions.

Today, our first priority must be safety—as it must always be. Guaranteeing that safety must ultimately be the responsibility of Ministers and of Government. That is why I repeatedly pressed the Secretary of State to publish a full list of all the schools with concerns about RAAC, which she has at last published today. However, I gently note that there could be omissions on that list, a number of which have already been drawn to my attention. I hope that we can get full clarity about the situation across our schools.

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

The hon. Lady has made a whole series of allegations and challenges about the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister, but surely, in a devolved arrangement, all those responsibilities and challenges apply equally to the First Minister. She has recognised that the list of schools in England has been published; why has such a list not been published for Wales? Does she accept that that is an example of the Welsh Government failing education and schools in Wales?

[Bridget Phillipson]

The difference between the Labour Government in Wales and the Government here in Westminster is that, over the last 13 years, the Welsh Government have continued with a school rebuilding programme, unlike the UK Government, who have cut funding and cut support to our schools time and again.

We want to be clear, open and honest with local authorities and multi-academy trusts about the steps that the Secretary of State is taking to get in place the protections and mitigations that are needed. She said on Monday:

“Absolutely nothing is more important than the safety of children and staff. It has always been the case that where we are made aware of a building that poses an immediate risk, we have taken immediate action.”—[Official Report, 4 September 2023; Vol. 737, c. 52.]

Yet she was keen to spread the responsibility for the concrete crisis through time and space, including to her colleagues, who I understand had been sitting on their backsides; to the Welsh Government—a topic of interest for Members—whose ability to act swiftly has been hampered by key information not being shared; and to the last Labour Government, who left office 13 years ago.

The Secretary of State was keen to emphasise that it was not her Department’s responsibility, or hers, to ensure the safety of our children at school. Pushing responsibility on to others—local authorities, the schools themselves, multi-academy trusts—without the powers, resources or support they need, is very simply passing the buck, and my word, there has been an awful lot of that this week.

As Ministers have been keen to remind us, concerns were first raised about RAAC back in the 1990s. By then, the wider issue was that too many schools, built quickly and cheaply in the previous 50 years, were approaching the end of their design life. The issues were many: RAAC, asbestos and the simple reality—in the school I went to and in so many other state schools across our the country—of buckets in corridors, classrooms blackened by mould, windows that did not close and doors that would not shut.

I was at school back in the mid ’90s, but I know how serious Labour politicians took those warnings, and I am proud that as the scale of the challenge became clear, Labour Ministers rose to it. In 2004, the Buildings Schools for the Future programme was launched to rebuild every secondary school in our country over 15 years. In 2007, Building Schools for the Future was joined by the primary capital programme to give every child the chance to learn safely in a first-rate learning environment. That was done not because it was simple or quick, nor because there were no easier, more popular or more eye-catching choices, but because it was right, because it was responsible, and because that Labour Government believed then, as we do now, that excellence must be for everyone, and that every child deserves the best start—not just some children, but all our children.

The change we saw in 2010, when the Conservatives entered Government, reflected a very different approach: an entirely botched cancellation of existing programmes not by Ministers long since retired, but by the Minister for Schools, the right hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), who is still sitting on the Treasury Bench today, and by a former Education Secretary, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), who is still in the Cabinet. Ambitions were reduced and timelines extended. Ministers knew the consequences when they took those decisions. They banked the savings and left our schools to rot slowly, quietly and inexorably.

[Dame Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend not think that the vast, overinflated amounts of money spent on some free school sites could have been better spent dealing with the collapsing schools?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for all the work that she has done over many years, as Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, to draw our attention to the problems. I will say a bit more about the recent report by the National Audit Office on many of these issues.

When we leave risks unattended, they worsen and, in time, things start to fail—first quickly, then suddenly. In July 2018, a ceiling suddenly collapsed at Singlewell Primary School in Kent, where RAAC failed without warning. Mercifully, no one was hurt. Months passed, and an alert from central Government and the Local Government Association went out that autumn emphasising the risks. It said:

“The limited durability of RAAC roofs and other RAAC structures has long been recognised; however recent experience (which includes two roof failures with little or no warning) suggests the problem may be more serious than previously appreciated and that many building owners are not aware that it is present in their property.”

Let me emphasise that final point: many building owners are not aware.

A few months after that, in May 2019, the Standing Committee on Structural Safety issued a note on the failure of RAAC planks. It said that all those installed before 1980

“are now past their expected service life and it is recommended that consideration is given to their replacement.”

It was not until March 2022—almost four years after that ceiling collapsed—that the Department for Education responded to the challenge of RAAC. How? It sent out a survey—not a surveyor, not a team of surveyors, and not even funding for surveyors, but a survey. If the issue was such a priority, and if the Secretary of State and her Department believed in immediate action, why, after a school collapsed in July 2018, did it take almost four years for the Department to send out a survey about RAAC in March 2022? I appreciate that the Secretary of State was not in post throughout that time, but responsibility in Government is not merely individual; crucially, it is collective and enduring. It stretches across Government and down the years. If she does not understand that point, perhaps she could seek advice from the Schools Minister, who has been in post for so many years, as he is today.

[Simon Baynes (Clwyd South) (Con)]

The key fact is that the Welsh Government ordered surveys only in May 2023, while the UK Government started engaging with schools in 2022. Surely that shows a woeful lack of responsibility.

[Bridget Phillipson]

I have here a briefing document. It would save us all a bit of time and energy if Conservative Members just gave us the number and let us deal with it. The Welsh Labour Government have been taking consistent action to rebuild schools during their time in office; the hon. Gentleman might not like it, but it is a fact, and that stands in stark contrast to what has been happening here in England.

[Sir Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. The Work and Pensions Committee highlighted last year the growing number of retired schoolteachers succumbing to mesothelioma because of exposure to asbestos during their working life. At the current rate of progress, it will take 350 years to remove all the asbestos from schools. Does she agree that the Department must get a move on with that?

[Bridget Phillipson]

My right hon. Friend is right to draw our attention to that matter, and I appreciate the work that his Committee has done on it. It would also be helpful if we had some clarity today from the Secretary of State about the risks that might arise when RAAC interacts with asbestos. If she could say a little bit more about that, I am sure all Members from across the House would be grateful.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am just going to make a bit more progress.

For a responsible politician, being in government is not simply a matter of pressing the agenda of their political party, their donors or those who profit from Government contracts. It is about rising to the challenges that face our country, and accepting the blame when things go wrong as the price of acclaim when they go well.

The point about RAAC was made very ably by the Secretary of State, who said:

“a school can collapse for many reasons, not just RAAC”.

They can indeed! So many things are wrong right now with our schools estate: there are faulty boilers, inadequate insulation, roofs leaking, and asbestos in around four out of five of our schools; and as the pandemic taught us, ventilation is simply not good enough in too many of our schools. How do we know that? The condition data collection tells us all of it. By the Department’s own admission, that exercise was not even a proper structural survey, despite coming 20 years after the risks of RAAC were first flagged, and seven years after the Government cancelled Labour’s school rebuilding programmes, having not even looked at hazardous materials.

The condition data collection found that more than 7,000 elements of the school estate were in poor condition and needed to be prioritised for replacement. Were all those someone else’s responsibility, too? Even the money that the Department did commit—the spending allocations of which the Minister for Schools speaks so proudly so often, with the keen pride of a Minister wholly oblivious to the scale of their own failure—was not all spent. Again, whose fault is that? Whose responsibility might that have been?

We are told that part of the difficulty in recent years has been finding the skilled labour to deliver the work that our schools so desperately need. I invite Conservative Members to reflect briefly on why exactly that might be. Could it be the dramatic overall drop in apprenticeship starts, the shortage of construction apprenticeships in recent years, or the utter failure of the Government’s apprenticeship levy to deliver spending on skills at the scale and pace we need? Could it be their wider failures on further education and in-work training? Thirteen years into a Conservative Government, who will take responsibility for that?

It was a Conservative Prime Minister who once savaged the press of this country for seeking “power without responsibility”. Today, that is the entire ideology of the whole Conservative party. That failure to accept responsibility is not merely the ethic of the Secretary of State and her Ministers; it comes right from the very top. Today’s Prime Minister was yesterday’s Chancellor, and we know—not just from the former most senior official at the Department for Education, but from the Schools Minister himself—that at the 2021 spending review, when even Ministers knew that the problems needed tackling urgently and the rate of rebuilding needed to soar, the now Prime Minister said no, and every Conservative Member accepted that. Cheaper champagne, yes; safer schools, no. There has never been a clearer picture of the priorities of the Conservative party.

The Prime Minister, fond as he is of private donations to his old school, has form on saying no to high standards in schools for other people’s children. He said no to the proper pandemic recovery plan that the Government’s own recovery tsar recommended. In 2021, he said no to the capital spend that would have kept our schools safe and our children learning. Last spring, he said no to the desperate pleas of civil servants in the Department for Education for the resources to make schools safe. In his spending review speech back in 2021, he even boasted of returning overall real-terms education spending in a few years’ time to the levels of the last Labour Government. That was not an admission, wrung as a repentant confession; it was a boast, made with pride, that one day—but perhaps not yet—he would take education as seriously as Labour.

Those who complain about party politics might reflect for just a moment on whether they would level the same accusation at the National Audit Office. In June, the NAO reported that

“Following years of underinvestment, the estate’s overall condition is declining and around 700,000 pupils are learning in a school that the responsible body or DfE believes needs major rebuilding or refurbishment. Most seriously, DfE recognises significant safety concerns across the estate, and has escalated these concerns to the government risk register.”

Just yesterday, in respect of RAAC, the Comptroller and Auditor General was clear that

“the long-term risks it posed took too long to be properly addressed”.

On the sustained inadequacy of the Government’s capital programme, he went even further:

“Failure to bite this bullet leads to poor value, with more money required for emergency measures or a sticking plaster approach.”

Failing to bite the bullet; poor value; a sticking-plaster approach—13 years into this Government, those are absolutely damning words from the Government’s own spending watchdog.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend will be aware that Jonathan Slater, the former permanent secretary, said that civil servants told the Government that there was a “critical risk to life” because of the dodgy buildings, and the failure to follow advice and invest in making sure our schools are safe. Does she agree that this Government are seriously putting children’s lives at risk through their incompetence and negligence, and through the failure of the Prime Minister to make sure there is proper investment in our schools?

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. If Ministers are confident about everything they have done and the decisions that were taken, they will back our motion today, allow us to see the papers, and be transparent with this House.

[Sarah Owen (Luton North) (Lab)]

I should be shocked by the lack of humility from Conservative Front Benchers, but sadly, I am not. Schools are literally collapsing around us, and the Conservatives want people to thank them for it. Does my hon. Friend agree that the Education Secretary needs to get a grip and explain why her offices got a £34 million refurbishment while schools are crumbling under this Tory Government?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes a very important point.

Finally, let me turn to the wording of the motion. I know that many Conservative Members share Labour’s concerns, and I ask them today to think of the young people and the school staff in their constituency. However loyal they have been in every past debate, I ask them to help us put truth and transparency first, and to force responsibility on their Front Benchers. It is time for the full truth to come out about why our schools are unsafe today, and whose decision that was. It is time at last for Ministers, and the Prime Minister in particular, to take and accept responsibility for the broken country they will leave behind. I commend the motion to the House.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

That is of no comfort to my constituents, I am afraid, because nearly all the schools concerned are primary schools, and there were no primary schools in the Building Schools for the Future programme because it was a politically driven programme funded by the discredited public finance initiative, which made it extremely expensive. I do not think we should go back there.

The Labour party does not actually criticise what my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State decided last week to protect the safety of schoolchildren and teachers. That was the subject of my intervention on the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson). Does she think that the Secretary of State has done the wrong thing? I will give way to her now if she would like to say that.

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am not Secretary of State.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

No, but the point is that this debate arises because the Secretary of State made a brave and courageous decision to act on the advice she was given. The Opposition has nothing whatever to say about that. She did the right thing. [Interruption.] If the shadow Secretary of State wants to intervene, by all means she may.

[Bridget Phillipson]

The hon. Gentleman would do well to show a little humility for the mess that his party has created right across our schools.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

There we have it: the hon. Lady will not say that the Secretary of State has done the wrong thing. Let the politics play itself out.

What we have here is a much more fundamental, wider systemic failure in the management of building safety, which has gone on for decades. Dr John Roberts, the former president of the Institution of Structural Engineers, wrote in The Times earlier this week:

“As a chartered structural engineer in active practice from the early 1970s, I never considered using RAAC as it did not “feel’ correct for permanent structures.”

So why was it used? One lesson is that perhaps Ministers should encourage their officials to challenge them more with uncomfortable truths—let us agree that.

The wider question is why such a critical building safety issue was systemically neglected, decade after decade. We should thank the good Lord that none of the ceilings collapsed on a classroom of pupils, or the Government would by now be announcing a full public inquiry rather like the Grenfell inquiry. There the parallels continue, because like cladding, RAAC is a long-persisting and neglected building safety risk, which successive Governments have failed to address.

I and others, including the former fire and housing Minister Nick Raynsford, the former chief investigator of the Air Accident Investigation Branch Dr Keith Conradi, and senior buildings surveyor Kevin Savage, made a submission to the Grenfell inquiry. Our recommendations to help to address the failings are principally twofold and relate to unresolved conflicts of interest in the building safety management regime of buildings, which are not addressed by the Building Safety Act 2022 or the establishment of the building safety body, which is now a statutory function of the Health and Safety Executive. At present, it is the HSE—