Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Neil Carmichael

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to speak in this debate, not least because it is the first one on education since I was elected as Chair of the Education Committee. My first task is to thank all those who voted for me, to whom I am immensely grateful. As we go along, either they will regret it or that number will swell.

It is a great honour to follow the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan), the education spokesman for her party. I have already talked to her about a range of issues. Her speech was very moving and very impressive, not least her reference to the first First Minister.

Coasting schools are not a new issue. We have known about coasting schools for quite a long time. Ofsted produced a report during the previous Parliament about the “long tail of underachievement”, which was in effect a reference to coasting schools. It focused on schools in rural and coastal areas, predominantly primary schools, but that was not its only concern. We need to get it on the record right now that we have always known about coasting schools. They have been a big problem for two reasons. The first is that they have affected our capacity as a nation to be productive. One of the key reports I intend to undertake through the Education Committee is on productivity so that we can tease out the ways in which we can improve our productivity. The second reason is social mobility, which is a key objective of any good Government. It is certainly an objective of the present Government.

A central issue is the definition of a coasting school. It revolves around the word “progression.” Are children progressing? How do we identify whether they are or not? Are they doing so at the right speed? When we discuss the detail of the definition, I hope there will be an emphasis on mechanisms to establish whether children are progressing in school. I believe it is necessary to examine, over a period of time, how children are operating within the teaching and learning framework in their school. “Progression” is a key word to keep in mind.

Failing schools are fairly obvious because they are judged to be inadequate. A red light goes on and that school has to be dealt with. My concern about saying that once a school becomes inadequate it is therefore failing is that there might be some pattern that we need to know more about. It would be as well to look at the definition of a coasting school to see how the school became inadequate. That should inform the debate.

I have spoken quite a lot about governance and governors. In the previous Parliament, I set up the all-party group on school governance because governance is one of the key elements in whether a school is going to fail and how it deals with the road towards becoming a failing school or, more importantly, becoming a better school. I welcome the clauses that look into intervention and deal with what an interim executive board looks like, how governing bodies are going to be treated, whether they will stay in place and how they will look during the process of improvement. We need more detail not just about how that will operate, but about the make-up of a school governing body and what it will look like in future. I give notice that I will re-present my original governance Bill, which I have talked about previously.

The other aspect on which we do not have enough detail is the role and capacity of our regional commissioners. We need to know more about how they will operate and what tools they will have to do the tasks that are so necessary to tackle schools that have been identified as coasting and therefore require intervention. One task that the Education Committee will want to do is examine the role and capacity of regional commissioners. It would be of great benefit to our understanding of the process if we knew exactly what regional commissioners would look like in two or three years’ time. We need to start plotting that journey now.

On the leadership of schools, the question is always what we do with the head and senior members of staff in a failing school. Again, that should be thought about carefully during the Committee stage of the Bill. I urge all members of the Committee to focus on that.

Last but not least, on adoption, the central point must surely be—

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way before he gets to the adoption section of his speech, and I congratulate him on becoming the Chair of the Education Committee. What does he think about the conclusion of the Committee’s report published earlier this year, which stated that it was still too early to say how much the academies programme had helped to raise standards? Ofsted has said the same thing: there is no evidence that the academies model is the best way of improving standards. So why are he and his party so adamant that that is the way forward, and why are they closing down parental consultation at the same time?

[Neil Carmichael]

This is actually about whether we should intervene in coasting schools. The hon. Lady is rightly talking about what happens next. We have already heard from those on the Labour Benches that they are quite proud of the academies programme, which they started, but what we have to do is perfect it. That is one of the tasks that underlies this legislation. The Education Committee also looked at whether academy chains should be examined, and we concluded that they should be. We will revisit that matter to ensure that it has been properly tested and discussed.

On adoption, I do not want the Bill to result in people ending up becoming candidates for adoption because that is the easiest route to take. We need to ensure that the adoption process after the decision that a child is to be adopted is made better. That is in line with the concerns expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Sir Gerald Howarth). He talked about the risks involved in going down the adoption route when the existing parents were unhappy with the process.

Given those considerations, I welcome the Bill.

Energy Price Freeze

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Neil Carmichael

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Neil Carmichael]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) if she is quick.

[Caroline Lucas]

That is immensely kind; I thank the hon. Gentleman so much. He talked about the smaller company in his constituency. If it is the one I think it is, its chief executive has said that the reason it was able to keep prices lower was because it had been investing in renewables, not getting hooked up in gas or other fossil fuels. Is that not the conclusion to draw from the hon. Gentleman’s remarks?

[Neil Carmichael]

That brings me to my next point, which is, ironically, that there is a tension between wanting to have lower prices and protecting the environment. I have often thought that the Department of Energy and Climate Change is both poacher and gamekeeper. We need to continue investing in green energy. I will always promote green energy because my constituency has a lot of important companies that are working extraordinarily hard to develop green technologies. However, we must respond to the price issue as well. That is why the Government are right to calibrate the green taxes more sensibly to reduce prices in the energy market. I get the sense more and more that the Opposition agree that the price freeze is simply idiotic.

I will talk about two other important matters. The first is energy storage. We do not give enough attention to that subject. Energy storage technologies will help and we need to invest in them. I hope that we will see energy storage treated as a capacity in the Energy Bill and that it will be invested in. Liquid air, for example, provides us with an opportunity to store energy and thereby flatten out demand and sort out the trough problems.

My hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) spoke sensibly about the need to focus on making houses more energy efficient. Of course we must do that. We have the least energy-efficient houses in Europe in broad terms. We have to continue with the green deal. I am delighted that the Minister is promoting that and that it has got off to a good start. We have to ensure that our houses do not leak energy, but contain it and therefore use less of it. That is one way to reduce bills.

Something that has not been discussed in the debate thus far is competitiveness, not just in this country, but across Europe. In January, the Prime Minister set out the stall for renegotiating our position in the European Union. One of the key points that he made was that we should strengthen the single market in energy. He was absolutely right. We have to recognise that there are lower commodity prices on the continent. We must be able to benefit from those prices. We need to attract investment from the continent and we must invest in the continent so that we have a more competitive and more connected energy policy.

Connectivity is lacking in certain areas. We need more investment in our infrastructure so that we can be sure that whatever form of energy we alight upon can get to the right place in the most cost-effective and efficient way. That is definitely a way to drive down prices. We must set out the stall for increasing competition in the energy market both locally and internationally, with Europe as a target. That would not be a particularly difficult thing to do.

Education Maintenance Allowance

Debate between Caroline Lucas and Neil Carmichael

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

rose—

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

rose—