Education and Opportunity

Debate between Caroline Nokes and Sam Carling

Wednesday 24th July 2024 Commons Chamber

[Sam Carling (North West Cambridgeshire) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker, for calling me to make my first speech in this place today and in a debate on education, a subject that is very important to me. As this is my first contribution, I ought to start by thanking the people of North West Cambridgeshire for electing me to represent them in this House.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes Central (Emily Darlington) on her maiden speech, as well as all the others we have heard today, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire and Glyndŵr (Steve Witherden), whose speech was very moving; I am sorry to hear of his loss.

I have thoroughly enjoyed hearing maiden speeches from Members on all sides of the House over the past few days, and I am honoured to be part of a clearly very eloquent and passionate intake of new MPs. I look forward to the debates that we will have over the coming years.

My constituency of North West Cambridgeshire has not had a new Member of Parliament in many years, as my predecessor, Shailesh Vara, was elected to represent it in 2005, when I was only three years old. Over that time, he made significant contributions to the work of this House, for example, through campaigning to broaden the age of routine breast cancer screening and, on a local level, fighting for new infrastructure to support residents as new developments continue to come forward across the constituency. He was very kind to me over the election campaign, which was fought fairly and cleanly, and I wish him well for the future.

North West Cambridgeshire is a constituency with an enormous variation of different communities. It has a large urban section in those parts of Peterborough south of the River Nene, such as Fletton, Woodston and Stanground, as well as new areas, such as the Hamptons, which continue to develop. That urban section also contains the former villages of Orton Waterville and Orton Longueville, which grew into one another and expanded when Peterborough was designated as a new town. Despite that growth, the village atmosphere of those areas has been beautifully retained.

My constituency also has a number of semi-urban towns, with Yaxley being the largest and joined by others such as Ramsey. And it has a large number of smaller villages—far too many for me to name now—but I look forward to holding constituency surgeries in as many as possible and engaging with their rich histories as I work to represent and support their communities.

North West Cambridgeshire has a very strong military tradition, with one in 20 of my constituents reporting in the 2021 census as having previously served in the armed forces. I am proud to have within my constituency the grounds of RAF Wittering, a station that was extremely active during the Battle of Britain in the second world war. I look forward to playing my part to support the causes of those personnel actively serving, as well as the veterans I now represent.

Continuing on the theme of the communities across North West Cambridgeshire, it would be remiss of me not to pay tribute to the large farming community that I now represent. I was pleased to meet representatives of that community during the campaign and am thoroughly looking forward to continuing that engagement now. A large proportion of the land in my constituency is used for farming and that plays a significant role in providing food for our country. Our farmers face numerous challenges, from the impact of rural crime to the effects of climate change on crops and livestock, and I am committed to advocating for farmers’ needs and supporting sustainable practices. I will be taking part in the National Farmers’ Union’s new fellowship programme for Members of Parliament to strengthen their knowledge and understanding of the farming industry and the problems it faces, and would strongly encourage other colleagues to do so too.

Now, if I may turn to the subject of today’s debate, as I am the youngest Member of this Parliament—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] I thank Members—it will not surprise many Members to hear that I have not been out of the education system for that long. Indeed, I was in the first cohort of students whose A-level exams were cancelled during the pandemic. In many ways, it was that experience that politicised me.

I grew up in a deprived rural area and was concerned from a young age to see a progressive decline in local high streets, alongside growing problems in public services, notably within schools. When I was in my final year at a rural school, budget cuts forced the closure of its sixth form, leaving me and many others having to find alternative provision at short notice, which was not easy for many, who faced very long journeys indeed to the nearest alternatives. The closure not only disrupted education but fragmented the community, as students were scattered to different institutions, but I never connected those issues to politics and the decisions being made in this place until I saw the direct impact of those decisions on schools during the pandemic. The response to the crisis, the decisions about exams, and the support, or lack thereof, provided to students made it clear to a great many previously disengaged young people that political choices have real and immediate consequences.

We have to work across this House to improve engagement with our democracy, and a large part of that must revolve around rebuilding trust in politics, and getting to a position where we disagree respectfully and work together to make life better for the people we represent. My background is in science—biology in particular—and that has instilled in me the importance of having solid evidence behind the decisions that we make here. We saw during the pandemic that communicating the rationale behind decisions taken by the Government was very difficult, which highlights why there is such a need to improve how we teach science in schools, and I will champion that.

I intend to use my direct experience of the problems in our schools to contribute to the Government’s agenda to revitalise them. Going further, we must deliver a robust skills system as part of facilitating lifelong learning as we seek to break down the barriers to opportunity, as our manifesto outlined. On that front, I pay heed to Anglia Ruskin University Peterborough. While just outside the boundaries of my constituency, it is delivering a huge amount for residents in the communities I represent, as, prior to its delivery, Peterborough was the largest city in our country that lacked a university, as I understand it. I am proud that a Labour combined authority has made expansion and development of that university a real priority, and I look forward to championing that cause in this place. That is a real example of how devolution works. Having served as a councillor and council cabinet member, I hope to be an ally and champion of local government and the insight that councillors and other locally elected representatives have into local communities.

I have highlighted just some of the issues that my constituents in North West Cambridgeshire face, but of course there are so many more that I do not have time to go into. A lack of affordable housing. Insufficient and unreliable public transport. The dental desert that we face in Peterborough, with no adult dental clinics accepting new patients, and people having to travel as far as Stevenage and Kettering. The list goes on, but I will end this speech by reaffirming my commitment to doing all that I can to address these issues, both in my constituency and more broadly, through delivering with colleagues the change that we were elected to bring.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Caroline Nokes)]

I call Johanna Baxter to make her maiden speech.