Girls (Educational Development)

Claire Perry Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Amber Rudd]

Of course, Mrs Main. I will adhere to that, confidently. With qualifications and confidence—king. Without qualifications—trouble, absolutely. But anyone who is brimming with confidence can get on and make the right choices.

It is very important that, along with studying for their qualifications, young people learn confidence at school, but why is it particularly necessary for girls? We so often see girls outperforming boys in qualifications, so why is it that when I go, as I often do, to the mixed schools, particularly the secondaries, in my constituency and get up and talk to the pupils, I get many questions, but very rarely from the young women? They seem to think that they have to sit quietly, and that worries me. It worries me that the next generation of young women are not confident enough in the classroom, and that will have an impact on their future lives. We know what low confidence is about; it is about low self-esteem, and in areas of high deprivation, such as the ones I have in Hastings, we are more likely to get the low self-esteem that goes with lower family expectations and unwise choices.

The topic I want to address today is teenage pregnancy. The UK has the highest rate of teen pregnancy in Europe and the developed world, and one of the highest in the whole world. The previous Government made strong efforts to tackle the problem. In 1999 they put together a 10-year strategy to reduce the number of teen pregnancies, and a lot of money was spent on it. The different impacts and influences on the young women making the choices were analysed, and we found out a lot about the effects of welfare, of access to employment and housing, and of confidence, but unfortunately the strategy did not have a tremendous impact. Over those 10 years, the number of teen pregnancies fell by only 13%; the goal had been 50%. Any decrease is of course good, because having such high levels is an unacceptable way for communities to operate, but we could do more, by boosting confidence in schools. We must have a platform that addresses how we can influence young women so that they make smart choices.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the best ways of influencing young women to make smart choices is to show them role models? All too often the role models in the media are about make-up and singing as career success. Does she agree that a great advantage of the initiative taken by my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) is that it shows young women that there is a huge multiplicity of female role models out there who can inspire them?

[Amber Rudd]

I agree. It is incredibly important that young women realise that there are other women out there who can help them to make smart choices. We need to reduce the impact of all the advertising and television that seems to suggest to them that celebrity and early parenthood are a way forward. It is well known that these young women sometimes make what we call a choice to go ahead and have a baby at a young age. They think it is a smart choice—they see the welfare benefits—but in the vast majority of cases it is not a smart choice, and it has unhealthy outcomes for the young woman and the baby.

In schools, we can do two things. We can raise educational standards, of course. In some cases, it is hardly fair to say that young women with no qualifications make choices. They do not make choices, because they are left with no qualifications. Having qualifications is incredibly important, and I hope that this Government raise standards. We also need to help young women with their self-esteem, so that they have, quite simply, the confidence to make choices—to say “No” when they want to, and to ask for birth control so that they do not end up having babies quite so young.

Last week I saw Hilary Pannack of Straight Talking, a leading UK charity, which was set up in 1998 to combat the high levels of teenage pregnancy. The charity does an extraordinary thing, delivering peer-to-peer education in schools. It employs young mothers who have had babies as teenagers to go into schools and make clear the sort of life that lies ahead. They do not say, “This is a disastrous thing to do,” because no life is a disastrous thing, but they do explain the hardships of young motherhood and the lack of choice about their own lives. The organisation is very successful. It told me that it tries to explain why not to get pregnant:

“The approach is centred on the belief that young people might know how not to get pregnant”—

this is not pure sex education; they understand the facts—

“but they also need to know why not to get pregnant.”

My experience of talking to young women in Hastings is that that would be a very useful guide.

Coming back to the impact of deprivation, in 2007-09 the teenage conception rate in Hastings was, unfortunately —

Adoption

Claire Perry Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Jessica Lee]

I agree with my hon. Friend’s point. At the moment, all public law cases automatically go to the family proceedings court. They may then be transferred to higher courts, such as the county court or even the High Court. However, when we are dealing with strict time limits and concerns to create outcomes for children, every extra court date is time not best used. It is a waste of the child’s time, and we must improve the situation. I would support any proposals that allocate cases more efficiently and directly to the correct level, so that they can be properly managed by appropriate judges.

The Norgrove review proposes a limit of six months in which to complete proceedings. That is certainly a good aspiration, but if that is to be achieved, it will require the coming together of many aspects of how the courts function. I realise that the report has only just been published, but I ask the Minister for any preliminary response to it, and what the time scale is for a detailed Government response to that important document. Six months is a reasonable period in which to make an assessment. A court’s primary and first consideration and hope is that a child may be returned to their birth family and stays with it. Following that is an assessment and consideration of the parents and any other family members. We need to speed up the availability of court time.

Judicial continuity is important. If a judge is charged with the responsibility of a case from the outset, they will have a much better understanding of the dynamics, personalities and initial concerns of a social worker. They will have a grip on the background and chronology of the case; they will have seen it through. It is much more difficult for a judge to step in halfway through a case and make important and life-changing decisions for a child. I am sure that many judges would wish to have judicial continuity throughout cases—they aspire to that as well—so I hope that can be achieved over time.

Once the court process has been exhausted and a placement order made, allowing local authorities to match a child with prospective adopters, there are further hurdles and challenges. A local authority has to consider the pool of adopters within its authority. Again, one has to think about the cost and other complications of looking further afield from the outset. However, is that a sensible, child-centred approach? Surely, we need a more straightforward structure in which adoption teams across the country can consider as wide a pool of prospective adopters as possible from the earliest opportunity. That could save months when matching children with prospective carers.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

I apologise for arriving late to this extremely important debate. I have considered adoption. I am 47 years old and have successfully brought up three children. I know that there is a big question over whether MP mothers are fit people to adopt, but I am also considered too old to adopt because of some absurd guidance on the age spread between the adopted child and the adoptive parents. Surely it is time to stop that insanity and allow these vulnerable children to be placed in loving homes regardless of ethnic background and age. We need a return to common sense.

[Jessica Lee]

I agree with my hon. Friend. Of course we need a common-sense approach. There are thousands of children in care who are waiting to be placed, and we must do all that we can to help them.

The issue of concurrent placements is important. Foster carers who are caring for children throughout the court process—the care proceedings—can also become the adoptive parents without having to be assessed all over again. The advantage is that children are in their prospective home and able to form those important attachments from an early stage. That is surely desirable and needs to be encouraged. Organisations such as Coram are skilled and successful in implementing such an approach, and authorities, including the London borough of Harrow, have championed it.

Of course there are consequences to such an approach. We are asking foster carers to make an emotional investment, and yet they are often left for months on end waiting for the outcome of the assessments of everyone else to see whether they can keep the child for the longer term, so it is not for the faint-hearted. None the less, there are many advantages to the concurrent placement approach. I hope that the Government will consider increasing the number of concurrent placements and also how they are undertaken across the country.

Another aspect of the adoption debate is the question of how important it is to secure a cultural and ethnic match between prospective parents and the child. In my experience, this is a debate in which feelings can run very high, and professionals and parents hold a variety of views. Of course there are many who have a greater knowledge and insight into this issue than I, but for what it is worth my view is that we have taken a step in the right direction with the recent change in the legislation that says that a culturally appropriate match is desirable but is by no means a prerequisite or a deal-breaker.

It is easy to be simplistic about this topic, but it is difficult to accept that it is better for a black and minority ethnic child to have to remain in care for all of their childhood instead of being placed in a loving home because there is not an ideal ethnic match.

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[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I want to make a few points to give the Northern Ireland perspective. I commend the hon. Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee)— I am sure that my pronunciation is totally wrong, but that is by the way. I hesitated to mention her constituency, because I was not sure it would come out right. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) on his heartfelt contribution. He has walked that road and knows it well.

I am a great believer, as I have said in other debates, in the importance of family life. Family is the core of society, and we build society around the family. I am fortunate enough to have come from a good family environment, from my point of view. I have three boys and am a grandfather to boot. I see the importance of family life in giving children stability and ensuring that they do well in life.

In my position as an MP, I have had the opportunity to meet many constituents who adopt and foster, and who give love and meaning to those who need help. Many wish to adopt, and I will make a couple of points relating to them. Some of those points have been mentioned, but I want to put on record the situation in Northern Ireland and the importance of family life to those who find themselves on their own.

I have seen many products of adoption and the good work done by foster parents. I know a family in my constituency who have adopted or fostered numerous children over a period of years. I remember one young boy; I mind well when he was adopted, and I have watched him grow all the way through the process. He started as a vulnerable young boy, and found parents who gave him an opportunity in life. Now he is a young man. I have watched his progress from a child seeking adoption to his present employment. He is stable, kind, well-mannered and a credit to both his parents and his foster parents.

Northern Ireland had 2,660 children in the care of the authorities in March last year, to give some statistics. Their needs included short-term care as well as long-term adoption and fostering. The breakdown is that 50% were boys, 17% were between the ages of one and four, 30% were between five and 11, 31% were between 12 and 15 and 19% were 16-plus. They all have their own unique needs.

Fostering and adoption are absolutely important, but in Northern Ireland, only 61 of those 2,660 young people found adoptive parents that year. That is a minuscule drop in the ocean. I have spoken to fostering authorities and organisations in Northern Ireland, and they have indicated some of the problems with the process. A better way is needed through the paperwork and bureaucracy that we have all mentioned and know about. I made a comment earlier about people going overseas to adopt children. It is not that children from across the water should not have the opportunity for adoption. It is not only celebrities who adopt them but people such as my hon. Friend the Member for Upper Bann, who wanted to give children a home, as do many people I know, who have looked at photographs in the paper and read stories on TV and in magazines about multi-millionaires who go overseas to adopt children. Such people give young people stability and opportunity.

The process worries me, because it takes so long. One key factor that other Members have mentioned is that the process can take anything from two to two and a half years. For those who are starting the process and are anxious to enable quick fostering or adoption, we must do something about that.

[Claire Perry]

I wonder what the hon. Gentleman would say about a case in my constituency involving an officer returning from Afghanistan. He and his wife had been trying for five years to have a child and decided to adopt. He was a smoker and was told that he had to give up, that he could not then restart the process for a year and that it would take another two years, by which time he is likely to be on deployment again. Surely we should do better and make the system more streamlined.

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for that example. We are all frustrated by the process, which does not deliver when needed but adds anomalies, in this case in relation to smoking.

Sure Start Children’s Centres

Claire Perry Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

To close a building in a community can rob it of a useful resource, but to close a children’s centre robs a community of something far more precious—its future. We have heard many contributions about the value of Sure Start and our children’s centres, and differing opinions about the extent to which they have been successful, but there has been general consensus that the Sure Start programme has been a success and ensured that children get the right start in life.

I have visited all the children’s centres in my constituency and been struck by the many stories of the parents and grandparents who take their young ones to them, and have benefited from them more than from many other services that our local authorities provide.

I will be party political in my speech: Conservatives are robbing families in my constituency of the chance of a better future. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) said, it is a matter of record that the city of Liverpool has the greatest need but is getting the biggest cuts. To those who need the most will come the least. My first question to Government Front Benchers who are present—and to Treasury Ministers who are not—is to ask what they have against the children of my constituency. [Interruption.] Yes, it is.

At least the House and the country can see what the Government’s priorities are. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby said, even if Liverpool had the average level of local authority cuts, my city would get £26 million more than it currently receives—enough to save the Sure Start centres at Childwall and Woolton, and Church and Mossley Hill, which are today threatened with closure.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Luciana Berger]

No, I will not give way to the hon. Lady, who has only just joined the debate. I have been here for two hours.

If we take out the money allocated to Liverpool schools, Ministers have decided to cut the money for children and families by 35%. In the city with the greatest need, more than a third of the budget for children and families is being shed.

We all support efficiency and back-office cost savings, but I asked the Minister in a named day question on 15 February what the average back-office costs for a Sure Start centre are. I am still waiting for a response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Rotheram]

No, not just yet.

It is glaringly obvious that the Government do not understand the holistic nature of the Sure Start children’s centres—their qualitative as well as their quantitative value. Yes, they are about providing a co-ordinated range of practical facilities and services, but, equally importantly, they are also about offering social and emotional encouragement and support, often to parents living in some of the most disaffected, marginalised and hard-to-reach communities in the land.

Sure Start children’s centres do not cater only for the most disadvantaged—whom our Cabinet of multi-millionaires clearly finds so tiresome. They also support hard-working low and middle-income families. Ministers would do well to remember that. Isolation, chaos and dysfunction are both causes and symptoms of family deprivation and marginalisation, and are not the preserve of the least well-off.

I fully acknowledge that the children’s centre programme, which is still in its infancy, is far from perfect. The quality of provision is sometimes patchy, there is room for standardisation and improvement, and although all the indications are good, it is much too early to evaluate the benefits fully.

[Claire Perry]

First, may I apologise for joining the debate late? I was attending a Justice Committee meeting.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the need for these centres, but Wiltshire has had a 25% cut in its revenue support grant yet not a single centre is closing—and no library is closing either, so why is Liverpool choosing to shut its centres? This is a matter for the local council, not central Government.

[Steve Rotheram]

You just don’t get it, do you? I do not know what the settlement is in your area. [Interruption.] Well, let me tell you that the total settlement in Liverpool is—

Oral Answers to Questions

Claire Perry Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s question. She will be aware that we appointed the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) to undertake a review of early intervention. He will publish a report relatively soon on best practice in that area, and it will include many of the issues that she has just mentioned. The best Sure Start children’s centres already use a significant number of evidence-based programmes, and the Secretary of State for Health has also announced an expansion of family nurse partnerships, which are extremely important in supporting young parents and in working with their children. However, we are very keen to encourage more Sure Start children’s centres to make better use of the programmes on offer.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Speaking from experience, I know that there is almost nothing a parent can do to prepare a child for the devastating experience of being bullied at school. Today, on the first day of anti-bullying week, well over 800,000 people are taking part in a groundbreaking online march, organised by Beatbullying. What steps are the Government taking to reduce such bullying, which can have such a devastating impact on children’s lives?

[Sarah Teather]

I thank the hon. Lady for raising this very important issue at this very important time. The Government take it very seriously, and we will speak much more about it, including about homophobic bullying, in the forthcoming White Paper.

Schools Funding

Claire Perry Excerpts

Wednesday 7th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I would like to make two points in response to the hon. Lady’s question. I sought as quickly as I could to bring to the House a statement explaining the future of Building Schools for the Future. That is why I made the statement on Monday. There had been a great deal of speculation about the future of the project, and to allow it to proceed would have meant that whichever schools were built, unnecessary additional administrative costs would have been incurred. That is why I sought the fullest possible information, and sought to bring it to the House in a statement at the earliest possible stage. I know that the hon. Lady is a Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent. One announcement that I was able to make on Monday was that Stoke-on-Trent, as a local authority that has reached financial close, will see all the schools under Building Schools for the Future rebuilt or refurbished.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that the other piece of important factual information he presented on Monday, the expansion of the Teach First programme, is in fact accurate, and that the numbers were presented—[Interruption.]

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sorry; I respect the hon. Lady’s enthusiasm, but the short answer is that the Secretary of State cannot go into that, because it is way beyond the terms of the statement today. If I know the hon. Lady, she will save it up for another day, and we look forward to hearing it on a subsequent occasion.

Free Schools Policy

Claire Perry Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s commitment to fighting extremism in all its forms, and I pay tribute to the role that he has played, both as a constituency MP and on the Select Committee on Foreign Affairs, in drawing attention to the dangers of extremism. He will be aware that as an Opposition Member, I was insistent that we do not give public money to extremist groups. That is why I have said that no school can be established unless the individuals who are setting it up do so with an ethos and curriculum that are in accordance with the democratic values of this country. More than that, we will operate according to the principles that were laid out in the Policy Exchange report, “Choosing our friends wisely”, which was endorsed by the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), as a means of ensuring that not only violent extremists, but extremist groups, do not receive public funds and are unable to exploit the generosity of the state.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm that one of the first applications he received for new academy status was from the outstanding St John’s comprehensive school in Marlborough, which has just had an enormous, £25 million rebuild without a penny of Government money? Does he agree that the model it is proposing of a rural federation, whereby it has a suite of primary schools, is incredibly important in large rural constituencies?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend hits the nail on the head, as ever. It is critical that people realise that outstanding schools are going on the journey to acquiring greater academy freedoms in order to help other schools. That may mean underperforming primaries, or nearby faltering or coasting schools, and the example of St John’s, Marlborough, and everything it has done, is inspirational.

Industry (Government Support)

Claire Perry Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

I think that is one for the Budget statement on Tuesday.

Finally, we are starting to get the answers to some of these deep-rooted problems. We heard today about the changes to financial regulation, and I wonder how long it will take the Labour party to involve itself in the debate about the future of financial regulation. We think that banks should be properly regulated, not regulated under the old system that failed. The Government are also putting forward solutions to help credit flow to businesses; we are getting increased certainty in the tax system; and of course we have measures to tackle the deficit. As a result of those last measures, since the election, the interest rates paid on Government bonds has fallen by 0.4%—one tenth—which means that the interest on Government debt has fallen by one tenth in just over a month since the election, in anticipation of action to deal with the deficit.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

I want to emphasise that point. We heard so much about the financial stability that the previous Government were going to give us, yet the international markets have sent out an incredibly strong signal: that we finally have a Government with the guts and the policies to tackle this deficit, which hon. Members who are now on the Opposition Benches could never even own up to, let alone deal with. The markets are saying, “This is now a country that we want to invest in again,” and interest rates have fallen as a consequence. I want to underline the importance of the statistic that my hon. Friend gave in demonstrating the world’s view of Britain finally being open to business, now that we have had a change of Government.

[Matthew Hancock]

I agree with my hon. Friend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for your tutorial on how to be a good parliamentarian. I fear that many of us will let you down before we have learned to do our jobs properly.

I came into this debate to listen, not to speak, but I have found myself compelled to get up and speak on what I think is an incredibly important matter. I apologise for being in and out of the Chamber. I have had a huge visit from the 3rd Regiment Royal Military Police, who I then took for tea. They were marking the maiden speeches out of 10. I am not going to say who did well, but they were quite impressed by some speeches on both sides of the House.

I felt compelled to speak because I have a business background. I went to that bastion of capitalism, Harvard business school, but that was 20 years ago and I have been somewhat cleansed since then. I have had many years of working in consultancy, finance and running my own small business. Then I lived in the countryside and raised my children. On my campaign, I had a reputation for speaking from notes on the back of a fag packet. As this is a no-smoking zone, I have had an upgrade and am speaking from scribbles on the back of some very nice House of Commons paper.

I want to make a couple of specific points and to say why I felt compelled to get up and speak. I am really worried, because I do not think that Opposition Members understand the fundamental reason why we are here today or how Government should support business. We hear lots about micro-interventions and RDAs. Everybody knows that if one visits one’s RDA one will find that they have wonderful and often overlapping agendas with many other parts of the public and private sectors, but they are not lean, honed, efficient and joined-up mechanisms. In many cases, they are the worst bastions of the unaccountable and unelected public sector. They might, in many cases, be doing good work, and that is why they might well have a role to play in many places, as the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) suggested, but they are not the best way in which to spend precious pounds of taxpayers’ money. However, the Opposition appear to think that that is the right thing to do.

The Opposition also think that micromanaging the economy is the right thing to do. Let me just reference a couple of the myriad schemes that were put in place to support business during the recession. The £10 billion working capital guarantee scheme was designed to underwrite portfolios of loans held by banks, which is such an important part of unlocking the crunched credit system, but it made only £2 billion-worth of guarantees in the time that it was operational. It lent only 20% of its capacity, which suggests that it was not doing what business needed.

Then we had the £75 million capital for enterprise fund, which was designed to do what we would all like to do—get high-tech, high-grade start-ups off the ground—but it lent only half of that money in the time that it was operational. That again suggests that there was a disconnect between what the then Government wanted to do and what business really needed.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the real problem with these quangos is accountability? A very good local charity in my constituency was the beneficiary of some money from Advantage West Midlands, and it was very grateful for that money. When it asked, “How would you like us to report on our achievement?” the RDA said, “Oh, just write a report; it doesn’t really matter.” So there is no real accountability. Will she expand on that point and on how the coalition’s policy will bring to local people the accountability that will make the difference in terms of efficiency of delivery?

[Claire Perry]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. The whole issue of accountability and transparency in the public sector is key. One phrase that I love to say is that sunlight is the best disinfectant, and that can be applied to the spending of central Government, local authorities or these unelected, unaccountable quangos, which in many cases are not even consolidated into departmental accounts. It is very easy to pay for junkets to the south of France if one knows that nobody is looking at the books. He raises an incredibly important point on an issue that we have pledged to improve with a far more rigorous and accessible system of transparency in public spending, which I wholeheartedly support.

Let me return briefly to the other schemes that were meant to make such a difference. Do hon. Members remember the £2.3 billion automotive assistance programme—the former Government’s flagship scheme that was going to support the entire vehicle manufacturing system and supply chain? It made only three offers of loan guarantee schemes and only two companies decided to go ahead with them.

Then we had the other enormous underpinning of the British export industry—the £5 billion trade credit insurance scheme, which sought to underwrite firms doing the incredibly valuable job of earning pounds by exporting. Well, it underwrote 109 policies. That sounds reasonable, but they were worth £18.5 million. That sort of micro-meddling and initiative-itis bedevilled the former Government, and as a business person, I feel they do not get what British business needs. But we do.

British business needs three things. First, it needs transport and broadband infrastructure. If my memory serves me right, Labour Members only recently started to get to grips with the concept of high-speed rail, which will do so much to rebalance economic growth across the regions.

As for broadband infrastructure, in rural Britain we are extremely deficient in what will give us a living and working countryside. Instead of grinding through additional taxes, more changes and a digital switchover fee, the Government have a plan to get the broadband network in place. That is incredibly important.

Secondly, British business needs a decent low-taxation environment. On corporate competitiveness, we have gone from 10th in the world to 26th over the last 10 years. We can all give examples from our constituencies of companies that have left the country to move to more benign taxation environments. I am talking just about the headline rate, not the taxation complexity to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) referred earlier. Have Members seen the size of our tax code list? The list reaches my waist and I am 6 feet 1 inch. It is a lot of paper and we have developed a whole industry employing lots of people to interpret tax codes for small businesses. The Conservatives’ aspiration is to have the lowest tax rate in the G20 and that is what British business needs.

Thirdly, we need to get regulation out of the way. My hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) described the health and safety madness that bedevils businesses of all sizes. Indeed, we have gone from fourth in the world for business regulation benignness to 86th over the last 10 years. We have become a country where people have to wade through acres of red tape to do what they need to do every day.

Over the last 13 years, Labour Members did not get, and still do not get, what British business needs. We are the party that will deliver our promises, which is why I am pleased to speak in support of the amendment for which I shall vote tonight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chi Onwurah]

I am afraid I will not give way. I have very little time and I know that other Members wish to speak.

Let us be clear. Active support for industry is not a uniquely Labour policy. Across the world, Governments who know the benefits of long-term investment support their industry. I do not believe that China is a political model for us, but it has invested aggressively in technology and is reaping the rewards for doing so. Its wind power industry has doubled in output in the past year. In Singapore companies planning to relocate are asked how many graduates they need, what kind of grants they want and what kind of infrastructure would help.

[Claire Perry]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Chi Onwurah]

No, I am afraid I have no time.

Our competitors recognise the importance of supporting industry. The coalition uses the excuse of not wanting to pick winners, but in reality it wants to take our country back to a laissez-faire industrial indifference which will leave us without technology leadership in any sector. It talks about the importance of cutting the deficit. We agree. We set out plans to cut the deficit in half over four years, but that should not be used as a reason to risk our futures.

The people of Britain understand that even when times are difficult, one should not stop investing in the future. It was Britain’s leading role in the first industrial revolution that gave us our current relative prosperity. If the Government do not equip the country to take advantage of the opportunities that are presented now, they will betray not only the north-east, but future generations across the UK. I support the motion.

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is a great pleasure to speak for the first time in a debate chaired by you.

I am sorry to see that the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) is leaving us.

[Claire Perry]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Toby Perkins]

That was a brave attempt. Before the hon. Lady spoke, I thought we had already been patronised more than we could stand, but she raised the bar considerably.

[Claire Perry]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Toby Perkins]

No, I should like to make progress. Other Members wish to speak.

My background as a small business owner and now as an MP in the east midlands, in a coalfield and manufacturing area, gives me a broad perspective on the debate. That broad perspective is one of the things lacking in the arguments that we hear from the Government Benches. People seem to fail to understand that the private sector and the public sector do not live in two entirely opposite worlds that never have anything to do with each other. As a business man, I rely on people buying products from my firm. Some of those people might be doctors, some might be teachers, some might work in private industry. What all of us who run a business need more than anything else is a strong economy and a strong environment in which to do business.

Of course, everyone running a business and everyone in society wants to pay less tax. More important than a small cut in corporation tax is an economy supported by Government to run successfully. Hon. Members should remember that corporation tax is 5 per cent. lower now for big firms than it was in 1996-97. All the parties are talking about manufacturing, yet only Labour has put in place the financial means to support manufacturing and to boost industry, which is what should be happening.

I was pleased to hear the contribution by the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), who I think might be joining the proud tradition of Tory rebels over the years in his call for more support for industry. He said that the British Government should support our manufacturing firms in the way that the American Government support theirs. I hope that he will continue to stick to that line after he has spoken to his Whips.

In our area, the East Midlands Development Agency is not, of course, the whole solution, but it is an important contributor. In Chesterfield, there is an organisation called CPP that employs 270 staff. When I went to visit it before the election, people there told me that they were able to carry out the initial set-up only because of the support of the development agency, which put in £1.7 million.

The east midlands engages in more manufacturing than any other area. The Secretary of State has said that he wants his Department to be the Department for growth, but cutting investment allowances will not speed the growth that we need in our economy. I was horrified to hear the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), who is not with us at the moment, say that she keeps speaking to people who tell her that the East Midlands Development Agency is not contributing and is not doing a good job, and they want to get rid of it. In fact, for every £1 the development agency puts into the local economy, we get £9 of benefit coming back. I do not know who the hon. Lady can have been speaking to, because local businesses and business organisations are queuing up to support it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Claire Perry Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

The Prime Minister made it clear from the Dispatch Box last week that the pupil premium would involve substantial extra money from outside the education budget. Perhaps I should remind the right hon. Gentleman that one of the sticking points during the coalition talks with the Labour party was that it would not agree to the pupil premium.

[Claire Perry (Devizes) (Con)]

Could the Secretary of State please confirm that the pupil premium will still include an upward adjustment for the children of military families—a matter of utmost importance for thousands of schoolchildren in my constituency, Devizes?

[Sarah Teather]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. She makes a very good point, which we are considering at the moment. We will announce further details of our policy on the pupil premium in due course.