Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

My hon. Friend is passionate about securing an excellent education for all his residents. The funding will help many children in mainstream education, but with dyslexia early identification and teacher training is key. I will be setting out more details in the response to the special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision Green Paper.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

Is the Secretary of State and her Department aware of the severe financial crisis engulfing the University of East Anglia, one so severe that the vice-chancellor has today resigned? This will have a dramatic impact on the regional economy. We could be looking at up to £45 million-worth of projected debt and 30% job losses. As such, will the Secretary of State or the Minister agree to meet me and a delegation from the University of East Anglia to discuss this most critical issue as soon as possible?

[Robert Halfon]

Yes, I would be very happy to meet the hon. Gentleman sooner rather than later.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [Lords]

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Report stage
Monday 21st February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in support of new clauses 14, 15 and 11, which at their core support a just transition for North sea oil and gas workers by removing the barriers they face in transitioning into renewable energy, and ensuring that they can access the support and training needed. I may press new clause 14 to a vote if necessary.

In recent weeks, Ministers have rightly emphasised the need to support oil and gas workers. However, they have done so by resorting to more investment in extraction in the North sea, contradicting the advice of the International Energy Agency and threatening the ambition of the Glasgow climate pact to limit the global temperature rise to 1.5°.

Research published in 2020 by Friends of the Earth Scotland, Platform and Greenpeace shone a light on the experiences of offshore oil and gas workers—I will come to some of their comments in a minute—and revealed a high level of concern about employment, job security and working conditions. However, it also showed a significant appetite to be a part of the transition to a zero-carbon economy, with over 80% of those surveyed saying they would consider moving to a job outside the oil and gas industry and over half choosing to transition into renewables and offshore wind if they had the opportunity to retrain and were supported in doing so. New clauses 14 and 15 would help to realise that ambition, while ensuring that in achieving our climate goals we do not leave communities behind and repeat the mistakes of the past.

The Minister may point to the North sea transition deal, announced by the Government last year. However, in reality that initiative has failed to provide any real support for workers to transition into renewables, either in investment or policy. Unfortunately, as things stand, training is a barrier and not a passport to future success. Training certificates for wind energy and the oil and gas industry are not transferable between the sectors or recognised by the two separate training standards bodies, with both OPITO and the Global Wind Organisation claiming that their training courses are too specific.

That means that offshore workers seeking to transition into renewables from oil and gas are required to complete entirely new training courses, which often come at a prohibitive cost. That is an insurmountable barrier for workers who are already paying an average of £1,800 a year, out of their own pockets, to maintain their training and safety qualifications. While some courses are unique to different environments, many cover core skills that run across the offshore energy sector, including first aid, fire safety and working at heights. Rather than narrowly focusing on courses, we should move to a skills-based approach, with standardised training where possible and top-up training available for specific environments.

Paul, an offshore oil and gas worker, says very clearly that the

“biggest problem that faces the energy work force wanting to make the transition from offshore oil and gas to renewables is the cost of the extra training needed. Some of the GWO (renewable training governing body) training is essential but most of it is a duplication of the courses used in offshore oil and gas.”

That comment is reinforced by Jack, another worker, who says he has

“thought about working in renewables, but that’d be thousands of pounds you’d have to pay to work in both industries. It’d just be too much, it costs an absolute fortune just to stay in one sector… Shelling out all this money does cause stress, and it does have an impact on your family and your living costs. There are lots of people worrying about how they’re going to pay the mortgage.”

This situation simply cannot go on.

Before recess, the Government announced that they were hitting the

“accelerator on low-cost renewable power”

by moving to annual contracts for difference auctions, yet to genuinely realise this ambition, offshore workers must be supported to transition into renewables, not face multiple barriers to do that. This is a skilled workforce whose knowledge and experience are absolutely essential if we are to achieve the UK’s climate goals in a timely manner.

What would these amendments do? New clause 14 would require the Secretary of State to produce and implement a strategy to achieve the cross-sector recognition of core skills and training in the offshore energy sector, and to ensure that training standards bodies adopt a transferable skills and competency-based approach to training. Crucially, this strategy would apply to all workers whether they are directly employed or contract workers, and they would have to be consulted in its development. This amendment would enable oil and gas workers to access jobs in renewable energy. It would also mean that, while there are not sufficient jobs in renewable energy as capacity continues to be built up, workers are able to take contracts in both sectors and then move between them. It would prevent a skills drains as people leave the energy sector altogether due to difficulties with finding work, and the cost and time involved in maintaining training certificates.

New clause 15, which is complementary, would establish a retraining guarantee for oil and gas workers seeking to leave the sector, thereby supporting them in transitioning to green energy jobs. It would also ensure that they are able to access advice on suitable jobs based on their existing skillsets, as well as the funding and training needed to transition. Again, all oil and gas workers are eligible for the retraining guarantee, as well as those who have recently left the sector. This amendment would provide clear pathways for oil and gas workers into clean energy, meaning they are not left behind in transitioning to a zero-carbon economy. It would also be infinitely more affordable if accompanied by new clause 14, meaning that workers are not required to duplicate training courses. Amendment 11 would ensure that the new clauses are applicable to Scotland, which is of course essential to facilitate a just transition for workers in the North sea.

These amendments are backed by the workers who operate in this industry. Crucially, they reflect the concerns of workers and their call for cross-sector recognition of skills and training. Some 94% of respondents to a 2021 survey of offshore workers said that they would support an offshore passport that licenses accredited workers to work offshore in any sector through a cross-industry minimum training requirement. An offshore training passport is also backed by the RMT and Unite Scotland. These organisations have also called for the establishment of a training fund for the offshore passport as part of the North sea transition deal. The RMT is backing these amendments, and as Lewis—no relation—a drilling consultant from Aberdeen with 40 years of experience in the oil industry, says, “An offshore passport would be a fantastic thing. I think it is absolutely brilliant and essential for my future.”

As it stands, the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill is a missed opportunity for climate. A recent Green Alliance report revealed a significant skills shortage in every major sector of the economy, from energy efficiency to battery manufacturing and the energy industry. The Bill could have been an opportunity to close the green skills gap and prepare us for the zero-carbon economy of the future. On Second Reading, the Secretary of State said:

“Skills are about investing in people all across our country, about strengthening local economies”.—[Official Report, 15 November 2021; Vol. 703, c. 381.]

These amendments would deliver just that, ensuring that offshore oil and gas workers are able to gain the training and skills they need to access good green jobs, while ensuring that we support communities affected by the UK’s transition to a zero-carbon economy and maintain vibrant local economies. These amendments also complement the objectives of the Bill to

“ensure everyone, no matter where they live or their background, can gain the skills they need to progress in work at any stage of their lives”,

and to

“increase productivity, support growth industries and give individuals opportunities to progress in their careers.”

I hope that the Government look closely at these amendments and recognise that there is much more they need to do to genuinely support oil and gas workers and to make a just transition in this sector a reality.

[Mr Perkins]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for adding his name to this amendment, as a lead sponsor, and I think he has made a very important point. Coming off the back of COP26 and all the warm words we heard then, does he agree with me that for the Government, over the course of the next six months, simply to publish an energy sector skills strategy—we are not expecting them to go any further than that at this stage, but simply to show that they have a plan—is the very least that people listening to those warm words from the Prime Minister at COP26 would expect?

[Clive Lewis]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and I agree entirely. We can already see, before the ink is dry on the COP26 agreement, that the Government are back-tracking. We only have to look at history. Many Conservative Members will look at what happened in the 1980s with the demise of the mining industry and say, “Well, we were the first to ensure that we decarbonised our economy”, when actually this was a tragedy. If we look at what happened with deindustrialisation and what happened in the mining industry, we see that actually the whole reason for the necessity of the levelling-up agenda is that there was not a just transition. This is an opportunity for us to ensure that we do not make the same mistakes as we have in the past, and that we play our part in making sure that we get to net zero in a timely manner. I think that is what most people in this House and out in the country would want, and on that I shall finish.

[Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak today in support of the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. Ensuring that everyone has access to high-quality training and education throughout their lives is vital. I come from a family of teachers, and I retrained in my 40s so that I myself could teach, so I am particularly passionate about the opportunities that the Bill will open up. I want to take this opportunity to highlight the support of my local FE college for some of tonight’s proposed amendments.

Much is said of talent being spread equally across our country, but opportunity is not. That is particularly true in North Devon: it is not just in the country where opportunity is not equally spread, but in our county as well. We are over 60 miles from any university, and our youngsters do not in general see university as a natural next step post 18. Devon is particularly short of highly-qualified young people. Just 24% of 20 to 29-year-olds have a degree, which is one of the lowest levels in the country. It is against this backdrop that our excellent and sole further education college, Petroc, which educates over 9,000 learners and works with hundreds of employers, is well placed not only to welcome this Bill, but to highlight areas it would like to see strengthened.

Like me, the college highlights how coastal and rural areas such as North Devon have particular challenges that are masked by aggregating data, even to a county level, when our county is the size of Devon and has such variance in opportunity across its beautiful rural and coastal spread. The college was keen that I should highlight its support for new clause 7, as it is particularly concerned that the lifetime skills guarantee includes subsequent level 3 courses, so that those without an A-level or equivalent qualification, or those who hold such a qualification but would benefit from reskilling, are able to study on a fully-funded and approved course. This would facilitate adults being able to remain in North Devon and acquire new skills, enabling them to take advantage of the new jobs opening up in the area, whereas at present staying in North Devon means remaining in low-paid, low-skill employment, despite the multiple high-skilled job vacancies that do not match our local skill base.

We also hope that steps can be taken to revisit universal credit conditionality, as in new clause 5, so that those on benefits are encouraged to increase their skills to enable them to seek better employment. I recognise the challenges in this space, but similarly we need to encourage those who, due to the seasonality of our vital tourism and hospitality economy, spend part of each year on universal credit, as in North Devon, to upskill so that they can work throughout the year, as well as to encourage employers to stay open longer and extend our tourism season, given the growth in winter visitors we have seen post pandemic.

North Devon, like many other remote, rural and coastal locations, has particular challenges in raising aspiration, improving educational outcomes and enabling adults to upskill.

Budget Resolutions

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

One of my favourite quotes of all time is from Henry Kissinger to, I think, the US press corps. He said:

“Does anyone have any questions for my answers?”

That has always tickled me. I looked at the Budget headings, and I wondered, “Do the Government have a Budget debate heading for my speech?” Unfortunately, they do on public services.

Sometimes in a debate, it is important that we try to get to the detail and the truth, if you will, of the matter. In this one, the issue is public services. My first point is one that has been discussed before, and I will discuss it again briefly: this is not a massive investment in our public services, relatively speaking. It does not even catch up with the past decade of austerity, and I will talk about that in a bit more detail. The other thing, though, is that spending is not being funnelled entirely into the public sector. Increasingly, it is being funnelled into the private sector, and from there it is going offshore and elsewhere, and I want to look into that as well, because I am suspicious about this Government’s new-found devotion to investment in public spending. I think there is something behind it that we need to look into.

The overall picture is that this is not a reversal of the deep cuts of the past decade. The Resolution Foundation has said that

“only one-third of the cuts to real day-to-day spending per-capita in unprotected departments since 2009-10 will have been reversed by the middle of the decade.”

Let us take for example the NHS, which this Government have made a great song and dance about. The British Medical Association has said that the previously announced £10 billion is not fully adequate to deal with the still-growing backlog of care. The Health Foundation has said that £17 billion is needed to clear the backlog. What do we get? Ten billion. That is a shortfall of £7 billion. We have the sheer brass neck of the Government telling the people of this country, “Look what we are doing. Look what we are spending”, but in relative spending terms, they are taking away from the public realm. We on the Opposition Benches know that, but I am not sure whether some of the Government Members understand that or believe or know what this Government have actually done.

Let us look at the NHS, because one thing I want to talk about is where the money is going. We know that the Health and Care Bill will increasingly privatise decision making on where NHS resources go. Increasingly, if corporations and big business are deciding where the tens of billions of pounds are going, you can bet your bottom dollar they will be going to the corporations, the private sector and shareholders and not being reinvested in public services. There is an issue here, which is democracy within our public services.

Let us take social care, for example. Some 83% of care home beds are owned by the private sector. If money was being reinvested into care beds and paying staff decent wages, I could understand why that was happening, but it is not. We know what is happening to vast amounts of money, which is going from the public purse into these so-called public services that are being run by vulture capitalism. The money is being sucked out and going to shareholders and offshore. That is where the money is increasingly going, and that is why this Government are so keen to spend billions of pounds handing out money to their friends who then recycle it and invest in the Conservative party. That is what is happening.

Let us look at the energy system, which is critical given what is going on up in Glasgow at the moment. Analysis by Common Wealth on the diversion of wealth from public to private has shown that, in the past five years, just under £10 billion in dividends has been paid to shareholders in the big six. That is six times larger than their tax payments of £1.52 billion. It found that

“the average firm within the Big Six has, over the past ten years, awarded their highest paid director almost fifty times the pay of the average worker in the company, and forty-five times the average income in the past five years.”

No wonder those on the Government Benches are so keen, after 10 years of austerity, to start pumping money to their friends in the big six and beyond.

Let us have a look at the Environment Agency. We know that it has said that there were 400,000 raw sewage discharges into coastal waters and rivers in England last year from private water companies. That is a tidal wave of turds that has splashed across this country on this Government’s watch. Professor David Hall from Greenwich University has said:

“Since privatisation companies have given out almost half as much for shareholders as they spent on upgrading and maintaining water and sewerage systems…£57 billion compared to £132 billion.”

This Government have the brass neck to tell this country that we cannot expect the privatised water companies to invest in a Victorian sewage system because they cannot afford it, but they can afford to give £60 billion of public money to their shareholders. Those on the Government Benches know that. No other country allows private companies to own and run regional water and sanitation systems. That is a fact.

While the Government talk about spending more on public services—we know that relatively speaking they have not, but when they do spend more, increasingly they are not public services as we on the Opposition Benches would recognise them, but public services run by and for private corporations that siphon off vast amounts of public wealth into their own bank accounts and coffers. I will conclude by saying that the answer is quite simple. When we on the Opposition Benches talk about public services, we are talking about universal basic services that are democratically controlled and owned and transparent and accountable to the people of this country who pay for them. That is the difference.

Sustainability and Climate Change (National Curriculum)

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Derek Thomas]

I thank the hon. Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome). That is a great part of the world. When you live in west Cornwall, you do not travel much beyond London, unless you have to.

It is great to be able to speak in this debate, not least because schools in Cornwall are brilliant at raising awareness of climate change and the harm we do to our planet. I have received thousands of letters from schoolchildren setting out their concerns and asking pertinent questions about my commitment to this critical issue. When I was elected, I made myself a perhaps foolish promise that I would always write personally and individually to every child from whom I received a letter. I may regret that because it is a massive task, but well worth doing, because each letter contains real examples of why those children care about climate change.

I have visited many of the amazing schools across Cornwall. Mullion School introduced me to its eco-club and its technology to monitor the ice caps and what is happening in the coldest parts of our world, which are unfortunately heating up. Mounts Bay Academy’s tree-planting, polytunnel and plastic-free efforts have transformed the thinking in schools and homes. Nancledra school invited me very early on in 2016 to its eco-fair. Trythall school, where my children go, invited me to see the work it was doing with members of Women’s Institutes to make the school and their homes more environmentally friendly. Nearly all schools across my constituency have invited me to see their efforts to reduce plastic waste. We in Cornwall are fortunate to have Surfers Against Sewage, who do a great job with schools, and many schools around the country are following that example. Marazion School has actually taken me on beach cleans, which is a great joy, because the children are so much nearer to the stuff they are picking up than we are. As we get older, picking up these little plastic things becomes a challenge, so I recommend that my children go and clean up the waste we have made. I am joking. I am going to get shot in a minute.

The schools working with the Woodland Trust in my constituency have done a great job and planted thousands of trees in their grounds. Prior to the G7 summit in Carbis Bay, which many will remember, several schools in the area took the opportunity to put pressure not only on me as the local MP and other Cornish MPs, but on our Government and world leaders to take this more seriously, to accelerate action and to prepare properly for COP26.

We had a head start in our schools because of the way they have engaged our children in the need to decarbonise and to restore nature, but I want to talk about why that is important. My daughter, who is five, started school properly in September. If things go as planned, when she leaves formal education all new cars will be electric, homes will be powered by wind and heated by air; bottle deposit schemes will have replaced the the need for parents to give their children pocket money, the countryside will look and feel different, and the job opportunities will be very different. That is why we need to take seriously the need to teach about climate change and how to mitigate it formally in our classrooms.

As I have demonstrated in my constituency examples, teachers in Cornwall are already embracing with enthusiasm teaching about the impact of climate change, but I recognise that climate education needs to be extended, as Teach for the Future said, to include knowledge about how we abate the climate emergency and ecological crisis, how to deliver climate justice, and how to support students dealing with eco and climate anxiety. That is important, because I saw the worry on the faces of children I met when the school strikes were taking place. Climate education will reduce anxiety, as students will be empowered with information to tackle the problem.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich East—I mean for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome)—on securing this debate. Sorry, that was a Freudian slip: everywhere is Norwich to me. The hon. Gentleman is making a good speech, but does he agree that, just as we should teach our children about the climate crisis and its onset, we should do so in schools and classrooms that are not belching out carbon at the same time? Is it not critical that this Government get on top of that and decarbonise the education estate by 2030 at the latest?

[Derek Thomas]

I agree, and I welcome the intervention. When I was on the Environmental Audit Committee, we looked at various plans to decarbonise the public estate by 2032. That is a massive challenge and hugely expensive, but it is right that we should prioritise the places where our children learn. We know that in many places, our school estates are not fit for purpose in terms of the best learning experience, let alone the right thing for the environment. That is just one of the many significant challenges we face as we grapple with this vital issue.

Education on climate change is also about the opportunities available for the future. Cornwall offers a particular opportunity for our national and global efforts to decarbonise and switch to renewable ways of living. We have one of the world’s most important supplies of lithium. We have copper and tin-rich rock beneath our homes. In my constituency, we are led to believe, we have the third-richest tin and copper mine in the world. We have geothermal possibilities, allowing us to extract heat from the ground, and we are doing that at Jubilee Pool in Penzance. We are leaders in renewable energy and we produce some of the most sustainable food crops, dairy and meat. We have some of the most exciting potential for carbon sequestration on land and on the ocean floor, and we have the potential for a large but sustainable fishing fleet. Lack of education in schools on this presents a challenge to our ambitions.

Education should address how we shift to a greener way of living without costing the Earth. There is an interesting debate taking place in Cornwall, because as we consider extracting copper and tin once again and extracting lithium from dormant mines, and at geothermal, we are trying to understand whether the immediate environmental impact of carrying out this important work is worth the result of extracting the minerals that we need in all our devices and in renewable-energy batteries, and so on. There is a real argument that we need the education and the learning in our schools, as well as among the public, about the environmental impact of digging up the ground. What exactly is it? Is it worth it? Or is it better—I say this tongue in cheek—to just get things from China or elsewhere, where we have no control over how the stuff is extracted? Education in schools could really help understanding of how we balance getting to a greener living with the impact that we have to spend right now.

Special Educational Needs

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)[V]]

I thank you, Sir Edward, for chairing, and my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) for leading this important debate. One does not have to be a parent to want to live in the kind of society where every adult and child is treated with dignity and respect, regardless of their background, ability or race.

As a parent, of course, I worry about my young daughter, but not just her. I worry about the world she will grow up in, the country she will call her own and the community she will be a part of. That means I want a society for her where every person—every child and every adult—is treated with dignity and respect. That is what I see as our responsibility as lawmakers: to create the conditions where every child and adult can thrive.

Yet I am all too aware that that is currently not the case, particularly in the experience of children with special educational needs and disabilities, and their families. The parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities in Norwich South tell me about the unending barriers they face when trying to get support. Many are part of the fantastic organisation, SENsational Families.

To start, the length of time it takes to get a diagnosis for many children means that their needs are not being met from the beginning. In Norfolk, it takes roughly two years for children to get a diagnosis of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or autism spectrum disorder. That is two years of anxiety, waiting to get a child the support they need. Even once they have the diagnosis, families find more delays in getting an education, health and care plan in place. Norfolk is one the 10 lowest-performing authorities in the country. Only 20% of EHC plans are completed within the Government’s 20-week timescale. It is appalling that 80% of EHC plans are, by the Government’s own metrics, not being completed on time.

When it comes to finding a school place for their child, there is more agony, anxiety and frustration. There is a severe shortage of specialist places available in Norfolk, which leaves many children struggling in mainstream schools or being excluded. Parents tell me they have to fight at every juncture for the rights of their children. If they do not continually fight, the children end up out of education. They also explain how it seems that parents who shout the loudest get the support. In addition, parents can speed up getting a diagnosis by paying privately, at a cost of around £1,500, meaning that we have a two-tier system where more wealth and money gets people access to better services faster. Is that really the kind of society that we want to live in? Should children be deprived of essential and life-enhancing services because their families cannot afford to fast-track their diagnoses?

The work done by the all-party parliamentary group for special educational needs and disabilities, which is chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), chimes with much of what I am hearing in my constituency: young people with special educational needs and disabilities, and their families, feel forgotten, left behind and overlooked. It should not have to be this hard, and it certainly does not have to be this way.

The struggle faced by the parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities is not just about access to education or services. The lack of specialist places and delays in diagnosis are symptoms of much deeper problems caused by the failure of successive Conservative Governments to invest in creating strong social infrastructure. Those children and their parents need not only the right educational support, but safe and affordable housing, universal healthcare, a universal basic income and financial support that lessens the burdens on carers—strong social infrastructure that ensures that every person in our society can lead a dignified and fulfilling life.

I support the calls from the Disabled Children’s Partnership for an ambitious, funded covid-19 recovery plan to help children catch up on a lost year. Beyond that, we must also invest in the social infrastructure of this country, so that we have a fair and green recovery from the pandemic, which leaves no one behind. Children with special educational needs and disabilities and their parents are being failed by the system at every turn. We can do better; we must do better.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

The hon. Member will be aware that we secured a three-year funding settlement for schools, with a 4% increase in funding for the next financial year, and we have also secured for this year a £1 billion catch-up fund and the covid workforce fund. If a school is genuinely in financial difficulties, it should talk to the local authority if it is a maintained school, or to the Education and Skills Funding Agency if it is an academy.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

What steps he is taking to help ensure the safety of staff at (a) early years settings, (b) special schools and (c) alternative provision during the covid-19 lockdown announced in January 2021.

[Sarah Jones (Croydon Central) (Lab)]

What steps he is taking to help ensure the safety of staff at (a) early years settings, (b) special schools and (c) alternative provision during the covid-19 lockdown announced in January 2021.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Vicky Ford)]

Ensuring the safety of children, the workforce and families is our overriding priority. The early years and schools workforce are classed as essential workers for the purposes of accessing testing, and we continue to update our guidance to help specific settings provide a safe and secure environment for children and staff.

[Clive Lewis [V]]

The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has contradicted the Government by saying that it has not authorised the use of 30-minute lateral flow tests to allow students to remain in classrooms instead of sending whole groups or bubbles home. Will the Minister confirm that no tests are being done on our children that have not met with regulatory approval, and will the Government commit to putting the health and safety of children first, instead of the PM’s deregulatory ideology that is turning our schools into experimentation labs for big pharma?

[Vicky Ford]

We have added NHS Test and Trace and Public Health England, and we have asked them to provide rapid updated public health advice on daily contact covid testing in schools. This is in the context of the current prevalence of the virus and the high transmission rates. The Department, NHS Test and Trace and Public Health England encourage the weekly testing of all staff, although this remains a voluntary matter for individual staff members. As I said earlier, early years staff will be prioritised through community testing.

School Funding: East Anglia

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2019 Westminster Hall

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered school funding in East Anglia.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. We are here to talk a little about why the £14 billion package of schools funding promised by the new Government is too little and too late for schools in my constituency and across East Anglia.

My constituency boasts many very good, often outstanding schools run by hard-working headteachers, teachers and support staff, but school funding has fallen by 8% in real terms since 2015. The workforce has been cut systematically year on year because funding has not been available to replace valuable staff members who retire or move on. That has resulted in bigger classes, teachers teaching out of specialism, and a fundamental reduction in the quality of the service schools can provide to both children and parents.

Nine out of 10 schools have suffered Government cuts to per-pupil funding since 2015, and a parliamentary petition calling for increased funding for schools received more than 113,000 signatures. In response, the Government stated simply that they recognised that schools faced “budgeting challenges” and were

“asking them to do more.”

That has been taken more literally than any of us could have predicted, with schools asking parents to donate hundreds of pounds a year to buy textbooks and equipment and to repair leaking buildings.

Only last week, a school in my constituency made a plea to parents and guardians to come in during the holidays to prepare the grounds for the school term because it could not afford a caretaker. The headteacher said contractors would usually work over the summer but this year there was no room in the budget to cover the expense. Thanks to the good will of those already hard-working parents, the repairs will be done in time and the school will be safe and ready to welcome its pupils. However, schools across my constituency and the whole of East Anglia have had to go cap in hand to parents and carers, begging for help to cover basic supplies, when they should be focusing their energies on providing the best possible education.

[Sir Henry Bellingham (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this timely and important debate. He and I have been working with Educate Norfolk and Norfolk heads over the past year or so. When we asked them what funding increases would make a significant difference, they came up with the sorts of figures the Government have just announced. I appreciate there is a long lead-in time, but does he agree that that is at least a welcome start to restoring funding levels?

[Clive Lewis]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for being supportive of the debate and for the work he has done with me and local headteachers. That money is welcome, but it is not enough. I will come on to the details of that. I agree that any increase is welcome, but we need to ensure that it is the right increase.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree—he probably does not—that although Norfolk faces a difficult situation, the situation in Cambridgeshire is even worse? Tony Davies, the headteacher of St Matthew’s Primary School, tells us that the school will run out of money at the end of this year so it, too, is seeking contributions from parents. How is it that fantastically successful schools are literally running out of money?

[Clive Lewis]

I thank my hon. Friend for his input. We have to accept that our schools are running out of money for the same reason that our public services are underfunded: because of a damaging political choice. I will come on to that, but let me add that one of the reasons I sought the debate was that, as I understood it, every school in Norfolk was potentially going to put in a cost-overrun budget—an illegal budget—because of the funding shortfall. That is happening across the eastern region, and definitely across Norfolk.

Only last week, a local trust in Norfolk announced that it had had to cut 35% of its teaching assistants. That means the ratio of children to staff is bigger, creating myriad potential risks and increasing exponentially the lost learning time for children who need extra help in the classroom.

[Sandy Martin (Ipswich) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the biggest problems we have with underfunding in education, certainly in Suffolk, is that there are not enough facilities and not enough staff to cope with children with special educational needs, especially attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? Some children receive no more than one hour’s education a day and are losing all their self-respect. We are storing up problems for the future in those cases.

[Clive Lewis]

I will address that in detail shortly, but there is indeed a crisis in special educational needs teaching.

Every parent and teacher knows how vital teaching assistants are to aiding our young people’s learning, yet a briefing meant only for Ministers and officials at the Department for Education, which was leaked last week, was clear that the Government still intend to slash the number of teaching assistants. The briefing stated:

“We recommend we continue to push No 10 not to include this publicly.”

Can the Minister tell us whether that is true? If it is, why do the Government not recognise the value of support staff in helping our children to learn and thrive?

Headteachers across the country have not been able to balance the books. It is no wonder they have had to make cuts: the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that if it were not for the sudden promise of new funding, school funding would have been £1.7 billion lower in real terms in 2020 than in 2015. The newly promised figure is not additional funding; it is to plug a hole that appeared due to the fact that total school spending per pupil fell by 8% in real terms in 2017-18. Even if headteachers trust the Government’s motives, that funding will go only a small way towards repairing the damage caused by years of continued cuts. In the face of such damning statistics, will the Government concede that the past nine years of austerity—a political choice by consecutive Conservative Governments—have crippled our schools?

The alleged new money for schools announced this week is something of a confession in itself. I happily acknowledge that that money—£14 billion over three years from 2020—is a significant and welcome change of direction. Finally, we can stop listening to Ministers continually claiming that schools have more funding than ever before. The centrepiece of the announcement was a one-off £2.8 billion cash injection, but I am sorry to say that that does not even come close to reversing the cuts made by the Conservatives over the course of this decade. The Institute for Fiscal Studies believes that to do that, £3.8 billion would need to be shared out among schools across the country every year.

This is where things seem to get even more controversial. Sadly, following the analysis in The Sunday Times this weekend, I am forced to question whether any schools in my constituency will receive any increase in funding at all. The supposed cash boost is nothing more than an election bribe, with the overwhelming majority to be spent on grammar schools and schools in Conservative MPs’ constituencies, helping the party target marginal seats as we build up to an almost inevitable general election in the coming weeks, months or perhaps even days.

Do the Government really believe that this is how our children’s future should be decided? Is this really the best way to educate the next generation and close the gap between rich and poor? From where I am standing, it simply plays into the same old Conservative rhetoric that sees inequality increase year on year. This is not sorting out our schools crisis; it is neutralising an electoral image problem. It is retrofitting policy to suit the polling objectives. Most of all, it is feigning concern while failing children.

Over this decade of cuts, our classrooms have been turned into the new frontline of the welfare state, with staff filling in for councils in financial collapse and for parents in precarious jobs or inadequate housing. Any serious attempt to fix our schools must be combined with money to rebuild our public services and our welfare state. I am afraid that the new Government do not seem interested in that.

To put the situation in perspective, a headteacher from my constituency recently told me that on top of the inescapable loss of teaching staff due to budget cuts, the school has had to cut back on support for students, reducing or removing core support in the form of counselling, behaviour support and mental health support. That, alongside the significant cuts to external support services such as child and adolescent mental health services, social services and special school support, has been disastrous for many vulnerable students in my constituency who have nowhere to turn for help. That, somewhat inevitably, has resulted in an increase in the number of permanent exclusions that schools have had to make, a pattern sadly replicated across the UK, leaving both students and parents desperate and with nowhere to turn.

Consider also the renewed focus of the new Government on headteachers being encouraged to use “reasonable force” on misbehaving students. Education officials caution that such a policy will

“impact disproportionately on children in need of a social worker, children with special needs and...Black Caribbean Boys”.

In other words, as summarised by The Guardian,

“it will be state-led discrimination against minority groups. Ensuring that more kids are excluded will simply feed them into pupil referral units or lead to them getting schooled by gangs.”

So much so that police and crime commissioners worry about rates of exclusion driving knife crime even higher. I would say, “Don’t worry—the Home Office has a plan: anti-knife crime advertising on fried chicken boxes,” but we will not go into that. Is this really the big society that the Government want to create? Does the Minister really believe that these devastating cuts and archaic forms of punishment will impact positively on our children?

The Prime Minister recently stated that there should be no winners or losers when it comes to our children’s futures, but I find it hard to see how the decimation of state school funding and the services it pays for helps to level the playing field between students educated in our state schools and those who can afford to be educated at elite private schools such as Eton and Harrow.

I turn to an issue of huge local importance. The funding crisis in East Anglia has had huge knock-on implications for our children with special educational needs. In Norfolk alone, there are 21,000 children with special educational needs and disabilities. Of those, 15,000 children with SEND are in mainstream schools and only 6,000 have an education health and care plan. Only 1,000 referrals for EHCPs are received by Norfolk County Council each year, and 150 children with SEND are still waiting for a special school place. Nationally, that figure is 8,500, and only 3% of children in England have SEND statements or EHCPs.

I recently met a group of parents who have been severely affected by the lack of provision for their children. I have constituents whose children, despite having EHCPs that clearly state that they cannot cope with mainstream schools, still cannot be provided with places in specialised schools. Staff cuts in mainstream schools have had a significant impact on all pupils but particularly those with SEND. The cuts have seen a reduction in specialist teaching assistants, counsellors and speech and language therapists, all of whom pupils with special educational needs and disabilities rely on for their needs to be properly met.

I also know of children who have been forced to stay at home due to lack of staff and spaces in specialised settings, meaning that they are effectively excluded through no fault of their own. There is nowhere else they can go, and the impact on their families is catastrophic: parents have to give up work and livelihoods are lost. Sometimes, even homes are lost and marriages fail.

Specialised schools provide invaluable support and education that these children are legally entitled to, but, without sufficient money from central Government—I assure the Minister that the £700 million announced for SEND children is not sufficient—they cannot get that, and there is nothing that parents or teachers can do. More parents are taking Norfolk County Council to tribunal over SEND provisions, and winning, because they are right: their children are not getting the education they have a right to as set out in legislation. Does the Minister accept that unless there is a significant increase in high-needs funding, the Government will fail to deliver on the reforms they introduced in the Children and Families Act 2014? These devastating cuts have, to quote my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), brought services for children with special educational needs and disabilities to a “dangerous tipping point”.

Last year, I met headteachers at the Educate Norfolk annual conference, and some of the statistics they gave me were staggering. Eighty-two of our schools have reported that they have cut their support staff budgets and 39 had to reduce SEN support for no reason other than funding. In real terms, that means teachers having to administer medicines to children with medical needs and perform other tasks usually carried out by support staff. Can the Minister answer how those same staff can also adequately support children with special educational needs?

It is not just about provision for SEN. Overall, changes to the benefit system have resulted in a reduction in the number of households eligible for free school meals. That, in turn, reduces the amount of pupil premium funding that a school receives. Increases in staffing costs from increased national insurance and pension contributions and pay increases, which are not fully funded by central Government beyond 2020, come out of school budgets. That will get worse, with staff having to work longer and retire later.

This is completely unsustainable. We need a better strategy, based on inclusivity—not a theoretical idea of inclusivity—that ensures that there is more SEND training for teachers and non-teaching staff, so that staff, children and parents are properly supported. Labour pledges to deliver a strategy for children with special educational needs and disabilities, putting more money into those services while working more strategically with schools and SEND providers. We want to introduce a fairer funding formula that leaves no school worse off.

The years that children spend at school should not just be time that they must get through. They should be a wonderful time of learning. We know so much more about the psychology of childhood and what makes children thrive in education. That must apply to all children so that they can leave full-time education with a real chance in life, not a chance restricted by Government cuts. Joint general-secretary of the National Education Union, Mary Bousted, said:

“Teachers know that their working lives would be more fulfilling and less conflicted if fewer of the children and young people they teach were not themselves suffering from the devastating effects of increasing child poverty caused by…deliberate policies.”

In 2015, I campaigned against the academisation of some of our Norfolk schools, which is yet another example of the mismanagement and greed of the Government, with reports of headteachers and executives being paid five-figure sums. Money is floating to the top, with schools left in deficit, and spending on buildings and learning resources is being cut. Similarly, free schools, aimed at the middle classes, and which the Government want more of, are diverting money from existing state schools and are being run like private companies.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I think the hon. Gentleman misspoke—at least, I hope he did. Will he confirm that since £10,000 is a five-figure sum, he meant to say “six-figure sums”?

[Clive Lewis]

Yes. As ever, the hon. Gentleman has spotted a small mistake, and I am glad that he rectified it. Maths was never my strong point; I have always been a history man myself. I now see what he was sniggering about earlier—[Laughter.]

[Mr Bacon]

And he didn’t mention it!

[Clive Lewis]

Heads will roll back in my office.

[Sir Henry Bellingham]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is also a problem in Norfolk with some schools that went into major building programmes under PPI? We heard at one school that we visited in Taverham that after 6.30 pm the school does not belong to the teachers and that they cannot have outside events there because it is in the hands of PPI managers.

[Clive Lewis]

I might get my figures wrong, but I get my acronyms right. I think we are talking about the private finance initiative. I was with the hon. Gentleman at a fantastic school in Taverham where the PFI contract stated that its vast resources, including the gym and the swimming pool, could not be used by the local community. Once the school gates were locked, that fantastic resource could not be used by the rest of the community. Given that taxpayers’ money from that community is paying for that school, that is a complete outrage and I agree with the hon. Gentleman.

In 2017, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith) won her seat as a result of a campaign based on school funding, not Brexit. That was the issue her constituents were up in arms about because it was their children, jobs and livelihoods at stake. The Prime Minster is in trouble on schools, and he knows it. When, last week, the Government announced that they would be providing £14 billion in one-off funding between now and 2022, headteachers responded by saying it was not enough. As I said earlier, we will continue to need an extra £3.8 billion every year to keep our schools afloat and £12.6 billion to reverse the effects of austerity altogether, not a one-off pre-election bribe.

The National Education Union says that headteachers are unlikely to

“trust the motives, or the professed support, of ministers who have, time after time, voted through measures that have made families poorer. Teachers deal every day with the effects of increased child poverty in children’s inattention and distress and know that it is these causes that need to be addressed if pupils are to behave better and achieve more in schools.”

The Government need to stop their panicky pre-election promises to increase school finances and give schools the funding they need, when they need it, not because there is a general election looming. A whole generation of young people have already been failed because of cuts to education funding, and simply announcing a specialist academy trust in the north of England does not count as trialling a new approach. We have already been there and done that; it did not work.

Here is a suggestion: rather than prorogue Parliament to get a no-deal Brexit through, let us ensure that that does not happen, save the £2.1 billion it is said that we will spend in the event of a no-deal Brexit and spend that on education. We can put that hard-earned taxpayer money towards keeping our schools open and our school buildings safe and maintained, and giving our children the education and the childhood that they deserve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. Unfortunately, this is not a forum where we can indulge in our usual conversation about football. However, I will try to introduce some elements.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) on securing this important debate on funding. Straight out of the gate, I join him in saying that we should all praise teachers and hard-working staff, which we sometimes forget to do in our debates. I wish the best of luck to all schools, many of which went back to work yesterday or today. He mentioned his love of history, but not so much his love of mathematics. He said that austerity had been going on for nine years, but I have to pick him up on that. Actually, school budgets were protected under the coalition Government until 2015, so the slashing and burning of budgets that we have seen has happened in only four years, not nine. That is why it has had such a huge impact.

My hon. Friend also raised the hugely important issue of off-rolling across our country. We know that this has significantly led to gang violence, county lines and, yes, the rise of horrific knife crimes under this Administration’s watch. We know that, in 2016-17, nearly 10,000 children were off-rolled by schools in our nation, and the Government did not know where those children went on to. That is a disgrace in this day and age.

I have to say that it is a joy to see the Minister, my opposite number, in his place. He has survived more regime changes, and now a change to a minority regime after the events of today, than you could shake a stick at. He must be the little-known fourth member and brother who, along with Barry, Robin and Maurice, made up the Bee Gees. The Minister’s motto, which he sings in the bath every evening, is “Stayin’ alive, stayin’ alive”. I want to know whether his superhuman power of being Minister for six years, under so many regimes, comes with tights and a cape, and will he confirm that he does wear his pants on the inside of his trousers?

I loved the Augustinian notion that the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (Sir Henry Bellingham) came up with about the world as it was and the world as it should be, but all we know is the world as it is currently. Let’s just go around the counties, shall we? I have figures for Norwich school cuts between 2015 and 2019. I will be giving my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South statistics that he already knows. Tuckswood Academy?

[Clive Lewis]

I know Tuckswood Academy, yes.

[Mike Kane]

It lost £432 per pupil and £282,000 out of its budget in that period. Bignold Primary School?

[Clive Lewis]

Yes.

[Mike Kane]

It had a £516 loss per pupil and is £430,000 down on where it should be. Clover Hill infant school had a £757 loss per pupil; it is £276,000 out of pocket. But let us go around the Chamber. Let us look at the East Anglia county average—the loss between 2015 and 2019. In Norfolk, there was £279 less per pupil. It has lost £66.6 million-worth of spending power in the last four years. Suffolk—let us go there. It had a £178 loss per pupil. It has £40.3 million less spending power since 2015. Let us go a little further south, to Essex. It is £257 down per pupil. In Essex, £134.4 million has been taken out of school budgets since 2015.

We can be in no doubt, after all that we have heard again today, about the impact that this Government’s continued austerity in our schools is having across East Anglia and the whole country. The new Chancellor of the Exchequer, the new Secretary of State for Education and the long-standing—as I have pointed out—Minister for School Standards have announced over the last few days more funding for schools and teachers. Unless or until we see that new money and the magic money tree that it is coming from, we can only assume that it is business as usual for this regime.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Lewis]

I thank the Minister for his response, and I thank all those who have contributed to this timely and interesting debate.

On the issue of Jane Austen College and the Inspiration Trust, I have always been supportive of the teachers and the pupils in such schools. My issue has never been with them; it has always been with the philosophy behind free schools and academies, and sometimes with their leadership. We should understand the philosophy of free schools, which is—to quote a member of the Department, although I am not sure whether they expected their words to go public—to bring the chaos of the free market to our public state school education system. That has been one of my key concerns about free schools and the academy system.

I will make a last couple of points. The question that many of us have now is about this new money. It is welcome, but we ask ourselves, “Will our constituencies actually see any of this money, or will it be used disproportionately and cynically in key Tory marginals?” The answer remains to be seen.

Labour Members have always claimed that cuts to public services have been a political choice. Having listened to the Minister today, I think it is quite clear—now that this money has been found—that the last four years of cuts to our education system have been a political choice. We are glad that the money has been found, but the past four years have been very difficult for schools and they are still struggling.

Regarding pupils with special educational needs, we need to understand that £700 million will simply not be enough. This is a problem that goes far and wide and deep. It is systemic, and far more than £700 million will be needed if it is to be tackled properly. I think the Minister understands how severe this problem is, so I hope that more money can be found for children with SEN, their families and the support that they and their schools need.

Finally, no amount of new funding can ever make up for the lost opportunities—the lost childhoods—of those pupils who have been failed by successive Conservative Governments for these past few years, after billions of pounds of cuts have led to underfunding. No new money can ever make up for that.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered school funding in East Anglia.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

We are doing a lot of work in that regard. For instance, we organised a pilot project, run by The Challenge, which highlighted some of the needs of employers. We are working closely with the sector, because it is crucial to the success of T-levels for us to get the industry placements right, and that means building relationships between colleges and those delivering T-levels and local employers.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

A while ago, like many Members, I was lobbied by staff and students in further education who told me that they and their institutions were at breaking point. At 16, the average further education student receives £1,500 less than the average student aged under 16. When will the Government understand that this investment in our communities needs to happen, and it needs to happen now?

[Anne Milton]

This member of the Government does precisely understand some of the challenges facing the sector. Some of the money that goes into further education does so through a variety of funding streams. For instance, I have not yet mentioned the £330 million that went into the restructuring of colleges, which has brought about substantial financial savings in some colleges undertaking mergers. However, I am very aware—and the Chancellor is very aware, and the Prime Minister is very aware—of the circumstances of FE colleges.

Education Funding

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I will move on, Madam Deputy Speaker, and make a little bit more progress. Education needs that investment. Just look at the services that serve the very start of our lives. Spending on Sure Start has been cut by two thirds—down by more than £1 billion since the Government took office—and over 1,000 Sure Start centres have been lost.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

In Norfolk, the Conservative-led county council is proposing the closure and loss of 46 of 53 of our children’s centres— [Interruption.] It is a shame. And we know that 75% of the most vulnerable families in our county use these centres. It is terming this a “service improvement”. Will my hon. Friend join me in telling Norfolk County Council that this is an absolute disgrace?

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. I hope that Members across the House, including Government Front Benchers, recognise that early years are so vital. If we really care about social mobility and want to help every child to reach their full potential, those early years are so, so crucial, yet the loss of those children’s centres and Sure Start centres is so short-sighted that we will be picking up the cost of it for generations to come.

The Government have refused to give assurances to maintained nursery schools, despite the vital role that they play. Just this month, I, along with my hon. Friends the Members for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) and for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), campaigned to save Salford nurseries. What response did the Salford Mayor get from the Treasury? A letter from the Chief Secretary talking about the NHS. They literally do not even recognise the issue. Perhaps today the Secretary of State can guarantee additional funding when the transitional £55 million ends in 2020 and recognise the valuable work that our maintained nurseries do across England. Perhaps he could use the £600 million returned to the Treasury because parents are not using the tax-free childcare, even as 85% of local authorities take a cut to the funding rate that they receive for the 30 hours of free childcare. Many parents are actually paying more for childcare now, since the so-called free hours were introduced.

The harshest cuts have fallen in the areas that we discuss least in this Chamber. In further and adult education, budgets have been cut by over £3 billion in real terms since 2010. One pound in every four has been cut and we have seen the consequences. The number of adult learners has declined by over 3 million since 2010. Cutting funding for these programmes means cutting people off from a second chance, like the one that I had in my life and which so many of my constituents need, yet there was not a single penny nor a single word about further education in the Budget. Instead, there was the bombshell of £140 million a year of new pension costs from the Treasury, with no guaranteed funding to match.

Last month, we celebrated Love Our Colleges Week, yet they have had neither love nor money from this Government. The spending review offers a chance for the Government to change approach. If the Secretary of State before us today is the one who sincerely wants more investment, he should have no problems voting with us today. But if not, it is time for him to move aside for a Labour Government that will. I commend the motion to the House.

Oral Answers to Questions

Clive Lewis Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Finally, I call Clive Lewis.

[Clive Lewis (Norwich South) (Lab)]

Under this Government, children with special needs are six times more likely to be excluded than their peers. In Norwich, headteachers have described provision for special educational needs as a complete mess because of a funding shortfall. Will Ministers commit to increasing funding support for these children to ensure that they get the education they do not just deserve, but is their right?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The Government have launched the most ambitious SEND reforms in a generation and are committed to improving outcomes for children with special educational needs. More than 98% of statements of SEN were reviewed by 31 March deadline for introducing education, health and care plans. The hon. Gentleman talks about funding, but we have given £391 million to local areas to support implementation of the new duties in the Children and Families Act 2014.