Onshore Oil and Gas

David Mowat Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for leading the charge on this. It seems that the key word in this debate is “manufacturing”, and it is good to have a discussion that focuses on that. I thought that the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), in particular, made an extremely good speech, not only about the shale industry and manufacturing in that area, but the impact on manufacturing generally. It is very hard to have a march of the makers when we have higher electricity and feedstock costs, and generally a higher cost environment than our competitors, particularly those on the eastern seaboard of the US. Those points were well made.

I support the shale industry, which I have spoken about in the past. I completely agree that the concerns of local MPs—I have a fracking site in my constituency—need to be listened to. The industry needs to be well regulated and safe. I will come on to—what did we hear?—the “pragmatic and responsible” position apparently taken by the SNP.

I completely support the need for good regulation and local involvement, but I also have to say that sadly, in my view, the shale industry in the UK is not going to take off with the current prices of oil and gas. At $28 a barrel, the US shale industry is closing down and it has much more significant economies of scale than we have—the cost is something like $50 or $60 a barrel over there, and the gas price is linked. There will have to be closures. Frankly, in Aberdeen, we are seeing the impact of $28 a barrel. That is only just starting to hit Aberdeen, because $28 is higher than the operating cost in the North sea, let alone development and exploration.

I will put that caveat to one side and turn to the manufacturing potential of the industry—I hope I am wrong, however, and that perhaps prices will increase. We do not know.

[Angela Smith]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his kind comments. Is it not also the case that the shale gas industry is much more fluid, dynamic and has much lower start-up costs than the oil industry, for instance, and that, in the long term, shale gas probably has a better future?

[David Mowat]

All that is true—and it is much more tactical, quicker and goes on from one to another. It does not have the big up-front development costs of, for example, North sea platforms. That is true, but it is also true that the wells do not last as long. The fact is that in the US, the shale industry is a $50-a-barrel industry, and at $28 dollars, that industry is in trouble. That is the whole strategy that the Saudis are taking and is what they are trying to achieve. They are going to be successful unless other things make them stop.

The title of the debate, however, is “Onshore Oil and Gas”—not shale. I say that because it is worth remembering that we have an onshore oil and gas industry. We have drilling and have had it for the past 30 years in places such as the New Forest, without the level of controversy that appears to surround this industry.

Other Members have talked about this, but let us examine briefly what has happened in the US shale industry. The industry has reduced the cost of gas by two thirds and has been converting—unfortunately, this also might stop—liquefied natural gas import ports to become LNG export ports. Equally important, the US has met any climate change target that anyone has given it. It did not sign up to Kyoto, but it would have met it by miles because of the displacement of coal by gas in its carbon emissions.

I want the House fully to understand that if the world were capable of taking out all coal and replacing it with gas, which is a big ask, it would be equivalent to increasing the amount of renewables in the world by a factor of six. That would be real progress in emissions. When political parties talk about carbon emissions—we heard about that earlier—without giving cognisance to that fact, it is frankly disingenuous at best.

[Kirsty Blackman (Aberdeen North) (SNP)]

On emissions and greenhouse gas, it is relevant to think about methane emissions when natural gas is used instead of coal. We need to consider that, and not just the carbon emissions.

[David Mowat]

That is a strong point and I agree with it. It is extremely important that, as in the US, there are no methane emissions. We have seen over and again in places such as Pennsylvania that methane is not emitted and that some of the scare stories are not true. I am sure that when the Scottish Government conduct their pragmatic and responsible review of the industry they will find that out for themselves.

In the US—I will not repeat my points—there are two elements in what cheap energy can do in manufacturing. The US has created around 200,000 jobs in that industry but, more important, the estimate is 1 million jobs in the onshoring chemicals industry in the US eastern seaboard. The transformation is extraordinary. It is re-shoring industry from Asia, China, Europe and, frankly, the UK.

Organisations make marginal decisions—this is not about closing Teesside and moving it to the US. When it comes to the marginal decision of where to open the next production unit, it will not be in Grangemouth, Teesside or Runcorn, but in Pennsylvania or Cleveland because that is where energy prices and feedstock prices are so competitive that more money can be made. We need to be cognisant of that. We sometimes talk in this House as though it is a new industry, but it is not.

The question arises—it is a fair one—of whether that applies to the UK. I have heard it said many times that things are different in the UK. It is true that we have a smaller manufacturing base and a much smaller chemicals industry, so perhaps it will not be so dramatic. People sometimes say, “Well, US gas prices have reduced by 70%, but that can’t happen here because we are on a European grid.” Generally speaking, when there is more of a commodity, the price falls. It is true that we have a European gas price and a European hub, but we had a global market for oil and look at what shale eventually did to the oil price. We are still living with that.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

I take on board what the hon. Gentleman is saying about a sheikhs versus shale fight, but the reduction in general fossil fuel prices, because of the online, downstream effect of renewables in the last 10 years, has also had an effect on driving down fossil fuel prices. The future of shale could be very beneficial to energy intensives because of cost, which is at least 50% cheaper than conventional gas. In addition, most of those industrial sites in Britain are located close to where those feedstocks are found.

[David Mowat]

I meant to say at the start that with current prices where they are, I do not think we will see a massive upkick in the UK’s shale industry. I think that will happen where shale is available near a chemicals site—INEOS in Runcorn and in Grangemouth is an example—because the costs and economics are different.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

Rather than seeing shale as a means by which to reduce consumer prices for heating boilers, for example, we should also have an industrial strategy that targets the use of shale gas for cheap energy-friendly intensives because that would be a cheap benefit.

[David Mowat]

My point was more about feedstock. I have no problem with an industrial strategy along those lines, although I make the point gently that the million jobs that were created on the eastern seaboard of the US were the result not so much of industrial strategy, but of a massively cheaper economic model and business case and all that goes with that. We need to learn from that.

The Chairman of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish), made a number of points about the fact that we are running out of gas. This is not principally a discussion about whether we should have gas versus renewables. It is gas versus coal, as I said earlier, in environmental terms. Gas production is now 70% lower than five years ago and we are importing it from Qatar and principally from Norway, but increasingly from Russia. Centrica has a contract with Gazprom and around 10% of our gas will come from Russia by 2020. We need to understand that and be comfortable with the implications.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I am sorry I was not here for the start of the debate. The hon. Gentleman has talked a lot about the proximity of supply and forward gas production over the years. Will he talk a bit about coal gasification, which could be so important and is so close to Teesside and the north-east, for our energy-intensive industries?

[David Mowat]

I am not sure whether that was a request for me to talk about coal gasification. I will not because I have been talking for 10 minutes, but I agree that it is a complex market and an opportunity for Teesside. Our country’s industry base in Teesside is extremely important to all constituents there, and I completely agree with that.

On Wednesday, I had dinner with the head of Ernst and Young in the UK and I said that one thing that annoys me about parliamentary debates is that we quote reports from people like Ernst and Young as though they are some sort of gospel. We all say, “That’s what they say, so it is true and I will go with that.” It said in its recent report that it estimates that 64,000 jobs will be created in the shale industry alone, 6,000 direct and the rest in the supply chain, steel and so on. I return to the US experience where more jobs were created in the industries that benefited from the lower feedstocks than in the direct industry—the chemicals industry and so on.

[Angela Smith]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that important point. Does he recognise that the steel industry unions are one of the biggest supporters of the shale gas industry in the US?

[David Mowat]

I think the steel industry unions are right, as are the chemicals and aluminium industry unions. The US, unlike the UK, still has an aluminium industry, principally because energy prices there allow it to happen.

[Neil Parish]

The US has reduced its gas price hugely to attract the industry. When we extract shale gas, will we reduce our gas price or will we keep it the same? That is an interesting point because, if we are to encourage the industry properly I suspect we will have to reduce our gas price.

[David Mowat]

Gas prices are set by the market. We have a spot price for gas which is set in the European gas market. People have made the point that the European price will not decline in the same way as in the US. That may be true, but I make the point again that they could have said that about oil and shale oil. We have seen what has happened there. Clearly, the more there is of something, all other things being equal, the more the price falls. Fuel poverty is not the subject of this debate, but many people are living in fuel poverty in our country and we should all be keen to have lower energy prices.

Before I close, I want to pick up on the pragmatic and responsible points made by the Scottish National party. All of us as Members of Parliament have a leadership role in our communities. We heard my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton exercising his leadership role. Of course he faces pressures in terms of the environment of the Yorkshire dales, but he also understands that we need jobs in our country and we need to create wealth. Importing gas at scale from Qatar, Russia and Norway takes jobs away from our country and has an impact on industries in Cleveland and so on. That is the exercise of leadership. “Leadership” is an important word, and all of us in this place need to exercise leadership. Saying that we are going to have a moratorium on this activity because that is responsible and pragmatic when the reality is that this industry has been going for 10 years and can go to Pennsylvania, like my hon. Friend did, and have a look—it can do all of that—is what I would describe as negative leadership, and it is populist politics because there is a body of people out there who are receptive to that; and that is not what any of us were elected to this place to do.

[Mr George Howarth (in the Chair)]

We have approximately 30 minutes left. That should be adequate time for the three Front Benchers, but I caution them that the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake), who moved the motion, has said that he would like a few minutes to sum up at the end.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[George Freeman]

It is a pleasure to follow that speech. I will happily repeat the figure I just gave: the Prime Minister has just announced £400 million of extra funding for energy finance. We have just made announcements on onshore research. One of the lessons for Scotland is to reduce its dependence on public sector funding. The truth is that, under the renewables obligation for offshore wind, 28% of the funding went to Scotland—that is £560 million—when it represents only 10% of bill payers. We need to support the green economy in Scotland, just like we are doing in the rest of the country.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

In the spending review, a major energy investment of £250 million was announced for small modular reactors. That was warmly welcomed in the north-west and it will make a big difference to our ability to meet our climate change targets. It is crucial that the UK owns the intellectual property rights that result from that technology. Will the Minister and his colleagues in the Department of Energy and Climate Change make sure that that is the case?

[George Freeman]

My hon. Friend is something of an expert on those matters and I will happily look into the very important point he makes. One of the benefits of our support for the green economy—which, as I have said, is now a £45 billion sector in this country—is that we are generating the leading technologies in 21st-century green energy. I will happily look into the specific points he makes.

National Minimum Wage: Sports Direct

David Mowat Excerpts

Monday 14th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

This is an extremely important matter but we have other important business to follow, so I am looking for pithy questions and answers.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

On the facts, the case in The Guardian is disturbing. Does the Minister agree that one good piece of news is that, whatever else happens, in April next year Sports Direct will have to pay these people 11% more than they are getting now?

[Nick Boles]

That is absolutely right. That has happened because the majority Conservative Government have run the economy sufficiently well that we can expect employers to do that and still prosper.

School Funding

David Mowat Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stuart]

I do agree. As a result, the children of a multi-millionaire in one constituency or area receive more funding for their education than do the children attracting a pupil premium and from one of the poorest families in a neighbouring area. That is indefensible. The discrepancies are so enormous as to require change, notwithstanding the political challenges and difficulties of doing so.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

There would appear to be consensus on the Government side, and perhaps on the Opposition side, that enough is enough. This is the third Westminster Hall debate I have attended on this issue since I became an MP five years ago—the first was in April 2012—and at each debate it has been agreed, including by the Government, that this had to be fixed. If the door is ajar, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight) said earlier, there would appear to be a wedge in it that is still to be removed. Does my hon. Friend agree that we must hear from the Minister about timing and not just about whether he agrees that the principle is wrong?

[Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is right and I hope and expect that we will hear from the Minister on when the House will get the detail about what the Government propose to do.

To bring to life the example I mentioned of a relatively small secondary school with 920 pupils, the £1.9 million difference between two such schools in different areas is enough to pay the total costs—salaries and pension contributions—of 40 full-time teachers. That huge funding gap cannot be justified.

The gap is not explained by pupil deprivation. People might think that the system is designed to give more to areas of concentrated deprivation, whether urban or other. In 2011, Department for Education analysis showed that a school with 43% of pupils eligible for free school meals can receive £665 less funding per pupil than a school with less than 10% eligible pupils. Therefore, a school that serves the most deprived, as opposed to one that serves a remarkably affluent population, can receive hundreds of pounds less per pupil simply because of where it is rather than the nature and character of the children concerned, let alone their needs. Given the flat cash settlement for schools since that time, those figures will not have altered significantly.

I will give another example of the disparity that can exist between authorities. A secondary school pupil in York who receives the pupil premium, which is worth £935 this year, still has less spent on his or her education than an equivalent pupil in Birmingham who is not eligible for the pupil premium. Therefore, the child of the wealthy entrepreneur or lawyer in Birmingham receives more than the child from the poorest home in York.

Colleagues have mentioned the cross-border issue. The same applies in the relationship between Nottingham and the county that surrounds it: a 13-year-old pupil in the city gets more for their education than a disadvantaged child from the county next door, even though that child receives a pupil premium. Indeed, it is worse than that: a child who is in care in a certain area of the country and receives the pupil premium plus, worth £1,900, to reflect their needs, will still receive less than the child of a wealthy lawyer in Islington. That cannot be right. It needs to be fixed in a timely way and that is what we are gathered here today to tell the Minister.

We might think that if the disparity does not reflect deprivation, perhaps it reflects underlying performance in the system such as the quality of education in the schools, with more money going to help those areas doing less well. However, that would be wrong. Some of the best performing areas, notably in London, continue to receive thousands of pounds more per child than areas that are really struggling with education outcomes. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea receives 39% more funding per pupil under the schools block grant than my own area, the East Riding of Yorkshire, which loses out badly under the current funding arrangements.

The East Riding struggles with many of the challenges identified by Ofsted Chief Inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw in rural and coastal areas of England, where it can be hard to recruit and retain high-quality teachers, and partnerships between schools can founder because of the distance between them. We could take a coastal town and ask, “Why can’t we replicate the London challenge in East Yorkshire?” but anyone who drew a circle around Withernsea in my constituency to find all the schools that might be able to provide mutual support would find that half the circle was in the sea and the other half took in a swathe of rural East Yorkshire. That does not create easy conditions in which to build the collaborative regimes that have made such a difference in London and that is a further reason why such areas need to be fairly funded.

Contrary to any lazy misconceptions that areas such as the East Riding are rural idylls, there are areas of deep deprivation. Withernsea ranked in the top 10% of most deprived areas in England on both the income and employment indices of multiple deprivation in 2010. In a devastating speech in 2013, Sir Michael Wilshaw warned that

“many of the disadvantaged children performing least well in school can be found in leafy suburbs, market towns or seaside resorts”.

The East Riding also faces the additional costs associated with needing to run small, rural schools because of its geography. There is a limit to how far we can expect children to be bused, so it needs to run small schools, which are necessarily more expensive. It therefore has higher natural costs, and greater challenges in delivering high-quality education.

On top of that, the East Riding targeted as much funding as possible at its schools. Various blocks make up the dedicated schools grant, and historically the East Riding chose to stick most of the money for special educational needs in the schools block—it was entirely free to do so. It said to schools, “Use your budget to deliver that.” There was practically nothing in the high needs block, because that money had been put into the schools block. When the dedicated schools grant came in, which was based on what had been spent at that time and how it was accounted for, the East Riding received among the lowest levels of SEN funding in the whole country. That was not because there was a lack of challenge, but because of how the accounting had been done.

Our high needs funding is now the lowest in England, so the East Riding has had to move funding over to try to compensate for that. The situation was unfair already. Then we moved to the £390 million the Government came forward with last year to help lower-funded authorities, but that was distributed on the basis of the schools block, one of the three blocks that make up the dedicated schools grant, and as my local authority had its money in the schools block and not the high needs block, it ended up receiving a very much smaller share of the cake.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stuart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that.

[David Mowat]

The Minister mentioned my point, so I want to come back on that. While the £390 million was welcome, it was not a change to the funding formula. We still do not have a national funding formula and, in fact, that £390 million affected Warrington much more poorly than the better-funded Westminster. After the £390 million, Warrington remains 11th from bottom of the 152 authorities. We will come back to that.

[Graham Stuart]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. That is why we need a whole new look at this and a national funding formula. As a result of issues relating to the blocks that colleagues may or may not have followed—it is complicated—after the £390 million, the East Riding became the lowest-funded local authority in the whole country. Members can imagine the gratitude my constituents felt: the then Chairman of the Education Committee and leading member of the campaign for fairer funding had somehow dragged the East Riding from being the third or fourth lowest-funded authority to the very lowest. I had to put my hand up and say, a little plaintively, “Well, we did get £1.8 million more.” But relatively speaking, we fell to the bottom. We can all see why people were not very happy, and they would like to know that there was a rationale. Someone has to come bottom, but let there be a rationale for that.

If we cannot develop a rationale, we should put people on the same money. In the Parliament before last, the all-party group on rural services conducted an inquiry on health and education funding. Professor Mervyn Stone, emeritus professor of statistics at Oxford University—a marvellous man with a beard like a biblical prophet’s—said, “If you move to equal funding per pupil or per patient across the country, you’d have something fundamentally unfair, because of the variety of costs”—I hope I am not unfairly putting words into his mouth—but we would still have something far fairer than any of the structures that anyone has come up with so far, let alone implemented in Government. Equal funding would be fairer.

Our call today is not for perfection but for a significant move to close the gaps. It is worth saying to colleagues who represent London seats that some areas of London—a few, admittedly—would benefit from a new national funding formula. Under the recommendations submitted to Government by the F40 campaign, which is the group of lowest-funded local authorities, there would still be, on average, more than £1,000 more per pupil in London than in the rest of the country. Take a class of 30. Whether it is in London or Warrington, there will be a classroom, kids and a teacher, and there might be a support assistant. A school in London will have £30,000 more a year to run that. Costs are higher in London, but not that much higher. It has to be right to move to something that is fairer to everyone.

Before the debate, I asked headteachers in Beverley and Holderness about the challenges they face. I will quote some of the problems that they highlighted. One said:

“We reduced staffing by reducing the number of cover supervisors and downsizing a number of teaching subject areas.”

Another said:

“Fewer sporting competitions—we can’t afford to pay for transport to away fixtures”—

imagine the cost of doing so in a sparsely populated rural area. Another said:

“Provision is stretched and children receive less intervention time”.

Another said:

“Resources are not being replaced or updated as we would like. The school guided reading scheme has been on the subject leaders’ development plan for the last 2 years and it is something that we cannot afford.”

That is the reality on the ground in schools in my constituency.

Those problems are not unique to the East Riding of Yorkshire—colleagues from up and down the country will testify to that, as is evidenced by the fact that there are so many of them here today. That is why the F40 group of local authorities, for which I serve as a vice-chairman, has come together to make the case for fairer funding. I pay tribute to the F40 campaign. It is led by Leicestershire Councillor Ivan Ould, who along with other F40 representatives has campaigned with great determination for almost 20 years. It is to the credit of the Government and Ministers that they are now listening to the campaign and are going to act.

I know colleagues will want me to say that we all owe a debt of gratitude to my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker). He was a tireless champion of the issue in the previous Parliament, and I know he continues to be highly supportive in his new role as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Secretary of State. It is a delight to see him here.

Progress is being made, in the form of the extra £390 million that was allocated as a down payment towards fairer funding in 2014, as well as through the Government’s manifesto commitment to make that extra resource part of the baseline funding settlement. The Minister said that there have been two parts to this: last year’s £390 million and this year’s; I know it is going to be every year from now on.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mowat]

rose—

[James Cartlidge]

I will just make one point so that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) is not intervening on an intervention, which is that I call on him to support me on that point.

[David Mowat]

On the Barnett formula, it is true that, historically, Scotland has not been subsidised, principally because the Barnett formula extra—over and above need—has been made up for by Scottish oil. Therefore, the taxation situation is as the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) said. That is not the case this year, nor will it be the case in the future.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

James Cartlidge— back to education.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I, too, congratulate the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) and my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) on securing this debate. Like others, I am a veteran of these debates—we had one in April 2012 and another in April 2014—and they can be surreal, because we all agree that something must be done. The Opposition did not particularly agree in the 2012 debate but, to be fair, by 2014 they did. The Ministers who responded to those debates also agreed that something had to be done, that we could not go on like this and that there had to be a national formula, yet the months go by.

Just to validate myself, Warrington is 144th in the league table, having declined further once the £390 million was given out under another opaque mechanism towards the end of the last Parliament. I want to say something a little different from other Members. Let me be clear: yes, we have £2,000 less per pupil than other areas, but I would not mind that if I could point my schools in Warrington to an audit trail explaining why it was necessary. Perhaps there is less deprivation. Perhaps sparsity or the age profiles are different. Perhaps there are various criteria. However, that is not the case. The only reason I can give is, “It’s always been like that, and we haven’t got round to fixing it.”

[Sir David Amess in the Chair]

I said in the April 2012 debate, and I think perhaps the April 2014 debate as well, that a new Government came in bristling with talent and reforming zeal, agreeing that the situation was wrong, yet the problem was somehow too difficult, because there had to be losers. That is the crux of it: the Government were concerned that the losers would shout more than the winners. Morally, that is not a good position. We are talking about the life chances of children in our constituencies.

[Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)]

Speaking of life chances of children, my hon. Friend has the pleasure of being the Member of Parliament representing my nephew and niece. I encourage him to fight vigorously not only for them—his constituents—but for the rest of us who suffer without a fairer funding formula.

[David Mowat]

We are doing our best for my hon. Friend’s nephew and niece.

[Kevin Foster]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[David Mowat]

Let me just answer the question. Actually, I want to make one further point to the Minister. I support free schools, and I support a number of our initiatives, including academy consolidation, studio schools, university technical colleges, free school dinners and the pupil premium. They are all good things, yet for my community in Warrington, they are all second-tier issues compared with funding. The situation is not acceptable. Some of these things are almost like a displacement activity for Ministers. What matters to my community is that the Government put a fair funding formula in place, rather than just acknowledging the problem again or saying, “We know it’s wrong, but it’s too hard to fix.” We need to get on with it.

What the Government do is produce league tables. There is a sort of covenant: the Government fund, the schools have to educate, and league tables exist to compare how they are getting on. At some point, unless funding is done fairly, league tables will break down. Maybe there should be funding-adjusted league tables. My hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey) talked about the two S’s, Southwark and Somerset. My two are Westminster and Warrington, where the same issue exists—a £2,000 discrepancy. In the correction that took place with the £390 million, oddly, Westminster got more than Warrington, for reasons that were opaque and hard to explain.

Yet there is a way forward. The F40 has set out the criteria for a new formula in a very good paper: age weighting, deprivation, special educational needs, proportion of children whose first language is not English and sparsity. As I said, if as the result of all that Warrington ended up getting £2,000 less than Tower Hamlets, I would be content, because I could explain to my headteachers the reasons why they are having to cut back and make teaching assistants and teachers redundant. At the moment, I cannot do that, and it really is not good enough.

Here is where I give the Minister some encouragement. I do not expect everything to be fixed immediately once a formula is introduced, but the direction of travel must be set. F40 suggested that it should happen over three years, although it could be longer. The direction of travel could take three, five or even 10 years to unwind. We have been talking about it for an awfully long time; it has been an issue for 20 years. However, it is not acceptable for us not even to take the first step of setting up an audit trail so that we can explain to our headteachers why schools in my constituency, such as Bridgewater and St Monica’s, are under huge pressure, partly due to centrally organised salary adjustments.

If, after the consultation—which will apparently be next year, so we will be a year into this Parliament before it ends—the Minister comes back with an approach that means it takes longer than three years to fix the problem, I will not necessarily be upset, but I want the first step to be taken, so that we do not continue to acknowledge the problem while doing nothing. We are talking about the life chances of many children.

Education and Adoption Bill

David Mowat Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and welcome him to the House, as I have not heard him speak here before. I cannot comment on the individual circumstances, but my predecessor did not have the option to make an academy order. We will not tolerate the failure of schools. There will be conversion because the academy process, by bringing in a strong sponsor, makes the difference in turning around schools, many of which have languished under local authority control, failing for months on end.

As I was saying, what happened at the Warren school cannot be right. By issuing an academy order straight away, we will ensure that a long-term solution is in place as soon as possible. To further tackle unnecessary delays and ensure swift progress to academy status, the Bill introduces a new duty on governing bodies and local authorities to actively progress the conversion of failing schools into academies. That will send a clear and unambiguous message to all parts of the system that any unnecessary delay is unacceptable when it comes to improving the life chances of our children.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

There is a lot in the Bill that is good and academies are clearly part of the solution, but so is fair funding. We have talked a lot about that and the previous Government made a commitment to move to a fair funding formula. Will the Secretary of State advise us on whether we will make progress on that soon?

[Nicky Morgan]

I am conscious, Madam Deputy Speaker, that funding is not at issue in the Bill, but it is important to all schools up and down the country. My hon. Friend might be aware that it was discussed a great deal at Education questions last Monday in this House, when I referred to our party’s clear manifesto commitment to make progress with fairer funding for our schools. I thank him for his support on that and know that it is an important issue to Members in all parts of the House.

Let me be clear about failing academies: failure has to be tackled wherever it occurs. We support academy status because we see that it works, but where individual academies are struggling, we do not hesitate to take swift action. The statutory legal framework that is being amended in the Bill applies only to maintained schools. Academies are not governed by the statutory framework because they are held to account through a legally binding contract known as a funding agreement. Each funding agreement sets out the controls that are in place for holding the trust to account and the mechanisms by which the Government can intervene to address concerns.

As I have set out, academies are generally performing very well and have progressed faster than their maintained school counterparts. Last week’s Ofsted figures reported that, of the more than 4,600 academies, 1,400 of which are sponsored academies—schools that were set up to transform some of the toughest cases of underperformance —only 145 are judged inadequate. However, as I have said clearly, one failing school is a failing school too many. That is why we have a tough regime to tackle academy failure, which allows us to intervene much more rapidly and effectively than we can in maintained schools.

Open academies are carefully monitored by regional schools commissioners and we take robust action where it is needed. As well as issuing 107 formal notices to underperforming academies, we have intervened and changed the sponsor in 75 cases of particular concern. The results of such intervention are evident.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Academy chains want to find efficient ways of providing back office services, but the hon. Gentleman is right to say that chains that are under performing, including the AET chain, are receiving the close scrutiny of the Minister responsible.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

T6. With the advent of the new curriculum, the Government have moved away from a nationally recognised, standardised system based on levels, and schools are now free to choose from myriad different assessment frameworks. Is the Minister confident that consistency will be maintained, and what work is being done to ensure that all frameworks are fit for purpose?

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. The old system of levels was flawed. It merely gave the illusion of consistency. In reality, the standard of a particular level varied from school to school. The national curriculum, on the other hand, sets out very clear expectations for each key stage. The national curriculum tests in reading, maths, grammar, punctuation and spelling at the end of key stage 2 will tell pupils’ parents and teachers how children are performing against very clear expectations.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick Boles]

It is incredibly important that opportunities to work are not preserved for one group in society. We will be a fair and prosperous society only if we create opportunities involving all people, whether that is women in engineering or people with learning disabilities and other special needs. I visited my local college in Grantham the other week; it is working closely with local employers to create opportunities for young people with learning disabilities and other special needs to gain experience of employment. That is exactly what a great FE college will do in a community, and there are many such around the country.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

22. Our new studio school in Warrington is providing a brilliant link between the school and the work force. It is supported by parents and all local employers. Will the Minister confirm that he intends to accelerate the roll-out of studio schools in Cheshire and more generally?

[Nick Boles]

We are happy to take proposals for new studio schools from any area and any group of people who want to set one up, as we are for free schools and new university technical colleges. We do not have a prescriptive, one-size-fits-all policy: we believe in letting a thousand flowers bloom, and studio schools are an important part of that.

Voter Registration

David Mowat Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd October 2014 Westminster Hall

[Chris Ruane]

I could not possibly comment.

I have explained the Government’s position. I now turn to the Electoral Commission’s position, and I have paid tribute to it for what it has done. In 2009, I met people from Experian, the credit reference data agency. We sat in my office in Portcullis House and I said that 3.5 million people were missing from the register. They said, “No there aren’t. The number is 6.5 million.” I immediately relayed that to the Electoral Commission, which said that that was nonsense and that it would conduct its own research. The day before that was released—I think it was released on a Friday, so it was on the Thursday—it told me that I was right and that the figure was 6.5 million, but a different 6.5 million. Perhaps it was 13 million. Who knows?

Labour does not have clean hands. Some 3.9 million people were not on the register in 2001 and that rose to 7.5 million on Labour’s watch. That was not for party political advantage because of the profile of the people missing from the register: the unemployed, those on low wages, those living on council estates, those living in houses of multiple occupation, young people and black and ethnic minority voters. It was not for party political advantage, although we should have done a better job—but party political advantage has kept those 7.5 million people off the register for the past four years. The Electoral Commission has not played its full role in getting them back on the register.

It would cost only £340,000 to do a proper survey of the missing millions, but in the past 14 years the commission has carried out only three. That is despite electoral administration legislation in 2005, 2009 and 2010. The commission has been remiss in its research. It should not be left to a Back Bencher and a credit reference agency to prompt it into doing its job.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I apologise for missing the start of the hon. Gentleman’s speech. I am listening carefully to his logic and the build-up to the 7.5 million people who seem to be missing from the register. According to his own logic, that occurred under the previous Government, but the fact that we have not fixed it is apparently due to our pursuing partisan values. That logic is odd. Why did the previous Government fail so completely on that?

[Chris Ruane]

We did not do our job and I admit that. However, we had a plan from 2010 to 2015 to remedy that and to put the missing millions on the register in time for IER to be introduced in 2015. That plan was wrecked for party political advantage by the Conservative wing of the coalition Government.

The Electoral Commission has let us down in other ways. In the dry run for IER, the Department for Work and Pensions cross-referenced national databases with the electoral register. There was a match rate of about 82%, which it then sent to 383 local EROs. It asked them or said that if they wanted they could do local government data matching to get them from 82% to 92%. Of the 383, only 137 informed the Electoral Commission that it had done that. There may have been others, but they could not be bothered to tell the commission. It should have been firm and told those authorities that they had to take part in the dry run to iron out any difficulties ready for the live run. It did not do that.

The Electoral Commission’s plan for 2014 to 2019 covers what it hopes to achieve over the next five years. It recognised in 2014 that 7.5 million people were missing from the register in 2010. What is its aim for putting those people on the register over the next five years? The answer is zero. It has said that its aim for April 2011 was for the register to be 85.5% complete; for April 2019, the aim is that that completeness does not deteriorate. So 7.5 million names are missing now and there will be 7.5 million missing in 2019. That reminds me of a report once sent to my mum stating, “Christopher has set himself very low standards and failed to achieve them.” The Electoral Commission has failed. It set itself low standards and will fail to achieve them. It has been remiss.

When the Electoral Commission found out that the number of people missing from the register in 2010 was not 6 million but 7.5 million—that has flatlined; it is the same now—it welcomed that. It welcomed the fact that there had been no improvement in the registration rate. It had flatlined and had not increased, and the commission thought that was an achievement. It has set itself low standards. It is not only happy that 7.5 million people will be kept off the register for the next five years, but it has introduced restrictions on the handling of postal votes. It says that political parties cannot be trusted to go out and ask people whether they want a postal vote and to send it off when it has been filled in. It refers to electoral postal vote fraud, but there has been only one case of that in 10 years.

The Electoral Commission is not happy with just doing that. It is proposing that when people go to the polling station in 2019, they will have to show photo ID. That has been done in America, in right-wing Republican states—there is a perfect mirroring between Republican and Democrat states in America in terms of those that have and have not introduced photo ID. The independent Electoral Commission in this country is proposing that we copy those Republican states. It is an outrage. There has been one successful prosecution for electoral registration fraud in 10 years.

There are big issues out there. The prediction, as my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central outlined, is that there will be an additional 5.5 million people missing off the register as a result of IER. The hon. Member for Norwich North is right that they will be protected for the general election. There will be a carry-over from household registration to individual registration, and we thank the Government for that—I think they were forced into it by the Lib Dems and others—but the next big date is the freeze date for the Boundary Commission, for the next boundary review, which is December 1 2015. If there is no carry-over for those 5.5 million people and for the 7 million people already off the register, 13 million or perhaps 14 million people will drop off it before the boundary review freeze date of 1 December 2015.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Miss Anne McIntosh—not here.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

T3. There are manifest and clear benefits from the game of chess as an educational and sporting tool, but while other countries continue to develop the game, in the UK participation is collapsing, particularly in the state primary school sector. Will the Minister meet me and other members of the newly formed all-party parliamentary group on chess to discuss substantive and low-cost changes that we could make to help the sport?

[Mrs Grant]

We do not recognise chess as a sport, as my hon. Friend knows, because it is not a physical activity, but I would be happy to meet him to discuss the current state of the game.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I am happy to meet that trade association to follow up its specific concerns. The hon. Gentleman is right that business needs uniform and proportionate enforcement, and we are looking to deliver that through improved guidance with the relevant bodies, such as the Health and Safety Executive and the Environment Agency.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

11. What steps his Department is taking to support energy-intensive industries.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

In the Budget the Government announced a package of support of £500 million a year for energy-intensive industries. From 2016, we will introduce compensation for the costs of the renewables obligation and the feed-in tariff. We will also be extending to 2019 the compensation scheme for the emissions trading scheme and the carbon price floor. Together with amendments to the carbon price floor, these changes will be worth around £7 billion to businesses in Britain.

[David Mowat]

My right hon. Friend will be aware that several of our EU competitors are increasingly cross-subsidising industrial use of electricity, creating a difficult landscape for our energy-intensive industries. A recent example of the impact of this is BOAL Aluminium, an aluminium processor which was going to invest £2 million in the UK but has moved that, with all the associated jobs, to Belgium, where energy costs 30% less. Is there more we can do to prevent carbon leakage of that type?

[Michael Fallon]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing representatives of the aluminium industry to see me in the Department. It is important that we in Britain do not lose out on such investment. We have already paid out some £30 million of compensation to 53 of the most electricity-intensive companies and we will continue to press for further reform in Europe.