Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

I am delighted to say that there are over 20,000 ambassadors from engineering who go into schools under the STEMNET—the science, technology, engineering and mathematics network—programme. It is just one example of the organisations that can help to bring employment and education together.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

7. What steps he is taking to adopt a revised funding formula for schools.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

Our proposal to allocate £350 million to the least fairly funded local areas in 2015-16 is the biggest step towards fairer schools funding for a decade. This puts us in a much better position to introduce a national fair funding formula when multi-year spending plans are available.

[David Mowat]

The Minister may be aware that Warrington is ranked 137th for funding out of 152 authorities. As a comparator, Westminster, which is ranked 10th, receives £3,000—60% extra—more per child each year than Warrington. It was therefore disappointing that in this new allocation, Westminster received a big uplift and Warrington received nothing—perpetuating that differential, which is really unacceptable. Will the Minister explain the logic behind that, and does he agree that we need to move to a national formula very quickly indeed?

[Mr Laws]

I would make two points. First, what we sought to do in the announcement of a couple of months ago was address the issues not just of low funding, but of unfair funding. It is still possible for some parts of the country that are not the lowest funded to be underfunded, as we saw in the announcement. As for comparing Westminster with Warrington, although traditionally thought of as an affluent area, Westminster has had something like 50% of its children entitled to free school meals over the last six years, so it benefits, quite rightly, from high levels of disadvantage funding. Secondly, I agree with my hon. Friend in that his points make the case for moving on from this allocation to a full national fair funding formula in the next Parliament, to which both our parties are committed.

Schools Funding

David Mowat Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2014 Westminster Hall

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I would like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) on leading the charge on such an important issue.

I have now been an MP for four years, and one of the advantages of that is that I can look back on my old speeches and make them again. It is two years since we were all in this Chamber discussing how we were going to reform the formula inherited from the previous Government. There was no dispute that that formula was wrong and there was no serious attempt to justify it. The Minister for Schools, the right hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws), has continued with the attitude that the existing formula is wrong and must be changed. The issue has been one of timing and expediency.

When I spoke two years ago, I gave the example of the contrast between funding in Warrington and Westminster, two places that I know—I live in Westminster when I am in London and in Warrington when I am in Cheshire. I made the point that funding was £8,100 per head in Westminster and about £5,000 per head in Warrington. My right hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry) made an excellent speech, but he was wrong to say that there was a differential of £1,000 per head; the differential is £3,000 or even £4,000 per head for some schools.

In my previous speech on this issue, I explained that I did not understand how Westminster, a relatively affluent part of London, could receive such an increased allocation over and above Warrington, which is not particularly affluent, although parts of it are. Teachers at schools such as St Monica’s and Appleton Thorn are dealing with really quite tough budgets and having to make very hard decisions, whereas there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that the extra money received by places such as Westminster resulted in more teachers per head. The differential of more than £3,000 per pupil is enormous when multiplied out and compared with a school with 100 or 200 pupils.

It was agreed that the existing formula had to change, and no serious attempt was made to defend it. We have now received the first response in the form of the initial allocation. I hate to say that my words did not work, but Westminster, which previously received £3,100 more per pupil than Warrington, will receive a further £200 per pupil from the initial allocation. Westminster is 10th out of the 152 local authorities. Warrington, which is 135th out of all local authorities, will receive no extra funding. Perhaps my previous speech was not as effective as it might have been.

I want to echo the words of the F40 campaign in its consultation response. What we have ended up with is neither transparent nor fair. The formula can do lots of things—it takes into account attainment and all sorts of other factors—and I understand that, even allowing for the very low budget in Warrington, attainment there is pretty good, which is testimony to the quality of teaching and the efforts made. However, when we know that the formula must be changed but it is not because to do so would be politically difficult, that is not courageous government.

I have asked why the new Government, who came in bristling with talent, new ideas and determination to get things right, have not been able to put the formula right. It looks like they are not going to be able to do so over the five years of this Parliament. I understand that the formula was inherited from the previous Government, that many of the trade-offs were unacceptable, particularly in the massive haemorrhaging of funding to London, and that that will take a while to unwind. Nevertheless, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) said, every journey must start with a small step. We have not really taken that step yet.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

The Office for Budget Responsibility forecast for 2014 is that business investment will rise by 8%. Given the depth of the crisis to which we have had to respond, this is a slow process, but business investment is now overtaking consumer spending as the driver of the recovery.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

16. What steps he is taking to support energy-intensive industries.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

The Government have in place several measures to address energy costs for these industries. The Budget announced a further £7 billion package of support including: extending the existing compensation scheme to 2020, under which we have distributed £30 million to 53 companies; new compensation for costs of the renewables obligation and feed-in tariff; qualified exemptions to the carbon price support mechanism for combined heat and power; and capping the CPS at £18 per tonne of carbon.

[David Mowat]

The Secretary of State will be aware that even after the welcome changes in the Budget, the carbon price floor in the UK is four to five times higher than in the rest of the EU, where the emissions trading scheme is more or less defunct. In addition, the EU has a system of more direct subsidy in countries such as Germany for these industries. Can he assure the House that he will be active in ensuring that our industries are supported in the same way as those in the EU are, and that the 900,000 jobs in energy-intensive industries are protected?

[Vince Cable]

Indeed, it is a major industry. My figures suggest that we have some 600,000 jobs directly or indirectly affected. It is a massive industry. We believe in it, and it is important that it is able to compete on a level playing field. That was the purpose of the changes announced in the Budget and we are now actively pursuing state aid clearance to make sure that these compensation mechanisms go through.

Engineering Skills (Perkins Review)

David Mowat Excerpts

Tuesday 10th December 2013 Westminster Hall

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff) on securing the debate. I want to make two or three quick points.

I stand before Members as a lapsed engineer. Thirty years ago, I set off for Imperial college, determined to become an engineer. I finished my degree, and I then became a chartered accountant, although I did go back to work in technology. I have followed many debates about engineering over the past 30 years, and it might be useful to isolate the reasons why so many people in our country, uniquely, follow such a career path and what the Government, educators and society more generally can do to make it less prevalent. I think we all agree it is not a good thing.

As I said, I am a lapsed engineer. Latterly, I have also failed to get my daughter to do A-level physics. She is doing maths and chemistry, which is a bridge too far. I realise, therefore, that my credentials for speaking in this debate are not as strong as they might be.

I have three points. First, on status and culture, there has been something unique about the status of engineering in Britain, although that is perhaps truer of England than of Britain. The hon. Member for Ellesmere Port and Neston (Andrew Miller) talked about engineers in Germany; I used to work in Norway a lot, where, again, people referred to engineers in the same way as they would to doctors. We do not do that in this country, and we have never really got close to doing it. Clearly, it does not matter that much, but it is an indicator of the way society regards the profession.

Another indicator—I have often reflected on this—is when an engineer was last on “Desert Island Discs” or “Woman’s Hour” talking about what they do and how they have made a difference. One of this country’s big success stories over the past few years has been Range Rover. It cannot make enough of its new aluminium cars, given how many it sells all over the world, but how many people in our country could even come close to naming the cars’ chief designer? Would that be the same in Germany, France and Holland? I suggest not, and we need to be cognisant of that. Things have got better recently—and they need to, given the shortage of engineers.

I would depart slightly from some of the remarks made by the two previous speakers. There can be a danger of confusing technicians with engineers. I do not say that in a snobby way, but there can be an assumption that people have to be practical to study engineering—that those who would study engineering at Oxford, Cambridge or Imperial would be the sort of people who enjoy stripping down a car. That is not true, and having such an assumption at the heart of the discipline of engineering can be a problem. That is not to say that places such as the JCB academy are not brilliant—we absolutely need more of them, and they have a role to play—but we must be careful about our language.

At organisations such as the Royal Dutch Shell group, the top half-dozen people will almost always have an engineering background. In Royal Dutch Shell’s case, that is partly because of its Dutch heritage, rather than its British heritage—[Interruption.] Yes, it is. In so far as there are disciplines and professions in the Royal Dutch Shell group, the people with an engineering background tend to be based in Holland, not the UK, which is stronger on marketing.

Aside from status and culture, we also have salary and prospects. When I finished my engineering degree, I became a chartered accountant. One of the guys who started on the same day had come top in engineering at Cambridge, but he became a chartered accountant and then went into the City—I do not know what happened to him after that. That would happen in no other country in the world; nobody in the United States who left the Massachusetts Institute of Technology having come high up the list of graduates would go on to become a certified public accountant.

However, at the time I became a chartered accountant—it was 30 years ago, although I suspect this is still happening—we saw fit to incentivise people in a certain way. The guy who joined with me was making a commercial decision about his career, and he thought, rightly or wrongly, that he could do better and progress more quickly by taking the route he did. As a result, however, there was a penalty to be paid by society, and I contend that we have been paying it for the past 20 or 30 years.

There is also an issue about salary. I gently point out that, while the Government hire many engineers and people from other professions, such as barristers, we would have to go a long way to find engineers we chose to pay £200,000 or £300,000 purely from Government money, in the same way as we choose—again, uniquely in this country—to remunerate advocates.

[Peter Luff]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech. Just for the record, I should say that the median annual salary by degree subject six months and three and a half years after graduation is higher for engineering and technology than it is for law.

[David Mowat]

I am delighted to hear that. However, I repeat my question: how many engineers do the Government pay £200,000 or £300,000 a year, in the same way as they apparently pay advocates—a subset of them are about to go on strike over their pay—out of public, as opposed to private, money? We think that is normal. That is to do with cultural norms and with an assumption we make in this country about the relative value of careers, which is wrong.

Finally, we have made a lot of progress—even in this Parliament—on education. I welcome a lot of the noise coming out of the Government about the need to promote technical education, maths and physics—the STEM subjects—and all that goes with that. I have been of the view that a liberal arts-biased education system is deeply ingrained in our country. I very much hope that the progress that has been made in the past few years towards emphasising STEM—particularly for women—continues. Fixing the issue is a prerequisite for achieving the sort of economy we will need to have in the next two or three decades.

[Meg Munn]

rose—

Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Thursday 24th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

I have visited Northumberland college, which serves my right hon. Friend’s constituency, and it is an impressive institution. Of course, it is important to ensure that adult skills are available throughout our country, and as the recent OECD study showed, spreading English and maths skills is vital to ensuring not only that we can improve our competitiveness as a country but, most importantly, that we can allow everybody to participate. Improving technologies in teaching will help, but we must ensure that there is access to basic skills throughout the country.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

6. What projects will be eligible for funding from the Green Investment Bank.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

The UK Green Investment Bank has a total of £3.8 billion of funding to finance green projects in sectors within its approved remit, and to date it has committed £714 million, including for waste recycling facilities, energy from waste plant, offshore wind farms and energy efficiency projects.

[David Mowat]

I thank the Secretary of State. It is impressive how quickly the bank has got up and running. However, the scope envisaged during the Committee stage of the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill, and indeed in the Bill’s green purpose, included low-carbon industries such as the nuclear supply chain. I understand that that did not get EU state aid clearance. Are we going to appeal against that so that we can go back to the original mandate?

[Vince Cable]

The hon. Gentleman is right that European state aid restrictions mean that the sectors involved are narrowly defined, and I understand his concern for the nuclear industry supply chain. However, following the announcement of the new reactor this week, and the commitment by the companies involved to provide more than 50% of procurement to British companies, the nuclear supply chain has a really excellent future anyway.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady is a brilliant campaigner for higher quality schools in her constituency, and we will do everything we can to help. I am afraid that her question lays bare the fact that there are some really good MPs on the Labour Benches who want their schools to become academies, but an insufficient number of Labour local authorities that are prepared to stand with us against the enemies of promise.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

T6. Bewsey Lodge primary school is a very good school in a difficult part of Warrington. It has a large special needs unit that, although it is high quality, reduces the overall performance metrics, which affects morale. Better school comparability could be achieved if metrics were produced with, and without, special needs units.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his keen interest in schools in his constituency that provide important and excellent special educational needs provision. It is important that we have an accountability system that recognises the achievements of all pupils, which very much chimes with Sir Michael Wilshaw’s comments last week, as well as the strengthening of the SEN element of inspection from September 2012. We will launch an accountability consultation shortly, and doubtless my hon. Friend will want to contribute to it on the very point that he has just made.

Curriculum and Exam Reform

David Mowat Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to hon. Gentleman, as ever, for lessons on humility and how to avoid arrogance, and how to acknowledge that we have made mistakes in the past. As in so many areas of life, he is my model in all things.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

In the recent past, examining boards have competed with each other to offer better results. This has been a driver of grade inflation. Now we are moving away from having a single board per subject, how can we be sure this will be dealt with?

[Michael Gove]

This is a very good point. I was keen to try to deal with this problem of competition, which I believed generated a race to the bottom. While I was keen to do so, however, I recognised that it was a step too far at this stage. We retain the option of moving in that direction if exam boards do not change the way in which they operate, but I have been encouraged by the eagerness with which awarding organisations have responded to Ofqual’s desire to ensure that standards are higher. I note that the shadow Secretary of State did not acknowledge Ofqual or thank it for the work it did to ensure that the English GCSE and other GCSEs were protected as gold standard qualifications. I am confident that the current leadership of Ofqual is doing the right thing. I believe that the steps and instruments are there to ensure that we can have more rigorous qualifications.

Post-16 High Needs Provision (Warrington)

David Mowat Excerpts

Tuesday 15th January 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr Laws]

That is important because the Department must be able to distinguish between areas where the figures may be unreliable and those where they are reliable. We recognise that there may be issues in Warrington.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

It is true that the rate has gone up significantly in the last year, which is causing the anomaly. Even after it has gone up, it is still lower than the national average. Surely that is relevant to the way in which the computation is done, because it does not imply any abuse.

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. When looking at the statistics and trying to understand why the changes have taken place in specific authorities, my officials will carry out such checks to test the credibility of the data. We believe that this level of increase may in some cases result from misunderstanding or inaccurate predictions of the number of students with high-level needs because that scale of growth in numbers is not reflected across the country in the lower age groups. To manage expectations, the Education Funding Agency set a limit of 24% to cap the projected increase in the number of student places, and has encouraged authorities in some cases to provide more realistic estimates of places where the original increase reported cannot be justified. I am not saying that that is the case in Warrington, but in some areas that has been a concern. A cap has been necessary to be fair to all local authorities.

As a result of the exchange of information between Warrington council and the EFA, the position reached just before Christmas was that the post-16 element of its high needs allocation will be £677,000 next year, within a total high needs budget of £18 million. The EFA is now looking at more recent information from the council to see whether further adjustments are necessary to the amount allocated to it. The particular issue in Warrington is that it has predicted a significant increase of 65% in the number of places and a significant increase in consequent costs since 2011. Within the increase in recent years, a much larger number of students have, as the hon. Lady said, attended non-maintained and independent special schools and colleges, which tend to be more expensive.

Although the window for further adjustments to dedicated schools grant allocations has now generally closed, the further education and school sixth form elements of those allocations are not due to be finalised until early March. In general, we expect all local authorities to live within the overall dedicated schools grant that they have been allocated. For Warrington borough council that is £146 million, within which the high needs allocation is £18 million. We are aware that there may be unintended consequences arising from the changes due to specific local circumstances, such as those set out today by the hon. Member for Warrington North and my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat).

An opportunity remains until 22 February for a few local authorities to make an exceptional case to the Education Funding Agency, and I assure them that the EFA and my officials will look carefully at whether adjustments can and should be made if the changes have affected particular areas in ways that were not predicted, and if they are material. In its review of such cases, the agency will ensure that any further adjustments are not to the detriment of other local authorities. We want to be as fair as we can to all authorities.

Gender Balance on Corporate Boards

David Mowat Excerpts

Monday 7th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

I welcome the opportunity to speak in the debate. As the Minister will know, I am a member of the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee. The Committee is currently undertaking an inquiry into women in the workplace, which will include a review of the recommendations of the Davies report. I do not want to pre-empt our final report and recommendations to the Government, but I will say that we wanted to institute a cross-party inquiry for the very reasons that the Minister gave earlier.

Diversity on boards is good for companies, and therefore good for the British economy. Given the present state of the economy, we should explore every avenue that may lead to increased innovation, diversity and productivity. In response to what was said by the hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab), let me point out that diversity means introducing different experiences to a board, rather than a single set of pre-judged experiences. The hon. Gentleman advanced the classic Catch-22 argument that those who do not have enough experience cannot join a board, but those who are not members of the board do not have enough experience in the first place. However, we all have to start somewhere.

Evidence given to our Committee has made it clear that there are strong views on both sides about the imposition of quotas, but it has also shown that some companies have taken strategic steps to increase diversity through, for instance, regular reporting on how they are achieving a gender balance. I was interested in what was said by the hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) about the use of reporting to drive progress. Pay transparency is another key component, as are solid targets and consistent ways of ensuring that progress is made. As with politics, progress can go back as well as forward. Unfortunately, when it comes to membership of the Cabinet, it is going back. It is important to have a clear and consistent policy in this regard.

We should take account of companies that are keeping their heads well down and not joining in the argument because they think that if they do not participate in it they can ignore it. I do not rule out the use of quotas if we find that a persistent sector of the economy does not consider diversity to be integral to the progress of the economy overall, and I think that the Government have a role to play in that respect. I agree that quotas are not the only way of achieving diversity, but I think it important for the Government to think about procurement and about how they spend money on training and higher education.

One other aspect we should be considering is regulation of the London stock exchange. Requiring companies that are members of the stock exchange to look at how they achieve diversity on their boards and throughout senior management is a way of avoiding primary legislation while driving progress. In response to the hon. Member for Esher and Walton, I should add that one of the companies that gave evidence to us, Clydesdale bank, has set a target of increasing the number of women in the three top senior management roles over the next few years. That is one way women can gain experience in executive director roles, as well as non-executive director roles, which have been referred to.

This is a work in progress, but the Government need to be at the heart of it.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

The hon. Lady said that companies that are more diverse grow more quickly and that there is evidence of that. Is this not, then, a self-correcting problem, because all companies need to grow, and those that are struggling to grow and are not diverse enough should surely be doing what is required to correct that? Surely this is self-correcting, so the measures she is describing are unnecessary.

[Ann McKechin]

A persistent group of people will always resist change if they can. Despite the good track record, there are contrary voices, as we heard during the Business, Innovation and Skills Committee inquiry, stating that men are inherently better at doing these things anyway and that things will be fine. That view should not be accepted in the 21st century. The public, this Parliament and the Government should take an active role in engaging with this. Issues of pay transparency, part-time work, child care and business culture should interest us all, whether we are in business or not.

I concur with my hon. Friend the shadow Business Secretary about it being important that we respond positively to the EU over how this country and this Government can make a difference to the economy, which will, I hope, improve if we ensure that diversity is key to our corporate structures.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Mowat Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend and I will respond with enthusiasm. I want to make sure that the very best, which succeed not just in the quality of academic and technical education, but in instilling a love of creative education in young people, have an opportunity to help schools that may not have those strengths. I have never visited a school that is strong academically that is not also strong creatively. The more we can learn from great schools, the better for all our children.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

12. What plans he has to review the allocation formula for education funding.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

The current system for funding schools is unfair and out of date. In March, the Secretary of State announced our intention to introduce a new national funding formula which would redistribute funding on a fair, transparent and pupil-led basis.

[David Mowat]

The current formula, which we inherited, contains in-built bias and anomalies. Given that the Secretary of State and several Ministers are on record as saying that it needs to be replaced, why must we wait until 2015 before that process even starts?