Building Schools for the Future

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 14th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend, who serves on the Education Committee, has made a study of the waste inherent in Building Schools for the Future, and he is right: it is a scandal that, while buildings, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) pointed out, were in a state of decay, unfortunately millions of pounds were spent on consultants. One individual, in one year, made more than £1 million as a result of his endeavours as a consultant working on Building Schools for the Future.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Is it not becoming increasingly obvious that last year the Secretary of State took the decision to abandon all those schools under Building Schools for the Future in too much haste? As a result, he has had revised lists—I think there were six in all—and now this court judgment. We have a school in my area, more than 100 years old, being held up by pit props. A contract was made with the builder, but the case is still waiting to be decided. His junior Minister said that it is a compelling case, and there must be scores like that all around Britain. Why does he not stop the arrogance and get on with the job?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman says on the one hand that we acted with unprecedented haste, and on the other hand that we should get on with it. One of the reasons we acted as we did is that the scheme we inherited was wasteful and inefficient. I should point out that as a direct result of changing the scheme we have been able to ensure that a school that was part of Building Schools for the Future, in the constituency of the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband), is going to be built one year faster than it would have been under Labour, with 30% savings. Under this coalition Government, we are making the savings and beating the time scales to ensure that in the most deprived areas, the schools are built.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

My hon. Friend makes a strong case for colleges. Perhaps it is time that I put on record the fact that this Government believe that further education colleges are the unheralded triumph of the English education system. Furthermore, we will continue to give them greater discretion, greater opportunity and greater freedoms in order to allow those with the tastes and talents to pursue vocational and other kinds of learning to fulfil their potential.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Has the Secretary of State had a look at the letter from the headmaster of Tibshelf school explaining the difficulties of having to deal with the split school site in Bolsover and North East Derbyshire? Has he also received a letter from the Derby building company Tomlinson and Sons which expected to build the school, or does he have the same disease as the Deputy Prime Minister and stop dealing with his Red Box after 3 o’clock?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful for that well-crafted question from the eloquent, grammar-school-educated Member for Bolsover. I am well aware that Derbyshire county council, under many years of Labour rule, did not secure value for money for the taxpayer. I am pleased that the incredibly wasteful Building Schools for the Future scheme is being replaced with a more effective way of ensuring that money goes to the front line, and I look forward in due course to visiting Bolsover and North East Derbyshire with him and the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel) in order to salute what a coalition Government are doing for a generation betrayed by Labour.

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Performance)

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Denham]

A year ago the black country had a functioning regional development agency. That agency has been destroyed. The hon. Lady is clutching at straws when she says that there may come a point when the Black Country LEP is fully functioning, but it will have no resources, no powers and no legal rights. That is not a step forward; it is a step backwards. That is typical of the damage that the Business Secretary and his Department have done to economic policy in the past year.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

A week last Friday, together with Bolsover district council, we went to the east midlands region to try to get money for a firm that was going to provide 50 jobs on an old ex-pit site in the Bolsover area. There were quite a lot of applications, but the people there said that they could not deal with them. The net result is that we were talking for hours, but their hands were tied. The region still had some money available, but this Government, through this Department and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, were refusing to let them use it to provide the jobs to get the economy to grow. What a shower!

[Mr Denham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and his experience will be typical of many hon. Members’ experience, because this will have been a wasted year.

When the global banking crisis hit, the Labour Government did not sit by hoping that something would turn up. In the six months after that crisis hit, we cut VAT to boost growth; gave businesses time to pay the Revenue; speeded up payments to small businesses; introduced the scrappage scheme; started the enterprise finance guarantee; invested in key technologies and regionally important sectors; boosted investment in education and health; and reformed training support and expanded apprenticeships. In six months there was real energy and drive; from this Government and this Department there has been nothing in nearly nine months. Worse than that, the Business Secretary has made the wrong choices. Each has made life harder for businesses that wanted to invest to create jobs and grow. Instead of creating certainty and confidence, the Business Secretary has sown doubt and confusion.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The important point about our scheme is that we are giving schools additional money to support the participation of more children in competitive sports. As the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) pointed out, we are ring-fencing schools spending in cash terms and ensuring that the pupil premium is there to help the most disadvantaged. There will also be additional funding for every secondary school to ensure that it can maintain, if it wishes, its full role in a school sport partnership. However, let me make it clear: that money is for head teachers to spend. We are making sure that the bureaucracy that tied their hands in the past goes.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

John Barker runs the school sport partnerships in Bolsover and works at Tibshelf school, which has already been mentioned today, in my constituency. If the Secretary of State could, under this new deal, give him a job running the whole Bolsover school sport partnership and provide a new school building at Tibshelf as well, he would kill two birds with one stone. The school sport partnership will be happy; the Tibshelf people will be happy; and the 100-year-old school in Tibshelf that is being held up by pit props will be replaced. Can he give that guarantee?

[Michael Gove]

I have to say that if I leave the House at the end of today having made the hon. Gentleman a happy man, I will consider my political career to have reached its peak. I seriously accept both the case that he makes for capital funding for Tibshelf school, which is in his constituency, not that of the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Natascha Engel), and the case for support for the gentleman he mentions. I am sure that the money will be there to ensure that that gentleman can carry on his good work. As the Under-Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), made clear, capital funding is available for Derbyshire and I will ensure that capital funding is in future targeted on those areas of greatest need. There are few areas of greater need than those that the hon. Gentleman represents, and few are lucky to have such an eloquent advocate.

School Sports Funding

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

What I will enjoy today is educating Conservative Members. When we came into government, we introduced rules on the sale of playing fields, which was to be allowed only if the proceeds from a small patch of the land were to be reinvested in higher quality sports facilities on the same land. The hon. Gentleman should check his facts, because that is what happened.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

On the question of selling off playing fields, does my right hon. Friend recall from his youth that most of the welfare playing fields were sold off because the Tories shut the pits and the playing fields followed suit—[Laughter.] In Tibshelf in my area, in a school that will now no longer be rebuilt, John Barker runs a schools sport partnership and has managed to get more than 90% of the kids to start playing sport again. What does he get in return? He gets the sack: he is one of the people who have lost their jobs because of this lot.

[Andy Burnham]

I noticed that when my hon. Friend made that impassioned contribution coalition Members laughed, because they have no understanding of what happened to communities such as his and mine in the 1990s, when the coal industry social welfare organisation tried to protect some of those facilities. Some are still there, but not all of them. Coalition Members have no understanding of the role of sport and how hard communities in former mining areas have fought to keep their sports provision.

There was a developing consensus, which was repeated just before the recent general election. A write-up of a Radio 5 Live debate appears on the Youth Sports Trust website and it says that, on school sport partnerships, Hugh Robertson said it would be wrong to dismantle “13 years of work” and, instead, “the party would build on” them. But that broad consensus has now been broken by the Secretary of State. School sport partnerships have joined a growing list of things that the Conservative party said it would protect in opposition, but has scrapped in government.

Let me make one thing clear: Labour Members would have understood if the Government had decided to reduce funding to school sport partnerships and the Youth Sport Trust, as long as they kept the basic school sport partnership infrastructure in place. What we are struggling with is having to accept the Secretary of State’s decision to remove 100% of their funding and demolish an entire infrastructure and proven delivery system that is improving children’s lives here and now. I cannot understand why he has done that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

Yes, I do indeed recognise the excellent work of our colleges. That is why we want to give them more freedom, more discretion and more power to respond to the needs of learners and local businesses. We have begun to do that during our time in government, and I should like to draw the House’s attention to today’s written statement, which goes further along those lines.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State remember the Lib Dem halcyon days when he sat here on the Opposition side of the House opposing university top-up fees and walked through the same Lobby as me? He was also against the privatisation of Royal Mail, but we now know the price of a Liberal pledge: a seat on the Government Front Bench and a ministerial salary. What a price to pay.

[Vince Cable]

I have always enjoyed—[Interruption.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 11th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the passionate way in which he makes his case. I am well aware that in Nottinghamshire, and in many other areas, schools that desperately need refurbishment and rebuilding have been denied resources. One of the reasons why we had to change the BSF programme was that it was behind on its timetable, it was inefficient in the allocation of resources and vulnerable children, such as those for whom he speaks so passionately, were losing out. I can guarantee that Lord Hill will be in touch later today to fix a precise date to see my hon. Friend.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Has the Secretary of State received a report of our meeting with Jonathan Hill regarding Tibshelf community school in my constituency? The school is 100 years old, it is being held up by pit props and the teachers are having to travel six miles back and forth from Tibshelf to Deincourt community school, which is being closed by the county council. We desperately need to get this job done. The Minister said that this is a compelling case. Does the Secretary of State feel compelled to replace the school and rebuild it?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman always makes a compelling case for his constituents, and I am well aware that in the part of Derbyshire that he represents resources have not been devoted to the front line as efficiently as they should have been. One of the aims of the capital review that we have put in place and of the comprehensive spending review, which will report to the House next Wednesday, is to ensure that the schools in greatest need—both secondary and primary—receive resources as quickly and efficiently as possible.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank the Minister for that clear answer, which underlines the reason why he is so popular in the further education sector and elsewhere, and as regards providing apprenticeships—

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

Get on with it.

[Neil Carmichael]

All right. What will be done to ensure that pupils are properly signposted towards and encouraged to take vocational training?

Oral Answers to Questions

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I am very happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that problem, which is happening all around the country. As it happens, in his constituency, I believe that nine companies have taken up the enterprise finance scheme—654 companies in Scotland have done likewise—and have drawn more than £1 million from it, but I recognise the problem. Actually, I think I met the chief executive of the bank to which I believe my hon. Friend is referring last week. I am aware of the enormous frustration in many small-scale enterprises, and I will continue to pursue the matter.

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

What help will the Secretary of State give to those small and medium-sized businesses that were hoping to take part in the building of 700 schools, including one in Tibshelf in my constituency? Does he not understand that public sector cuts equals private sector misery?

[Vince Cable]

I think that the hon. Gentleman is conflating two massively different issues. I have many responsibilities—this is a very big Department—but school building, mercifully, is not one of them. However, he raises the more basic question of bank lending. Of course, there is an enormous problem, despite very high approval rates through the banking system. I am discussing with the Chancellor how we can improve the supply of capital, and there will be a paper before the summer on the different streams that we can energise to get capital flowing into good companies.

Education Funding

Dennis Skinner Excerpts

Monday 5th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab)]

The previous Tory Government closed the last 10 pits in the Derbyshire coalfield. Is the Minister going to tell me now that the prospect of two schools at Tibshelf and Shirebrook in that deprived ex-coal mining area has been stopped as well?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware that some schools in his local authority area have reached financial close, and those that have reached financial close, including Shirebrook, are unaffected.