Schools White Paper

Debate between Diana Johnson and Nadhim Zahawi

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My right hon. Friend is right to highlight that issue. I was in the Department when we rolled out relationships education and relationships and sex education in the curriculum, teaching young people what healthy relationships are like and how to identify unhealthy and abusive behaviour. That is a priority for me and it is in the White Paper under paragraph 80.

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State speaks about levelling up opportunity. In some of the most disadvantaged areas, including my own constituency, we have the excellent Hull and East Yorkshire Children’s University, which provides a rich source of experiences and support for pupils and schools. Will he say something about his plans to harness the expertise of organisations such as children’s universities and give them sustainable funding so they can get to work on that levelling-up agenda that the Government talk so much about?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

That is exactly what this White Paper will do and it is why the issue of teaching is so important to our plan. I will certainly have a look at the children’s university the right hon. Lady mentions. Anyone who wants to join us on this journey is most welcome, and we want everyone to come along because, if we deliver for every child, we will have done something great for the future of our country.

Higher Education Reform

Debate between Diana Johnson and Nadhim Zahawi

Thursday 24th February 2022 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I understand that an impact assessment has been produced on the changes to the repayment of loans. Can the Secretary of State tell the House what the impact of those changes will be for young women who come from less well-off backgrounds?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The really important thing to remind the right hon. Lady is that no student will pay more than they have borrowed. That is the most powerful message we can send out to anyone considering higher education.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Diana Johnson and Nadhim Zahawi

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

10. What recent assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the national tutoring programme in improving the educational attainment of pupils in the north of England.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)]

The national tutoring programme reached 308,000 pupils in 2020-21 and this year it is expanding further to offer high quality tuition for up to 2 million pupils across the country.

[Dame Diana Johnson]

I know that the Secretary of State is as concerned as I am about children in my constituency reaching their full educational potential, but I am concerned that only 240,000 enrolled on the national tutoring programme in its first year, that it has only a third of the funding that his own Government adviser put forward for covid catch-up and that funding per pupil will not reach 2010 levels for another three years. Can we see some evidence that the Government’s proposals are working? For example, can we see granular information about how the national tutoring programme is reaching the most disadvantaged children in our communities?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady for her question. She is always assiduous and follows the evidence. I am also grateful to her for coming to the Department on another matter to do with further education. The academic years independent evaluation is taking place and will assess the programme’s impact on pupils’ educational attainment in all regions, including the north, and we will of course publish that. I want to share with the House some of the latest reported figures on the national tutoring programme. It is going well in all parts of England, and provisional figures from our delivery partners show that so far this year 3,822 schools have engaged with the programme through the tuition partners and academic mentors. The latest reports show that 475 academic mentors have been placed in schools in the most disadvantaged areas of England. On top of this, all schools are sharing the £579 million to recruit their own local tutors.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Diana Johnson and Nadhim Zahawi

Tuesday 21st January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Dame Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

T3. Does the Secretary of State agree that local enterprise partnerships should be led by the business community in the area they serve?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Nadhim Zahawi)]

Yes, she does.

Higher Technical Education Reform

Debate between Diana Johnson and Nadhim Zahawi

Monday 8th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank my hon. Friend and neighbour for her excellent question, and I congratulate MGTS on its contract. She rightly raises the ever faster moving nature of the economy and its changing shape, including some technological disruption. That is precisely why we want employers to co-create these technical qualifications. I do not think that the Government are able, on their own, to move to where the markets are. Businesses understand that better than anyone else, which is why we want them to be at the heart of this.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Following on from the question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for West Bromwich West (Mr Bailey) about how we encourage more people to participate in technical education and obtain the qualifications, what specifically does the Minister think we need to do about the fact that we still do not have enough girls and women taking up technical subjects? We are missing a huge pool of very good people who could make a career in technical subjects.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Diana Johnson and Nadhim Zahawi

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

5. What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the universal infant free school meals policy since 2014.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)]

Take-up is a key measure of success for universal infant free school meals, and it has been strong since the introduction of the policy. According to the latest figures, 1.5 million infant pupils—excluding those eligible for benefit-based free school meals—took a lunch on census day. That represents a take-up rate of 86.2%.

[Diana Johnson]

Some 15 years ago, Hull led the way by pioneering the policy of free healthy school meals to fight poverty and childhood obesity and to improve attainment in the classroom. When the Liberal Democrats came to power in Hull, they scrapped that scheme in 2007, but this was followed by the Labour Government’s pilots and the announcement from the coalition on free school meals for the earliest years. However, given the continuing link between poor nutrition and childhood obesity, is it not disappointing that just-managing families in Hull are seeing a doubling of prices for school meals, all because the austerity funding squeeze on school budgets and councils has not ended in deprived areas?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for that question. Giving free school meals to infants encourages children to start on the right path to nutritious meals. Those who are eligible will go on to claim free school meals, and it is worth noting that the new eligibility criteria and the protections introduced last April mean that we expect more pupils to be entitled to free school meals by 2022, by contrast to the scaremongering that took place in this place and outside when the policy was introduced.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Diana Johnson and Nadhim Zahawi

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker.

When does the Minister intend to announce the date for issuing the criteria for the pilots to address holiday hunger that were announced just a few weeks ago? Hull is champing at the bit to make its application.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We have done some excellent work on this, and an announcement is imminent.

School Holidays (Meals and Activities) Bill

Debate between Diana Johnson and Nadhim Zahawi

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 19th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I will make some more headway first. Then I will take a few more interventions.

To reach an informed decision, we will work across Government. We will begin immediately to carry out rapid research, along with further stakeholder engagement. That will enable us to learn from those who are already active in the field about how to achieve the most positive outcomes. I am keen to work in partnership with the right hon. Member for Birkenhead to drive that forward, and I will be most grateful for his continued support and expertise. We will, in particular, look to colleagues in Wales, who are already offering “food and fun” holiday schemes, and to the teams who have evaluated them. We will learn lessons from similar schemes elsewhere. There are, for example, the opportunity areas, six more of which we have launched today. We will also consider how to build on breakfast club provision. Drawing on the learning from the research and engagement, we will set out our plans for the research, including the pilot programme, later in 2018.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

Will the pilots take place this year? In Hull we are already trying to plan for a scheme to be in place in the summer, and it would be nice to know whether we could apply for funds to conduct one of the pilots.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We will begin the research immediately. The difficulty with beginning the pilots in the holidays this year is the procurement process, but I want to begin them as soon as possible.

Contaminated Blood and Blood Products

Debate between Diana Johnson and Nadhim Zahawi

Thursday 24th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson]

Yes; the hon. Gentleman makes a very important point. One of the unintended consequences of devolution is that we are ending up with such a mishmash of schemes, and that is of concern for the people affected.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

One of my constituents, Mr M, makes exactly that point: it is unfair that the Scottish settlement is so different from the settlement for him in Stratford-on-Avon. Most importantly, one of my constituents, who is in the Public Gallery, wants to remind the House that there are fewer than 300 primary beneficiaries left, and it is vital that they are not forgotten.

[Diana Johnson]

Absolutely. That is a very important point. I will come on to the primary beneficiaries in a while, but I will now make some progress.

My first concern was about the different schemes that are available. The second issue, which is also important, is that we know the five existing trusts will be amalgamated into a single body to administer the scheme at some point in 2017. I am deeply troubled by the fact that the administration of the new body looks likely to be done by a profit-making private company. I know that Atos and Capita have attended meetings with Department of Health officials about the new contract. Formal tender submissions will be due soon, with a decision on the contractor set to be made in 2017. No Health Minister has had the courtesy to tell the all-party group of these plans, nor were the beneficiaries asked for their views about this in the survey done in January. Even the Department’s response to the survey, which was published in July, made absolutely no mention of such a prospect. Alongside hon. Members on both sides of the House, I cannot support proposals to contract out provision to Atos or Capita.

Let me remind the House how many in this community were infected in the first place. Many contracted HIV and hepatitis C from American blood products supplied by profit-making private companies. The United States, unlike the UK, has always allowed the commercial purchase of blood products, and those products were often donated by people who desperately needed money and were willing to be less than honest about their chances of infection. This is the reason why so many in the affected community harbour such distrust of private companies.