Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity

Emma Hardy Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

We published our special educational needs and alternative provision improvement plan in March 2023—the hon. Lady may have missed that as she was not yet in her place—and we have backed the plan with investment of £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025. That will fund new and alternative provision places, and it is also a significant investment in the high-needs budget. We know that we need to invest in improving the special educational needs and alternative provision system, and I am happy to go through that plan with her.

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State’s plans to increase maths teaching up to 18 are interesting. I wonder how she expects to deliver that when there is currently a shortfall of over 5,000 maths teachers and the retention of maths teachers is at an all-time low. How does she think she can deliver maths teachers to increase maths education when she cannot deliver enough for children up to the age of 16?

[Gillian Keegan]

We have some initiatives in place. First, we are raising the starting salary to £30,000 for all new teachers across the country, and more in London. Secondly, we are increasing—in fact doubling—the premium we pay to maths, computer science and some science teachers to enable them to earn more. That is the plan. We are also updating our retention and recruitment strategy before the end of the year.

Anyone who wants a blueprint for a Labour Government does not need to look back to the ’90s and early-2000s, when Labour oversaw a decade of decline. No, they should look to Wales. After a quarter of a century running the education system in Wales, the Labour Administration preside over the worst-performing education authority in the UK. While in England we have increased the number of teachers by 27,000, the numbers have fallen in Wales. While our standards rise, Wales consistently has the worst results for maths and reading in the UK. Those are facts. Even before the pandemic, the head of the OECD said that the Welsh education system had not just “underperformed” but “seen its performance decline”. There is nothing that stifles opportunity more than an education system in decline under Labour.

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[Gillian Keegan]

I am happy to answer the hon. Gentleman’s question. I always want things to improve in Wales, and I very much care about the Welsh children. It is not my words; it is the OECD and the international league tables—which I believe they have actually withdrawn from now because they do not want the scrutiny. We have to be open and transparent and put ourselves forward for international scrutiny, and that is where these words are coming from.

[Emma Hardy]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Gillian Keegan]

I will give way one more time to the hon. Lady.

[Emma Hardy]

The Secretary of State is being generous. I was interested in her comments about some university degrees not being of high value. I wonder how she seeks to calculate whether those degrees are not worth the same as others. Does she intend to use the longitudinal educational outcomes data that looks at average earnings? Does she acknowledge that children who wish to stay in areas such as Hull will earn less because wages are lower in certain areas, and that that has nothing to do with the degree? Would she reflect on the presentation given to the Treasury Committee recently, which said that outcomes in life and how successful someone is in terms of job and income are everything to do with their parents’ background and not the background or anything to do with the university that that person attended?

[Gillian Keegan]

I am happy to come to that later. I am concerned about ensuring that children and young people in Knowsley, Manchester, Hull, Blyth, Teesside and all over the country get fantastic opportunities, so that their earnings rise. That is what we in this party will continue to do.

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[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

I think the best word to describe what was in the King’s Speech is “inadequate”. It is clear that the Government have neither the energy nor the vision to deal with some of the difficulties facing so many people in our country. The disappointment of the speech adds to the general feeling of decline over the past 13 years. What the country really needs is change. That is the sense I get from each and every person I go out and speak to: it is time for a change. What they really need is a mission-led Labour Government focused on putting right the mistakes of the past 13 years.

We heard a perfect illustration of the Government’s governing by slogans from the Education Secretary at the Dispatch Box earlier when she talked about the idea of low-value degrees. She and other members of the Government often use that phrase, but they have utterly failed to define it. Every time they try, they realise that it is impossible to work out.

I am going to quote that well-known socialist Lord Willetts, who I believe still holds the Conservative Whip over in the House of Lords. We talked at the Treasury Committee about the impact of somebody’s degree on their life chances. I questioned him about evidence from the Resolution Foundation, which said that

“it is clear that much of what happens post-university is still determined by certain socio-economic characteristics chosen for us by chance at birth”.

It added that

“the IFS have utilised anonymised tax records and student loan data to show that”—

this is the bit that I hope the Education Secretary is listening to—

“even accounting for institution attended and subject studied, graduates from wealthier families earned more.”

That is the evidence that we have been given. It was collected from anonymised tax data, and it shows that even among people who do the same course at the same university, if someone comes from a wealthier background, they go on to earn more.

I put that to Lord Willetts—I am sure Members understand that he is not a well-known socialist—and he said, “That is absolutely fair.” He absolutely acknowledged that that is the case. He said:

“It is indeed the case that your background, even if you partly overcome it in your time at university, for any given degree, then has an impact in the labour market. The presumption”—

this is how he explained why some people do better at university than others, and why background is important—

“is that this is to do with all the networks and the social capital and the wider opportunities you bring to your hunting for jobs after you have finished your time or in your last year at university.”

So the background, the networks and the social capital of the parents had the greatest impact on how well someone did at university.

That is exemplified by the way in which this Government seem to operate, and their apparent view of teachers. Teachers do an amazing job, as do many of the people in universities, but they are not divorced from the environment in which they exist. Someone may go to university and have to work without that social capital or network. Another example given by Lord Willetts related to the unpaid internships that many employers continue to offer. If people are not able to take those up, they will not have the same opportunities as others.

Lord Willetts also gave some interesting evidence about degrees. He said that people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds tended to go for degree courses in which they were trained specifically for one occupation, because, he said, they were unable to take the risk. Those people do not want to study a subject such as history—which, I should point out, is the degree held by most top CEOs in the FTSE 100—because they sense the risk of not being employable. We already have a two-tier system in our university jobs market and in our degrees market. This attack that suggests that somehow universities are responsible for the inequalities in our country that so many people face is ludicrous. Once again, the Government are pushing the blame on to someone else rather than accepting the fact that inequality has grown on their watch. If they really want to address the need for aspiration and social mobility, they need to consider addressing the background that so many people come from.

[The Minister for Skills, Apprenticeships and Higher Education (Robert Halfon)]

rose—

[Emma Hardy]

Of course I will always give way to the right hon. Gentleman.

[Robert Halfon]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. We used to serve on the Education Committee together, but I think that her argument is fundamentally wrong. If it is not wrong, why are there some incredible universities—I am thinking of Nottingham Trent University, the University of East London, which I visited last week, and Staffordshire University—with an extraordinary number of disadvantaged students, who do not have the networks and so on to which the hon. Lady referred, but many of whom get good jobs and good skills? If that is the case, it is not to do with networks; it is to do with good teaching at good universities.

[Emma Hardy]

I have the utmost respect for the right hon. Gentleman, and I remember his love of Nottingham Trent University from when we served together on the Education Committee. There are some examples of universities doing great things to generate the correct networks for pupils, but the anonymised data, including the anonymised tax records, show that even when all that is taken into account—and of course there are excellent universities doing excellent work—what determines the jobs that people get when they leave university is their parents’ background. Those are the facts. The right hon. Gentleman can have alternative views, but he cannot have alternative facts.

In the context of schools and teachers and the difficulties that people may experience when they go to work, I now want to say a little about women with endometriosis. I have spoken about this many times in the Chamber. One in 10 women have the condition—it is as common as diabetes or asthma—but if I asked everyone in the Chamber about it today, I would probably find that many had never heard of it. It is a debilitating condition that affects a woman’s entire body, and is often linked to the menstrual cycle.

Many of the women I have spoken to who have the condition want to work and to do well. Indeed, many work as teaching assistants in schools or as teachers, because it is a female-dominated profession. Our survey established that half of them took time off work often or very often because of their condition, two fifths worried about losing their jobs because of their endometriosis and a third believed that they had missed out on promotion opportunities because of it, while 90% said that it had had an impact on their long-term financial situation, and one in six—remember, this condition is as common as diabetes or asthma—had had to give up work all together.

All that is required to keep these women in work are the usual reasonable adjustments and a consideration of the way in which work is structured. Some great cross-party work has been done on the menopause, and policies in the workplace seem to be changing, but I would have really liked to see in the King’s Speech a measure to address endometriosis and some of the other conditions affecting women.

Locally in my constituency, the Hull and East Yorkshire endometriosis group, which is full of amazing, formidable women, is working with the trade unions to create a rights charter and to encourage workplaces to look at how women with endometriosis are treated. But again, we did not see anything on rights at work in the King’s Speech. There was no employment Bill. There was no new deal for working people. There was nothing. Fundamentally, if we want to get the changes that people need—the genuine opportunities for all people from all backgrounds and the opportunities for women to continue in work—what we need is a Labour Government.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (Jacob Young)]

It is a privilege to follow the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson). Both she and I entered the House of Commons aged just 26, grew up in working-class families in the north-east and think that she would be a better leader of the Labour party than the current one.

The title of the debate is “Breaking down barriers to opportunity”. It is testament to the progress that the country has made that myself, the Secretary of State for Education, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Gillian Keegan), the deputy leader of the Labour party, the right hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), and the shadow Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South, are all from working-class families in northern towns and are now responding to the King’s Speech in the mother of all Parliaments. I think that is a good thing.

It is a huge honour to close the debate on His Majesty’s Gracious Speech, the first in over 70 years, and on the vital issues of unlocking the great potential of our young people and unleashing opportunities across all parts of our country, on behalf of the Government. As has been widely acknowledged during the debate, education is one of the most powerful levers we have to help achieve this Government’s defining mission of levelling up economic growth, improving people’s quality of life and restoring the pride in the places they call home.

I thank everyone for their contributions to the debate, in particular my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton), my hon. Friends the Members for South Dorset (Richard Drax), for Aylesbury (Rob Butler) and for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond), and who could forget the chair of the APPG for Shakespeare, my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Rowley Regis (James Morris).

Like my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education, I started my career as an apprentice, before spending nine years in Teesside’s chemical industry, so I am especially passionate about ensuring that the next generation has the best possible choices and opportunities.

As the Prime Minister has said, for the next generation, and indeed for our country, that means taking difficult decisions for the long term, so that we lay the foundations for sustained success, enabling people everywhere to build a brighter future. And in that, as my right hon. Friend, the Education Secretary, has rightly said, we are building on a proud record.

Huge credit must go to the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, my right hon. Friend the Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove) and the Minister for Schools, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), for their ambition and vision back in 2010 for taking on the soft bigotry of those who believed that some are pre-destined for success while others are not.

None the less, we know that there is more to do to equip children starting school today to take up the jobs of tomorrow, starting with no more rip-off degrees, no more arbitrary targets for university, and no more assumptions that university is the only route to success. Instead, we are giving every generation real choices and a commitment to a real return on their investment.

[Emma Hardy]

Will the Minister give way?

[Jacob Young]

The hon. Lady has spoken many times in this debate, so I think I shall make some progress.

[Emma Hardy]

rose—

[Jacob Young]

We are giving a commitment to a real return on their investment, their hard work, their hard cash by delivering more high-quality technical education—

[Emma Hardy]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

If the Minister was going to give way, I am sure that he would give an indication that he wishes to do so.