Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old

Gary Sambrook Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak in today’s debate on behalf of the Opposition, and to set out the contrast between a Conservative Government who have spent 12 long years failing Britain and a Labour party determined to make our country the best place to grow up and grow old.

As the Leader of the Opposition set out last week, at the heart of the Government’s programme there is a poverty of ambition for our public services, entirely inadequate for the challenges we face. We see that in the Government’s ongoing refusal to commit to a children’s recovery plan to support children after the disruption of the pandemic on anything like the scale that either their adviser, Sir Kevan Collins, or the Labour party has set out. I remain disappointed but sadly not surprised. After all, this is the Government who reopened the pubs before they reopened schools.

Twelve years in and the Conservatives are out of ideas, out of touch and out of steam. The challenges we face as a country demand vision, leadership, energy, drive and determination. Of course there are the challenges that every country faces, and now there are the challenges bequeathed by the pandemic and its legacy. But there are also the challenges brought by 12 years of Conservative failure, and what they all have in common is that every single one of them is a challenge from which this Government flinch.

A generation of children have been through the education system in this country under Conservative Governments since 2010. Their experience is the core narrative of this Government’s failure: not simply a failure to deliver, but a failure to think, a failure to plan, a failure to resource and a failure to learn. I think of what a child starting school in 2010 will have seen in that time: real-terms cuts to funding per pupil; secondary school classes at their largest for a generation; hundreds of thousands more children eligible for free school meals; school building repairs cancelled or postponed; hundreds of days lost to the pandemic; botched examinations not for one year, but two; and now this historic failure to invest in the children’s recovery plan that the Government’s own expert recommended and that our children desperately need.

The only thing on the up under this Government is child poverty. Now, as that young person looks ahead to university and the years that follow, they can see higher costs than ever before, stretching almost to retirement.

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for drawing comparisons with what it is like to go to school under a Conservative Government. I went to school under a Labour Government. When I left my secondary school in 2005, it had a pass rate of 11% and one in three teachers were supply teachers. Was that not the real legacy of a Labour Government: a failed generation?

[Bridget Phillipson]

The last Labour Government transformed the life chances of people across our country—child poverty down, investment in our schools, schools rebuilt, teachers properly supported. That is a record of which we are very proud.

This is a generation of children let down from primary school right the way through to university, a generation of children failed by the Conservatives. I can tell you why they have been failed. The Government have stopped thinking in terms of children, people, parents and families. They have been too long in power, and they are mistaking changing institutions and regulations for improving the lives of our people.

Look at the Schools Bill, published last week. I had genuinely hoped for better, but what did we find? It is narrow in scope, hollow in ambition and thin on policy. It has 32 clauses on the governance of academies and 15 on funding arrangements. On funding, what a sorry sight it is to see a Conservative Chancellor and Secretary of State seeking plaudits merely for aiming to restore, by 2024, a level of real-terms school funding achieved by the last Labour Government, when their Government have spent a decade slicing it away.

The newspapers this weekend made it all too clear that whichever children the Secretary of State cares about, they are not always the children in England’s state schools.

We learnt that he is concerned that the success of our young people in accessing their first choice universities from England’s state schools—the schools which the vast majority of children attend and for which he is primarily responsible—is evidence of “tilting the system” away from private schools, of which, he tells us, he is “so proud”. What an extraordinary remark by the Secretary of State for Education about the success of students in state schools in this country.

If that were not enough, the next day brought further clarification. Not only does the Secretary of State appear concerned by the growing success of state-educated children in entering the universities of their choice, he is not bothered that their schools are crumbling around them. His own officials, within the last two months, have said:

“Some sites a risk-to-life, too many costly and energy-inefficient repairs rather than rebuilds, and rebuild demand three times supply”.

Children are being educated in schools that are a risk to life, and the Government have not lifted a finger.

The children of this country are being failed by an Education Secretary more interested in appealing to Conservative party members than in ensuring the success of our young people.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)]

The title for today’s debate is “Making Britain the best place to grow up and grow old”. With that in mind, I would like to be the first Member of this House to congratulate Jake Daniels on coming out today—the first active footballer in UK professional football to do so. It makes the UK an even better place to live and grow older. Many people like me, who grew up in a world where we looked for role models, will know that Jake can be very proud of the role that he will play as a role model for future generations.

In that vein, I welcome the Government’s commitment in the Queen’s Speech to ban conversion therapy, and I would gently push those on the Treasury Bench to remember that we included trans people in our original promise. We should include all LGBT people in that conversion therapy ban.

Let me move on to education. I am pleased that 82% of young people in my constituency are now in schools that are good or outstanding. When I visit so many of my local schools—especially Balaam Wood; King Edward VI Northfield School for Girls, which used to be called Turves Green Girls’ School; Turves Green Boys’ School; Colmers Farm Primary School; and Hawkesley Church Primary Academy—I am always amazed by the dedication and commitment of so many of the teachers and by the young people, who have so much commitment to learning. I am also really pleased that the Edge Academy has been shortlisted for an award for its support for young people in that school right at the heart of Northfield.

Education concerns us all because it benefits young people and gives them the skills they need for the future. I am glad that there are measures in the Queen’s Speech to improve higher education. Julia Stevens from Cadbury College is pleased with the new investment in the north block and new labs. She is committed to lifelong learning, as is Principal Mike Hopkins from South and City College, which is doing good work. I was pleased to open the electric car centre there only a couple of months ago. That college is committed to ensuring that young people have the skills of the future.

When it comes to people in the Northfield constituency growing older, we have two ExtraCare retirement villages—one in Bournville and one in Longbridge—which are an amazing example of what we can do when we are creative with housing and the many activities and things people can do in those retirement villages. They live together in communities that I like to refer to as being like static cruise ships. They are amazing places to visit—as soon as I hit the age of 55, I would love to put my name on the waiting list for an ExtraCare retirement village. As Members of Parliament, we should lead from the front, which is why the other week I was keen to join so many local people in the conga line when the oompah band played at the Bournville retirement village. Such villages really are places of the future into which we can encourage many people to move as they grow older.

On social housing, I was born on a council estate in Birmingham that was one of the largest council estates in Europe when it was built. My brilliant team that assists me in the constituency has now done more than 20,000 items of casework, many of which refer to housing and housing repairs. I am glad that the social housing regulation Bill will make sure that we increase the standard of the social housing that people live in and expand tenants’ rights even further to people in the private rented sector.

We need to build more houses in the right places, in consultation with local people. When we have big projects in Birmingham, such as what was supposed to be the athletes village—unfortunately, it will not house any athletes during or after the Commonwealth games—it is unfortunate that we have a local authority that demands certain levels of social housing from private companies but falls really short of the expectation they encourage from people. At the last count, social housing made up only 4% of the thousands of houses being built under that scheme. We need to do more to make sure that the 22,000 people who are currently on the waiting list have the opportunity to get into social housing and on to the housing ladder.

I have only 10 seconds left. I would like to think that, in my near five hours of bobbing to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, I played some part in my ambition for the Government’s obesity strategy.