Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

As my hon. Friend will know, the Department has a statutory duty to convert local authority maintained schools judged inadequate by Ofsted into sponsored academies, whereby a strong sponsor works with the school to secure improvements in education. We take a case-by-case approach to the conversion of these schools and to addressing failure in academies, which includes consideration of all the different means by which the Government can support the future success of a school, including capital investment where appropriate.

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Ind)]

T3. My constituent Geno Brown rightly points out that education plays a vital role in teaching young people about our country’s colonial past and its implications for generations of black and minority ethnic children. What is the Minister doing to make sure that this history—not just our successes, but our failures—is taught properly in our schools?

[Nick Gibb]

We have had a debate on the content of the history curriculum and the role that migration and other issues play in it. We give a lot of discretion to schools and teachers over what they teach and how they teach it within that curriculum, and there are many elements in it where those issues can be taught effectively.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Monday 11th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

We take the issue of social mobility very seriously. The attainment gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children has narrowed by 7% in key stage 4 and by 9.3% in key stage 2, in primary schools. However, we continue to work hard to ensure, and believe passionately in ensuring, that all children, regardless of background and regardless of where they live, are able to fulfil their potential in our education system, which is why the pupil premium provides an extra £2.5 billion a year for children with disadvantaged backgrounds.

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

9. What assessment she has made of the effect on children's nutrition of the absence of free primary school meals in the school holidays.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Justine Greening)]

The Government actively support the provision of nutritious food in schools. Free school meals are provided for the most disadvantaged pupils, and for every pupil in reception years 1 and 2. We have also committed £26 million to expand breakfast clubs in up to 1,600 schools. More broadly, we believe that helping households to raise their incomes by allowing them to be in work is the best way to lift families out of poverty and help children to lead healthy lives.

[Mr Shuker]

May I commend to the Secretary of State the private Member’s Bill tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), which will tackle the problem properly by ensuring that children who receive free school meals in term time also receive nutritious meals outside term time? If she feels that she cannot offer Government support for the Bill, may I also commend to her a charity in my constituency, Make Lunch, which is now providing meals in 50 locations —entrepreneurially, off its own bat—to tackle the problem, and will she arrange a short meeting with a Minister to discuss it?

[Justine Greening]

As the hon. Gentleman sets out, there is a lot of good work happening in this area, and from my perspective, aside from what happens in schools during term-time, there are two key elements: having a strong economy that is providing people with jobs and employment, and, secondly, making sure people get to keep as much of their pay packet as possible, which is why we have not only introduced the national living wage but have increased the personal allowance. If we take those two things together, we see that somebody working 35 hours on the national minimum wage, now the national living wage, will have gained by £3,300 more through those two policies.

Schools that work for Everyone

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I think my hon. Friend will welcome the proposals that we are setting out in the consultation document, which aim to look at how we can see stronger, more connected relationships between grammar schools and other schools nearby, and how, working together, they can lift overall attainment.

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

As a product of Luton’s comprehensive system, I know at first hand the benefits that come from good leadership and good teaching, and that has never held back capable students from social mobility. I will do everything I can, as the town’s MP, to oppose segregation. Why does the Secretary of State believe that a system in which the pupil is chosen by the school at 11 is better than the shift that has happened in the past 15 or 20 years whereby pupil and parent together decide on a pathway at 14?

[Justine Greening]

Again, I do not accept that this is somehow an either/or approach on education. It is about driving more choice for parents, having more schools that can be tailored to particular children’s needs, and, in the end, raising educational standards.

Schools White Paper

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. The Government, as they have no other ideas, seem to enjoy such reorganisations.

I will shortly return to some of the very real concerns about the performance of academy chains, but I first want to look at another of the Government’s arguments for forced academisation, which is that it is about autonomy and freedoms. This Government say they are for choice in education. Choice? What choice is there in a one-size-fits-all policy? What is autonomous about forcing a high-performing school into an academy chain? Will the Secretary of State promise that every outstanding school leader who wants their school to remain as it is can do so? No, she cannot. Where is the autonomy for the small village school, which the White Paper makes clear cannot be a stand-alone academy? I see some nods from Conservative Members to these points. Perhaps this is why even one of the Secretary of State’s main allies, Toby Young, has described this policy as Stalinist. The curriculum and other freedoms described by the Government could easily be given to all schools without the need for a change to legal status.

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is talking about autonomy and democratic control. We have a model of that in the form of co-operative schools, in which parents, pupils and school leaders all work together. Why does she think they should be forced to academise?

[Lucy Powell]

My hon. Friend makes another excellent point.

On curriculum freedoms, the Secretary of State and I both know that the autonomy the Tories say they are providing just does not exist. During the past five years, parts of the curriculum have been personally drafted by the Education Secretary and then circulated for sign-off among Cabinet Ministers. This sort of ministerial diktat on the curriculum puts schools into a straitjacket. In fact, what we are actually seeing with academisation is a further narrowing of curriculums as schools aim to improve their Ofsted judgments on an increasingly narrow set of measurements.

While the academy programme was originally about bringing new partners and innovation into the system, a wholesale academisation programme will undoubtedly create an increasingly sclerotic and one-dimensional system. It is no wonder that the chief executive of England’s largest academy chain, Academy Enterprise Trust, recently admitted that there is in fact less autonomy for schools in multi-academy trusts than there is for local authority schools.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

The 50% limit on faith admissions to free schools ensures that the new high-quality school places that they provide are available to local children, not just those of a particular faith, and it helps to ensure that those pupils receive an inclusive and broad-based education. We are always happy to hear representations on how best to achieve those goals and I would certainly welcome applications to establish, for example, more Catholic free schools, but I understand why the Catholic Church in particular is reluctant to do so.

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

T1. If she will make a statement on her departmental responsibilities.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)]

I hope that hon. Members will be glad to hear that today we have published proposals for consultation to start the process of introducing a national funding formula for schools from 2017-18. These plans will ensure that every school and local area, no matter where it is in the country, is funded fairly. It will ensure that pupils with similar needs attract the same level of funding and give headteachers far more certainty over future budgets. Areas with the highest need will attract the most funding, so pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds will continue to receive significant additional support. That is a key part of our core mission to have educational excellence everywhere.

[Mr Shuker]

Luton Girls’ Academy was given £100,000 by the Secretary of State’s Department but never opened. I have repeatedly asked the Department for Education to tell me whether that money has been paid back, yet neither written parliamentary questions nor freedom of information requests have garnered an answer. When will she tell me how much money was wasted on this free school project?

[Nicky Morgan]

The hon. Gentleman received a letter from the Under-Secretary of State, Lord Nash, on 29 January 2015 telling him why the project could not go ahead and that it had fallen short of the rigorous criteria we have set. Total pre-opening revenue costs for Luton Girls’ Academy will be published by the end of March. In line with our transparency agenda, our policy is to publish expenditure data clearly, and that means that we publish the full pre-opening revenue cost of cancelled or withdrawn free school projects, once the amount of expenditure has been finalised and taking into account any repayments.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Tuesday 15th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

In the short time that my hon. Friend has been a Member of Parliament, he has done a lot to champion small businesses in Worcestershire. I have seen that at first hand. The Worcestershire growth fund represents an excellent funding opportunity and I certainly join him in encouraging companies in his constituency and mine to apply.

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

T2. The illegal money lending team has commenced 330 prosecutions against illegal loan sharks and had £63 million written off for the most vulnerable in our communities. The decision to cut a third of its £3.6 million budget may not have crossed the Secretary of State’s desk at the time, but he has had plenty of time to review the decision and it will have a big impact, so why does he continue to dodge questions about this short-sighted cut?

Children of Alcoholics

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Tuesday 24th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Children and Families (Edward Timpson)]

As ever, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone.

I congratulate the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) on securing this important debate, and even more on the manner in which he introduced it and his courage in speaking out about his experience with his own family. It is a testament to him that his determination to give a voice to the many thousands of children who find themselves in a similar predicament has led to today’s debate—and, I am sure, to many conversations in the coming weeks and months. I read about his dad, Dermot, this morning. I listened to the right hon. Gentleman talking about his dad’s life and how he inspired him to enter the world of politics and make the world a better place. I also heard about the ongoing anguish that his father’s battle with alcoholism caused him, which will inevitably still affect him today. But there is no shame in that whatever—absolutely none.

I am really pleased that the right hon. Gentleman made the decision to speak up today and put on the record his desire to ensure that, from here on in, those children out there will feel more able to deal with the consequences of living in such a family environment. Even more important is his desire to prevent the problem from even happening in the first place. To that end, I look forward to working with him and the organisations that have helped him to prepare for this debate, so that we can take stock of both the progress that has been made and where there are shortcomings and a lack of understanding. There is sometimes a lack of encouragement to those out there who still feel very much unable to let others know of the suffering that they are having to deal with day after day.

[Mr Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I salute the bravery of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill (Liam Byrne) in introducing this debate. On the Minister’s point, will he ensure that all educational professionals have the appropriate training for when a child might disclose something to them? Many alcoholic parents are very concerned about losing their children, so will seek to involve them in the secret to try to prevent their child from being taken into care. The Minister is from the Department for Education, so will he look at whether all educational professionals are suitably trained for disclosure?

[Edward Timpson]

That is hugely important. It is not a surprise to me that one of the top three points that the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill wanted me to address was the fact that it is the professionals who interact with children daily who are best placed to try to spot the signs and act on them sooner rather than later. In that way, children who have nowhere else to turn will receive timely and sympathetic support, backed by the knowledge of that professional about what works and how they can help the child and their family to turn the corner—knowledge that has so often been lacking in the past.

I am conscious that I have only five minutes in which to address all the right hon. Gentleman’s extremely well-made points. We must base any response on the premise that every child has a right to grow up in a safe and secure environment. Parents play a crucial role in how their children develop and behave. Of course, parents should act as role models for their children, but we recognise that parental alcohol dependency is a disease that affects many parents. It can limit their parenting capacity, which can have serious consequences for their children.

Rather than read out the response that a Government Minister might normally give to this sort of debate, I shall discuss how my own experience reflects what the right hon. Gentleman said and why I, too, am determined to join him in trying to do more and to do right by the children who still have to live in such circumstances.

I grew up in a family who fostered many children, of whom a large proportion, including one of my adopted brothers, came from a home in which alcohol misuse had been a regular feature. We cannot underestimate the lifelong impact on such a child, who, whether for a short time or a much longer period of their childhood, has been trapped in a cycle. They learn behaviour that they find difficult to avoid later in life, which creates that cycle between generations, and they often witness violence and conflict and feel a sense of isolation. To try to unravel all that is a huge task for anyone. If we superimpose on to that the scale of the problem, irrespective of the progress that has been made on the public health agenda and reducing alcohol dependency, we will see that huge problems further down the line are being stored up for future generations.

In both the private and public cases I dealt with in the family courts, alcohol was often a feature; as the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) rightly said, it was sometimes a feature in families of whom the overriding public impression was that alcohol would not be at the heart of their problems. On the surface, these are functional families, but underneath there are serious issues that need to be addressed. To that end, notwithstanding that this is a complex issue that transcends the work of many Departments, the Government have a role, because there is commonality: a shared ambition to ensure that no child should be left behind in our determined efforts to try to tackle the problem.

I will look very carefully at the 10 points raised by the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill and undertake to talk to ministerial colleagues, particularly in the Department of Health, about how we raise public awareness of parental alcohol dependency in a similar way to how we have raised awareness on smoking. I am happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman, along with representatives from many of the excellent organisations that have come together to help him in both a personal and professional capacity to prepare for this debate, so that we can pull together our collective understanding of what is being done and where we continue to fall short.

Much of the work that we are doing on the social work reform agenda, and on how we equip teachers and other educational staff to understand the presentation of children from a family in which alcoholism is a problem, is going to be key to unlocking this taboo that sometimes remains. If we are honest, we all know of someone in our own family or immediate circle of friends, or certainly in our social network, for whom this is a feature in their lives.

We should not pretend that there is an easy way of trying to make changes happen, but, on the back of the right hon. Gentleman’s public push to galvanise the work already being done in many places around the country, we have a real opportunity to ensure that responses are more consistent and that we start to reduce some of the anomalies we see in different local authorities. As my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Dr Poulter) said, there should be a much more joined up approach so that families who feel unsupported and children who feel lonely no longer have that as a central feature of their lives. We must use some of the innovation out there to ensure that the work we do in future really does make a difference.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered support for children of alcoholics.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Grant]

I am delighted that Ponteland community middle school has been successful in its application. Artificial pitches are amazing and increase participation, community involvement and talent development, which is how we will grow the game. I am happy to look, with my hon. Friend, at what scope there might be for further projects.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

T6. Given reports that alcohol advertising in Formula 1 might go the same way as tobacco advertising, and given that this is an area where there has been some concern in the past, can the Minister give an assurance that any discussions that are entered into with Formula 1 teams will be open and accountable, and will seek to preserve our great British motorsport industry as well?

[Mrs Grant]

The great British motorsport industry is an incredible industry and we must look after it. I am happy to have a chat with the hon. Gentleman about the issues that he raises.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[John Woodcock (Barrow and Furness) (Lab/Co-op)]

10. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of provision of primary school places.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

12. What assessment he has made of the adequacy of provision of primary school places.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

We have more than doubled the allocation of money for basic need to more than £5 billion in this Parliament, and 260,000 additional places were created between May 2010 and May 2013, including 212,000 primary places.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Laws]

We are so serious about this issue that we have doubled the amount of basic need funding going to the hon. Gentleman’s local authority compared with the period under the Labour Government. We are seeking not only to improve the quality of existing schools but to make sure that parents can exercise their choices effectively.

[Gavin Shuker]

In Luton we are 630 primary places short of the number we require—a situation that would be much worse had a free school not been built by an arms-length council body that had to jump through all the hoops of the free school system. Is it not perverse that local authorities are not allowed to build schools?

[Mr Laws]

Local authorities are allowed to build schools. We have allocated £37 million to the hon. Gentleman’s local authority to do precisely that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Gavin Shuker Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

From September, the new history curriculum will ensure that children understand the history of these islands as well as a coherent chronological narrative. In citizenship, they will learn about the United Kingdom’s constitution, about the precious liberties enjoyed by citizens of our country and about their role as citizens and how they can participate.

[Gavin Shuker (Luton South) (Lab/Co-op)]

T2. Given the well documented problems that whistle- blowers encountered in reporting their experiences at Barnfield Federation to the Department for Education, will the Secretary of State commit to publishing all inquiry reports in full, including all the versions that have circulated outside the Departments involved?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that case. As we both know, very serious allegations have been made in connection with the Barnfield Federation. They are currently being investigated, and nothing I say, do or publish should prejudice those investigations. However, as has always been the case, whenever there is information that it is right we should share with those affected and with the public, we will share it in due course.