Higher Education Regulatory Approach
Graham Stuart Excerpts(1 week, 1 day ago)
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Bridget Phillipson
I am confident that the OfS, as the regulator, and its director for freedom of speech will seek to engage with a range of views, including those of Jewish students and community organisations, as they take forward this important work. That is certainly something that I have done to understand the concerns and the potential impact on minority students, including Jewish students, at a time when we all sadly know that antisemitism on our campuses and streets has been rising. As a country, we must do everything in our power to tackle that.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
This screeching U-turn is welcome and I hope that, as the shadow Secretary of State says, it heralds a new period of humility and further change by the Government. The Secretary of State said that universities must protect free speech or “face the consequences”, but as far as I can see, she has removed those consequences. Could she please lay them out for us?
Bridget Phillipson
I know that the right hon. Gentleman is probably used to his party engaging in these discussions on quite difficult and sensitive issues in a rather reckless and irresponsible way, but we on these Benches take our time to do this seriously and properly to make sure that we get it right, because this is such an important area. He will have heard from my speech—I will set out further detail—the requirements that will be in place through registration conditions, the fact that the Office for Students will be able to impose penalties on institutions, and the requirements that we expect of all higher education providers. My message to vice-chancellors and institutions today is that they need to do more, and they need to do it better.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Graham Stuart Excerpts(2 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
The Secretary of State has mentioned previous generations of politicians, and all of us in this House must recognise that we follow in the footsteps of giants. Tony Blair, Lord Adonis and others created the academy system that was built on under the last Conservative Government and brought about a transformation of English education. Why does the Secretary of State want to dismantle decades of work by Members across this House and bring about a gross socialist uniformity that will destroy the progress that has been made?
Bridget Phillipson
That is simply a mischaracterisation, and the right hon. Gentleman knows it. I will come on to the wider schools measures in this Bill later in my speech, but I note that he had nothing to say in his intervention about the safety of children and the measures we are discussing today. The wrecking amendment that the Leader of the Opposition has tabled would block the very important, very serious measures that the Conservatives have been telling us for days they want to see put in place. If they want those measures, they need to support them.
Bridget Phillipson
I agree with my hon. Friend. I recognise the challenge that she faces in her constituency and that we see right across our country. We have seen a big increase in the number of children being home-educated. While I respect the right of parents to make that choice—there is a complex range of reasons why many parents are now making that decision, and there are questions about how we support our children with their mental health and wider challenges on the SEND system—let me be absolutely clear to the House that all children not in school, when they are being home-educated, must have a good level of education. We cannot allow the situation to continue where we do not have visibility of where children are and they slip between the cracks. We will ensure through the Bill that when a child protection investigation is under way or there is a child protection plan, local authorities will be able to decline that request from parents, because we all sadly know what can go terribly wrong when we fail to step in and protect children.
Bridget Phillipson
I am afraid that I am concluding now.
We are bringing together the system’s many parts into a collaborative, coherent whole with children at its heart. Our ambition to support children does not stop here. We expect to bring forward further legislation when parliamentary time allows. Our work to erase the stain of child poverty must and will continue through the child poverty taskforce, which I am proud to co-chair with the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions.
Reducing the burden on schools, freeing teachers to teach and children to learn—today is about action. When colleagues from across the House read the Bill in all its detail, they will find running through its 60 clauses one golden thread, one common theme, one objective, one common cause. It is not structures or ideology, and they will find no pet projects or stale dogma. They will see that our focus is firmly on children: their life chances are the aim, their protection is the objective and their success is our common cause. This Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is written for them. It is introduced to the House for them. It will be implemented for them—for their safety, for their schooling and for their futures. I commend the Bill to the House.
Laura Trott
I am glad that the hon. Lady has confirmed that the Labour party is, indeed, anti-academy.
The Bill goes on and on—rampant centralisation in search of a cause. Why are the Government making all schools follow the national curriculum? Where is the evidence that there is a problem? Why are they putting in place sweeping powers to direct academies on unspecified things? What possible justification do they have for that? The notes say that it is to prevent “unreasonable use of power”. I say, look in the mirror.
Graham Stuart
My right hon. Friend has mentioned pay and power. I think they lie behind the Bill, because the education unions opposed at every step under the last Labour Government and under the last Conservative Government. The dinosaur tendency, which we just heard from the hon. Member for Gravesham (Dr Sullivan), shows that the Government viscerally dislike the freedom of academies, and they turn their face against the transformation of educational outcomes—not least for the poorest—because of ideology rather than a genuine commitment to the child.
Laura Trott
Sadly, I think my right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. I see no other reason for the academy provisions to be in the Bill. It actually says in the explanatory notes that the primary aim of this legislation is to make the education system “more consistent”. That is at the heart of the problem today, because more consistency does not a better education system make. It is a classic Labour argument: one size must fit all, lopping the tops off the tallest poppies.
God forbid that schools might be able to innovate and learn from each other, and teachers might have freedoms in the classroom to try new things, backed up by a regulator that rigorously inspects and identifies failure. That is an excellent education system, but one that aims solely for consistency is not—a system of command and control, stifling teachers, supressing innovation, with everything decided in an office in Whitehall, far away from the classrooms. It is same old Labour: consistency for all, excellence for none.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
After five years in this place, I am relieved and delighted that I and other hon. Members finally have the chance to consider a piece of legislation that focuses on children. The Bill gets to the heart of our shared duty as public representatives to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our children. The Liberal Democrats will approach the Bill in a spirit of constructive co-operation. I urge colleagues across the House to do the same for the sake of our children up and down the country.
On that particular note, I turn to the reasoned amendment tabled in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch). Everyone in this House agrees that no child should ever face sexual abuse and exploitation. We all agree that the state must comprehensively investigate all allegations. We must deliver justice and prevent these sickening acts from happening again in future. Where we disagree is on how to achieve that. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches want action that helps victims and prevents these crimes from happening again. The Conservative party wants to derail this important Bill instead. We will table amendments ensuring the recommendations of the Jay inquiry are implemented in full. We will be a party of constructive opposition and we will aim to strengthen the Bill and its crucial measures on child protection and safeguarding. For that reason, we cannot accept the Opposition’s wrecking amendment. Our children’s safety and wellbeing is simply far too important. We owe it to them all to get this right.
Graham Stuart
Can the hon. Lady set out exactly in what way the amendment, which I think is entirely constructive—it accepts the safeguarding element, but challenges the educational vandalism that is being undertaken by the Government—is so objectionable?
Munira Wilson
I humbly say to the right hon. Gentleman, who has been in this place much longer than I have, that I understand that if the reasoned amendment were passed, the Bill would fall. That is why it is not a constructive amendment. That is why it is a wrecking amendment. I do not think killing a Bill that seeks to improve safeguards and safety for our children is the way to get justice for innocent victims of sexual abuse.
There is much in the Bill that we on the Liberal Democrat Benches welcome, but of course there are areas of detail where we will seek to probe and strengthen, and measures on which we will seek to go further. As the Bill makes its way through the House, we will provide that detailed scrutiny, challenge and improvement.
Some important changes are in the provisions on kinship care. The Secretary of State will be aware that this is a subject close to my heart and those of my party colleagues.
Munira Wilson
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is absolutely right. I welcome the measures that put information about the local kinship care offer on a statutory footing, recognising the crucial role of kinship carers and finally putting a statutory definition into law, which we have long called for. Yet a definition in and of itself will not provide the financial and practical support that many families and children need. Areas where the Government are taking action are limited to certain sub-groups of kinship carers and their children, thus undermining the value of the proposed definition. The charity Kinship says it would
“hope to see future legislation and the forthcoming multi-year spending review further prioritise wider kinship care reform”.
I therefore ask the Secretary of State, and will ask the Minister during the progress of the Bill, when they plan to expand the current pilot scheme to provide allowances to all kinship carers. Why does the educational support in the Bill not seek to extend pupil premium plus and priority admissions for children in kinship care?
We welcome the Bill’s provisions on child safeguarding, including the register of children not in school. As Liberals, our party firmly upholds the right of parents to educate their children at home when it is the best choice for their child. In 99% of cases a parent knows what is best for their child, but it is deeply concerning that there may be many thousands of children whose whereabouts are simply unknown. That reality can contribute, as we have seen all too recently, to tragic safeguarding failures, and that cannot continue.
Graham Stuart
Can the hon. Lady provide a single instance where a child who was in home education—we must remember that children at school spend about 86% of their time out of school—who was at harm was not known to social services already? Too easily there is a conflation of a failure of social services, which needs to be fixed, with home education, which is entirely separate.
Munira Wilson
All the evidence points to the fact that the education and schools sector must be a key safeguarding partner, which is why it is in the Bill. When a child has been identified as being at risk, ensuring that they are in school, which the Bill seeks to do, will help to safeguard them. We saw this all too tragically in the recent case of Sara Sharif: she was taken out of school and then abused at home, and tragically died.
Munira Wilson
The point is that this is just an additional measure to ensure that children like her are safe.
I want to reiterate to colleagues across the House that we absolutely support and champion the right of parents to home-educate. This is not an attack on home education; it is about ensuring that all children are safe. That is the view of the Children’s Commissioner, the National Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children and many other organisations, and in fact parties across the House. The Conservatives themselves started to legislate for this in the last Parliament but then binned the provision. There is cross-party consensus on this measure.
There are areas of detail that we need to dig into during the Bill’s progress, but in headline terms, the register is a crucial tool in the armoury that we give local authorities to ensure that our children are safe. As I have said, it has been called for by many organisations and all parties. However, the volume of information requested from parents places a significant and potentially intrusive burden on those who choose to home-educate for the right reasons, so we must ensure that data collection is strictly necessary and proportionate and is being used appropriately.
Clause 24 sets out the cases in which parents and carers must seek permission to withdraw children from school. I would question the inclusion of children placed in special schools. When there are safeguarding concerns about a child, the local authorities should be able to step in to ensure that they receive their education at school. However, some children’s needs will not be met in the special schools in which they are placed, and parents may feel that they have no option but to home-educate. In such cases, should not the presumed options be to improve the child’s experience of the school or to work with the family to secure alternative provision, rather than using the blunt instrument of clause 24?
We know that, after years of neglect and mismanagement by the Conservatives, our schools are crying out for support. For students, parents and teachers enduring crumbling buildings, persistent underfunding and a spiralling SEND crisis, hearing the Conservatives’ rhetoric today will be utterly galling. The Bill takes welcome steps in restoring local authorities’ powers to propose new maintained schools—especially given the desperate need in many areas for new special schools, which local authorities have regularly been prevented from establishing in recent years—although, it is disappointing that it does nothing else to start addressing the reforms that are so desperately needed to improve the special educational needs system. We also welcome the co-operation on school admissions criteria. Together, these changes empower communities to allocate educational resources locally, but some clarifications are needed.
Let me ask specifically what assessment the Government have made of the impact of requiring every single teacher to have, or to work towards, qualified teacher status, and whether they have spoken to the sector about that. We all agree that we want qualified teachers in our schools, but there may be some unintended consequences when non-qualified teachers are brought in to run certain services and extracurricular activities. Are the Government confident that this measure will not lead to those unintended consequences?
The provisions on pay should seek only to set a minimum floor, not a maximum ceiling, on what staff can be paid. I take on board what the Secretary of State said in response to an earlier intervention—that no one’s pay would be cut—but that is a retrospective reflection. I hope that in future all schools, whether or not they are academies, should be able to pay a premium in order to attract the right staff, if they have the resources to do so. [Interruption.] From a sedentary position, the Conservatives are saying that they will not be able to do that. In Committee, we will seek to amend the Bill to make it clear that this should be a floor, not a ceiling.
Alistair Strathern (Hitchin) (Lab)
I thank those on the Front Bench for the speed with which they have brought forward the Bill so early in the parliamentary term. As a former teacher and a local authority children’s lead, I know how important so many of the measures are—an importance matched only by how overdue so many of them are too—which is why it is such a shame to see others seeking to turn the debate into a political sideshow, when it should really be an opportunity for the House to come together behind some powerful and important safeguarding measures.
As a teacher who saw at first hand the importance of breakfast clubs for delivering the best start to a school day for young people, and as a local authority leader who worked to expand them, I am really excited to see that clause 21 brings forward Labour’s commitment to ensure that no child starts school hungry. No one should tolerate children starting school without the food they need to learn and to be ready for their school day, and I am glad that this Government certainly will not do so. Today, however, I want to focus on some of the measures relating to keeping some of the most vulnerable children in society safe and ensuring that they have the support they need. I am particularly pleased to see clause 24, which places on local authorities an obligation to have a register and visibility of every child off the school roll.
As a former local authority lead, I know that reading serious case reviews is an important part of preparation for any role, and certainly for that one. If we read those serious case reviews and stories of what can happen to some of the most vulnerable young people when they are allowed to fall off the radar and to slip through the net, and when they are left open to exploitation and abuse by some of the most evil people in our society, we can be under no illusions as to why this measure is so important. I absolutely understand why, at first reading, those who home-school might have some concerns about it, but this is absolutely not an attack on home-schooling.
The right to home-school is important, certainly at a time when inclusion and support in schools is far from what it should be for children with some of the highest needs, and it is important that that is protected. But just as every parent has the right and responsibility to do what is right for their child, we all have the right and responsibility to ensure that no child can be left vulnerable and fall between the cracks. This Bill does that, and I am incredibly proud to be standing with colleagues and supporting a measure that I know so many of us have called for in a variety of roles over the last decade.
Graham Stuart
Does the hon. Gentleman have sympathy with parents who feel that they have been let down by the local authority on support for their child with special educational needs, who recognise the historical primacy of parents in determining the education of their child, and who are now seeing a piece of legislation that removes that right and says that the state, not the parent, decides whether a child can be taken out of school? We all accept that where there are safeguarding issues, action should be taken, but is the hon. Gentleman really comfortable with changing the approach for the ordinary parent after decades of it being the other way around?
Sir Gavin Williamson
The Bill removes academies’ ability to do more for teachers. The Ark academy trust, for example, pays its teachers an average of 2.5% more than every national pay point. Where academies have areas of specialism, they have used them as an opportunity to pay more and bring the best teachers in.
As we progress through the Bill, clause 50 gives the schools adjudicator the power the set public admission numbers for schools, including academies, giving local authorities greater influence over admission numbers for schools in their areas. In reality, that will mean that the very best schools lose out on the ability to expand rapidly and offer more children the opportunity to go there. That is increasingly important at a time when overall student numbers are starting to decline. The best schools have less opportunity to offer more spaces to pupils in their communities.
Clause 44 repeals the requirement to turn failing local authority schools into academies. There is already a great deal of ambiguity about failing schools. What will the Government do about them? That has not been made clear. Ofsted’s powers have been watered down, which will mean that failing schools continue to exist and there will be no change.
Graham Stuart
Does my right hon. Friend agree that Ministers must set out how failing schools will be tackled? We cannot have a system in which children are left in schools that let them down without immediate action. That is what the academies programme sought to address.
Sir Gavin Williamson
My right hon. Friend is absolutely correct. There is total silence on what will happen. There is no sense that where a school is failing, action will be taken to ensure that successful academy trusts take over those schools and drive improvements.
What we have heard from the Government since they came into office has been about getting rid of excellence. I was very proud of a number of the programmes that we introduced, such as the Latin excellence programme or more cadet forces in schools. The evidence points to the fact that those things had a real impact on children’s attainment, and often for children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. Those programmes have just been scrapped. There is a sense that the Government want a homogeneous schools system in which brilliance and excellence, and the freedom for teachers and schools to deliver the very best for their pupils, are stamped out. There is a sense that Ministers know best—that Whitehall is the master—and that that will drive our education system forward.
Many aspects of the Bill are positive in relation to children’s wellbeing, but I urge the Minister to consider the other aspects that will systemically destroy the progress made by both Labour and Conservative Governments in driving forward academic excellence, and in allowing state schools to offer some of the things that private schools offer, which they had not been able to do before. At my comprehensive school, joining a cadet force or learning Latin were simply not options. The Bill is about dumbing down. It is not about raising aspiration; it is not about raising excellence.
Sir Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)
I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for all the work that she has done on child sexual abuse. I want to speak on two limited measures in the Bill: first, the registration of children not in school, a positive measure that builds on the work of the previous Government; and secondly, the clauses on teacher training.
We know from our casework that the measure on a register is positive and will play a big role in ensuring that children are not lost or hidden in the system. In implementing and applying the measure, I urge the Government to consult with SEN charities and organisations, particularly organisations working with autistic kids and families. Ambitious about Autism makes the case that the register should contain more data on the profile of children not at school, disaggregated by primary need. It is vital for autistic children and families that we put on a clear footing the expectation that there will be detailed profile data, so that schools and councils can offer more tailored support in getting them back to school. Children with pathological demand avoidance require a completely different approach when it comes to negotiating school entry, and we must ensure that their needs are met with patience and understanding.
Graham Stuart
My right hon. Friend will be aware that although many home-educated children with autism are known to local authorities, there is very poor support for them. How will this burdensome, expensive register—it will be even more expensive if he has his way—transform the support that children need, rather than being just another bureaucratic exercise that continues the current woeful level of support?
Sir Julian Smith
I thank my right hon. Friend for that intervention, but I make clear my support for the register.
The other aspect to having more rules and regulation for families of autistic children is the inadvertent risk of penalising those families through fines and the imposition of stricter rules, which will obviously add to the harm and stress that they often face. I urge Ministers and civil servants to reflect on that. Why should those parents be fined if they are doing all they can to get their children into school?
Even more problematic is the fact that for autistic kids, the clearer, firmer and harsher rules—even with all the good intent that I believe there is—can add further trauma and make school entry even more difficult. That already happens with registration. Schools are rightly under pressure from Government to ensure that children get to school on time. However, parents of autistic children, particularly with a PDA profile, have done amazingly well to get their children to the school gate at all, and the total focus on registration at a certain time of day at all costs risks school refusal and, ultimately, children missing education. Both Ambitious about Autism and the Children’s Commissioner’s report on support for autism and other conditions argue that a much better understanding of the different aspects of autism is key to getting children back to school.
At the heart of this matter are parents. Time after time, parents of autistic children are judged and challenged because schools and authorities assume that the issue is behaviour or bad parenting, or that the issue has a very simple cause. Making sure the measures in the Bill have a deeper understanding of what those families and kids are going through is absolutely vital.
The teaching measures will help. I again point to the work of the previous Government, supported by the Autism Society, making positive strides to introduce autism training in initial teacher training. The more that individual teacher training programmes have specific models about different aspects of autism and challenges to school entry, and the more that can be done on continuous professional development for all staff—teachers, administration staff and receptionists—is key.
Autism is often at the centre of school refusal and non-attendance. As the Bill progresses through the House and into implementation, looking at these measures with the autistic child front of mind will not only transform the school experience of children and families, but in my view help address the core goal of the measures to improve school attendance.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. Let me begin with the question of the need for a national inquiry into the rape grooming gangs. Given what has been said so far, I challenge colleagues who have opposed the inquiry to name a single proposal from the Jay report that cannot be implemented if we go ahead with it. It really is a matter of “and”. Notwithstanding the political theatre that Labour Members have tried to bring to the debate, the fact that both the Prime Minister and the safeguarding Minister have said that they are open-minded suggests that—sensibly, from a policy point of view and politically—the Labour party may move to the correct position.
As was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson), this is a Bill in two parts, which could probably most usefully have been two separate Bills. The first half concerns safeguarding, and, for the most part, my party and I support it; the second concerns schools, and that we most certainly cannot support. Rather than accusing our amendment of being a wrecking amendment, as the Liberal Democrats have rather disappointingly done, they should recognise that the second half of the Bill—the schools element—is the wrecking element, because it makes the important safeguarding improvements part of a Bill that cannot be genuinely supported in this House.
There is a troubling theme; a misguided notion that the bureaucrat knows best, as colleagues have suggested—for instance, the proposal to strip academies of the flexibility to set competitive pay for their staff. If the Government were genuinely interested in the levelling up that has just been referred to by the hon. Member for Bury North (James Frith), why not, as Sir Dan Moynihan, perhaps the nation’s most successful headteacher and trust runner, said at lunch time today, give those academy freedoms to maintained schools? Why rip away the elements that have been used by academies to produce schools such as Michaela which are the best in the country? We have an ideologically driven Labour Government—that certainly applies to those on the Front Bench; I would not want to daub everyone behind the Front Bench with the same description—who cannot even bring themselves to congratulate a school that has been the best in the country for three years in a row.
The Government are signalling that they do not trust schools to attract and retain the best teachers, and trust only the Secretary of State to do so. In advocating for new schools to be opened and controlled by local authorities, they remove the contestability. Notwithstanding some of the contradictions in the Secretary of State’s speech, she did describe competition as “harmful”. I represent Beverley and Holderness, and for many years I looked at schools in Hull, where there was a view, expressed sotto voce, that “It is the people here who are the problem”. Generation after generation was failed, and when the academies programme was expanded in 2010, what happened? We saw primary schools leave local authority control en masse. We saw that it was no longer acceptable for a local authority to use its democratic mandate to give a substandard education to the local population. We saw a transformation. We saw academy groups opening up, and teachers and communities seizing that. I cannot believe that Labour Members really want to tear this away when the evidence is crystal clear from the OECD PISA tables. On any measure, English education has become immensely better.
Graham Stuart
I may not believe that of the Labour party generally, but I would believe it to be possible of the hon. Gentleman.
Richard Burgon
The right hon. Gentleman is making various remarks about what he considers to be the failings and deficiencies of this excellent Bill. May I invite him to reflect on the fact that in my constituency, East Leeds, families and children have been really struggling over the last decade? The measures in the Bill to bring down the cost of school uniforms and provide free breakfast clubs in primary schools should be warmly welcomed and supported by all of us who care about children and families in our communities.
Graham Stuart
No one can be against the principle of breakfast clubs and efforts to make sure that families do not have excessive charges imposed on them by schools, although we need to look at the specifics. That has nothing to do with what I was saying. I ask the hon. Gentleman, and indeed other Labour Members, to reflect on the speech made by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh). I chaired the Education Committee from 2010 to 2015, and she and the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Sir Nicholas Dakin), who is on the Front Bench, were distinguished members of that Committee.
Graham Stuart
As was my right hon. Friend, of course.
I do not think that anyone with whom I have been in this House over the last 20 years has a more personal and visceral record of fighting for change in their constituency than the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden. Colleagues should consider that before they go into Committee and have the opportunity to reflect on the changes in this legislation, because she knows of what she speaks. She has been heroic in championing the improvement in education in her area, and she has delivered it.
Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)
I declare my interest as a former director of the New Schools Network. As such, I have worked with many great free school and academy leaders.
I am enormously proud of the huge improvements in English schools over the last 14 years. In primary schools, English children are the best readers in the west. The PISA rankings show that we are: 11th in the world for maths, up from 27th under Labour; 13th in science, up from 16th under Labour; and 13th in reading, up from 25th under Labour.
In response to various debates and questions, the Education Secretary has made it clear that she does not really like these statistics, but the same story is told by the “progress in international reading literacy” study and the “trends in international mathematics and science” study. It is a shame that Ministers cannot bring themselves to celebrate this success story, or even to congratulate the leader of the best school in the country, Katharine Birbalsingh of the Michaela community school. Facts are very inconvenient when Ministers are so ideological about education.
The magic formula behind this success is one championed by Tony Blair, David Laws and all of us on the Conservative Benches today. The formula is freedom, accountability and evidence of what works. Through this Bill and other measures, the Government are unfortunately taking a sledgehammer to each of these principles. New free schools have been cancelled, the trust capacity fund has gone, and funds for schools that are planning to academise have been taken away. And this Bill is about to reverse academy freedoms, restore the powers of council bureaucrats and replace innovation with ideological uniformity. The clarity of Ofsted accountability has been ruined. Standard attainment tests in primary schools are in danger, and with them school accountability and progress data will go.
On the evidence base, this Government are anti-data, anti-facts and, indeed, anti-evidence, as we have heard during the debate. There have been attacks on synthetic phonics, maths mastery, a knowledge-rich curriculum, teacher-led instruction and traditional academic subjects. We have heard some Members explicitly reject the concept of academies and demand state-run schools. There is a denial of the scientific evidence behind what has worked. From the neurological knowledge we now have about how children learn, to the work of E. D. Hirsch on cultural literacy, and the confirmation that higher-level skills are dependent on the automatic mastery of lower-level activity, the Bill is based not on what works, but on what we know does not work.
Graham Stuart
Does my hon. Friend share my hope that Government Members will follow the example of the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) and put the Bill under genuine scrutiny?
Nick Timothy
I share my right hon. Friend’s admiration for the speech given by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh). It was incredibly powerful and I hope Members on the Labour Front Bench listened closely to what she said, even if they are not listening to me right now—they are looking at their phones. The Government have made a deliberate decision to dismantle everything that has worked.
Matt Bishop (Forest of Dean) (Lab)
The Bill is a landmark piece of legislation that promises to transform the lives of children across England. It is a testament to the Government’s unwavering commitment to the safeguarding and welfare of children. I welcome it as an opportunity to ensure that every child, regardless of their background, has access to the support, protection and education they deserve.
Following my earlier policing career and before entering this place, I worked as an education welfare officer in a large secondary school in the Forest of Dean. I saw at first hand the impact of a disrupted education. The covid-19 pandemic only exacerbated those challenges, and more and more children are missing school for a number of reasons. Vulnerable students were hit hardest, further deepening existing inequalities felt within the education system. The disruption to their education was not just academic, though; it poses pastoral problems. We have a system where parents can choose to home-educate without any checks or scrutiny, and that can lead to a crisis of safeguarding as children are often unaccounted for during this time. Let me be clear: I am not saying that home education and every single school absence are safeguarding concerns, but having dealt with some horrific safeguarding cases in my previous careers, I am sure the House will agree that even one safeguarding case is one too many and that we should all be doing something to ensure the safety of our children.
Currently, there is no legal requirement for parents to inform local authorities if their child is being home-schooled, and that lack of oversight leaves children at risk as their needs and safety may be overlooked. The Bill aims to address those oversights by introducing a requirement for children educated outside of school to be registered with local authorities.
Graham Stuart
Can the hon. Member give a single case of a home-educated child being harmed who was not already known to social services? Again and again, it is a failure of social services when notified, not the absence of a burdensome register for parents, who often home-educate their children out of desperation.
Matt Bishop
During my previous careers in the police and in education, there were cases. I will not say individual names in the House, but I am more than happy to liaise with the right hon. Member and his colleagues outside the Chamber about cases I have dealt with.
Catherine McKinnell
No, I will not. I have said that I will not.
I know that we are all united in our desire to ensure that the Bill works for children and young people across the country. I apologise if I am not able to respond to all the points that have been raised; there were a huge number of them, and we will have an opportunity to debate all those issues in the weeks ahead.
This legislation will provide the safe and secure foundation that all children need, and I was surprised by the tone of the shadow Secretary of State’s opening remarks, in which she decried it as “educational vandalism”. I know what educational vandalism looks like: children unhappy in schools, standards falling, staff undervalued, school buildings crumbling, and special educational needs and disability systems failing on every measure. That is the Conservatives’ record on education. It is shameful, and it let down a generation of our children. We are determined to turn the page.
Central to the Bill is cutting the cost of sending children to school. In our manifesto, we committed to offering breakfast clubs in every primary school; through this Bill, we will deliver those clubs, which will ensure that all children get the chance to have a soft start to the school day and are ready to learn. The Bill will also address parents’ concerns about school uniforms by limiting the number of branded items, which will put money back into parents’ pockets.
Many Members have spoken powerfully about the impact of poverty on children in their constituency, including my hon. Friends the Members for Bury North (Mr Frith), for Washington and Gateshead South (Mrs Hodgson), for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome), for Hitchin (Alistair Strathern), for Sherwood Forest (Michelle Welsh), for Stockton North (Chris McDonald), for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), for West Bromwich (Sarah Coombes) and for Hartlepool (Mr Brash). All of them know that tackling child poverty will improve the life chances of our children, and today we have a chance to make that happen.
As Members have highlighted, our measures will ensure that we look again at admissions and place planning to make sure that decisions account for the needs of local communities. That is why we are introducing a duty for state schools and local authorities to co-operate on place planning and admissions, and emphasising the importance of working together to secure the best future for every child.
Catherine McKinnell
We have heard a lot from the right hon. Gentleman today.
Contrary to the comments made by the right hon. Members for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) and for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson), we recognise the importance of admission authorities being able to set their own published admission numbers, and of good schools being able to expand where there is local demand. There seems to have been a huge amount of misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the Bill’s measures on academies. Unfortunately, I simply do not have time to refute it all today, but we are determined to drive high and rising standards right across our school system, to ensure that schools and children have the support to thrive, and to break the link between background and success. That means looking beyond the sign above the door of a school to the children within, but we cannot achieve that without quality teachers. I pay tribute to all our school workforces, who work tirelessly in the service of children and young people.
Wild claims were made today; the shadow Secretary of State asked why the Government were telling teachers that their pay is too high. At no point have we said that teachers’ pay is too high; indeed, we recently implemented a 5.5% pay award for teachers. To be clear, this Bill does not seek to reduce teachers’ pay. We recognise the good practice and flexibility that academies have benefited from, and the focus of our measures is providing a core offer to all state schools while still leaving them the flexibility to innovate.
A number of Members have rightly highlighted the challenges around SEND, including my hon. Friends the Members for Hyndburn (Sarah Smith), for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Rand), and for Scarborough and Whitby (Alison Hume). We know the challenges relating to special educational needs and disabilities. We are absolutely determined to fix the system by improving inclusivity in mainstream schools while ensuring that there are special school places for children with the most complex needs. This Bill will go some way towards supporting those aims, but it is by no means the whole picture, and we will continue to make progress on the reforms that are so desperately required.
Our priority is ensuring that the most vulnerable children do not fall off the radar of the professionals who are working to protect them. Members from across the House have rightly focused on that issue. I commend them for their very thoughtful contributions on these challenging issues, including the right hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Sir Julian Smith), my hon. Friends the Members for Rother Valley (Jake Richards) and for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), who must be commended for the work that he has undertaken in this area, and my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds South West and Morley (Mr Sewards). There will be “children not in school” registers in every English local authority, and local authority consent will be required to home-educate children who are subject to child protection inquiries or child protection plans, or who are at special schools; that is a proportionate solution that focuses on the most vulnerable.
The Bill will strengthen multi-agency safeguarding arrangements and implement multi-agency child protection teams. We recognise that we must improve information sharing across and within agencies, and we will. The Bill will support children in the care system so that they achieve and thrive. It will keep families together, and children safe, and crack down on excessive profit-making. These are issues that I know hon. Members care very deeply about, and my hon. Friends the Members for Lowestoft (Jess Asato), for Derbyshire Dales (John Whitby), for Forest of Dean (Matt Bishop) and for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) have spoken movingly about them today.
Children’s Social Care
Graham Stuart Excerpts(2 months ago)
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Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. [Interruption.] I did not mean to knock you down a peg, Mr Speaker; that would be very unwise.
I regret the Secretary of State’s tone in response to the shadow Secretary of State, and I hope that, over time, she learns not to adopt that tone on issues such as this. The shadow Secretary of State noted that there is a capacity crisis, and the Secretary of State has said that we need greater early intervention now. Is the Secretary of State confident that she has the resources to support local authorities and others in tackling this twin challenge? Both parts need to be tackled at the same time, which is a truly serious undertaking.
Bridget Phillipson
I am not quite sure how to begin to respond to the frankly extraordinary first part of the right hon. Gentleman’s question. To take the more serious points he raised, we are determined to ensure that we have the resources and support in place for the most vulnerable children in our country. The reason I get so cross when I hear some of the contributions made by Conservative Members is that during my time as shadow Secretary of State and Secretary of State, I have heard directly from far too many children who have been badly failed by this system. It is shocking and shameful, and we will change it.
Oral Answers to Questions
Graham Stuart Excerpts(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Bridget Phillipson
As the first ever Labour MP for Hexham, my hon. Friend will be a champion of rural communities across the country. I would be more than happy to meet with him—or my hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards will meet with him—to discuss this important concern, which I know many Members wish to discuss.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
I thank the Secretary of State for her answer, and for her personal commitment to creating a fairer funding system for children with special educational needs. In that light, she will forgive me if I mention that the East Riding has the lowest high-needs block allocation of any local authority in England. So many people have been genuinely committed to a fairer system in the past. Will the Secretary of State set out how she will achieve that? It is easy to support it in principle, but it is very hard to find a way of delivering it in practice.
Bridget Phillipson
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his question, and will make sure that officials engage with him on that point. If there is anything further he would like to share, I will happily look at it. He is right: this is a difficult area, and we need to make sure we get it right. I am determined to deliver a system where all children and young people have every chance and opportunity. Particularly when it comes to SEND support, we will have to work across the House to get to a much stronger and better position for our children and families.
Ukraine
Graham Stuart Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Anneliese Dodds
This Government are absolutely committed to ensuring that there is no sanction dodging and that we have an effective sanctions regime, which is critical to ensuring that Putin’s illegal war does not succeed. Over £20 billion-worth of UK-Russia bilateral trade is now under full or partial sanction. Imports from Russia into the UK have fallen by more than 99%, and exports to Russia have fallen by more than 75%. I previously mentioned that we have been working to tackle the so-called shadow fleet, and working with our allies and partners to ensure that we have robust action in that area, but we will continue to keep the system under review.
Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
I congratulate the Minister on both the tone and the substance of her response here today, and I see that the Foreign Secretary is now coming into the Chamber. The President of Ukraine has lauded the UK for its leadership in arms, politics and support for Ukrainian society, but can the Minister explain why he said that, since the election, that support had slowed?
Anneliese Dodds
I am grateful to the right hon. Member for his question, but I have to say that the Prime Minister could not have been clearer that the UK’s support for Ukraine is unwavering. This is a cross-party commitment coming from the UK. It is absolutely clear and we continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine. That is why the Prime Minister, within his first week in office, committed to £3 billion a year of support to Ukraine for as long as it takes. That is a new commitment, and one that we believed it was important to make, to underline that continued support. The right hon. Member will remember that, as a further signal of the strength of the relationship, the Prime Minister called President Zelensky on his first day in the job and that the Defence Secretary visited Kyiv just hours later. That commitment could not be clearer.