All 4 Debates between Graham Stuart and Angela Rayner

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Graham Stuart and Angela Rayner
Wednesday 20th November 2024

(3 days, 12 hours ago)

Commons Chamber
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Graham Stuart Portrait Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
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Q12. The whole House recognises the authenticity of the right hon. Lady’s back story—her pride in being a carer, and indeed in her recent elevation. In contrast, the chief constable of Northamptonshire was sacked in June for misrepresenting his CV, and just last month a nurse, Tanya Nasir, was imprisoned for five years for doing the same. Does the right hon. Lady agree that such serious consequences are right and just in such cases?

Angela Rayner Portrait The Deputy Prime Minister
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I know where the right hon. Gentleman is trying to go with this. While it is tempting—[Interruption.] What I will say to the right hon. Gentleman is that in the last four months our Chancellor has shown more competence than the last four Chancellors that were appointed by his Government.

Employment Rights Bill

Debate between Graham Stuart and Angela Rayner
2nd reading
Monday 21st October 2024

(1 month ago)

Commons Chamber
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Graham Stuart Portrait Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
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The Government’s own impact assessment states that

“the impact on growth could”—

only could—

“be positive”,

and that any such impact

“would be small in magnitude.”

The negative impacts, not least on small businesses, will be very serious in magnitude, as my hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) laid out. Will the Deputy Prime Minister please explain how she will minimise the negative impacts?

Angela Rayner Portrait Angela Rayner
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We have already been working with businesses while bringing forward the Bill, and we will continue to do that through the consultations. We have recognised probation periods, for example, but we do not think that people should not have rights two years into their employment.

We are listening, but I say to Conservative Members, who promised employment Bill after employment Bill and then never delivered them, that the people of this country deserve secure fairness at work, and this Labour Government will deliver it. Almost 9 million employees will benefit from protection against unfair dismissal from day one, 1.7 million will benefit from new policies on flexible working, and up to 2 million will receive a right to bereavement leave. Thousands of pregnant women and mothers will benefit from new maternity protections, and tens of thousands of fathers and partners will be brought into the scope of paternity leave. We will deliver a genuine living wage that matches the cost of living.

In total, more than 10 million people will benefit from Labour’s plan in every corner of this country, so if you are in casual work, unable to rely on guaranteed hours, this Labour Government are delivering for you. If you are working hard on low pay and struggling to make ends meet, this Government are delivering for you. This is a Government back in the service of working people.

--- Later in debate ---
Angela Rayner Portrait Angela Rayner
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Some of the measures in the Bill do recognise the difference between large employers and smaller ones, but we also have to ensure fairness and clarity of purpose in this country, and I think this Bill strikes the right balance. As I have said to other hon. Members who have raised issues regarding small and medium businesses, we are working with those businesses. We have already listened regarding probation periods: the Bill now creates a new statutory probation period so that employers and employees can check whether a job is a good fit. If it turns out not to be right, the Bill allows for a new lighter-touch standard of fairness for employers to meet when they dismiss someone, so I think we are striking the right balance. We have worked very hard on this piece of legislation. If workers are dismissed unfairly, everyone deserves the right to protection, however long they have been in post. With Labour, they will have that right.

Turning to statutory sick pay, no one should feel forced to struggle through work when they are not well. Our view is simple: everyone should be entitled to sick pay from the first day that they are sick, regardless of their earnings, yet 1.3 million employees are currently excluded because they do not earn enough. That means that lower earners, including carers, go to work when ill because they cannot afford not to do so, risking infecting the vulnerable, the elderly, and others with whom they come into contact. No one should want that. Under this Bill, all employees will be entitled to sick pay however much they earn, and that sick pay will be paid from their first day of being ill.

Graham Stuart Portrait Graham Stuart
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Will the right hon. Lady give way on that point?

Angela Rayner Portrait Angela Rayner
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I have already given way to the right hon. Member, and there are so many other Members who want to speak.

This Government know that the current system does not support working families. We said that we would make flexible working the default, and the Bill will do just that. Flexible working makes workers happier, and we know that businesses that offer it benefit from bigger, better and more diverse recruitment pools. At the same time, we recognise that not all workplaces can accommodate all flexible working requests, so businesses will be able to negotiate or reject unworkable requests as long as that rejection is reasonable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Graham Stuart and Angela Rayner
Monday 2nd September 2024

(2 months, 3 weeks ago)

Commons Chamber
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Angela Rayner Portrait Angela Rayner
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My hon. Friend is absolutely right: this week will be very difficult for the community around Grenfell, including the survivors and those who lost loved ones. He is also right to say that there are outstanding measures from phase 1. The Under-Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the hon. Member for Bethnal Green and Stepney (Rushanara Ali), made a written ministerial statement today that will hopefully show where the Government intend to go, but there is a lot that needs to be done. On Wednesday, the whole House will have a moment of reflection, and we will think of those at Grenfell in the coming weeks.

Graham Stuart Portrait Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
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I congratulate the Secretary of State on her dancing skills, her appointment and her outstanding answer to the question from the shadow Secretary of State, my right hon. Friend the Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch), on council tax, which I will pursue. Can she assure the House and guarantee that she will not remove the single person discount, which is so important to pensioners who are already losing out because of the absence of the winter fuel allowance? That would put gladness into the heart of elderly people across the country who live on small incomes.

Angela Rayner Portrait Angela Rayner
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I thank the right hon. Gentleman for his comments on my dance moves; that opinion is subjective, like beauty, of course. On a serious note, I find it astonishing that Conservative Members, after running down the economy in the way that they did, and after the Chancellor has had to come to the House and talk about the billion-pound black hole, are now trying to claim that this Government are about raising taxes. This Government are about making sure that working people are better off, and we intend to do that.

SATs Results

Debate between Graham Stuart and Angela Rayner
Tuesday 12th July 2016

(8 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Angela Rayner Portrait Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)
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I beg to move,

That this House believes that every child deserves an excellent education which enables them to grow and thrive; notes that the Government has published figures showing that a lower proportion of children were meeting the expected standard at the end of Key Stage 2 overall in 2016 than in 2015; further notes that, as a result, in 2016 47 percent of children will be told that they have not reached the expected standard in at least one of their SATs papers; regrets that the Secretary of State for Education has pushed ahead with chaotic and confusing reforms which mean that thousands of children will be unnecessarily labelled as failures, and that the Secretary of State is steadily losing the confidence of teachers; and calls on the Government urgently to review primary assessment and the 2016 SATs results and to clarify that these will not be used for measuring and judging school performance.

The 2016 key stage 2 standard assessment tests, which assess children in reading, writing, spelling, grammar, punctuation and maths, are the first to assess the new primary national curriculum, which was introduced in 2014. The Government claim that they have raised expectations for pupils at the end of key stage 2, but those at the chalk-face—primary school teachers and school leaders—say that the expected standard for SATs has been set at a level that is beyond the reach of the majority of children.

Our children are being set up to fail. Almost half of England’s 11-year-olds will now go on to secondary school, having been told by this Government that they are failures. However, the real failures are this Government, particularly the current Secretary of State for Education who pushed ahead with this flawed system despite all the warnings from the education profession that the primary assessment system was not fit for purpose.

Under this Government, children who fail to meet the totally unrealistic expected target at the end of key stage 2—47% of children—will be required to resit these tests in future. School leaders were told yesterday that the catch-up funding for secondary schools will not increase despite the rise in the number of pupils deemed to be below the expected standard. For these pupils, the first year at big school—and all the excitement and anticipation that it should bring—will instead become an anxious replay of drilling for tests in English and maths, which they sat in primary school. I can only imagine the impact on those young lives—to have to go through it all again, to feel a failure, to see their friends getting on when they should be looking ahead to new challenges and new opportunities.

I remember being told that I would never amount to anything, but look at me now. I want—teachers want—every child to know that they are amazing. I want an education system that helps every child realise their full potential.

Graham Stuart Portrait Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
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The hon. Lady may remember that under the last Labour Government we had such a system. It was fantastic. Every child was told that they were succeeding. It was just that when we looked at the international league tables, we went down, down and down. We had grade inflation. Whatever her critique of SATs results this year, does she not agree that we must have high standards and we must maintain those standards over time; otherwise we will go back to those days under Labour when we let down the future of young people by pretending that they were successful when, in fact, they were not?

Angela Rayner Portrait Angela Rayner
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I remember that under Labour we had Sure Start, we had Every Child Matters, we had new schools, we had teachers in the profession, we had people and children feeling that they were happy. At present we have teachers taking unprecedented industrial action and leaving the profession at record rates, so I take no lectures from those on the Government Benches regarding the current situation.

The Opposition recognise that ongoing assessment and consistent testing in schools is extremely important to help teachers and parents support and provide new challenges for all children. Such tests can identify and close any gaps in knowledge so that all pupils can do well. But a proper assessment regime needs consistency and needs to be understood by all.

The Government have utterly failed to deliver on this. The current SATs tests go too far. The Secretary of State has chopped and changed too much. She has caused disruption and chaos in our schools and extra bureaucracy for our teachers. The key stage 2 assessments have been an unmitigated disaster and a nightmare for thousands of children, ending in disappointment and prolonged uncertainty. They also have serious consequences for thousands of schools because of the way this Government use them as part of the school accountability system.

KS2 SATs are used to rank schools in league tables. They are scrutinised by the Department for Education and regional schools commissioners, who form judgments on schools’ performance. Ofsted uses SATs results when forming its inspection judgments, and parents take them into account when choosing their children’s school. Schools’ reputations are heavily dependent on how their pupils perform in these tests.

The National Association of Head Teachers asked the Secretary of State not to publish the data, as she herself has conceded that it is not to be compared with that for previous years. The NAHT general secretary, Russell Hobby, said:

“Given the changes to SATs this year, and the mistakes we’ve seen, it is hard see how valuable this data will be to parents who want to understand how well a school is performing year on year or compared to other schools. But the government does love a league table, regardless of how accurate it may be.”

Worryingly, the schools commissioners are already using the provisional results from these tests to identify those schools to which they can apply their extensive legal powers to force them into academy status on the spurious grounds that they are failing, coasting or underperforming.

Does all this remind us of anything—children who are judged failures at an early age, being separated from their primary school classmates; schools which are being wrongly condemned as second class? That sounds to me like the dark days of the 11-plus, with children branded failures before they have even reached their teens and separated from their classmates, with all the stigma that that can bring. Many adults today still recount the lasting effects that that had on them.