Child Care

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman).

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way to me and not to honorable colleagues on the Opposition Benches.

On the expansion of provision, does my hon. Friend welcome the fact that 73% of the children’s centres in the north-east are rated as either good or outstanding? More importantly, what opportunities will they have to expand that provision in the future?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my hon. Friend for his point about children’s centres, which have been a massive success under this Government. Record numbers of parents are using them, we have improved them by focusing them on outcomes and they are really achieving.

Oral Answers to Questions

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I think that 92,000 places is a fantastic achievement for local authorities. There are disparities across the country, and we are working with local authorities that are behind. I am pleased to tell the hon. Gentleman that 400 two-year-olds have places in his local area of Tameside. We are doing more to ensure that childminders can offer places. All good and outstanding childminders will be able to offer places from this September.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Many parents want their young children to have home-based child care. What policies does my hon. Friend have to ensure that we can offer places to parents who want that kind of child care?

Low Pay

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Westminster Hall

[Mr William Bain (Glasgow North East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hood.

Growth may be making an overdue return to the UK economy, but the continuing slump in real wages is forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility to extend into 2014, and the UK currently has the highest inflation rate in the European Union, both of which contribute to the cost of living crisis. The Office for National Statistics confirmed this morning in its November economic brief that real disposable household incomes have not risen in a sustained way under the Government’s policies.

Despite employees working more hours than before the economic crisis began, the recovery is not making its way into the pockets of ordinary workers. Workers in the lower half of the income scale, particularly low-paid workers, are falling even further behind the top 1% of earners in our society. There has never been a more important time for this House to discuss the issue of low pay and how together, as a Parliament and a society, we can tackle what is now a crisis.

As the report of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission recently made clear, poverty pay blights the outcomes in life of millions of men, women and children across our country. Every week, those of us with the honour of representing our great cities such as Glasgow meet those who suffer the effects of being trapped in low pay for long periods. According to the Poverty Alliance, 870,000, or 17%, of the population in Scotland live in poverty. A fifth of all children in Scotland are below the breadline.

This afternoon I will show that low pay is a problem not only in urban parts of the UK; there are pockets of truly shocking poverty in rural parts of Britain, too. If we are to come up with the right answers on low pay, we must first acknowledge how serious and widespread a social evil this now is across our country.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate, and I endorse his comment that low pay affects rural areas such as mine as much as urban Glasgow. However, does he accept that the decision to raise tax thresholds provides the best possible support to low-paid workers?

[Mr Bain]

I am grateful for that intervention; I will be considering that point later in my speech. However, I must point out to the hon. Gentleman that those on the lowest earnings will not gain a penny from further increases in the personal allowance. I can direct him to the research that the Resolution Foundation has produced on the subject. It has looked at the matter in detail.

There are also issues—I shall also come to this point later—about the effects that universal credit will have, particularly in relation to any future increases in the personal allowance. Sadly, given how the Government are designing the credit, what they give with one hand, they may be taking away with another, and that is an important consideration.

The hon. Gentleman has a good record on the subject. I am sure that is borne out of his own experience in his constituency, where 47% of part-time workers are earning less than a living wage. He is absolutely right to campaign on the subject—more power to him for doing so from the Conservative Benches.

As I grew up in Glasgow, the real life experiences of people paid less than £1 an hour for security work were a scar on my conscience and a powerful spur to action on poverty pay. The success of the minimum wage in raising pay rates for the most disadvantaged working poor households is shown by the fact that the Conservatives who opposed it, and the Liberal Democrats and members of the Scottish National party who did not vote for the legislation, now would not dare abolish it.

Indeed, several Ministers in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, including the Secretary of State and the Minister for Skills and Enterprise, who I am pleased to see in his place, claim that they want to build on the success of the national minimum wage. It is important that today we see precisely how the Government anticipate changing the remit of the Low Pay Commission to that end.

According to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics in response to a parliamentary question I recently submitted, the average gross median wage in Britain in 2012 was £405 a week, which is almost 7% down in real terms from 2010. For the low paid, the situation is even more desperate, given that higher energy, housing and food costs affect them with even greater severity.

More worryingly, the argument that having a job is enough on its own to lift a family out of poverty has lost much of its potency, because two thirds of the 3 million children living in poverty in this country today live in households in which at least one adult is in work. October’s rise in the main rate of the national minimum wage to £6.31 an hour was the fourth successive uprating below the rise in prices. The minimum wage has lost a fifth of its value in real terms over the past decade, and we must begin to reverse that.

Under-employment and the low-skilled, low-paid work that has been created in an increasingly hourglass-shaped labour market in the past few years have made the cost of living crisis worse for millions of the working poor. The Resolution Foundation has established that 4.8 million people, or one in five across the UK, earn less than the living wage rate set by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. That figure is up by 1.4 million in the past four years alone.

[Mr Bain]

My hon. Friend is right, and she speaks with great passion on behalf of her constituents. Some 57% of her constituents in part-time work earn less than the living wage, so she will be seeing on a weekly basis the real effects of poverty on the living standards of people in Llanelli.

Other analysis that I recently received from the ONS shows that in parts of the north-east of England between a half and two thirds of part-time workers are earning less than the living wage. In parts of Northern Ireland and the south and south-west of England, poverty pay among part-time employees is equally endemic. Even in the constituency of the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, more than two in every five part-time workers take home less than the living wage. With women more likely to be in part-time work than men, extreme low pay, particularly in the social care sector, represents not only economic injustice but gender inequality.

[Guy Opperman]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way to me for a second time. I know he is a passionate advocate of the living wage in Glasgow, where there has been some success. Does he agree that, for the living wage to gain greater traction and to have the take-up that we all want without the statutory empowerment that nobody wants, the key issue is trying to find ways to incentivise businesses, particularly in low-wage economies—the hospitality sector being an obvious example? Does he accept that, and does he have any ideas about how that should be done?

[Mr Bain]

That is a very good idea. We should be considering what is available in fiscal terms and what we can do through procurement. As I will describe, local authorities and other parts of the public and voluntary sectors have a good record of addressing low pay, but that needs to be extended to the private sector. Procurement is one means by which we can do that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow Central (Anas Sarwar) is here today. He will know that the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Bill, presented by the Scottish Government, is particularly disappointing and simply does not meet the test of ending low pay in Scotland.

As many as 220,000 direct care workers may be paid less than their legal entitlement to the national minimum wage. That is a national scandal, and the Government must act to end it. Worse, poverty pay is creating an even larger burden on the state because it is one of the biggest drivers of the increasing costs of housing benefit and tax credits. The recent report of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission found that 84% of the public agree that employers should do more to pay wages that better reflect the cost of living.

It is becoming increasingly clear that, if there is to be a wage-led recovery that reaches all the people of the United Kingdom, further action on the national minimum wage is needed now. According to the 2012 labour force survey, low pay is more prevalent in the private sector, with sole traders, partnerships and companies reporting rates of low pay at 47%, 35%, and 26% respectively. That compares with a low pay rate of only 15% in local government.

Although the tax credit system cushioned living standards between 2003 and 2008, and remains an important means of improving work incentives now, the case for building on the success of the national minimum wage has never been stronger. We should support councils and other parts of the public sector that pay or use procurement rules with the voluntary and private sectors to extend a living wage to more and more people. The Government should at last support the recognised living wage accreditation scheme, which would be a splendid way to mark national living wage week next week, but we also need to understand that a rise in the national minimum wage will help substantially more workers than even a voluntary expansion of the living wage by employers.

We also need better enforcement of the minimum wage to stop the exploitation of unpaid interns for months on end and should back the superb campaign led by Intern Aware. Equity highlights the ongoing issue with performers and arts organisations in relation to the exemption in section 44 of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998.

It is particularly shameful that the maximum penalty for fly-tipping is 10 times the penalty for not paying a worker the legal minimum rate for an hour’s work and that the average fine per breach of the minimum wage rules was just over £1,000 in the last financial year. There were just two successful prosecutions of employers last year for failing to pay the minimum wage rate, according to information provided to me by the Treasury. The Government can do a great deal more on enforcement, and I hope the Minister will outline the next steps.

As I said to the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman), increasing the personal tax allowance does not in itself end the crisis of low pay. Many low-paid workers do not earn enough to pay income tax and so would not benefit from further rises in the personal allowance. For lone or couple households with children, the interaction between a rising minimum wage and the help provided by the tax credit system will do the most to raise living standards.

We also need to be mindful that the introduction of universal credit will mean that what low-income taxpayers may gain from a higher personal allowance will be lost through the new tax credit system, which is assessed on after-tax income. New research by Gingerbread published this morning shows that the Government’s current plans for universal credit will make it far harder for low-income lone parents to make work pay beyond 20 hours a week, as the incentives rapidly taper away.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Hancock]

Absolutely; it is vital that work always pays for every hour, and that is why having a consistent withdrawal rate in universal credit matters. It is valuable that this debate is not particularly partisan, but I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention to the fact that, with tax credits as they were, withdrawal rates were sometimes more than 100%, so in some cases—not in large numbers—people were taking home less when they worked harder. Universal credit will put an end to that, which should be welcomed in all parts of the House.

[Guy Opperman]

Does the Minister accept that the true way to engineer people out of low pay is to provide them with the skills to do a better job and to make progress? Last week, I opened an engineering academy in Hexham, and shortly we hope to welcome to the north-east the skills funding pilot of the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. Does he accept that skills are the real secret for the future of the low-paid?

[Matthew Hancock]

Yes, of course. As the Skills and Enterprise Minister, everyone would be amazed—I would not be doing my job—if I did not support that argument, which I do.

Al-Madinah Free School

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend is right. If we reflect on some of the schools that were able to languish in failure for many years under the last Labour Government without decisive action being taken, we will find that our actions in this case compare very favourably indeed.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I welcome the action taken in respect of this school and the fact that the majority of the 170 free schools are outperforming local authority schools. Does the Minister agree that one bad apple does not spoil the barrel, and has he learned anything about Labour’s policy on free schools?

[Mr Laws]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. It is interesting that the shadow Secretary of State who speaks for the Opposition on these matters has not concluded that the Labour party’s last academies programme was deficient because some of those academies have failed. There is a basic lack of logic in Labour’s position and an ideological resistance to innovation in the school system.

Secondary Schools (Accountability)

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I do not think we can be accused of leaping too rapidly to conclusions when we have just completed an eight-month consultation process on the changes that we are discussing today. It would be negligent of us to stand back and ignore the recommendations being made by Ofsted and others, and the dramatic figures that we have seen in the past year or so, which suggest that a vast amount of money is being sunk into exam fees rather than into teaching—behaviour that is not potentially in the best interests of some of the most disadvantaged youngsters. We have spoken to many head teachers and head teachers’ bodies about this. The timing has been controversial, but many head teachers have told us that there were problems and abuses in this area and that these changes are sensible,

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

The Minister visited Hexham schools this summer, for which I am grateful. He will know that they are outstanding and that they will welcome these accountability reforms, including the destination measures that he outlined. Could he give the House a little more explanation of how, through over-achievement, a school can avoid the next year’s Ofsted inspection?

[Mr Laws]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for arranging the visit to his constituency some months ago. I very much enjoyed visiting a couple of schools in his part of the country. Those schools that achieve a particularly high level of progress—one grade more than expected—will have that exemption from Ofsted inspection, and that will send out a clear signal to those schools that we are rewarding the extraordinary progress that they are making.

National Curriculum

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Monday 8th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Academies do make up the majority of secondary schools. At the moment, academies make up only 10% of primary schools, and the curriculum is of course more specific when it comes to the foundation subjects at primary level. The curriculum generates a sense of expectation and lays the foundations for the new GCSEs, which we expect to be the principal benchmark for accountability at the age of 16 for all schools.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Did the Secretary of State notice Professor Black’s comments today? He said:

“You can’t debate our sense of national identity and our national interest unless you understand our national history. This curriculum put British history first as well…It kicks out woolly empathy”.

Does he agree that that is the right way forward in the longer term?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s point. Professor Jeremy Black is one of the finest and most productive historians working in academia today. He is also one of the most engaging of teachers.

GCSEs

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

My constituents in Northumberland will welcome this effort to raise standards across the board, although my local schools already produce outstanding results, despite very low per capita funding. Will the Secretary of State meet a delegation of head teachers of my high schools at some stage this summer in Westminster, to discuss both this consultation and the proposed transitional funding arrangements?

[Michael Gove]

It would be a pleasure.

Children and Families Bill

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. Advocacy comes in different forms. We have advocacy in relation to the legal process, and legal aid will still apply up to the point of tribunal for those who require legal advice. There is also advocacy in terms of trying to navigate the system. One thing that we are doing in relation to the pathfinders is to see who can help co-ordinate and navigate for parents and young people in a system that often has been too impenetrable, labyrinthine and drawn out. That could be through a key working role or through the work that the special educational needs co-ordinators carry out so effectively in so many of our schools. It is a practical response to the problem that we know exists while ensuring that the advocacy that is currently available for the legal process continues into the future. We set that out in Committee and I encourage the right hon. Gentleman to look carefully at what we said.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Will the Minister reassure some local authorities that the proposal will still ensure integration between the 1970 legislation, the Children Act 1989 and this Act, and make sure that there is not a silo system that does not have the integrated service that we all so want?

[Mr Timpson]

My hon. Friend touches on the heart of the Bill, which is to tackle the perennial problem of special educational needs, in that education, health and social care have tended to work in parallel rather than in conjunction with one another. In many of the clauses, both through the general duty to co-operate, the joint commissioning clause, and now the duty on health as well as the duty to consult parents and children themselves, there is already, with the pathfinders, a growing involvement of each of those different agencies in coming together and concentrating on the central and most important issue, which is the child. I hope he will see that the Bill gives local authorities an opportunity to nurture and grow their relationships with health and other agencies, and ensure that as a consequence they are providing better services for children in their local area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Timpson]

I will be corrected if I am wrong, but my understanding is that there have been ongoing discussions. We are aware of the issue. As with all organisations that have expressed an interest in the Bill, we have been keen to keep an open dialogue with the RNIB to see what solutions we can find. Many of the solutions will be found at local level. We must accept that some conditions have a high incidence and some have a low incidence, and that can affect the sort of provision available right across the country. The beauty of trying to develop the local offer is that it will make it far more transparent not only in a local area, but across a regional area, so parents and young people will have a greater understanding of what is available to them, how they can access it and, if they are unable to do so, how they can make a complaint, which in the past has been quite a convoluted and impenetrable process. We must ensure that they have the power to make those decisions.

[Guy Opperman]

I am not sure whether I need to, but I will make a declaration: I have represented about 100 applicants for statements at special educational needs and disability tribunals, and local authorities still owe me money for some of them from before 2010. The simple question that my constituents in Northumberland would like answered, if that is possible, is this: will these proposals make it easier to gain a statement for those parents who have been trying to do so for so long, given that the process has been so convoluted and difficult over the years, as we have all found?

[Mr Timpson]

The short answer is yes. That is the intention of the Bill. There are a number of reasons for saying that. One of the complaints from parents about the statementing process relates less to the statement itself and more to early identification and the need for much greater effort from different agencies in co-ordinating the assessment and the plan. Everything in the Bill tries to encourage that and, in some circumstances, cajole the different bodies to come together and work with the family, rather than, as we have heard far too often, the family feeling that they are working in a different environment from those around them. By ensuring that that happens, we will reduce the prospect of conflict, misunderstanding and, therefore, the road to tribunal, which we all want to avoid. That is why we included the mediation process, albeit on a voluntary basis, to give parents and those responsible for providing services every opportunity to work together, co-operate and consult at every stage, but particularly in the early stages, in order to avoid unnecessary discord and damage further down the line.

Oral Answers to Questions

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Local authorities certainly have an important role in championing vulnerable children in particular. If they feel that any school, whether it is a maintained school, an academy or a free school, has a principal who is not doing the right job for their children, they should raise it directly with the Department and we will together take action.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

20. Head teachers in Northumberland find it unacceptable that high local government pension scheme rates are set simply because a school decides to become an academy, and yet that is the policy of the county council. Does the Secretary of State agree that that policy is totally wrong and that head teachers who aspire for their schools to be academies should be encouraged and supported?

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. He has fought like a tiger for the schools in his constituency and across Northumberland. I have been working with the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to make progress.

Forced Conversion of Schools to Academies

Guy Opperman Excerpts

Tuesday 12th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Thank you, Mrs Main. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (John Pugh) on securing this debate. I have to confess that the problem in Northumberland is not that the county councils are being bullied by the Government but, rather, that the county councils are bullying the schools.

The reality of the situation is that Northumberland has few academies; my constituency does not have a single one. We must ask why. All of us, of course, want our children to receive the best possible education, whether at an academy or a maintained school. The great William Yeats described education as the lighting of a fire, and the question that follows is how best to achieve that.

In Northumberland, we have a three-tier system, of which I am an unadulterated supporter, particularly in a rural context, but at the heart of the issue for Northumberland is a middle school. The Minister is a small hero of Hexham middle school, which I visited two weeks ago to meet Mrs Parker and her three star pupils, Elizabeth Nixon, Amy Hawke and Anisha Bannister, all of whom wrote to the Minister requesting a change of mathematical calculation, from chunking to long division. They are deeply pleased that she listened to their pleas and are looking forward to meeting her when I bring them and their teacher to the House in the near future.

I welcome the chance to debate academies today. Surely it cannot be a bad thing that they can set pay and conditions, deviate if necessary from the national curriculum, change the length of terms and school days, reduce classroom sizes, introduce new disciplinary techniques, target resources to the most appropriate areas, and allow the school to be run by head teachers and governors rather than by a local authority, which, in my case, is some 50 or 60 miles away. That is my opinion, but I could give my hon. Friend the Member for Southport ample examples, including the Harris Federation, the schools in Newcastle, and ARK Schools, which runs more than 18 separate academies throughout the country. Since they took over those schools, grades have gone up by more than 200%, and the standard and quality of education have improved immeasurably. Local people are voting with their feet and deluging those schools with applications.

That is why I deem it unfortunate that, contrary to my hon. Friend’s assertions, Northumberland schools are not being forced to convert to academies. They are being prevented from converting. I will give three specific examples. Allendale middle school was a failing school, and the council chose to close it instead of converting it to a sponsored academy. It will close in the autumn, notwithstanding the assurance from the former Under-Secretary of State for Education, Lord Hill, who said that

“there is substantial evidence that sponsored Academy status is the best way to transform such underperforming schools and make sure that we achieve a lasting solution to underperformance”.

Similarly, Haltwhistle middle school has chosen to go down the path towards academy status, but it is being prevented from doing so by the county council’s approach on pensions. That is what I want to address in my last few minutes today. In Northumberland, the county council is requiring an extra pension contribution from an academy, of between 12% and 26%, whereas for a standard maintained school in the UK the average pension fund contribution for teachers earning less than £75,000 is approximately 8%. There is no financial justification for the measure, and no other county in the country is following that course of action. Either the council’s pension fund panel is driving that unfair proposal forward to prevent schools from becoming academies, or the council is fundamentally opposed to academy status. There can be no other reason, except that it would like to obtain greater sums from a would-be academy than from a maintained school.

The position is set out in a communication between the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and the Secretary for State for Education in December 2011, which stated that

“the overall costs for the Academy as a participant in the Scheme should not increase”

and they

“should not be treated in the LGPS less favourably than maintained schools.”

Given that advice from the two Secretaries of State, I tabled a parliamentary question to which the Minister for Schools, my right hon. Friend the Member for Yeovil (Mr Laws) replied:

“my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Education and for Communities and Local Government made it clear that no academy should pay unjustifiably higher employer pension contributions than maintained schools in their area”.—[Official Report, 29 October 2012; Vol. 552, c. 15.]

With several head teachers and governors from Northumberland, I then met the Minister and a Minister from the Department for Communities and Local Government on 17 December. As yet, nothing has changed. Some schools that want to become academies or are budgeting for the year ahead are facing larger pension contributions than those of their competitors and than those which they themselves previously enjoyed. In those circumstances, either there is an impact on their financial calculations because they are paying larger contributions, or they are refusing to become academies when that is what head teachers, governors and local parents want, because they are worried about the larger contributions.

One Northumberland school governor said:

“We are being drained of funds by this issue, and it is draining away the optimism we had when we converted to an Academy”.

That is a crying shame. Academies are a fantastic opportunity to help to turn poorly performing schools around, but the failure to resolve the issue is holding back schools in Northumberland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure, Mrs Main, to be under your chairmanship this afternoon. I think I agree with some of what everyone has said, but not all that anyone has said, which makes for an interesting debate. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) for securing it. One point on which I agree with him is that there is a danger of the academies programme being seen as an end in itself, rather than as a means to an end. It is that point on intended and unintended consequences that I wanted to address.

I will explain where I am coming from on the issue by reference to my constituency. I had a quick tot up and I have nine secondary schools in my constituency, including one that is 100 yards outside. They range from leading independent schools, such as Latymer Upper school and St Paul’s girls’ school, to leading Catholic schools, such as Sacred Heart high school and London Oratory, which former Prime Ministers and current party leaders seem keen to send their children to. There is also the West London free school, which was set up Toby Young, and two academies that were part of the Labour Government’s academies programme: Burlington Danes academy, which is a new build, and Hammersmith academy. There are two outstanding—I should say that all those that are subject to Ofsted inspection are outstanding—community schools: William Morris school, which is a sixth-form school that I helped set up 20 years ago and am a governor of, and Phoenix high school, which is run by Sir William Atkinson, who is a famous head teacher, known across the country.

The reason I mentioned those is because there is a vast range of schools, and I do not discriminate between any of them. I go to them all, invite their pupils here and I am very proud to have every single one of them in my constituency. I am particularly proud of the two academies and indeed, I helped to set them up, under the previous Labour Government. It is a shame that the £50 million that went into those was not replicated by the Building Schools for the Future programme being continued, so that community schools could also have benefited.

What I find surprising is the attitude of—I have to call them this—the ideologues in the Department for Education and in some Conservative local councils, including my own. They take it to be their mission to ensure that there is academisation wherever possible, without regard to the reasons why they are doing it. I hope that from what I have said it is clear that I have no particular beef about whether a school is an academy or not. All those schools are doing well in their own way.

I can best illustrate that by reference to ARK Schools, which is a well known academy chain, and is the governing foundation for Burlington Danes academy, which, historically, has been a grammar school, a successful comprehensive school, and a Church of England school. It is now an ARK academy and I was part of ensuring that that happened. On the back of that, west London is now populated by a dozen-plus new ARK schools, and again, I have no particular objection to that. I was at one of the primary schools last week—ARK Conway primary academy—opening the new library.

What I have difficulty with, however, is the attitude of Conservative local authorities, who, whenever they see a possibility in relation to an existing community school, pressurise that school into becoming an ARK academy. We had an early example of that with Kenmont primary school in my constituency. The head left, which is a perfectly normal thing to happen. The local authority then said that it could not afford to employ a new head and that the school would therefore have to become an ARK academy. It was only because the parents and governors objected—in the end, a new head was recruited —that that did not happen, and it is now, once again, a very successful community primary school.

Other schools have been pressurised; indeed, one is being pressurised at the moment, and I use the phrase advisedly. There are primary schools in my constituency that have effectively been told that their only option is to become an academy. I feel that in some cases, those schools are set up to fail, and they are not given the requisite support. Perhaps a head teacher leaves, there is a temporary head for a year or two, and the school is allowed to drift into special measures. I am not going to name particular schools—I do not want to name schools that are having difficulties—but I see that pattern repeated, and it is not what a local authority should be doing. It should be supporting all its schools, including those for which it is not directly responsible.

We had a £33 million investment programme—at the moment, that is quite a big programme—over two years for primary schools, yet all that money was directed to voluntary-aided schools, free schools or academies, for new build, refurbishment, conversion or expansion as may be, despite the fact that very successful community schools also wish to expand and see investment put into them. I object to those double standards and to not having a level playing field. I have to ask who the ideologues are in this case, and I am afraid that they are particularly centred around the Secretary of State for Education.

None of that would matter if there were no adverse consequences, but let me explain some of the consequences. First, there will be a perception—it may be a reality, but it is certainly a perception—that we are creating a two-tier system in education, in which academies are the preferred type of schools. Parents will therefore gravitate, reasonably and understandably, towards those schools, because they believe that the schools will be preferred—with money, resources or simply the attention that they receive from local education authorities and the DFE. That then leads to a form of separate development. A number of academies are now for pupils aged three to 18, and they therefore monopolise children within an area. Equally, I have noticed a trend whereby secondary academies will select—particularly if they are in the same group—from their primary feeder schools, so it may be that there is no longer an interchange between primary schools in that way. I am beginning to get a lot of complaints from parents of children in community primary schools who might want to send their children to secondary academies, and they find that they are refused or are a long way down the waiting list.

I also fear that there is a possibility of politicisation of the academy system down the road. There is a strong association between the academy system and not only Conservative local authorities, but Conservative funders, peers and so on. Lord Nash has been mentioned. Lord Fink, who I think is still the Tory party treasurer, was the chairman of ARK, and he is the chairman of one of the schools in my constituency. Both of those gentlemen are very substantial funders of the Conservative party. One of them, Lord Nash—or rather, his wife, Lady Nash—was the principal funder of my opponent at the last election. It is a free country. Anyone can do as they wish, but the association of particular schools, chains of schools and individuals with a particular political party is not healthy in education. I see that as another branch of the politicisation and there is the real prospect of our moving—with every pronouncement that comes out of Government or those close to Government—to profit-making schools. If another Conservative Government were elected, we would see that trend continue, and I think that would be extremely regrettable.

This is not an easy issue to deal with; it is not black and white in any way. As I hope I made very clear at the beginning, I support every school in my constituency. I have a good relationship with ARK. I find it slightly troubling that soon it will be almost the size of a local education authority, spread across some west London boroughs, because it does not have the same democratic accountability as LEAs. However, I do not blame ARK. It may be a willing recipient of the Government’s largesse, but I place the blame squarely where it lies: in the tram-line attitude and the “Go for academies at all costs” policy that infects the DFE at the moment. With hindsight, in years to come, I think that that will be seen as a very retrograde, ideological and divisive step.

Whether individual schools are achieving for individual pupils is clearly important, but as Members of Parliament, we have to look after the interests and welfare of all the schools in our constituencies, and that certainly ought to be the role played by LEAs and the DFE as well. I do not see that happening—I do not see the even-handed approach that will embrace and encourage community schools, in the same way that I see that when those in the preferred or favoured categories are dealt with.

[Guy Opperman]

With the hon. Gentleman’s experience of ARK, does he not accept that in even his own constituency—I do not extend the point to all other ARK schools around the country—when ARK has gone in and schools have become academies, they have transformed the education? Without knowing his constituency, I suggest that all the schools ARK has gone into have had a successful outcome. Surely that is the point.

[Mr Slaughter]

I make it clear that I am absolutely not criticising ARK as an educational institution. The answer is that it has had some remarkable successes and some partial successes. Some successes have not been quite so big, and in some cases, it is too early to say. That is true—it is exactly why I started with a slightly self-indulgent tour round my constituency—and I could say the same thing about many other schools and different types of schools there. That is not the point I am making. The point that I thought I was making—I will make it slightly more clearly—is that the concentration and fixation on a particular type of school and giving schools of that type a privileged status will undoubtedly have an unbalancing effect on education across the piece. That is the mistake that the Government are making.

[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) on securing the debate. He gave us a thoughtful and philosophical discourse, as ever, on forced academisation. Interestingly, he described what he saw as bullying going on within the system. I will come back to that. He also introduced us to the interesting concept of an under-occupancy subsidy for some types of school that the Government are currently promoting. I am sure that we will hear more about that in the future.

I also congratulate the hon. Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) on his speech. He managed to turn it into a bit of a debate about pensions, which might be a separate issue from what we are discussing today, but he did show his erudition by quoting Yeats. I, too, will quote some Yeats:

“Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world”.

In some of what is going on with the forced academisation debate, there is a problem with the falconer not knowing what the falcon is getting up to out and about in the field. I will also come back to that point.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Lancashire (Rosie Cooper) described what she called snake-oil salesmen in relation to forced academisation. The hon. Member for Bradford East (Mr Ward) said that this policy was not so much ideological as egotistical on the part of the Secretary of State for Education and that he needed to be seen to be doing something dramatic, which explained his actions. It reminds me a bit of the goalkeeper’s dilemma during a penalty shoot-out. Statistically it is proven that, very often, to stand still is the best thing to do during a penalty shoot-out, but if the goalkeeper does that and the opposition scores, they are roundly criticised. If, however, the goalkeeper dives in completely the wrong direction and the opposition scores, they are praised for at least having a go. Perhaps that explains the phenomenon that the hon. Gentleman described.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Mr Slaughter) told us about his own experience, including helping to set up academies in his constituency, and about his fear of politicisation and of profit-making schools. I recently met colleagues from Sweden, who described to me the utter disaster of profit-making schools—free schools—in Sweden. The impact has been to lower standards because of the race to the bottom that profit-making schools entail. Also, Sweden has had to reinstate a requirement for teachers to be properly qualified in free schools, because of that race to the bottom for low-paid staff and maximising profit. That has happened in free schools in Sweden, so there is a lesson for us there as well.

This debate is about forced academisation. Let me say at the outset that I am a supporter of academies and have been throughout my 12 years in the House of Commons. Of course, the genesis for the academies programme under the previous, Labour Government was to launch a direct assault on the double disadvantage of social and economic deprivation. Our concern about the current Government’s academies programme is not about the freedoms that can be granted—that come along with academy status—but about the loss of focus on under-performing schools in areas of high social and economic deprivation and the fact that that might result in the positive impact of the academies programme being diluted. I worry that the principal foundations for the success of the early academies—collaboration and partnership—have been replaced by what other hon. Members have talked about here today, a fixation on the numbers game. That is what we are seeing at the moment. It explains why we are having this debate on forced academisation today. It is all about numbers, rather than standards.

I am not wedded to any particular model for the way in which schools should be run. As a former teacher myself, I agree with the hon. Member for Southport that the structure makes very little difference. We know what makes a good school; we know what factors are involved in that, and there is plenty of research to show it. I do not think that there are many people, either—there may be some here—who think that local authorities should directly run all state-funded schools these days. A lot of us agree that local authorities did not always do a particularly good job of running local schools in many cases in the past, but just because a job was not always done well does not mean that there is not a job that needs to be done. There is a job that needs to be done at local level in relation to our schools, and that focus is being lost by the current Government with this numbers game that they are fixated on.

I welcome the Minister who will reply to the debate. It is a shame that the Minister for Schools is not replying to it. I know that responsibility for this subject lies in the House of Lords, but it would be good to have the Schools Minister here to reply to the debate, because he could then explain why he supports the current policy when he said in his manifesto at the last election that he wanted to

“replace Academies with our own model of ‘Sponsor-Managed Schools’. These schools will be commissioned by and accountable to local authorities and not Whitehall”.

That was his policy previously, which perhaps explains why he never fronts up on this subject as Schools Minister and turns up to debate it. I would welcome his doing that in the future.

However, I am glad that we have the hon. Lady here to answer on behalf of the Government about the worrying reports that we are receiving from around the country. Despite my intervention earlier about yesterday’s article by Warwick Mansell in The Guardian, there seems to be a growing number of reports from around the country about bullying behaviour by the individuals who are being sent round by the Department for Education to bring about forced academisation of schools.

Last year I visited a group of schools that had formed an education improvement partnership. One of the primary school head teachers in it was desperate to tell me about her experience with what some people locally have described as gauleiters being sent out by the Department for Education. What she told me made my jaw drop. She told me that when the adviser from the Department turned up, she was told that she had to meet them and that no one else was to be present. When she objected to that, she was told that perhaps at a stretch she might be allowed to have the chair of governors present with her for part of the meeting. She wanted to have, and in the end she insisted on having, the head teacher of the local secondary school, which was part of the education improvement partnership, with her for the debate, but she told me several stories about how she was leaned on—that is the only way it can be described—and told that there was no alternative to her school becoming an academy, despite the fact that the governors did not want that, the parents did not want it and it was clearly an improving school. In the end, having taken legal advice, they were able to fend off the adviser who had come from the Government, using those bullying tactics, but I am told that as she left she said, “I’ll be back”, Arnold Schwarzenegger-style—no doubt after further efforts have been made to undermine the efforts being made by the school to operate as part of an education improvement partnership to raise standards in the school. That is happening around the country. I have also been told that in the same area, one head teacher has seen a gagging clause put into their contract, having been forced out of a school as part of this process.

It is all very well, under the cloak of standards, to go around to schools and offer them an opportunity to consider academisation—the sponsored academy approach. That can be entirely appropriate on many occasions, but the bullying behaviour—we are hearing, and I am receiving, more and more accounts of it—is very worrying. I therefore want the Minister to answer a few questions about that. How many schools does she know of that have successfully resisted forced academisation procedures? How are the academy advisers recruited? How are they rewarded? Is it true that they are on a payment-by-results regime? I hope that the Minister will answer this question particularly. Is there any code of conduct for those people as to how they should behave? As the Minister with responsibility for the issue of bullying, will she give us an absolute assurance that if there is one, she will publish it, and that if there is not one currently, she will ensure that one is available? I ask that because some of the behaviour that is being described—

[Guy Opperman]

rose—

[Kevin Brennan]

I do not have time to give way I am afraid. I would otherwise, but I want the Minister to be able to answer.

Given the behaviour that is being described, if there is a code of conduct, it is obviously not being adhered to in any acceptable way. Is it acceptable to insist on meeting heads alone, not allowing them to have other people with them? Do the advisers have targets? To whom are they accountable? What evidence is there that forced academisation raises standards? We do not have much time and I want to give the Minister the chance to answer the questions. Why has the Department backed down in the face of a legal challenge from Coventry council about forced academisation? Will she undertake to ban gagging orders on heads who are forced out of their jobs and introduce transparency into the process?