Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Monday 23rd November 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Gentleman raises an important point about vaccines. We are working very closely across Government to ensure that those people who have the greatest clinical need get the vaccine. He highlights a really important issue, and he would not be surprised to hear that, as Secretary of State for Education, I always see education as the absolute priority, but I would be very happy to work with the devolved Administrations to make sure that we have as combined and co-ordinated an approach as possible, which is really the greatest strength of our Union.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Many schools in West Worcestershire have benefited from the condition improvement fund, but Malvern Parish Primary School, with its leaky, draughty Victorian windows, keeps missing out. Would the Secretary of State kindly look again at its bid?

[Gavin Williamson]

I have some good news: on 14 January —after Christmas—there is going to be an opportunity for such schools to apply for the next round of condition improvement funding. There is more money in this pot than ever before due to the fact that we are spending more money on the improvement of our schools. Of course, I would always be very happy to sit down with my hon. Friend and discuss her educational priorities, including for the schools in her constituency.[Official Report, 24 November 2020, Vol. 684, c. 6MC.]

Educational Settings

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

We have to recognise that schools such as Gibside will be facing considerable pressures in terms of staffing and the spread of the virus, but also in terms of pupils who may be unwell. Many children who attend special schools such as Gibside will be on an EHCP, which obviously puts them in the category of vulnerable children for whom we are looking to make sure there is continued provision.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

This has been a sobering statement, and I want to put on record how much I appreciate the tone used by the Secretary of State and the hon. Member for Ashton-under- Lyne (Angela Rayner).

My question is on behalf of university students. What will they pay for their tuition fees?

[Gavin Williamson]

There are currently no plans to change the tuition fees. Obviously, as has been highlighted, universities will continue teaching online. We will be working very closely with Universities UK to ensure students have their grades in a timely manner to ensure they are able to move on to the next stage of their lives.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

The University of Bradford did contribute a bid in 2017. That process subsequently produced five brand new medical schools, which have increased our capacity by 1,500 medical places. Unfortunately, the University of Bradford’s application was unsuccessful, but it is not true to say that the Department did not engage with the university, and I am more than happy to visit it.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

It is wonderful to hear about the plans at the University of Bradford. In addition, the University of Worcester is developing plans for a three counties medical school, which would cover Worcestershire, Gloucestershire and Herefordshire. May I urge my hon. Friend also to look into working with the Department of Health and Social Care to support that bid?

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

The Chancellor outlined our commitment to put more money into early years, and the hon. Member highlights the extra £66 million that has been put into it. We have seen an expansion of the Government’s support for early years, raising the number of free hours from 12.5 to 15 to 30 and supporting children from the most disadvantaged communities. We will continue to look at this and have discussions with the Treasury.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

In addition to childminders, nurseries such as the Madresfield Early Years Centre in my constituency provide a wonderful setting for young children. Can the Secretary of State provide reassurance that, where we are increasing pay for some of the lowest-paid workers in our society, those nurseries will be compensated for that when we reimburse them for free childcare provision?

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend highlights the important role that the private sector and many organisations play in providing great settings for early years care. That is why we put an extra £66 million into the sector. It is too early to comment on negotiations with the Treasury, but I note her comments.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

Fortunately, my many responsibilities do not include the setting of interest rates. I am happy to leave that to the Governor of the Bank of England, who has made an admirable impression.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

T6. Did the science Minister hear the excellent Radio 4 programme about Malvern’s cyber-security hub, and will he clear his diary to come and open the private sector-led national cyber-skills centre in Malvern?

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend is a great advocate for the Malvern cyber-security hub, and I do indeed very much hope to visit it. I am sure it is well worth a visit.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

STEMnet ambassadors are doing a fantastic job of going to schools to encourage young people to study those subjects. There is a surge in the number of young people taking A-levels in subjects such as maths and physics, which are often a requirement for going on to engineering.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

9. What assessment he has made of the ability of businesses to recruit staff with appropriate IT skills.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

Our recent information economy strategy shows that employers find it hard to get people with the right IT skills, yet there is also relatively high unemployment among computer science graduates. That is why I recently convened a round-table with vice-chancellors and employers to tackle that mismatch. I know that issue is vital in the Malvern cyber-valley that my hon. Friend does so much to support.

[Harriett Baldwin]

Indeed, cyber-security IT skills are vital for the online world. Will the Minister welcome the initiative by private sector firms in my constituency to set up a cyber-skills training centre, and may I invite him, once again, to visit?

[Mr Willetts]

I do support that initiative and I hope it will be possible to visit my hon. Friend’s constituency, because I know how much she does to support the Malvern cluster, which will soon be rivalling the Cambridge cluster and tech city.

Child Care

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the hon. Lady for her points. I will deal specifically with childminders later and I will respond to her point then.

Labour also had a voucher scheme, but only one fifth of parents could use it—only those whose employers offered it, and only those who were in employment rather than self-employed. There was no limit on income, unlike tax-free child care, so millionaires got it, but the self-employed did not. That was Labour’s legacy on child care—a massive waste of money, added complexity and a huge spreading of confusion.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

It was even more unhelpful than that, as my employer offered the child care voucher scheme, but because it was so tightly regulated, even though I was spending a fortune on child care, I was not able to use it.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my hon. Friend for that point, which illustrates the problem with the child care voucher system.

Let me further point out to Labour Members that in the ’80s and ’90s, when we had a working mother in charge of our country, England was ahead in respect of maternal employment, but we fell behind other countries such as France and Germany under Labour’s watch. Maternal employment rates are rapidly rising under this Government. As Edmund Burke pointed out—the shadow Education Secretary is clearly a big fan—“those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it”, and if he has not learnt the lessons that people in the previous Labour Government learnt at the time, he will fail, should he ever get the opportunity to be in office. That is why we are reforming the child care system: we are reforming the hopeless legacy that Labour left.

The signs are that what we are doing is working. We are seeing prices stabilising, more places being made available in school nurseries and a revival in childminding. We want parents to have a good choice of options, including nurseries, schools, childminders and children staying at home with parents, or a combination of those. We are introducing much simpler funding and creating a regulatory structure to support modern working parents.

We are determined to reverse the decline in the number of childminders. From this September, good and outstanding childminders will be able automatically to access funding for early education places for two, three and four-year-olds. That means that an additional 28,000 childminders will automatically be funded. I think that addresses the point raised by the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier) about ensuring high-quality childminding.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jonathan Ashworth]

It sounds like an example of “same old Tories”—yet more broken Tory promises.

As I said earlier, I have tremendous respect for the Minister. I watched her carefully as she toured the studios yesterday, when she talked about the Conservative proposal for tax relief. That tax relief, however, will not be introduced until 2015, and I understand that it will apply only to couples when both partners are earning. If a couple have a two-year-old at nursery, one partner is working and the other is at home caring for a newborn child, that couple will receive nothing—zilch. There will be no help for them whatsoever from this Government.

[Harriett Baldwin]

The hon. Gentleman is forgetting the fact that if the couple are married, they will be able to transfer some of their tax allowance from one to the other. [Interruption.]

[Jonathan Ashworth]

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), who speaks on Treasury matters, shouts “No, she won’t.” I think that that deals with the hon. Lady’s point.

I gather that the child care voucher companies will manage the Minister’s proposed scheme, but I do not know whether they will manage it for free. I should be interested to know what estimates the Department has made. How much will it cost the voucher companies to administer the scheme, and how much of the £1.5 billion that the Minister is putting into the tax-free scheme will be creamed off?

The Minister’s big plan was to downgrade child care ratios. I remember the pamphlet that she wrote about that before she was appointed. At the time, a woman stopped me to complain about it while I was doing my shopping in Morrisons in the centre of Leicester. We know that, all too often, the Government’s answer to the challenges of globalisation is a race to the bottom, but what the Minister proposed would have put downward pressure on quality in the child care sector. I hope that she has now listened to campaigners, and does not plan to return to that proposal.

Tory spin doctors used to brief that the solution to the problem of a lack of affordable high-quality child care was the holy grail of policy, but we do not hear that so much nowadays. Regrettably, they are now briefing against the Minister. I read in Ben Brogan’s daily briefing the other day that they like to watch her “like a hawk”, and I read in Total Politics magazine that they like to keep her “on a tight leash”. Such briefing is nasty and unfair: that is no way to treat a Minister who is trying to develop better child care policies, although I disagree with the direction in which she is heading. However, I am afraid that it will fall to my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent Central and for Manchester Central to clear up the Minister’s mess, and implement a child care policy that will give hard-working mums and dads in my constituency the support that they so desperately need.

--- Later in debate ---

[Fiona Bruce]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right, and we should pay tribute to grandparents. I was very fortunate in having four wonderful grandparents without whom I could not have developed the business I did develop in those early years, when I could not have afforded the quality of child care that I could, perhaps, have afforded in later years. It is important that we strengthen family life, and I will come on to talk about some of the initiatives we need to put in place to support family life more widely. Many people cannot access that in their locality, however.

[Harriett Baldwin]

I am sure my hon. Friend will support this Government’s extension of the right to request to all employees, so that, for example, the grandparents the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) referred to are able to take time off, perhaps for child care responsibilities.

[Fiona Bruce]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point because I was going to discuss the extensive provision that this Government are promoting for flexible working. As an employer, I have been able to accommodate some of the flexibility young mothers need, even when they perhaps just want to start work at 9.15 rather than 9. That can make an enormous difference to family life by enabling there to be good care and a good start to the day for very young children.

I was very fortunate that when my two boys were young we had a wonderful childminder, who is still very much a friend of the family. They still refer to her as “Auntie Pam.” Auntie Pam cared for my boys for two days a week. It is a tragedy that between 1996 and 2010 under the previous Government the number of childminders —the number of auntie Pams—dropped from 103,000 to 57,000. This Government are addressing that.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Woodcock]

It does; my hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is a striking, damning figure that sits alongside the human stories of difficulty and suffering that we all experience in our constituencies almost daily.

[Harriett Baldwin]

The hon. Gentleman is making some powerful points about poverty. Does he accept that work is one of the best ways out of poverty? Does he also welcome the fact that, when universal credit is rolled out in his constituency, child care will be supported for the first hour of work for the individual whom he so eloquently described?

[John Woodcock]

Work is important in many ways, not simply as a means of getting an income. There are some real questions about universal credit, but if the hon. Lady will forgive me, I will not go into that now.

Privately, my constituents sometimes share with me their sense of guilt and frustration when the strain is so great that they just cannot shield their children from the cuts they are having to make. Swimming lessons go, trips to the zoo are put off, and when nothing beyond the bare nutritional minimum goes into their child’s lunchbox, they worry that their child is not going to eat enough because they are not giving them what they really like or want. These are working people. They have made the choice to go out and hold down a job, and to juggle work and family life. They do not expect handouts. They know that life will not be easy when they choose to bring up kids, but they just ask for a bit of help with what can seem like the suffocating burden of rising living costs. Child care should be one of the things that lift the strain on families and give them a way out of poverty; it should not add to the burden.

One of key recommendations of the Furness Poverty Commission on dealing with social and economic exclusion in Barrow and Furness was to close the gap that local people had identified in affordable and flexible child care. It is great that the number of children under the age of four in England is increasing, and I am pleased to have been able to do my bit on that front in recent years. So I am delighted by Labour’s plans, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) has set out, to increase the availability of affordable child care. I am especially pleased that the extra entitlement will come in the form of wraparound care from 8 am to 6 pm.

Increasing child care from 15 to 25 hours a week could make a real difference to many families in my constituency. For many parents, it would make the difference between being able to work and not being able to do so. The provision of 12.5 or 15 hours has been a help but it has often not provided a trigger given the way in which the need for child care is spread out if parents rearrange their lives to go back to work. I believe that this wraparound care, aligning child care with the standard working day, will be revolutionary in helping parents to get back to work.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester South, I have a great deal of respect for the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss). I was therefore disappointed to hear her dismiss the wraparound child care guarantee in the way she did. She did not want to take my intervention earlier, but I have to tell her that one of the main problems is that there is often no provision at all for families—

Child-care Ratios

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2013 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I have already outlined what our plans are; we announced them in our “More great childcare” proposal. Our plans have the support of Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector, who commented on them in a recent speech. He has accepted the principle of higher-qualified staff having more professional autonomy. Andreas Schleicher of the OECD also supports our plans. Of course opinion is divided within the British academic establishment, as it is on many education issues. I would point out to the hon. Gentleman however that these policies are alive and well in France, Ireland, Holland and Germany. There is not a single country, including Scotland, where the ratios as are low as they are here in England. Furthermore, he has not come up with any response on what he plans to do about the appallingly low wages in the child care sector or the high levels of staff turnover, or with any ideas about how he is going to reduce costs. Is this another spending commitment that he is pledging when his party has already pledged many more spending commitments than it has the money to pay for?

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

I am so pleased that the Minister is looking at ways to bring down the cost of child care for hard-working families. In her consultation, did she hear from the childminder who has four children who stay until 1 o’clock but who, because of these very inflexible regulations, has to say no the parent who wants to drop off an additional child at 12.30?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Many childminders—I recently held a round table meeting with them—told me that they welcome the additional flexibility that they will have under our rules. They also welcome the increased level of trust that we are placing in child care professionals. Rather than dictating from Whitehall what they should be doing, we have a strong inspection regime, we are recruiting new Her Majesty’s inspectors into the sector and we are giving more professional responsibility to people on the ground.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, but all the international evidence from EPPE— the Effective Provision of Pre-School Education—to the OECD “Starting Strong” survey indicates a strong relationship between the qualifications people have, the quality of the child care provision and the outcomes for the children. I think there should be some flexibility in the system, however, so we can get high-quality people and improve vocational training and apprenticeships. I suggest that the hon. Gentleman respond to the consultation on precisely the point he raised.

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

Many people, including the shadow Education Secretary, have praised the Scandinavian approach to child care. Will the Minister confirm that in Sweden and Denmark there is no mandatory national child care ratio at all?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right that there are no national ratios. Indeed, in parts of Sweden, no ratios at all are set for some nurseries. What the Swedes do is to rely on high-quality professionals exercising their professional judgment in the particular setting. That is the system we want to move to here. It is backed by the OECD and by Sir Michael Wilshaw of Ofsted, so I suggest the Opposition back it as well.

Oral Answers to Questions

Harriett Baldwin Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Harriett Baldwin (West Worcestershire) (Con)]

1. What steps his Department plans to take to increase the number of women in the workplace.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

The number of women in work is higher than at any time in British history. We propose a new system of shared parental leave and extending the right to request flexible working to all workers, which will further promote female participation in the workplace by increasing flexibility and choice. We are also committed to seeing more women in senior positions in the UK’s top companies, initially focusing on board representation.

[Harriett Baldwin]

In the last tax year men paid £92 billion in income tax whereas women paid £36.8 billion, which is 60% less. Normally I am in favour of lower income taxes, but in this case will the Secretary of State explain what else he is doing to help to equalise those figures and, most importantly, bring an extra £55 billion into the Exchequer?

[Vince Cable]

I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work she has done through the Working Families charity to promote shared parental leave and on female participation in the finance sector. It is not entirely a problem that women are paying less income tax; raising the tax threshold will help low-paid women in particular to pay less tax, which is one of our objectives. Female participation and promotion and women rising to the top in business are also key objectives of our policy, and that will produce the equality for which my hon. Friend strives.