Education Maintenance Allowance

Heidi Alexander Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that intervention. I know that some people have seen the EMA as an additional welfare benefit—the point made by the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk)—but it is important to clarify that the EMA has never been a support benefit. It was introduced by the previous Government to incentivise young people to stay in post-compulsory education. It has always been paid in addition to welfare payments. The Government have protected support for families with the lowest incomes and we will continue to support the most vulnerable while ensuring that all sections of society that are able to contribute to the deficit reduction do so. The withdrawal of child benefit from higher rate taxpayers, which will save £2.5 billion a year by the end of the review period, will ensure that people on lower incomes are not subsidising those who are better off.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Gibb]

I will not give way to the hon. Lady, because I am running out of time and I want to get to this point: child benefit for families without a higher rate taxpayer will be maintained and will be paid for children up to the age of 19 if they are in full-time education. The Government will use some of the savings from child benefit to help fund significant, above-indexation increases in child tax credit, which will be worth something like £30 in 2011-12 and £50 in 2012-13. That is in addition to the increases announced in the Budget: £150 in a year for 2011-12 and £60 in 2012-13.

I can also assure the hon. Member for Glasgow North West that none of us wants any young person to drop out of education because of financial difficulty. However, we cannot justify continuing to fund a programme that is so expensive, unresponsive and poorly targeted. Instead, we will introduce an enhanced discretionary learner support fund.

Currently, £25 million a year is given to schools, colleges and training providers through a discretionary learner support fund, to enable small payments to young people to help them meet the cost of their education. Colleges value the fund, because they are able to provide support to the young people whom they consider to be in most need. They can also respond to any changes that there might be in a student’s household income during the year. After the EMA is abolished, the fund will be significantly increased over the spending review period. The detail of the future arrangements is still being considered, but we envisage that the enhanced learner support fund will build on the principles of the current scheme to provide exceptional targeted support to students aged 16 to 18 who are experiencing financial difficulties.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Heidi Alexander Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas]

I want to speak to amendment 5, and to reinforce some of the points that have already been made about the importance of making real consultation mandatory. The Government are selling these proposals on the basis that they are about empowering communities, but they are specifically refusing to allow proper consultation with our communities. This is not about empowerment; it is about centralisation.

The Department for Education website gives four handy steps towards conversion. First, the head teacher decides that he or she wants to opt out. Then the governors meet and pass a resolution. The Secretary of State then approves the proposal and the funding agreement. Finally, the Government order the local authority to cease maintaining the school. Then, as if by magic, the school is suddenly free. I am sure that most parents would find that rather alarming, and that they would want to have a direct say in the removal of their right to democratic influence through the severing of that link to the local authority.

Proper consultation would enable reflection on accountability and governance, and on whether the freedoms that academy status brings would be used without disadvantage to other parts of the community. Despite all the nice rhetoric about the schools being free schools set up by those parents who want them, there is a real risk that they will drain resources away from other schools in the region. We need the kind of consultation that the amendment proposes if we are to ensure that that does not happen.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that this lack of consultation with communities and local authorities runs contrary to what others in the new coalition Government are proposing in their localist agenda? They talk about giving more power to communities and local authorities, but the proposals in the Bill seem entirely inconsistent with that agenda.

[Caroline Lucas]

I completely agree with the hon. Lady. In spite of all their rhetoric about the big society, when the Government are put to the test and asked to demonstrate their commitment to the idea, they do not seem to trust our communities enough to consult them.

The ramifications of so many schools becoming independent are enormous, and children, parents, teachers, trade unions and members of the wider community are surely entitled to have their voices heard. Under the Government’s proposals, thousands more schools could become their own admissions authorities, and parents will want to know who will ensure that a school’s admissions policy is being observed. They will also want to know that the education of vulnerable children and children with special needs will be fairly managed and properly resourced. Consultation is the key to giving them that kind of guarantee. Surely local authorities are entitled to debate proposals that will result in local authority boundaries ceasing to have meaning in some cases. Surely they also need to have some kind of input into an admissions process that could lead to chaos for the rest of the region.

Consultation should be absolutely central to the Bill, and it is still not clear to me, despite what the Secretary of State has said, why he and other Ministers are in such a rush. Perhaps we must conclude that they are anxious that students, parents or staff might rise up and object to this attempt to take power away from local communities. Perhaps that is why the Secretary of State does not want to consult on these proposals.

Oral Answers to Questions

Heidi Alexander Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. She makes a very good point, which we are considering at the moment. We will announce further details of our policy on the pupil premium in due course.

[Heidi Alexander (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

15. What recent discussions he has had with local authorities on the Building Schools for the Future programme.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

As I mentioned earlier, we are currently reviewing the methods by which capital has been allocated.

[Heidi Alexander]

I thank the Secretary of State for his answers on the BSF programme, but I am afraid that I am still not clear on the detail. As a former director of Lewisham’s local education partnership, I should be grateful to him if he confirmed whether the funding commitments that underpin the strategic partnering agreements between local authorities and their private sector partners will be honoured. Lewisham council would be grateful for any reassurance that he could provide.

[Michael Gove]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on her election, and she is fortunate to have many excellent schools in her constituency, including Haberdashers’ Aske’s Hatcham, which I have had the great pleasure of visiting. Lewisham was one of the first local authorities to enter Building Schools for the Future. A number of schools have been built already under BSF, and because Lewisham is so far advanced, I cannot conceive of any changes to the BSF programme that would be likely to impact on the many projects that she will have shepherded towards a close.