Oral Answers to Questions

James Duddridge Excerpts

Monday 12th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Damien Moore (Southport) (Con)]

3. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to support the development of skills in communities that meet local business needs.

[Sir James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

12. What steps she is taking with Cabinet colleagues to support the development of skills in communities that meet local business needs.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)]

I am delighted that we will be rolling out the local skills improvement plans from this summer. The LSIPs will put local employers at the heart of developing skills provision to meet the needs of their businesses, ensuring that people get the right skills to get good local jobs. In my own Chichester constituency, the Sussex LSIP is working to meet the needs of many sectors, including our horticultural industry, worth £1 billion a year to the local economy. Other hon. Members in rural seats will understand the recruitment challenges facing agrifood businesses. Our skills plan will bring together providers such as colleges to create more opportunities for people to get the skills businesses need, and that will be going on across the country.

[Gillian Keegan]

I know my hon. Friend is doing a lot to support businesses in our great seaside towns. We are increasing collaboration with colleges, employers and the chamber of commerce. The plan has been informed by hundreds of local businesses such as Lattimer, Access Point, EFT Construction, Bulldog Products and Stormspell. The visitor economy has been identified as a priority for the city region, with actions being taken to establish a working group to develop basic skills courses and to increase off-season study and training, management apprenticeships and access to work placements for students in and around the area.

[Sir James Duddridge]

The seaside will be grateful for that excellent response. Denise Rossiter, chief executive officer of Essex chambers of commerce, is working with local businesses such as Adventure Island to come together and deliver a local skills improvement plan that will help my seaside town to deliver a pipeline of talent for all sectors, including digitech, engineering and manufacturing. That will drive the local economy. Will the Secretary of State support the funding bid for that great work and the great city of Southend, and may I invite her to Adventure Island?

[Mr Speaker]

I hope that’s in Southend.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Duddridge Excerpts

Monday 17th April 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I assure the House that there are no open areas in school buildings where we know of any immediate safety risk. If the Department is made aware of any dangerous building, immediate action is taken to ensure safety and remediate the situation. To address the challenges in the school estate, we first needed a true understanding of its condition. That is why it is so disappointing that over the 13 years of the last Labour Government, including when the right hon. Member served as Minister with responsibility for schools, there was not a single comprehensive review of the condition of the school estate, so we had a lot of work to do, but we now have full data.

[Sir James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

I thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for Schools for the efforts made when asbestos was discovered in the King Edmund School. I appreciate the work that the Secretary of State is doing. Is she particularly concerned about the impact of aerated concrete on schools, and on children’s education when remedial works are done?

Oral Answers to Questions

James Duddridge Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

I would be delighted to meet my right hon. Friend. She is an incredible campaigner on these issues, which are also important to the Government.

[Sir James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

King Edmund School, in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), is currently closed while building materials containing asbestos are removed from the site. Will the ministerial team look into this situation with a view to getting kids safely back to school as quickly as possible?

[Nick Gibb]

Yes, I certainly will look into that. The school was initially closed as a precaution while we carried out enhanced testing. Testing is now complete, and the school buildings are safe, but asbestos remains on the site of a previously demolished building, so the school will remain closed while that is removed. However, we are doing everything possible to ensure that the school site reopens by 3 January.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Duddridge Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

Quite simply, the proposals will involve more children being eligible for free school meals than under the previous system. We have a short-term arrangement for the very early days of universal credit, which is different, but we estimate that around 50,000 more children will be eligible for free school meals than under the old system.

[James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

What is the Department doing to help children with special educational needs on their pathway to adulthood and, where appropriate, into the workforce?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)]

We have introduced the supported internship programme for young people with complex needs, which is having a significant impact on supporting young people into work.

Education: Public Funding

James Duddridge Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

The new national funding formula comes in in 2018-19. As I said in my opening comments, no school will see a cut in funding as a consequence of moving to the national funding formula. What the hon. Gentleman is alluding to is the cost pressures on schools that occurred between 2016 and 2017 and that will occur over the next four years. We have already incurred about 3% of those cost pressures, and we will incur between 1.5% and 1.6% of them over the next three years—those are figures from Institute for Fiscal Studies. We are helping schools to tackle those cost pressures, but there would not be those pressures if we did not have to deal with the historic budget deficit we inherited in 2010. Those cost pressures are being borne right across the public sector, but because we are prudent with our public finances, we have record employment numbers and record opportunities for young people when they leave our school system.

[James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

The Minister is rapidly becoming my favourite Minister. At the beginning of the consultation period, every school in Southend was going to lose out, but he listened, and that is no longer the case—there is more funding overall. However, will he look specifically at bulge funding where there is a need in the medium term but not the long term to provide extra places?

[Nick Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his kind comments. I hope the same response will come from Opposition Members. [Interruption.] Perhaps in due course. He is right that we have to deal with growth in pupil numbers, and there are provisions in the new funding formula for growth, but we will take his views into account when we respond to the national funding formula.

Education Funding: Southend

James Duddridge Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2017 Westminster Hall

[James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Southend West (Sir David Amess) on his contribution and on initiating the debate. I particularly welcome the Minister, who is a beacon of stability in a Department in which Secretaries of State can come and go. I was an Education Whip during the Minister’s first incarnation as an Education Minister, and it is good to see him back in his proper place as a beacon of stability within that Department.

I welcome the consultation, but for us, NFF stands more for national funding failure than national funding formula. I gently say to the Minister that, if the consultation does not result in changes, it will not pass through the House. My hon. Friend has said that he will not support it; I—as somebody who loyally supports the Government—will not support it if the funding formula does not change, both in relation to Southend and more generally. I agree with the principle of a national funding formula. I understand that an eighth of Government spending is on education so it cannot be an area that we do not look at and review, but it cannot be right that Southend is, as my hon. Friend said, one of four areas in which every school loses out—the only area to do so outside London. That seems wholly unacceptable.

The budget pressures are great. Some 80% to 90% of budgets go on staffing, while pensions and national insurance contributions are rising faster than the rate of inflation, whether measured by the retail prices index or otherwise. These are very difficult times. Schools do more now than they did in the past; year after year, schools are expected to do more with less. It is not just about cutting the obvious things. The excellent headteacher of Hamstel Infant and Nursery School, Mrs Clark, wrote to me to demonstrate that there would be a massive impact on that school’s ability to do what it was already trying to do, and that it was being asked to do more under the funding formula. That is typical of all the other primary schools. Other schools have already reduced the number of older staff, who are more expensive, and have replaced them as they retire early or at the right time with cheaper, younger employees.

If the NFF goes ahead, it will lead to redundancies. Learning support assistants will be made redundant and non-core subject teachers will be made redundant in virtually every school, including Southend High School for Girls, Cecil Jones Academy, Shoeburyness High School, St Bernard’s High School and Futures Community College, in addition to all the primary infants schools. I know that the funding formula does not apply to special needs schools, but there are parallel issues there as well. In addition, we have grammar schools that are underfunded and would benefit from a higher level of basic funding. At the moment, the position is untenable.

I welcome the capital expenditure that the Government are facilitating. I also welcome the work on opening out grammar schools. Roughly 100 grammar school pupils come from the Thurrock unitary area, which is represented ably by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price), who cannot speak for herself in the Chamber given that she is a Government Whip. Putting more grammar schools in Thurrock would help Southend, in that more local people—people in not only the Southend postcode but Great Wakering and the broader Essex and Thurrock area—would come in.

The Government must do something. They could do something on the area cost adjustment and on the London allowance. Lots of people will not come into Southend from an area in the outskirts of London where they could be paid more. The Government could do more on funding grammar schools, on transitional arrangements and on arrangements for bulge groups going through, which they are in secondary schools. Without doing that work and without Members of Parliament being on board, the proposals simply will not and should not get through the House of Commons.

School Funding

James Duddridge Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is listing Members who are unhappy. I, like her, am unhappy. All the schools in Southend are receiving a cut under this funding formula, and I think it is the only local authority area outside central London where that is the case.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

No, it is not.

[James Duddridge]

The figures I have are from the House of Commons Library. I apologise if I have misread them, but that is my reading. Is not the point that this is a consultation? If this were a fait accompli, I would not support the Secretary of State, but this is a consultation.

[Angela Rayner]

I hope that the hon. Members I mentioned will make contributions today, because the motion before the House makes it clear that our schools are facing a cocktail of cuts that will see 98% of schools lose out in the funding formula. I hope that the Government think again about their proposals.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Duddridge Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I am aware of this matter, because my hon. Friend has played his role as a fantastic local MP and already raised it with me. The Department is looking to see whether we can make sure the barriers preventing the school from getting a great sponsor that will help to improve it, not just for his own children but for all the children, can be quickly removed.

[James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

3. What assessment she has made of the potential merits of special needs schools multi-academy trusts.

[The Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families (Edward Timpson)]

Multi-academy trusts enable the sharing of staff and expertise that can help to foster truly excellent special educational needs provision. Special schools can be successful both in multi-academy trusts that specialise wholly in supporting children with special education needs, as well as in multi-academy trusts that offer special provision alongside mainstream provision. Some examples of multi-academy trusts that offer special provision can be found in our new good practice guidance, published on 9 December.

[James Duddridge]

I was going to ask the Minister to issue further guidance. I do not think the 9 December guidance had been issued when I tabled the question, so I am grateful for that and encourage him to look at special needs schools operating within multi-academy trusts solely as special needs schools. There is an enormous difference in special needs schools between thousands of pupils and hundreds of pupils.

[Mr Speaker]

I hope the hon. Gentleman is encouraged by the power of his own question tabling.

Oral Answers to Questions

James Duddridge Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Attorney General]

Yes I do agree, and what the hon. Lady describes clearly does not sound acceptable or in line with the standards we would all expect. There are two things that I think are important. The first is that the prosecutors should be involved as early as possible, so that advice can be given to the police about the development of an investigation with a view to prosecution. The second is to ensure that when a case comes to court, we continue the communication that we should have had up to that point with victims and witnesses and that people are given to understand what is going on around them. Courts can be very confusing places, and we only add to the distress if we do not take the trouble to explain the process to those who are, through no fault of their own, suddenly involved in it. That is one of the things we will look to do better.

[James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

I welcome the increased number of prosecutions for rape, but will the Attorney General outline what more can be done to improve the consistency across different areas and also the prosecution rate?

[The Attorney General]

My hon. Friend is right that although we should welcome the increased volume of prosecutions that are taking place, there is still a divergence in the way in which this is done across the country. For that reason, the CPS has set up a national delivery board and is looking at ways in which we can understand why those differences exist and is attempting to resolve them. As my hon. Friend says, this is also a matter of making sure that prosecutors are properly trained, as they are, and have the resources they need to do the job well.

Free Schools (Funding)

James Duddridge Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Again, I have to emphasise to the hon. Gentleman that it was the previous Government—I know he was not part of it—who cut spending on new school places and told local authorities to cut surplus places at primary. It is this coalition Government who have increased spending in Croydon on new school places: under the previous Government it was £17 million and under this Government it is £142 million—eight times as much. Before the hon. Gentleman asks for more funding, he should apologise to his constituents for the reckless profligacy and inefficiency of the previous Labour Government.

[James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)]

In September, for every place in a free school there will be three applicants. Does the Secretary of State agree that we should trust parents and pupils? They clearly like free schools and we should fund them accordingly.

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. It is important that we do not just ensure sufficient school places everywhere in the country; we need to ensure that they are high-quality school places. One of the reasons why the free schools programme is succeeding is that it is both adding to the number of quality school places and providing an appropriate challenge and support to existing schools to raise their game.