Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old

James Wild Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to be called to speak in this debate to support the measures in the Queen’s Speech, focusing on the core Conservative value of opportunity. Education is key to giving people the best chance to make the most of their talents, and to Britain being the best place to grow up. One of my priorities since being elected has been visiting schools across my constituency to hear directly from teachers, teaching assistants and pupils about the challenges involved in improving literacy and numeracy standards, which are fundamental to young people going on to succeed.

I welcome the Schools Bill, which sets the ambition for 90% of children to achieve expected standards in reading, writing and maths, up from 65% in the most recent year that standard assessment tests took place. It is all very well setting targets, but there needs to be a plan to achieve them. Much will rest on the new parent pledge, which means that any child that falls behind in English or maths should receive additional tailored support. The best schools already do this, and sharing evidence on what works means that more children can now get the support they need and their parents will be more closely involved in their child’s progress.

One of the issues most frequently raised during visits to schools is access to speech and language therapy, which others have referred to. Spoken language underpins literacy development. It is key to learning across the curriculum, including in maths. The Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists highlights evidence from the Education Endowment Foundation that teaching with emphasis on spoken language enables an average of six months’ additional academic progress over the course of the year. I welcome the reassurance that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education gave me when the SEND paper was published that the parent pledge should ensure that children who need help with language and communication are supported. One of the calls that the royal college and other language organisations make, which I support, is to ensure that the new national professional qualifications in literacy, special educational needs and early years include a focus on developing and supporting spoken language skills.

As we learn to live with covid, a specific ask from a recent visit to Churchill Park Academy in King’s Lynn, which serves young people with special needs, is for tests to be made available for such schools. They have particularly vulnerable pupils who are not currently attending school due to concerns about covid prevalence. I would be grateful if Education and Health Ministers could carefully consider that request.

The focus of this debate, on making Britain the best place to grow up and grow old, also includes access to healthcare. It will come as no surprise to Ministers that I return to an issue I raised in my maiden speech in the first Queen’s Speech debate of this Parliament, and indeed in last year’s Queen’s Speech and on many other occasions—the need for a new Queen Elizabeth Hospital in King’s Lynn. QEH is now more than a decade beyond its planned 30-year lifespan, and due to its reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete planks, it now has 1,500 timber and steel supports holding up the cracking roof—it is the most-propped hospital in the country—and that number is likely to increase as further failsafe work is completed. Due to this concrete cancer, the trust’s risk register has a red rating for direct risk to life and to the safety of patients, visitors and staff due to the potentially catastrophic risk of failure of the roof structure.

Last month, some of my constituents once again came to Westminster talk about the need for QEH to be one of the additional eight new hospital schemes the Government have committed to building. A major issue they asked me to highlight is just how bad an experience being in a ward surrounded by props holding up the roof is for patients. Staff at the hospital stressed how it makes it harder for them to do their job to provide the care the patients need. I warmly welcome the funding from the Department of Health for a new endoscopy unit, and the new west Norfolk eye centre that opened last week at QEH, but now is the time to make a decision to build a new hospital for the 300,000 people across Norfolk, Lincolnshire, and Cambridgeshire that QEH serves. This is not about having shiny new buildings for their own sake; it is about better health outcomes in some of the most deprived areas in the country that the Government have recognised as a priority for levelling up. By committing to this vitally needed hospital, the inevitable requirement for a replacement will become part of a funded programme rather than an unplanned demand on the Treasury requiring emergency funding. That is better value for taxpayers and will deliver the improvements that people in North West Norfolk and beyond deserve. I hope that my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary has good news for my constituents soon, as they are rightly frustrated at the delay in this decision.