UK Trade & Investment

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 12th September 2013 Westminster Hall

[Daniel Kawczynski]

This debate and the report focus predominantly on the general export picture, of which our defence exports are just one aspect. However, if the right hon. Gentleman stays until the end of my speech, he will hear a reference to arms exports.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

At what point?

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The hon. Gentleman will have to wait and see.

The report makes three or four specific recommendations, which I will highlight to the Minister. One of the most critical is extra parliamentary scrutiny. In the process of writing this report, we went to see the Select Committee on Business, Innovation and Skills and interviewed its esteemed Chairman. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills is a large Department, and the Committee is focused on domestic business and skills matters. During this Parliament—I may be corrected if I am wrong—I understand that the Committee has not undertaken any reports specifically scrutinising UKTI.

The Committee and the Department are so large that we need a subsection of the Committee or even, dare I say it, a separate Select Committee. The Minister and others might say that that is unrealistic, but I am putting the suggestion out for deliberation and consideration. Some form of body or mechanism is needed to perform ongoing scrutiny of the work and performance of UKTI. Let us not forget that UKTI receives hundreds of millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. It is vital that all of us in the House play our role in scrutinising how that money is spent.

If we have additional scrutiny in the House, we can be confident in going to the Exchequer and others when things need additional funding and saying, “This is the work that the House of Commons has performed in scrutinising UKTI, and these are the deficiencies and shortfalls that UKTI faces. We need to secure additional money for it.” One mistake that the Government made at the outset, although I completely understand that budgets had to be cut across the board, was cutting the communication and advertising budgets for UKTI and others a little too much. I am certainly making representations to the Prime Minister to ensure that additional funding is given to UKTI so that it can advertise itself in providing service delivery and market itself to SMEs.

The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) rightly referred to SMEs. About 47% of British SMEs have never heard of UKTI. They do not know anything about it; they do not understand what services it can provide. How can we expect cutting-edge SMEs, some of which have the most extraordinary innovation and ability to export, to use UKTI if they simply do not know what resources exist? I want UKTI to have product placements, even in soap operas. There could be a storyline where a local UKTI chap comes to see a company to help it export. I want advertising in national newspapers and on the radio and television, so that everybody starts to talk about export and understand that we can use our experiences in other markets to help SMEs export. We all remember the “Tell Sid” campaign, whether or not we agreed with—

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[Daniel Kawczynski]

Absolutely. I could not agree with my hon. Friend more, and I am sure that the Minister will reply to his point.

If I can achieve one thing from the debate, it will be that the Minister goes out and advertises for a top French export expert. I want the Minister to pinch him or her from the French export agency or a French export sector. I want him to find him or her, whoever is best, and pay him or her double what he or she is getting in France. Frankly, we will never get into the French markets unless we have French understanding, in both language and how French-speaking countries operate. We are not normally prone to saying wonderful things about France; but to start pinching their contracts, we need to understand how to do it. I want the Minister to take that point seriously, and if not, at least explain to me what his Department is doing to ensure increasing competence in the French language and the ability to understand how French contractual operations function in French-speaking north Africa, so that we are in a better position to attract contracts.

I pay tribute to the two Prime Minster’s trade ambassadors who are here. They do a superb job and are in a privileged position. To appoint them trade ambassadors, the Prime Minister obviously has great confidence in them, but how many people out there or in Shrewsbury know about trade ambassadors? I am sure that they know my hon. Friends the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry) and for Gloucester (Richard Graham). It is important that we communicate with SMEs in Shrewsbury and elsewhere, so that if they are interested in exporting to Indonesia, for example, we can say, “There is a dedicated trade ambassador. This is his name. This is how you get in contact with him,” and do the same with Algeria and other countries. What work is the Minister’s Department doing to ensure greater understanding among SMEs of the vital resource of trade ambassadors and envoys that the Prime Minister put in place?

I have spent 20 years studying Libya. It is a country about which I am passionate. I have many friends there whom I treat as family. Before the last election, I wrote a book about Libya and the appalling human rights abuses there. My tremendous frustration with the previous Labour Government trying to curry favour with Colonel Gaddafi was such that I decided to write the book, highlighting the extraordinary abuse in Libya. I presented the Prime Minister with a copy two weeks before the 2010 election, and in 2011, I, along with others, pleaded with him to intervene in what we thought would be a bloodbath on the streets of Benghazi. Recently, I went to see him to highlight my concern about the ongoing instability in Libya.

I passionately feel that British companies should be exporting to Libya. The media circus has of course moved to Syria, but we must never forget that if we intervene in a country such as Libya, we have a duty and a responsibility to ensure that everything is done subsequently to help with security, building democracy and ensuring that residents have stability, so that they can trade with the UK.

From my friends in Tripoli, I get daily reports of kidnappings, violence and acts of terrorism; the Government still do not have control over large parts of the country. It is very important that we do everything possible to help Libya, by assisting her with security, and here I am drawn into the point made by the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) about our security industry.

There are many people who would like to criticise British security exports, but exporting the knowledge that we have accumulated in the UK over decades—on policing, border guards and training armies, navies and air forces—to a country such as Libya is a good thing. Surely, we ought, at the very least, to help Libya—with all its instability—with our expertise.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing the debate. His points about Libya and its instability are absolutely correct. Is he not concerned that vast amounts of the weaponry that was supplied—not just by Britain, but by France and many others—to various opposition groups under Gaddafi, or post-Gaddafi, have now found their way into Mali and many other places across north Africa? There is a genuine danger of further instability.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman that a lot of equipment that the Gaddafi regime had has got across the border into Mali and other countries. We are deviating slightly from the subject of the debate, but I will say that most of that equipment is Russian. I am not sure what proportion is western-supplied arms.

I pay tribute to Mr Richard Paniguian, head of the UKTI Defence and Security Organisation, which is the military security part of UKTI. DSO is populated by people who have been in the armed services. They understand the products and are passionate about them and their work. If UKTI generally can understand how DSO operates and replicate the passion, energy, enthusiasm and calibre of the staff, we will be motoring further ahead.

I shall say a few things about British defence exports because I, for one, am not embarrassed that the United Kingdom exports security—it is extremely important for our country. Many hon. Members have in their constituencies, as do I, defence operators and contractors, firms on which many jobs and a lot of this country’s prosperity depend. The UK has some of the most rigorous export licensing procedures in the world. It considers each application on a case-by-case basis, taking into account, among other factors, the precise nature of the equipment and the identity and track record of the recipient. Her Majesty’s Government do not—and will not—issue licences if they judge that the proposed export would provoke or prolong internal conflicts, or if there is a clear risk that it might be used aggressively against another country or to facilitate internal repression. When circumstances change or new information comes to light, we can and do revoke licences if the export is no longer consistent with the criteria.

Recently, I had to defend the Prime Minister on the radio when he went to the United Arab Emirates and many people criticised him for trying to sell them some Typhoon jets. It would be the height of irresponsibility if the United Kingdom did not collaborate with our Gulf allies—sound, strategic allies such as the United Arab Emirates—to ensure that they had the capability to defend themselves against a belligerent neighbour who might attack them at any time. If countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar and Saudi Arabia did not have British planes with which to try to pre-empt naked aggression against them from Iran or others, we would see increasing instability in the region.

You will be pleased to hear, Mr Betts, that I am coming towards the end of my speech, but let me just raise one or two remaining points. My hon. Friend the Member for Romford (Andrew Rosindell), accompanied me on the delegation to Gibraltar, and I want to make a point that he wanted to make about the British Council. The United Kingdom has a global British Council network. Its work is very good, but we do not see it providing any information on UKTI. How is the Minister’s Department collaborating with the British Council, utilising its extraordinary network, to ensure that as well as sharing information about British language courses and all the other good things that it does, it communicates about UKTI and British commercial links?

I wish to talk very briefly about the European Union. The Prime Minister hopes to renegotiate various aspects of our position with the European Union, and I hope that one of those aspects will be how we go about international trading agreements. The first thing that happened to me when I was elected in 2005 was that I was sent to the World Trade Organisation talks in Hong Kong. The other two Members of Parliament with me were the hon. Gentleman who is now the Speaker and Lord Mandelson who, as Trade Commissioner, was representing the whole European Union. I found that very frustrating, because the United Kingdom did not have a voice. The UK was represented by Lord Mandelson, who was representing all 27 nations, but different countries mean different things to other countries—for example, Gibraltar and New Zealand are far more important to us than to Poland. I very much hope that there can be some movement on individual countries being able somehow to negotiate with countries of long standing, so that there is no one-size-fits-all criterion for the whole European Union.

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[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski) for securing the debate and ensuring that we had the opportunity for this discussion. I will make two points that he will agree with, but he may have problems with the rest of my speech.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Let us have the nice things first.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. As someone who grew up in Shropshire, I fully appreciate the beauties of Shrewsbury.

My first point is that the hon. Gentleman’s comments about language and the British approach to the rest of the world are absolutely right. It is depressing to find that the number of students entering university this year to study foreign languages has gone down, as it did last year, and that the quality and quantity of language training in many secondary schools are wholly inadequate. We need to start language teaching much earlier, in primary schools as well as in secondary schools, and to give greater emphasis to the learning of all foreign languages at university—not just the obvious European ones, such as Spanish, French, German and Italian, but the Chinese and Arabic languages, as well as Hindi, Bengali and others. We are a country that has to trade and export, and if German and French companies can send people around the world who are competent in all the local languages, we should be able to do the same. It is extraordinarily arrogant for us to turn up in a country and assume that, because we are British, everybody will want to speak to us in English, so we just have to be prepared to make those changes.

The second point on which I am sure the hon. Gentleman will agree relates to the engineering base of much of British trade with the world. It is obviously essential to have a high degree of understanding of engineering and science teaching both in schools and universities, and to recognise the status of engineering, which has done so much in this country; I am thinking of the railways, shipbuilding, motors and all the other aspects of engineering. Engineering is often seen as a dirty-hands profession, rather than a mainstream one. I can say that because I come from a family of engineers who closely followed that whole narrative. The basis of an awful lot of our past trade was the export of high-quality, high-tech engineering products.

[Jeremy Lefroy]

I entirely endorse what the hon. Gentleman said about languages. The issue is about improving not only exports overseas, but employment opportunities locally. A company in my constituency cannot recruit staff from Britain, but has to look overseas to recruit its foreign-language speaking staff. There are job opportunities right here in the UK for people who speak the foreign languages he mentioned.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I obviously completely concur with the hon. Gentleman, but I also recognise that many families in Britain who are bilingual in a variety of languages—I cannot put an exact figure on it, but I would think that about 70 different languages are spoken in my constituency—and many brilliant young bilingual people do not seem to get job opportunities in companies that are often trading with the countries that their parents came from. We should recognise that we have those resources in our society.

As I said in my intervention, I want to raise some arms trade issues, which are highly appropriate because the biennial arms fair, the Defence and Security Equipment International exhibition, is taking place in the London docklands. I think I am right in saying that more than 1,000 exhibitors—1,400, I believe—are now plying their wares.

I have many concerns, because if we compare the countries and companies involved in that arms fair in the London docklands with the Foreign Office’s report on human rights problems and abuses, we find an unfortunate coincidence between, on the one hand, the countries exhibiting at that international arms fair, countries that British companies that are exhibiting wish to sell to, or countries invited to send delegates, and, on the other hand, serious human rights concerns that the Foreign Office has drawn attention to, and countries with human rights records that it thinks we should be concerned about. Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Oman, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia are among the UK’s biggest customers for arms purchases, and Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Libya, which were not on the list in 2011, have now received invitations, although human rights problems are legion in those countries.

An early-day motion was tabled two days ago, on 10 September, by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), and has been signed by a number of colleagues, including me. It draws attention to the “Scrutiny of Arms Exports and Arms Controls” report, House of Commons paper 205, and states

“that the Government would do well to acknowledge that there is an inherent conflict between strongly promoting arms exports to authoritarian regimes whilst strongly criticising their lack of human rights at the same time”.

I look forward to the Minister’s response to that.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

The hon. Gentleman gave a list of countries about which concerns have been expressed, including the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, but has he visited those countries? I have taken to those countries delegations of parliamentarians, including Labour MPs. They interacted with non-governmental and human rights organisations there, and got a very different perspective on what is happening on the ground from the one reported by the British media in this country.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I have not visited Saudi Arabia or the UAE, but I have visited many countries on the list and others in those regions. Only half an hour ago, I spoke to a young man from Bahrain. He came to this country as a place of safety and security, because of how brutally he was treated in prison in Bahrain. He showed me the shot marks on his body—from birdshot—inflicted on him by the police because he was taking part in a demonstration for democracy in Bahrain. His view is that the Bahrain regime is propped up by Saudi Arabia, Britain and the United States, that it is an enormous purchaser of arms from this country and that it provides military facilities for both Britain and the USA, but it has an appalling human rights record.

Although non-governmental organisations in Saudi Arabia are doing their best, we must ask serious questions about the human rights record of Saudi Arabia; there is the use of the death penalty, the suppression of opposition groups, the denial of women’s rights and a whole lot of other issues. Even the hon. Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham could not claim to concur with the Saudi Government’s approach to human rights, or indeed support it in any way. We are the biggest arms exporter to Saudi Arabia, and the influence that Saudi Arabia has is absolutely enormous. We should think carefully on this matter, because if we export CS gas and crowd-control and anti-personnel equipment, as we do to nearly every one of the countries in the middle eastern region, they will be used against the legitimate democratic process that wishes to bring about the kind of society that we enjoy, with our freedom of speech and elected Parliament. If those people are shot by the equipment that we have supplied, are we not part of the problem? Are we not partly responsible for that oppression of human rights?

The hon. Gentleman tells us that the UKTI Defence & Security Organisation works very hard and does very well. I am not surprised that he mentions that it is heavily populated by people who were formerly in the armed services. Let me ask him this. The end-user certificate system and the monitoring of arms exports have been around for a long time, but there seems to be an incredible degree of leakage. As soon as one raises the issue, and says, “We shouldn’t be exporting arms to that country”, we are told that someone else will do it. They say that the French, Germans, Chinese or Russians will. Perhaps that is so; they probably will try, but we have to start somewhere and influence others. If we are exporting equipment that is used—it is often quite low-technology equipment—to oppress human rights protesters, we should ask ourselves some serious questions about it. Who are we to table motions complaining about the oppression of democracy in Saudi Arabia if we have supplied the equipment that oppresses the democratic wishes of people in the first place? I say that as an example; there are many others that can be used.

We can learn lessons from the Iran-Iraq war, which took place some years ago. At the time, as now, the west was fairly obsessed with supporting Iraq against Iran because of the presence of the ayatollah in Iran. I am not in any way defending the human rights record of the Iranian Government, any more than I would defend the human rights record of the Iraqi Government of that time, or indeed Iraqi Governments since. Britain quite happily provided equipment, support and political cover for Saddam Hussein in Iraq because it was opposed to Iran. The west did that, as did the US and lots of other people. In 1988, when the gas attack took place on the Kurdish people in Halabja, I raised the issue here in Parliament and was told that the situation was serious, bad and quite appalling. I then asked why we were involved in the Baghdad arms fair only eight months later. The Minister at the time told me that it was good business. We went ahead with that arms fair, and only two years later we were at war with Iraq. No doubt some of the equipment that was being fired back at British troops had been sold to Iraq by Britain. What goes around comes around.

There is a disproportion in many of the issues. Arms exports contributed, I think, 1.5% of the total exports of this country, yet they have a wholly disproportionate level of support from the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, and there is a substantial degree of subsidy for the research done through the domestic purchase of the products. I do not wish to go on for too long, but I want to register the point that there are many people in this country who are deeply uneasy about our arms export policy, and about the export of surveillance equipment, high-tech planes and everything else that can be used to bomb and strafe people in civil wars in any part of the world, much as we deplore those civil wars.

I am always told, “If you raise all these issues, it will cost a lot of jobs in the arms industry.” I fully understand the employment issue, but I also fully understand the enormous, brilliant skills that we have that produce these weapons and the equipment that backs them up. None the less, many of the workers and I would rather the brilliance and skills were put towards exporting peaceful products, useful goods, energy-efficient goods and transport products, such as trains, planes, cars and ships, instead of getting us so deeply involved in the arms industry. Once we have supplied arms to an authoritarian regime, we cannot wash our hands of it and pretend that it will go away.

I want to know how much money has been spent on the exhibition in docklands. Who authorised the invitation list, and who allowed many of the companies, including Russian arms exporters and others, to come to Britain, knowing full well where many of the products will end up, and the misery and suffering that are caused as a result of them? We cannot wash our hands of this or wish it away; we have to take responsibility for it.

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[Charles Hendry]

My hon. Friend brings me absolutely beautifully to the final part of my comments, which is on exactly that point. We are incredibly well served by our missions around the world, and by the extent to which our ambassadors and their teams are now very focused on industry and trade opportunities.

Much as I and other trade envoys would love to meet every company in Shrewsbury that wants to become involved in a country, my job is primarily to help open the doors of Government Ministers in countries where often there is not a regular flow of foreign Ministers going through, so as to push that trade process forward. However, we could not do it without the expertise and focus of others. The extraordinary growth that we are experiencing in some of those markets—there has been a doubling of trade with Russia, and a trebling of trade with some countries in the middle east—shows how that policy has been working.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. Gentleman’s point about the quality of British higher education and universities was very well made. On his travels, does he pick up, as I do, on the fact that there is great concern about the complications of applying for visas to study in Britain—the tier 4 visa system—and about the cost of higher education in Britain? From my experience of local universities in my constituency, I know that we are losing students to other places because of those complications, and the message that I get from those universities and from my travels is that we should simplify the system to continue to attract students.

[Charles Hendry]

The hon. Gentleman makes a valid point. In the countries that I have been going to, I have found that most of the students who come to the UK either self-pay or are on Government scholarships. Kazakhstan sends 9,000 students overseas, and 4,000 of those have come to Britain on full scholarships. We have been the country of choice because of the quality of our universities. There is a case for removing from the immigration figures the number of students who are coming here to study, because students can become an easy target when it comes to trying to bring down the immigration figures, when our ability to attract them is actually a tremendous national asset that we should be looking to capitalise on as best we can.

Nazarbayev university in Kazakhstan is partnering with Cambridge university and University college London, and I hope that in due course it will partner with Edinburgh university and other universities as well. All its students are taught in English; they are trilingual, speaking Kazakh, Russian and English. Our universities have a fantastic chance to make a contribution, and to ensure that the next generation of people coming through have a strongly pro-British approach, at least in part a British education, and a willingness to do business with this country.

The opportunities for us around the world are simply extraordinary and UKTI deserves a great deal of the credit for the progress that we are making in opening up markets.

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[Richard Graham]

I agree on the advertising and marketing point, but in the case of Land Rover there have been more significant changes, not least in the speed, efficiency and quality of product that Jaguar Land Rover provides. It is a remarkable success story, as he would agree. I totally accept what he said about its presence in east Africa, which is a happy land in my experience.

To return to my point on the SME debate, in some ways it has not changed since I wrote that paper all those years ago. The debate focuses on what Government should do to best help SMEs export. For example, should they subsidise many trips abroad for SMEs so that they can get to know the countries to which they might export? Do the SMEs have the resources or the sales structure to be able to follow through, or are the trips an interesting but non-productive form of business tourism? Should we help only the larger companies, and through them indirectly boost SME exporters through the supply chains of those large companies?

Should we use Government offices for all export help, or can chambers of commerce be better partners for certain SME goals? In some cases, chambers of commerce can be more selective than Government can. If someone needs a lawyer in Jakarta and rings up the British embassy, the embassy will be obliged to provide a list of every lawyer in town. What that person is really looking for is just one reputable company that can do the business. Government cannot choose a lawyer for someone, but a chamber of commerce might say, “Other companies like yours have effectively used X, Y and Z.” There are situations in which a chamber of commerce can be a more effective partner for SMEs.

What about where the Government should focus? Do we think that the work on strategic goals, such as EU trade agreements made successfully with, for example, Korea will add most value, or do we need an unremitting focus through UKTI on high value added opportunities in selected sectors, such as energy and resources, on which my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden is focusing successfully in the “-stans”? I am focusing more on infrastructure and aerospace in Indonesia. Do we perhaps need something like an army—I apologise to the hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) for using this metaphor—with a selection of weapons from which we choose the most appropriate for the opportunity and the market?

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The hon. Gentleman should use the word “tools” instead.

[Richard Graham]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right: “tools” is a better word. Do we need a selection of tools? We need a flexible approach that can draw on the most appropriate tool in the right marketplace for the right opportunity, with an organisation led, as UKTI now is, by people with direct experience of leading businesses in their own right. I pay tribute to UKTI for recruiting an old friend of mine, Crispin Simon. He is now leading on SMEs and has led at least one FTSE 350 company in the recent past.

I agree with the Minister, Lord Green, that there is much to be said for a greater role for the chambers of commerce. That is happening and is to be welcomed. We must accept that during the process the quality of service will not necessarily always be even across the world. It will vary from country to country and from chamber of commerce to chamber of commerce.

I will make a small handful of points. First, it is important that UKTI’s GREAT campaign is publicised as widely as possibly to all Members of Parliament. It is a major marketing campaign. It is visually attractive, powerful and resonates in different countries. I launched it in Indonesia. I hope that the Minister will confirm that the regional offices of UKTI have invited every MPs to the GREAT launch in their area. I am delighted to help the launch in Gloucestershire next Tuesday. All MPs can and should play a role in encouraging their SMEs to export by joining the GREAT campaign.

Secondly, UKTI is already doing very good work. My hon. Friend the Member for Wealden rightly paid tribute to that work, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham, on the back of his powerful paper, which he spent much time and effort producing. I am grateful to him for doing that. They are both right, because some remarkable things are going on.

Returning to the west Kowloon example I gave earlier, it is most recent in my mind from breakfast this morning that two small companies that I had never heard of before—Keepthinking and North, which are both based in Clerkenwell, in the east of this city—have won significant contracts with that project. That is a good example of how companies that may not be known to me or other hon. Members here today are winning contracts abroad with the help of UKTI. That is important, because we already know about certain familiar exports, such as the wings, engines, landing gear and coatings and so on that make up 38% of every Airbus and are made in Britain. It is important to remember that those parts are made in Britain, because the export value is always credited to France, but it is equally important that we understand that unknown companies in new sectors have real opportunities overseas.

There is an opportunity, which I hope the Minister will agree to take up, for UKTI to hold a seminar, possibly in Parliament—we know that it is difficult to move MPs out of our comfort zone, and we are required by the Whips to attend debates and vote and so on—to update MPs on some of the opportunities in new sectors and some of the new companies across the country in sectors such as creative media, medical science, nano-science and education.

I have been promoting two things in Indonesia with a degree of success. I hope that there is more to come. The first is a fantastic computer software tabling programme for universities. There are more than 100 universities in Indonesia. The software was created by a Cambridge-based company, is high-quality and could be exported to other parts of the world. The second is a quality assurance agency, which is highly rated internationally. It is based in my constituency and is doing work in many countries across the world, but it could work in others as well. Let UKTI educate MPs, who then could not possibly complain to the Minister that they did not know what UKTI was doing or what new opportunities there were.

Thirdly, in countries in which we have both a UKTI and a Department for International Development presence, I believe we can do more to act as a united UK plc. The story of the first biodiesel plant in Indonesia, made by the wonderful Gloucestershire-based manufacturer Green Fuels—I am taking the Indonesian ambassador to Green Fuels next week—is a good example of a business contract by a private business that is totally in line with our DFID objectives for Indonesia. The contract should open further opportunities for the UK in a general sense, and I believe there are other such examples elsewhere in the world. A more united, working-together spirit by DFID and UKTI could lead to exciting results.

I finish on a note as positive as those of the Members who spoke earlier. The help given to me, as one of the Prime Minister’s trade envoys, by our embassy in Jakarta, which includes both UKTI and the British Council, has been powerful. We are all working together on strategic and tactical goals that will benefit both Indonesia and the UK, which is important. A win-win solution is much more attractive than simply trying to thrust a product at some hapless overseas country.

Prudential, for example, derives significant earnings from its Indonesian operations, and in return it provides insurance and pension solutions for many millions of Indonesians. Prudential employs no fewer than 190,000 people in that great archipelago. That is what UK companies can achieve for themselves, starting from nothing not very long ago. That is what companies can achieve for UK plc and for their host country, which shows the value of inward investment—exported investment from the UK. Such investment offers great opportunities for British SMEs to service, in this case, Prudential either in the UK or overseas, and from that base to expand and service other financial institutions. British service companies can be very successful.

Debates such as this are a great marketing opportunity for trade envoys, so it is appropriate for me to finish by saying that if Members here today, or those who read the debate later, have specialist companies in their constituencies that believe they have something to offer Indonesia, they are of course absolutely welcome to contact me. I will do my best, with UKTI, to try to help those SMEs export a little bit more.

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[Matthew Hancock]

We will pursue the strategy on which we have set out, which is ensuring that the UK economy is strong at home by dealing with our debts, making it more competitive, doing everything that we can to win what we have called the global race and ensuring that UKTI plays its part, not least by delivering a UKTI budget increase over the past couple of years, so that it can reach the target of doubling exports to £1 trillion, as the hon. Gentleman mentioned.

The Government’s ambition of doubling exports to £1 trillion by 2020 also involves getting 100,000 more UK companies exporting. The hon. Gentleman asked how we are doing on that. As he said I would say, the monthly figures fluctuate, but UKTI is on track to achieve its target of supporting 32,000 businesses for the 2012-13 financial year. Some 90% of those 32,000 businesses are small and medium-sized enterprises. That support has helped generate additional sales of more than £33 billion. I would say that that is money well spent.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham), who is no longer in his place, discussed the importance of encouraging small businesses to export. He particularly mentioned chambers of commerce and other business groups. We are piloting the use of chambers of commerce; as non-governmental organisations, they can play a different role and fill a niche. There are 20 pilots, including in Brazil, India, Hong Kong, Russia and Singapore, using chambers of commerce as well as UKTI. He also mentioned one of my personal passions: Education UK—a specific unit within UKTI to help our education exports.

I will also come to the point about the link with the British Council. My hon. Friend mentioned the West Kowloon cultural district project, which has been supported by both UKTI and the British Council working together. That is an example of those two organisations working collaboratively to very good effect.

The good news on languages is that, although entries to A-level were down, entries to GCSE rose sharply. I hope that after a long period of decline, the increase in GCSE entries this year shows that people in English schools who take languages are coming through the pipeline. Let us hope that that is an early indicator of better things to come.

The hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) asked about defence exports. Of course, as he said, the end user certificate system has been in place for a long time—more than 20 years—and the Government have confidence in the export licensing system, which we think is thorough and robust enough to address human rights issues that might arise from individual sales to individual countries. Any application for an export licence is considered against consolidated criteria in the light of circumstances in that country.

That brings me to the point raised by the hon. Member for Hartlepool about exports to Syria specifically. He mentioned two licences issued in 2012. I can confirm that those licences were never used to export chemicals and were revoked under the new EU sanctions. I hope that that addresses his question.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

The point that I made was that the FCO’s website expresses serious human rights concerns about regimes to which a large number of British arms exports are approved by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills. I particularly draw attention to Bahrain, but also to the whole operation of the defence and security equipment international exhibition, which is on at the moment. A Russian company there that has been supplying arms to Syria is openly parading its wares at the exhibition, which is subsidised by the British Government. We need a lot more transparency about the operation of the defence services organisation and what eventually happens to those weapons. When people are assaulted by anti-personnel weapons supplied by Britain, they do not feel very benign towards this country.

[Matthew Hancock]

As I said, any application for an export licence is considered against the criteria, which have been in place for some time, in the light of circumstances in that country and depending on the products’ end use. The system has been supported by Governments of all three major parties. In the specific case of Syria, which has been raised as a concern, no chemicals were exported under that licence. I think that that addresses the point.

I am grateful for the opportunity to have this wide-ranging debate. I am looking forward to working with my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham, to ensure that we can push UKTI even further. I think that the overwhelming support for the direction of travel within UKTI and, at a higher level, the overwhelming support for UK trade openness and the ability to trade with the whole world will have been noted clearly in this debate. Thank you, Sir Roger, for your chairmanship. I hope that all those who read the report of the debate will notice that we are a country that is very much open for business.

Children and Families Bill

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

I know this issue is fraught with problems—I battled with it, together with the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), in our time at the Department for Education—but given the clear examples of abuse we have seen in some madrassahs, which have been revealed in television programmes and by investigative journalism, it should not continue to fester on the Secretary of State’s desk. New clause 14 is a probing amendment aimed at getting the subject back on the radar, because it has been more than three years since those clear recommendations were made and nothing has been done about them.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Do the hon. Gentleman’s proposals relate only to the schools he referred to as madrassahs, or do they also relate to supplementary schools and weekend schools?

[Tim Loughton]

The new clause is very broad and could effectively cover other supplementary schools, as they are termed. I know that this subject is fraught with problems. No doubt the new clause will not be a satisfactory solution ultimately, but I think it is a working basis on which to take the matter forward, rather than continuing to ignore it.

New clause 15, which has the full support of the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, relates to support services for those returning from care. There has been a big focus, rightly, on improving the whole adoption regime. The Government announced a little while ago that £150 million will be taken from what was the early intervention grant to provide adoption support services. It is really important that we have the right degree of support around placements to ensure that they stick.

We hear a lot about adoption support services, improving care homes and better training for foster carers, but 37% of children in care return to their birth parents, and too many of them then return to care after the initial intensive preparation and support because of lack of ongoing support services. In 2012 that affected 10,000 children who returned to the birth parents—treble the number of children who get adopted. We know that that instability, that revolving door going in and out of care, can be really damaging to those vulnerable children. The NSPCC has put together a very credible case. It has totted up the cost of children remaining in the care system against the cost of giving them proper support packages back with their families, where that is the most appropriate destination for them and only where it is in their best interests.

New clause 15 merits serious consideration. It would provide the right social outcome for vulnerable children in care, but it would also save an awful lot of money if we get it right. I am sure that the Minister, who has great expertise in and knowledge of dealing with different types of children in the care system, will be supportive. It is also supported by an interesting paper produced last November by the Social Care Institute for Excellence, which said:

“Returning from public care to live with a parent is the most likely ‘permanence option’ but, for maltreated children, the least successful. There are wide variations between local authorities in terms of the resources allocated to decision-making about reunification, and the quality of practice.”

Finally, I have tabled three amendments on adoption. I have mentioned why adoption needs to be a priority. Many good things have happened in the past two and a half years on adoption, and I am very pleased that the Minister is committed to carrying that work on. The number of children given the opportunity to be adopted has been increasing, although numbers alone are not the be-all and end-all; it is the quality of the placements that really matters. The adoption scorecards that were introduced a year ago lay out with full transparency how well an authority is doing compared with other authorities across a whole range of measures. We have the adoption gateway to help recruitment, we are speeding up legal proceedings for children left in limbo, we are bringing in and beefing up fostering for adoption, we have the adoption support services that I mentioned, and many other things are happening. All that amounts to a very serious structural overhaul, and it is beginning to work, so we do not want to go and mess it up. I fear that in this Bill, the Government, with the best intentions, are going too far.

Academy Status (Haringey)

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr David Lammy (Tottenham) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the chance to debate the decision of Ministers to force four primary schools in Haringey to become academies, against the wishes of their governors, parents and teachers. Those schools are Downhills primary school and Coleraine Park primary school in Tottenham, and Nightingale primary school and Noel Park primary school in Wood Green. I am sad to see the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Lynne Featherstone) leaving the Chamber as I begin this speech.

Although this debate concerns those four schools primarily, Ministers have suggested that hundreds of schools around the country could be forced to convert into academies. Schools in Birmingham, Bristol, Durham, Essex, Kent, Lancashire, Leeds and Northamptonshire could be next in the firing line, so this debate is of interest to Members throughout the country and on both sides of the House.

I will deal with three issues. The first is the absolute importance of standards in primary schools and the other interventions that could be made to drive up standards. The second is the fundamentally undemocratic way in which Ministers are taking this decision. The third is the need for collaboration, not confrontation in ensuring that our pupils achieve the maximum that they are capable of achieving.

My remarks will focus on Downhills primary school, but they apply just as strongly to the other three schools in Haringey that are affected by the Minister’s decision. I have known Downhills since 1975, when I first stepped through its doors as a pupil. The school has been serving the local community for more than 100 years. Last week, I received a letter from a gentleman who attended Downhills during the second world war, which stated:

“I have memories of an excellent education—I was even appointed School Captain. My primary education at Downhills led to later success. I was not alone there. We were encouraged to succeed. I hope your current efforts to secure the appropriate status for Downhills Primary School will be successful and that they will help present and future pupils to have a brighter future.”

It is not just me who shares that history and is angered by the Minister’s decision.

I want to make it clear that I do not oppose academies. I support academies that work with parents and the local community to raise standards. I am a pluralist in education. I supported the academies programme of the previous Government, of whom I was a member. However, just as there are good community schools and poor community schools, so there are good academies and poor academies. The Government’s attempt to force schools in Haringey to become academies assumes that academies are the only way to raise standards and that academies always raise standards. Neither is true. The Government’s actions also ignore the fact that schools perform best when central and local government work in collaboration with parents, teachers and governors, rather than against them.

I will start by focusing on school standards. The Secretary of State has branded the parents, governors and teachers at these schools as

“ideologues who are happy with failure”

and “enemies of promise”. However, not one of us is an apologist for poor results. That is why Downhills is under a notice to improve, and we support that. It is worth looking at the Downhills governing body—the very people who are supposed to be opposing this action for ideological reasons. It covers the whole range of the community. It has a solicitor, a former nurse, a senior civil servant and a hedge fund manager, all working for free to make the school better. Is that not what the big society is all about? Should not those people be praised rather than removed? How will getting rid of all of them and imposing a sponsor make the school and society better?

The governing body and I know that if a pupil leaves primary school without the basics, they will struggle at secondary school and potentially struggle throughout their life. We had riots this summer that reminded us of that fact. We are at the coal face, and we do not need to be lectured by those who, frankly, have limited experience of the inner-city context.

We believe in supporting a school to improve, and that is exactly what we are doing at Downhills. Results from 2011 show that the school is above the Government’s floor target for English and maths. Some 64% of pupils achieved the national average level in both subjects, and among pupils who had been in the school for at least four years, 75% did so. More than 90% of parents are happy with the school. We are not resting on our laurels with that 64% figure, because it still leaves too many pupils who do not succeed, but the argument that the enormous upheaval being foisted on the community is justified by the results just does not hold water. Downhills is above the national primary school average. Will its improvements continue if the school is forced through the process of becoming an academy over the next few months, against the wishes of the entire community?

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend for how he is representing his constituents in support of Downhills school, which is an improving school. Like many in the country, it is improving because of investment, people’s determination, parents’ support and teachers. Does he have any idea why Downhills and a couple of other schools in Haringey have been selected for this treatment, when other schools have not? Is there a process by which the Department for Education is threatening all primary schools in the whole country?

[Mr Lammy]

My hon. Friend raises a good point. It is not clear why, perhaps apart from political reasons, Haringey has been selected. I certainly want to know whether the Department intends to go after the 2,500 primary schools in the country whose performance is lower than that of Downhills. I will come on to that point.

At Downhills, 72% of pupils have English as a second language and more than 40 languages are spoken by the pupils. More than 45% of pupils are eligible for a free school meal—I mention that fact because I, too, was eligible for free school meals when I attended Downhills—and the number of families living in deprivation is double the national average. Enormous numbers of pupils join and leave the school during the school year, and it has one of the largest Roma populations in the country.

I raise those points not to make excuses for failure, but to point out that pupils from deprived backgrounds at Downhills actually do better than the national average. Speaking another language at home or being from a deprived background is absolutely not taken as an excuse for failure at the school, whatever the Secretary of State might think. We can just look at the results—they speak loud and clear.

Looking further into the figures, the capricious choice of Downhills becomes even more dubious. In 2011, 2,594 primary schools obtained worse results than Downhills primary. In the Secretary of State’s own education authority of Surrey, 26 primary schools obtained the same results or worse. In West Sussex, the area of the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), who will respond to this debate, another 26 schools obtained the same results as Downhills or worse. Does he propose—I hope he will answer this question—to force those 2,594 schools to become academies as well? If his answer is yes, we really will be seeing a revolution in education in this country, and it will certainly get him on the 10 o’clock news. Is that about standards, or is it about politics and ideology? I want to hear the Minister’s answer when he stands up. When we look at the results, we find that London schools do much better than schools in other parts of the country. That is not complacency; I am simply pointing out that if the Minister’s choice of schools to target was based purely on results, he would not be targeting schools in London to begin with.

If the Minister were motivated solely by results, would he not have waited for the second Ofsted inspection into Downhills school, which will show how the school has raised its game since the notice to improve? I remind him that when Ofsted made its monitoring visit in September, it said the school was on the road to improvement and praised the senior management team, including the head. Why is the Minister casting Ofsted aside and saying from Whitehall, “I know best”? Can he explain that new approach to localism, which has emerged in the past few weeks?

The Minister must ask himself whether now is an appropriate time to cause upheaval in the Tottenham schools system following the riots of last September. I urge him to demonstrate the sensitivity that is required after a constituency has experienced what mine experienced—it was witnessed on TV screens not just by hon. Members, but by the rest of the country and internationally.

By focusing only on forced academies, the Government have ignored all the other tried and tested ways in which standards in primary schools can be raised. A relentless focus on teaching and learning, booster lessons, a renewed management team, federation with thriving schools and new buildings all contribute to improving standards in education. All could be tried, and many have been or are being tried, but they have all been cast aside and ignored by the Government.

At Downhills, six teachers have been replaced in a year. A new head was brought into Coleraine Park school to turn the school around 18 months ago, and a new deputy head was brought in from an outstanding school just a few miles up the road. The results show that those changes are working. The trouble is that the Government are ignoring the results and focusing only on forced academies. That approach ignores the fact that, just as there are good community schools and bad community schools, so there are good academies and bad academies. The last results for Marlowe academy in Ramsgate were even described by the former principal as “disappointing”. Mossbourne academy in Hackney is rightly held up by all as a vision of what can be done, but that goes to show that a one-size-fits-all approach to reforms in struggling schools does not work.

It is clear that those reforms need funding. I understand that times are tough, so this is not solely about spending, but it is right to put on record that the Government set up a free school in Muswell Hill last year that will cost the taxpayer £6 million. It has 30 pupils at the moment. For the Minister’s geography, Muswell Hill is a few miles up the road in the London borough of Haringey. The Secretary of State could have given £100,000 to every Haringey primary school and reached 30,000 children rather than 30. Given Muswell Hill’s demographic, the Minister will understand why my constituents are a little concerned and alarmed.

The Minister has remarked that Haringey’s primary schools are the worst in inner London. They are. So why does he not fund them at inner-London rates? Haringey has the same challenges as Islington, Camden and Hackney, but receives £1,500 less per pupil in schools than those areas. For Downhills, that underfunding is worth about £600,000 a year, which is equivalent to one extra teacher in every classroom. Where would Downhills primary’s standards be if we had the money in the London borough of Haringey that we deserve? The Minister’s account in the newspapers this week suggested that mine is an inner-city constituency, but one that has suburban funding. I hope he will say something about what he will do to redress that balance so that we can achieve the improvement we want.

The reforms are working, and the results are improving. Results and standards are vital, and although the Government might ignore the results, we will not. We say loud and clear that standards matter, and we do not tolerate poor results or low aspirations—I certainly do not, and there is no record of my doing anything of the sort in this House over my years as the MP for the area. Results have not been good enough, but they are improving, and we will be relentless—working, I hope, with the Department—in seeking to improve them further. People want the best for their children. This mixed community, which is represented by the governing body, but also by the wider deprivation demographics I mentioned, wants the best results for all its young people.

I am also concerned about the undemocratic way in which these things have been done. In 2010, the Secretary of State said that academies could become the norm, but that it was “down to individual schools” to make the decision, and I support that. Has he changed his mind, or was it always his intention that schools could decide their own destiny, as long as they chose the destiny he had chosen for them?

Two of the schools affected—Nightingale primary school and Noel Park primary school—are in the Hornsey and Wood Green constituency. The hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green supports forced academies, but her party’s manifesto in 2010 promised to give all schools the freedom to innovate. It is a strange freedom that allows schools to innovate on the ground, but only so far as the Secretary of State will allow from Whitehall.

That freedom is not worth the name, and it is fundamentally different from the freedom the previous Government’s academy programme offered parents and pupils. The Labour academy programme took failing schools—schools that parents were running away from in droves, and where discipline had gone out the window—and gave them the freedom to innovate in the best interests of pupils, with the support and assistance of teachers and parents. That differs hugely from the current programme.

The Government talk the language of localism and pluralism, but when it comes to the crunch, we see something quite different, which is driven solely by mandarins in Whitehall. That is fundamentally undemocratic. There is no collaboration whatever. Given that the Department’s Ministers are so well educated, it is a disgrace that not even the elected MP was worthy of a phone call or a letter. That is not the way one would usually expect Ministers to behave when such massive decisions are being made. The Minister has not even sought to get to the school or to spend any time there. Indeed, there is no record of his having spent any time in a Haringey primary in Tottenham. That is of huge concern, given the decision he is about to make.

The proposals are a massive shift and a departure from the policy under the previous Government. The intellectually bankrupt idea that excellence is synonymous with only one structure is of huge concern, and it does not hold water. It should be abandoned, and I ask the Minister to give some contrite indication of a change of position.

Careers Service (Young People)

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 13th September 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his question. He calls for humility, but I acknowledged at the beginning of the debate that we did not get the Connexions service perfect and that we were prepared to work with the Government. I pay tribute to him in leading the Select Committee’s production of a very good report that comes to the right conclusions on this issue. It is possible for schools, with sufficient support, to provide face-to-face advice, although I do not think that he or I would want to go back to the days when the PE teacher or some other member of staff was responsible for giving careers advice and did not do a particularly good job of it. We need independent, good-quality, face-to-face advice.

There is an important point to be made about conflicts of interest. At 16, young people face choices about whether to go on to further education college or sixth-form college, or whether to stay at their school. It is important, in the highly competitive world that the Government are creating, that the careers adviser in the school should not have a vested interest in advising the young person to stay there if that would not be the best option for them. That needs to be thought through, but, without a transition plan, we have no means of judging what will happen. The Government have simply not provided us with any detail.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I agree with what my right hon. Friend is saying. Is he aware that a generation of young people will get no support or advice this year or next year? In particular, children whose parents’ first language is not English have no opportunity to talk to them about their options. What those children need is not a school-based service but an independent, professional service that can assess them in the round and give them support, help and, above all, inspiration. They will not get much inspiration from trawling a website.

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend speaks with customary clarity on these issues, and tells us what life is like for the young people he represents, many of whom might be new arrivals in this country who do not understand how young people can open the doors to education, training and jobs. He has put his finger on the problem. The Government take the view that schools can do everything, and that everything can be pushed down to the schools. Some things need to be organised across the whole local authority, however, if we are to maintain quality and expertise.

I am prepared to believe that schools could provide the necessary advice, but the transition process needs to be managed so that the experts who are currently working for the local authorities can be brought into the schools to provide the advice from those schools. Instead, this lot are allowing those people to be let go and made redundant, even though they have many years experience in the careers service. They are being lost to the profession, and in a few months’ time the schools will be expected to subscribe to a phone or web-based service.

Government Members might think that this is funny, but I do not. We are talking about young people’s life chances, and those young people deserve better than what the Government are giving them. We owe them more, because the world that they are facing is far harsher than the one that we lived in 30 or so years ago. Young people today can expect to have at least 10 different jobs throughout their careers—probably more. Unlike their grandparents, who did specific jobs in large industries, they will be most likely to work in smaller companies. They will need to be all-rounders, able to adapt quickly to new situations. It is also more likely that they will be employers as well as employees.

The harsh truth is that it is getting harder for everyone to get on, but the odds are being stacked much more heavily against those who have the least. If we do not act, this century will see us return to a world in which the postcode of the bed that people are born in will pretty much determine where they end up in life. In today’s world, as traditional structures break down, social networks and connections are becoming the key to jobs and opportunities. In some industries—sadly, we can count Parliament among them—it has become almost expected that a young person will have to work for free before they can get their first foot on the ladder. That is wrong; it is the exploitation of young people’s determination to get on.

If we allow the situation to continue in which there is no careers advice and in which the only way in is through having a connection with a company or organisation and moving to London to work for free, we will limit the job opportunities in the most sought-after careers in the country to less than 1% or 2% of the population. That is not a situation that I am prepared to accept. Parliament needs to step in and level up the playing field, to ensure a fair distribution of life chances around the country. We need to help those young people who have the least.

A statutory careers service is important because not all young people get the same support and advice at home. Dame Ruth Silver, chair of the Careers Profession Task Force, says of the Government’s approach:

“It will further deepen deprivation, because some people come from families who have never worked; the ones who need it most are those who don’t have successful adults in their lives.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

This Government are not involved in ring-fenced budgets for schools. We have de-ring-fenced a large number of budgets into the dedicated schools grant, so that head teachers and teachers can decide how that money is allocated within the priorities of their school. That is the approach that this Government are taking to public spending in the schools sector.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Can the Minister tell us how many secondary schools are providing careers advice, what means he has to survey what they are doing, and how many of the 100 “super heads” who are meeting the Secretary of State this evening are providing careers advice?

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman is asking me to provide a critique on the state of careers advice in this country today. I will come to that, because his party’s record is not one of which he should be proud. The Labour party has just been in power for 13 years and the state of careers advice today is a consequence of what happened during those 13 years, not of what has happened during the first 16 months of this Administration. Hon. Members in all parts of the House agree on the importance of pupils receiving good quality advice and guidance to help them make the right choices for their future; that is particularly the case in these difficult economic times. We have recently seen a welcome reduction in the proportion of 16 to 18-year-olds who are not in education, employment or training—it has fallen from 9.4% in 2009 to 7.3% in 2010—and rises in the number of 16 and 17-year-olds in education. The youth labour market is also tightening, with unemployment for 16 to 24-year-olds who are not in full-time education growing each year from about 420,000 in 2004 to its current level of 671,000. The premium on achievement in particular vocational and academic qualifications demanded by employers and universities means that making the right choices becomes ever more important, and the consequences of making the wrong choices are ever more damaging.

Public Disorder

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ms Diane Abbott (Hackney North and Stoke Newington) (Lab)]

When I saw the flames on the streets of Tottenham on Saturday night, I had a deep sense of foreboding because I knew that it was only a matter of time before the same problems came to the streets of Hackney, not just because we have many of the same underlying social conditions but because the same gangs run backwards and forwards across the border between the two communities.

I want to stress that the pictures that people have seen on their television screens of looters in Hackney do not represent my community. What represents my community is the hundreds of people who turned out the following morning to clean up Hackney and to make good their community. I want to thank my council officers and my chief executive, Tim Shields. It is easy for Westminster politicians to denigrate council officers, but when people arrived to clean up Hackney at 10 am, council staff had been there before them and had swept Mare street and the surrounding streets, and everything was clean and orderly before 8 am. Council officers in Hackney had also been up all night monitoring CCTV, monitoring buildings in the high street for arson, and making sure the police got there to stop arson so that we did not see buildings in flames, as we saw in other parts of London. I would like to thank the emergency services and my borough commander, Steve Bending, who did the very best with the resources that were available to them.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

When my hon. Friend describes the response of the police in Hackney, does she share my concern that there was a poor and slow police response to what happened in the Tottenham Hale shopping centre? Does she agree that any inquiry into the policing activities must examine why there was so little police availability for that incident?

[Ms Abbott]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend, but one has to admire people’s willingness to stand up for their community and defend their community. We saw on the streets of Hackney members of my Turkish community, wanting to defend their restaurants. However, we must be careful about vigilantism. It is one thing to defend one’s business, but it is for the police to be on the street defending communities. We have seen what happened in Birmingham. I worry about vigilantism tipping over into ethnic conflict in some of our big cities.

Some Members of the House are talking as if disaffected, violent, criminal urban youth, with no stake in society, are overnight phenomena. I put it to the House that in London, to my knowledge, we are looking at the third generation of black boys who have been failed by the education system. I do not say this today because I have read about it in the paper. Ever since I have been a Member of Parliament this is an issue I have worked on. For 15 years I have had conferences about London schools and the black child, trying to bring the community together, trying to bring mothers together, trying to encourage them not to blame the system, or the schools, or politicians, but to take responsibility for their own children’s education. I have held workshops in Hackney for the black community, for the Turkish community, and I have had six years of running an award scheme for London’s top achieving black children. And I tell the House this: it has been impossible to get publicity for much of this activity, just as many ordinary people in our communities who are working hard with young people and people on estates cannot get publicity. But when people riot, the media is all over our communities, and the next weekend they will be gone, leaving us with these issues.

Let me say, in the very short time available, that one of the things that I have learned from years of work, in particular around urban youth and the black family, is that most families want to do the best by their children. Members are getting up and talking about bad parents. Some of these mothers want to do the best, but they struggle. I gave an award a few years ago to a young man who came here from war-torn Somalia at the age of eight and he got a first from London university. He lived on a grim estate in Brent. His brother was in a gang. It is not just about toxic areas, toxic estates, toxic families; these are individuals. Let us hope that what is happening to boys and families in urban communities is not just this week’s issue, but is something to which the House will return and give the attention it deserves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

The point was made constructively, and I hope to respond in a constructive fashion. I will not rule anything out at this stage. We are still in the middle of restoring order. It is vital and appropriate that we show ourselves open to learning lessons, but I absolutely have confidence in the right hon. Member for Leicester East (Keith Vaz). The Home Affairs Committee has done a great job in the past 15 months, and he will do a superb job. The terms of reference of his inquiry seem to be broad and comprehensive. But, of course, lessons will need to be learned, and while we are in the process of restoring order it would be premature for any of us to say that our minds are closed to any constructive suggestion about what we can learn.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Michael Gove]

Not yet.

I should like briefly to refer to four particularly outstanding speeches that were made during the debate, the first of which came from the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy). The points that he made resonated. From the moment that Mark Duggan’s tragic death came on to our television screens through to the horrific scenes that we saw over the weekend, the right hon. Gentleman’s voice has been one of common sense and moral clarity at a difficult time. His speech again today was superb, when he pointed out that the vast majority of young men did indeed show respect and restraint through the past week because they have grown up with a male role model, a moral code and a recognition of boundaries. He made the critical point that our great cities of course rely on our police forces, but ultimately order is policed by individuals who show pride, shame and responsibility to others. I could not have put it better myself.

I also agree with the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander). I share her sorrow at having to come back to this House from her honeymoon, but I have to say that, even though her husband may be disappointed, her constituents should be proud of her for the speech she made today. She pointed out that the riots are a result of disaffected and marginalised youth who have grown up in households where no one gives a damn, where violence is glamorised and where there is real poverty, particularly of responsibility and aspiration. It was a superb speech and she has done a great job for her constituents.

My hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North (Nick de Bois) drew a vivid and affecting picture of how one of London’s most attractive suburbs could be convulsed by violence, as individuals intent on wrongdoing took to the streets in the most wicked of ways. He asked detailed and constructive questions about the roles that the local authority, schools and TFL can play in making sure that our response to future events is sharper. We will write to him to ensure that his constituents’ concerns are addressed.

My hon. Friend the Member for Battersea (Jane Ellison) made a brilliant speech, in which she spoke up with passion on behalf of her constituents, pointing out that, for all those young people who picked up a brick in anger or greed on the night that violence gripped her constituency, there were many, many more who picked up a broom in optimism and hope the next morning. That underlines what the past week has shown: both the worst and the best of our country.

We see the worst when a 31-year-old man who is a learning mentor in a primary school, whose job is to inspire the young, is found guilty of burglary. We see it when a daughter of a millionaire couple who had the best education the state can provide becomes, it is alleged, a getaway driver for two other young criminals. When we watch the video of a young boy, who travelled across the world from Malaysia to study in this country because he saw us as a civilised community and a place of hope and learning, apparently being helped up, only to be robbed, all of us are sickened and ask: how can this happen in our country? When we think about the Sri Lankan couple, who fled civil strife in their own country to come here and build a life and a business, only to see their business trashed by criminals, or when we think of Salford town centre, which has been regenerated by an imaginative town council and a great MP, sent back a generation in one night by the violence of thugs, we all ask ourselves: why has a culture of greed and instant gratification, rootless hedonism and amoral violence taken hold in parts of our society?

Even as we despair, we can hope, because we have also seen the best of Britain this week, such as the volunteers mentioned by many today who took part in the clean-up operation immediately afterward. The hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) made the vital point that local authority officials, officers and workers have done an exemplary job, not least in her own constituency, where the mayor of Hackney, Jules Pipe, has shown real civic leadership. The way in which people who take pride in their community worked hard the next day to clean up the mess that had been created by an amoral minority was, to my mind, the very exemplar of public service. Also, let us not forget the work of the fire and ambulance services, who, alongside the police, risked life and limb to restore order and to ensure that people were safe.

We should take pride in the way in which multicultural Britain rose to this unique challenge: the Turkish citizens of Dalston who defended their families and businesses; the Sikh citizens of Southall who defended their gurdwara and their families; and the British Muslim citizens of Birmingham who sought to defend their communities. When three of them were mown down by one evil individual, we saw the best and the worst of Britain clash in one moment. All of us were moved beyond words by what Tariq Jahan said about the death of his son and the lesson that we should learn. We have seen modern Britons across this country stand up for old-fashioned British values of decency, solidarity and a determination to protect the vulnerable. If there are examples that we should bear in mind in this House and in our work in the weeks ahead, it is the leadership that those individuals have shown.

As well as seeing the best and the worst, we have witnessed a conflict on our streets between right and wrong. Those who have been committing these acts are individuals without boundaries, respect for others, or any moral sense. Those who were standing out against them and protecting us were the police. Let me pay tribute to the courage that has been shown by ordinary officers in the course of this week. Their leave was cancelled. Many of them have been working with very little sleep, facing the prospect of real violence and damage to life and limb, yet have uncomplainingly gone out there to protect us. We can be proud of those officers and the commanders, who have had to take terrible risks but who have ensured that for the moment order has been restored.

We heard how borough commanders from Hackney to Wandsworth and Ealing to Redbridge have ensured that the reputation of the Met, having taken a battering in recent months, is once again restored as a force that we can all take pride in. The chief constables of west midlands and Greater Manchester, faced with tremendous challenges, have also shown courage and imagination. We should applaud their bravery. Yes, there will be lessons to be learned. Yes, inevitably, in a difficult situation, when there was no intelligence of what was going to happen, mistakes will have been made, but how many of us could show the same degree of courage and resolution, faced with young men bent on violence and determined to cause havoc, when we knew that if we stepped out of line or transgressed the rules, we could find that our own life, livelihood and reputation were gone? Let us remember just how difficult modern policing is, before any of us casts a rhetorical stone at any of those individuals.

There were, across the House, widespread expressions of support for the police and for a more robust stance in the future. Having talked to a variety of police officers over the past week, I know that the sentiments expressed in the House go with the grain of policing opinion. My hon. Friends the Members for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray), for Beckenham (Bob Stewart), and for Ilford North (Mr Scott), the hon. Member for Lewisham East and the right hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Hazel Blears), all of whom encouraged the police to take a more robust stance, will find and have found a willing audience in those who are responsible for deploying the forces that maintain order.

Both my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary agree. I have been privileged to spend time attending the Cobra briefing meetings over the past week, and I have seen the degree of willing co-operation, energy, imagination and determination on the part of both the civil powers and the police to deal with the situation that we faced.

Of course there are suggestions from hon. Members about things that we might consider in the future. I was particularly struck by the powerful speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) who, speaking as a special constable, made a strong case for the deployment, if necessary, of water cannon. Let me underline to the House that the operational requirements of the police will be met in full by the Government. If they need support or help, they will get it. Yes, it is the Home Secretary’s ultimate decision whether a police force can use water cannon, but if any chief constable considers it appropriate to deal with any aspect of civil disorder, this Home Secretary has made it clear that she is on their side, and I hope the whole House will be. Mercifully, those steps have not needed to be taken, and our tradition of community-based policing by consent has seen our police force restore order to our streets with the help of our communities.

As we look at the way in which the police operate, it is important that we do not back-pedal on reform. Our police are still held back by a legacy of bureaucracy that I know all of us on both sides of the House want to tackle. There are still 1,000 process steps and 70 forms to get through when they are dealing with a simple burglary. Twenty-two per cent. of police time is spent on paperwork. Jan Berry, the former head of the Police Federation, has pointed out that one third of police effort is over-engineered, duplicated or adds no value. We can reform our police force in order to ensure that the officers we have are there on the streets where we need them, and this should be a cause that unites us across the House in a determination to ensure that police professionalism is respected.

But as the right hon. Member for Tottenham pointed out earlier, when we want our streets policed, we need them to be policed as much by the moral self-restraint of individuals as the uniformed presence of officers, and that means that we need to affirm at this time the values that we all know have been overlooked or neglected in the past. We all know that a culture of dutiless rights has led to a generation of parentless children. Being a father means taking on the most important job in the world, and those who are there when a child is conceived should be there when a child is raised. We need to remember: I am my brother’s keeper. We have a responsibility to others, and all of us find a fulfilment in service that is greater than anything that can be found in shallow hedonism or instant gratification. We need to say to the young people of this country—and the overwhelming majority know it and want to hear it affirmed—that hard work, self-discipline, aspiration, respectability and respect for others, the values by which they lead their lives, are the values that we will defend whenever and wherever they come under attack. I am so grateful that so many Members from both sides of the House have affirmed those principles tonight—

School Closures (Thursday)

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. There has been misinformation and propaganda about this dispute, and it is important that the facts are known—and that they are known by every Member. It will be the case at the end of this process that all public sector pensions will be among the best available. In particular, teachers’ pensions will remain strong because we recognise the importance of ensuring that those who work in our classrooms are well protected. Because discussions are ongoing and because they are based on Lord Hutton’s report, I think it quite wrong to prejudice those discussions by pre-empting them and stating what an end-point should be. By their very definition, discussions allow for both sides to make constructive suggestions, which is why it is such a pity that the trade unions have deliberately chosen to pre-empt that process.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State understand the degree of anger and frustration among so many teachers who have given years to their profession and feel that they have been forced into taking strike action, thus losing a day’s pay, in order to try to protect the pension for themselves and for a future generation of teachers? Instead of trying to work out cockamamie schemes to keep schools open, why does he not deal with the issue, retain the pension and support the teaching profession?

[Michael Gove]

I understand that there will be anger and frustration on Thursday: anger from parents whose child care arrangements have been disrupted, and frustration about the fact that schools remain closed. The question for all of us is: why is this reform necessary? I am afraid that the answer is: because of the dire economic situation that we inherited from the Labour Government. We are pledged to negotiate openly, honestly and constructively, but that negotiation has been pre-empted by the unions, and the hon. Gentleman’s responsibility is to ensure that schools in his constituency stay open.

Munro Report

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. There has been some correspondence between Professor Munro and the devolved Assemblies, and I have been trying for some time to meet my counterpart in Northern Ireland to go through such matters with him or her, whoever it was on either side of the elections. I am keen to go and hold conversations with our counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland so that they can hear what we are doing, but also so that I can hear what they are doing. There are different ways of working in those areas.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Like the Minister, and I think everyone here, I welcome the Munro report. The hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) made a point about the status of social workers, how they appear in public and how the newspapers denigrate them. There is also the problem of young social workers who are just out of university and newly trained and qualified having enormous difficulty in getting their first job, because they lack experience. Particularly in areas of inner-city Britain such as the one that I represent, there is great difficulty in retaining social workers because of housing difficulties and because of the enormous pressure and case loads that they face in fast-changing, high-turnover communities. It is not surprising that many do not stay on. I am sure the Minister is well aware that that turnover debilitates the entire service.

[Tim Loughton]

I agree, and we could have a debate just about the list of matters that the hon. Gentleman mentions, most of which are covered in the Munro report. The social work profession in this country has an awful lot of good people who do not get recognised and some poor people who need to be weeded out. In the past, people have felt frustrated and undermined, and the media onslaught against them has been completely demoralising. They have therefore left their jobs or taken early retirement, because the pressure has been too much for them. Who would want to go into a job like that, after all the publicity about baby P and other cases? Who would want to put themselves in the firing line by taking a job in which they try to do their best, but blame is pointed at them because they happen to be a social worker, even though they might be doing a good job?

We have problems at both ends. We need to retain and encourage good social workers and ensure that they can do their job as efficiently as possible, and we also need to ensure that the people coming into the profession—there has been a big rise in applications for social work degrees recently—are the right people. They need to have the necessary calibre and dedication and be there for the right reasons, and we need them to stay the course. That is part of the work that the Social Work Reform Board is doing and part of the reason why the College of Social Work is so important. Having a chief social worker, which is the 15th recommendation in the report, will help to raise the game. It will raise the profile and status of the profession, and it will give people in it the feeling of being valued. Those are important matters.

--- Later in debate ---

[Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

I echo the Minister’s welcome for the work of Professor Munro, and thank her and everyone involved in the production of the report. I also give the Government credit for commissioning this important piece of work. Unlike many other reports on social work, this review has not been produced in the immediate aftermath of a specific, much-publicised tragedy. It takes a holistic view of how we could protect the most vulnerable children in our society better. I also echo my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) in welcoming the tone of the Minister’s remarks today. We look forward to working constructively with the Government to take forward Professor Munro’s recommendations.

Protecting our most vulnerable children is crucial, difficult and emotionally charged work. Providing the most resilient environment in which to protect children is a responsibility that has challenged and exercised Governments of every hue for many years. I pay tribute to the many hundreds of social workers who, through their hard work, commitment and professionalism, literally save lives. Social workers know that theirs is often a thankless task. When they perform at the top of their game to improve lives for the better, safeguarding children from harm and assisting families to get back on to the right path, they rarely get bouquets or thanks. They do not expect to get even a mention in the local free paper. Their own satisfaction at having made a difference has to suffice. But they also know that should any of the multitude of their borderline decisions be proved, with the benefit of hindsight, to have been wrong, and should a tragedy then occur, they will be on the front page of every newspaper in the land and held to account for their decisions.

It is in that context that Professor Munro produced her report, and that the previous Government took many significant steps to support the social work profession and our children. It is also in that context that we all have a duty to speak up for the importance of the work that social workers do, and to recognise the knife-edge nature of much of their decision making in an imperfect world.

I shall also follow the Minister’s lead in thanking foster carers across the country for their invaluable work. I know from personal experience how vital their role is. I also welcome the measures to make the route to adoption a quicker one. As an adoptive parent myself, I know the importance of children being taken on by a new family as early as possible, once they have been identified as suitable for adoption.

This is not the first report on protecting children to call for a change in society’s attitudes towards and expectations of the social work profession. Nor is it the first to call for an approach that puts children at the heart of our thinking on this subject, but it is no less valuable or right to call for these things just because they have been spoken of before. We recognise that in this vital area, progress is always more easily made when there is a sense that all the parties involved are working together constructively and positively, and there is a great deal in the report that we are happy to support enthusiastically. It builds on many of the reforms that the previous Government embarked on, and endorses many of the structures that they implemented. It also builds on the work of the social work taskforce and the social work reform board, whose contribution the review warmly endorses.

I shall turn now to the specific recommendations in the review. In calling for a child-centred approach, it recognises that the needs and rights of the child, and the child’s involvement in and ownership of a process that might be happening at a confusing and frightening time in their lives, must be paramount. We absolutely support that idea, and recognise that children must feel that the interventions and decisions being made about their future should involve them and not just be a process that happens to them. We are pleased that the review recognises that we all owe a debt of gratitude to the firm foundations of reform laid down by the social work taskforce. Among many other reforms introduced by the Labour Government, the report recommends the protection of, and specifically cautions against the dilution of, the role of directors of children’s services. I shall return to that point later. The report also endorses the vital role of the College of Social Work in lifting standards and representing the profession internally within local authorities and more broadly across all parts of our society.

The report gives further support to local safeguarding children boards, and to the 10 principles of the assessment framework. We hope that, as recommended in the review, the position of chief social worker will be able to play a key role in promoting the interests of children through the improvement of the profile and professionalism of social work, and through influencing Government policy on behalf of children and the profession.

We will support any efforts that will improve the standing of social work. This includes its profile within the media and among the wider public. It includes helping to make social work a career of choice for talented graduates, helping to build the self-esteem of the social work profession and, within the House, recognising the debt we all owe to the profession for the work it does on behalf of our most vulnerable children and families.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend will have heard my earlier intervention on the Minister about the status of social workers, and I am sure he will have agreed with me. Does he also agree how important it is to have some sort of steer or directive for local government to take on newly qualified social workers and to provide them with the relevant training and entry into the profession? I observe huge cuts taking place in local government all over the country, as a result of which there are fewer new job opportunities for qualified social workers—and therein lies a problem 10, 15 or 20 years down the line.

[Toby Perkins]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The problem is not just 10 or 15 years down the line; it is more immediate. When we know that there are social work vacancies around the country, it seems bizarre that newly qualified people in this sector are finding it difficult to find work. Professor Munro’s recommendations on practice and assessment years at the early stages will make a significant difference—at least, I hope they will. My hon. Friend is absolutely right about the considerable anecdotal evidence that newly qualified social workers are finding it difficult to find work. I hope that the proposed measures in the report will be followed through, as it is vital that people should choose to work in this area. As the Minister has said, we want to make social work an attractive career option for talented people leaving university, but if those people find it hard to find work as a social worker, that is going to become more difficult.

English for Speakers of Other Languages

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

I will be very brief because of the short time we have left.

I think that the Minister has been in touch with or visited City and Islington college in my constituency. Consequently, he will be well aware of the excellent work that the college does on ESOL training, the good-quality teaching that it provides and the knock-on benefits for the entire community.

During his visit, he will also have heard from the students there—and no doubt from many other students around the country—that it is not only the college-based teaching that is valuable and important but the community-based teaching and the grant support for small community groups to learn English as a second language. That is because many people, particularly women, feel extremely isolated. For them, the concept and prospect of going to a college is quite daunting, whereas a fairly small teaching group in a community centre or a similarly appropriate location can be just as effective as teaching in a college.

Any analysis of what we are doing in this country about teaching English as a second language would show that the relatively small amount spent on it has enormous beneficial effects in later life for the children of ESOL students and for the economy and the community as a whole.

In Australia, any newly arrived migrant who does not speak English receives—as of right—up to 500 hours of English teaching, to enable them to participate fully in Australian society. That is extremely valuable. The community in north London that I am very proud to represent has dozens of different languages, possibly even 100. The multicultural concept and the associated quality of life is hugely valuable. However, there is a thirst among those people to be able to contribute to society. If we do not teach those people English, or give them the opportunity to learn English, in a college or elsewhere in a community, where will they learn it? English is not spoken in their homes, as nobody there has had the chance to learn it other than through the children. As a result, we end up with the embarrassing consequences of small children translating for their parents, as other Members have already pointed out, or we end up with children underachieving in school because their parents are unable to support and assist them. Those children underachieve and their parents are unable to access work.

We should educate the parents, particularly the mother, to speak English. The knock-on effects of doing that are enormous—for the achievements of the children in school and for the participation in society of both parents in every way, including gaining access to work and jobs. We would get back the money spent a dozenfold, in increased taxation and increased income for the community as a whole. It is a win-win situation as a result of a relatively small investment.

My plea to the Minister is that he fight his corner within Government spending requirements, that he understand both the value of English as a second language to the learners and its benefit to our entire community, and that he recognise the dedicated commitment of ESOL teachers in colleges and communities up and down the country. They not only teach English as a second language but do so much to bring the people they teach into the ambit of community life, so that they understand what it is like to live in this country and understand the rights, responsibilities and opportunities that they have. Cutting back on that is not sensible, fair or reasonable, and will simply be counter-productive in the long run. Give people a chance to communicate, participate and be part of our society; give them the chance to learn English as a second language.

Higher Education Policy

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Denham]

That argument is worthy of further examination, and I assure the hon. Gentleman that I will be dealing with it in due course, at—I hope—not too much length. It gets worse.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Denham]

Ministers have consistently claimed that fees above £6,000 will be allowed only if tough access agreements are in place. Before I say more about that, however, I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn).

[Jeremy Corbyn]

I am sure my right hon. Friend realises that the universities that have not raised their fees to £9,000, such as my own London Metropolitan university, are giving themselves a large financial problem which is resulting—in the case of the London Met—in the loss of possibly as many as 10,000 student places over the next three years, a large number of redundancies, and a loss of access to higher education for students from working-class backgrounds. That is the perverse effect of the Government’s strategy of effectively trying to privatise higher education.

[Mr Denham]

My hon. Friend has underlined a point that I have already made. Individual institutions have had to make their own choices, but this was a system in which almost every incentive for the vast majority of institutions was to raise fees, and there were almost no incentives to lower them. Given the number of professors of game theory in the universities of England, one would have thought that Ministers could have got a few together and asked them, “What will you do, in practice, if we introduce a system like this?” Every single one of them would have replied, “We will make the fees as high as we possibly can.” The Minister and the Secretary of State are just about the only people with any connection to higher education who are surprised by what has happened.

Of course, Ministers have consistently claimed that fees above £6,000 will be allowed only if tough access agreements are in place. When Cambridge university announced it wanted a fee of £9,000 per year, the Deputy Prime Minister—the man who promised no fee increases—exploded, stating:

“They can say what they like. They can’t charge £9,000 unless they’re given permission to do so. And they’re only going to be given permission to do so if they can prove that they can dramatically increase the number of people from poorer and disadvantaged backgrounds who presently aren’t going to Oxford and Cambridge.”

That sounded pretty clear, but what has Cambridge actually proposed? Its current access target under the current fees policy is to reach 60% to 63% of state school students—not, we should note, poorer or disadvantaged state school students, just any state school students including those from selective schools. What has it proposed in the new access agreement? It has proposed that the target should be not 60% to 63% of state school students, but 61% to 63% of state school students. As the Financial Times put it:

“Cambridge basically reckons it can triple student fees and placate the Government by adjusting the bottom of its target range for state school pupils by one percentage point.”

Does anybody in this House believe that Cambridge will not be allowed to charge £9,000?

The Secretary of State’s guidance to the Office for Fair Access did not request that OFFA take into account past performance on benchmarks or widening participation, nor could it legally have done so. It will be many years, at best, before OFFA can possibly judge whether the new access agreements have been complied with and made any difference to access. Will the Minister for Universities and Science tell the House today how long he expects it to be before OFFA could feasibly sanction any university for failure to comply?

It is obvious that these bungling Ministers thought OFFA had powers it simply did not have. When The Times asked Sir Martin Harris, the director of OFFA, whether Ministers had been aware of his limited powers when plans to treble the cap on fees were approved by Parliament, he replied:

“I think that the powers of OFFA became clearer as this debate went on.”

That is a tremendously polite way of saying, “They didn’t understand what they were talking about,” and he went on to say, for the avoidance of doubt:

“It is very important that everybody understands that OFFA is not a fee regulator.”

Tory peers made sure of that in 2004. In another place, they passed amendments that ensured that Labour’s fees legislation could not allow the very interference that the Tory-led Government are now threatening.

Of course, in theory OFFA can reject an access scheme, but only a stupid and incompetent vice-chancellor would run that risk. Universities just need a rational plan for school outreach work, and bursaries or fee waivers for some students; if they get that right, OFFA’s powers to limit fees to £6,000 collapse, and the university is free to charge up to £9,000. That is the second reason why £9,000 is becoming the norm, not the exception.

The cynical talk of tough access agreements is raising false hopes among students, and now the finances are unravelling. The permanent secretary at the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills recently appeared in front of the Public Accounts Committee, and he was asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) about the consequences of fees higher than an average of £7,500. She asked:

“You have a gap, haven’t you, that you are going to have to plug”?

The permanent secretary replied: “Yes.”

The Secretary of State has already made it absolutely clear how he will respond. He told the Higher Education Funding Council for England conference:

“Government essentially has two ways of dealing financially with collective over-pricing: either cutting the teaching grant or student numbers.”

So there will be more cuts in teaching grant, or even more cuts in student numbers beyond the cut of 20,000 from the total Labour planned for September 2010 and the number he will allow in 2012-13.

Frankly, the Government are all over the place on this. On the one hand the permanent secretary says there is a problem, and the Secretary of State says he may cut student numbers or the teaching grant. On the other, he says there is not a black hole. The House of Commons Library has published estimates of the financial shortfall at average fee levels above £7,500. Ministers say they do not recognise the Library figures, so will the Minister guarantee to the House today that the average fee will be no more than the £7,500 first promised? If he cannot guarantee that, will he tell the House what the black hole will be, and how he is going to balance the budget?

That is not the only question about finances, because the whole fiasco has been driven by the Secretary of State’s claim that he needed to sacrifice higher education to cut the budget deficit. There are increasing concerns that the policy will not save any public money. The cut in teaching grant has to be set against the massive increase in the level of student debt that has to be written off because of loans that will never be repaid. London Economics, million+ and the Higher Education Policy Institute are among the organisations that have pointed out that quite small changes in assumptions about future graduate earnings or the rate of non-repayment would wipe out any savings. Yesterday, the director of the Office for Budget Responsibility wrote to me confirming that the OBR will re-examine the Government’s assumptions once all the universities have set their fees.

As it has become increasingly clear that fees approaching £9,000 will be the norm, Ministers have constantly threatened to enact new laws to stop them. In their guidance to the Office for Fair Access, these Ministers said that

“if the sector as a whole appeared to be clustering their charges at the upper end of what is legally possible, and thereby increasing the pressure on public funds, we will have to reconsider what powers are available, including changes to legislation, to ensure there is differentiation in charges.”

They have talked of cutting all university places by 5% to 10% and then auctioning them off to the lowest bidder, including foreign-owned private universities. They have also talked of strengthening OFFA’s legal powers, but part of this disgraceful situation is that they make threats but they will not publish any details.

So I ask the Secretary of State and the Minister for Universities and Science whether, having said that they are prepared to legislate to stop universities charging high fees, they will stop hiding behind weasel words and tell us what they actually propose to do. Will there be an auction of student places? Is OFFA going to be given powers to set fees or impose quotas for students from different backgrounds? There are people on both sides of the House who would like to have the answer to that question. Does the Minister have any idea how he would get such a policy through the House of Lords, given that the Lords insisted on explicitly limiting OFFA’s powers in 2004? It really is not good enough for the Secretary of State and his Minister to keep making it up as they go along.

The Minister said that he would double the level of student loans available for study at private universities and he has made it clear that he wants more competition from private universities, but he has not set out how they will be regulated, how quality will be maintained or how the problem of fraud, which is being investigated by congressional committees in the USA, will be avoided—this involves the same companies he wants to expand their activities here. Once again, veiled threats are being made in panic as Ministers lose control of the system, but we are being given no details, no substance and no openness. It is not good enough to keep this House, future students and universities in the dark about what they plan to do.

Let me turn now to another aspect of Government policy that is becoming clear. The Secretary of State and his Minister plan to force tens of thousands of students from squeezed-middle homes to pay a levy to cut the fees of other students, often those from similar backgrounds. In a typical access scheme—hon. Members can go on websites to look at these—a student with two working parents both on £24,000 a year will pay a full £27,000 a year in fees, but that will include a £3,000 levy to cut the fees of the student from next door with one working parent on £24,000 a year. So two graduates with the same degree from the same university starting the same job will start their working life with as much as a £9,000 difference in their level of debt. How many of our constituents will think that having two hard-working parents should be a disadvantage that stays with someone for 30 years?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tristram Hunt]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I am happy to look at that. Personally, I am no fan of the graduate tax.

I, too, am new here, but as I understand it, what happens in this place and in government is that people come up with ideas and then there is a Green Paper, a White Paper, some debate, a decision, and then a policy enactment. What we have here is the imposition of an arbitrary fee level, followed by the scurrying around for a justification, which we have seen over recent months, to make the figures add up.

The Government’s policy is driven by ideology. It is the ghost of Keith Joseph coming back to life. It is neo-liberalism rather than Liberal Democrat politics. However, let us be generous for a minute and argue, as the confused Minister for Universities and Science tried to, that some of it is driven by a desire for deficit reduction. We will leave aside for a second the fact that for every £1 million invested in universities £2.5 million comes back, and we will leave aside the fact, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield), that the only other country deciding to slash spending on universities and science during the recession is Romania. Clearly Ministers are using the Romanian model, when we thought they were interested in a knowledge-driven economy.

If deficit reduction is the strategy, why do the sums not add up? Why will the Government’s plans cost more, not less, over the coming years? Because the Government have got their sums wrong and do not understand how universities work. They thought fees would be £6,000 or £6,500, but why would universities charge that amount when it costs them £10,000, £11,000 or £12,000 to educate someone? At the university of Cambridge, it costs £14,000 to educate an undergraduate. Why on earth would it not charge £9,000 to recoup some of that cost? The incompetence of Ministers has been absolutely breathtaking, and the suggestion of the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) that the problem was advice from civil servants was, I thought, rather grotesque.

And what fees they are! Nine thousand pounds. Every decent university will go for the top rate, so we will go from having some of the lowest fees to having some of the very highest. That represents an ideological decision to withdraw the state from higher education. Only that can explain the decision to cut 80% of the higher education teaching grant. The headline fees will put students off, and for all the guff that we heard about special provisions, when people see the figure of £9,000, it will be very hard to convince them.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

My hon. Friend must be aware, as I and many others are, that the cuts are wholly disproportionate. We are destroying humanities, arts and language courses all over the country, and we are denying the opportunity of education to many working-class youngsters, because the cuts are in favour of vocational courses rather than pure academic ones. Does he believe that that is selling the whole country short?

[Tristram Hunt]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The Government’s attack on humanities has been grotesque from the beginning. Their intervention to try to make the Arts and Humanities Research Council fund big society research could not have been more laughable. There will be an effect on history, French and humanities courses.

Post-16 Education Funding

Jeremy Corbyn Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I should be delighted to visit Harlow at some point to see what we can do to advance the very exciting plans for a university technical college. I am also happy to confirm that the flexibility of the new scheme will enable college principals to tailor it to the specific needs of students. It is true that the old EMA provided an incentive for attendance, but this scheme could help college principals to give more support to the very poorest students who put in the most impressive performances and whose learning needs to be supported most strongly.

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)]

Can the Secretary of State explain how the money enabling the college principals to give discretionary awards will be drawn down? Will there not be a perverse incentive for colleges not to take on pupils from poorer backgrounds because they are more likely to demand more money? Would it not be better for us to have a national scheme based on rights, with national application and national distribution? Such a scheme was pretty successful under EMA, resulting in more young people staying on at college and going to university.

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman and I disagree on many matters of principle, but he is absolutely right to say that we must support the very poorest. That has been a consistent theme of his political career. The new scheme will allow the very poorest to receive more than they did under the previous scheme, and will enable college principals to target their resources on those who are most in need. I believe that those college principals, rather than the hon. Gentleman or me, are best placed to identify the needs of students.