Educational Attainment: Yorkshire and the Humber

Debate between Jo Cox and Philip Davies

Monday 18th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Philip Davies]

Yes, I very much agree with my hon. Friend, who makes a good point, as he always does on education matters.

I emphasise that we have some fantastic schools and some fantastic teachers, who are all working incredibly hard. I am very pro-teacher. My dad is a retired teacher, so I will certainly not criticise them; they work very hard in sometimes very difficult circumstances. I am not often a big fan of all the teachers in the National Union of Teachers, but teachers on the whole work incredibly hard, and it is important that we do not criticise them when we are discussing some of these educational standards, because they often operate in very difficult circumstances.

Finally, I was struck by the good point the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) made about opportunities being harder to come by for people in the north than for those in places such as London, and I would like to float an idea. We often give student loans to people who want to progress their career through the university route; I wonder why others, if university is not for them, should not be able to get some form of student loan to allow them to do things such as come to London to access work experience placements. I do not see why student loans should be only for the benefit of the most able and perhaps the wealthiest and most advantaged. How about giving loans to some of the most disadvantaged people in the country to allow them to pursue their career? How about giving people in Yorkshire the opportunities that people in other parts of the country get? I hope that the Government will look at that. Social mobility is what the Conservative party should be all about, and we have to look much more imaginatively at this issue.

[Jo Cox]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

I am going to finish; otherwise, Mr Deputy Speaker will get annoyed with me, and I do not want that to happen.

I hope that the Conservative party, which I believe is about social mobility, will look more imaginatively at what we can do to help kids from poorer backgrounds who are perhaps not the most academic to access the best opportunities. I would like to think that student loans could be extended to them for their benefit.

Local Government Funding

Debate between Jo Cox and Philip Davies

Wednesday 3rd February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jo Cox (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) on securing this important debate. She and I serve together on the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government, and we have received deeply worrying briefings of late on the future of local government finance, some of which I will touch on.

It is right, as a principle, to offer councils a four-year funding settlement to help them plan for the future. I welcome the Government’s initiative. However, when councils simultaneously face rumours about huge new services, such as the attendance allowance or public health, for which they may be expected to take responsibility over the same timeline, they are left with no security in their financial planning. I speak to council finance directors who are struggling to understand what will be expected of them over the next four to 10 years, which means it is incredibly difficult to plan.

The reality is that many councils have very little room left for long-term financial planning. My council tells me that it is firefighting from budget to budget without long-term certainty, and that it will be 2.5% worse off in 2020 than today, compared with national average cuts of about 0.5%. That figure does not seem very big, but it is about the size of the entire libraries budget, and let us not forget that it comes on top of incredibly severe cuts over the past four years that mean that Kirklees Council will be spending about 15% less than it spent in 2010.

I do not believe that anyone becomes a councillor to cut local library services by 32%, to cut children’s music services by 94%, to remove £700,000 from the budget to cut grass or to completely scrap community events and festivals, which is what is happening in Kirklees. Many of my constituents are feeling the even sharper end of council cuts to adult social care and other important services. My fear is that the Government want to blame local councillors.

I am struck by the fact that families living in a £70,000 terraced house in Batley in my constituency will now be getting £60 less per family member in council services than they did in 2010, but families living in a £2 million home in Oxfordshire will be getting £50 more per family member. That seems blatantly unfair, and my constituents struggle to understand it. That disparity in core spending power over the course of this Parliament is staggering and seems to be growing. For councillors such as mine in Kirklees, it does not feel like we are all in this together.

I welcome the intent behind the proposed business rate growth retention, but the Government’s announcement leaves many unanswered questions. In Kirklees Council, the potential funding gap—

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Jo Cox]

Can I just finish this point?

[Philip Davies (in the Chair)]

No; I do not like doing it, but I have to cut the hon. Lady off in her flow.