Business of the House

John Denham Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

On the first point about a written statement, the Prime Minister has a very strong record in coming to the House to deliver statements, including after the great majority of European Councils. As my hon. Friend knows, this particular Council meeting took place after the end of Parliament’s sitting, so it would not have been possible to come straight to the House about it. I think there are some Councils and occasions when it is appropriate to give a written statement instead, but on the vast majority of occasions an oral statement is made. I understand the point my hon. Friend is making about the range of reports and requests from the European Scrutiny Committee. It has not been possible to schedule those debates as things stand, but of course I am happy to discuss that further with him.

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

May we have an early debate on compensation for victims of badly installed cavity wall insulation? Many people, including my constituents, have had cavity wall insulation carried out, funded by the obligations placed on energy companies by the Government. When that goes wrong, as it sometimes does, the Government refuse to intervene and the Cavity Insulation Guarantee Agency, the industry regulator, is absolutely useless at taking any action. May we have an early debate with Ministers to see what can be done to sort the problem out?

[Mr Hague]

There will be people caught in a difficult situation as a result of that, and the right hon. Gentleman raises a point that will be important to some people around the country. It would be an appropriate subject to advance for a Backbench Business Committee debate or for an Adjournment debate, but I will also draw the attention of my colleagues at the Department of Energy and Climate Change to what he has said.

Devolution (Implications for England)

John Denham Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

Yes, I absolutely agree. I think there is sometimes a desire on some parts of the Opposition Benches to try to suppress debate on this issue and hope that nobody will talk about it over the coming months or years. That will not be a successful approach. People across England now expect this issue to be addressed.

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

The tragedy is that we are so close to a lasting settlement for England and the Union. We could agree on devolution in England, we could agree on an elected second Chamber, and we could also clearly agree on changes here. Does the Leader of the House not understand that his partisan and highly political desire to rush to an early vote in the Westminster club on just one element puts at risk the constitutional change this country needs?

[Mr Hague]

I do not think it is open to the Labour party to opt out of a cross-party process and accuse the rest of us of being partisan. This is a Command Paper on which two parties have participated. There would have been no harm at all in the Labour party putting its own proposals into this Command Paper, and the reason we have set out a number of proposals is so that there can be a debate, not a rush to a single proposal, and there can be consultation about those proposals. I look forward to the comments on these options from the right hon. Gentleman.

Business of the House

John Denham Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

My right hon. Friend makes a very powerful point. There is a good case for a debate on this matter and I hope he will take it to the Backbench Business Committee. As chair of the ministerial committee on animal health and animal issues, I too feel extremely strongly on this issue. I believe there is more that Governments across the world can do, and I will be doing some work on that in the next few months.

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

Can I take it from the Leader of the House’s words that whatever the statutory instrument is on, it will not be on English votes for English laws? When he brings forward the White Paper, will it include proposals to take the options he identifies out to the country at large for discussion, debate and amendment, before anything is brought back to this House?

[Mr Hague]

There is no primary legislation that would permit the statutory instrument to be about English votes on English laws; the right hon. Gentleman can be assured of that. One of the reasons why it is important to bring forward a Government paper on the options on decentralisation and on the question that we have come to call “English votes on English laws” is so that there can be a full debate in the country and discussions between parties. Indeed, I regret that those on the Opposition Front Bench have chosen not to take part in cross-party discussions. I will be writing to them today to invite them to contribute ideas to the Command Paper, so there is a chance for them to reconsider their position. Perhaps the right hon. Gentleman can encourage them to do so.

Devolution (Scotland Referendum)

John Denham Excerpts

Tuesday 14th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hague]

I will give way to the right hon. Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith).

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the Leader of the House. A few moments ago he said that the way in which English votes on English laws is delivered would be the subject of a great deal of debate. Why is he not proposing to involve the people of England in a discussion about how England should be governed? Why is he saying that he has all the wisdom to force this through in a Cabinet discussion without any wider debate whatever? What is he scared of and why will he not listen to the people of England?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

It is at times like this that we are reminded of Disraeli’s observation that the English are governed by Parliament, not by logic. There is a lot to be sorted out in this regard.

I start from the simple point that England must get what England wants. The change that is now taking place must lead to change in England. The question is what that change is and then how it will be decided by the English people. Let us be clear that the decision must be taken in England’s interests, like the decisions for Scotland, Wales and so on. Yes, the Union is important, but England cannot be the only nation of the Union that has to forgo its rights for the sake of the Union. With due respect to some of my colleagues, we cannot be told that Scotland can have something that suits Scotland but, on principle, the same thing must be denied to England because of the Union. No amount of Barnett theology, technical discussion about definitions or talk about two-tier or second-class MPs can solve the simple fact that it cannot be right that MPs from Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland can vote on what happens in schools in my constituency, on the structure of the NHS in England and on the level of university fees when I cannot vote on the same issues in those nations and regions.

I say with respect to my friends and colleagues that England is changing. The days have gone when the English were happy to be happily confused as to whether we were British or English because we thought they both meant the same thing, and we have to reflect that. The new settlement needs to take into account English interests, but I have a profound disagreement with what the Conservative part of the Government is proposing, its timetable for forcing it through to a vote in a few weeks’ time and its attempt at making it a decisive—or divisive, rather—general election issue. It is worrying that the Conservative commentator Tim Montgomerie has tweeted today that this is a “classic Crosby issue.” Why is a discredited Australian tobacco lobbyist who has been hired by the Tories taking the role of trying to determine the English constitution?

What England needs is not the divisive choice of one particular solution to the problem, driven through by a Cabinet Committee to the exclusion of all the alternatives that the people of England would like to discuss, including an English Parliament, much greater devolution to England and the revision of the second Chamber. Why is just one proposition going to be pushed through without any broad discussion? Is it because the people of England look at this House and say, “All the expertise we need is there! These people absolutely speak for us. They represent the voices of every village, community, business interest, union and environmental group”? They do not look at us like that. They think we are out of touch and that we do not represent them, and they want the future of England to be decided after a debate that involves all of the people of England.

England needs to reach a consensus, not the confrontation that Lynton Crosby and the Prime Minister are trying to engineer. England needs a coming together, not a division in the way the Conservative party is trying to pursue the issue.

[Mr Redwood]

When I launched my “speak for England” campaign, I did not consult Mr Crosby; I did it because 70% of the English people want English votes for English issues and they want them now.

[Mr Denham]

The right hon. Gentleman proposed an English Parliament, but he will have noticed that the Prime Minister has excluded that option from the debate. Would he not rather have the process of a constitutional convention through which he could pursue his argument for an English Parliament, if that is what he thinks is right, and the rest of us could pursue what we think is right?

Back in 2007, I argued in this Chamber that a reformed House of Lords, democratically elected from the nations and regions, is the obvious solution: it would allow scrutiny of English legislation in the English part of a second Chamber. Our fundamental problem is that the Commons cannot play both roles: it cannot be both an English legislature and a Commons for the United Kingdom. At the moment, its priority is to be a Commons for the United Kingdom, to the disadvantage of democracy in England. Tilted the other way, it becomes a legislature for England, to the disadvantage of the Commons of the United Kingdom.

We need a different solution, but it is not for me or, with respect, the Prime Minister and the Leader of the House to say what that solution should be. It is for the English people, after a proper constitutional convention—a proper debate—to settle on what they think is the best way for our nation to be governed.

Business of the House

John Denham Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Perhaps I can look to a distinguished former Cabinet Minister to offer us the tutorial in brevity. I call Mr John Denham.

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

May we have a debate on compensation for faulty work carried out under the affordable warmth obligation? The Mark Group carried out work on the home of a constituent of mine, presenting itself as delivering a Government scheme, but now neither it nor the regulator or Ministers are willing to act to compensate my constituent.

[Mr Lansley]

I was not familiar with the issue raised by the right hon. Gentleman, but I will, of course, raise it with my colleagues at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. He may, of course, wish to raise it himself at next Thursday’s questions.

Business of the House

John Denham Excerpts

Thursday 12th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: this is very much about a presumption in favour of brownfield over greenfield development; that is what the Government are looking towards. The other important thing is that this Government expect planning to be locally led. I am sure my hon. Friend will bring to bear on his council, in the way he describes, local people’s views on what they want in their local plan. Under the Localism Act 2011, that should be pre-eminent in the local plan.

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

On Monday, the Secretary of State for Education announced that, in future, schools will teach British values. Although he appears to have been panicked by the crisis in his Department into announcing something with which he used to disagree, it is a very good idea. The problem is that it is easier said than done and harder to do well than badly, and if it is done badly it would probably be better not to do it at all. Can we have a debate in this House, before the Department publishes its proposals, on how exactly British values can be taught successfully and effectively in our schools?

[Mr Lansley]

Indeed, I heard the Secretary of State say that. If I recall correctly—I will ensure that I am correct about this—I think he said that while he was looking for schools to promote British values, it was not some immediate response, but something he had been considering. I think it was the subject of a pre-existing consultation in any case. We will of course ensure that we keep the House informed about the progress of that consultation and our response to it.

Transparency of Lobbying, Non-Party Campaigning and Trade Union Administration Bill

John Denham Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd September 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Lansley]

My hon. Friend is right: schedule 1 refers specifically to the principles of exclusive cognisance and parliamentary privilege, and does not seek to impinge on them in any way. However, we consider that the normal activities of Members of Parliament could never be considered to be lobbying, and we have included exclusions in the Bill which we believe make it clear that MPs are not included. I am perfectly willing to reassure colleagues that I will continue the conversations I have had with the House authorities, and that I will continue to maintain discussions with colleagues. If there is any doubt about whether Members of Parliament might, in any form in respect of their activities in the House, be included or compromised in relation to this, we will put a specific provision into the Bill to make sure that does not happen. We will be very clear about that.

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

May I remind the Leader of the House that the reason the Government decided a few months ago to bring forward the lobbying Bill was that they had dropped their proposals for plain packaging of cigarettes following the employment of a paid lobbyist of the tobacco industry as the head of the Conservative party election campaign? Given that that is the origin of this Bill, can the Leader of the House explain why no provisions in this Bill would shed any light or give any transparency on the involvement of Lynton Crosby in these matters?

[Mr Lansley]

Since I am here presenting the Bill to the House and I was the Secretary of State who initiated the consultation on plain packaging, I am probably in quite a good position to tell the right hon. Gentleman that what he just said was complete tosh.

To ensure—

General Matters

John Denham Excerpts

Tuesday 18th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

I wish to speak about the marking of the English and English language GCSEs this summer.

At the beginning of the school term, I was asked to visit one of my local secondary schools, which had been confidently predicting 58% A* to C grades in English and English language. The students have been marked down at 32%. At the same time, stories started to appear in the local newspaper, the Daily Echo, about schools in neighbouring Hampshire. Some schools that have regularly had 84% to 90% A to C grades achieved just 60%. It became clear to me, as it did across the country, that something had gone enormously wrong in the marking of GCSE exams this summer.

I wanted to speak in the debate because I believe that a huge injustice has been done to that group of students who sat the exams this summer. It is an injustice that has a real effect on their lives: I have heard already of students who have been denied access to the college or the course that they wanted, or who have not been allowed to go on to the apprenticeship that they had been promised, or who are worried about the future impact of having low grades when they might come to apply, for example, to selective universities.

Equally importantly, there are those students who, from the beginning of their school career, needed considerable support, inspiration, nurturing, cajoling and confidence building just to stay the course. They left school in June confident that they would achieve a reasonable result, but they now feel so bitterly let down that they say they are turning their backs on education altogether.

This is not the time for wider debate on education standards; that will take place another time. I want to focus on the marking of those exams this summer. I believe that the students are innocent victims, caught in the crossfire of a wider and sometimes highly partisan debate about education. We need to focus on the position that they are in, but up to now Ministers—and, I am afraid, the Secretary of State—do not seem to have understood the injustice that has been done. The concerns of students are being brushed off, like so much dandruff from the Secretary of State’s collar.

Why am I so convinced that an injustice has been done? First, because the students, however we look at it, fulfilled every expectation of their teachers and, in turn, of the exam boards. Students look to teachers to guide them on what they need to know—the skills and the aptitude that they need to demonstrate—but there is simply no evidence that, peculiarly this year, they were catastrophically let down by their teachers.

Let us look at the schools involved. It is not as though this is poor performance concentrated in schools that had traditionally been weak or had struggled to achieve decent results. As is very clear, the unexpectedly poor results occurred in schools that had traditionally been among the best-performing in the country. It defies belief that so many teachers in so many schools should, collectively, turn into poor teachers in that one month of June this year.

Those teachers were supported by the exam boards. In the school that I visited, because the controlled assessment was new, there were regular checks with AQA on the way the work was being moderated and to ensure that the approach to the teaching was in line with the exam boards’ expectation. The school was told that it was in line with expectations—a school that had been praised for the excellence of its moderation and the quality of its predictions.

We got the Ofqual interim report, but it really does not convince in any way that Ofqual has, clearly and transparently, got to the bottom of why the results turned out the way they did in so many schools.

One reason for my participation in the debate is that I am one of the architects of Ofqual. It was my joint decision with my right hon. Friend the Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls), when he was Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families and I was Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills, to establish Ofqual as an independent regulator. The truth is that the guarantee of independence that we delivered has not turned out to be a guarantee of competence. Ofqual has failed to deliver the quality of service that is needed to inspire confidence among students and teachers.

The interim report that Ofqual published failed to provide a convincing explanation of what happened; indeed, as the General Secretary of the Association of School and College Leaders said to the Select Committee on Education, in the one exam that we are talking about there has been extraordinary variation: 26.7% of those sitting it got a C grade in June last year; 37% got a C grade in January; and 10.2% got a C grade in June 2012. As he said,

“there is no evidence that those papers had any difference in the level of challenge in those examinations”.

In other words, it is all down to the extraordinary way in which the exam was assessed.

Ofqual tried to say that the problem related to January, but its figures do not tell a convincing story that gives a full explanation. In any case, students have the reasonable expectation that if they deliver what they were asked to deliver by their teachers and the exam board, that will be reflected in their result. For them to fail their exam, as they will be seen to have done, is deeply unfair; it will have a lasting impact on them.

Last week, the Secretary of State said, or is reported to have said, the following to the Select Committee—the transcript is not yet on the website—about the Welsh decision to reopen the question:

“the children who suffer are children from Wales who, when they apply for jobs in England, will hand over certificates that profess to be good passes, and English employers will now say, ‘I fear, through no fault of your own…that I cannot count your exam pass as equivalent to this other exam pass.’”

As with many of the Secretary of State’s statements, there is absolutely no evidence for that. Indeed, if it were true, we would be seeing schools, colleges and employers turning down children with the January qualifications, on the grounds that those qualifications were not good enough.

Ofqual says—I have given a health warning about its report—that performance overall is down by just 1.4%. Perhaps we should treat that statement with caution, but if that is the case, it can hardly be claimed that re-grading to around the expected levels would invalidate the whole set of qualifications this summer. It would, however, make a massive difference to the students affected. Allowing the injustice to remain uncorrected will do far more damage to the students than any possible consequences of allowing a re-grading consistent with the January results to go ahead.

Why did the Secretary of State not consider that course of action, or, given the questions around the Ofqual report, set up an independent inquiry? I am convinced that a re-grading is the only fair way forward, but I can understand that a necessary first step is an independent inquiry into what happened. I fear that the real reasons do not reflect well on the Secretary of State. He is a highly political, highly partisan Minister who wishes to play every issue for his personal promotion and party advantage. When the issue came to light, he thought, I am sure, “This is a party opportunity.” After all, Labour had introduced controlled assessments, and Labour—indeed, I, as Minister—had introduced Ofqual. He thought it was an opportunity to attack Labour’s record and burnish his credentials as a defender of standards; that is what he set out to do.

However, surely there has to be a limit to the amount of damage that we are prepared to do to innocent students just to promote a Secretary of State’s career and political stance. We are all in politics, and we all make partisan speeches at times, but none of us has the right to make others the victim of our politics.

I am convinced that an injustice has been done to thousands of students; they worked hard and did what they were asked to do. I am convinced that many of them will suffer as regards their careers, academic qualifications and job opportunities. This situation cannot be allowed to last, and the issue must not be lost in the wider, legitimate debate about educational standards. I hope that the Government will, at this late stage, agree to an independent inquiry, so that we can get to the bottom of what went wrong and make sure that the students concerned are treated fairly.

Business of the House

John Denham Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

May we have an early debate on the marking of GCSE English exams this summer? It is clear that tens of thousands of young people went home in June, confident that they had done everything that their teachers and the examiners asked them to do, only to get devastating results in August. As Ofqual is accountable to the House, should we not have the chance to debate whether the damage being done to those young people’s careers far outweighs any impact of regrading in line with the January assessments?

[Mr Lansley]

I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman will have seen that the Education Committee is pursuing precisely those issues, and it is right that it should. The Secretary of State for Education was absolutely right to say that Ofqual is an independent regulator. He did not interfere with its decisions, and, frankly, the Welsh Education Minister is wrong in seeking to substitute his own judgment.

Business of the House

John Denham Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I cannot promise an early debate before the House rises, but my hon. Friend makes an important point. I can only suggest that when the House returns in September he applies for a debate in Westminster Hall, so that he can pursue this particular avenue and deal with it at greater length.

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

The right hon. Gentleman has been here even longer than I have, and I have been here long enough. Will he draw on his considerable experience of this House to confirm that where a clear majority of the House supports a Bill in principle, it is perfectly possible to make good and measured progress even if there is not a timetable resolution, simply by that majority closing a debate on a particular topic when it has had due attention and moving on to the next matter? Can we kill the myth that a timetable resolution is essential for progress on a Bill?

[Sir George Young]

That was not the conclusion drawn by the Labour Government, who introduced timetable motions on all the constitutional measures in the recent Parliament. There is a real risk if we go down the route suggested by the right hon. Gentleman—who I am sorry is standing down at the next election—of having protracted debates on individual subjects each of which needs to be guillotined. My own view is that it is much better if, in principle, one can seek agreement on an overall amount of time and then plan the debate for the Bill in conjunction with the time that is needed for all the other Bills. I am slightly reluctant to go down the route that the right hon. Gentleman has just invited me to go down.