Oral Answers to Questions

John Glen Excerpts

Thursday 20th December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Richard Graham. Not here. That is the second time this has happened in a few days. The fellow has got to get himself sorted.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

I recently met Phil Downer, who runs a recruitment business, and he took me through the 14 pages of the new agency workers regulations that he has to fill in every time he recruits somebody for a few weeks. Will the Minister explain whether the red tape challenge is addressing this unnecessary regulation, which is a massive burden on a small business man who is trying to get on in my constituency?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)]

The hon. Gentleman is a strong supporter of businesses in his constituency. The red tape challenge is looking at a wide range of issues and he is right to highlight that. We need to ensure that there is proper paperwork when it is necessary, but we will review whether the current burden is appropriate and proportionate.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Glen Excerpts

Monday 3rd December 2012 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to questions, having welcomed his eloquent maiden speech on a similar subject. We are looking to introduce traineeships, which will include English and maths for those who do not have level 2 qualifications, work experience and work preparation. That will ensure that as many people as possible are ready for work and know how to get and hold down a job. That will be another step in our important efforts to tackle youth unemployment.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

8. What progress he has made on introducing education, health and care plans for children with special educational needs.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

Education, health and care plans, which are an integral part of our reform of the special educational needs system, are being tested through 20 pathfinders across 31 local authorities. Independent evaluation suggests that they are making good progress in designing single assessment and planning processes. The pathfinders expect to have completed more than 300 plans by the end of December. They will continue to inform the development of our draft legislation.

[John Glen]

I thank the Minister for that helpful response. What processes will there be to ensure that the plans remain accountable to parents and families, and to ensure that the provisions that are laid out are fully implemented?

[Mr Timpson]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. Our proposed reforms maintain current protections for families, but they will go further in strengthening accountability by placing a duty on local authorities and health services to plan and commission services jointly, as well as to extend the current right of appeal to young people between 16 and 25 in further education and training.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for advocating so persistently and constantly on behalf of her constituents. I would say two things. First, we are doing everything to ensure that we can equalise funding between schools, school sixth-forms and colleges in the direction that the Association of Colleges has welcomed. Secondly, I am absolutely delighted that 1,000 more students have enrolled in Liverpool, thus proving that our reforms to the education maintenance allowance and its replacement by a bursary fund has been, as Government Members have said, a success—and not the failure predicted by Opposition Members.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

T6. Salisbury has submitted an application for a science university, a university technical college and a free school sixth-form; we also have two outstanding grammar schools and a recent encouraging report from Sarum academy. Does the Minister agree that that diversity of provision allows opportunities for all children from all backgrounds?

[Matthew Hancock]

I do agree, and I urge others to take the same view as my hon. Friend. We should ensure that there is a diversity of provision, including university technical colleges, free schools and academies, and also a diversity of high-quality qualifications on offer—both academic qualifications and occupational qualifications that will form part of the Tech Bac—so that we can provide the best education, highly regarded and held in high esteem, for every single student who wants it.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Glen Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

First, let me reassure the hon. Gentleman that, because the early intervention grant is rising, the money will be there to ensure that safeguarding responsibilities can be discharged. Birmingham local authority has, under different political colours, had problems in both school improvement and child protection. I want to work constructively with local councillors and local MPs to ensure that we can make some improvements. Investment is required, but so is a far more rigorous attitude towards dealing with the circumstances in which many children at risk of abuse or neglect find themselves.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

T9. A number of schools in my constituency struggle to get some of their pupils to grade C standard at GCSE, and some of the head teachers to whom I have spoken are concerned that the rigorous standards of the English baccalaureate certificate will prove unattainable for some of those pupils and might be discouraging, particularly for those who at age 11 are five years behind on reading? Will he assure teachers in my constituency that he is committed to raising standards for all, that those pupils should not be discouraged and that the EBacc is not out of reach?

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a fair point, and that is why we are introducing additional support for all children who are behind their expected level of achievement at the age of 11. That additional support will go to those secondary schools that need it. I must be honest, however, and if there are primary schools in Wiltshire in which children are five years behind their expected reading age, that is just not good enough. The responsibility rests with the head teachers of those underperforming primary schools. If secondary teachers are saying that they cannot transform those children’s education in some of the wealthiest parts of Wiltshire, he should have a word with those head teachers, because as far as I am concerned they are falling down on the job.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Glen Excerpts

Monday 27th February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

It is always nice to have friendly fire from one’s own side, isn’t it? I can absolutely assure the hon. Gentleman that I was delighted to see the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions introduce transitional arrangements to support children and families in difficult situations.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

14. When he plans to publish a report of his review of sex and relationship education.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

We are considering sex and relationship education as part of our review of personal, social, health and economic education. We are currently analysing consultation responses received online and from stakeholder engagement meetings and the evidence from national and international research. We intend to announce proposals for public consultation on these findings in the summer term.

[John Glen]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Given the wide range of successful sex and relationship education programmes across the country, including the APAUSE—Added Power and Understanding in Sex Education—programme, will the Minister confirm that the Government are committed to preserving autonomy for individual schools in deciding which programmes they adopt?

[Tim Loughton]

It is of course this Government’s policy to make sure that we give schools more freedoms and more time within the curriculum to teach pupils in the ways they think most appropriate for maximising the effect, but we also want to see a change of emphasis, with a much stronger focus on respect for others in sex and relationship education, building young people’s capacity to say no to things they do not feel are right, and making sense of the portrayals of sex and relationships to which they are exposed through the media. I hope that innovative schools will do that in a way that best gets that message across to their pupils.

Apprenticeships

John Glen Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

In opening the debate, the Minister said that he has put apprenticeships at the heart of this Government’s policy, and I welcome that. Nobody would in any way decry the commitment to and passion for this issue. However, when someone makes such a bold assertion, they have to produce statistics to demonstrate that the Government are succeeding, and that is at the heart of the Government’s problem on this issue. The statistics may demonstrate a big increase in the number of apprenticeships, but if we drill down and look at what is behind the statistics, we find that it does not necessarily indicate a commensurate increase in skills or value for money. Comments have already been made about the huge increase in the number of post-24 apprenticeships and some of the poor-quality provision for 16 to 18-year-olds. I commend the Minister for his comments about trying to improve the quality of provision, but they are a tacit admission by the Government that their policies so far are not actually delivering what they are intended to deliver.

Talk about apprenticeships is good rhetoric, as it chimes with the Government’s assertion that we need to rebalance the economy, and it provides a justification for pointing out an alternative educational route for those denied access to higher education—that denial is what the Government’s higher education policies are likely to produce. Clearly what is available is not actually going to deliver the agenda that individuals need and the economy needs.

I must pose a rhetorical question: what actually comprises an apprenticeship? We can debate the definition, but this contains certain key elements. It must be a work-based course to improve skills and employability, and it should be undertaken over a sufficient period to be meaningful. At the end of the course, the apprentice should qualify for a position superior to the one that he or she had when they started the apprenticeship, either in the same company or another. The level of employment post-apprenticeship should be a measurement of the success of the apprenticeship. Most importantly, the individual who has undertaken the apprenticeship must believe that they have enhanced their skills as a result. Unfortunately, the evidence so far is that a great number who have taken the current apprenticeships do not feel that way and have not had opportunities open to them as a result.

I have evidence to suggest that young people recruited for 12-week apprenticeships have ended up doing only five weeks, with a significant element of that time taken up with stuffing envelopes. The Government have paid for that as an apprenticeship course, which poses serious questions about the value for money that we are getting, the experience that we are offering to young people and the damage to the apprenticeship brand that could arise from it.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

I have been listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. He seemed to suggest that the previous Government’s university access policy was delivering something superior and he seems to be denigrating the status of apprenticeships. Is not half the problem that people talk down apprenticeships, which denigrates their status—that status is very important in encouraging people to take up apprenticeships in place of going to university—and delivers an outcome that is no better?

[Mr Bailey]

I am glad the hon. Gentleman made that intervention, because it allows me to point out that under the previous Labour Government there was a huge increase in the number of people going to university, including a fourfold increase in the number going from my constituency, and there was also a fourfold increase in the number taking apprenticeships. By and large, we find that those apprenticeships were far superior to the those being classified as “apprenticeships” under this Government. As has been said on a number of occasions, the huge number of apprenticeships for over-24s is just a rebranding of the Train to Gain programme. They would not have been included in the previous Government’s statistics on apprenticeships, so to compare one with the other is not to compare like with like. I believe that in the retail sector more than 70% of those who get an apprenticeship level 2 qualification are in existing employment, so does that really meet the test of improved professional qualifications and employability? I doubt it.

Education Bill

John Glen Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

I will make four points on four aspects of the Bill.

In Salisbury, I am blessed with some amazing schools, from the Trafalgar school at Downton in the south to Stonehenge school in the north. I have visited them all at least twice since I was elected. The school I am most proud of is Sarum academy, which operates in one of the most challenging communities in my constituency. When I first visited it a few months after being elected last summer, the headmaster would not show me round the school. He sat me down and explained many of the difficulties he had encountered. To his credit, he had made great progress in the previous 12 months in meeting some of the targets that had been set for him.

A few months later, I visited the school again. The excellent new principal, Ruth Johnson, took delight in showing me round, perhaps because she was keen for me to take up the case for greater investment in the school. I am pleased to say that the Government duly heard those pleas and money has been forthcoming. She said that what was critical was not only the investment in buildings—I acknowledge what the previous speaker said about that sometimes being critical to lift the morale of teachers and pupils—but the discipline that she was able to instil because of the culture of the school.

I welcome the provisions of the Bill, which give massive encouragement to teachers who have been struggling with discipline and pupil behaviour in recent years. It may be true, as was said by those on the Opposition Front Bench, that the cut in advertising will have an impact on recruitment. However, I suspect that the bigger reason for the drop in the number of people who want to go into the profession is that they have been unhappy at the level of discipline that they have had to deal with, and the level of support that they have been given, in the classroom. I am delighted that the Bill gives teachers practical powers to search and confiscate possessions when there are reasonable grounds for suspecting the possession of prohibited items. They need that detailed provision to deal with some of the situations that they face. It is a scandal that a quarter of school staff have been subject to false allegations. It is important and welcome that teachers will be able to impose detentions immediately, without having to give 24 hours’ notice.

The Bill could go further. Like other Members, I am concerned about the provision for excluded children, particularly those who suffer from special educational needs and who need extra provision. I hope that when the Government bring forward proposals in this area, there is special investment for individual children who need extra help from the state. Vulnerable children who are excluded still have to access education and support. For the past six months, I have been battling along with my constituents Stuart and Emma Verdin to secure the right provision for their son James, and it has not been an easy process. Finding the appropriate discretion and finance for such individual cases needs to be taken seriously.

I am delighted by the provisions on raising standards in schools. Currently, I do not think that educational standards have the full confidence of employers, parents and universities, particularly with respect to the examinations system. There seems to have been a conspiracy of affirmation that does not acknowledge the reality of grade inflation over the past 20 years. Every summer, every politician goes out of their way to praise the improvement in the quality of teaching. Some of that must be true, but I am not convinced that it is all true. Schools are choosing less rigorous subjects for their pupils to ensure that their league table position is maintained. That is not healthy. The provision for Ofqual to ensure that attainment standards are improved is welcome.

I urge the Government to think again about the great contribution that religious studies could make to the English baccalaureate curriculum. I have been lobbied about the matter by a number of my constituents, and having studied the subject myself to the age of 18, I believe that it is of great assistance to critical thinking, teaching pupils to respect themselves and other religions, beliefs and cultures.

I welcome, too, the simplification of the scrutiny process and the fact that Ofsted inspections will focus on four key areas. I welcome the fact that outstanding schools such as Bishop Wordsworth’s grammar school in my constituency—soon to be, if not already, an academy—will not need to be inspected unless their performance indicators fall. That seems to me a reasonable and practical step for schools that do not need masses of attention from regulators and scrutiny by the state.

I shall finish by addressing early-years provision. I echo the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee), who endorsed the Bill’s provision of free early-years education for two-year-olds. It is critical that the Government have a joined-up policy across education and welfare reform, which we will discuss in a couple of weeks, to ensure that poor children do not become poor adults. I endorse the report by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), who has done so much to raise awareness of the critical importance of that issue.

We need to go further in recognising that there is too much micro-management in early-years provision. I remember visiting a school in my constituency last autumn and seeing pads of yellow Post-it notes lined up as the teachers and teachers’ assistants were getting ready to photograph every single element of behaviour in order to demonstrate change. It is right that parents want to see some evidence of progress, but do they really need a blow-by-blow account of every time their four-year-old blows his or her nose?

The Bill will make a massive contribution for children in this country and in my constituency. I have suggested a few improvements, but I welcome it massively. Those improvements can be taken on in Committee, and the Bill will make a massive contribution to education in this country.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Glen Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Prisk]

That was a very stretched literary metaphor, if I may say so. [Interruption.] No, in spite of the question, the reality is that the Government are working very closely in that area, and as we have demonstrated in the north-east, we are making good progress. I work closely with my colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government, as I do with other Ministers, and I am sorry that Opposition Front Benchers have nothing positive to say on this subject.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

7. What steps he plans to ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises are able to gain access to finance.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

8. What steps he plans to take to ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises are able to gain access to finance.

[The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Vince Cable)]

The Chancellor and I are currently in discussions with the banks and are seeking an agreement for them to lend verifiably more than they were planning to viable businesses, especially SMEs. We want more competition in business banking, which is why we have set up the Independent Commission on Banking and we are supporting alternatives to bank lending, such as the equity-based enterprise capital funds.

[John Glen]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his reply. My constituent Neil Carden recently visited a Department for Business, Innovation and Skills summit. When giving me feedback, he said that despite my right hon. Friend’s efforts to improve SME access to finance through the enterprise finance guarantee scheme, the more important issue of the continuing risk-averse culture among banks remains unchecked. Given my right hon. Friend’s recent comments about the armoury of weapons he has at his disposal, could he set out which ones he is going to use to tackle that culture and get banks to lend more to small businesses?

[Vince Cable]

My hon. Friend successfully ran a family business for some years, I believe, so he understands risk management. Clearly, in the banking sector, in many cases banks took extraordinary risks in commercial and domestic property and derivatives. It is right that they should be conscious of risk, but to some extent they have lurched to the other extreme. That is one of the reasons why the Chancellor and I are discussing how to maintain a steady flow of credit to viable enterprises.

Oral Answers to Questions

John Glen Excerpts

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)]

I will ignore the flim-flam at the end. What matters to the hon. Lady is ensuring an effective partnership in her area. There is squabbling in Somerset and Devon, which the people concerned have to sort out. If they do not, they will fall behind. That is the message for them, and I hope she will support me on that.

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

T2. Odstock Medical Ltd in my constituency was the first commercial entity to be set up under the NHS. It does vital work developing medical devices alleviating the condition of people with multiple sclerosis. Unfortunately, it is unable to access the SME support from the Department. Given that its major shareholder is the local hospital, will the Minister meet me to discuss how it can be reclassified as an SME so that it can access that support and grow its business, which does vital work?

[Mr Prisk]

This is a peculiar glitch in the way the law works, and I would be pleased to meet my hon. Friend and the business in his constituency to see whether we can wrinkle it out.