Catholic Sixth-form Colleges

Debate between John Howell and Bob Blackman

Tuesday 5th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, for what I believe is the first time. I congratulate my neighbour, the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas), on securing this debate at an important time for not only Catholic education, but education as a whole. It was a great pleasure to chair the Backbench Business Committee and give him the opportunity to hold this debate.

I rise for a number of reasons, the first of which is fairness. I have always strongly believed in a parent’s right to choose the type of education they want for their children, be that a church school, any other form of religious school, or a secular school—I do not take a particular view. Equally, parents should have the right to choose whether their child receives single-sex or mixed education. One of the great beauties of the London borough of Harrow, which my neighbour and I share, is that we have education for Hindus, Jews, Catholics and Protestants, and we will soon have a Muslim state school as a result of parental demand.

St Dominic’s Sixth Form College, which is in my neighbour’s constituency, has as its main feeders two Catholic schools in my constituency: Salvatorian College and Sacred Heart Language College. They are 11-to-16 schools, both Catholic in nature, and the natural progression for their pupils is to go on to St Dominic’s college. However, St Dominic’s does not just take young people from Salvatorian College and Sacred Heart; as my neighbour alluded to, it takes young people from across north-west London. It has quite a long reach into a number of London boroughs.

The nature of St Dominic’s, and of other Catholic colleges, is that they provide excellent education. That is why they are in demand, after all. It is worth remembering that in many ways we have such advanced education across this country because of the investment made by the Church of England and the Catholic Church going back way before we had state education. It is important to understand that the colleges are excellent. They provide a very good standard of education, are well led and have excellent teachers. That is the feature of a good education system, so it is grossly unfair that they are disadvantaged.

I rise to seek fairness in the system for Catholic sixth-form colleges. It is fair to say that when we have changed the funding formula, sixth forms generally have suffered. Clearly, the priority has been on young people between the ages of 11 and 16, who have a higher rate of funding than sixth forms. A head or member of a governing body of a school, college or whatever that teaches people from the ages of 11 to 18 can adjust the funding to ensure a spread throughout the institution, but a sixth-form college is totally dependent on the funding that comes in for those young people between the ages of 16 and 18. The slight problem is that the average funding is £4,545 for a sixth-form student, which is 15% lower than that for 11 to 16-year-olds. Straightaway, sixth-form colleges are at a disadvantage from a revenue perspective.

One of the challenges in Harrow is that Sacred Heart Language College has always been full. It is an excellent school, so there has been a steady flow of young women going on to St Dominic’s or beyond. It is fair to say that Salvatorian College has had real challenges. However, it is being completely rebuilt and we are looking forward to the new premises opening completely. The school is now full with young boys coming through, so the impact on St Dominic’s will be even greater. The college is full, and as the hon. Member for Harrow West alluded to, there is little if any space to expand. Even if we could get hold of the money required, expansion is a real challenge, given where it is located and that it has such a tight site.

The impact on the funding level is important. Colleges—sixth-form colleges and Catholic sixth-form colleges in particular—are dropping courses in modern languages as a result of funding pressures. When we are trying to encourage the development of modern languages, it is not helpful if colleges are dropping them due to funding. Equally, we are trying to get young people better educated in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. When we are encouraging them to do STEM subjects, it is a disaster for colleges to drop those courses.

There are other issues. St Dominic’s is having to put young people in much larger class sizes to try to use the facilities available. I visited the college only last week. It has a plan to expand into lecture halls, as opposed to classrooms, to try to use facilities to their maximum capability. There is good sense to that. Teachers can lecture, but then there still needs to be the capacity for one-to-one teaching subsequently. As has been mentioned by my neighbour, the hon. Member for Harrow West, and in various interventions, we have a crisis.

[John Howell]

What effect is the situation that my hon. Friend describes having on university applications and the success that Catholic sixth-form colleges have had in getting people into good universities to do good courses?

[Bob Blackman]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. There is that concern. All the Catholic sixth-form colleges are producing an excellent education, with a good flow of young people going on to university and being given the opportunity to excel. Virtually every young person who goes through St Dominic’s goes on to good universities with good courses, particularly in maths and science. We should be encouraging that and ensuring that it happens.

At the same time, we have the challenge of what we could call the learning tax. Catholic sixth-form colleges are not able to academise and therefore cannot claim the VAT back. That gives any college a real challenge. Catholic sixth-form colleges should be able to academise. We should also remove any restrictions on the faith of the leadership of the college. Such colleges should be able to ensure that Catholics are the senior management and senior staff. We should have a position where the intake is in line with legislation, namely that a proportion of the students coming into the college can be selected. They do not have to be exclusively Catholic, but there should be a Catholic flavour to the colleges.

Equally, there is a challenge in what we do to expand such colleges, which are extremely popular and very successful. It is fair to say that the teachers in those colleges are experienced, highly professional and doing a good job, yet they do not get the pay rises they would get if they were working in a college down the road. That is clearly unfair. We have to remove the restriction whereby these colleges are not getting the pay grant that other colleges get. That is unfair discrimination.

Israel and Palestinian Talks

Debate between John Howell and Bob Blackman

Wednesday 5th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

I refer the House to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Yesterday, there was a debate on the middle east in the other place. My noble Friend Lord Polak made a typically interesting contribution. He pointed out that in 1948 there were 726,000 Palestinians refugees, and 856,000 Jewish refugees living in Arab lands, yet since then the UN’s focus has been solely on the Palestinians. He pointed to the more than 170 resolutions, the 13 UN agencies created or mandated to look after the Palestinian issue and the billions of dollars that have been provided to the Palestinians. Nevertheless, he still hoped that the UK would do all it could to bring Israelis and Palestinians around the table to hammer out a solution. I agree with him.

Israel remains committed to an independent Palestinian state through, among other things, direct negotiation to end the conflict. Israel’s Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has repeatedly underlined his commitment to restarting peace negotiations without pre-conditions. Israel has accepted the principle of a future Palestinian state based along 1967 lines and for land swaps to take place.

Polling in 2016 has shown that there is still an appetite for a two-state solution among both Palestinians and Israelis. The figures were almost 60% for Israelis and just over 50% for Palestinians. The biggest obstacle to peace involved the infighting between Hamas and Fatah, the Palestinian approach unilaterally to wanting statehood, and the rearmament in Gaza by Hamas. Personally, I would add to that the seemingly blinkered approach of the Palestine Liberation Organisation. When I was last in Ramallah, I visited the PLO and had talks with its members. I found that there was little basis on which to have those talks. There was an attempt to blame us for all the ills of the region and a dislike for the involvement of anything that smacked of the private sector. I also wish to stress the levels of co-operation that already exist between the Israelis and the Palestinians and to point to one organisation in particular, Save a Child’s Heart, which I have visited on a number of occasions and does fantastic work.

I would be the first to admit that settlement expansion is counterproductive, and I have made that point to the Israeli Government, but the settlement issue is not a permanent obstacle to peace, and it is one of the five final status issues. It is not the reason for the continuation of the conflict, as violence predates the settlements, and the majority of settlers live within established settlement blocks along the green line, which are widely anticipated to become part of Israel in the peace settlement.

The past two years have shown a rising level of terror and Palestinian incitement in Israel. Since 2015 alone, there have been around 180 stabbings, 150 shootings, 58 car ramming attacks and one bus bombing. The result has been more than 389 terror attacks and over 759 injuries and some 50 Israeli or foreign deaths. The violence escalated to the point that, in October 2015, an Israeli mother and father were gunned down in front of their four young children. The sort of attitude that we have seen from President Abbas is not very helpful. He vowed to Palestinians that he would not stop prisoner salaries even if he had to resign, despite telling the US that he would do so.

[Bob Blackman]

rose—

[John Howell]

I will not give way, as I am fairly close to the end.

No peace agreement will be able to guarantee peace in the medium to long term if a generation of Palestinians are growing up indoctrinated to hate Israel and the Jews. The Palestinian Authority’s failure to deliver on its commitment to end incitement and hate education explicitly undermines the principles and conditions on which the peace process is built. Although I welcome France’s recent efforts to promote peace, I do not think that the best way to make progress is to hold an international conference without the attendance of the two main parties. We must get the two main parties around the table at the same time.

Occupied Palestinian Territories: Israeli Settlements

Debate between John Howell and Bob Blackman

Thursday 9th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[John Howell (Henley) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) because, like him and the hon. Member for Ilford South (Mike Gapes), I have been fully involved in visits to Israel and the west bank—six over the past three years—with organisations that encourage co-operation between Israelis and Palestinians. I also chair events here where those organisations come forward and describe what they are doing. I have on several occasions been to Tel Aviv to see Save a Child’s Heart, a brilliant organisation that goes out of its way to treat Palestinian children who have heart problems. That involves fine surgery that requires a great deal of skill.

[Bob Blackman]

My hon. Friend mentioned Save a Child’s Heart. Will he confirm that children from other Arab countries and beyond receive life-saving treatment at the hospital in which it operates?

[John Howell]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The number of Arab children treated by the Israeli doctors at the hospital is phenomenal, and it sets a brilliant example for the whole region.

Middle East

Debate between John Howell and Bob Blackman

Monday 30th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[John Howell]

That is a debate we can have on Wednesday, I am not going to answer that question now.

We need to put pressure on Saudi Arabia to stop exporting its radical ideology worldwide, despite our geopolitical alliances. I ask the Minister perhaps to write to me in reply to the question of what steps the Government will take to ensure that the Wahabist ideology does not spread further across the middle east.

Before I finish, I want to highlight another important country in the region that has been consumed by a less violent but equally destructive Islamist threat. The AKP Government in Turkey have increasingly eroded democracy by arresting dozens of prominent journalists, turning to authoritarianism and reigniting the conflict with the Kurdish PKK to seal their power. The same Government are a vocal supporter of the terrorist group Hamas, which has masterminded deadly attacks against Israelis from its Istanbul headquarters. In our approach to Turkey, as is too often the case, realpolitik has taken precedence over human values, ignoring the fact that democracy is not only about having an election.

In addition, despite their latent arrests of ISIL suspects, the AKP Government in Turkey have turned a blind eye to ISIL terrorists, instead prioritising fighting Kurdish forces in Syria, the very people making the largest territorial gains from ISIL. The erratic actions of Turkey, especially taking into consideration last week’s developments with Russia, give us increasing cause for concern. I ask the Secretary of State to join me in condemning the Turkish Government’s undermining of the freedom of press in the country and to explain how we can expect ISIL and other jihadists to be dislodged from their territory in Syria when Turkey is bombing the Kurdish YPG.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

Turkey is still talking to the European Union about accession, so when the Government take such actions, as my hon. Friend rightly points out, what signals does that send out about potential entry to the EU?

[John Howell]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. At best, it sends a very confused signal and, at worst, it sends a signal that we do not care what Turkey does in the middle east. That is a signal that we do not wish to send to Turkey and we should not send it. We should say that we do not agree with what Turkey is doing and that it is supporting a form of Islamic fundamentalism in its actions.

I am not sure that I have fully used my extra allotted minutes, but let me conclude by going back to what I said at the beginning of my speech. The situation in the middle east is very confused, but it is not surprising, in my view, that the western press ignored totally the rise of ISIL, because they were not looking. All their action was focused on what was happening in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, not in the wider middle east.