School Funding

John Redwood Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Bradshaw]

I entirely agree, and I will come to some of the historical reasons for the underfunding in a minute, but first I want to mention one of my fantastic headteachers in Exeter, Moira Marder, who is the executive head of two of my high schools: St James school and Isca college. She has done comparisons of funding with two cohorts of very similar schools around England and found that St James and Isca are the worst funded of their cohorts in the whole of England. All Members’ local authorities will have suffered big cuts, but our local authority has suffered a 27% cut in funding—nearly 40% in real terms—and we still have to find £135 million over the next four years.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

An additional problem Wokingham has, as a very low-funded authority, is that a large number—about 13,000—of new homes are being built in very few years. We need to build extra schools and provide extra school places, and the sum is simply far too mean to allow for the extra costs of setting those up.

[Mr Bradshaw]

We face exactly the same challenge in Exeter, which is a growth area. We have huge additional housing developments everywhere, and I share the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns that the funding formula does not keep up with the growth in demand caused by those developments and growing populations.

I mentioned a moment ago the cost of school transport. I was staggered to discover that transport now takes up 50% of Devon’s total non-schools education budget—that is £20.9 million out of a budget of just over £40 million. Children in Exeter suffer a further injustice. Because none of our schools has a sixth form, all 16-to-19 education takes place at Exeter college. It is an excellent further education college, but as we all know, historically FE has been significantly worse funded per student than school sixth forms. That is now being addressed, but it still has not been addressed completely. FE has also suffered far bigger cuts in real-terms funding under the current Government than schools as a whole—indeed, we are told that further big cuts to FE are in the pipeline. I would argue that children in my constituency therefore suffer a triple disadvantage when it comes to education funding. They are in one of the worst-funded areas of the country—Devon; as urban dwellers, they subsidise the high cost of providing education in a rural county; and from 16 upwards, their only provision is FE, which itself is funded less than schools and faces huge cuts.

In spite of that situation, thanks to the hard work of teachers and students in my constituency, since I have been the MP we have seen a significant improvement in attainment across schools and at Exeter college—but that happened largely in the years of growing investment, when it was easier to deliver. In the past couple of years, there have been worrying signs in some of the schools that that improvement has stalled and might even be going into reverse. I have absolutely no doubt that part of the reason for that is that the headteachers, who are excellent, are struggling to keep the schools running in an effective way and provide the education and the service their students deserve because of the dire funding situation.

I know—my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) touched on this—that a significant reason for that underfunding is historical. I hope the Conservative Members present will hear me out on this. Allocations are based on historical funding levels. I used to cover the education authority in Devon when I was a local radio reporter, and I know that in the past allocations were based on historical funding levels, largely—as we can see from the number of Conservative Members here today—in Conservative shire authorities, which did not spend as much on education as Labour metropolitan authorities. I know that there are exceptions, as the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness indicated, of Labour authorities that would benefit from a reallocation. That historical underspending is one of the main causes of the current injustice.

Given that the Government have moved almost entirely away from funding education through local authorities and that funding is now passported directly to schools, surely there is now no excuse for central Government to persist with this injustice. It is not fair to the children in the constituencies of all the Members of Parliament who are here today and the many who I know would have liked to be here but cannot. At the very least, what we need in the forthcoming comprehensive spending review is a clear commitment, as other Members have said, not only to an intention but to a timescale for delivery, so that we narrow the gap over a small number of years, so that the children of my constituents and of other Members’ constituents have exactly the same opportunities as those in the rest of England. We owe it to them and to future generations. That is a just system, and that is what we should push for.

Trade Union Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

The hon. Gentleman will know that the certification officer is the regulator for trade unions, and it is perfectly usual for the regulator to be paid for by those whom they regulate.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that modern unions are at their best when they work with employers to get more skills, better training, higher quality work and better paid jobs, and that strikes are deeply damaging to the interests of the employees as well as the employers?

[Sajid Javid]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. At the heart of this Bill is partnership—partnership between trade unions and employers and other stakeholders. A great example of that can be seen at Toyota in Britain. It has not had one day of industrial action in 20 years, and that is because of the partnership that it rightly has with its trade union.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ms Eagle]

Again, I agree wholeheartedly with the comments of my hon. Friend.

[John Redwood]

Does the hon. Lady have a message for people in London trying to get to work or students trying to get to schools or colleges on the tube? Does she think each one of those strikes was right and necessary, and what is her advice to the travelling public?

[Ms Eagle]

My message is that the Mayor should start doing his job and help to respond to the dispute.

There is no necessity to employ the law in this draconian way, especially when this country already has the most restrictive trade union laws in Europe. The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the trade group for the human resources sector, has criticised the Bill as an “outdated response” to today’s challenges, commenting that the

“Government proposals seem to be targeting yesterday’s problem instead of addressing the reality of modern workplaces”.

Education and Adoption Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Tristram Hunt]

I welcome the hon. Gentleman to the House. One of the issues before us today is the evidence for improvement, and looking at what works. It has long been the practice of the Labour party to focus on what works, and we need to focus with clear precision on whether the Bill will deliver the educational improvement that we all want to see.

We would like to have supported the Bill, but following the Conservative party’s rejection of cross-party talks on 14-to-19 education last week, we face, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin)—the best part of Dudley—pointed out earlier, more partisan, dividing-line politics. Rather than taking politics out of our education system, the Secretary of State seeks to divide the House for the sake of ideology. Worse than that is the narrowness of her vision.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

As the shadow Secretary of State and his party seem to agree with the aims and main purpose of the Bill, why not vote for the Bill tonight and then table strong amendments to deal with the issue of how to tackle failing academies? The Secretary of State might even accept some of those amendments.

[Tristram Hunt]

Given that the Secretary of State will not even take an intervention from Opposition Members, it is unclear whether she would be willing to accept reforms.

When the late Prime Minister, Baroness Thatcher— the right hon. Gentleman will enjoy this point—first became Education Secretary, she told her permanent secretary, “I am worried about the content in schools, rather than the structure.” Sadly, this Education Secretary is wholly uninterested in what is taught and how it is taught: her first legislative act is yet more structural change. The Government have nothing to say on Sure Start, on effective early-years support, on smaller class sizes, on high-quality teaching, on strong school leadership, on reforming accountability or encouraging school collaboration. They have zero interest in parenting, attachment and early child development.

Education has moved on. The leading jurisdictions around the world are not responding to the 21st century challenge with top-down, target-driven centralism: they are devolving power, broadening the curriculum, learning to let go and unleashing excellence, not mandating adequacy.

School Funding Formula

John Redwood Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

rose—

[Kevin Brennan]

I would be delighted to give way, but I cannot if I am to allow the Minister time to speak. [Interruption.] Hon. Members know I would be delighted to give way if we had more time, but I must wind up my remarks if I am to be fair to the Minister and give him an opportunity to respond.

We do need a fair funding formula, but let us acknowledge that it needs to be transparent, and let us all acknowledge, including the Minister, that there will be winners as well as losers in any such process. When the Government laid out their original plans for a national funding formula, they did not outline the details. They had to let the Institute for Fiscal Studies do it for them. It showed that their plans would have resulted in at least one in six schools losing 10% of their budgets, that one in 10 would gain at least 10% and that nearly 20% of primary schools and 30% of secondary schools would experience a cash-terms cut in funding. That is why it is not easy. That is why Ministers have not been able to deliver what they said they would in the coalition agreement. I do not criticise them for that because it is difficult. We need to find a way forward, on a cross-party basis, on a national funding formula. The type of party political sniping we have heard tonight will not help to achieve that.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

We have had a short but on the whole excellent debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) on his leadership of the campaign, on opening the debate, and on putting the case so powerfully and in a way that sought to unite Members across the House. I also pay tribute to the other hon. Members who spoke, who in most cases have been involved in the campaign for quite some time, including the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), the Chair of the Education Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Mrs Spelman), and my hon. Friends the Members for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey), for South Dorset (Richard Drax), for Hexham (Guy Opperman), for Newton Abbot (Anne Marie Morris), for Norwich South (Simon Wright) and, of course, my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Dr Huppert), who has done such a fantastic job in representing his constituents’ interests on this issue of revenue funding in the same way as he has done on capital funding. As he noted, as a consequence of those representations, parts of the country, such as Cambridgeshire, which were underfunded for many years under the last Government, have at last seen a massive move towards fair funding.

I do not want to make a partisan speech, particularly after the good example set by my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester, but I was a little disappointed by the shadow Minister’s response. He might at least have started with an apology for doing nothing in 13 years to correct the problems in the funding formula. I thought that we might have had a clear plan from the Labour party, given that he had so much to criticise about the coalition’s policy, on how he would introduce a national fair funding formula. What I heard was something of a policy free zone of a speech. Perhaps the lack of support behind him on the Labour Benches indicates the lack of enthusiasm among members of his party to sort out the injustices that have dogged our funding system for so long.

When this Government came to power in 2010, the funding system for schools that we inherited at the start of the Parliament was opaque, irrational and unnecessarily complex at both national and local levels. Similar pupils were funded at vastly different levels simply because they happened to be in different local authorities or in different types of school building. Previous Governments knew that the school funding system was unfair but failed to reform it.

[Mr Redwood]

Would the Minister suggest that there should be a limit on how big the gap can be between the best and the worst per pupil level of funding, as that would be a starting point for getting some justice?

[Mr Laws]

That is certainly a sensible principle, and it is exactly what we have tried to do through many of our reforms.

Throughout the Parliament we have introduced major reforms that have improved the fairness and simplicity of the system and laid the essential foundation stones to allow us, the two coalition parties, to introduce a full national funding formula in future. The major reforms we have made are changes to the local funding system, and changes to the way in which we fund disadvantage, with the introduction of the pupil premium and minimum funding levels. Time does not allow me to speak in detail about the first two changes, but I would like briefly to say something about the third—minimum funding levels.

We introduced minimum funding levels last year. I thank not only all the Members who lobbied for that change in the system but the excellent officials in our Department who worked hard, over a sustained period, on the new model. This Government have introduced the first reforms to the distribution of funding between local areas in over a decade. In 2015-16, every local area will attract a minimum level of funding for each of its pupils and schools. The £390 million increase in funding that we introduced as part of minimum funding levels represents a huge step towards removing the historical unfairness of the schools funding system. It ensures an immediate boost to the least fairly funded authorities and puts us in a much better position to implement a national funding formula in the next Parliament. All the logic of the reforms we have made indicates that they should be baselined into funding in the next Parliament. I can certainly make that commitment on behalf of my party; it is for others to make commitments on behalf of their parties.

Consumer Rights Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 9th March 2015 Commons Chamber

This legislation is a fundamental infringement of the free market. Whether or not people agree with the Lords amendment, we are making a very big change. We have barely any time to debate it. It was not debated on Third Reading, because it was not even in the Bill. It is most unsatisfactory to pass serious legislation in this way. Before this amendment, I supported this legislation. I have voted for a Bill that now contains something I would have voted against. I have no opportunity to say that I do not agree with this particular Bill. That cannot be the way to pass important legislation. A sunset clause would allow us to come back to this matter properly in two years’ time, and to start afresh with a Government Bill in which everything is debated properly right from the word go.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give me some idea of how much damage might be done to the industry during a two-year phase?

[Philip Davies]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point. The Minister argued that two years was very short. In two years’ time, the whole industry could have upped sticks and gone abroad. It may well be that my two-year sunset clause is too long. I will happily be chastised for that, but I thought it was important that we put a line in the sand. I thought that two years would give us a reasonable time to see how the legislation worked with different tournaments and different music events. It is ample time for people to consider the effects. If those people who are in favour of the Lords amendments are so confident in their arguments, they have nothing to fear from a sunset clause. If everything is fine and dandy and none of my fears comes to fruition, the Government will happily reintroduce the legislation and it will sail through because it has been shown to have worked. They do not like the sunset clause because they know that the point I am making is the real agenda behind this Bill, and they do not want to be rumbled.

Once the Bill is on the statute book, the Government think that that will be it and nobody will bother or have the courage to revisit it, and I suspect that they are right. That is why I have tabled my amendment. I understand that there may be some difficulty in having a vote on it, even though it is sensible, and I am sorry that the Government have refused to accept it. This is an unfair and unnecessary intrusion into the free market. Who knows what consequences will flow from this legislation? I shall urge my colleagues to do what they have done twice in recent times already, and vote down the Lords amendment. I shall be interested to see how many of my colleagues vote for something that they have happily voted against in recent weeks and how, as a general election is coming, they will justify their action to their constituents. I shall happily be able to tell my constituents that I stuck to my guns, that I did not change my mind and that that is why I do not want to be in coalition with these wishy-washy Liberal Democrats any more.

Consumer Rights Bill

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 12th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Hodgson]

The hon. Gentleman can debate when his time comes.

The concession that the Minister offered in this place—tweaking the guidance to a set of regulations to make it clear that secondary ticketing platforms should abide by them—has proved completely ineffective. Those regulations have been in place for more than six months, and the secondary websites have completely ignored them. It is time for real action, and that is what proposed new clause 33 would provide.

What we are asking for is not exactly radical. Any consumer in any market would expect to know who they were buying from, exactly what they were buying and whether a product came with a risk that they would not be able or allowed to enjoy it.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Hodgson]

Not at the moment.

What we are asking for would not put secondary ticketing platforms out of business; if anything, it would increase consumer confidence in them. What we are asking for would not drive legitimate resale underground, but it might drive some illegitimate resale underground. Why would the Government and this House want to take decisions that benefited illegitimate enterprise? If that part of touting is driven underground, then it will be nowhere near as successful as it is now, given that it is able to hide behind the legitimate veneer of platforms that are supposed to be about fans selling unusable tickets to fellow fans. What we are asking for would not leave consumers who bought a ticket they can no longer use out of pocket if the event organiser does not allow refunds; there are sometimes very good reasons for many of them not doing so.

[Mr Redwood]

rose—

[Mrs Hodgson]

Let me make this extra clear, because that might clear up some of the points that Members are trying to make—if not, I will let them intervene. We have tabled a small amendment to the clause that the Government could easily adopt today to allay their own fears. This is simply about transparency—that is all. Who could argue against creating a more transparent marketplace other than those who benefit from the murkiness and muddiness that we have at the moment?

[Mr Redwood]

I want to clarify the hon. Lady’s point about the event organiser’s right to cancel tickets. Under her amendment, in which conditions could the event organiser cancel a ticket if it had been resold?

[Mrs Hodgson]

If the ticket clearly states that it is not for resale—that it is non-transferable—then that is part of the terms and conditions that it was sold under. In the new model that we are hoping to create, with a new level of transparency, there would be less need for that.

The reason event holders put it on their tickets is to try to do something about the murkiness and market failure that we see at the moment with the resale of tickets on the secondary market. Under our proposal, that need would not be there because there would be full transparency and people would be able to see who was reselling the tickets. There would be fewer abuses of the system so there would be less need to put “Not for resale” on tickets, because genuine fans would be able to resell to other genuine fans tickets for events they could no longer attend.

--- Later in debate ---

[Philip Davies]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point, which drives a coach and horses through the hon. Lady’s amendment. People could sell a ticket to an event along with a scarf or a hat and say that they are charging x amount for the hat and the face value for the price of the ticket. That would get around the hon. Lady’s amendment quite easily and make the whole thing complete nonsense.

[Mr Redwood]

There is a more serious problem than the one my hon. Friend has just described. I do not think people will be selling houses or hats with tickets, but there are hospitality packages. Companies that offer hospitality with an event normally have to pre-buy tickets so that they can get the person into the ground before they can provide the hospitality. There is a cross-pricing issue.

[Philip Davies]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. The point is that people could easily get round the law by selling other things with the ticket to ensure they do not breach the terms of the amendment. They could charge different amounts for the various things being sold as a package. It would be complete nonsense.

As I mentioned, the OFT decided that the current regime worked in the consumer’s best interest. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Stephen Barclay) keeps chuntering from the sidelines. If he wants to make a speech, I am sure that you, Mr Deputy Speaker, will look on him favourably.

--- Later in debate ---

[John Robertson]

The hon. Gentleman is right about that. I have met various promoters for T in the Park and they have done their level best to try to stop the touts, but even they admit that they cannot do it completely. If we make this illegal, that puts a different front on it. If we tell everybody it is illegal to do something and someone does it, they know it is illegal. If we do not tell them it is illegal, they will continue to do it. As we have already said, they will continue to use all the new technologies that are coming online and they will rip people off. There will be people who are so desperate to buy a ticket to see somebody that they will pay these prices, and as long as somebody is willing to pay them, the problem will continue and prices will keep increasing.

[Mr Redwood]

The hon. Gentleman is right that some things should be illegal, but I can reassure him that where someone creates an artificial ticket and it is not a proper ticket, that is either fraud or theft. We have already made that an illegal situation.

[John Robertson]

I appreciate what the right hon. Gentleman is saying, but what is the difference between that person making a forgery and other people having a machine that can buy up 100,000 tickets for a venue? Is that not illegal? Is it not outrageous? Would you not want to do something about it? I am not talking about you, Mr Speaker; I am talking about the right hon. Gentleman.

I feel very strongly about this issue, as you can probably tell, Mr Speaker. Sometimes it is difficult to put things into words, but as politicians and Members of Parliament we should be putting our constituents first, not big business. We should not be hindering big business, but we should not be putting it before our constituents. Some in the Chamber tonight would rather put big business before their constituents.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Efford]

I am answering the hon. Gentleman’s point and he can come back to me on it in a minute, although I am going to shut up quite soon.

Some of the people purchasing these tickets are clearly involved in criminal gangs, as shown in the report on Operation Podium from the Metropolitan police. That report was given to the Government and they were warned that it was not just a question of people making a few bob on the secondary ticketing market. The people who set up these botnets to swamp the market when tickets are first offered for sale are often involved in criminal gangs associated with drugs and firearms. The Metropolitan police have raised serious concerns about this and we ignore them at our peril. What kind of free market wants to perpetuate such activity? I am interested in that.

[Mr Redwood]

We have heard a lot about the £500 tickets to go to a particular day of the Lord’s test against Australia, but as a cricket lover who wants more people to be able to go to test matches does the hon. Gentleman agree that an awful lot of tickets are on offer from the original vendor at very sensible prices for Headingley, Durham, Old Trafford and so on and that people could go to those?

[Clive Efford]

I am delighted that those tickets are on sale at very sensible prices, which is why I am in the Chamber to support the ECB, the RFU, the FA and others in asking for the sensible ticketing policies they apply to be protected. All they are asking is to have the information available when a ticket is offered for resale so that they can see whether that ticket is being sold according to the original terms and conditions for the sale. We should not be allowing organised gangs to exploit the consumer by hoovering up these tickets and forcing people to pay much higher prices on the secondary ticketing market.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jo Swinson]

I recognise the attempts made in that amendment, although they do not address all the difficulties that I have outlined. Many people who are unable to attend an event at short notice will find that they have another friend who is happy to go along to it with them, but others will not, so they will use online marketplaces, in which case these issues will apply.

One of the main difficulties with the Lords amendment is that it would require sellers to provide their name. That should raise concerns, because it would include private individuals who could be young people or vulnerable consumers. Perhaps a 14-year-old One Direction fan who is unable to attend the concert she has bought tickets for will want to resell them, and in doing so would have to provide her name online. This is a concern not about ticket sales but about things such as identity theft and the difficulties involved when private individuals have to place their names online. There were over 100,000 reports of ID fraud in 2013, and we do not want to support proposals that could—albeit inadvertently —push that number higher.

[Mr Redwood]

When I asked the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) in what circumstances a ticket could be cancelled—a crucial point, because there might be legitimate circumstances but also circumstances where it would be unreasonable—I did not feel that I got a sensible answer. The Minister is right to be worried about that lack of precision.

[Jo Swinson]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point.

Post Office Mediation Scheme

John Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Arbuthnot]

As my hon. Friend suggests, and as my hon. and learned Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Sir Oliver Heald) suggested earlier, it is becoming increasingly untenable for the Post Office to act as its own prosecutor without the independent look that the Crown Prosecution Service would bring. My impression is that the Post Office shares that view, and the sooner it can get rid of its responsibility to prosecute—I believe it should happen today—the better.

In the light of all those cases, Members of Parliament got together. My right hon. Friend the Member for West Dorset (Mr Letwin) and I went to see the chairman and the chief executive of the Post Office, who then came to meet right hon. and hon. Members. They suggested that they should set up an independent forensic investigation, and they appointed Second Sight to do that work. Second Sight identified concerns that gave rise to the mediation scheme that we are discussing today.

Second Sight did not identify major software issues in its interim report. It must follow that the mediation scheme was set up to deal with the issues of support and the surrounding issues relating to the sub-postmasters. The Post Office agreed to a mediation scheme that was to include those who had pleaded guilty. It is almost too obvious to say this, but in view of what the Post Office has been doing I have to do so: I would never have agreed to a mediation scheme that excluded people who pleaded guilty, such as my constituent, Jo Hamilton. I would not have agreed to one, and neither would right hon. and hon. Members throughout the House.

That is what the Post Office agreed; let me turn to what it actually did. In the working group for the mediation scheme, the Post Office began this year to argue that the issues of concern that were identified by Second Sight should be excluded from mediation—for example, the absence or ignorance of contracts, and the failure of audits and investigations—despite its agreement with Members of Parliament that the scheme would cover the issues in the interim report. I understand that the Post Office has been arguing in recent months at the working group stage to exclude 90% of the cases coming before the working group, despite everybody’s understanding that exclusion from mediation was to be the exception, not the rule. Extraordinarily, the Post Office argued to exclude people who had pleaded guilty, despite its express agreement to the contrary with me and other right hon. and hon. Members, and despite the fact that it knew that we would not have agreed to a mediation scheme otherwise.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for leading on this issue and for bravely taking the case of many people in the postal sector to the management. From his discussions with the senior management of the Post Office, is there any sign that it now recognises that it made mistakes? Is there any willingness on its part to recognise that at least some of those people are completely innocent and deserve an apology and compensation for the way that their lives and businesses have been wrecked?

[Mr Arbuthnot]

That is a very difficult question to answer, because the Post Office pleads secrecy. It will not tell us what is happening in the mediation scheme. We asked in July how the mediation scheme was going, but it refused to tell Members of Parliament because it was all confidential.

Repeal of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011

John Redwood Excerpts

Thursday 23rd October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, the convention in this country is that a Parliament cannot bind future Parliaments. If a future Parliament wanted to repeal this Act, made the case and had the votes in this House, it could repeal the Act. The more substantive point, which has been made a number of times, is that in a five-year Parliament the fifth year is wasted. The truth is that be it a five-year, four-year or three-year Parliament, it is always possible to make the case that the last year is spent electioneering, so that point does not necessarily follow from having five-year fixed-term Parliaments.

The final point I wish to deal with is the idea that the Government have run out of steam. In the Queen’s Speech, we announced a full legislative programme; there were 16 main programme Bills, including five carry-over Bills and three draft Bills. That compares with 13 main programme Bills, including three carry-over Bills and two draft Bills, in the last Session of the previous Parliament. Our programme includes legislation dealing with serious crime, trafficking and modern slavery, improving access to finance for small business and pensions.

The hon. Member for Great Grimsby invoked Oliver Cromwell and his words to the Long Parliament:

“You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing.”

I would say that the Labour Government were here too long for any good they could do and, be it on the economy, welfare, health or education, this five-year Parliament is doing a lot to get our country back on track.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

Can the Minister explain why passing a lot of laws is a good idea? Have we not got enough laws already?

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that point, which comes as no surprise to me. He would agree that when we got into government we had to fix an almighty mess and rectify a big mistake—the last Labour Government—hence the legislation that we have had to pass in this Parliament.

Birmingham Schools

John Redwood Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving me the opportunity to make two points. She is absolutely right. When the allegations were raised in the original Trojan horse letter, it was important that they were investigated, and the findings we have today are the findings that Ofsted and the Education Funding Agency are competent to deliver.

Peter Clarke is also looking into some of the broader allegations. One of the reasons he was chosen is that if people have been unfairly alleged to have taken part in activities of which they are entirely innocent, there can be no more effective figure to exonerate them than Peter Clarke.

I would also emphasise that Sheik Shady al-Suleiman spoke at one of these schools and his comments are now on the record of the House. I think that anyone listening to those comments would recognise that such a speaker in a school is exposing children to the dangers of extremism.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

When will we see the Secretary of State’s statement of British values, which I fully support, as I do his whole approach?

Start-up Loans

John Redwood Excerpts

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am conscious of the level of interest, but also of the pressure on parliamentary time. Depending on the length of questions and answers, it may or may not be possible to accommodate everybody, but we will begin with Mr John Redwood.

[Mr John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

As we wish to spread the news to constituents, what is the typical interest rate for loans and the average duration of them?

[Matthew Hancock]

The interest is typically 6% and the average duration is up to five years, but those matters are of course also dependent on the proposition that is made. So far, in the year and a bit that the scheme has been going, the amount paid back has been pretty strong.