Immigration and Nationality Statistics

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Wednesday 18th December 2024 Westminster Hall

[Nick Timothy]

I certainly agree that most people crossing the channel are not really seeking refuge, because they are coming from a safe country: France. They are seeking their economic betterment, which may be legitimate from their perspective, but is not necessarily in our interests as a country.

I must be honest: my party played its part in this policy failure. I say “policy failure” because, at times—certainly when I worked in the Home Office and, I think, when my hon. Friend the Member for Weald of Kent (Katie Lam) was in the Home Office—there was a genuine attempt to get the numbers down. Indeed, back in those years, the numbers fell, but ultimately we failed, thanks to free movement rules, a loss of wider political support for our work across Government, and a failure to reform the higher and further education system, public services and the wider economy, so as to get off the addiction to more and more migration.

Brexit should have changed all that. It was a clear vote not only to reclaim our sovereignty, but to reduce and control immigration, but the points-based system that followed, with its hugely liberal rules, was always bound to increase the numbers dramatically. For that, my party will need to show sincere contrition and, if we are ever to win again, demonstrate to the public that we truly get it and have a plan to cut immigration drastically.

To inform the policy choices we face and help us to understand what we must do with the millions of newcomers who have started new lives here in the past 25 years or so, we also need much better data. Low-paid immigrants bring costs that are not adequately considered by Government impact assessments. They need housing, drive on roads, use transport, have health needs, take school places, claim benefits and eventually receive the state pension, which was recently valued by an actuary at £250,000 per person. Most immigrants and their dependants will, over their lifetimes, be net recipients of public funds.

However, the British state does not even try to calculate the net fiscal costs and benefits of different profiles of migrant. We get fragments of information from, say, the census, or prison statistics. We know that 72% of Somalis here, for example, live in social housing, compared with 16% of the population overall. We know that one in 50 Albanians here are in prison, and that nationalities such as Iraqis, Jamaicans and Somalis are disproportionately likely to be criminals. We know from now-discontinued income tax data that some nationalities, such as Bangladeshis, receive more in child benefit and tax credits than they pay in income tax and national insurance. That does not even include the costs of education, housing, healthcare, pensions, and other effects on infrastructure and services.

Some European countries have started to do the necessary work. In Denmark, for example, official figures show that Danes and Europeans are net contributors, but migrants and their descendants from the middle east, north Africa, Pakistan and Turkey are net recipients throughout their whole lives, including when they are working.

I have asked various Ministers in oral and written questions whether the Government will commission work to establish the true cost of immigration broken down by profile of migrant. The answer that comes back more often than not is that that has not been done before. However, that is not a reason not to do it now. My first question to the Minister is: if it is not to be done, why not? Can she give us a justification?

I have asked similar questions on specific aspects of policy. The Department for Work and Pensions told me in a letter that

“we are investigating the feasibility of developing and publishing statistics on the immigration status of non-UK/Irish”

nationals, or “customers”, as it bizarrely calls foreign benefits claimants. My second question is: what discussions has the Minister had with counterparts in the DWP about that? When will that work be completed? Will the data be broken down by nationality, visa route and type of benefit?

We know bits of information on social housing from the census, as I said, but that is not good enough. Only yesterday, a grotesque online video was published by Westminster city council promoting social housing in Arabic, Bengali, Spanish and French, which, given the rules around no recourse to public funds, I found somewhat surprising. My third question is: what discussions has the Minister had with counterparts in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about that? Can we get annual data on social housing occupation by nationality, visa and asylum status?

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that some excellent work on the issue of data and immigration has been done by our hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien), who has been a cheerleader for getting the kind of information that would help us inform public policy? As he is talking about social housing, does he share my concerns that the Labour Government seem to be moving away from some of the provisions we put in place to prioritise British people for housing?

[Nick Timothy]

I endorse that entirely and pay tribute to our hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O'Brien) for the excellent work he has done. He was the first Member of this House to talk about what he calls the “data desert” when it comes to immigration.

On criminal justice policy, the Justice Secretary very recently refused to answer in the Chamber when I asked if the Government would publish the nationality, visa and asylum status of all imprisoned offenders. My fourth question is: why did she refuse to do that? Why can the Home Office and the Ministry of Justice not come together to publish that data?

There are many other areas of policy, but I want to turn to the Home Office in particular. The Home Secretary told the House of Commons in July that the Rwanda policy had cost the taxpayer £700 million by the time Labour had come to power and that by ending the retrospective element of the duty to remove in the Illegal Migration Act 2023, she would save the public £7 billion over 10 years. Those numbers were clearly preposterous, and Home Office officials got in touch with me to express their concern about the things she said on the Floor of the House. The National Audit Office had said in March that the Rwanda scheme’s total cost was only £290 million, which included a £50 million payment made between its study and the general election. To be fair, the NAO costs did not include some things, such as the cost of detaining migrants. However, those costs would have had to have been met without the Rwanda scheme anyway, and it is difficult to understand what might justify a £410 million difference between what the NAO said and what the Home Secretary said on the Floor of the House of Commons.

In a letter to the shadow Home Secretary copied to me, the Home Office permanent secretary gave a breakdown—if it can be called a breakdown—of the costs behind the £700 million claim that ludicrously lumped together £278 million under the title “Other fixed costs” with very little description of what that means. My fifth question is: can the Minister tell us specifically what those costs are? Will she hand over all the relevant data to the Office for Statistics Regulation? Can she commit to placing in the Library a detailed set of accounts to justify that number?

In a separate letter to me, the permanent secretary justified the discrepancy by claiming that the NAO report had not included some “expected” Home Office costs. That makes no sense because “expected” implies costs that had not been incurred in March when the NAO report was published, but the Home Office now says that those costs were incurred between 2022-23 and June in 2024-25. In his letter to me, Sir Matthew said:

“Further detail is contained within the impact assessment that accompanied the retrospection statutory instrument that was laid before Parliament.”

But again, the impact assessment models costs in the future, not the past, so I have a sixth question. When the Home Secretary said that the £700 million had already been spent in July, why was her permanent secretary talking about prospective costs in August? Why did he refer to an impact assessment based on future costs, not costs already incurred?

On my seventh question, when the immigration Minister, the hon. Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), debated this issue with me in Westminster Hall in September, she promised to write to me to explain those discrepancies. Why did she not do so? Can the Minister tell us why the Home Secretary still has not replied to my letter of 21 September, despite written answers on 22 October and 25 November promising to do so as soon as possible?

Finally, I have asked Ministers in the Home Office and the Foreign Office about the secretive deal to bring Sri Lankan asylum seekers from Diego Garcia to Britan, even though the Government are under no obligation to do so. Home Office officials are worried that among those migrants are criminals and even child abusers. The Home Office said:

“Migrants with criminal convictions, charges, or subject to ongoing investigations were not in scope for that relocation.”

However, in a written answer to me, the immigration Minister refused to say whether the Government had sought or obtained the necessary information from the Sri Lankan Government. On 14 November, the Foreign Office Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), answered my question, saying that the Government

“does not have any information about Sri Lankan migrants’ criminality that pre-dates their arrival on British Indian Ocean Territory.”

On 9 December, the immigration Minister answered another of my questions and said:

“The local UK police force in the area where the migrants have been located have been informed of their arrival in the UK.”

That does not sound very reassuring, and there are clear discrepancies between what the Home Office and Foreign Office have said. The fact that the police have had to be notified about the arrival of those migrants would be very alarming to people who live in those areas, if the public actually knew where those migrants are.

For my eighth and final question, can the Minister confirm that the Government have no idea about the criminal records of those migrants dating to their time in Sri Lanka? What on earth are the Government doing importing migrants, for whom we have no legal responsibility, into this country in such secrecy when there are concerns about them inside the Home Office, and without undertaking every conceivable security check?

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Seema Malhotra)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Mundell. I thank the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy) and congratulate him on securing this important debate. I also thank my colleagues from across the House who have contributed.

There has been an important focus today on statistics, which I welcome because this Government believe in making good use of facts and evidence when delivering policy. Various points have been raised, and I want to come back to all of them, but, if I do miss any, I hope that Members will allow me to respond to some of their points in writing. I also recognise that the Minister for Border Security and Asylum, my hon. Friend the Member for Wallasey (Dame Angela Eagle), is unable to be here today.

Before I address Members’ points, I want to make a few remarks reflecting on the immigration system that the Government inherited. The hon. Member for West Suffolk alluded to the situation that we found, and it is worth reflecting on what the latest official figures show because they shocked us all. Under the previous Government, net migration grew almost five times higher in four years—and is still four times higher—-than it was before the pandemic, driven heavily by an increase in overseas recruitment. The Home Secretary and the Prime Minister have both been extremely clear that net migration needs to come down. We are, therefore, continuing with visa controls, which we supported when they were introduced by the previous Government. However, we are also clear that much more needs to be done to restore order and credibility to the system. That is why—

[Julia Lopez]

Will the Minister give way?

[Seema Malhotra]

I will make some remarks; I know the hon. Lady has already contributed.

That is why we are pursuing a new approach to end the overreliance on international recruitment by ensuring that the immigration, skills and training systems are properly aligned in a way they have not previously been. Further details of our plans to reduce net migration will be set out in the forthcoming White Paper. I am sure the hon. Member for West Suffolk will want to contribute and bring his own experience in government, which I do respect. I am sure he will also want to engage on how we build the solutions and the architecture that we need for a new part of how Government works, working across the Home Office, skills and our future needs, as well as on how we ensure that we are supporting migrants into work, which is also part of the role of the DWP.

Let me turn to some of the issues raised in the debate. It is worth saying that the issue of dangerous small boat crossings has been a phenomenon of the last five or six years. There has been an increase from 300 people coming in 2018 to an average of over 36,000 a year in the last three years—a 120-fold increase. We cannot deny that, in a few short years, an entire criminal smuggler industry has been built around boat crossings, and that has also been allowed to take hold across the UK border. The cost of the asylum system also increased by more than five times to £5.4 billion between 2019-20 and last year. Returns of those with no right to be here are 30% lower than they were in 2010, and asylum-related returns were down by 20% compared with 14 years ago. That was the legacy we inherited from the previous Government, and former Ministers themselves have admitted it was shameful.

On the calls for more data, the Home Office and the Office for National Statistics publish a very wide range of statistical information on a regular basis. Our country’s statisticians, and those working in my Department and other Departments, are in fact world leaders in the production of statistics and analysis on the topic of migration. I am sure that the hon. Member for West Suffolk will know that the UK publishes, I believe, more statistics on migration than any other country. The content and presentation of official statistics is kept under review and that regular oversight allows us to balance the production of regular statistics with the need to develop new statistics and statistical products for future release. We remain committed to the issues of transparency and ensuring that public and parliamentary debates are informed by robust and accurate statistics, and to keeping statistics under review.

The hon. Member for West Suffolk raised a few comments on some of his correspondence and it would be helpful to refer to some of that. I assure him that the Home Office has received his letter of 1 September and is due to respond in due course. The breakdown of £700 million in costs, which the hon. Member inquired about, has been published on gov.uk and sets out the cost of the Rwanda partnership and the Illegal Migration Act 2023, which were inseparable. The purpose of the IMA was to prevent individuals arriving in the UK from remaining here, and Rwanda was intended to be a vehicle for enabling that. To try and separate them is deliberately misrepresenting the true cost of what was clearly a failed policy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Monday 9th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Morgan]

Parents and carers up and down the country are still struggling with the cost of living. As part of our mission to bring down barriers to opportunity, breakfast clubs give parents and carers the confidence that their child can access a breakfast, should they need one, and we are supporting families to work with the cost of childcare. It is a pity that the Conservatives cannot say whether they back our plan to deliver better life chances for all children in all parts of the country.

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

Nurseries and the small businesses that provide before and after-school clubs are being whacked by national insurance increases, and there is little clarity from the Government about how these breakfast clubs will work, which has the potential to undermine another part of their business model. What representations has the Education Secretary made to the Chancellor to deal with the massive hole that she has blown in her plans?

[Stephen Morgan]

We take no lectures from the Conservative party on how it failed children over the last 14 years. I have heard providers’ concerns about early years funding, and I recognise the importance of local authorities and providers planning ahead for the pivotal expansion year. We will be updating the House very soon on that issue.

A Brighter Future for the Next Generation

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Thursday 13th May 2021 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Secretary, Cabinet Office (Julia Lopez)]

I thank all hon. and right hon. Members who have taken part in today’s debate. There have been many valuable contributions.

The year 2020 and the early part of 2021 have been a time of enormous difficulty, and our nation’s resolve has been tested by the pandemic. There has been huge disruption to the lives of young people, whose futures we are debating today. As my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Huw Merriman) rightly said, a lost year for us cannot be compared with a lost year of learning and development for them.

With the end of the EU transition period in January, the UK began a new chapter in its national story—one of great change and even greater opportunity. This must become the spur to do things differently and better, and, in doing so, create more opportunities for young people. We have to use this shift to shatter the stasis that has led to decades of underproductivity and disconnection between decision makers and communities. With UK politicians now being more accountable for delivery, we will pursue policies that work for young people across the UK, with huge investment in early years, post-16 education, skills, infrastructure and technology. With freedom of intellectual challenge, we hope to create a more outward-looking and dynamic economy.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon) made a compelling speech on the skills agenda, to which he has committed so much campaigning energy, and he welcomed our lifetime skills guarantee. I am grateful to him for the way in which he has engaged with me on civil service apprenticeships. I see those apprenticeship routes as fundamental to our talent pipeline for the digital and data specialist roles that we are creating across Government to lead our drive to improve online Government services for citizens. I appreciated the excellent suggestion by my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) on special educational needs and development hubs, and I have just raised it with the Secretary of State for Education.

I was very interested to hear the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) criticise the English education system when Scotland’s performance on the PISA league tables has drastically slipped and the attainment gap has increased. Meanwhile, UCAS data show that just 9.7% of those from Scotland’s most disadvantaged areas have been accepted at university, compared with 17% in England.

I want to wish my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) a very happy birthday and thank her for her tireless commitment to the early years agenda over 25 years. As a relatively new mum myself, I can say that what she said this afternoon, especially on maternal mental health and support, resonated. That has been a real challenge for many new parents during the pandemic, and I wish her the very best on her work on “The 1001 Critical Days”, which has now been recognised and supported by Government.

It is fantastic to hear of the input into that project from my hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson), who draws on huge experience, and the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). I am sure that the wisdom and warmth that the hon. Lady brought to that role was invaluable. She raised an extremely important point about cancer services, and I know that the question of NHS delays caused by the pandemic is an area of great focus for the Cabinet Office in its work on public sector recovery and reform. That will also be tackled in new health legislation.

This afternoon, I learned to my surprise that my right hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling) is the House’s No.1 champion of hedgehogs. I was glad to hear of his support for the ambitious environmental and animal welfare measures in the Gracious Speech. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) raised the potential of COP26 to inspire and provide opportunities in green tech for young people. In our sponsorship of COP, the Cabinet Office agrees; we are tremendously ambitious in this area. The London Gateway freeport—in my region and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price)—will help to spur new green investment and jobs, and our work on new T-levels, apprenticeships and skills will help local young people to take advantage of them.

As others have said, levelling up is not only for the north.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) talked of retaining flexible working from the pandemic to help families. The Cabinet Office is actively exploring that in areas such as public appointments and civil service HR. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury South (Christian Wakeford) spoke movingly about illiteracy, and I hope that our lifelong learning initiatives will help to address it. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) supported our education plan and our kickstart scheme, and raised the issue of apprenticeships. I hope she engages with our skills for jobs White Paper and recognises the enormous investment we are making in skills, including a £3,000 incentive for firms to take on apprentices.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh) is absolutely right about the emotional commitment we all feel towards the future of the Union. Our family of nations has faced the great challenge of the pandemic together, through protections to the economy, support from our armed services, the procurement of vaccines and more. This is not the time to tear us apart.

My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) is right to highlight the futures of young girls beyond our shores, where this Government are investing hugely in their education, as the key to tackling a whole range of global challenges, and the importance of stable public finances to all our finances, which was underlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock. She also made an oft overlooked point that outcomes and not money spent ought to define success in our public services. That is why the Cabinet Office wants to use procurement reforms and digital transformation to improve the performance of our services to all citizens. She also talked of our proposals against violence towards women and girls and to improve online safety in order to protect young people.

My hon. Friend the Member for Mid Derbyshire (Mrs Latham) raised the important issue of forced marriage, and I really praise her for her campaign. My hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle talked of not only the importance of new homes and infrastructure to young people’s futures, but the crucial new legislation we are bringing in on fighting knife crime, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith) and the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). That issue affects far too many young people. It is with deep sadness that we lost Daniel Laskos to knife violence in my constituency on Friday, and his family have been in our hearts this week. I pay tribute to the work of local police officers on this case, and I hope that new powers will help them to do their vital work so that no more lives are lost to senseless violence.

A number of hon. Members referred to the levelling-up agenda and its importance to young people in their constituencies, and one rather dubious reference was made to Chumbawamba. The Government are committed to boosting funding for communities in all parts of the UK, with the £4.8 billion levelling-up fund and another £220 million to invest in local areas, ahead of launching the UK shared prosperity fund in 2022, and a series of infrastructure initiatives of the kind that my hon. Friend the Member for Keighley (Robbie Moore) mentioned.

We in the Cabinet Office are also committed to ensuring that the administration of government is less Whitehall-centric, by locating more civil service roles in the regions and nations of the UK, through our ambitious places for growth programme. The civil service needs to be visible in and representative of the entire UK, across all Departments, functions and professions. This will also play an important role in demonstrating our commitment as a Government to maintaining the integrity of the Union. The Cabinet Office has recently announced that our second headquarters will be located in Glasgow, with 500 officials to be located there in the next three years. A number of other Departments have also announced their plans to increase the UK Government presence across the UK. That includes the Department for Transport building on its presence in Leeds and Birmingham, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government establishing a second HQ in Wolverhampton, Leeds becoming home to second HQs for Department of Health and Social Care and the Department for Work and Pensions, and new Treasury economic campus in Darlington. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary will have heard the passionate bid for a Home Office HQ from my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) and for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Jo Gideon), who have listed the huge investments already made in their city. We want opportunities for young people to go hand in hand with these moves. Again, I am particularly focused on using the tremendous talent in schools and colleges across the UK to get British students into exciting digital and data roles in the heart of government.

Of course the brightest futures can be built only on solid democratic foundations, which is why the Government are bringing forward our elections Bill, as set out in Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech. This Bill will deliver on multiple manifesto commitments and hopes to ensure that our democracy remains secure, fair, modern and transparent The potential for voter fraud in our current system strikes at a core principle of our democracy: that your vote is yours and yours alone. Any instance of or potential for electoral malpractice damages the public’s faith in our democracy and has to be taken seriously. The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith) and a number of other hon. Members use language outside this place to talk about straightforward proposals to request that voters prove they are who they say they are when they take up their sacred right to vote, calling that simple principle “voter suppression” in typically hyperbolic fashion designed to frighten and scaremonger. I completely agree that the vote is a precious right, which is why this Government believe that we should make it harder for those who seek to interfere with it.

Setting aside the fact that every voter will be able to secure a voter card from their local council for free if they want one, and that many people already have that kind of identification in the form of a passport or driving licence, the demands for evidence that voter fraud is a problem do not show an understanding of what happened in Tower Hamlets when I was a councillor there. In that borough, disinterest and complacency from authorities about electoral corruption and fraud meant that it was left to four ordinary residents, risking legal bills of hundreds of thousands of pounds, to challenge the election of the mayor in 2015. It was not easy, and I pay tribute to them and people such as Councillor Peter Golds, with whom I worked at the time and who raised with the Electoral Commission our serious worries about voter fraud.

The tireless work of those residents and their barrister, Francis Hoar, exposed how easily the system can be exploited when authorities are just too nervous about taking action. Through their courage, they had the mayor’s election overturned. I do not wish to see other communities go through that simply because of reticence on our part to introduce a very simple check that a voter is who they say they are. Indeed, I noticed that Mr Hoar himself tweeted last week that he had been subject to personation at the ballot box, so I regret that the idea that there is nothing to see here is wide of the mark.

The Opposition are not naive and inexperienced on this matter. They will know that in many council elections, the margin of victory at ward level can be exceptionally slim, yet we are electing people who will be stewards of public money and services for some of the most vulnerable in our communities. I know full well that Opposition Front Benchers understand the importance of identification at key votes, because they ask for it to be produced for their own party’s elections and even to attend Labour Live, in so far as there is any demand. Our plans simply bring us into line with Labour’s elections, and with the Labour Government’s introduction in 2003 of voter identification in Northern Ireland, where participation has not been affected.

[Cat Smith]

We are discussing the importance of voting and democracy in a debate about the bright future for the next generations. Given that 16 and 17-year-olds have the right to vote in Scotland and Wales, how does the Minister defend the status quo in England, where 16 and 17-year-olds are not given equal voting rights to their Scottish and Welsh counterparts?

[Julia Lopez]

That is subject to lively debate, and I know that it is being explored by the Minister for the Constitution and Devolution, my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich North (Chloe Smith). I will take that point away to discuss with her while she is away.

I thank all hon. Members for their thoughtful contributions to this debate on future opportunities for young people. From huge investment in the skills agenda and early years to measures to keep young people safe in the street and online, work on issues of passion to younger generations such as the environment and animal welfare, and giving freedom for vigorous intellectual debate that challenges and hones ideas—our own in-house political poet, my hon. Friend the Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), set that out superbly—Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech sets out an ambitious legislative agenda to put young people at the heart of our national recovery and economic renewal. I commend it to the House.

Ordered, That the debate be now adjourned.—(Rebecca Harris.)

Debate to be resumed on Monday 17 May.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

We look forward to 17 May, so that we can visit pubs and restaurants without fear of getting wet or, indeed, catching hypothermia —the glorious 17th.

Will those leaving the Chamber before we go on to the Adjournment please do so in a covid-friendly manner? I ask that the Dispatch Boxes are sanitised while Alexander Stafford opens the debate. The Minister is not going to touch the Dispatch Box until that has been done. Thank you very much, everybody—and thank you, Minister.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

The Secretary of State ought to be able to detect the hon. Gentleman’s status and his intellectual distinction from a radius of approximately 1,000 miles.

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

The extra money for post-16 providers is extremely welcome. It has been warmly welcomed by Havering Sixth Form College in my constituency. However, it appears to be a one-year funding deal, rather than the three-year settlement that five to 16 education providers received. Will the Secretary of State look at giving colleges more long-term certainty by delivering future increases in line with inflation and raising the overall rate for 16 to 18-year-olds?

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend raises a very valuable point about the importance of long-term certainty for all parts of the education sector. That was very clearly explained in the report from the Select Committee chaired by my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). We will continue to look at it. It was a one-year settlement for 16 to 19-year-olds. We made sure we gave as much certainty in the schools sector as possible. We continue to look at what more we can do to give confidence to the further education sector on how to invest in the future of our young people.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his supplementary. We do keep a close eye in monitoring the provider, the market and of course the cost base. Under the early years national funding formula, our average rates to local authorities are higher than the average hourly costs of providing childcare to three and four-year-olds, but he makes an important contribution, in the sense that we have to keep an eye on the costs. Ofsted has essentially done the work; the number of childcare places has remained broadly stable since the introduction of the 30 hours’ programme.

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

The cost of childcare is prohibitive for many families and can dissuade women from returning to the workplace, but those financial pressures are doubled and sometimes tripled for parents of multiples. What work is the Minister doing to assist those families to deal with the especial financial challenges of childcare provision for twins and triplets, particularly those families on middle incomes, who may not qualify for the child allowance or other benefits?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Clearly, the programme aims to make sure that parents who are working are able to receive the entitlements. Of course, we deliver entitlements for two-year-olds for the most disadvantaged families in this country, but I will happily look at the question of parents with twins or triplets as well.

Further Education Funding

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham]

The short answer is that I agree. Qualifications for workers in key sectors have dropped. Qualifications for construction workers have dropped from 98,000 to 62,000. For engineers, the sector from which the hon. Lady comes, including plumbers and electricians, the figure has dropped from 145,000 to 46,000. That is a huge drop in a relatively short space of time, precisely at the moment when we need more engineers in this country, to take forward our technology revolution.

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

My hon. Friend highlights precisely the relevant point, namely that at the very moment when we should be looking at vocational skills in our economy, we are squeezing funding in that area. This is critical to where our country is heading in the next 10 to 20 years.

[Richard Graham]

I agree with that, as I think all hon. Members would.

--- Later in debate ---

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

Further education is the crucial but sometimes forgotten link between secondary schools and universities; it is very much the Cinderella service. It can pave the way for an excellent university career or provide the opportunity to learn the vocational skills required to enter a competitive professional field, and is just as important as secondary or higher education. We cannot afford to neglect further education and we must correct the disparity in funding.

As many colleagues have said, the national funding rate for 16 and 17-year-olds has remained frozen since 2013-14, yet we know that, as with our schools, the cost pressures on our colleges are considerable. If we do not address that, there will be a huge issue—it has already been growing year on year.

Despite that, our schools and colleges have been doing an excellent job with the resources they have. Two colleges in my constituency, Colchester Sixth Form College and Colchester Institute, are both bucking the trend. In my constituency, A-level attainment is far above the national average, which is remarkable. Huge credit deserves to go to the teachers, staff and leaders who work within our schools and colleges. However, we cannot expect this success to continue if we do not take action to address the rising costs faced by schools and colleges, and their underfunding.

Those rising costs are having an impact: 51% of colleges and schools have dropped courses in modern foreign languages; 38% have dropped STEM courses, which we know we so desperately need; and 78% have reduced student support services or extracurricular activities, with significant cuts to mental health services.

[Julia Lopez]

A problem that I find in my constituency is that there is a disconnect between the jobs being generated by the economy and the ability of our education sector to provide the right skills for those jobs. Havering Sixth Form College, which is in my constituency, plays a key role in that process. For instance, going down the nursing associate route will be critical for our public sector. Trying to get that match between the public sector, the economy and our education sector is critical, which is why this debate is so important.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Funding

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I thank the right hon. Member for Twickenham (Sir Vince Cable) for securing this crucial debate. I very much echo what the hon. Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) has said, particularly about trying to navigate through such complexity when it comes to special educational needs. I appreciate that time is short, so I shall simply echo many of the points raised by other hon. Members about the pressures on mainstream schools in terms of financing and classroom support, the time it takes to obtain education, health and care plans, and the tensions that can be created between schools and councils in meeting statutory obligations to SEND children.

Since my election I have made it a priority to visit each of the 42 schools in my constituency to get to know the school community and its needs. The pressures on special educational needs services have been one of the most consistent themes in my conversations with parents and teachers, and I have highlighted those concerns to the Education Secretary and to the borough’s lead for children’s services. In Havering we have had the fastest-growing number of children of any London borough for the past few years, and funding has simply not kept up with that changing demography. Redden Court School in Harold Wood, for instance, has three times the national average of students with special educational needs and disabilities. That is more than 50 children with an education, health and care plan. The schools in my constituency are doing a fantastic job at ensuring that SEND children can be educated in the mainstream, but we must take into account the pressure that that can place on classroom staff and resources.

I was pleased by the announcement, before Christmas, of an additional £250 million of high needs funding, of which my borough will get more than £600,000. It is also welcome that the Secretary of State has allocated a £100 million top-up fund for new high needs school places and improved facilities, as well as removing the cap on the number of bids for free schools with special and alternative provisions. However, we must also look at the strain on third sector organisations at pre-school level, which often rely on diminishing local authority funds. Pre-school can be a critical time for getting the right support, and the right diagnosis of any condition, for SEND children before primary education begins. First Step, in Hornchurch, provides many fantastic services to local families affected by autism and other special educational needs. The Prime Minister has indeed promoted that charity’s work on my behalf on her own Twitter account. However, pre-school support for autistic children can be patchy, and new difficulties can arise, within the school environment and beyond, as those children grow older. I should be most grateful if the Minister would advise on what she is doing at pre-school level to ensure that parents and schools are equipped with the right support to help children to make the transition into primary education.

Skills Devolution (England)

Julia Lopez Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Westminster Hall

[Julia Lopez (Hornchurch and Upminster) (Con)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I commend the hon. Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) on securing what is a welcome and increasingly urgent debate.

As we leave the European Union, we will need our domestic workforce to be ever more dynamic, innovative and flexible, not just to maximise the new opportunities to our economy from trade and technology, but to reduce our reliance on a vast overseas workforce. Access to a pool of half a billion EU workers has for too long allowed businesses to obtain cheap, skilled and hard-working employees without having to properly invest in the domestic skills base. It has similarly allowed the Government to duck some of the shortcomings of our own education and skills systems by effectively piggy-backing on the investments of other nations in their people.

Economic migration to the UK will not and should not stop once we have left the EU. London, where I am an MP, is an economic powerhouse that needs to have access to the global talent pool, but if we are to fulfil our own industrial strategy and maximise opportunities for home-grown workers, we need to turbo-charge our approach to skills and get businesses, schools, colleges and Government to work together in a far more interconnected way. The current framework for improving skills is far too centralised and inflexible, unable to deliver workers to fill London’s vacancies as quickly as those vacancies are created, and failing to provide lifelong learning to keep existing workers sufficiently up to date.

Two weeks ago, I visited my local jobcentre, where the team is doing a quite remarkable job in getting people into work. However, one of the groups they find hardest to place is the over-50s, who need to be given time and confidence to adapt to the changing workplace. Meanwhile, one in five London families are stuck in in-work poverty, so attention also needs to be paid to providing clear progression pathways into higher paid work. We require a new spirit of collaboration that leads to increased interaction between our schools, businesses and public services.

I am very excited by what I see in my own constituency. Hon. Members have referred to the critical importance of investment in STEM subjects. On Friday, I visited the Coopers’ Company and Coborn School, which has a dedicated STEM coordinator, Nick, who is doing some amazing work in increasing uptake in science, maths and tech subjects by connecting the school to the academic community and to businesses. Too often such work is reliant on dynamic individuals and organisations, without whom the workstream would not be able to progress.

I am also particularly excited by a five-week, focused course being run by Havering College in my constituency, working with Transport for London. Committed students in the boot-camp style course at this railway academy are guaranteed a job interview with the prospect of employment as railway engineers. Half a million pounds-worth of rail equipment donated by TfL has been installed at the college and students are getting hands-on experience to learn about the rail industry. That is the kind of joined-up skills approach we shall need to see much more of, not least as it helps to provide workers for critical infrastructure projects such as Crossrail. The programme has also helped long-term unemployed and ex-offenders with few or no qualifications to access full-time employment.

It is probably now time to give London the powers that will enable it to prioritise those kinds of skills investments: getting people into work and delivering critical infrastructure in the capital. Devolution of skills provision would also support the capital to develop Londoners’ employability and skillset, targeting and scaling up skills efforts to ensure that everyone who grows up in London can access employment in a changing and increasingly competitive labour market. Compared with international peers and other parts of the UK, London has much lower fiscal and political autonomy, and it is highly dependent on national policies and funding—74% of Greater London Authority and borough expenditure is based on intergovernmental transfers. That makes it very difficult to plan for the long term.

There are two areas where the Government could now look at devolving additional power, since City Hall will soon take control of London’s adult education budget: unspent apprenticeship levy funds and the 16-to-18 further education skills budget. Those issues will be key to meeting the demands of London’s changing labour market. With a wider range of powers, London would be in a strong position to create a system that meets employer need, not just learner demand, and capitalise on local labour market intelligence. It would enable stronger employment engagement to identify skill needs and sector priorities, which can only be done effectively at local level. The provision of higher level professional and technical education could be driven up and clear progression pathways created for learners. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s perspective on those and the other technical and skills issues raised today.