Schools: National Funding Formula

Debate between Justine Greening and Helen Goodman

Thursday 14th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Today I have set out the new funding formula for schools. We will have a transition period, during which local authorities continue to have the ability to allocate at local level, but we have made it clear that we are setting out the amounts that we think schools should get. That is the whole point of this process, which does reflect sparsity. We have more work to do to ensure that we reflect sparsity more accurately over the coming years, as I have set out in the funding formula document, but this is a step in the right direction. I fully expect that, over time, we will continue to get better and that we will move to an even more accurate approach to sparsity.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Seven years ago there were two secondary schools in Spennymoor. Now there is only one, and no children went into the sixth form this September, which obviously puts its future into question. Surely the truth is that because the Secretary of State has been able to win only £1.3 billion and not £2.7 billion, she will not be able to give those children in Spennymoor the future they should have.

[Justine Greening]

That is not correct. As the hon. Lady admits, we are putting additional funding into the core formula, which is part of this Government’s strategy to raise standards. Alongside that, of course, we have improved the curriculum, and the new GCSEs are successfully starting to roll out this year. As we debated yesterday, importantly, more and more of our young people are going to university. Record rates of disadvantaged young people are going on to higher education. We are moving in the right direction, but there are still parts of the country that have not reached the level and achieved the standards we want for our young people. That is why I have committed to having opportunity areas to lift up places that have perhaps faced the most difficult challenges. That is part of a broader push from the Government, and from me as Secretary of State, to ensure that we truly lift all parts of our country to reach the best standards of education for children.

National Funding Formula: Schools/High Needs

Debate between Justine Greening and Helen Goodman

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I believe that this will be a fair funding formula that will be in everyone’s interests, including those of my hon. Friend’s constituents.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

I have a letter from the National Union of Teachers, which is extremely alarmed that pupils in Bishop Auckland will lose £452 over the Parliament. Will the Secretary of State tell me what will happen in my constituency? She has reassured London MPs and the home counties. In the interests of intellectual honesty, will she say who are the losers out of her funding formula?

Sustainable Development Goals

Debate between Justine Greening and Helen Goodman

Wednesday 28th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My right hon. Friend is right, and she speaks from a position of authority. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Mr O'Brien), she is well respected, both for her service as a Cabinet Minister and for her tireless work with charities such as Tearfund. She is absolutely right: we were one of the key players that recognised the need to fuse the two agendas, of sustainability and climate change and of tackling poverty, successfully if we were to achieve the goal that my Department works faithfully to achieve of eradicating absolute—

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Government Members say that they want a bipartisan approach and nowhere is that more useful than on the issue of climate change, because we need a long-term strategy. Why does the right hon. Lady resist having separate climate change goals within the sustainable development framework?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady is somewhat misinterpreting the Government’s position. If she looks at the report by the high-level panel of experts co-chaired by the Prime Minister, she will see that it includes a range of targets and goals in relation to climate change. I shall come on to that later but, as I have said, no one can deny that the UK has played, continues to play, and will play a leading role in climate change discussions, not least because that flows into the work that we do in international development, for example, setting up the international climate fund and investing nearly £4 billion in projects that can help to tackle development and, in many cases, give a real lead in addressing climate change.

Since the report by the high-level panel, the open working group on sustainable development goals—a group of 70 member states mandated at Rio+20 to deliver a proposal on those goals—the UK has pushed for the highest possible level of ambition. We have been consistent in our drive for member states to agree an inspiring and workable agenda centred on the eradication of extreme poverty, with sustainable development at its core, ensuring, as I said to the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), that no one is left behind.

As part of that, we have consistently argued for a strong health goal that focuses on strengthening health systems and on ensuring effective health outcomes for all women, men, girls and boys at all ages. We have clearly stated that the framework must fully integrate environment and climate change, and it must have a strong goal on gender equality focusing on improving prospects for women and girls. I was disappointed that there was no explicit reference to the importance of having a strong gender goal and the mainstreaming of women and girls’ issues in the development framework. I hope that we can continue, as we have done in the past, to have cross-party consensus on those issues to make progress.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Justine Greening and Helen Goodman

Wednesday 3rd September 2014 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that in co-ordinating our humanitarian assistance, we do it solely on the basis of need.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

2. What her Department’s role is in the relief effort for people affected by the situation in Gaza.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Justine Greening and Helen Goodman

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Ultimately, we need a political solution to the conflict, and that has to be led by President Kabila. The solution also has to be regional if it is to be sustainable. Furthermore, Mary Robinson, the special envoy appointed by the United Nations Secretary-General, can have a key role in bringing together the various countries that must be brought together if we are finally to achieve long lasting and long overdue peace.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

Has the Secretary of State had any discussions with the mobile phone companies that source some of their rare minerals in Democratic Republic of Congo, thereby financing the warring parties? If she has not, may I suggest that she does?

[Justine Greening]

I very much take the hon. Lady’s point on board. A lot of DFID’s work is in addressing corruption, and that includes illicit flows of money. As part of the G8 this year, for example, we led the way on challenging the leading economies of the world to up their game on tax, trade and transparency. Illicit flows of money were a core part of that. I assure the hon. Lady that I take her point on board and will follow it up.

Amendment of the Law

Debate between Justine Greening and Helen Goodman

Friday 23rd March 2012 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I am not sure that the hon. Gentleman’s intervention made much sense. I agree that infrastructure is critical. The key part of the OBR report, which he ought to focus on, states that we are on course to meet our fiscal mandate and to get our public finances back in order. I am sure that he welcomes the OBR’s assessment that we will see the net creation of 1 million jobs in this country over the coming year.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

To explain further the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop), if the Secretary of State turns to table D.1 in the Red Book, which shows the detailed summary of the OBR’s central forecast, and looks along the line for “Fixed investment” by “General government”, she will see that it falls in 2011, falls in 2012 and falls in 2013. That is the point that my hon. Friend was making. The right hon. Lady clearly has not looked at the Red Book.

[Justine Greening]

This Government are investing more money in capital spend than was planned by the previous Government. If the hon. Lady is complaining about those numbers, she would be complaining even more if we had the misfortune of having her party in office. This Government are investing in infrastructure and putting unprecedented levels of investment into the railways, as I am sure she is well aware, even though she prefers to score a political point.

The Government are rightly taking action to make it easier for people and businesses to go about their daily business. We are cutting commuting times and speeding up journeys; getting people and products moving faster and more reliably; and ensuring that Britain is plugged into the global marketplace. Of course, the easy choice, faced with Labour’s debt and deficit, would have been to cut capital spending and major infrastructure projects. We are not doing that. Instead, we have taken a deliberate decision to invest in our transport infrastructure, from relatively small interventions that make a big difference such as hard-shoulder running on motorways, to huge projects such as Thameslink and Crossrail.

I am delighted that we have a London Mayor who is committed, alongside the Government, to driving forward projects such as Crossrail, which are vital to our capital’s future prosperity. It is vital that we continue to have a Mayor who is passionate and successful in campaigning on London’s behalf at the heart of the Government; a Mayor who refuses, unlike his opponent, to make empty spending promises based on imaginary pots of money; and a Mayor who will be the best possible advocate for London’s economic success when he welcomes the Olympic tourists and athletes in the summer.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Justine Greening and Helen Goodman

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I only wish that the hon. Gentleman’s assertion was correct. The previous Parliament debated this very issue, and I think it was responsible of the new Government to get the independent Office for Budget Responsibility to examine it, given that there had been conflicting assessments from different industry watchers and think-tanks. The OBR was very clear that although we received some extra revenue from the North sea as a result of higher prices, the impact of higher oil prices is far more wide-ranging. We can see that from the debate that we have had over a number of weeks, which continues tonight, about the impact of oil prices as they feed through to high pump prices.

I remind the hon. Gentleman of his own words about how to pay for the stabiliser back in 2009. He said:

“That amount could come from the VAT windfall or the North sea windfall, because it would be directly related to the price of oil.”—[Official Report, 13 May 2009; Vol. 492, c. 908.]

I know that he was talking about the direct revenues that he has just mentioned, but I think he was also making the broader point that a more general windfall accrues to the North sea industry when oil prices are high. I will talk briefly about some of the steps that we want to take to ensure that we mitigate the risks involved in the more marginal investments, so that we manage the concerns that have been raised, particularly by Liberal Democrat Members.

Amendment 10, which was proposed by the Labour party and spoken to by the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), would require the Chancellor to

“produce, before 30 September 2011, an assessment of the impact of taxation of ring fence profits on business investment and growth including an assessment of the long-term sustainability of oil and gas exploration in the North sea”.

As I have said, I want to reassure hon. Members that we are engaged closely with the industry. In fact, we explicitly mention in the Budget document that we want to work with the industry on field allowances, particularly those on marginal gas fields. Since coming to power, we have engaged closely with the industry, as my hon. Friends are aware. We have introduced a change to the ultra-high-pressure, high-temperature field allowance to ensure that the fiscal regime was appropriate to those prevailing circumstances.

The Government are keen to continue working with the industry. I have personally met representatives of Statoil and Centrica and spoken directly with them about their individual concerns. As I am sure the right hon. Member for Gordon is aware, Wood Mackenzie explicitly pointed to the Mariner and Bressay oil fields as two of the few fields where there would be an uneconomical impact, but for a variety of reasons, a number of technical challenges associated with those fields already made them a challenging investment. Nevertheless, we are working directly with Statoil to look at whether field allowances can be developed to help to unlock that investment.

The Government published our assessment of the impact of the measure in a tax information and impact note at the time of the Budget. Although we do not expect the measure to have a significant impact on investment or production in the forecast period, as I have said, we are working closely with the industry. First, we want to look at field allowances to see how we can unlock those more marginal fields, and secondly, we want to look at the longer-term issues that the industry is keen to address, including, for example, achieving more certainty on decommissioning.

Of course, the Government expect that the average post-tax profits per barrel will be higher over the next five years than it was over the past five years because of the higher oil price. In its analysis of the Budget, industry analyst Wood Mackenzie stated:

“At current high oil prices, few new projects will become uneconomic as a result of the change”,

However, we want to do what we can to ensure that investment is unlocked for those projects that remain at risk, so that they go ahead.

[Helen Goodman]

I am just a little concerned about how the Minister expressed herself in her most recent remarks. My understanding is that Ministers are not supposed to be privy to the individual tax bills faced by individual taxpayers. From what she is saying, it sounds as if a line has been stepped over when it perhaps should not have been.

[Justine Greening]

I do not think that that is true. It is perfectly normal and reasonable for the Treasury to work with industry and individual companies to look at the particular problems that they face. That is exactly what the previous Government did, and they introduced field allowances. There is no substance at all to the hon. Lady’s claim. In fact, she would have more justification for complaint if we were not taking such action.

As I have said, the recent very high sterling oil price has resulted in unexpectedly high profits for oil and gas companies, although at the same time it has resulted in financial pain for motorists and the wider economy. The Government therefore decided that it was appropriate to increase the rate of supplementary charge, to redress that imbalance. The fact that we have acted in that way does not mean that we do not appreciate the impact of taxation. However, we believe that investment in an exploration of the UK continental shelf will continue, driven by the record high oil price.

The hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) asked about forecasting. Of course, there is a range of industry forecasts on future oil prices, but the Government use the OBR, which is entirely independent of us. The OBR forecasts an oil price for the forthcoming years of this Parliament in excess of $100 a barrel for every year of that period.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Justine Greening and Helen Goodman

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Yes, I can, and of course my hon. Friend is not the only person to hold that view. The secretary-general of the OECD said only last week that Britain needed to “stay the course”. He realises, as did the Bank of England Governor Mervyn King when he talked about our deficit as being “clearly unsustainable”, that if we had not set out a credible plan and got a grip on our public finances to tackle the deficit, we would have run the risk of an even sharper fiscal tightening later down the road, a loss of confidence and higher interest rates in future.

[Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)]

It costs £150 to give a person debt advice, and it costs £50,000 to rehouse a family. Will the Economic Secretary explain why Treasury Ministers are cutting the funds to citizens advice bureaux to provide such advice, and why that is a good way to cut the debt?

[Justine Greening]

We are looking at ways in which we can ensure that people still get the debt advice that they need, and of course a lot of the grants are provided by local authorities. There is no point in Opposition Members talking about debt, because it was their party that created the problem in the first place.