Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kate Green and John Glen

Monday 18th May 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

The hon. Lady makes a reasonable point. We are monitoring the effectiveness of all these schemes, and the way that local authorities are using their discretion in giving out those grants, but this is a matter that we will continue to examine carefully.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

What assessment he has made of the effect of the covid-19 outbreak on regional economies.

Coronavirus: Employment Support

Debate between Kate Green and John Glen

Thursday 19th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[John Glen]

I confirm to the hon. Gentleman that we are looking at the most comprehensive package that we can bring forward that deals with all sectors and all categories. We want it to be effective to deal with the reality of the challenges that our country faces.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

May I raise a specific question with the Minister? Childminders and childcare providers in my constituency tell me that, although they have insurance if they have to close their businesses as a result of a notifiable disease, which covid-19 clearly now is, insurance companies are saying that they will not provide the cover, because it does not appear on the list of notifiable diseases. Will the Minister take that up urgently with the industry?

[John Glen]

I have taken that up urgently with the industry. Businesses take out business relief, and then about 5% take out insurance for non-specified diseases, and 5% for specified diseases. We have made sure that for those that have taken insurance for specified diseases, that will be triggered by the Government’s announcement this week, and the other package of measures will support businesses that do not have that insurance. We cannot retrofit contractual obligations to insurance companies.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Kate Green and John Glen

Tuesday 16th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

6. What recent assessment his Department has made of trends in the level of household debt since 2010.

[The Economic Secretary to the Treasury (John Glen)]

The household debt-to-income ratio has fallen from 152% at the start of 2010 to 138% in the third quarter of 2017. It has remained significantly below its pre-crisis peak of 160% in the first quarter of 2008. I also note today’s report from the Institute for Fiscal Studies on the same subject.

[Kate Green]

I, too, have read the IFS report, which points out that debt is a real problem for a significant minority of low-income householders who are struggling to pay the bills and make debt repayments. Does the Minister accept that imposing a freeze on benefits when inflation is standing at 3% will make things even tougher for those families?

[John Glen]

The report also points out that the percentage of households with financial liabilities in the four lowest wealth quintiles fell between June 2010 and June 2014. The Government are fully committed to helping the poorest households, and just last year the Money Advice Service spent £49 million on giving 440,000 free-to-client sessions to assist those in difficulty.

Grammar and Faith Schools

Debate between Kate Green and John Glen

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman). I send my best wishes to the Parliament choir for a successful concert.

In Trafford, part of which I represent, we already have a selective education system. All our schools perform very well, but that is despite selection, not because of it. Trafford’s success reflects excellent teaching, strong schools leadership, a culture of schools working together to support one another, and very good support from families and parents. I pay tribute to everyone—staff, students and the wider community—for the excellent results that Trafford achieves.

It is important to note, however, that selection at age 11 is not an unalloyed good for everyone, or even for the majority of our children. A few weeks ago, I went to meet the headteacher of one of our very successful non-selective girls’ schools—well, I guess it is selective, in that it is single-sex—and she talked about the challenges that she and her staff team face when girls who have failed the entrance examination for our local grammar schools arrive at her school, at the very young age of 11, demoralised and dispirited, believing that they are failures and have been written off.

That headteacher’s team do a tremendous job to recover the morale and confidence of those girls, who go on to perform extremely well, but I find it offensive that we should say to young children, “You are a failure”, on the basis of an inflexible and unsuitable examination that does not reflect the wider context of what is going on in children’s lives and what learning ought to be for. If we have a system in which only one in four of our children aged 11 are told they are successful and have potential, we are getting something very wrong.

As I say, the selective system does not perform well for all our children in Trafford, nor does it deal with the postcode lottery, which Ministers have said they want to address through their proposals. In Trafford, children from the richest wards are by far the most likely to be in Trafford’s grammar schools. Those from the poorest wards, largely concentrated in my constituency, are the least likely to be in grammar schools. In preparation for this debate, I saw a graph of the numbers, and the curve was startling and shocking: a tiny proportion of children in wards such as Bucklow-St Martins and Clifford in my constituency go to grammar school, compared with a much higher percentage of children from Hale and Bowdon, in the more prosperous parts of the borough.

[John Glen]

I always listen carefully to the hon. Lady, but is the issue not sometimes aspiration and getting applicants from a diverse range of backgrounds? If more from such backgrounds applied, could we not make some progress?

[Kate Green]

I will be very honest with the hon. Gentleman: I do not know. I just feel that a system that says to parents, “Don’t bother putting your child forward because they have no chance of succeeding,” is not a very good system either. What that headteacher told me gives the lie to what he suggests. She said that parents felt under pressure to put their child forward for the assessment even when they knew that they were unlikely to succeed. The disappointment is being compounded by a great deal of wasted effort and pain. He is right about the complexities around who applies and what happens when they do, but there is something very troubling about a graph that shows that only children from the richest parts of the borough have a high chance of entry into grammar schools. I suspect that their having supportive parents, and lots of assets in their home to support their learning through educational toys, reading, educational trips and leisure activities and so on, is the reason why they have a higher chance of getting into grammar schools. I do not negate what he says, but I strongly suspect that it is those wider social factors and family resources that dispose children from the richer parts of the boroughs to have a higher chance of entering grammar schools.