Higher Education (England) Regulations

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the Secretary of State’s myth-spinning about Scottish universities. She would have us believe that our universities are not world-class. I am sure it would be of great interest to the 19 higher education institutions in Scotland, many of which are in the top 200 in the world, to hear her comments today. I thank the Secretary of State for that.

As legislators, we must ask ourselves why it is that we educate. Is it for self-enhancement, or is it for the benefit of society? I would say that for young people, as they set out considering tertiary education, it would probably be the former—get a decent job, a nice house and a decent education. However, for legislators there should be a clear distinction. First, of course, we are concerned about the individual and their future life chances, but we must take a wider view of the purpose of education and it must include our vision for society. To talk about “burdening” society with fees, as the Secretary of State just did, is to fail to take into account the benefits gained from having a well-educated population and a well-educated workforce. As we move ever closer to Brexit, with the cliff edge looming, key skills shortages in healthcare, education, digital and IT mean that graduates are needed now more than ever to ensure that the UK remains competitive in a post-Brexit environment. When that is considered, fees for tertiary education—fees that young people pay simply so they can fuel economic growth—become nonsensical.

We can clearly see the effects of that ludicrous policy when we consider the abolition of nursing bursaries. The steep decline of 20% in those choosing to study nursing should be a warning to us all. That, coupled with the devastating 96% drop in EU nurses registering to work in the UK, should be a wake-up call to the Government and their damaging policies.

It is a fundamental principle of the SNP that education should be based on the ability to learn and never the ability to pay.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Would the hon. Lady be willing to inform the House about the effect of the Scottish policy on the abolition of fees on disadvantaged students? To quote the Sutton Trust,

“the Scottish…policy of avoiding tuition fees meant that it was obliged to cap university places…with particularly negative consequences for less advantaged students”.

[Carol Monaghan]

First, the Scottish Government abolished fees, but secondly, since we came to power in 2007 there has been a 12% increase in Scottish-domiciled students going to university. We have a strong and principled record of opposing increases in tuition fees in England and Wales, and we will reject any legislation that seeks to increase the financial burden on students.

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[Robert Halfon]

We need to look at this across the board to make sure that salaries are related to performance and are seen as fair. I am not against high salaries, but what we have seen with some of these vice-chancellors, although not all, is pretty awful. As I say, their Marie Antoinette response to this just shows that they are completely out of touch with what is going on with a struggling economy, struggling students and so on. That is why I support the recent comments by the Universities Minister on pay and the restrictions the Government have proposed.

In my role as Chair of the Education Committee, I look forward to bringing greater scrutiny to the issue of pay and the wider value-for-money question. The hon. Lady is a new, valued member of the Committee, and I am pleased that one of the first areas the Committee will look at is the extent to which students are gaining a high-quality education and accessing graduate-level jobs. We will look at the evidence on how universities are currently spending the £9,000 and how an extra £250 would improve—or not—the experiences and outcomes of students.

Value for money must also be linked to interest rates. Not only are students graduating from university with greater debt than ever before, but they are facing substantially more interest on their loans. The interest rate of 6.1% is just too high; with the increase it will be more than 24 times the official Bank of England base rate. It has to be reviewed and it must be lowered, and it should be much more comparable to what happens in other countries. As the OECD highlights, our interest rate is one of the highest in western Europe, overburdening our students.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Does my right hon. Friend accept that lowering the interest rate would give a greater advantage to wealthier students, because they are more likely to pay off their debt than the more disadvantaged students or the lower earners? This would probably have the reverse consequence of what he intends to deliver.

[Robert Halfon]

I have heard that argument, but the wealthier students are the most likely to be able to pay off the current interest rate. A member of my office staff, who is not paid huge amounts of money and whom I would love to pay more, has £60,000 to pay. I just find that unacceptable—

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[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak after the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), and it was an even greater pleasure to listen to the fine maiden speech from the new hon. Member for Birmingham, Edgbaston (Preet Kaur Gill). She spoke of some touching and superb family values, which we all look for in our families. Her parents, whom she spoke of, must be very proud of her performance in the House today. I welcome her to the Chamber.

There are many spending commitments that we might wish for, and free tuition would be a wonderful commitment if we could afford to make it. That would be wonderful for me, because I have four children, all of whom may at some point enter the realms of higher education. But there are many other competing pressures, such as the pension system, the police forces, our armed forces, help for disabled people, the NHS and public sector pay. During the general election campaign when I talked to voters on the doorstep about some of the Opposition’s spending promises, the key question that I was asked many times was, “How are they going to pay for it?” The reality is that if students do not pay for tuition, the taxpayer will have to pick up the bill.

Of course, the Opposition will say that they have a fully costed manifesto to deal with the problem, but it is right that we look at the detail of that manifesto. [Interruption.] I am very happy to take an intervention if Labour Members would like me to. The reality is that there was £250 billion of extra spending commitments in that manifesto, on top of the fact that this country already spends about £50 billion a year more than it receives in taxes. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that there was a £45 billion hole in Labour’s extra spending commitments, which included £125 billion in extra infrastructure spending, roughly £125 billion to nationalise our utilities and railways, and £100 billion to wipe off past student tuition fees—that was a commitment, whether or not it was a manifesto promise.

The reality is that spending commitments can only be made in a strategic way. We cannot simply use cheap party politics and a short-term, kneejerk approach to funding the finances of this country.

[Angela Rayner]

May I ask the hon. Gentleman whether he actually read our manifesto and looked at our costings, and where in his party’s manifesto the DUP deal was?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

We are talking about tuition fees, on which the Leader of the Opposition made a clear commitment to deal with past debt as well as future fees. The reality is that we have to find the money to pay for the commitments that we make, and there was a huge gaping hole in the funding for the Opposition’s commitments. Such a gaping hole was why this country ended up £1.7 trillion in debt, and the Conservative party had to deal with inheriting a £153 billion deficit on the back of uncosted spending commitments. Of the 13 years for which Labour was in power, it did not balance the books in nine of them. Its public spending was greater than its tax receipts. We need an end to this short-term party politicking and gesture politics. We need properly costed manifestos and properly costed public spending. We simply cannot wipe out tuition fees without finding the money to pay for it.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), the Chair of the Education Committee, made some good points about how we should look at reforming tuition fees by making sure that they are performance-related so that universities are held to account for providing a good education that provides a return on investment for students. We also need a more flexible approach so that students can have lower debt by taking modular courses, for example.

[Jo Churchill]

May I draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the Higher Education and Research Act 2017, which took just that approach by ensuring that universities can offer two-year degrees, which will save students money? They can also offer lifelong learning opportunities and so on, all of which helps more than the Opposition’s approach would.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Taking a university course in two years rather than three or four makes perfect sense for someone wanting to reduce their debt. So does attending a local university, and we should move towards modular courses to ensure that students have ways around accumulating large debts, which nobody wants to see.

Opposition Members will say that we need to make the spending commitments that they are suggesting today, but they miss the point. There are huge ticking time bombs in our public expenditure for the coming decades, including our health and welfare spending. There is no strategic element to their spending plans. It is simply gesture politics.

[Carol Monaghan]

I am interested to hear the hon. Gentleman talk about a ticking time bomb in healthcare spending. Would he like to explain where new nurses are going to come from?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I am sorry, I misheard the hon. Lady’s final point—I am very happy for her to make it again.

[Carol Monaghan]

I was asking the hon. Gentleman where new nurses are going to come from.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

There are 12,000 more nurses on our wards in the UK than there were in 2010. More money is going into the NHS, and there is a commitment to spend another £8 billion by 2020. We are investing in the health service, but there is no doubt that those commitments will be very significant in future years. Of course we need to invest in our public services wherever we can, but we need to do so strategically without cheap party politicking. A piecemeal approach to our expenditure would have catastrophic consequences for our future debt. We need the strategic approach taken by the Conservative party.

School Funding

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. I am sure that the reason the debate has been over-subscribed is that many hon. Members from both sides of the House have realised that the national funding formula and the cuts faced by our schools are taking them over the edge and building a crisis in our school system.

The Conservative party’s promise was not to spend more on schools; it was to spend more on each pupil, in real terms. Yet the Government will cut per-pupil spending. Under Labour Governments, education spending increased by 4.7% per year. The fact of the matter is quite simple: the Secretary of State and her party entered government on a manifesto that pledged to protect per-pupil funding. That promise is being broken.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I have noticed over the past two years that the Opposition seem to have an awful lot of money to spend, and the hon. Lady is obviously suggesting spending more. Does she accept the analysis performed by the Institute for Fiscal Studies of the Labour and Conservative manifestos, which effectively said that the two parties’ commitments to investment in education came to exactly the same figure?

[Angela Rayner]

The difference between the Labour and Conservative manifestos is that when Labour was in power, in 1997, 2001 and 2005, our manifesto pledged to increase spending on education, and we delivered on that. It is the Conservative Government who are not delivering on their promises. Government Members should hold them to account.

Instead of proper funding for our schools and investment in our future, we have seen years of regressive tax giveaways to the wealthiest, and now the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have threatened to turn Britain into an offshore tax haven for billionaires—a bargain- basement economy that loses billions of pounds in tax revenues each and every year. The Government are faced with choices, and time and again they make the wrong decision.

I know that every Member, on both sides of the House, will want every child in their constituency and in our country to get the best possible start in life, but if the Government do not change their course, that simply will not be possible. So today is the chance for the Secretary of State to tell us whether she will keep her manifesto pledge and commit to provide the real-term increase in school budgets that was promised. If she will not, I call on all Members of the House to send a clear message today: that we will accept nothing but the best possible start in life for every child in our country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

As the hon. Lady recognises, I very much enjoyed living in Acton. It is important to raise standards in Acton schools. I will look very carefully at the particular issue she raises and perhaps write to her to find out what we can do to speed things up.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Easingwold school in my constituency—I must declare an interest as two of my children attend this school, but so do 1,000 other children—has been placed in special measures and will now, of course, become an academy, which I support. The choice of academy has been announced and subsequently retracted, pending surveys of the school. Clearly, either the process is flawed or the way this has been handled is flawed. Will the Secretary of State look at this matter urgently to resolve these problems?

[Justine Greening]

I am aware of this matter, because my hon. Friend has played his role as a fantastic local MP and already raised it with me. The Department is looking to see whether we can make sure the barriers preventing the school from getting a great sponsor that will help to improve it, not just for his own children but for all the children, can be quickly removed.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I do not want to pre-empt the consultation. There are always dangers for Secretaries of State, but there is a danger in inaction, too. We have had an unfair national funding formula for well over a decade, and probably longer. I am not going to go down as the Secretary of State who had the opportunity to try to right that wrong but did not take it.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

21. Will my right hon. Friend confirm that small rural primary schools, which are currently on the margins of financial viability, will be as secure under the new formula with academy status as when maintained by the local authority?

[Nicky Morgan]

We are very aware of the specific demands for rural schools. There will be specific funding to recognise their characteristics, including sparsity in particular. I hope my hon. Friend will take part in the consultation.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

As the hon. Gentleman knows, there will be no change immediately; the current structures will stay in place for at least two years. Of course companies are concerned about what will replace them, and that is exactly what we are working on now with many researchers, businesses and others. The Minister for Universities and Science is taking this very seriously and he has already been speaking to a number of stakeholders.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

A vital component of innovation in business is a superfast broadband connection. Would the Secretary of State consider extending the excellent satellite voucher scheme to allow the pooling of vouchers to enable the establishment of community schemes such as fixed-point wireless?

[Sajid Javid]

I will certainly discuss that with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport. I was pleased to have introduced that scheme in my previous role as Culture Secretary, and it has been making progress. My hon. Friend would perhaps also like to know that infrastructure will be absolutely key to the new national innovation plan, which will be published shortly.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

We are extending broadband coverage throughout the country and it includes hundreds of thousands of SMEs, including in the hon. Lady’s constituency. We are on target, and she may like to know that our USO is twice as high as is recommended in the EU. Already, despite the fact that there is more work to do—I am the first to accept that—we have wider coverage than most of our large EU partners, we have higher average speeds and we have the lowest average price.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

The Ofcom solution to the desperately poor penetration of fibre to premises in the UK is to open up access to BT’s ducts and poles, but that would require reasonable rates of access as well as a clear network map of those ducts and poles. What can the Secretary of State do to make sure that BT complies with those requirements?

[Sajid Javid]

I have read Ofcom’s report carefully and met Ofcom a number of times about that issue, and I have every reason to think that BT will comply. If that does not happen, of course we will look at what action we can take.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend, as a member of the Science and Technology Committee, is a keen advocate of the high-tech sector and particularly of the Goonhilly satellite earth station in Cornwall. He is right to share the Government’s determination to improve STEM skills in this country. That is why the Government fund the Cornwall and West Devon maths hub and the Cornwall science learning partnership, which provide support to schools in west Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly to improve maths and scientific education. We are also reforming technical and professional education and taking steps to improve the quality of careers advice to young people.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

8. Families for schools does an excellent job arranging for business people to visit schools to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs, including science and technology entrepreneurs. Will the Secretary of State outline plans to engage more business people with more schools to encourage more young people to help build our enterprise economy, particularly in science and technology?

[Mr Gibb]

That is precisely what is happening. The local enterprise partnerships are working closely with the careers and enterprise companies because we want to ensure that there is a connection between employers and schools so that a generation of young people inspired by technology can get to know what jobs are available in the technology sector, where, incidentally, earnings are on average 19% higher than for those not working in that sector.

Education

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Monday 1st February 2016 Ministerial Corrections

The following is an extract from Questions to the Secretary of State for Education on 25 January 2016.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Across North Yorkshire we are seeing a 10% increase in the demand for primary school places, and many of my constituents are concerned that we provide the infrastructure to meet rising populations and the increased numbers of houses being built. Will the Minister confirm that the capital funding will be provided to meet that ongoing demand for new places?

[Mr Gibb]

As I said, the Department has allocated £40 million to North Yorkshire for places required by 2015. This is based on the local authority’s own forecast of how many places it will need. We encourage local authorities to negotiate significant developer contributions for new places where they result from developments. I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this matter in more detail. Perhaps, through him, I can persuade North Yorkshire County Council to encourage more free school applications.

[Official Report, 25 January 2016, Vol. 605, c. 13.]

Letter of correction from Mr Gibb:

An error has been identified in the response I gave to the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) during questions to the Secretary of State for Education.

The correct response should have been:

Onshore Oil and Gas

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential role of UK manufacturing in development of onshore oil and gas.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. Shale gas exploration is a key issue in my constituency. Exploration licences have been granted to five operators in Thirsk and Malton, covering the vast majority of my patch. I receive dozens of letters and emails about fracking every week and I care passionately that, if it goes ahead, it is to the great advantage, not disadvantage, of my constituents.

As a local man, I understand why so many local residents worry that the peace and tranquillity of North Yorkshire, including the stunning North York moors, will be disturbed, and why they feel that their lives may never be the same again. I do not believe that that will be the case. As long as fracking is conducted in a balanced and measured way, the advantages for our local and national economies far outweigh the disadvantages.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on obtaining this important debate. On his point about constituents who have concerns, how do we bring people along and convince them that there is no issue? What job of work needs to be done?

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. That is a key issue, which I will come to later on in my speech.

The environmental reasons for moving from coal to gas are compelling. Global carbon dioxide emissions will be found to have declined in 2015, principally owing to reduced coal use in China and the US, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the US Environmental Protection Agency both credit the majority of the US reduction directly to the move from coal to shale. The World Health Organisation recently declared a state of emergency on air quality in many countries. It estimates that the cost of air pollution to the EU alone is a staggering £1 trillion and the human cost is even more dramatic: in 2010, about 600,000 premature deaths in the European region were caused by air pollution.

According to a report by the Health and Environment Alliance, coal-fired power stations are responsible for the following effects on UK citizens: 1,600 premature deaths; 68,000 additional days of medication; and 363,000 working days lost. Diesel cars and coal-fired power stations must become things of the past.

Geopolitically, domestically produced shale can help us develop a more effective foreign policy. Despite growing turmoil in the middle east, UK energy prices are falling in the markets, at the fuel stations and for our domestic energy. Traders can clearly see that the west is developing independent sources of energy and the British Geological Survey estimated that 10% of the predicted UK reserves could meet our gas energy needs for 40 years.

As with North sea oil and gas, fracking could lead to a new industrial supply chain. In 2014, 375,000 people benefited from employment and tax revenues of £2.1 billion resulted from the North sea oil and gas industry. Reports by the Institute of Directors and Ernst and Young indicate that shale gas could provide 64,000 jobs and £33 billion of domestic investment. Domestic is the most important word. This opportunity could spawn tens of thousands of jobs, and good jobs, too.

In my constituency, we have many world-class engineering businesses and a first-class training organisation called Derwent Training Association, which specialises in training top-quality light and heavy electronic and electrical engineers. Such businesses can be the innovators of the future, taking the industry forward and making it cleaner and more efficient. For example, it is possible to convert methane to hydrogen—a CO₂-free fossil fuel—and the University of Strathclyde has established the UK centre for hydraulic fracturing to develop quieter, more energy-efficient equipment.

Shale would offer significant opportunities for many UK industries. It is estimated that it would require 12,000 km of steel, worth £2.3 billion. Recycling of waste water by domestic businesses would also be required and that would be a £4.1 billion opportunity. Other opportunities include rig building and environmental monitoring. Our chemicals industry could also be a big winner by capitalising on cheaper natural gas liquids often found alongside shale deposits.

If the UK could demonstrate the success and environmental credentials of shale gas, we could export our knowledge, skills and technologies to other countries in Europe and further afield, just as we did with conventional exploration. We must not repeat the mistakes of offshore wind, where we are the market leader in generation but lack any significant supply chain.

In the future, power generation will be centralised, cars and home heating—probably using air source heat pumps—will be electric and battery storage will be commonplace. Some people will argue that a new fossil fuel is a backward step that will prevent the energy industry from innovating. I disagree. Yes, renewables should be part of the future, but subsidies will only hold back their efficacy. I think that we should have reduced subsidies more progressively, as has happened in the US, but the Government had little choice given the wild and unmanaged overspend overseen—or probably not seen at all—by the previous Secretary of State.

Let us think of the technology sector. Deep Blue is the computer best known for defeating world chess champion Garry Kasparov on 11 May 1997, but a modern smartphone is 30 times more powerful than Deep Blue and made without Government intervention or subsidy. Should not the Government simply set the parameters for CO₂ emissions and air quality and then let industry deliver the solutions? Is that not a better solution than paying homeowners unsustainable amounts of money to put solar panels on their roofs?

Of course, we can contemplate welcoming a new industry only if it is compatible with daily life in North Yorkshire. Last autumn, I paid a visit at my own expense to Pennsylvania to speak to local people, the US regulators, academics, protestors and operators about the impacts of the shale gas industry on the economy, the community and the environment. I did not see significant and widespread industrialisation of rural areas, but we do need to learn from early regulatory failures and carefully plan for the industry’s cumulative impacts.

We need a single regulator to make sure that there is a clear line of accountability. We need independent regulation and monitoring at every stage and, crucially, a rolling five-year local plan to co-ordinate activities. We need a local plan for fracking, covering a five-year roll-out and detailed solutions for key concerns. We also need traffic plans for the movement of heavy industrial equipment. Heavy industrial plant connected with shale gas, such as compressor stations and refineries, needs to be located in areas used to hosting industrial chemical sites.

We need minimum distances to settlements and schools and minimum distances between sites to prevent the industrialisation that many people are concerned about. We also need to consider the impact on other important parts of our local economies and, of course, the visual impact on our countryside, so we need buffer zones around our national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty.

In an age of computer-generated imagery and simulated time-lapse photography, we can and must paint the picture for the public on how we can carry out fracking safely and discreetly, or risk years of delays owing to public concern. The effects on the economy and on job creation locally in Pennsylvania were positive, and I met various supply-chain businesses that were clearly thriving.

We must look at the whole picture. We cannot afford to ignore this opportunity. Under this Government, the economy is doing well and unemployment has come down, but we would benefit from having a clean, low-cost, low-carbon, home-grown energy source that supports domestic businesses, creates local, well-paid jobs and makes our economy and our nation strong by generating energy for generations to come.

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[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

It is a pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on securing this important debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), who, in a campaigning speech, made some powerful points on behalf of her constituency and in favour of well-paid jobs and the future of the steel industry in south Yorkshire.

I am the chair of the chemical industry all-party group and co-chair of the energy-intensive industries all-party group. The UK chemical and pharmaceutical industries have a strong record as manufacturing’s No. 1 export earner. However, the fact that they are energy-intensive industries that compete globally means that their export success is critically dependent on secure and competitively priced energy supplies.

The chemical industry uses energy supplies both as fuel and as a raw material to make the basic chemicals that provide key building blocks for almost every sector of manufacturing and the wider economy. UK energy supplies are becoming uncompetitive and less secure. Supplies of North sea gas for use as raw materials and fuel are diminishing, and there is increased reliance on less secure supplies of imported gas. Our onshore oil and gas reserves offer an unrivalled opportunity to secure our energy supply for the future, crucially lessening our dependence on foreign energy markets while also creating tens of thousands of high-skill, high-wage jobs and generating billions in tax revenues.

The political realities in Russia and Ukraine, as well as parts of the middle east, show in no uncertain terms the increasing importance of energy security in the coming years. We cannot afford to be complacent. It is estimated that fracking has offered the US and Canada approximately 100 years of gas security, and it has presented an opportunity to generate electricity with half the carbon dioxide emissions of coal. Our shale reserves offer a stepping stone in our transition to a low-carbon future, especially the move from coal. Fracking can undoubtedly provide us with a legitimate, cleaner means of gradually bridging the gap between fossil fuels and renewable energy. Our energy security and the reduction of CO₂ emissions are critical considerations when we think about fracking as part of a broad energy mix, but I firmly believe that scientific and engineering evidence should be front and centre.

The safety and security of people, their homes and their businesses are paramount to any discussion. As I have said in the past, I cannot and will not support anything that may pose a risk to the health, safety and wellbeing of local residents, the natural environment, homes or businesses. Perhaps that is an area in which the Government need to do more to convince the great British public. I recently held two public meetings, in Frodsham and Helsby, where there is currently fracking exploration. I invited representatives of the Environment Agency, Public Health England and the Health and Safety Executive, together with a local property surveyor, representatives of Ineos with more than 50 years’ experience in the industry, and a rather sceptical professor.

The meetings were particularly well attended. It is interesting that the public bodies are relatively poor at getting points across. They are there to reassure the public, but they are reluctant public speakers. They are reluctant to engage face to face with members of the public, who have legitimate reasons to be concerned. People may have been told that their property will not be worth as much, that it may be susceptible to subsidence, or that their health may be at risk. There are many such stories—I regard them as scare stories, but they are based on what is said by powerful lobby groups such as Frack Free Dee, which point to what has happened in Australia and America in the past.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

I had a similar experience at a public meeting in my constituency. All the regulators were on a panel there, and it was clear that some questions and answers fell between the cracks. Does my hon. Friend accept that a single regulator with overall responsibility for the industry would improve public confidence?

[Graham Evans]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point, and I agree. The three agencies involved are the Environment Agency, Public Health England and the Health and Safety Executive, and they go together as a threesome. If the Environment Agency says it cannot or will not attend, Public Health England and the HSE do not turn up. They go as a triple act. The people involved must of course be skilled in what their agency does, but I point out to the Minister that that should include being skilled in public speaking. That means speaking to the public in plain language, not jargon. People’s concerns are legitimate, but I also believe that there is evidence available to reassure the public. I am sorry to say that it is a struggle. We politicians are used to knocking on doors and being eye to eye, face to face, with the public, so we can argue and explain complicated issues to our constituents. However, the public agencies need to raise their game and stop using jargon.

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[Kirsty Blackman]

I appreciate that point and I will come on to manufacturing; I just wanted to answer first a few of the points that had been brought up throughout the debate. “Fracking” is the term that my constituents use and the term that is recognised throughout the UK. That is why I was using it.

It has been mentioned a lot that we should ensure that controls are in place and there is proper regulation. The Scottish Government’s point of view and the direction that we are taking is that we want to prove the safety first and, if we do decide to do this, ensure that the controls are in place after that.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

During the moratorium, what evidence has been collated about the safety or otherwise of shale gas?

[Kirsty Blackman]

We are still in the process of researching this. The research does not finish until later this year, and then in 2017 the public consultation will finish, so we are not at the point in time at which we will be publishing the evidence. I think that that is reasonable. It is reasonable to look at the research properly before we bring it all together—

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[Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab)]

We have had a very interesting debate. I have certainly learned a lot by listening to contributions from hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber. I thank everyone for that and congratulate the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) on securing the debate. He told us that fracking—I am sorry to use that term—was a big issue in his constituency. Nevertheless, he made the case in relation to clean air, strategic interests of our economy, the industrial supply chain and jobs, including in the steel industry, tax revenues and exports. He slightly deprecated Government intervention in the economy, I think, by giving examples of economic progress where that had not happened. Then he outlined a whole series of Government interventions that he thought were necessary for this industry to work appropriately in the context of his constituency, so I think that there is a balance to be struck in relation to what the Government’s role is in developing a new industry of this kind.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The deprecation that I expressed was more about providing short-term subsidies that are then withdrawn, rather than thinking long term. The interventions that I suggest are long-term interventions that would control and regulate the industry.

[Kevin Brennan]

I understand that, although I think that there is a case to be made for saying that some of the subsidies that the Government have withdrawn could have been planned in a longer term way. We will leave that point, however, because is not the subject of our debate.

I praise my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith), as other hon. Members have done, for her speech and for campaigning assiduously, particularly on behalf of the steel industry and her constituents. She put the case very well. Whatever we may think about the industry, the House has taken a decision, although it may not be the one that we wanted. There are clearly opportunities for British manufacturing, so we have to take a pragmatic approach and plan accordingly. We need a strategic approach to ensure that UK plc and jobs in the UK benefit to the greatest extent possible from the development of the industry. My hon. Friend outlined the potential for the UK chemicals industry and for manufacturing in general. She made some good points about the pumps that would be required for the industry, about sand and cement and about the steel industry. I congratulate her on her contribution.

The hon. Member for Weaver Vale (Graham Evans) described a public meeting in his constituency. I understand the difficulty of getting the message across. Energy generation is one of the great “wicked issues” of politics. We all know the rule in politics: everybody wants cheap, plentiful, clean energy at the push of a button, but nobody wants it to be produced anywhere near to where they live. Those two things, as we all know, are incompatible. We are required to wrestle with such wicked issues every day as constituency MPs, Ministers and leaders in our community and across our country. The hon. Gentleman was quite right to point that out.

I believe that Ministers might have a more direct role than the hon. Gentleman seems to think in taking the message to the public. That is part of Ministers’ responsibility, and they should not duck away from taking on difficult issues. In my experience, when Ministers take such responsibility, in the longer term they produce results for the Government in question—not that it is my duty to give them advice on how to win elections. I certainly think that Ministers have a direct role, although I appreciate that the Minister might not wish to spend his Friday nights in the way in which the hon. Gentleman described.

The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Stuart Blair Donaldson) gave us an interesting insight, in his brief contribution, into the fact that the industry had its place in the 19th century. Shale was exploited in his constituency in the 19th century, so it is not a new concept.

The hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Neil Parish) told us about his experience in Europe, and told us not to blame him for the bad things that have gone on there. Yesterday, other hon. Members and I attended a dinner with the aerospace industries. Since the start of the European collaboration that is Airbus, the European share of the commercial airline market has gone from 18% of the world market to 50%. It was made absolutely clear to us last night that that would not have happened without European co-operation and our membership of the European Union, so it is not all bad.

The hon. Gentleman described his friend the hon. Member for Thirsk and Malton as brave, and I am sure that he is. I am sure he would be equally brave if his majority were 456 rather than 19,456. He is quite right that it is always tough to have to wrestle with concerns from one’s own constituents.

The hon. Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) made, as ever, an informative and expert speech. He pointed out—this is the elephant in the debate—that the current wholesale price makes it substantially more difficult for the industry to get going than might otherwise be the case. He made a well-informed and interesting speech, in which he pointed out the potential for other industries.

We had a speech from the SNP spokesperson, the hon. Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman), who laid out her party’s position. I wish my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) had made a speech. He made many interventions, all of which were interesting and, as ever, informative. We slightly missed out, but he did give us the benefit of his interventions.

It is my responsibility to set out our position as a party. We have already laid out the conditions that we wanted to see in place before the industry developed further, to ensure the implementation of the protections that hon. Members have expressed concern about. I will not go into great detail on that, because we have not got time. Given that the UK will rely on gas, on any estimate, until at least the 2030s and possibly beyond that—we are very reliant on imported gas from Norway and Qatar, as was pointed out during the debate—we support exploratory drilling, but it must not be at any cost. We made that clear in the amendments we tabled last year to the Infrastructure Bill. Despite conceding some of those points during the debate, the Government have somewhat reneged on them since the general election. We laid out a large number of conditions that we thought were necessary before exploratory drilling could go ahead. I will not list them now, because of the time, but they are well established on the record. That remains our party’s policy.

We have criticised the Government for allowing communities to decide whether they want onshore wind farms but not extending the same community involvement to this industry. There are questions about the appropriate level of local concern over a strategic industry of this kind. In relation to onshore wind, the Government have rather undermined their argument about the industry by the position that they have taken. I will not press any further on that point.

The development of this industry offers great opportunities for manufacturing industry in this country. One might call it “manufracturing”, as some have done. The Government must acknowledge that unless they bring forward an active industrial strategy, those opportunities will not be realised. We have heard about opportunities that have been missed with other industries, including offshore wind, because of a failure to understand and exploit the supply chain opportunities of a developing industry. There is a great danger that the same thing will happen in relation to this industry as it develops, unless there is an active industrial strategy. That must be driven by the Government being prepared to pull every lever at their disposal and bring all the appropriate parties together in the same room, as the previous Government did, for example, with the creation of the Automotive Council. In fairness, that was carried on beyond 2010 and is still in existence. It has brought tremendous benefit to UK manufacturing by getting industry and interested parties together and encouraging them to understand that there is a commonality of need, even where people are in competition with each other, for the sector.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Once again, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I apologise for my initial lack of knowledge about protocol. I am grateful to Government and Opposition Members for the constructive way in which the debate has been dealt with. I am also grateful to the Minister. I quite understand that onshore oil and gas is not his normal brief, but skills and industry is, and we have heard compelling cases from Members on both sides of the House about the opportunities for the steel, chemical and engineering industries. There are huge opportunities for jobs for young people, which would give them a chance in life as young engineers. I welcome the recent announcement by the Secretary of State for Education that schools will be required to direct young people to engineering as well as to university, which will be key.

We need clear regulation. People have concerns about who they would go to if something went wrong—would it be the Environment Agency or the Health and Safety Executive? Having a single regulator, or a lead regulator, would deal with some of those concerns. We also need a clear, well articulated plan. The shadow Minister mentioned my majority. That is a clear case in point. We need to ensure that Members of all parties—whatever their majorities—are willing to support onshore drilling on the basis that it is the right thing for the UK and a real opportunity for UK manufacturing. It is incumbent on the Government to clearly illustrate how that can be done in a way that eases local people’s concerns.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin Hollinrake Excerpts

Monday 25th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

The right hon. Gentleman will know that Conservative Members take social mobility very seriously, and we have an excellent record on it; we even allowed the Liberal Democrats into government once. On the early intervention grant, we have increased the amount of money for troubled families and are deploying it in a very targeted way to help the families who need it most.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

9. What plans the Government have to meet demand for school places in Thirsk and Malton.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr Nick Gibb)]

The Government are spending £23 billion on school buildings to create 600,000 new school places by 2021, open 500 new free schools, and address essential maintenance needs. Supporting local authorities in their responsibility to ensure sufficient school places in their area is one of our top priorities. North Yorkshire received £12 million in funding for new school places between 2011 and 2015 and has been allocated a further £40 million to create the further places required by 2018.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Across North Yorkshire we are seeing a 10% increase in the demand for primary school places, and many of my constituents are concerned that we provide the infrastructure to meet rising populations and the increased numbers of houses being built. Will the Minister confirm that the capital funding will be provided to meet that ongoing demand for new places?

[Mr Gibb]

As I said, the Department has allocated £40 million to North Yorkshire for places required by 2015. This is based on the local authority’s own forecast of how many places it will need. We encourage local authorities to negotiate significant developer contributions for new places where they result from developments. I would be delighted to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this matter in more detail. Perhaps, through him, I can persuade North Yorkshire County Council to encourage more free school applications.[Official Report, 1 February 2016, Vol. 605, c. 5-6MC.]