Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Thursday 23rd January 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

Ensuring that any agency of Government or any council can live within its means is a crucial part of good governance in these difficult times. The approach that the Government have taken is to do that through making savings, difficult as it is. That is clearly working and I recommend it to the Labour-led council in Worcester.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

10. What assessment he has made of innovation in the UK manufacturing sector.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

Manufacturing businesses are among the most innovative in the UK. In 2012, they spent £12 billion on research and development. We are investing in R and D alongside them. In particular, we are backing eight great technologies that are shaping the industries of the future.

[Laura Sandys]

The Government focus a lot on labour productivity, but what support are they giving to innovation in resource productivity, which accounts for two thirds of the costs in manufacturing?

[Mr Willetts]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on the interesting and imaginative work she is doing on this subject with other hon. Friends. Through our support for R and D—notably but not solely through our catapult centres—we are rewarding innovation that ensures that businesses operate with lower overheads.

Pupil Premium

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

That is an absolutely crucial point. The Department is not going to go back to the fashion under some previous Secretaries of State of micro-managing individual schools and telling them what interventions they need to deliver. Schools have a better understanding of the interventions that will work for the school and the individuals than we will ever do, sitting in a Department in London. However, we are going to hold schools to account for ensuring that whatever interventions they use are successful. We have worked closely with Ofsted to ensure that this is a key part of the accountability process for schools, and that there is a much greater focus by Ofsted on narrowing the gap. The chief inspector has made it clear that schools will no longer be ranked outstanding if they are failing in this key area, and there will be a requirement on schools that are not delivering a good standard to commission support from key leaders in education, such as national leaders of education, to bring advice into the school when it is failing to narrow the gaps. We have also recently appointed the widely respected John Dunford, who has great experience in education, to serve as a champion of the pupil premium and to spread the message about best practice to schools across the country.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

Picking up on best practice, the primary school in the poorest ward in my constituency, Newington, has seen a 40% increase in standards in English and maths. The head teacher puts that down solely to the pupil premium so, locally, people will be very pleased with this suite of measures. One measure that seems to be being misinterpreted is the assessment of three-year-olds. Responsible teachers will make an assessment of the young people coming into their school so that they can put the right measures in place. It is not an exam, as has been suggested by some Opposition Members.

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Many schools are already using baseline assessment on entry to school; that is the rational thing to do. It is also the most rational way of measuring progress, rather than doing it over an arbitrary period. I also agree with her that the additional money for the pupil premium and the additional accountability and focus will be crucial to narrowing the gap. The huge amounts of money going into schools with large numbers of pupil-premium pupils will result in some dramatic and impressive progress over the next few years in improving the lot of young people from those backgrounds.

Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

Yes.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

2. What assessment he has made of the effects of the pupil premium on pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

The pupil premium represents a significant investment of £1.875 billion since its introduction in April 2011. We are keen to ensure that schools’ use of the premium leads to real improvements for disadvantaged pupils. We have two evaluations under way—a study we have commissioned from Ofsted and our own external evaluation of the premium’s first year. The findings of both reviews will be available next spring, and will further support our drive to promote best practice.

[Laura Sandys]

I welcome the Minister to his position and thank him for his answer. Fifty-six per cent. of the children at Newington primary school are on free school meals. In the headmaster’s view, the pupil premium has doubled key stage 2 attainment and improved maths and English scores by 41%. Will the Minister give a commitment that the money will be in the hands of the head teacher and not ring-fenced in future?

[Mr Laws]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her kind words and am delighted to hear of the success of the pupil premium in her local school. I can confirm that we are not going back to the days under the previous Government, who sought to micro-manage each piece of education expenditure.

Energy Supply

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Westminster Hall

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk (Mr Yeo), the Chairman of our Select Committee. As he rightly said, we have been involved in producing a wide range of reports. Subjects such as energy can be quite dry, but every 10 or 15 years, they become the most exciting portfolio across all Government Departments.

I welcome the new Minister to his post, which he takes at a time when energy is perhaps one of the most important and interesting issues that the country faces, with energy security absolutely at the heart of that. I look forward to his first appointment with the Committee, which I am sure will be in the near future.

I also follow my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk in recognising the extraordinary work and success of the Minister’s predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), who was an exemplary Minister with a reputation both here and abroad. I am sure that the new Minister realises that his post is, in many ways, a sales job. It is about knocking on doors around the world to try to ensure that we find the investment we need, which is close to £200 billion. I am sure that fellow members of the Committee will join me in hoping that my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden has an interesting future beyond the portfolio that he has left.

Energy security involves two competing issues, in that we face a significant increase in energy consumption but, at the same time, a decline in UK production. I do not want to make too much of a political point, but that situation did not arise only yesterday—we have faced it for the past 15 or 20 years, so it has been straightforward to predict. It is unfortunate that we are now racing to try to achieve some policy certainty and reinvestment in the energy sector when it has been quite obvious that we have been facing this problem for many years.

Globally, some would say that the last century was dominated by the politics of ideas. This century will be about the politics of resources. That is what makes the energy security debate so important, because it is about much more than the energy sector. It is also about our future industrial growth, our competitiveness and keeping the lights on, and in a much less benign environment than before. There is demand for energy, food and water from domestic audiences, whether they are in the UK, China, Russia, or even countries where democracy is not necessarily the watchword. For the UK and all these other countries, access to resources will be absolutely crucial and will determine their economic success.

No one is proposing energy independence, but I have a personal experience that illustrates why I am particularly sensitive to the issue of energy security. I worked in the energy sector for about 15 to 20 years. Before I came to this place, I worked for the Georgian Government in the Caucasus, advising them on the Baku-Jehan pipeline. The second time I was in Tbilisi, I came out of my hotel room and saw a man who was not much further away from me than my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk is now. Somebody then went up to that man and shot him in the head. That was related to a large energy deal that was being proposed by a Russian company. The Georgian businessman had turned down the deal, and instead of a shareholder meeting, a P45 or any form of renegotiation, there was a murder in the main street of Tbilisi. That might sound unusual to people in Whitehall, but it is not necessarily unusual in parts of the world where energy is politics.

In addition, when I was sitting having a nice meal in Georgia, the lights went out for 20 minutes. It was apparently a message from the President of Russia to the President of Georgia—“Please will you give me a ring?” He gives him a ring, and 20 minutes later the lights go on. The Georgians then turn around to each other and say, “So, we have lost a bit more of our sovereignty.”

Those examples might seem extreme, but this is where politics and resources come together. Although we might not be exposed to the politicisation of energy, the international market will be, and we must clearly understand that the world of benign energy trading might become a bit more difficult.

Unlike for many countries, it will be not the insecurity of supply that we have to address, but the cost of the supply. The cost of volatility in our energy sector will greatly affect the desirability for inward investment into this country. In India, the electricity went down for three or four days, and that was a massive blow to the country’s attractiveness as an investment market. We might not have the actual lights out, but we will have a problem when it comes to cost, and the cost to our industrial base is crucial. As a result, we should be looking for consistency and predictability to the same extent as considering the lowest cost at which we can deliver energy.

What does a secure energy environment look like? I agree with the Chairman of our Committee that it looks like a truly mixed energy economy, because that will deliver us the greatest resilience. We need to consider increased domestic production, because international volatility will be one of the most destructive economic factors for British business. Our domestic production will, of course, include nuclear—I am a great proponent of nuclear, but we need to get the investment profile and environment right—wind, gas with carbon capture and storage, and coal.

[Neil Carmichael]

My hon. Friend makes some interesting points about threats and volatilities. Does she agree that the European single market is a tool that we could extend into energy and thus assist in that area?

[Laura Sandys]

I had an interesting experience with my right hon. Friend the Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), who has never been known to be a great proponent of Europe. He said in a Chatham House speech before the election—perhaps in 2008 or 2009—that European Union member states should become a co-ordinated and active consumer of energy when it comes to Russia and certain parts of central Asia. I therefore agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael).

To return to the question of a mixed energy economy, new technologies must also play a part in the resilient energy mix, but anyone who thinks that any of the energy generation sources are pain-free is misguided. Planning applications for shale gas, which I have had in my area, make onshore wind farms look like a walk in the park. The cost of nuclear, including de-risking, will be a lot more than the Government think. In many ways, that reiterates what the Committee Chairman said about considering taking on responsibility for build costs.

The wind sector needs to become much more efficient and to understand how to better engage communities. We must recognise that no energy solution comes without some pain. We must not necessarily look to pick winners and losers, but consider how the mixed energy economy needs to be addressed. We all need to appreciate that opportunities are not simple and straightforward.

The Minister faces an interesting in-tray. Energy security will be achieved through a range of Government policies, although sometimes the policies are so complex that they might create competing behaviours. There are capacity mechanisms, increasing market liquidity, which is crucial, storage policies, which were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud, distributed energy incentives, which have not had sufficient profile and enough focus placed on them by the Department, and smart technologies. A range of interactive measures can help to reduce wastage, increase productivity and hedge costs. If energy security means anything, we must ensure that we closely consider demand reduction. Our Committee was a bit concerned and rather disappointed that the Department did not include in the draft Bill a significant set of policies on demand reduction. That can be a very exciting win for the UK when it comes to competitiveness and to building a resilient and modern economic base.

In conclusion, I want to highlight a significant problem with the country’s energy security. This reflects something that the Committee Chair said, and I hope that the Minister will be able to resolve it. The issue is policy certainty. Companies are much less worried—strangely enough—about what incentives there are, or about exactly what they feel they will get out of choosing one energy source or another. However, we currently have rhetoric and we have reality. We have a fast track on the low-carbon economy with one measure, and the brakes appear to be put on with another. We have an opportunity to build a really strong economy around our need for energy investment, but we sometimes confuse the investment community about our intentions. Certainty and clarity of direction will offer the Minister the greatest opportunity for success when he travels the world’s energy company boardrooms, selling the UK as one of the most predictable and reliable investment locations in the world.

Safeguarding Children

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

We had this conversation yesterday in the Select Committee on Education, of course, and I said that in response to the Action for Children report we had examined closely whether there needed to be an update to the law, which goes back to the 1933 definition. We were strongly advised that we did not need to change the law, which the courts and children’s services are interpreting in a contemporary way. As I was speaking yesterday, we were putting on the website a neglect toolkit, designed with Action for Children and the university of Stirling. It includes some practical tools for detecting, intervening and dealing with cases of neglect. That is a much more practical way to achieve real results now.

Revising statutory guidance is clearly not the only thing we need to do—far from it. The consultation forms part of a much wider programme of reforms that includes Ofsted’s new inspection framework, which began in May 2012 and has a stronger focus on the quality of practice and the effectiveness of help provided to children. It is much more children-centred. From June 2013, the planned new joint inspections will make a further important difference by looking at the contribution of all local agencies to keeping children safe. We are reforming inspection so that it makes judgments about the things that really matter, and so that it looks at how agencies work together to safeguard children more from the perspective of the qualitative outcomes for the child.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that moving looked-after children from one local authority to another creates greater difficulty, namely ensuring that case notes are transferred and that the conversation between the different agencies is sustained? When children are moved, their longer-term safety is eroded because of the distance and lack of contact between the source local authority and the receiving one.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend knows exactly what I think about that—we have discussed it at length. She has become something of expert in this matter because it is an issue in her constituency, as it is in mine. As a result of her approaches and events in Rochdale and other alarming cases, we will announce shortly, as I told the Committee yesterday, the results of the additional work done by the Deputy Children’s Commissioner on how we ensure that children are placed out of area only when appropriate, and when they can be safely and appropriately looked after. That should happen at the moment, but it does not in practice. The sufficiency principle, which we have overhauled once, needs more work. I will be happy to make those announcements in detail within the next few weeks, because this is a serious matter.

I want to get to the end of this speech so that other hon. Members can contribute, so I am going to talk fast, as I often do. The motion calls for early intervention programmes

“to be promoted on the best available evidence”.

We know that the earlier help is given to vulnerable children and families, the more chance there is of turning lives around and protecting children from harm. We are therefore continuing to work with children’s services, police and the NHS to shift the focus on to earlier intervention and early help.

Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Willetts]

Let us be absolutely clear that the Prime Minister, the Secretary of State and I have all been on trade missions to India because we recognise its importance as an export market. British exports are growing by 10% and we will continue to argue the case for Typhoon as an excellent and cost-effective deal for the Indian Government. Of course, Ministers would be very happy to meet employees.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

Economic growth has been greatly enhanced in east Kent by the huge amount of work done by BIS for the enterprise zone and the regional growth fund. What more can be done through UK Trade & Investment to promote life sciences internationally and to get inward investment into east Kent?

[Mr Willetts]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Of course, this week is the first anniversary of the announcement by Pfizer that it was planning to close completely its facility at Sandwich. That will now be transformed into a research and business park, not least thanks to the excellent efforts of my hon. Friend. Indeed, Pfizer will be an anchor tenant employing, we believe, 750 Pfizer staff. That shows we can fight back and we can maintain life sciences activity in this country. Through the proposals we set out in December, we aim to increase that.

Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman has been a fantastic campaigner on behalf of Tibshelf school and, as he has often pointed out in this House, the school has had to be kept aloft by pit props and is not fit for purpose. We want to ensure that the priority school building programme, to which I think he refers, will provide the resources from the Department for Education’s budget, but we will work with the local authority to ensure that we refurbish the school appropriately. I should stress, however, that final decisions on each school in the programme will not be made until at least next month.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

I had a very good morning on Friday when I went to two infant schools. Both say that a larger number of children are coming in with speech and communication problems. What measures will we take in response to Jean Gross’s communications strategy, and how will we make it a priority to support those children at a very early age to resolve such problems?

[Sarah Teather]

As the hon. Lady says, there is a very particular issue with communication problems and ensuring that we identify them early. That is part of the reason I am working closely with colleagues at the Department of Health to implement significant numbers of new health visitors and to ensure that we commission services better. The education health and care plan, which will integrate services, will, I hope, make a real difference to children in that position.

Oral Answers to Questions

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

That is a typically acute point from the hon. Gentleman. One of the things we are doing is to invite the new group of 100 teaching schools that we have designated to play a closer role in collaboration with universities. Just last week, I was talking to the Royal Society about how important it is that universities and learned societies ensure that the best teachers can become accredited as masters in their field so that they remain up to speed with developments in their subject.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

T3. The Minister has made great headway in ensuring that looked-after children are not sent beyond their local authority boundary. However, 30 children from Greenwich have been placed in South Thanet in addition to the number it has placed before, and the number from Lewisham has increased by 15 in the past six months. I wonder what more we can do.

[Tim Loughton]

I am well aware of my hon. Friend’s genuine interest in that matter and she has been to see me with other colleagues. When we brought in the new guidance earlier this year, I wrote to every director of children’s services to remind them of their obligations to house looked-after children as close to home as possible. I have taken the matter up again with the office of the Mayor of London and will be making further representations to those London boroughs that particularly impact on south-eastern seaside resorts such as her own. They should not have to take such large pressure.

Grammar Schools

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2011 Westminster Hall

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson) for securing the debate. He has said many things that I agree with, particularly on the Kent grammar school system.

When I arrived in Kent as a parliamentary candidate, I had no great understanding of the grammar school system, although I did have an open mind. I wanted to find out what parents felt about the issue, and when knocking on doors I came across families in which one child went to a grammar school and the other to the high school. Sometimes the child at the high school went on to sixth form at the grammar school. I found that Kent had an integrated system and that it was impossible to knock on a door and say, “That is a grammar school house,” or, “That is a high school house.” Perhaps that has something to do with the number of grammar schools in Kent. In my constituency, as in that of my hon. Friend, there are four grammar schools. Therefore, 30% of young people in my constituency go to a grammar school, and it also allows children who have finished their high school education to attend sixth-form college at a grammar school. People can access that excellence at any time.

One thing that struck me very starkly was social mobility. We look for excellence in education, and no one disputes that grammar schools provide that. There is always, however, a big question about whether grammar schools attract only children from middle-class families. One school in my constituency, Chatham House, surveyed its pupils’ parents and found that only 20% had been through higher education. Therefore, 80% of children at that school will be the first generation to go into further education or university. For me, that provided a stark understanding of the issue, and it sounded a clarion call that we are talking about a route into higher education for a first generation of children.

In one of the richer areas of east Kent—an interesting thing to say, because the area has high deprivation— Sir Roger Manwood’s grammar school in Sandwich has an average number of children on free school meals. Again, that reasserts the message coming across from teachers.

[Kevin Brennan]

I am sure that the statistics that the hon. Lady has quoted are correct, but is she aware that overall, the ratio of state to grammar schools is 25:1? There are 158 pupils on free school meals in non-grammar schools for every one in a grammar school. The ratio is 158:1, rather than 25:1, which is what it should be. Is the grammar school mentioned by the hon. Lady highly unusual?

[Laura Sandys]

It is not unusual for me or for parents who send their children to grammar schools in my area, but different counties have different systems. Kent has a high number of grammar schools that are attended by between 25% and 30% of children. That offers a huge opportunity for young people from diverse backgrounds to access the grammar school system. Other counties have few grammar schools. That is a pity, because the schools attract only a small number of children, which may not include a representative percentage of the population as a whole. In many ways, that supports my advocacy of the need for more grammar schools to create a proper mixed environment and educational system that is appropriate for different children with different abilities at different ages.

As my hon. Friends and I have said, grammar schools do not work in isolation, and when seeking excellence in our grammar schools, it is crucial that we also seek it in our high schools and other schools in the area. We cannot promote grammar schools without promoting a mixed educational environment.

Kent is lucky to have very good high schools, and I ask the Department to look at how they are judged during Ofsted reports. It is important that the system in which those schools operate is understood by Ofsted and that the 30% of children in my area who enter the grammar school system is understood in the context of what those high schools have achieved in that mixed and selective system.

I wish to be clear on three points. First, we must not undermine excellence. I was concerned to hear about the campaign in Reading, because if we end up with a situation in which grammar schools, which are excellent schools, are threatened or put under pressure by parents, we will do our education system a big disservice. Secondly, I would like the Department to be clear about the opportunities and social mobility offered by grammar schools, when there are enough of them in an area to enable them to increase their intake. Thirdly, I will always be dedicated to my high schools, and I am clear that they need to achieve a huge amount. The Government must understand the selective nature of the system in which they operate.

We are looking to increase opportunities for schools to expand, extend their interests and attract parental choice, and that will be the same for grammar schools, high schools and technical colleges. At the same time, we must maintain and sustain the excellence that currently exists in our grammar school system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this important debate. Like everyone who has spoken before me, I am a strong supporter of grammar schools. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Dartford (Gareth Johnson), whom I congratulate on securing the debate, I am a product of the grammar school in the constituency that I represent.

Rugby retains grammar schools, but we have the best of both worlds because we also have non-selective schools. We have a non-selective school in Ashlawn that has a grammar stream, and we have two high-class, selective, single-sex grammar schools—Lawrence Sheriff school for boys and Rugby high school for girls. I should declare an interest, in that my daughter is a pupil at the girls’ school.

As I say, Rugby has grammar schools, and I am a product of Lawrence Sheriff. My hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight (Mr Turner) was there a few years before me, and I came to this place with my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), who also went to the school. The school therefore has a proud tradition of producing Members of Parliament.

At the school, I was in a class with the sons of cement factory workers and scrap metal merchants, each of whom was the first member of their family to go to university. I therefore have a good understanding of the role of grammar schools in providing social mobility.

We retain grammar schools in Rugby because of the hard work and diligence of an earlier generation of politicians, who fought to retain our selective schools in the face of the comprehensivisation of Britain. The fact that we have grammar schools is a major asset for the community that I represent. Our schools are in high demand. Parents move into our area to provide their children with the opportunity to attend a grammar school, and they also apply from substantial distances—20 or 30 miles away—to secure that kind of education for their children. We know the schools are popular, and it is because of the high standards and excellence that a grammar school provides. My hon. Friend the Member for Dartford gave a full account of the academic qualifications secured at most grammar schools.

I am pleased that the Government recognise the strengths and qualities that grammar schools can bring the country, and that they have brought forward a policy that will enable them to expand. In Rugby, we have been looking forward to the expansion of our grammar schools in the past few years, because of our party’s policy to permit them to grow where there is population growth. Rugby has a very positive approach to new housing development. We have a site that is expected to take 6,200 new homes in the next 20 years, and we are expecting the grammar school provision to increase in proportion. It is great news that we may be able to go further.

I am anxious to ensure that our grammar schools should be available for the broadest possible number of children in our community. I have one or two anxieties about the selection process that will take place in an era of academies. Until now, the selection arrangements for our existing grammar schools have been run by the local authority, and I have two concerns about the process to which the authority has moved in recent years.

The first concern is about the need for parents to opt in. That came home clearly to me much as it did to my hon. Friend the Member for South Thanet (Laura Sandys). I was on a doorstep talking to parents who had a bright and gifted young child, who had been denied the opportunity of a grammar school place because they had not filled in the necessary form in time for the child to take the exam. I was horrified that there was a system in which parents must opt in rather than opting out. I should like the Minister to comment on an opt-out system. I recognise that there will be parents who decide that a selective education is not right for their children, or who do not want to put their children under the burden of taking a selection exam. However, if we are to make our grammar schools the engines of social mobility that they should be, we should make certain that a child’s ability to sit the selection exam is not determined by their parents’ ability to get a form filled in on time, and sent back to the school and local authority.

[Laura Sandys]

Another issue in my constituency is that fewer girls than boys apply to grammar school. There is no reason for that, other than parents’ not necessarily looking at their girls, and their potential to go to grammar school, in the same way. My hon. Friend’s system would be extremely interesting, in many ways, in relation to opening that up and perhaps increasing the number of girls who apply.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kevin Brennan]

I am not in the least antagonistic towards any school. As I have made clear, our policy is that the parents of children in the feeder schools to such schools should have the decision as to whether a system is selective or not. Let us be clear. When discussing grammar schools, it is not just a case of one school, but a selective system in an area. That is the consequence of having selection. It is quite right that parents should have a choice on that.

The hon. Member for Wirral West (Esther McVey) made the point that academic excellence is extremely important, and she referenced the very good schools in her area. I simply reiterate that academic excellence can be catered for in good, non-selective schools, whether they are academies, community schools or whatever.

On the point of social mobility and the make-up of existing grammar schools across the country, in a parliamentary answer to my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) in April this year, which can be found in the Library debate pack for this debate that I am sure hon. Members have seen, the Minister set out the number of year 7 pupils attending state-funded secondary schools overall, the number of those pupils attending grammar schools and then the numbers of pupils from a black ethnicity, those who receive free school meals and those who have a statement of special educational needs. It must be said that the Minister’s statistics show that grammar schools are purely academically selective; they are clearly socially selective as well.

[Laura Sandys]

As I outlined in my contribution, different areas have different settlements when it comes to grammar schools and high schools, and that is important to understand. In an area with many grammar schools, there is a much greater cross-section of the population. When there are only three or four in a county, they are often in rural areas and people must drive to them. There is therefore a difference in the systems. We often put an umbrella around all grammar-school systems as if they were one, rather than look at the nuances that have developed in different areas with different outcomes.

[Kevin Brennan]

In her speech, the hon. Lady made the point that the grammar school in her area with a free school-meal intake was at exactly the average for the area, but that is an exception. It has to be an exception, and the statistics show that. In 2010, for example, 96,680 year 7 pupils attending state-funded secondary schools received free school meals out of a total number of 549,725. Out of 22,070 grammar school pupils, 610 received free school meals. The table goes on to give a percentage, and I must say that, using my comprehensive school maths, I think that the figures are wrong in the Minister’s answer. I am sure that it was not his answer, but perhaps a mistake in translation when it went into the debate pack. The percentage calculations that I have done to check seem wrong, but what is clear from the figures when they are recalculated in a different way is that the ratio of state-school pupils to grammar-school pupils is about 25:1 and yet the ratio for free school meals is 158:1. There is clearly a huge amount of social selection going on, but I give those figures with the health warning that they may have been mistranslated along the way. Perhaps the Minister will clarify that—if not now, at a later date.

I will not go on much longer except to say that, as I stated earlier, Andreas Schleicher, the OECD statistician who compiles the figures for the programme for international student assessment, pointed out at a meeting that I attended that the best school systems in the world are non-selective. That is a clear conclusion of the OECD’s research.

Apprenticeships (Small Businesses)

Laura Sandys Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ward]

There is a lot in that idea because the concept of working towards and developing a skill—in the old days, a craft—and a profession has been lost. The idea of sticking with something and staying with it until a body of knowledge has been achieved or a degree of experience or skill has been acquired has been lost over the years. I remember very clearly my father’s small card showing that he was a master plumber. The importance of both an organisation’s and a young person’s commitment perhaps ought to be recognised more formally.

We all welcome the Government’s drive to increase the number of apprenticeship places, particularly in areas of unacceptably high youth unemployment—for example, Bradford. In a couple of the wards in my constituency, one in eight young people are not in education, employment or training, and they are desperately in need of some sort of future. It is perhaps unfashionable in some quarters to defend one of the schemes that is still in operation but on its last legs: the future jobs fund. However, I want to talk about the importance of what has been described by others as getting people ready for apprenticeships and making sure that young people are employable in the view of those who wish to take on apprentices.

We need to be very careful not to throw away the baby with the bathwater. The future jobs fund in Bradford got off to a poor, bureaucratic and frustratingly slow start, but it did become a success, particularly with categories of young people who struggled to get into apprenticeships. It was successful both in getting young people into work and in giving them the skills and the work experience that it was hoped would help to them into employment long into the future. More than half of young people on future jobs fund placements in Bradford did not return to benefits after 28 weeks. They found some sort of career progression after, in many cases, pretty difficult young lives. A major criticism of the future jobs fund has been that a high proportion of jobs were created in the public sector but, in Bradford, around 75% of the placements were in the voluntary or community sector. That is big society at its very best.

I should like to mention the Thorpe Edge project. As you will know, Mr Davies, that is a community furniture project that had 13 future jobs fund placements over a period of years. It was apparent that, for some of the young people on that project, getting out of bed before lunch was an achievement, let alone having an apprenticeship where they were expected to arrive at half-past 8 and work through until the leaving time that night for five days a week. The people on that project were fortunate because those who were responsible for running it had experience of dealing with young people in a difficult area. If someone on an apprenticeship did not turn up at 8.30 am and perhaps came in at 10 am, they would have probably lost their job. However, through their knowledge of the young person concerned, Thorpe Edge project supervisors knew that the young person concerned probably came from a background where there was a lone parent or the person concerned was on drugs or suffered from alcohol abuse. In such circumstances, simply getting into work at all was an achievement. By providing intensive support and help for some of those young people, the programme allowed them to get into college or employment.

The focus of my comments is on those people who simply will not get those apprenticeships, however many placements we manage to generate and however many placements the Government are willing to fund. Additional apprenticeships certainly offer a good alternative to the future jobs fund or schemes of that kind in many cases, but there is space for both types of programme. We need schemes that benefit people who are employable and who will do well out of placements and people who would struggle to get on to apprenticeships at all.

There is clearly a supply-side problem in many economies. I hope that the Minister will set out some of the measures that can be used to address the shortage of apprenticeship placements. A scheme in Bradford with the local social housing provider in communities recently received more than 600 applications for just seven apprenticeship places. Evidently, demand is massively outstripping supply.

Other hon. Members have raised all sorts of issues about the barriers and why businesses are not willing to take on apprenticeships, whether because of bureaucracy and red tape—we have mentioned some of those issues—or because of a lack of awareness of apprenticeships, as hon. Members said earlier. Many people who have been in business for years might never even have considered offering an apprenticeship. We need to consider what is happening in the schools and through the careers advice service. We also need to recognise that in some communities, certainly for small businesses, cost is an issue. We need to bear that in mind.

The Federation of Small Businesses has been quoted a lot with regard to the implications for small businesses. I understand that the Government have decided not to extend an apprenticeship grant for employers that provided some time-limited financial support for businesses. We still need to consider that as necessary for certain businesses, particularly small businesses, and in certain economies with high unemployment and a small number of available opportunities.

Let us not forget that although businesses receive 50% for post-19 and a full 100% for pre-19—I understand that that might be extended in some cases—they still have to pay for the young person. For many small businesses in particular, that is identified as being the most important cost. An FSB survey identified that it is simply too costly to take on. Of all the reasons why they were not taking on apprentices, the fact that it was just too costly came out top.

An FSB survey on skills identified that 66% of businesses said that, with the right measures in place, they would take on an apprentice. Those measures include a financial incentive for taking on an apprentice, greater clarity in terms of Government contributions to wage and training costs, and a separate body, interestingly, to manage the payroll costs. That has to be a way forward for many of our young people.

For 20-odd years, I worked in a university. We have heard some comments about university today. I agree that it was wrong to specify a 50% target. For many young people, the message was that if they do not get to university they have failed, and that closed up a lot of options. I also have tell hon. Members that, as someone who worked in a university for nearly 25 years in total, many young people, especially towards the end, were there because they did not know where else to be. They were there to find themselves and to delay a decision. They were there to gain something—a qualification, which they hoped would be useful—but also to defer a judgment on what they should do with their lives.

[Laura Sandys (South Thanet) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman think that those young people found themselves after the three years they were under his stewardship? The fundamental issue, brought up by many hon. Members, is that we do not start to talk about the world of work early enough. Many hon. Members have said that there is an issue about education and schools. I have never been impressed by the careers system and careers officers across the board, either in my era or now. Does the hon. Gentleman have any greater sense of confidence in the careers system that mentors our young people?

[Mr Ward]

There are measures to improve the system. It has failed in many instances. On getting information through to young people, I would add that the most important individuals for many young people as they go through their education—a blinding flash of the obvious—are the teachers, not the careers advisers. How many teachers have any experience of life outside of a school, whether in manufacturing, engineering or not being a teacher?

I am concerned that we miss a trick if we focus on developing the careers advisory service, recognising that it is a weak area that we could develop, without looking at the crucial issue of the experiences of the most influential characters in our young people’s education—the teachers themselves. Perhaps the Minister has something on that—it may not be his remit, I do not know—but exchanges between business and schools are important. When young people consider what they want to do with their lives, they should be surrounded by people who have experience of something other than going to university or being in another educational setting.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I begin by congratulating, and not just in the customary way, the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) on bringing an extraordinarily important subject to the Chamber today. His speech had depth and breadth; it was extremely expansive and dealt with many of the most important points. It is inevitable that the general approach we take to apprenticeships is concentrated on the challenge we face in dealing with apprenticeships in small and medium-sized businesses. Whether we call them micro-businesses, sole traders or people who are starting out on their own, the issue is magnified in that area. The hon. Gentleman has therefore done the House and the Chamber a service by the breadth of his remarks.

The hon. Gentleman talked about apprenticeships not being to do with manufacturing alone, which is true, and under the previous Government that diversification of apprenticeships, which is continuing, was important. The current Government have inherited that rising curve in apprenticeships, taken by the previous Labour Government from a base of 65,000 in 1997. The occasion is not one for trading loads of statistics or being partisan, but it is incumbent on Members to remember that the abolition of Train to Gain released to the present Government a significant amount of money, some of which they have chosen to use in the expansion of apprenticeships, which we welcome. The challenge for all of us, in whatever position, is to ensure that the expansion of apprenticeships is a success and continues.

It is important to look at the elements of policy continuity and, in particular, I pay tribute to the Minister for how he and his colleagues have continued to support Unionlearn. The routes into apprenticeship are many and varied, and we have heard today about some of those ways and how some can be improved. Undoubtedly, one of the best ways of persuading people into apprenticeships or taking up skills at whatever age is the support, endorsement and encouragement of their peers. In that respect, the work of Unionlearn has a great deal to teach us, whether or not we are talking about unionised environments. In the same way, many of the contributions this afternoon, in particular the last one, have stressed the need for such a process to be understood across the board.

The challenge we face is the one given to us by the Federation of Small Businesses, with figures on numbers and take-up that people have quoted in some detail today. Small businesses are crucial to growth. The hon. Member for Gloucester talked about that, and about the importance of taking on GTAs. He and other Government Members were somewhat sceptical about the former future jobs fund, but although we live in a three-minute universe, they ought to remember that their own Chancellor announced in the Budget earlier this year what some of us might regard as a pale imitation of the future jobs fund. We wait to see how that carries through. The hon. Gentleman made a valuable point at the end of his speech about incentives. I was particularly interested in the idea of the graduation of incentives over a three-year period, which many of us are familiar with from commercial practice, not least in hiring builders, and there is a lot to be said for that.

I congratulate other Members who spoke this afternoon. The hon. Member for Burnley (Gordon Birtwistle) talked about the importance of peer endorsement in apprenticeships and about the problem with skilled manual workers. Again, that is not a new problem but one flagged up by successive Select Committees, and it was a key issue in the Leitch report, to which all parties subscribed.

The hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones) raised issues about the careers service and the exposure of young people to the working environment, which is also important. Again, it is not a new issue. Some years ago, when I was a member of the Education and Skills Committee, we went to two places in the United States to look at training in schools, in Boston and North Carolina, which had good examples of training in units in a secondary school. In such a unit in North Carolina, most of the young people—very much from a blue-collar background—subsequently got jobs with the Bell Telephone Co., which had sponsored the unit. There are some lessons for us in that, with interesting echoes in such ideas of recent years as studio schools or the university technical colleges, of which Lord Baker has been such a strong advocate.

I was delighted to hear the contributions of the hon. Members for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier) and for Bradford East (Mr Ward). The hon. Member for Wyre Forest was particularly interesting and illuminating on his experience with the space company, which, in terms of where apprenticeships can take someone, I have found replicated in my own neck of the woods; a large number of people in Blackpool work for British Aerospace in one capacity or another. His reminder that it is a good idea not to make a false comparator—either apprenticeships or universities—was valuable. Whatever the value of higher level apprenticeships in their own right, we ought to be putting far more emphasis on ensuring that universities accept and look at vocational qualifications, and take themselves through to that level.

It is always a great pleasure to hear the hon. Member for Bradford East, who is extremely knowledgeable and passionate in this area. I was glad to hear what he had to say about his experience of the future jobs fund. It is true that in many areas it was not simply public sector-led. The statistics for my area of Blackpool mirrored those given by the hon. Gentleman. I vividly remember visiting Blackpool football club where six young people had been taken on under the future jobs fund, giving a similar success story.

I make one more point lightly and in not too partisan a fashion: I hope that hon. Members will see that the previous Government never made a commitment to or objective of 50% of young people under the age of 30 going into university education. If we look at the detail, we see that it was about some form of training or further or higher education. I make that point and pass on, but I am proud of the work that the previous Labour Government did to bolster apprenticeships and the apprenticeship system, making them an attractive option for businesses of all sizes. As I said, the results speak for themselves.

We set up the National Apprenticeship Service in 2009, as a national body playing a key role in overseeing the apprenticeship programme, providing information to potential apprentices and helping to match them with employers. We also introduced national apprenticeship week. It is a pleasure to hear today from so many Members that they have taken advantage of the hook of that week—throughout the rest of the year as well—to promote apprenticeships in their own constituencies. It is a good opportunity for doing that.

In my constituency, in February this year, my local Blackpool newspaper, The Gazette, sponsored an apprenticeship drive across the Fylde. I spoke at the launch of the drive and supported it, and it reached the sort of target figures of 100 to 150 apprenticeships, to which reference has been made. In my work as a Member of Parliament, I have seen the success of apprenticeships not only for very large companies such as BAE Systems, but also for small and local organisations. The Blackpool Pleasure Beach has taken on a number of apprentices successfully, as have many construction firms, or the dental practice in my constituency that I visited this year, which has just taken on two apprentices.

Sometimes it is not easy for a Government of any hue to persuade small and medium-sized businesses to look at apprenticeships. I know that from my own experience of running a small business with eight employees for 12 years before I came into this place. I know, as no doubt do many hon. Members who have spoken, about the multiplicity of factors and pressures on small businesses when they are trying to decide what to do: cash flow, marketing, promotion, lease arrangements. The list gets longer every year.

Of course there must be a receptive environment for small businesses to take on apprentices, and they must believe that it is worth expending the time, but that raises big issues about the structure of apprenticeships, and whether they are sufficiently structured to be useful to and easily accessible by small and medium-sized businesses. I do not want to be misunderstood. I am not suggesting that we abandon the traditional apprenticeship structures to which the hon. Member for Bradford East rightly referred.

My father undertook a traditional apprenticeship for a large company, Crossley Brothers, which is sadly now less well known than it was. It was a major factor in the engineering world certainly into the 1960s, and to the present day. Such apprenticeships have their value, but we must also consider the new type of apprenticeship. There are big decisions to be made and discussions to have about the value or otherwise of a modular approach, about delivery of apprenticeships on the job rather than outside at a further education college, and so on. Such matters must be taken into account when considering what benefits will encourage small businesses to take on apprentices.

Despite the Government’s announced additional investment in apprenticeships, many businesses still believe that there are major deterrents. A City and Guilds survey—I was at its launch during national apprenticeship week earlier this year—showed that 80% of employers still believe that there are barriers to hiring apprentices, and one in five believe that the current economic climate makes it too risky to take on an apprentice. A couple of other statistics are relevant to what hon. Members have said today. Just under half of employers would be encouraged to have an apprentice if more Government funding were available per apprentice—whether that would be a deciding factor, of course, is always the key question—and 26% wanted the recruitment process to become simpler and less time-consuming.

Those statistics are interesting, and have been supplemented recently by a major survey of 500 employers across the board, not just SMEs, by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. Its findings are interesting and specific, and slightly contradict what City and Guilds said, because they showed that two thirds of those not offering apprenticeships reported that it was inappropriate for their organisation. Again, the point about how to market apprenticeships and present them to companies comes to mind. One in six said that they were not offering apprenticeships because of a recruitment freeze, budget restraints or the economic climate. Interestingly—I am not saying that one side or the other has the last word—less than 5% said that they were put off by too much associated bureaucracy or insufficient public funding.

Whatever the case, major challenges must be overcome. It may be relevant to the example about the value of soft skills—I do not like referring to soft skills because that may suggest that they are not important; I prefer to call them enabling skills, but that is a matter of nomenclature—that the CIPD survey showed that apprentices were rated highly for enthusiasm, work ethic and presentation, but that their creativity, innovation, initiative and customer service skills were less impressive. There may be some messages there about the school system.

The statistics from the Federation of Small Businesses, as many hon. Members have said, are worrying for the reasons that have been described. It is particularly valuable that the FSB not only provides such data, but regularly monitors attitudes and feedback from its membership. I understand that the latest report is due out tomorrow, and it will be particularly interesting given the current fluid nature and uncertain prospects for growth. Similar statistics came from the CBI/EDI educational skills survey, which was published last month. It showed that apprenticeship growth is increasingly concentrated in large companies.

That is on a par with the Government’s need urgently to consider tailoring apprenticeships better towards the need of SMEs. It is a two-way process, which the Government must take on board and, with the National Apprenticeship Service, be alert to the changes and modifications that employers report. They must allow employees to complete the course-based elements of their apprenticeships. I do not exempt further education colleges from that process because, certainly in my neck of the woods, it is important, particularly when bringing in people who must do a lot of juggling with their work-life balance, that delivery of off-job apprenticeship course work is as close to their work or living place as possible.

[Laura Sandys]

I was pleased to welcome the Minister to my local further education college, Thanet college, which has been extremely helpful and important to me in the recruitment of an apprentice I have just taken on. FE colleges are embedded in their communities, and play an important role as ambassadors for the apprentice system. They support employers who may not understand the system effectively. Does the hon. Gentleman agree?

[Mr Marsden]

I absolutely agree. In my neck of the woods, Blackpool and The Fylde college has done sterling work in that area. There is sometimes an issue about colleges understanding the need to deliver some of their training closer to the workplace if possible and closer to the living space if possible of the people they are trying to reach.