Leaving the EU: Aviation Sector

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Mike Kane

Wednesday 31st October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mike Kane]

We are doing that now at my own airport. I will be going to the inaugural flight from Manchester to Mumbai next week. We now have direct connectivity to Beijing and Hong Kong, and shortly we will announce direct connectivity to Shanghai as well. Airports are increasingly going from point to point, and that seems to be the way of the future.

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I wanted to come in at that point, because my hon. Friend is talking specifically about those connections between Manchester airport and China. I want to touch on air freight, because Manchester has seen a £300 million increase in air freight exports to China in the last two years. To have that thriving air freight sector requires further work to be done. Does he agree that the UK needs to be doing better, given that we are outside the top 10 on the air trade facilitation index and outside the top 20 for electronic freight processing?

[Mike Kane]

The Manchester Airports Group includes East Midlands airport, which is close to my hon. Friend’s constituency, and Stansted. East Midlands is a huge hub for freight leaving the UK, and has huge expansion potential. I am concerned that the Government are not ready to use the opportunity, as we leave the EU, to prepare the aviation sector for the next, crucial five to 10 years.

The welcome that we give to those who visit us is also part and parcel of creating a truly international Britain after Brexit. It is how we tell the world that we are open for business and how we encourage tourists to come to see us time and time again.

Lots of questions still need answering, and there is a risk that questions are not being answered in good time. I am sure we were all concerned by the recent National Audit Office report on our state of preparedness for a no-deal scenario. Airports across the country have repeatedly reported problems of under-resourcing, queues at the border and a total dissatisfaction with the targets that Border Force works to. The Government have continued to cut funding for Border Force, while passenger numbers have grown, so can we really expect a proper service at our borders? I hope the Minister will tell us what the Government are doing to work with airports and Border Force to put in place a realistic, long-term plan to ensure our borders are adequately resourced into the future.

Finally, as I said, the aviation sector is a huge employer in its own right, and millions more are employed in related industries, such as the visitor economy and the logistics sector, which my hon. Friend just mentioned. Across the country, tens of millions of EU nationals make a valuable contribution to those industries. Although I am hopeful that arrangements will be put in place to ensure that people can remain employed in those sectors, we need to think seriously about what happens post Brexit. We must ensure we have the skills and training to support and grow the aviation sector in the years ahead. We have the opportunity to get this right through the industrial strategy process to ensure that Britain is known around the globe for delivering world-class service and hospitality, as well as for having a slick, efficient transport system.

As I have outlined, aviation is an essential component of an outward-looking Britain. It must continue to play a pivotal role in our economy and our social and cultural future, but the question is, how will we harness that potential? How will we use the sector to drive growth through enhanced trade and investment in tourism? How, on a more basic level, will we ensure that consumers continue to enjoy the choices they enjoy today? If we are serious about creating a balanced and truly international Britain, we must prioritise this sector now, during and after our exit from the European Union.

School Funding

Debate between Lilian Greenwood and Mike Kane

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lilian Greenwood]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government’s disingenuous attempts to override the statistics are failing, because parents, pupils and teachers know precisely what is happening? That is why I welcomed children and parents from SOS East Midlands to Parliament a fortnight ago. They know that 82 out of 84 schools in Nottingham city face cuts, including every single school in my constituency, they know that their children’s schools are losing an average of £296 per pupil, and they say that that is not good enough. It has to be addressed in the forthcoming Budget.

[Mike Kane]

My hon. Friend articulates the point for Nottingham city brilliantly, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) did for York, where 32 schools are facing cuts.

The hon. Member for St Albans also talked about special educational needs and disability—SEND—which is vital. Last year alone, 20,000 children were off-rolled because of it. She talked about a school in her constituency, the Links Academy, which takes in many off-rolled children, but we lost 20,000 to the system. My hon. Friend the Member for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport (Luke Pollard) highlighted that problem with regard to mental health too—we do not know where 10,000 of those children are in the system. In an age when we have criminal child exploitation going through the roof and the running of county lines, the school system does not know where 10,000 children are.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies has stated that the stats that we have heard used are simply not accurate, and the UK Statistics Authority has rebuked the Education Secretary for his inaccuracy. The figures quoted by Education Ministers attempting to defend their pitiful record on state school funding included money spent by parents on private school fees. There has been a concerted effort by the Secretary of State and the Minister to fudge the figures and deflect attention away from the cuts to school funding that they have presided over.

Let us assess the facts. Some £2.8 billion has been cut from school budgets since 2015, and we will find out in a couple of weeks that that will be a lot more. That means that 91% of schools are facing real-terms budget cuts per pupil. For the average primary school, that will be a loss of about £50,000 a year. For the average secondary school, it will be a loss of about £178,000 a year. But those figures are based on last year’s data. When can we expect the Department to release the schools block funding data for 2018-19? With the inclusion of those figures, it is likely that the outlook for our schools will be even bleaker.

Perhaps the Minister will try to deflect the House’s attention away from the reality of the impact of his Government’s cuts to school funding again, but hon. Members already know the impact on the ground all too well, as headteachers and parents are telling us about it. It is right that we are well represented by the hon. Members from West Sussex, the hon. Members for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) and for Chichester (Gillian Keegan). The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said that schools are x millions of pounds down in that borough in his constituency. I have the statistic: they are £8.9 million down based on last year’s data. It will be interesting to see what next year’s data will be when the Minister releases the block funding grants. The Minister’s own schools are threatening a four-day week because of the funding cuts.

We know that the £1.3 billion of additional funding announced by the Secretary of State is nowhere near enough to reverse the £2.8 billion that has been cut since 2015. We also know that none of the money announced so far is actually new money for education. While I, of course, support the principle that all schools should receive fair funding, the answer is not to take money away from existing schools and redistribute it. A fair approach would be to apply the lessons of the best-performing areas in the country to schools everywhere. A fair approach would look objectively at the level of funding required to deliver in the best-performing schools, particularly in areas of high deprivation, as my hon. Friend the Member for York Central pointed out, and use that as the basis for a formula to be applied across the whole country.

The F40 group, which includes my constituency of Trafford, has told us that school funding requires an injection of £2 billion to meet the needs of all schools, and that an early indication is that the shortfall for 2019-20 will be £3.8 billion. Schools need to see plans for the funding formula beyond 2020. They need a three to four-year rolling budget settlement so that they can plan for the future with confidence, and any settlement should take into account inflation, the cost of living increases and the wage and national insurance increases that have been pointed out by several hon. Members.

When will the Secretary of State and the Minister remove their heads from the sand and begin to truly hear the voices of schools, teachers, parents and Back Benchers from across the country? If that does not happen soon, our children’s education in St Albans, Harrow, Plymouth, York and West Sussex will continue to lose out.