Feminism in the School Curriculum

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Monday 11th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend puts it well. Jessy McCabe is with us this evening, and her e-petition—a very modern way of petitioning the Government—obtained nearly 4,000 signatures. When I pointed that out to the Prime Minister during Prime Minister’s questions, he congratulated her. However, that should not have been an afterthought. Why do these things go so far that they have to be brought back from the brink?

Last month, the Department for Education said that feminism could still be studied as part of the reforms to the A-level sociology curriculum, and that the proposed move

“tied in with school autonomy and trusting heads”.

It is not good enough to leave it to chance in that way. Teaching and learning strategy should enrich students because, as many Members have pointed out, feminism informs history and globalisation. This is not just one of those theoretical “isms” as many of these things are; feminism affects us all every day. As young people go on to study at university across different disciplines, having the compass of feminism and an understanding of unequal gender relations to navigate their path is critical, and we must make the classroom responsive to, and representative of, society. The syllabus should not be gender-blind, because that is denying reality. We could also include world thinkers on an expanded list, such as Simone de Beauvoir from France, or the American black feminist, bell hooks.

In the December debate in the other place, Lord Nash declared that the proposed new content for politics A-level was an improvement on the last one because for the first time it contained political ideologies. However, feminism was not one of the named ideologies, so that is a little inconsistent. The Department for Education justified the move on the grounds of giving more choice to schools, but to us it looked like freedom to downplay the historical contribution of female thinkers. It took reports on the website “BuzzFeed” over Christmas for us to have some inkling that movement was taking place, and such unofficial, if positive, statements, need substantiation tonight.

Today I tried to get clarity from the Department, and I rang up the parliamentary affairs section, which over Christmas was asking me, “What is going in your speech? ”—this is hot off the press, so I did not entirely know the content. I did, however, ask whether the rumours in The Independent on Sunday were true, and I was given the classic response, “The Minister will be laying out the Government’s position in the course of the debate.”

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

With the article in The Independent on Sunday, I did what one should not do and looked at the comments underneath. Some said, “Feminism equals hate”. I would not like to hazard a guess, but I suspect that those comments came from men. Does my hon. Friend agree that we really need to educate men as well as women about feminism? It is not just a women’s subject, and we need to clarify to men what feminism really means.

[Dr Huq]

I totally agree with my hon. Friend. When The Guardian had a women’s page, I often wondered whether that meant the rest of the newspaper was for men. When academic departments teach women’s studies, it makes me think, “Does that mean everything else is for men?” She makes a powerful point very well. It is true what they say: one should never go below the line, where the comments from all the crazy people are. [Laughter.] Not that I am empowered to make a diagnosis. Sorry, where more exuberant people sometimes post before they have engaged their brain. No, before they have thought of the consequences of their exuberance. [Laughter.] Anyway, we are nearing the end.

An opinion piece in November in The Times Educational Supplement, the in-house journal for the teachers of our nation, advised readers to:

“use the topic of feminism in the delivery of subject content. In maths, look at the pay-gap. In science, explore the work of female scientists. In PE, explore the notions of ‘female’ and ‘male’ sports. Make gender an explicit part of teaching…Make them cry and make them angry. Then tell them your generation has failed them and it’s now on them to go out and change it for the better.”

This is all sound advice—from a male head of history at a school in Hertfordshire.

Any curriculum needs to be inclusive, balanced and pluralistic to foster mutual understanding between people of all backgrounds, genders, sexualities, ages, ethnicities, and all faiths and none. Sadly, this sorry shambles where a change is shelved—if that is what is going to happen; we are still waiting to hear—after it should never have got to the advanced state that it did in the first place, is not an isolated incident. A-level music has already been mentioned. A petition with nearly 4,000 signatures pointed out that out of 63 composers, there were zero women. That is even worse than one out of 16, which meant that 94% were men. We do not need a calculator to work out zero out of 63, even if my constituent Jessy McCabe reversed that situation.

On GCSE religious studies, Members may not have noticed—it slipped out at the very end of last year—that in November a landmark High Court judgment ruled in favour of three humanist families who challenged the Government’s removal of non-religious world views in their rewritten syllabus for that subject. In the judgment, a High Court judge stated that that was:

“a breach of the duty to take care that information or knowledge included in the curriculum is conveyed in a pluralistic manner.”

The British Humanist Association called it “a stunning victory” and pointed out that

“continuing to exclude the views of a huge number of Britons, in the face of majority public opinion and all expert advice, would only be to the detriment of education in this country and a shameful path to follow.”

I hope—dare I say pray, as we are talking about religion?—that history repeats itself in this House tonight and we see a U-turn. Women’s voices have in the past all too often been silenced. That was meant to have happened in the bad old days, before the right to vote and before the Equal Pay Act 1970. In 2016, we cannot allow women’s voices to continue to be silenced. As Mary Wollstonecraft, the one surviving woman from the draft syllabus, put it:

“I do not wish”—

women—

“to have power over men, but over themselves.”

How can women have power over themselves if they do not know the voices that have created the foundations on which they stand?

Further Education

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2015 Commons Chamber

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I am beginning to wonder what this Government have got against young people. When I spoke in this Chamber yesterday I asked why on earth we should not give 16 and 17-year-olds the ability to vote in local elections, and today I am talking about cuts to post-16 education.

The Prime Minister said today that decisions we make now are not just for the present, but for the future and for our children and our children’s children. He should not have to say that—it is entirely self-evident—but the fact that he said it on the same day as this Opposition day debate on cuts to post-16 education funding is particularly ironic.

Hopwood Hall college in my constituency does not offer, and never has offered, courses in balloon artistry, yet the Secretary of State cites such courses. In so doing, she repeats the misinformation spread in March 2014 by the then Skills Minister, the right hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), when he, too, claimed that courses such as balloon artistry would no longer be paid for by the taxpayer. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills then revealed that such a course had never been listed for Government money anyway. It is disappointing in the extreme to hear the Secretary of State for Education incorporating such myths into her arguments. In this case I would suggest that she herself is guilty of scaremongering.

Hopwood Hall college is one of more than 100 colleges to write recently to the Prime Minister to urge a rethink of his Government’s proposals. They have highlighted many major problems with the current and planned system of funding, including repeated year-on-year cuts to adult funding, which now total about 40%; a significant reduction in funding for students aged 18; and large reductions in annual funding allocations being announced to colleges only weeks before a new academic year, severely harming their ability to plan and to invest in staff and resources. The letter was signed by the chair of Hopwood Hall college, Robert Clegg OBE, who is also a Tory councillor in Rochdale. I wonder whether the Secretary of State would accuse him of scaremongering.

The further education sector has taken a kicking over the past few years. I remember the sadness and anger in my constituency when the coalition Government withdrew the education maintenance allowance and poorer students were forced to withdraw from their courses as they simply could not afford to attend them anymore.

The principal of the college wrote to me last year, expressing his concerns about last year’s round of cuts and the detrimental effect they would have on the provision of adult further education. He said:

“Cuts of this magnitude could mean the end of this essential education in every city, town and community in England and the consequences will be felt by individuals and the economy for years to come.”

That was last year. Now it seems that FE and sixth-form colleges are staring another round of swingeing cuts in the face. There is a real fear that further funding cuts in the next comprehensive spending review will tip our sixth-form and FE colleges over the precipice. Colleges are asking that this Government give consistent and equitable funding to all 16 to 18-year-olds, and that this should be the same as that given to 14 to 16-year-olds. They want more certainty and predictability of funding to enable planning and investment to occur with certainty and confidence. I urge the Secretary of State to take seriously the problems stated in the letter signed by over 100 chairs of FE colleges and listen to their warnings—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order.

Trade Union Bill

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Rishi Sunak]

I am sorry, but I would like to make some progress.

I was proud to see that it was the original one nation Conservative Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who first legalised the picket line. That is a legacy that I, and I am sure my colleagues on the Front Bench, have no intention of turning away from. In fact I commend the majority of unions who work successfully with the police and other authorities to ensure safe, lawful and constructive picket lines. But if those picket lines become a means to intimidate non-striking workers and impact their families, something has gone wrong. Intimidation or harassment of individuals is simply not acceptable in today’s Britain.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Rishi Sunak]

I am sorry but I am keen to carry on.

Therefore it is right that key provisions in the existing picketing code become legally binding. It is right that unions are accountable for the behaviour of their picket lines, to tackle this problem of intimidation, otherwise I fear the reprehensible actions of a few—a tiny minority—will undermine the lawful, peaceful reputation of the vast majority of unions and their members.

In sum, this Bill ensures that unions can continue to play a valuable role, doing the work they do best while operating with the transparency, fairness and democracy they need to retain the public’s confidence. This is not a Bill against trade unions; it is a moderate Bill that balances the rights of unions and people working across this country, and I commend it to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

I declare my membership of Unite and refer Members to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

This Bill, the so-called Trade Union Bill, is in reality a threat to all our rights at work. The Conservatives claim to be the “party of working people”, yet with this Bill they have committed the biggest attack on workers’ rights in 30 years. No party can claim to be representative of workers when they attack the workers’ very own institutions—the trade unions.

In the short time available, I want to focus specifically on the Bill’s proposals for facility time and speak on the basis of my recent experience as an NHS employee and as a workplace rep for Unite in the NHS. For many years as a workplace rep and a clinical scientist, I struggled by on no facility time at all. I was trained by my trade union in negotiation skills, representation, health and safety and learning at work, and this training was frequently called upon by my employers to represent members in grievances and disciplinary hearings, to negotiate pay and working conditions, to consult over workplace restructuring or job losses and to promote learning new skills and training at work.

I believe that all those activities were beneficial to both my employer and the workers; and I know that they were infinitely preferable to my employer, who found it far more efficient and cost-effective to consult me as an elected representative of the workforce rather than having to consult each individual member of staff over every proposed change. Eventually, I was able to negotiate some part-time facility time, as it was recognised that there was a real need for union reps to be available to bring their skills, knowledge and experience to the workplace and to partnership working. There was also a real need for NHS trusts, like my own, that were seeking foundation trust status to be able to demonstrate good industrial relations with staff. That could not be done without giving union reps reasonable time to perform their duties in the workplace.

I worked with management over many issues, including the complete overhaul of pay structures and terms and conditions in the NHS, known as “Agenda For Change”. We worked tirelessly with management to influence and implement these new measures, which could not have been achieved without adequate facility time for representatives. Facility time is not a drain on the public purse.

[Harry Harpham (Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough) (Lab)]

I am sure my hon. Friend is aware that the TUC estimates that union workplace representatives contribute to overall productivity gains that are worth between £4 billion and £12 billion. Does she agree that measures that have had such a positive effect on productivity should be welcomed and, indeed, promoted?

[Liz McInnes]

I thank my hon. Friend. I was hoping to be able to make that very point myself. He has given me another minute!

Facility time is not a drain on the public purse; in fact, it is linked to increased productivity, which, as we all know, is crucial to the delivery of high-quality and cost-effective care in the NHS. There is a huge economic case for retaining the current arrangements. Capping facility time is an attempt to solve a problem that simply does not exist.

The Royal College of Nursing, which opposes the Bill, commissioned independent research. The resulting report shows that only 1.5% of public sector health care workplaces have a full-time union representative, and that those representatives are representing huge workforces consisting of some 2,500 people. They are dealing with employment issues every day, resolving conflicts before they escalate. The report also gives substantial evidence of close working between union reps and management, with managers reporting a high level of trust in their union colleagues.

The facility time proposals appear to have been drawn up by people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. I call for the provisions in this Bill to be rejected.

[Jack Dromey]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is probably widely known that I am a former deputy general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union and of Unite, but, for the avoidance of any doubt, I draw attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, of which I am very proud.

Recruitment and Retention of Teachers

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Thursday 18th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We have made some significant reforms to primary education, including how we teach maths in primary school. We want children to leave primary school after six or seven years fluent in arithmetic, so that they can cope with a more demanding maths curriculum at secondary school. We hope that that confidence will take them through to A-level when they reach sixth form.

We are also addressing the shortage by spending some £67 million over the next five years to train an extra 2,500 mathematics and physics teachers and to improve the knowledge and skills of 15,000 existing teachers. We also established the Maths and Physics Chairs programme to support post-doctoral researchers to train as teachers with the aim of enthusing, engaging and inspiring students to progress to A-level study, to lead subject knowledge development with teachers in local school partnerships and to forge links with business. Very able young PhDs are now working in schools, and it is an inspiring and successful project.

We have given schools the freedom to pay good teachers more. That gives schools more scope to retain their best teachers by offering faster progression up the pay scale. It also allows them to adapt to any local circumstances where recruitment in particular phases or subjects is more challenging.

Since 2010, we have focused on reforming initial teacher training, so that schools have greater choice and influence over the quality of both the training and trainees recruited. School Direct, which the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley referred to, is already proving hugely popular with both trainees and schools. Last year, we recruited 9,232 trainees to initial teacher training, an increase of 40% on the previous year. As a result, 35% of the postgraduates training to be teachers are doing so via School Direct. The School Direct salaried route provides an excellent route for career changers to train as teachers. They receive rigorous teacher training, at the same time as working in a school and earning a salary. These new entrants to the profession can bring different, valuable experience from their previous careers in industry. The success of that route is reflected in a substantial increase in the number of places offered by schools.

I am conscious of the time, but I think the hon. Lady and her colleagues are overstating the case. We understand the challenges, but we have engaged in a huge number of initiatives, including very generous bursaries, to address the problem, and I am confident—

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Gibb]

I give way to the hon. Lady.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

There is no complacency on the part of the Department. The Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), has already set out the action the Department can take—the swift intervention—when an academy is failing. That can result eventually in an academy being rebrokered. Uplands junior school had 17 months to appoint its interim executive board and turn things around, but progress has not been sufficient. That is very unfair on the children in that school.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

9. What plans her Department has to increase the number and quality of apprenticeships for 14 to 19-year-olds.

[The Minister for Skills (Nick Boles)]

We are determined to create 3 million apprenticeships in the next five years, building on the 2.2 million created in the past five years. We will be requiring all public sector bodies to employ apprentices, and will legislate to protect the term “apprenticeship” against misuse.

[Liz McInnes]

Figures from the House of Commons Library show that there were 440,000 apprenticeship starts in England in the last academic year, but almost 40% of those starts were made by over-25s, and starts made by under-19s have declined as a share of total starts since 2010. Why is the Minister not doing more to help young adults into apprenticeship schemes?

[Nick Boles]

The Government do not share with the Opposition the obsession with the idea that, somehow, anybody over the age of 25 doing an apprenticeship is wasting their time or the Government’s money. We absolutely agree that we want as many young people as possible to have the opportunity, but that includes people aged between 19 and 24, and over-25s. We want the entire programme to expand, which is why we are investing in it. We will deliver 3 million apprenticeships to people of all ages over the next five years.

Oral Answers to Questions

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. It is an absolute pleasure to congratulate the head teacher, Mrs Burnside, and all the staff, governors and pupils on their hard work in achieving those spectacular results. I greatly enjoyed my recent visit to schools in Pendle.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

2. What recent assessment she has made of the effect of the cost of child care on the household disposable income of parents with disabled children.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

This Government have introduced the biggest reforms to special educational needs and disabilities provisions in 30 years, reforms that enjoy cross-party support. Every disabled child, like all other three and four-year-olds, is entitled to a free 15 hours of early education, and the situation is the same for disadvantaged two-year-olds. In addition, when tax-free child care is introduced, parents of disabled children will get double the allowance of other families at £4,000. The disabled child element of universal credit is £4,300, on top of all the other benefits parents of disabled children receive.

[Liz McInnes]

The cross-party parliamentary inquiry into child care for disabled children found that 92% of parents with disabled children reported difficulties in finding suitable child care for their children. As child care costs overall continue to rise, particularly for disabled children, that figure can only continue to grow. What is the Minister doing to ensure sufficient places for disabled children?

[Mr Gyimah]

On the cost of child care in general, let me point out that the Labour party left us with the highest child care costs in the OECD; they went up by 50% when it was in government. This Government have been helping parents with the cost of child care, particular parents with disabled children, whom the hon. Lady mentioned. Local authorities have a legal duty to secure sufficient child care for working parents in their area. As far as free entitlement is concerned, local authorities that set the rate they pay for free entitlement can pay for additional hours, on an hourly basis and tailored to individual children, from the dedicated schools grant.

National Minimum Wage

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Tuesday 16th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Dan Jarvis]

That is a helpful and constructive contribution. If the hon. Gentleman will bear with me, I will talk about the living wage later in my speech. It would be useful to hear what plans the Minister has. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point that we currently have record numbers of people in this country who are underemployed. Record numbers of people want to work full time but cannot get full-time work, so they are stuck in part-time employment and struggling to meet their costs. That is a good point, and I look forward to the Minister responding to it.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

In his deliberations, has my hon. Friend given any thought to the practice of many employers of paying the extremely low minimum rate for apprenticeships? Some employers set up bogus apprenticeships that last for only a few months so that they can get away with paying the absolutely paltry rate for apprentices, which I believe is less than £3 an hour. Has he looked at that aspect of the minimum wage and at the age-related minimum wage for under-18s?

[Dan Jarvis]

Completely by coincidence, my hon. Friend has made a timely contribution that neatly introduces the point that I was about to make. If we want to win the fight against poverty wages, the remit of the Low Pay Commission must be expanded. It should not be simply a national minimum wage commission that sets the level of wages; I believe that it should lead our national effort to tackle the problem of low pay. We need to give new powers to the Low Pay Commission to investigate the causes and consequences of low pay in different areas of our economy.

We know that some sectors have particular, systemic problems of low wages. More than half of cleaners, 48% of hospitality workers and more than 40% of hairdressers are paid less than £7 an hour. At the same time, other sectors—the banking sector, for instance—could pay a higher minimum wage. I would be grateful if the Minister could tell us today whether the Government would consider giving new powers to the Low Pay Commission to bring together task forces to tackle such issues. Those task forces could include all the key stakeholders and recommend a strategy to the Secretary of State on the best way forward.

Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Tuesday 18th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Greg Mulholland]

That is helpful but I shall make it clear; the point of new clause 2 is that it is a stand-alone clause and has no bearing on that matter. I understand the position of those hon. Members with family brewers. They can support their family brewers if they wish by opposing new clause 6, but they can still support new clause 2, which, as I say, will apply not to a single family brewer but only to the large pub-owning companies. We have defined that very deliberately, which the Government failed to do despite our telling them that they should. A Member can vote for their family brewer by voting for new clause 2. To be clear; it is primary legislation and cannot then be changed without other primary legislation. It is not being put into the statutory code—secondary legislation—as some measures are. That is precisely why we have done it.

There has been a shameful campaign of misinformation against new clause 2 and the market rent only option from the usual suspects; the large pub companies and their mouthpiece, the so-called British Beer and Pub Association. In reality it is the big brewers and pubco association. They have been lobbying vociferously, making a whole stream of utterly baseless comments. It is simply scaremongering to suggest that somehow these companies offering a fair commercial rent to their tenants would cause collapse, chaos and closures.

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Greg Mulholland]

I remind the House of what was said by the BIS Select Committee in its follow-up report in 2011—

[Liz McInnes]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Greg Mulholland]

Let me finish my point and I will give way. The Select Committee said:

“The BBPA (British Beer and Pub Association) has shown itself to be impotent in enforcing its own timetable for reform and the supposed threat of removing the membership of pub companies who did not deliver was hollow.”

Just last year the chief executive of the British Beer and Pub Association misled the Select Committee and said two things that were factually untrue, as well as presenting a series of baseless evidence.

Finally, before I give way, I will read what the Select Committee said in its 2008-09 report:

“As is noted elsewhere in this Report…in evidence to us both Mr Thorley of Punch and Mr Tuppen and Mr Townsend of Enterprise Inns made assertions which, on investigation, proved to give a partial picture, or on one occasion were positively false.”

Members on all sides of the House can know exactly how to take the absurd and baseless claims from those organisations.

[Liz McInnes]

Like the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), I am seeking clarification on small family brewers. I, too, am confused by the effect of the proposal on J.W. Lees brewery in my constituency, which has fewer than 500 pubs but has a strong retail arm. I am concerned—as is the brewery, which asked me to raise the issue during the debate— about the effect it will have on a family brewer with fewer than 500 pubs but which has a strong retail arm.

[Greg Mulholland]

I thought I had given clarity. I ask the hon. Lady and all hon. Members to read this detailed new clause, as this is precisely why all of us who have been involved in writing it have done so. Let me read new clause 2(4):

“For the purposes of this section,”

meaning the market rent only option,

“the definition of a ‘large pub-owning business’ is a business which, for a period of at least six months in the previous financial year, was the landlord of—

(a) 500 or more pubs (of any description)”.

That cannot apply to any family brewer, and because it is in primary legislation, it cannot be changed in the future.