Queen’s Speech

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath Excerpts

Thursday 29th June 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

My Lords, as we have covered so many subjects, I remind noble Lords of my interests in the register, specifically as a self-employed consultant, president of GS1 and trustee of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists—and my wife is a consultant with the Education and Training Foundation.

We come to an end of a spirited, five-day debate on this Government’s rather threadbare legislative programme. The Brexit election has been followed by the Brexit Queen’s Speech, which, despite the Government’s loss of majority and authority, still, unbelievably, focuses on a crude and unrealisable determination to cut immigration, whatever the consequences to our economy, jobs and public services. Of course, Brexit is hugely important. However, as my noble friend Lord Whitty said, and anyone who campaigned in the recent election will know, many of the matters that really concern the public are to do with the subjects that we have debated this afternoon.

What is so disappointing is the Government’s response to that election. Although they have dropped some of their more contentious proposals, they have not signalled an end to austerity, nor shown any recognition that our young people, schools, hospitals and older people need urgent support. There is no answer whatever to the noble Earl, Lord Kinnoull, my noble friend Lord McKenzie and others, who spoke about the need to improve social mobility.

I turn first to education. The Minister promised more money for education. However, the IFS has confirmed that the supposed extra money this will amount to will still leave schools with a cut in per-pupil spending of around 7% between 2016 and 2022. The Education Select Committee has been abundantly clear what this means: larger class sizes and more reliance on unqualified teachers. That is why parents are so concerned.

The Secretary of State for Education has told us that no school will lose out. But she has not said where the money will come from, given the free school meals debacle. I hope it will not come from technical further education, because the one risk of putting that back into the Department for Education is that it has always been targeted within that department as an area regarded as softer than other areas of education expenditure. Given the fall in further education budgets between 2010 and 2015 of 14% in real terms, this is a legitimate concern. The ambitious target for apprenticeships, with which we all agree, is also a concern; my noble friends Lady Cohen and Lord Young made this point. The risk is that the Government will simply go for the numbers at the expense of high-quality apprenticeships. I hope the Minister can respond on this point.

On grammar schools, it would be good if the Minister would confirm that plans to return to the wretched 11-plus and the reinstatement of secondary modern schools are at an end. Will he also reject back-door proposals through the ability of existing grammar schools to open satellite campuses or annexes miles from their original site, as happened in Kent? Will the Minister put an end to that?

I also want to ask the Ministers about exam results this summer. Ofqual has said that schools should expect more variability in exam results this year. What on earth are parents and children to make of that? The fear is that they have become guinea-pigs on the altar of the ideological experiment to satisfy the bizarre notions of Mr Gove when he was Secretary of State.

I also hope that the Minister will respond to my noble friend Lady Lawrence about the value of overseas students to our universities. When, oh when, will we take student numbers out of the migration statistics? It is causing huge concern in our university sector.

I turn to welfare. What is the Government’s policy on the triple lock? The new Work and Pensions Secretary said this week that it is unlikely to last in the long term. I think that Parliament is entitled to some response from the Government on this. My noble friend pointed out their silence on many other aspects of social services. There is nothing to address the falling value of benefits and tax credits, nothing to restore work allowances in universal credit—which, of course, were put in to make work pay—nothing for WASPI women who find themselves in unexpected financial circumstances after a lifetime of work, and nothing for the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who spoke so movingly about young people caught in the trap of getting a job and then finding they lose their housing benefit. It is a scandal. Let us hope that the Government have an answer to it.

I turn to health. I do not always agree with the BMA. I certainly have not always done so in the past, but I thought that its chairman, Dr Mark Porter, put it well this week when he said that the NHS was at breaking point. Talk to anyone who knows anything about the health service and they will agree. My noble friend Lord Pendry talked about the situation in the north-west. But Ministers seem to be in total denial. Waiting times increase, staff shortages grow, CCGs ration ever more vital services, yet Ministers carry on as if nothing is happening and it is not their responsibility. They have not met their targets for month after month after month. When is the 18-week elective care target to be met, or the 95% four-hour A&E department target? Do those targets stand? The chief executive of the NHS has said on a number of occasions that he does not expect them to be met. What should we understand the Government’s policy to be?

I want to ask the Minister about the internal document of 25 May. It focused on trusts in London. Trusts with the biggest deficits were officially advised by the system to deny patients treatment, lengthen waiting times and close hospital units in the interests of a capped expenditure process. How does that square with the mandate for this year, which says that those targets are to be met? It simply does not stand up. On funding, the King’s Fund has said that the amount we spend on healthcare as a proportion of GDP has fallen and must now be increased. Will the Government respond?

On mental health, will the new draft Bill be subject to pre-legislative scrutiny? I took through the Mental Health Act 2007 after pre-legislative scrutiny—I shared a little of it with the noble Lord, Lord Warner, who did the Second Reading speech with great eloquence and then quickly disappeared stage left. That legislation gained enormously from pre-legislative scrutiny. I urge the Government to consider the merits of putting a draft Bill into pre-legislative scrutiny. It will certainly ensure the passage of the eventual Bill will go more smoothly, and will certainly be more informed.

The other point to make on mental health was made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Peterborough. It is that over the past few years, Ministers have made very welcome statements about the priority that mental health is to be given. We do not dispute any of that, but it does not happen. We know that clinical commissioning groups are cutting mental health budgets. In the end, Ministers have to take responsibility. They cannot simply say that they have made these edicts and CCGs have been told to do it, and then we have a situation where clearly CCGs cannot do it because they do not have the money, they have conflicting priorities and they are left in an impossible situation. So any further statement by Ministers on mental health will be treated with a touch of scepticism in your Lordships’ House until we get to the point where we see the additional money ring-fenced and guaranteed to be spent on mental health.

My noble friend Lady Donaghy and others talked about the importance of public servants. That applies as much to the defence forces and the police as other public services. NHS pay has been held down for a long time—frozen in 2011-12 and subject to a 1% cap. Why should public-sector workers be treated so badly? Is this not a key reason for current recruitment difficulties? Downing Street yesterday morning briefed that the pay cap was coming to an end, but this incoherent Government then similarly briefed in the afternoon that it was not. What is happening to the pay cap and when will the Government realise that they cannot artificially hold down the pay of public sector workers year after year?

A number of very important points have been made about public health, which I endorse. On social care, we have the immediate issue of funding. We need extra funding now. On the dementia tax, I ask the Minister this. The Government, with their Lib Dem colleagues in coalition, set up the Dilnot commission. They accepted recommendations. They then legislated; we spent months in your Lordships’ House legislating for Dilnot. They even said what the cap would be— it was higher than Dilnot at £72,000, but it was accepted as a reasonable response. Even when they then delayed its implementation, they said it would be implemented in 2020. The question remains of why the Government ran away from the Dilnot commission. Why are we having a consultation? What is there to consult about?

The one thing I say to the Minister is this: he will talk about the need for consensus, but he should look back to 2010, to just before the election, when Andy Burnham put forward proposals on a consensual basis for funding long-term care, and Cameron and Osborne and the rest of the crew attacked it as a death tax. He will find that his Government have no credibility in this area. Frankly, any old person who is concerned for the future has everything to fear from this Government’s approach.

I want to finish on culture. I very much warmed to the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Grade. I am sure the Minister would cause great joy in God’s own city of Birmingham if he were to announce this afternoon that Channel 4 is coming—it is the logical place, and I expect the Government to insist that Channel 4 moves out. Given the loss of broadcasting facilities in our city when compared to the great days of ATV, if I may say so, Birmingham is the right place, and I hope that will happen.

We welcome the data protection Bill, and there will be much discussion on it. However, I end by coming back to the point that I link education to creativity. A number of very important points have been made about our concern that, in many schools, creativity has been sacrificed on the altar of what is now an obsession with exam results. Like my noble friend Lady McIntosh, I was hugely impressed by the sensible comments made recently by the Chief Inspector of Schools. She made it clear that, in her view, the obsession with schools chasing exams at the expense of other activities that would give young people a rounded education has to stop. I hope that the Minister will say that the Government accept that view and support the chief inspector in more rounded inspections to ensure that children get a much wider education, in which these cultural issues are given huge importance.

This has been an excellent debate. We look forward to the response from the Minister, but I hope that over the next year or two, or for as long as this rather chaotic Government carry on in a half-light existence, we will get to debate more of these very crucial subjects.