Relationships and Sex Education

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Moon, and to contribute to this debate on the incredibly important right to remove children from relationships and sex education. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) made an incredibly powerful speech, capturing brilliantly so many of the feelings that my constituents and I have, and the concerns that many constituents have written to me about.

It is incredibly important that parents’ rights are respected. However, conversations I have had with headteachers since I was selected as an MP in 2015 have reinforced the concern that there is an imbalance of rights and responsibilities; and that there is a massive emphasis on the rights and responsibilities of schools, which undermines expectations of what parents ought to contribute. That manifests in a number of ways. I will not go on for any greater length than to say that if we give more and more rights and power to schools, and parents are unable to challenge schools’ decisions and the rights that they, or the state in one form or another, have accrued, the rights and authority of parents are undermined. A concern in civil society more broadly is that individual responsibility, whether that of school- children, their parents, or families as a whole, has been undermined, which then reduces people’s willingness to participate as full members of society.

The former Minister and former Member of Parliament for Crewe and Nantwich, Ed Timpson, said:

“We have committed to retain a right to withdraw from sex education in RSE, because parents should have the right, if they wish, to teach sex education themselves in a way that is consistent with their values.”—[Official Report, 7 March 2017; Vol. 622, c. 705.]

I believe that that is wholly right. It is a very good principle and approach. Religious schools have the right to teach RSE in accordance with their values and their guidance but children of the same religious or ethical perspective in a local authority school are not respected in the same way. It is incredibly important that that respect is universal and is not reserved for selective schools. It ought to be there for all schools.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

The Government’s response to the petition clearly states that primary schools are not required to teach sex education but that, where they do, they must consult parents and include that in their policy. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that gives parents an automatic right to withdraw their kids from sex education in primary schools?

[Chris Green]

There is huge concern about what that consultation means and what impact it has. Can a school still make an overriding decision regardless of the contribution produced by a consultation? That is key to this debate.

The hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones) rightly highlighted that there is, especially in Catholic schools, a very low number of children being withdrawn from classes—that one in 7,800 figure—but if trust and confidence broke down more widely, would we see an increase in that number? One of the aids in ensuring that that confidence is there is parents’ right of withdrawal, and taking that away would enable schools to make decisions with less influence and guidance from the wider school community. That is fundamentally important.

That leads to a concern about increased parent-sanctioned truancy. If parents felt unable to withdraw their child for just that lesson, they would perhaps withdraw them for the whole school day, which would undermine the child’s education more widely. The approach is not a respectful one. In so many other areas we hear about diversity and respect, and celebration of that diversity, and it is curious that in this area those things do not exist; rather, what the state or the agencies of the state believe to be right is imposed.

I urge the Minister to treat relationships and sex education as an integrated subject and to respect parents’ rights to remove their children, because that is the best way to ensure that more children engage with the classes. The classes make an important contribution not only to children but to parents, who are often informed and educated by their children. What assessment has the Minister made of the likelihood of an increase in children being home-schooled? A number of concerns are related to that.

Children’s Social Care

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

Bedford Borough Council is very concerned that there is no regulation of accommodation for vulnerable young people who are 16 years old and over—often referred to as semi-independent living or supported accommodation. In Bedford and nationwide, there is a significant shortfall in available placements for children in care or leaving care. This has resulted in an alarming number of 16 and 17-year-olds being placed in independent living accommodation.

An investigation earlier this month by The Observer and BBC Radio 5 Live established that there has been a 28% increase in the number of under-18s placed in independent living accommodation by councils in England in the last eight years. This accommodation lacks living and staff support, and includes unsupervised B&Bs and accommodation owned by private landlords, who have no obligations to offer appropriate care to looked-after children or those leaving care. In the report, we even heard from children who had been placed in tents.

I wrote to the Children’s Minister about this issue recently and I am very disappointed by his response, which completely failed even to acknowledge the problem. The Independent Children’s Homes Association has raised this issue for at least two years with many agencies including the Department for Education, Ofsted and the Children’s Commissioner, but there has been no action at all.

This is a scandal. Vulnerable children are being abandoned by the state and, worse, are put at risk by being placed in unsuitable and unchecked accommodation with adults who have drug addictions or a history of criminal behaviour, including sexual assaults. How many times must these children be let down by those who should be caring for them? Charities such as Every Child Leaving Care Matters and Just For Kids Law say that there has been unprecedented growth in the number of unregistered, unregulated units of multiple accommodation for children aged 16-plus, but of course we cannot be sure of the scale of the problem because they are unregistered. This must change now.

We must measure the problem and understand why it is happening in order to tackle it and ensure that no 16 and 17-year-old vulnerable children are left to fend for themselves in risky, inappropriate and often unsanitary accommodation. I am pleased to hear the Children’s Commissioner say in her interview with BBC Radio 5 Live and The Observer that she will finally be investigating the housing of vulnerable children this year; better late than never.

This is urgent. The Government must act now to introduce legislation that regulates such properties, and to reassure communities and local authorities that appropriate quality standards are achieved, in order to improve outcomes for vulnerable young people and give confidence to our communities.

Education Funding

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter).

On the top of overarching cuts to education budgets and undue pressure being heaped on local authorities, Bedford Borough Council has just been hit by an additional cut in its allocation of £1.3 million. That is despite the fact that, by the Government’s own assessment, the council’s funding allocation is below what it should be and it was therefore due to gain from the national funding formula. In reality, per-pupil funding in Bedford is actually falling.

The unexpected cut has come as a huge shock to the council and to school leaders who had planned expenditure based on the expected income, not on the reduced budget as worked out by the Education and Skills Funding Agency. Will the Minister look again at the figures to determine whether, as we believe, an error has been made because the Education and Skills Funding Agency has not allowed for in-year changes connected with Bedford Borough Council going from a two-tier to a three-tier system? The agency has reduced per-pupil school funding for Bedford Borough Council by 0.85% for primary schools and 1.55% for secondary schools. If those sums are not rectified, instead of increased funding per pupil, every average-sized primary school class in Bedford will be £1,000 worse off and every average-sized secondary school class will be £1,600 worse off. That is not what the funding formula promised to deliver. This Government promised extra funding, but we cannot see it anywhere.

The last thing that council officers in Bedford want to do is pass on the loss to schools that are already struggling to make ends meet, but with further cuts to local authorities in the pipeline it will be hard for them to avoid doing so. Hard-working teachers and local schoolchildren do not deserve this. After all, it is their education and their futures that are at stake here. We should be investing in the next generation, not compromising the quality of their schools. At the very least, schools deserve the same funding as before, or better still, the extra funding that the Government promised.

Will the Minister confirm how much contingency funding the Department for Education has in its budget for the dedicated schools grant? Will he also agree to meet me and representatives from Bedford Borough Council to urgently address the issue and order funding to be frozen, rather than cut at a cost of £1.3 million?

School Funding

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

No, I have already given way to the hon. Lady.

The NASUWT warned just weeks ago that one in five new classrooms is a portakabin. Is it not time for the Government to match our commitment to getting the school estate into a safe and acceptable condition?

For kids with special educational needs, the funding crisis creates even greater challenges. Let me declare an interest: only last week, I was one of those parents facing the issue of making transitional arrangements for their child with special educational needs. Frankly, parents up and down the country worry that support will not be in place for their children. When school budgets are cut, the services that support children who are most in need are often lost first. The National Education Union found that almost two thirds of schools have had to cut special needs provision.

The Government’s new funding formula presents local authorities, which are at breaking point due to cuts to their budgets, with the terrible choice between top-slicing additional funding for high needs and giving schools their full allocation. Councils should never have to face that choice. Will the Secretary of State look at giving every local authority the additional funding they need for high needs from his Department’s budget instead of squeezing it from schools, which are already under pressure?

There is a similar picture for other support. We recently debated the new rules on free school-meal eligibility. Despite Ministers and Government Members claiming that no children would lose their existing allowance, the IFS found that one in eight who is child eligible under the legacy benefits system will not be eligible after the changes. Will the Secretary of State finally publish his Department’s methodology?

At 16, children should have new opportunities ahead of them, but too often those are lost. Some £1.2 billion has been slashed from the 16-to-19 education budget, hitting sixth forms and colleges. Apprenticeship starts are in freefall. This Government’s repeated failure to invest in our young people and their futures will rob them of the opportunities that so many of us in the Chamber took for granted.

I am sure that the Secretary of State will remind us all of the £1.3 billion his predecessor eventually came up with last year, so perhaps he will also tell us where that money will come from. We already know that £300 million was raided from the healthy pupils fund despite the Government’s promise that that would not be cut. His predecessor also indicated that she would save money by rowing back on the free schools programme—at last, an admission that conventional schools are actually cheaper.

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

The Tories have cut £2.7 billion from the schools budget in England since 2015. Does my hon. Friend agree that the extra £1.3 billion of schools funding that the Government announced in July comes nowhere near plugging the funding gap?

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend makes a crucial point, which relates to the point made by the hon. Member for Lewes (Maria Caulfield). Taking £1.3 billion from the existing education budget does nothing to mitigate the £2.7 billion of cuts that schools have faced.

Will the Secretary of State tell us how many new schools will now be built by local authorities and how much money will be saved?

The rest of the cuts come from mysterious efficiency savings, which the Secretary of State’s predecessor said would be identified by officials. Have those savings been identified and can he share that information with the House today? Will he admit that the £1.3 billion will not reverse the loss of the £2.7 billion from school budgets, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) reiterated?

Money is not the only factor, but it is hard to escape the reality that the cuts are the fundamental fact of life facing those who run our public services and those who rely on them. Can the Secretary of State tell us exactly how many schools will face a cash-terms cut to their budget in the next year?

Free School Meals/Pupil Premium: Eligibility

Mohammad Yasin Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for securing today’s important debate.

We have been told many times by the Government that universal credit was designed to make work pay. These plans tell a different story. Universal credit was supposed to mean no cliff edges, so it would always be worth a household working extra hours to earn more. Free school meals are worth £437 per child, so even for a household with a single eligible child, taking just an extra hour of work per week on the national minimum wage would mean a loss of income under the new proposals. The Children’s Society estimates that a million children will miss out on free school meals under the new proposals. It is therefore not a case of work paying, but of some of the poorest children in society paying for another Tory policy that is set to bring yet more anguish and confusion to the botched universal credit roll-out.

Headteachers have voiced concerns that the proposed scheme would be complicated to manage and confusing for parents. Clearly the Government have not learned from their poor general election results. I remember the parody “strong and stable Tories steal the food from the children’s table” doing the rounds in response to the Tory manifesto policy to axe free school meals. The Government should know that they have no mandate to reduce school meals, and it makes no sense to do so.

Last summer, 47% of children who received support from food banks in the Trussell Trust’s network were between five and 11 years old, and 4,412 more three-day emergency food supplies were given to children during the summer holidays than in previous months. We know that children on free school meals already underperform in schools. Why would any Government choose to make life more difficult and more challenging for those children? Why would a Government that claim to want to tackle inequality, to help the disadvantaged, to tackle child obesity and to help out the “just about managing” come up with a policy that does the exact opposite?

I agree with the Child Poverty Action Group, which has said that the Government have missed an opportunity to alleviate the crisis by increasing the eligibility and uptake of free school meals, ensuring that all children from low-income households receive a nutritious meal at lunchtime. If a family is in need of universal credit, it stands to reason that the children should be eligible for free school meals. It is just another example of the Government using the universal credit system to make the poorest in society, including children in working households, even worse off.