Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Jack Dromey

Monday 1st November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Of course I will meet my hon. Friend. We recognise that some schools are concerned about pressures and have made available a range of school resources and management tools to help them get best value from their resources. I just remind the House that the increase of £1,500 per pupil by 2024-25 is compared with 2019-20.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

England’s near 400 maintained nursery schools were not eligible for exceptional costs funding, and they therefore had to bear the burden of covid themselves. The Government’s announcement last week of the continuation of supplementary funding for three years is a welcome step in the right direction, but will the Secretary of State confirm that it will cover inflationary pressures and the national living wage increase? Will he meet the hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly), me and the other officers of the all-party parliamentary group on nursery schools, nursery and reception classes to ensure that those outstanding centres of excellence in some of the most deprived communities in the country get the funding that they deserve?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Member will recall that when I was Minister for Children and Families, I met the all-party parliamentary group, an incredibly important group, which I know that the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), the current Children and Families Minister, will continue to engage with. We have confirmed that continuation of supplementary funding for maintained nurseries through the spending review period, which provides the sector with long-term clarity. I am happy to meet the hon. Member and the APPG to go through the details.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Jack Dromey

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

We have done some excellent work on this, and an announcement is imminent.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Michelle Gay, headteacher of Osborne Primary School, was in tears when she told ITV just how tough it is to be one of the 361 schools in Birmingham suffering real-term cuts while trying to give kids in one of the poorest and most deprived constituencies in Britain the best possible start in life. Headteachers have asked to meet the Secretary of State personally so that they can bring home to him just how tough it is becoming. Will the Secretary of State be generous and agree to meet them?

Local Government Financing

Debate between Nadhim Zahawi and Jack Dromey

Tuesday 29th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Jack Dromey]

It would appear that, in your local authority, they have found Lord Lucan, and they are now looking for the Liberal Democrat and Tory councillors. In Birmingham, they are going to have to stand up and be counted.

There is a grotesque contrast between the £2 billion levy on the banks—not on the bankers, by the way—on the one hand, and £11 billion off welfare and £12 billion on VAT on the other. I want to take this opportunity to pay tribute to the leadership shown last night by the truly honourable Members for Colchester (Bob Russell) and for Portsmouth South (Mr Hancock) when they voted against their own Government in opposition to the VAT increase.

The shadow Secretary of State was absolutely right to point out earlier that the areas with the greatest needs should not bear the brunt of the cuts. Birmingham has great problems of multiple deprivation and high unemployment, yet, as a consequence of the Budget, it will see the biggest cash reduction—more than £12 million. It will have the largest cut in area-based grant in any local authority in Britain, at £8 million, and the seventh largest cut to the school development fund, at £633,000. That money was designed to help struggling schools to succeed.

Birmingham will have the second largest cut to Connexions, at £2.7 million. This will harm the ability of our city to help the young into work and to get apprenticeships. It will also have the largest cut to the children’s fund, at £1.14 million. That will damage the capacity of our city to reach out to disabled, disadvantaged, troubled and sometimes abandoned children. It will also see the largest cut to the working neighbourhoods fund—a highly successful programme of concentrated, co-ordinated, community-led action to get Birmingham’s citizens off benefit and into work.

I have seen these programmes at first hand, in the form of the remarkable Employment Needs Training Agency in my constituency, and three excellent employment Connexions contracts focusing on the long-term unemployed, lone parents, ex-offenders, those who have engaged in alcohol abuse, and those who lost their jobs under Mrs Thatcher in the 1980s and never worked again. Those programmes have an outstanding track record of reaching out to those people, giving them hope, and helping them to rebuild their lives and get back into work.

[Nadhim Zahawi (Stratford-on-Avon) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman speaks eloquently about the problems in Birmingham without telling us how we got there in the first place. Does he think that borrowing £500 million, not every month or every week but every day, represents responsible behaviour towards the people of Birmingham?

[Jack Dromey]

We have a problem as a consequence of people like you: bankers.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am not a banker.

[Jack Dromey]

There are more bankers on the Government green Benches than there are in the square mile of the City of London.

Those admirable community projects’ money will run out in March 2011, and they are now facing a cut of up to one third. The impact of that on those projects and those communities will be absolutely devastating.