Small and Village School Funding

Debate between Neil O'Brien and George Eustice

Wednesday 17th July 2019 Westminster Hall

[Neil O'Brien]

The hon. Gentleman is completely correct. This challenge affects all of the United Kingdom. For rural schools that closed, the average walk to the next nearest school is 52 minutes, which in practice means driving or getting a bus. There is a cost to the taxpayer for this transport, and a cost to parents and children for driving a long way, so there are all kinds of reasons why we should want to preserve our village schools.

I will turn to small schools more generally, including those in urban areas. I am grateful to the House of Commons Library for digitising older data for me that revealed a dramatic transformation in the scale of our schools over recent decades, and a decline in the number of small schools. The number of pupils at state primary schools in England is roughly the same as in 1980, but the schools that they attend are completely different. In 1980 there were 11,464 small primary schools with fewer than 200 pupils, but in 2018 there were just 5,406. The number of such schools has halved over the decades.

In contrast, in 1980 there were 949 large primary schools with more than 400 pupils, but in 2018 there were more than 4,000, so the number of large schools has quadrupled. The number of really big primaries with more than 600 pupils increased from 49 to 780, while there are now more than 100 what I call “super jumbo” primary schools with more than 800 pupils, which often have playtimes in shifts and hundreds of staff. This is a huge change in the nature of our primary schools, and it is visible in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland too. In fact, since 2002 Wales has seen the most dramatic decline in the number of small schools, followed by the north-west and Yorkshire.

This huge change in our primary schools has come about without any real discussion or political choice. It seems to me a move away from the natural small scale for small children, and there is no obvious policy rationale for it. Small schools are not bad schools. Schools with 200 pupils or fewer are just as likely to be “good” or “outstanding” as other schools. In fact, schools with fewer than 100 pupils, which account for about one in eight schools, are more likely than average to be “good” or “outstanding”, so this is not about academic standards.

I think two different things are driving it. The first is planning, which is outside the DFE’s remit. We do not build new small schools, and we do not make developers pay enough for the infrastructure needed for new housing. Instead, our bitty, piecemeal development allows developers to get out of paying for new schools, and we cram more pupils into existing schools, building classrooms on playing fields. Secondly, wider catchment areas mean more car journeys to those schools, and because builders often put schools in residential areas, there are a lot of cars driving into streets that were never intended for them, leading to a lot of congestion. People tell me that makes their village no longer feel so much like a village.

However, the DFE could do some things about the declining number of small schools. We should increase the lump sum element of the national funding formula. Do not get me wrong: the national funding formula is extremely good and has meant that the funding rate per pupil in my constituency has gone up twice as fast as the national average. It helps underfunded areas such as mine to catch up with the national average, although there is still a long way to go. It would be very helpful to increase the lump sum—the part of the national funding formula intended to help small schools.

[George Eustice (Camborne and Redruth) (Con)]

Is another problem with the national funding formula that the system of gains, caps and floors—in place for transitional reasons, which we all understand—compounds historical unfairness? While 3% of a very small budget is still quite limited, 1% of a very large budget is still quite a lot for those schools to enjoy.

[Neil O'Brien]

I think my hon. Friend is correct, and I think we both want to see a faster transition to a fairer overall settlement. However, I want to focus on the point about the lump sum.

Leicestershire County Council was historically a strong supporter of small schools and had a lump sum of £150,000 per primary school. In the national funding formula, that is only £110,000. When consulting on the national funding formula, the DFE acknowledged that that number was lower than the average for most local authorities. As local authorities converge on the national funding formula, as they should, the pressure on small schools may intensify. The proportion of the core schools budget going through the lump sum declined in the last year, and the gap between income and expenditure is much smaller for small schools, indicating a financial pressure. In fact, larger schools have about twice as much headroom per pupil. Small schools are definitely feeling the pinch.

I hope and expect that, under the next Prime Minister, we will see a big increase in school funding. A good way of delivering that would be to increase the lump sum within the national funding formula. About a fifth of primary schools get more than 20% of their income from the lump sum, and for them an increase could make the difference between staying afloat and closing. There has been some discussion about increasing sparsity funding as an alternative, but I am a bit sceptical. Fewer than 6% of primaries get sparsity funding, and only 1% get the full amount; a number of small schools in my constituency that are under pressure would not be eligible. That is one reason why only a third of local authorities have included a sparsity element in their local formulas. Increasing the lump sum, if I could beg the Minister to do that, would be simpler and better. For a little more than £800 million, we could take the lump sum back up to £150,000 and get my village schools back to where they were.

Puppy Smuggling

Debate between Neil O'Brien and George Eustice

Wednesday 1st November 2017 Westminster Hall

[The Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (George Eustice)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) on securing the debate. I know, based on the number of hon. Members present, that people care deeply about this issue. Hon. Members who have attended similar debates in recent years will know that, both as a Back Bencher and as the Minister responsible for companion animals, I have championed this cause and tried to make improvements, particularly to the legislation on the breeding of puppies —an issue to which I shall return.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire pointed out, puppy smuggling is an abhorrent practice and is partly driven by demand for certain breeds in this country. We need to ensure greater public awareness of these things. If a person is told that someone wants to meet them at a motorway service station to sell them a puppy, that should set alarm bells ringing that something is not right. Everyone has a role to play in solving this problem, but in the time I have, I shall restrict my comments to what the Government are trying to do to improve things.

First, I shall explain a bit about what is required now. Under our current regulations, predominantly shaped by EU law, any dogs imported for commercial reasons—

[Neil O’Brien (Harborough) (Con)]

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on the Government’s brave and right decision to increase sentences for animal cruelty, which will certainly help to deal with the scourge of puppy smuggling. Secondly, may I encourage him to use the opportunities of Brexit to bring about reform of the 2012 legislation, to which he has just referred, so that we can clamp down more firmly on puppy smuggling? Thirdly, may I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Ceredigion (Ben Lake) and encourage the Minister to encourage other people to take on rescue dogs? I have seen in my own family how even very difficult dogs can become wonderful pets with the right family.

[George Eustice]

My hon. Friend and I have worked together on European issues in the past, so we come from a similar position on that. A number of hon. Members have mentioned their dogs. I had a pet dog called Mono, a particularly erratic border collie, which came from the RSPCA, and I would always recommend that as the first choice for people.

As I was saying, under the existing regulations, we have something called the Balai directive, under which all commercial dogs are supposed to come in. There has been growth in the number of dogs coming in under those commercial provisions, but also, following changes to PETS—commonly called the pet passport scheme—in 2012, we have seen significant growth in the number of dogs and puppies coming in under that pet travel scheme.

There are really three potential problems of which we need to be aware. First, are there people who are flouting the system altogether, not having any kind of passport or documentation and simply smuggling puppies in in the most literal sense? I have asked that question many times and I can give hon. Members some reassurance. Border Force obviously carries out lots of checks at the border for people who are people trafficking, for drugs, and for customs issues. Whenever they come across dogs that are hidden and do not have the documentation, they alert the local trading standards officers so that they can take action, but we do not get many of those cases. In the last 10 months, there has been one case of people coming in with no documentation at all.

The second issue is whether there are people bringing puppies into the UK on the PETS travel scheme, which is supposed to be for people’s pets, with the intention of selling them commercially. That is where there is greater concern and where our efforts have been focused.

The final issue is whether the existing commercial arrangements go far enough, because the truth is that checks under the Balai directive are more thorough than under the PETS travel scheme, but the difference is not that great, and applying that may not achieve very much.

I want to let hon. Members know that we have been working with Dogs Trust and the Animal and Plant Health Agency in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. Two years ago, following a similar debate to this, I asked them to get involved to toughen our approach at the border, and I can say that where we have come across examples of fraudulent vets, predominantly in east European countries, issuing fake documentation, we have taken action. For instance, the chief veterinary officer has written to authorities in Hungary, Latvia, Poland and Slovakia to highlight in particular the problem of under-age puppies. In January 2017, the Hungarian authorities wrote to advise us that they had responded to our letter and taken action, including police investigations of the veterinary practices and transporters involved. In July 2015, the Lithuanian authorities introduced legislation meaning that passports can now be issued only by a vet from their state veterinary service. Where we have seen problems, we have acted, which has led to change in some of these countries.

As I said, we are working with Dogs Trust to carry out more physical checks at our borders and particularly at the port of Dover. I thank Dogs Trust for the work that it has done in helping us to put the puppies that are seized into quarantine and, hopefully, find homes for them. Following that work, which started in December 2015—two years ago—in response to a similar debate to this, we have seized 649 non-compliant animals. The Animal and Plant Health Agency has played a leading role in that by helping to age the puppies involved. In most cases, the people are single, one-time offenders. I have asked whether we have a small number of repeat offenders. That appears not to be the case, but we are taking action on that front.

A number of hon. Members mentioned third-party sales. When I was the Minister responsible for companion animals, we took action on that. We have completed a consultation. We are bringing forward regulations that will ensure that anyone selling pets, whether online or in a pet shop, will need a licence, and they will have to abide by a statutory animal welfare code for dogs. We have introduced in that some provision to have “earned recognition” for groups such as the Kennel Club that run their own schemes.

The changes that we have made, both to the threshold before which people need a licence to breed puppies in the first place and to put it beyond doubt that anyone selling a puppy needs a licence and must comply with the dog welfare code, will deal with this problem. We should also recognise the work done by groups such as the Pet Advertising Advisory Group, to prevent people from going on and selling if they have high-velocity sales. A lot of progress has been made there.

I want to touch on the options that we will have when we leave the European Union. There is obviously a chance to look at these things afresh. We could, for instance, review the approach that we take on commercial animals so that we tighten the restrictions for those coming in—tighten the requirements. We could introduce more checks and restrict the ability of pets to travel from other European countries. If we think that a European country has weak authorities, we could address that by putting a particular restriction on it. It will be open to us to start to consider these things once we leave the European Union, but while we are in the EU, we must focus on doing the work we are doing to tackle this problem at the border and seize these under-age puppies.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of puppy smuggling.