Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Munira Wilson

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Neil O'Brien]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Around my constituency, we have seen the closure of a couple of local independent schools, which have blamed the decision to introduce VAT. This will mean more people looking for places in local state schools that are already oversubscribed and, in turn, fewer people getting their first choice. New clause 25 is not about the principle of the tax, but about having a proper mechanism to monitor the impact on the state system, among other things.

An importance piece published in The Times over the weekend found, based on freedom of information requests, that at least 27 local authorities have no spare school places in certain year groups, which will make it difficult to find places for children forced to move schools. Those are exactly the kinds of issues that we need to monitor very carefully, which is why this new clause calls for a report on the impact of the policy.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 25, which seeks to monitor the impact of VAT on private school fees. There is, however, something missing in the new clause, which I have urged Ministers repeatedly to look at. I hope that even if they will not publicly talk about it, they are looking privately at the impact of this policy on the 100,000 children with special educational needs in private schools who do not have education, health and care plans, and may be displaced into the state sector. That will have an impact on the state sector and the demand for EHCPs, which is already in crisis. When Ministers respond, I hope they might address that point.

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[Neil O'Brien]

I think it is clear from the Minister’s response that there are certain things we will not be able to find out in the absence of this new clause. We will not be able to see the numbers moving from the private sector to the state sector. In particular, as the hon. Member for Twickenham raised, we will not be able to see the critical flow of those with undiagnosed or unofficially recognised special needs, as they potentially move into the EHCP process and into state schools. Nonetheless, we will continue to monitor the impact of this policy over time, and I beg to ask leave to withdraw the clause.

Clause, by leave, withdrawn.

New Clause 30

Publication of details of preventative care and family support

(1) Every local authority, must within six months of the passing of this Act, publish details of all preventative care and family support available to people in their area.

(2) Information published under subsection (1) must be made available—

(a) on the authority’s website, and

(b) in all public libraries in the authority’s area.”—(Munira Wilson.)

This new clause would require all local authorities to publish information about preventative care and family support and to ensure it is freely available to people living in the area.

Brought up, and read the First time.

[Munira Wilson]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

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[Neil O’Brien]

The hon. Lady makes a thoughtful point. There is a fantastic meta-analysis published by the London School of Economics and the 5Rights Foundation of all the different studies that have been done on this around Europe. The hon. Lady referred to a specific study, which I hope to speak to the authors about. It is a good study, and perfectly sensible, but the issue is that it cannot find anything statistically significant because it looked at only 30 schools, with a sample size of about 1,200 pupils. It does not look at any natural experiments either, so it does not look at schools that are changing their policies.

Where we have good RCT-like evidence, like in the great study in Spain, where they looked at a province that changed its policy wholesale, we can see from those natural experiments the really powerful effects of in-school policies. I agree with the hon. Lady that this is not the only thing that we should do. The study she mentioned was not wrong; it just could never show us the things that people are interested in. Indeed, there is plenty of other evidence out there in these meta-analyses, and from Jonathan Haidt’s website, of really powerful in-school effects.

A study in the US shows that a class time-only rule does not give teachers as much benefit as they might expect. Research from the National Education Association found that 73% of teachers in schools that allow phone use between classes find that phones are disruptive during classes. The same is true here. The Department for Education’s national behaviour survey, published in April 2024, found that 35% of secondary school teachers reported mobile phones being used during lessons without permission. The problem is more pronounced for older children, unsurprisingly. Some 46% of pupils in years 10 to 11 reported mobile phones being used when they should not have been during “most or all” lessons. That is nearly half of pupils in most or all lessons reporting disruption, so the problem is absolutely there in the DFE’s data.

The idea that guidance has done the trick and that there is no longer a problem to solve is contradicted by the Department’s evidence. Work by the company Teacher Tapp, also known as School Surveys, similarly finds very high levels of problems and no signs of progress. Instead of guidance, all schools should be mandated and funded to have lockers and pouches, and to get kids to put smartphones away for the whole day, including breaks. Schools should be the beachhead and the first place that we re-create a smartphone-free childhood—seven hours in which we de-normalise being on the phone all the time for young people.

Why do we need a full ban, and not just guidance? I already gave some of the data showing that the guidance has not worked, but there are two other reasons. First, we need to support schools and have their back. From speaking to teachers and school leaders, I know that the pressures from parents to allow phones can be really severe on schools. Some parents, unfortunately, can be unreasonably determined that they must be able to contact their child directly at any minute, even though they are perfectly safe in schools. In the sorts of places where three and four-year-olds have smartphones, that is, I am afraid, normalised now, so a national ban would make things simpler and take the heat off schools.

Secondly, a full and total ban is needed as part of a wider resetting of social norms, as the hon. Member for North Herefordshire said, about children and smartphones. Smartphones and social media are doing damage to education even when they are not being used in schools. Our new clause 48 aims to be proportionate, and subsection (2)(b) would allow for exceptions as appropriate, having learned the lessons of what has been done in other countries.

To come to the hon. Lady’s wider point, when I was a Health Minister, I wanted us to get going an equivalent of the famous five bits of fruit and veg a day for this field—other Members might remember “Don’t Die of Ignorance” or “Clunk Click Every Trip”. We need some big things to reset the culture and wake up a lot of people, who are not necessarily going to read Jonathan Haidt’s book, to dangers that they may be unaware of. The heavy exposure of our kids to addictive-by-design products of the tech industry is the smoking of our generation. As with smoking, the tech industry comes up with fake solutions that do not actually make things safe. In the 1950s, it was filters on cigarettes, and now it is the supposed parental filters on social media. Just like with smoking, there is unfortunately a powerful social gradient to unmonitored internet access, with the worst effects on the poorest.

I do not know what Ministers will do about our new clause this time round, and I do not know what they will do as the Bill goes through the other place, but I hope that they will end up implementing this idea at some point. I will take my hat off to them when they do.

[Munira Wilson]

I come at this new clause first and foremost as a parent before I look at it as an MP. Looking at it with both hats on, though, I have long supported the previous Government’s guidance to schools to try to ban mobile phones during the school day. For a long time, I have needed convincing that a legislative ban was required, but I have finally concluded that we probably need to move towards one, partly for the reasons that the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston outlined. Some heads and school staff come under a lot of pressure from parents to allow the use of phones during the school day, but if this were a statutory requirement, the Government would have to provide the support needed to implement it.

Just this week, I talked to the headteacher of a secondary school in my constituency. He is very keen to implement a ban on phones during the school day, and he is trying, but kids are getting their phones out at various times and not staying off them. It is a fairly new school, but for some reason it was built without lockers, so there are no lockers. He has looked into purchasing lockers or Yondr pouches—the phone pouches that I believe the Irish Government have bought wholesale for every school in Ireland—and he said that that would cost him about £20,000, which he did not have in his budget. Putting the ban into statute would give headteachers and teaching staff the clout they need with parents who particularly want their children to have their phones during the school day, and the Government would need to resource the ban so that schools could implement it.

I draw Members’ attention to subsection (2) of the new clause, which deals with exemptions, because that is a very important point. Proper exemptions are important for young carers or children with health conditions that need monitoring via apps. School leaders and teachers know their children best, and they know which children need exemptions. I would be interested to know what the consequences would look like—would they fall on the school? I do not think the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston touched on that, but I would be interested in discussing another time how he thinks this ban could be enforced. It is just one of a suite of measures that we as policymakers need to take now, given the harm that phones and access to social media are undoubtedly doing to our children and young people.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Twelfth sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Munira Wilson

Committee stage
Thursday 6th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Neil O’Brien]

I rise to speak only to clause 56, which is a big old Henry VIII power. I am sure that their lordships will want to explore it in detail. In the interests of time, I have not tabled an amendment to it at this stage and I will not go into lots of detail, but it is always important to note such things. It is no small thing to give the Government the power to amend primary legislation without coming back to the House. Of course, there are certain limits to what they could do by means of such measures, but it is a big deal.

I place it on the record that the Minister will be well aware of some of the concerns about the clause that are coming to us from civil society. I am sure that she will have seen the comments from Jen Persson, the director of Defend Digital Me, on the information powers in the Bill. When we make laws in this way, it relies on someone noticing and raising an objection to Parliament to get any kind of democratic debate, and we can only stop such things in hindsight.

As the Minister will know, Defend Digital Me has put forward 30 different areas and proposals that it has concerns about, particularly on the information side. On previous clauses, we debated the constant unique identifier and eventually using the NHS number for that, and other things that we have objected to, such as the requirement to give information about how much time a home-schooled child is spending with both parents.

I will not reconsider all the debates that we have already had, but all those important decisions will potentially be in the scope of this Henry VIII power. I am keen to move on to the new clauses, so I will not go any further now, but I am sure that the Government will receive lots of probing questions on this point as the Bill moves to the other place.

[Munira Wilson]

I rise to speak in support of new clause 10, adding the Liberal Democrats’ support for putting equal protection into law for children. I do not understand why we would have a different level of protection for adults versus children. They are the most vulnerable children in our society. The Children’s Commissioner and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children have been very clear that children should be protected. This is not seeking to interfere with parents in terms of how they discipline their children; it is about protecting our most vulnerable. The Children’s Commissioner has strongly called for this, particularly in the wake of the tragic case of Sara Sharif.

I really hope, when the Minister says that the Government will actively look at this during this Parliament, that that is the case. I suspect that there are Members in all parts of the House—I note that the new clause has cross-party support—who will continue to press her on this matter, because it is a basic issue of children’s rights and equal protection in law.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Munira Wilson

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Neil O'Brien (Harborough, Oadby and Wigston) (Con)]

New clause 54 would allow academies to continue to exercise freedom in the matter of their curriculum where Ofsted is satisfied that the curriculum is broad and balanced. New clause 53 would allow ongoing curriculum freedom in academies where it is needed in the interests of improving standards. New clause 44 would extend academy freedoms to local authority maintained schools, allowing them to offer a curriculum that is different from the national curriculum, as long as it is broad and balanced and certified by Ofsted.

The imposition on all schools of the—currently being rewritten—national curriculum was raised in our evidence session right at the start of this Bill Committee. As Nigel Genders, the chief education officer of the Church of England noted:

“The complexity is that this legislation is happening at the same time as the curriculum and assessment review, so our schools are being asked to sign up to a general curriculum for everybody without knowing what that curriculum is likely to be.” ––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 64.]

There is a parallel here in that we are also being asked to sign up to sweeping reforms to the academies order at the same time as the Government are changing the accountability framework, as the hon. Member for Twickenham correctly pointed out in the Chamber yesterday. Several school leaders gave us good examples showing why it is a mistake to take away academy freedoms to vary from the national curriculum. As Sir Dan Moynihan, the leader of the incredibly successful Harris Federation, explained to us:

“We have taken over failing schools in very disadvantaged places in London, and we have found youngsters in the lower years of secondary schools unable to read and write. We varied the curriculum in the short term and narrowed the number of subjects in key stage 3 in order to maximise the amount of time given for literacy and numeracy, because the children were not able to access the other subjects. Of course, that is subject to Ofsted. Ofsted comes in, inspects and sees whether what you are doing is reasonable.

“That flexibility has allowed us to widen the curriculum out again later and take those schools on to ‘outstanding’ status. We are subject to Ofsted scrutiny. It is not clear to me why we would need to follow the full national curriculum. What advantage does that give? When we have to provide all the nationally-recognised qualifications—GCSEs, A-levels, SATs—and we are subject to external regulation by Ofsted, why take away the flexibility to do what is needed locally?” ––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 72.]

Luke Sparkes, from the also very successful Dixons Academies Trust, argued that:

“we…need the ability to enact the curriculum in a responsive and flexible way at a local level. I can see the desire to get that consistency, but there needs to be a consistency without stifling innovation.” ––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 79.]

Rebecca Leek from the Suffolk Primary Headteachers’ Association told us:

“Anything that says, ‘Well, we are going to go slightly more with a one-size-fits-all model’—bearing in mind, too, that we do not know what that looks like, because this national curriculum has not even been written yet—is a worry. That is what I mean. If we suddenly all have to comply with something that is more uniform and have to check—‘Oh no, we cannot do that’, ‘Yes, we can do that’, ‘No, we can’t do that’, ‘Yes, we can do that’—it will impede our ability to be agile”. ––[Official Report, Children's Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 83.]

The Minister talked about Chesterton’s fence and gave us some lessons in Conservative history and philosophy, but I point her to the same argument: this is an example of Chesterton’s fence. These freedoms and flexibilities are there for a reason. They are there to defend us against the inflexibility of not being able to do what Sir Dan Moynihan needs to do to turn around failing schools. It is no good us saying, “Here is the perfect curriculum. Let’s go and study this incredibly advanced subject” if the kids cannot read or add up. This is a very powerful point that school leaders are making to us, one which I hope Ministers will take on board.

Since the Minister referred to a bit of Conversative history and Ken Baker’s creation of the national curriculum in the 1980s, she will of course be aware that there was a huge debate about it and a lot of concern, particularly from Mrs Thatcher, about what many described as the “nationalised curriculum”. There was concern that it would get out of hand, become too prescriptive, too bureaucratic and too burdensome. That debate will always be there, and the safety valve we have at the moment is that never since its instigation have all schools had to follow the national curriculum. Even though academies did not exist then, city technology colleges did and they did not have the follow the national curriculum. This is the first time in our whole history that every single school will have to follow it.

In relation to previous clauses, I have spoken about getting away from the dead hand of compliance culture and moving toward an achievement and innovation culture—a culture of freedom—in our schools. Pupils at Michaela Community School made the greatest progress in the whole country three years in a row—an incredible achievement—and they did that by having an incredibly distinctive and knowledge-intensive curriculum that was completely their own. Its head, Katharine Birbalsingh, has argued in an open letter to the Secretary of State:

“Clearly there needs to be a broad academic core for all children. But a rigid national curriculum that dictates adherence to a robotic, turgid and monotonous programme of learning that prevents headteachers from giving their children a bespoke offer tailored to the needs of their pupils, is quite frankly, horrifying. Anyone in teaching who has an entrepreneurial spirit, who enjoys thinking creatively about how best to address the needs of their pupils, will be driven out of the profession. Not to mention how standards will drop! High standards depend in part on the dynamism of teachers. Why would you want to kill our creativity?

Then there is the cost. Your curriculum changes will cost schools time and money. Do you have any idea of the work required from teachers and school leaders to change their curriculum? You will force heads to divert precious resources from helping struggling families to fulfil a bureaucratic whim coming from Whitehall. Why are you changing things? What is the problem you are trying to solve?”

That is a good question; perhaps the Minister can tell us the answer.

Nor is it just school leaders who are raising concerns about this clause. The hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh) said that the proposal to make it compulsory for academies to teach the national curriculum was “of particular concern” to her. Our three new clauses reflect what school leaders have told us. We think the clause is fundamentally a bad idea, but we are trying to find a compromise.

New clause 53 responds to Sir Dan Moynihan’s point that freedom to vary from the national curriculum can be really important in turnaround situations: we cannot succeed in other things if children are unable first to read and write. New clause 54 allows freedom where schools are delivering a broad and balanced curriculum. That worries Ministers, although we heard from the head of Ofsted the other day that schools are delivering a broad and balanced curriculum, so once again it is not clear what problem Ministers are trying to solve. We do not learn the answer from the impact assessment either. If this is just about ensuring that all schools have the same freedoms, new clause 54 would give local authority schools the same freedoms as academies, but that is not what the Government are proposing.

I hope the Minister will tell us at some point what problem she is trying to solve. Where is the evidence of abuse? There is none in the impact assessment, and Ministers have not produced any at any point so far in the process. The Government’s impact assessment says that schools

“may need to hire additional or specialist teachers for any subjects not currently delivered or underrepresented in existing curricula”,

that they may need to make adjustments in their facilities, resources and materials to meet the national curriculum standards, and that they may need “additional or specialised training” to deliver the new national curriculum. It says:

“some academies may be particularly affected if their current curriculum differs significantly from the new national curriculum”.

Unfortunately, the impact assessment does not put any numbers on the impact. Will the Minister commit clearly and unambiguously to meet the costs, including for facilities, for any schools that have to incur costs as a result of this measure?

The Minister talked about Jim Callaghan’s famous phrase, his reference to a “secret garden”. We will come on to that on a later new clause, when we will advance the case against secret lessons in relationships, health and sex education. I hope the Minister will be as good as her word; I hope she is against the secret garden in that domain. On these new clauses, we hope the Minister will listen to the voices of school leaders, her own colleagues and people who are concerned about clause 41, and tell us what the problem is that the Government are trying to solve. The Government clearly like the idea of everything being the same—they like imposing the same thing on every school in the country—but what is the problem? Where is the evidence that this needs to happen? Why are Ministers not listening to serious school leaders who have turned around a lot of schools, who say that they need this freedom to turn around schools that are currently failing kids? Why do Ministers think they know better than school leaders who have already succeeded in turning around failing schools?

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. In the light of the discussion that we had before lunch, I want to put on the record that those who are questioning these measures—certainly on the Liberal Democrat Benches—are not trying to attack standards. We recognise that, like qualified teachers, the national curriculum is a very good thing for our children. It is important that children and young people have a common core. None the less, I come back to the question that I posed earlier and the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston just posed again: what is the problem that Ministers are trying to fix with clause 41?

In oral evidence, His Majesty’s chief inspector of schools, Sir Martyn Oliver, told us that there is very little evidence that academy schools are not teaching a broad and balanced curriculum. He said:

“the education inspection framework that we currently use significantly reduced the deviation of academies because it set out the need to carry out a broad and balanced curriculum…I would always want to give headteachers the flexibility to do what is right for their children”. ––[Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 50, Q113.]

Given the Ofsted framework, given that our primary schools are preparing children to sit their standard assessment tests, and given that secondary schools are preparing pupils for a range of public examinations, not least GCSEs, all of which have common syllabuses, the reality on the ground is that most schools do not deviate very much from the national curriculum.

On the other hand, during the oral evidence sessions we heard that school leaders have sometimes used the freedom to deviate where children have fallen behind as a result of disadvantage, trauma, the covid pandemic or other reasons, to ensure they reach the required level to be able to engage in that broad and balanced curriculum. I ask Ministers: if an 11-year-old is struggling to read and write, does it make sense to expect them to access the full history, geography and modern languages curriculum immediately at the start of year 7? As much as I would want them to—I say this as a languages graduate who bemoans the death of modern languages in our schools—we cannot expect them to do those things until they have a basic standard of written English.

The Children’s Commissioner spoke powerfully of her own experience. She had to turn a school around by ditching the wider curriculum to get the children up to the required standard before opening up the curriculum.

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[Neil O’Brien]

It is always a bad sign when someone has to misrepresent completely what their opponent is trying to say. Allow me to address that point directly by, once again, reading what Leora Cruddas of the Confederation of School Trusts told the Committee:

“We accept that the policy intention is one of equivalence in relation to maintained schools, but maintained schools are different legal structures from academy trusts, and we do not think that the clauses in the Bill properly reflect that. It is too broad and it is too wide. We would like to work with the Government to restrict it to create greater limits.” ––[Official Report, Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Public Bill Committee, 21 January 2025; c. 81, Q169.]

That is what our amendments seek to do.

To take the temperature out of the discussion, let me say that I do not have a problem with the Government having a new power of intervention to cut across their funding agreements with academies—although that is a big step, by the way. My problem is with the completely unlimited nature of the power. I am thinking about the effect of getting away from micromanagement over time. The sixth-form college I went to had become brilliant because it had managed to use the freedoms in the 1992 reforms to take a huge step away from micromanagement, but some of the older teachers there still remembered the days when they had to ring up the town hall if they wanted the heating turned up. Imagine that absurd degree of micromanagement. Terrifyingly, some schools in Scotland are still experiencing that insane degree of micromanagement; teachers there are currently on strike because their concerns about discipline are not being taken seriously, so we can see that freedom has worked in England.

I do not think that this was the intention of the Ministers, but the drafting of the clause is far too sweeping. It gives an unlimited power. I see no reason why the Ministers should not accept the suggestion from the Confederation of School Trusts, which our amendments seek to implement, that we limit that power in certain reasonable ways. It is fine for Ministers to be able to intervene more, but we need some limits. I am sure that the current Secretary of State wants only good things, but a bad future Secretary of State should not be able to do just anything they want.

The Ministers started from a reasonable point of view, but it has gone too far. I hope that they will work with the CST to turn the unlimited power into a limited one. Perhaps they will even accept our amendments, which would do exactly that.

[Munira Wilson]

I was going to say largely the same as the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston, although I think he was exaggerating slightly in suggesting that the power will lead to local authorities telling schools whether or not they can switch their heating on and off.

[Neil O’Brien]

I did not say that.

[Munira Wilson]

There was that suggestion.

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[Neil O’Brien]

No, I said that that happened in the ’80s.

[Munira Wilson]

All right. I have a lot of sympathy with amendments 88 and 89, and I agree that the drafting of the clause seems at odds with the explanatory notes. There is a potential overreach of the Secretary of State’s powers over schools, so I look forward to hearing what the Minister can say to temper what is in the Bill. I have no problem ideologically with what I think are the Ministers’ intentions; it is just that the drafting seems to allow a level of overreach and micromanagement from Whitehall, which I think we all wish to avoid.

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[Neil O’Brien]

I am trying to get the Minister to de-conflate her own statistics. The Government want to present the statistic in a deliberately conflated way and I am trying to get it de-conflated. This is the Government’s statistic; I am not offering it. I would like to have some sense from them of how many schools—they must have the figure to make the claim—are going to go through structural interventions so that we can compare the future regime to the previous regime. The Ministers are the ones making the claim that this will intervene on more schools; I am not claiming that. I think it is reasonable to ask for the numbers behind the Government’s own claims, which they did not have to make.

There is an irony behind all this. Ministers have said that they worry about having different types of schools and they want things in the system to be generally more consistent. Currently, the school system is a sort of halfway house: about 80% of secondary schools are now academies, but fewer than half of primaries are—so just over half of state schools are now academies; most academies are in a trust and so on.

In the absence of this Bill we were gradually moving over time, in an organic way, to get to a consistent system based on academies and trusts, which would then at some point operate on the same framework. But the Bill effectively freezes that halfway: it is ending the academisation order and enabling local authorities to open more new schools again. I have never been quite clear about why Ministers want a situation where they do not end up with an organic move to a single system but remain with the distinction between academies and local authority maintained schools, particularly given the drive for consistency elsewhere in the Bill.

In the past, there have been people in the Government who have held anti-academies views, or at least been prepared to bandwagon with anti-academies campaigners on the left. When running for leadership of the Labour party, the Prime Minister said:

“The academisation of our schools is centralising at its core and it has fundamentally disempowered parents, pupils and communities.”

That was not long ago; there he was, on the bandwagon with the anti-academies people.

Likewise, the Deputy Prime Minister said she wanted to stop academy conversion and

“scrap the inefficient free school programme”.

We talked about the evidence that those programmes worked when Labour Members asked for it. The Deputy Prime Minister said that the free schools programme is inefficient, but the average Progress 8 score of a free school is 0.25. That is a fantastic score, getting a quarter of a grade better across all subjects, which is beating the national average. That is what the Deputy Prime Minister thought was so inefficient, but the opposite is the truth. The Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister are not the only ones: the Culture Secretary spoke at an anti-academies conference. The Energy Secretary said that free schools were the last thing we need—but actually, for many kids they are the first. When Ministers in this Government say that they just want more options, and that they are still prepared to fight all the usual suspects to put failing schools under new management—even where left-wing local campaigns are against it—we start from a bit of a sceptical position, because of the relatively recent comments made by senior Ministers.

We do not have to imagine the future. The other day, we saw a choice: we saw a straw in the wind. Glebefields primary school in Tipton was issued with an academy order after being rated less than good twice. The DFE previously told Glebefields that the Education Secretary did not believe the case met the criteria to revoke academisation, despite the change of policy before us. The school threatened legal action and the Secretary of State changed her mind. I worry that there will be many such cases, as well as court cases, and that too many children will find themselves in schools that are failing them, and in need of new management that they will not get.

Ultimately, our amendments seek to limit the damage of this clause, but fundamentally we think that it is a mistake. We worry that, in a few years’ time, Ministers will realise what some of their Back-Bench colleagues already realise: why this clause is a big mistake.

[Munira Wilson]

On clause 44, Liberal Democrats have long supported the position that a failing school, or one that Ofsted has identified as requiring intervention, should not automatically be made an academy. That is our long-standing policy position, so when the Bill was published I welcomed that measure.

However, I felt the need to table amendments because, as I stated yesterday in the Chamber, I was concerned that we were being asked to take away the automatic provision of issuing an academy order without knowing what the school inspection regime would be, and were therefore being asked to legislate in a vacuum. I still think that it is wrong that this legislation started to be considered before we had yesterday’s announcements, but I recognise that the Government have now made them.

I was quite taken, in the oral evidence session, in which we heard from various witnesses, not least by Sir Jon Coles, who said he would like to see what Government policy is underpinning this particular measure, and what the Government’s school improvement policy is. I think the jury is still out on what we heard yesterday, but the fact that we have had a policy announcement negates, to some extent, amendment 95 in my name. It sought to ensure that there was something in place, so that if there were not an automatic academy order, the Secretary of State would invite bids from successful academy trusts that had a track record of turning schools around.

I say to the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston that academisation is not a silver bullet. He has enjoyed quoting many times the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden, who spoke out against her own Front Bench, but she even said herself on Radio 4 in the interview that he cited—which I listened to very carefully on the day it was broadcast—that academisation is not a silver bullet. I have not seen it in my own constituency, but I note that the hon. Member for Hyndburn (Sarah Smith) pointed out on Second Reading that she worked in areas in the north-west where there were some schools with very vulnerable pupils that had not been improved by being switched from academy trust to academy trust. Clearly, it is not always the correct answer. I therefore think it is important that Ministers set out the whole range of options that are available to ensure that we can turn schools around—and turn them around quickly—because our children deserve the best possible opportunities to flourish and thrive.

Some questions were posed on that yesterday, and I am sure that Ministers will address it over the coming weeks—although I welcome comments today—but, with the RISE teams that are being put in place, the number of advisers is really quite small for the number of schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil O'Brien]

The hon. Lady, in her speech, is talking a lot of sense. I would just point out to her that in the last Parliament, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies, per-pupil funding, in real terms, went up by 11%. There will always be constraints. Indeed, the current Ministers have cut the academisation grant and the trust improvement capacity fund, and cut Latin, maths, computing, and physics support; lots of things have been cut. In fairness, schools funding, per pupil, went up a lot faster in the last Parliament than it did in 2010 to 2015, when the hon. Lady’s party was in government. But there are always—[Interruption.]

[Munira Wilson]

I am very happy to respond to that. The hon. Gentleman will know full well—[Interruption.] Sorry; if the hon. Gentleman wishes to make these party political jibes, I am very happy to come back at him on them. In 2010 to 2015, it was the Liberal Democrats in government who made sure that schools’ day-to-day funding was not cut. We were responsible for introducing the pupil premium, which, post 2015, was never uprated.

[Neil O'Brien]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Munira Wilson]

In a moment. I will make this point, because I wanted to pick up on it in the oral evidence session when people were asking questions about attainment, but we ran out of time. The pupil premium was a Liberal Democrat front-page manifesto policy in 2010. That was implemented and it has helped disadvantaged pupils. After 2015 it was not uprated in line with inflation, and that is why our disadvantaged children up and down the country are now getting less money, in real terms, to support their education. We have seen a widening attainment gap since covid in particular.

So, I will take no lectures from the Conservative Benches on supporting disadvantaged pupils. It was our policy on free school meals, and our policy on the pupil premium, that came to bear. Actually, it was after 2015 that we saw funding cuts. The hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston boasted that per-pupil funding was raised; the Conservatives only got it back to 2010 levels by the time they left government in 2024. I am sure that Members across this room, when they visit their schools, will hear stories about the funding pressures.

[Neil O'Brien]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Munira Wilson]

I think we are diverging somewhat from the clause and the amendments.

--- Later in debate ---

[Munira Wilson]

Amendment 47 would, very simply, make the Secretary of State’s recommendations on pay and conditions a minimum for all schools, whether maintained or academy schools, as the Secretary of State and Ministers have now confirmed was their intention with the Bill. I note that, since I tabled this, new schedule 1 has been tabled. I question why we need a separate order-making power, with all the complexities set out in the new schedule—I am sure the Minister will address that—but I think we are at one in saying that the recommendations should be a floor not a ceiling.

I return once again to the data laid out in the House of Commons Library document on the Bill, which suggests that there is very little variation in pay between maintained schools and academies. Again, I am not 100% sure why we need the new schedule; I just think we should have a floor for all schools. I think it is great that where schools have the means, they are able to pay a premium to attract teachers in shortage subjects, challenging areas or schools that may have had their challenges, but, as we all know, the reality is that most schools are massively strapped for cash—most headteachers and governors I speak to say that. The idea that they are all going to be able to pay a premium is for the birds. None the less, those schools that are able to should absolutely have that freedom.

[Neil O’Brien]

We have been on quite a journey on this clause. At the Education Committee on 15 January, the Secretary of State said that critics of the Bill were confused. She said:

“It has become clear to me that there has been some confusion and some worry about what I have said in this area, so today I want to be absolutely clear that all schools will have full flexibility to innovate with a floor and no ceiling on what that means.”

The fact that, subsequent to that, we have pages and pages of Government amendments to their own Bill suggests pretty powerfully that it was not school leaders and critics of the Bill who were confused.

This is a very significant measure. The impact assessment notes that an Employer Link survey conducted in 2021 found that over 28% of employers varied in some way from the school teachers’ pay and conditions document. Freedoms have been quite widely used. As Sir Jon Coles said in evidence to this Committee, just because people are using the freedoms does not necessarily mean that they know they are using them. Some of the innovations are great—they are things we all want for our teachers and schools. For example, United Learning, Jon Coles’s trust, was paying 6.5% on top of the national pay and conditions to retain good people. Dixons was innovating with a really interesting nine-day fortnight, so that teachers in really tough areas got more preparation time. This is really powerful innovation that we do not want to take away.

The Secretary of State called for a floor not a ceiling and said that she wanted

“that innovation and flexibility to be available to all schools regardless of type.”

We think that is a good principle and we agree about extending it to all schools. That is why our new clause 7 would extend freedoms over pay and conditions to local authority maintained schools as well. Given that the Government said previously that it would be good to have the same freedoms for everybody, we assume that they will accept the new clause so that we can have the floor not a ceiling for everybody, not just academies.

If a floor not a ceiling is right for teachers, surely it is right in principle for the other half of the schools workforce. Surely, school support staff—actually, they are the majority of the workforce in schools—are not worth any less than teachers, and the same principles should apply to them. This is critical. Lots of trusts are using the advantages of scale to make back-office savings and efficiencies, and ploughing them back into additional benefits and pay to support really good staff. I hope that Ministers will support our new clause 64, when we come to it, and accept that the principle that they have applied to teachers should apply to everybody else in our schools, too.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Munira Wilson

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Munira Wilson]

Q Obviously, breakfast clubs are for primary schools, but hunger does not end at 11. Do either of you think that we should be extending provision of free school meals right up to 18?

Paul Whiteman: May I add something in response to your first question, and then deal with your second question? In terms of QTS, we agree with what Julia said, but would add that it is a legitimate expectation of pupils and parents that they are taught by someone who is qualified to do so. Therefore, the provisions in the Bill meaning that people travel towards becoming qualified teachers are very important. That necessity has a marginal impact on recruitment and retention, frankly.

Recruitment and retention is so much more than the flexibilities that may or may not be allowed to academy chains under pay and conditions. Those are sparingly and judiciously used at the moment—we have no objection to how they have been used so far. But those flexibilities have a marginal impact. What affects recruitment and retention is more around workload stress, the stress of accountability, and flexibility within employment, rather than those flexibilities.

[Neil O'Brien]

Q A quick question for Julie. You said it was not clear whether the Bill currently delivers a floor, not a ceiling. Would you welcome it if we all passed an amendment to make that very clear?

Julie McCulloch: Yes.

Mental Health Treatment and Support

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Munira Wilson

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Commons Chamber

[Neil O’Brien]

This is an extremely important issue that the hon. Gentleman is quite right to raise. We will be producing the results of the rapid review in the coming weeks, so he will not have to wait very long.

[Munira Wilson]

Like other colleagues, I see many children in my constituency waiting well over a year, sometimes two years, to access child and adolescent mental health services, so I was alarmed when NHS England recently told me that, on the latest modelling, the number of NHS-commissioned training posts in London for child and adolescent psychiatry will halve by 2031. I have no idea what is driving this modelling, but given that one in six seven to 16-year-olds have a probable mental health disorder, will the Minister at least look into these figures and undertake to write to me to explain why we are seeing such a drop in the number of training places?

Hospice Sector: Fiscal Support and Cost of Living

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Munira Wilson

Thursday 2nd March 2023 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Neil O’Brien)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) on securing this debate and thank her for the support that she gives to the palliative, end-of-life care and bereavement sectors. The Minister for Social Care, my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), is unfortunately unable to be here today, so I am here to represent the Government. I extend my gratitude to all Members here today for their contributions, which I have heard and learned from. I pay tribute to my own local hospices in Leicestershire, LOROS—the Leicestershire and Rutland Organisation for the Relief of Suffering—and Rainbows, for the work that they do.

The Government are acutely aware of the pressures and challenges posed by the rising costs that have been mentioned in today’s debate. While they affect us all in every sector, the impact on the hospice sector has rightly been raised for debate. Everyone here recognises the incredible importance of palliative and end-of-life care services, and the invaluable work that hospices, charities and the people who support them do to ensure that dignity, care and compassion are present in our lives when we need them most.

The efforts of organisations such as Hospice UK and Together for Short Lives play a vital role in ensuring that we as a nation provide world-leading palliative and end-of-life care. Like pretty much everyone in the country, I thank them. I take this opportunity to say thank you for everything that they do.

The hospice sector supports more than 200,000 people with life-limiting conditions in the UK each year, as well as tens of thousands of family members with bereavement support. We know we have an ageing population presenting with more complex health needs for more years of life. On average, about 600,000 people die every year in the UK, and that number is expected to increase. With that expected increase, the number of people needing palliative care is also likely to rise. Health is of course a devolved policy area, so in terms of direct hospice policy, I can only speak to the English experience, although I will of course talk about some UK-wide areas that are highly relevant, such as energy policy.

While so much palliative and end-of-life care is provided by NHS staff and services, hospices also provide significant support to people at the end of their life and to those important to them. They are mainly independent charitable organisations that receive funding from a mix of public sources and charitable donations. The sense of purpose that is shared with the community—the community cares for the hospice and the hospice cares for the community—is something that we should cherish. I see that strongly in my constituency. It is emblematic of the incredible rallying of compassion and care that we see around hospices all over the country. We should also note the important role that hospices played at the height of the covid pandemic when considering their important place in their communities.

In England, integrated care boards are responsible for commissioning end-of-life and palliative care services to meet the reasonable needs of their local populations. In the Health and Care Act 2022, palliative care services were specifically added to the list of services that an ICB must commission. That will ensure a more consistent national approach and support commissioners in prioritising end-of-life and palliative care, as hon. Members have called for. In July 2022, NHS England published new statutory guidance on palliative and end-of-life care to support commissioners with that new duty. It includes specific reference to ensuring the sufficient provision of specialist palliative care services and hospice beds, and ensuring their future financial sustainability.

I recognise the importance of quality palliative and end-of-life care for children and young people. NHS England is investing £23 million via the children’s hospice grant by March 2023, rising to £25 million by 2023-24, in order to provide care close to home for seriously ill children when they need it.

On the question that the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) asked, although we only set out funding to date in the spending review, that does not mean that all funding will be cut off at that point. We are exploring exactly how that funding will be provided in the future. Furthermore, this financial year, NHS England has made £5 million of match funding available to ICBs for local children’s palliative and end-of-life care services. That will rise to £7 million in 2023-24, demonstrating the value of those services.

The funding of hospices and the sector is indicative of the Government’s commitment to their work and the vital societal role that they play. We recognise, however, that hospices, like every other organisation and household across the country, are having to contend with a range of budgetary pressures, including huge energy costs following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

[Munira Wilson]

I thank the Minister for addressing one of my key questions about the children’s hospice grant. I am sure the sector will be grateful to hear that it is expected to continue. Although hospices will understand that he cannot commit to that at this stage, the problem is that if they do not know what they will get for the next three to four years, how can they make plans for their workforces and services? Will he say anything more than that something will continue? I do not know whether he is coming to this, but will he also say something about the ringfenced grant being administered directly, rather than via ICBs?

[Neil O’Brien]

Those are both really important points. The hon. Lady knows that it is not for me to set out the future of funding, but I hear the points she makes about ensuring that funding flows to hospices and that they are prioritised by ICBs, and about providing as much certainty as quickly as possible. Both those points have landed with me.

To meet the energy pressures, the UK Government’s energy bill relief scheme provides a price reduction in wholesale gas and electricity prices for all UK businesses and all other non-domestic customers. That means that they will pay wholesale energy costs below half of the expected prices this winter. A new scheme—the energy bills discount scheme, which has been mentioned— was announced in January, ahead of the current scheme ending in March. It is intended to help hospices’ budgetary planning into the future and provide certainty. That follows a Treasury-led review of the energy bill relief scheme some months ago.

The energy bills discount scheme will provide all eligible non-domestic energy users, such as hospices, with a discount on high energy bills until March 2024. It will apply to all UK domestic energy users in the voluntary and public sector, including hospices. We will invest up to £5.5 billion to support those non-domestic users. Furthermore, hospices may also be entitled to a reduction in VAT from 20% to 5% and exclusion from the main rates of the climate change levy on the energy they use for non-business purposes, as long as they meet the criteria in the scheme.

In addition to those two specifically energy-focused interventions, in 2022 NHS England released £1.5 billion in additional funding to ICBs to provide support for inflationary pressures, with local ICBs deciding how best to distribute that funding according to local need, including to palliative and end-of-life care providers such as hospices. I have previously mentioned the steps we have already taken in legislation and guidance to ensure that hospices are prioritised by ICBs.

A large part of hospice activity—probably the majority—actually takes place in people’s homes. That is why we are also taking action on domestic energy pressures. In fact, this winter we are spending a total of £55 billion to help households and businesses with their energy bills. That is among the largest support packages in Europe. A typical household will save about £900 this winter under the energy price guarantee, in addition to the £400 energy bill support scheme for households. On top of that, we are also spending £9.3 billion over the next five years on energy efficiency and clean heat, making people’s homes easier and cheaper to heat.

To help with some of the other cost of living pressures on households—which is the last thing people need when they are in need of hospice care—we are taking measures such as the extra £900 cost of living payment for 8 million poorer households, the largest ever increase to the national living wage for 2 million workers, and a total of £26 billion for cost of living support next year. I hope some of these supportive measures will reassure Members about the Government’s commitment to the sustainability of the hospice sector, particularly during this challenging fiscal period. I understand that the rising cost of living has caused all kinds of uncertainties, and we continue to engage proactively with the sector to try to understand the issues it faces.

[Munira Wilson]

Will the Minister give way?

[Neil O’Brien]

I will close my speech by again expressing my thanks to those who have attended the debate—including the hon. Lady, to whom I now give way.

[Munira Wilson]

I thank the Minister for giving way again. On his point about the energy bill relief scheme, will he at least acknowledge the absurdity of leaving hospices out of the energy-intensive grouping, while botanical gardens, zoos and museums, deserving though they are, have been included? Does he not recognise that that is utterly absurd, given the sort of services that hospices are delivering?

[Neil O’Brien]

Although this is not my policy area, as I understand it, this applies to the energy-intensive and the traded sectors, so organisations need to pass through two different filters to qualify: they have to be very energy intensive and in the traded sector. That would explain the organisations that are chosen or not chosen, but as I said earlier, I absolutely hear the point that the hon. Lady is making.

I pay tribute to all those working in and supporting the palliative and end-of-life care sector and providing essential support to those who need it. I hope I have reassured Members of the Government’s commitment to supporting these invaluable services.

Teddington Police Station

Debate between Neil O'Brien and Munira Wilson

Wednesday 23rd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson]

I appreciate that the Minister may not know definitively at this point whether MOPAC is covered by that general consent. If he cannot put that on the record definitively now, will he write to me urgently to confirm whether that is the case, so that I can flag it up with the Mayor and the Deputy Mayor for Policing?

[Neil O'Brien]

I will write to the hon. Lady today on that exact point.

Let me turn to the wider issues that the hon. Lady raised. She powerfully advocated the views expressed by many of her constituents that the former police station should not be converted into luxury flats. We do not want to see London turning into a city full of luxury flats for millionaires; it needs to be a city that serves the whole community. That sentiment is widely felt across London and indeed beyond. The Government are clear that the answer to the problem is encouraging and increasing the supply of affordable homes across the board, and encouraging high-quality mixed developments. That is what we are delivering through the £11.5 billion affordable housing programme, which is part of the largest investment in affordable housing in over a decade.

The hon. Lady made the point that of course we all want to see additional resources going into our police as well and there are choices that MOPAC can make. However, it is worth putting that into some context. As part of our plan to recruit an extra 20,000 police officers, as of the end of last year the Metropolitan police had already recruited 2,121 additional uplift officers, and in 2022-23 the Metropolitan police will receive up to £3.24 billion, an increase of £164 million, or 5%, on the previous year’s settlement. Yes, of course we want more resources to flow into the police, but they are already flowing from central Government.

We should be clear that there are choices for MOPAC. In my letter to the hon. Lady I will absolutely clarify and underline what I have said in the debate, namely that there are choices that MOPAC can make.

[Munira Wilson]

I decided not to pursue this point in my speech, but if the Minister is writing to me about the choices that MOPAC can make on funding, I must point out that it was very striking that, when the deputy Mayor wrote to me about the sale of the police station, she was very clear the money was needed for frontline policing—that the Mayor was funding an extra several thousand police officers—and to tackle violent crime. That suggested to me that there was a need to spend what is essentially a capital receipt on revenue activity. I hope the Minister can address that point, too, in his letter, regarding how that money should be spent if it is raised from the sale.

[Neil O'Brien]

I am very happy to add some of those points to the letter.

In the time remaining, let me touch on a couple of the wider issues that the hon. Lady mentioned. We are keen to support councils such as the London Borough of Richmond to deliver on regeneration and more affordable housing. We are very keen to encourage more generally the reuse of suitable brownfield land and existing buildings for all kinds of environmental and social reasons. Across the country, we are increasing the assessment of housing need by 35% in our urban areas and supporting that with the £1.8 billion brownfield regeneration funding announced at the spending review. Also, we are trying to make it easier for things to change purpose.

The whole thrust of Government policy is in many ways towards more brownfield regeneration and more reuse, including for social reasons. We will match that with the actions we are taking through the £150 million community ownership fund to support the retention of local assets across the country. Therefore, as part of the wider thrust of Government policy, which is about regeneration and trying to encourage communities to hold on to and continue to use assets that are important to them, the vision the hon. Lady is sketching out is clearly in strategic alignment with what the Government are trying to do.

This case is clearly important to the hon. Lady’s constituents. She and her community will feel a legitimate frustration when people say, “We don’t have any choice, there are no options here. There is nothing we can do about it.” It is clear to me, however, that there are choices. Given the context and the recent financial settlement for police and for local government, we are in a period of increasing numbers of officers and increasing funding. The hon. Lady’s proposal for more affordable housing and for the regeneration of a building that is important to the wider community is absolutely in alignment with what the Government are trying to do.

I will endeavour to write to the hon. Lady as soon as possible to underline the points that I have made. I am conscious that, as she pointed out, the matter is subject to negotiations, even as we speak.

[Munira Wilson]

I thank the Minister for being so generous in giving way again. I may be pushing my luck here, but as well as writing to me, might I persuade him to write to the Mayor of London, or indeed to the Deputy Mayor for Policing?

[Neil O'Brien]

Let me mull on that exact point and come back to the hon. Lady. I am sure that she will certainly share more widely whatever I send her, and she is welcome to do so.

We have already established in the debate that there are some wider choices available to MOPAC. I am happy to put some of those in black and white for the hon. Lady if that is useful to her. I wish her the best in all her wider endeavours in supporting such community regeneration projects in her constituency.

Question put and agreed to.