Lesser-taught languages

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

I wish to express my disappointment at the fact that a number of exam bodies have decided to pull out of teaching GCSE and A-level for lesser-taught modern languages. It seems that from 2016 or 2017 we will lose a large number of what are referred to as lesser-known languages, and for teaching purposes as modern languages. Those include Arabic, modern Greek, Japanese, Urdu, Bengali, modern Hebrew, Punjabi, Polish, Dutch, Persian, Gujarati and Turkish. In short, my case is that a short-term decision by exam bodies, supposedly made on the grounds of low uptake and/or financial viability, will put at risk the UK’s future trade, diplomatic and cultural relationships with many future economic success stories.

The internationally recognised group known as the Next-11 countries—the House will be grateful that I will not list them all—have been identified as countries set to enjoy rapid and sizable growth. However, with these cuts to exam board qualifications we are set to dismiss, among others, Arabic, Bengali, Turkish and Persian. Indeed, for Britain there will not be the Next-11 countries, but there may be the Next-7. The British Council identified key languages based on economic, cultural and educational factors. Those included Arabic, Turkish, Portuguese and Japanese, yet they too have been identified as of no further interest to exam bodies.

I fear that unfortunately we are not learning the lessons of the past. We have all become familiar with the success of the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India and China—which were identified decades ago as the growth economies of the future. Yet to all intents and purposes, for some years we in the UK have fared less well than some of our competitor neighbouring EU countries in doing business with the BRIC countries, and I suggest that in part that was because we did not teach and master the languages of the economies that we knew were about to emerge—and emerge they did. Are we now set to repeat those mistakes with the Next-11 countries and the so-called MIST countries—those countries have taken over from the BRICs and are Mexico, Indonesia, South Korea and Turkey?

Let me use the example of Turkey for illustrative purposes. Turkish is currently taught at GCSE and A-level, but the OCR board’s proposed policy is to cease to teach it as a modern language. The OCR—a not-for-profit organisation—has cited commercial viability as the reason for not proceeding with that exam, arguing that only 1,700 GCSE students and 600 A-level students entered for it. The decision to drop the GCSE and the A-level baffles me, frankly, not least because the number of candidates achieving A-level grades A to E is higher than that for courses the exam bodies are keeping, namely German and Spanish. The decision by the OCR is further complicated—and difficult to understand and challenge—by the fact that on the grounds of commercial sensitivity it will not share the financial information it claims is driving this decision. If it is abandoning the course, I struggle, as one who spent 25 years in business, to understand what could be commercially sensitive.

Perhaps I can make a note of my first two points for the Minister. Will he confirm that the Government are not putting financial pressure on exam bodies, or, indeed, if they are putting pressure on exam bodies? Will he require them to share the financial rationale for that decision with him or his officials?

[Stephen Timms (East Ham) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very important case. May I just tell him about the Shpresa project, which works in my area among families who came to the UK from Kosovo? Teaching people Albanian is a very important part of what it does. The young people are very keen that there should be a GCSE, as there is not one at the moment. The exam body has told them that raising £100,000 would enable a GCSE to be introduced. So far, they have raised £80,000.

[Nick de Bois]

I pay tribute to them for their ingenuity and their willingness to try to solve their problem. That points to something I would like to say about the diaspora a little later, but I applaud their entrepreneurial and, shall we say, Conservative instincts to try to find a solution for themselves.

I am quite happy to respect the commercial sensitivity argument about not putting information in the public domain. However, as the Minister will see later, I am anxious that if he were to explore that argument with the OCR it would perhaps either provide comfort or expose as flawed the argument that has been put forward.

On the wider argument, does the Minister agree that the case for learning modern languages is very simple? The world is becoming even smaller. We are seeking to deliver on the Government’s pledge and target to build exports across the globe and to maintain strong trading arrangements with the EU. We will therefore need fluent, well-educated people to build our relationships with Turkey, Poland, Iran, Bangladesh and the other countries I have mentioned. We will need language skills to do business with many of those countries.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the exam boards have for a long time cross-subsidised the smaller subject areas? The key thing here is to increase the numbers of people taking the exams. We know very well that it is a huge step forward to go from speaking a language at home to working towards a qualification. We should be aiming to offer more children the opportunity to get a qualification that then makes them able to do the things he describes in the commercial world: to operate as adults, not simply as children who have a language at home.

[Nick de Bois]

The hon. Lady makes an excellent point. Her work on the all-party group on modern languages champions the arguments for why we should engage with diasporas and capitalise on their contribution and their links, through the second and third generations, as well as making the teaching of these languages widely available. We could then turn around the reputation of Britain as a country that is not necessarily interested in other languages to one that champions such skills, so that we can return to and explore our roots as a trading nation. She makes the point about the advantages of the diaspora very well.

After five years in this place, I recognise that sometimes people are cynical about taking the word of an MP, so, shocking as that might be, I shall turn to some evidence that I hope the exam bodies will take on board. In 2013, the British Chambers of Commerce surveyed 4,768 companies, of which 70% responded that their access to greater exports was diminished by a lack of language skills. It is obvious, but it is good to have the evidence. UK Trade & Investment’s 2013 report, “The Costs to the UK of Language Deficiencies as a Barrier to UK Engagement in Exporting”, showed a staggering loss to British business of £48 billion in exports through poor language skills. I do not need a long education in mathematics to work out that this would be an astonishing return on our investment, if we could capture that £48 billion by continuing our investment in modern languages, including many of the lesser modern languages.

In case we need more convincing, I refer the House to the latest report from Professor James Foreman-Peck, of Cardiff business school, which, in 2015, showed convincingly that small and medium-sized enterprise exporters with strong language skills achieved far higher export-to-turnover ratios. That is the holy grail if we are to continue to drive our export business. It is simple. We require exam bodies to invest in the future by keeping and growing modern language courses, not cutting them back. On the point I think the hon. Member for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) was making, should we not be responding to the alleged concern about entry numbers for GCSE and A-levels, as in the case of Turkish, modern Greek, Polish and Bengali, with an attempt to reach more students by marketing the unique benefits of these courses? There is a vast audience out there waiting to take up the challenge.

[Jonathan Ashworth (Leicester South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate, the title of which is “Lesser-taught Languages”. In Leicester, these languages are not lesser taught—Gujarati, Punjabi, Bengali and Arabic qualifications are sat by hundreds of students every year. He has hit the nail on the head. If we want to expand trade, rather than getting rid of these qualifications, we should be encouraging schools to offer them, in addition to the madrassahs, temples and community organisations that currently offer them in Leicester.

[Nick de Bois]

Indeed. With the best of efforts, many of these supplementary educational skills—the hon. Gentleman rightly talks highly of those in his constituency—are not going to deliver the modern language skills we need at A-level and GCSE level to take pupils on to other qualifications. They are complementary. I will talk shortly about what is being done in the community, but on his point about “lesser-taught languages”, it was the term I inherited and felt worthy enough to draw to the attention of the Speaker’s Office. However, he makes very well the point that many people on Twitter have made to me. We still think of them as lesser languages, but in fact they are the languages of the future, economically, culturally and diplomatically.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. I have been to Turkey several times in recent years and have been impressed by the scale—7% or 8%—of its economic growth. There is a construction site almost everywhere. I am shocked to hear that an exam board might be thinking of withdrawing a Turkish GCSE qualification. Given that the state could provide these qualifications itself but chooses to allow exam boards to do it, is not the answer for the state to say to exam boards, “If you wish to be an exam board, we will hold you to a higher standard”?

[Nick de Bois]

My hon. Friend rightly makes a suggestion that I will be reinforcing to the Minister a little later. He is right. The Government’s job, and our job, is to lead. I know from questions I have tabled to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills and the Department for Education that they would rightly echo the sentiments he has expressed and which I am sure others in the Chamber hold regarding the value and importance of these qualifications. With a new Parliament, perhaps we can put some oomph—that will be an interesting one for Hansard—into backing up what we aspire to deliver.

As is evident today, there are cross-party calls, led by the all-party group on modern languages, for the political commitment to which my hon. Friend has referred. I think it is also a political commitment to transforming the reputation of the UK as essentially poor linguists. I was blessed in that my father was in the Royal Air Force, so I lived and travelled in many locations overseas. I found it quite hard to learn a modern language overseas. For many years we were in Holland, and as the Dutch told me, “We are all learning English because no one is really keen to learn Dutch.” I am not sure that that is necessarily the case now, but because we were English, we were inherently gifted by the fact that so many people wanted to learn English. That is not the way of the world now—in an ever-changing world and an ever-changing global market. I do not want Britain to be seen as a country that is reluctant to value languages other than English.

The all-party parliamentary group rightly set out other important aims—for example, to ensure that every child achieves a high-quality language qualification by the end of their secondary education. Indeed, that is an ambition that other countries do not need themselves, as many of them are on the way to achieving it. I think it right for exam boards to seek to review their policy, which is in my opinion short-termist and taken in isolation of the needs of business and in isolation of the wider UK skills level training for the future.

As the APPG rightly recognises, the commitment to, and the status of, modern languages are strategically important, yet this move, along with the wider concerns about the take-up of modern languages, make our position more vulnerable now and for the future. As the UK becomes more diverse, with a growing diaspora from many different countries, we should not lose sight of the unique opportunity to build closer cultural, diplomatic and business relationships with countries of origin.

Let me explain. In Enfield North, I have a very mixed population, with strong, well-established second and third generations of Turkish-speaking communities, Greek Cypriot communities, south-east Asian and Polish communities, to name but a few. Indeed, it was interesting to find out from my research that Polish is the second most commonly spoken language in the UK. This is not a reason, in my opinion, to abandon the A-level, but a case to ensure that we encourage the second and third-generation Polish people to become the entrepreneurs, academics and diplomats for the UK and to ensure that we help Poland to do more business with the UK. That is surely the role of modern languages—to secure the qualification, to get it recognised as a qualification that is utterly distinct from what people might learn in the home and to allow people to use languages to progress and develop the careers they need. If I sound as if I know what I am talking about at all, it is down to the discussions I have had on this subject with my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski). It is also worth noting that Poland is currently the UK’s ninth largest export market. That is surely something that we should tap into more.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

Poland is one of our largest and fastest-growing export markets. Whenever I go to Warsaw, the discussions I have in Polish are completely different from those I have when I speak in English. They are so much more open to discussions when people make the effort to learn their language. I very much hope that we can save the Polish A-level, purely from a commercial perspective.

[Nick de Bois]

I well take my hon. Friend’s point. I am blessed with a French name, but from the presumption that I speak French I recognise the constant disappointment of French-speaking people when I am limited to saying, “I am sorry, but I do not speak very good French”—in French, at least! My hon. Friend is right that the whole tone, mood and understanding can change when we nuance business relationships by using the language of the people we hope to do good business with.

What I said about Poland, I have already said about Turkey, and it is true of Bangladesh—a growing economy in the world, with unique and historic ties. It is set to be a growing economic partner to the UK, but that could be threatened by the decision to close the door on opportunity by not teaching Bengali, which is the 10th most spoken language in the world. That is a pretty big door of opportunity to close. I think that, in the mid to long term, these very same people can be at the forefront of the strengthening of links with their relatives of generations ago, back at home. I think that that can be part of a wider picture, and that what is becoming an increasingly smaller world can be a world in which we send our ambassadors from the United Kingdom, whose origins lie in the diaspora, to be our No. 1 representatives abroad.

Let me, at this point, pay tribute to Londra Gazete, a north London Turkish newspaper that has championed this issue—so much so that, in less than a week, more than 1,500 people had signed up to argue the case for it. It is not as if people are doing nothing now. The diasporas are certainly not sitting around doing nothing; they have their supplementary schools, and they follow the true Conservative principles of personal and family responsibility. Many people from different communities have set up such schools to help second and third-generation people who were born and raised in Britain to rediscover their language of origin. That is what is happening in the Turkish supplementary schools in Enfield. By keeping Turkish as a modern language, we formalise the achievement of pupils in those schools. It is a recorded academic achievement that can take them on to university, and, as I have said, they can become ambassadors and exporters for Britain.

Teaching in the supplementary schools is not a substitute for modern languages GCSE or A-level courses. I do not want our exam bodies to limit the ambition of any diaspora second or third generation. However, as I said at the beginning, this is not just about diasporas. We should not be limiting the ambitions of all Britons who are willing to learn important languages of the future. What may be a lesser modern language now will certainly not be a lesser modern language in the future.

I want to know whether the Minister will meet exam board decision makers—not least those on the OCR—as a matter of urgency, to raise this matter and convey the concerns that have been expressed in the House and in the modern languages community. I should be grateful if he threw his full weight and authority behind repeating the arguments that have been presented here tonight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

I will come to that in a moment. First, I wanted to point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield North and to other hon. Members that OCR plans to continue offering an IGCSE in first language Turkish, which I hope will be of interest to many of my hon. Friend’s constituents who already speak Turkish.

[Nick de Bois]

I want to put it on record that that has been examined by many people, but it is nowhere near the standard that we require for A-level and it will not achieve the objective, for example, of helping someone get into a university with that qualification.

[Mr Gibb]

I will take that point to the awarding organisations. Although the IGCSE will not count in school performance tables, the qualification is recognised by further and higher education as a demonstration of a student’s proficiency in the language. Clearly, though, the availability of the IGCSE is not a full substitute for a GCSE in Turkish as a foreign language, for those who are learning it as a second language rather than as a first language.

I have listened to the powerful case made by my hon. Friend and other hon. Members this evening on behalf of their constituents and others who recognise the importance of languages to our economy. I should point out, for the sake of balance in this debate, that the Turkish GCSE attracted only 1,403 entries last year, and for the Turkish A-level there were only 354 entries. Indeed, the entry figures have been consistently low for a number of years.

These relatively small numbers create some genuine difficulties for awarding organisations. In addition to diseconomies of scale, they may struggle to recruit sufficient staff to mark the exam and find it more difficult to set grade boundaries, given the statistical variability which is more likely in smaller cohorts. Nevertheless, I believe that these problems may well have solutions. Exam boards manage to recruit markers for the current version of the GCSE and they manage to set grade boundaries effectively.

My hon. Friend is correct. It is not the Government who are applying pressure, financial or otherwise, to reduce the number of foreign language GCSEs; quite the contrary. Having listened carefully to the arguments made by him and others, both during the debate and outside the Chamber, I will raise his concerns and those of other hon. Members with the chief executives of the awarding organisations, including OCR and AQA, and I will invite them to reconsider their current position—I will do that tomorrow—and to subordinate what I believe to be a commercial calculation to the far more significant long-term economic and cultural considerations for this country. In doing so, I will also question them closely about the financial rationale for their decisions.

I am very grateful to my hon. Friend and others for raising this important issue, and I pay tribute to his firm support for the key place of languages in our long-term plan for education and the economy.

Question put and agreed to.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I agree that work experience is extremely important, and I should like it applied to pupils as young as possible. As a first step, I would like young people to get advice about the jobs that are out there—I am talking about labour market information. But if the hon. Lady’s Government had not introduced so much red tape and so many health and safety regulations, employers might not be so put off taking on people for work experience.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

5. What steps her Department is taking to help more schools offer nursery classes.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

Nurseries in schools are at the heart of our plans to offer flexible, affordable and high-quality child care. To deliver on that plan, we are removing the red tape that stands in the way of schools offering provision to two-year-olds. We have also invested £100 million in early years child care places, of which a third are being created in schools. We are allowing child minders to offer wrap-around care in schools, and championing calibration between schools and private, voluntary and independent nurseries.

[Nick de Bois]

I am grateful to the Minister for his reply. Keeping a child in the same school when they transition from nursery to primary school is in the best interests of the child and indeed the school. Although I welcome steps to examine moves towards amending admissions codes for the most disadvantaged, may I urge him to keep an open mind about widening this policy right across nursery schools?

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. In many cases, parents want their children to continue into reception year in the school in which they attended nursery, but that should not come at the expense of parents who, for whatever reason, choose different early years provision for their children. As my hon. Friend mentioned, we are amending the admissions code for the most disadvantaged pupils. Of course I always keep an open mind, and we will keep this matter under review and consider it later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Laws]

We are not intending to over-regulate that sector, but I agree that we must ensure a proper deal for supply teachers. They form an important part of the school system, and the flexibility and freedom that we are giving schools to run their own recruitment, as well as additional resources through the pupil premium, are allowing schools to tackle those problems.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

T4. Some Labour councils are frustrating the growth of primary free schools by building annexes to local education authority schools, even though they may be miles from the secondary school, which often means that a less rigorous process is followed to establish the new school. Will the Minister look into the matter, and would he welcome examples of where it is happening?

[Mr Laws]

I would be happy to look into that. The hon. Gentleman will know that we allocate basic need and maintenance money directly to local authorities, and the free schools programme is managed directly from our Department. If he wishes to provide me with examples of this issue, I will happily look into them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

Our vision is that when young people leave school or college, they have the opportunity to go to university or into a high-quality apprenticeship. We have a programme of reform to increase the quality of apprenticeships, including offering more English and maths and a minimum duration. Undoubtedly, there is more to do to persuade people that apprenticeships are of high quality and that apprenticeships can get them anywhere.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

24. For too long, young people have been encouraged to take vocational qualifications that are below par. Does the Minister agree that, to rectify that, we must focus on the quality of apprenticeships and vocational training, because that is exactly what employers are desperate for?

[Matthew Hancock]

I agree very strongly with my hon. Friend. In fact, we have defunded more than 4,000 qualifications for under-18-year-olds in order to concentrate scarce resources on the qualifications that are valuable. Within apprenticeships, all the evidence shows that training while in work increases young people’s life chances, because it gives them the skills, as well as the knowledge and the behaviour needed to get a good start in a career.

Free Schools (Funding)

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I read with interest and appreciation the article he wrote in The Independent on Sunday outlining a similar case, and I have asked officials in the Department to see what we can do to give effect to his suggestion. If he would like to come to the Department and share his thinking with officials, I shall be delighted to see what we can do to take this forward.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

In my constituency there are three free schools destined, of which two are open, offering 80 places, yet this is in an area in the top 10% of the country for childhood deprivation. I understand the Secretary of State has been accused, with results like this, of being an educational zealot. May I suggest he wears that as a badge of honour for the results he has produced for us in Enfield?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the point he makes. It is of course the case that there has been pressure on school places in Enfield. That is why we have been pleased to increase the amount we spend from £20 million under the last Government to £77 million under this Government. It is also why I am delighted that Patricia Sowter, an outstanding head teacher, has been able to increase the number of school places on top of that by expanding her wonderful chain of free schools. When the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) was shadow education spokesman, he paid tribute to Patricia Sowter for her fantastic work. I hope the current shadow spokesman will associate himself with those words.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman has got his figures wrong. In fact, Sure Start provides fewer than 4% of places. In London, which he represents, 45% of early-years places are in school nurseries. I suggest that he join the Mayor of London’s programme, which he is running with me, to encourage school nurseries to open for longer hours. What the hon. Gentleman says about children’s centres is absolute nonsense. We have increased the investment in those as well.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

Unfortunately, the expansion of free places has resulted in the headmaster of Carterhatch children’s centre in Enfield asking fee-paying parents to take their children out of the centre to make way for those who are on the new scheme. What advice does the Minister have for the headmaster, who has chosen to discriminate against working parents, and for the parents who are fighting to keep their children at the centre?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank my hon. Friend for that question. We are working with London providers and local authorities to get them to expand the number of places. We have made it easier for private sector providers to expand without planning red tape, and we have made it easier for good and outstanding providers to expand without red tape. We also want to see school nurseries and children’s centres open from 8 am to 6 pm to provide flexible child care.

Child Care (London)

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Dobbin.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander) on securing this debate. Recently, I have found myself on the same side as her on certain issues; that probably comes as a disappointment to her and it certainly comes as a surprise to me. However, in common with her in this debate, I also profess a limited knowledge of this issue, although at one point my wife and I had four children under the age of five. I rightly stand charged of perhaps not doing enough at that time to learn about this subject; I should know more. However, I am pleased that we are having this debate, not just because it is in the context of London, but because it gives us time to reflect on the challenge and on what the Government are trying to do. It also gives us a chance to reflect on the supply side, which is behind many of the challenges we face. I think that hon. Members would agree that, for too long, it has been difficult for many families to find good, affordable child care.

Without going into detail, I shall touch on why child care services and facilities are so important. They help to nurture the child, enhance their education prospects and support families that want to return to work. Given what I have seen in some parts of my constituency, they also help to support the provision of a safe social environment, including the boundaries that children are sometimes, sadly, missing in an increasing number of dysfunctional family situations. Child care can make a massive contribution.

Particularly in relation to my latter point, I am pleased that the Government are seeking to address the welfare of children from less advantaged families, through a cross-Department—almost holistic—response. Part of that, of course, is access to child care facilities, which is an important part of the jigsaw that I have just put together. Having said that, it is inevitable that as the cost of child care increases, the Government’s response has to focus both on supporting and widening the supply side and on mitigating the costs that we face. Whatever we call the policy, I suspect that all hon. Members can agree that Government financial interventions will be mitigating something. The supply side will be fundamental, long-lasting and will hopefully achieve more.

In fairness, I should say that I am struck by the rather candid comments of Labour’s former Minister for Children, Beverley Hughes, who admitted that they got it wrong, saying that Labour’s approach of pouring money into tax credits

“was probably wrong. We were so keen to stimulate demand from parents”

with fiscal interventions,

“but in retrospect that was such a mammoth task. We ought to have focused on the supply side…then we could have done more and quicker.”

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. The former Minister for Children was making the point that we should have put more emphasis on supply-side funding and less on the demand side. Can he explain why the Government are not learning those lessons and are instead focusing much more on the demand side with their tax-free child care announcement yesterday?

[Nick de Bois]

I think the hon. Lady will find that we are learning those lessons. I am dealing with that point: my two themes are the supply side and fiscal interventions. However, I will concede that the supply-side challenge in London is particularly difficult. I will also bring to the Minister’s attention some weaknesses in the fiscal interventions that I am experiencing in my constituency now.

It is a current problem. In the interests of fairness, Opposition Members would recognise that the number of child minders halved under their Government, reducing choice and flexibility for parents. There were 98,000 child minders in 1997 and the number fell to 58,000 in 2010. Westminster Hall is generally a constructive environment for debates, but my main point is that this is not a new problem. Costs have been rising above inflation, consistently, since 2003, and since 2009 they have been rising above wages.

[Emily Thornberry (Islington South and Finsbury) (Lab)]

As the hon. Gentleman is comparing Labour’s policies with the current Government’s, can he say whether any child care centres in his constituency have closed since this Government came in?

[Nick de Bois]

I will, as I said, come on to the issues that we are facing in my constituency. However, the work force, on the supply side, is equally as important as the facilities. If the numbers halve, the problem of servicing good quality child care provision will be increased.

I suspect that we would also agree that the quality of the work force is important. That is unquestionable. We do not want to create places just to dump a child in, so that people can go off and have some free hours; no one is into that. We need good quality care. I am sure that the Government’s aims and attentions in this regard would draw cross-party support, because Opposition Members would have said, and tried to do, the same.

We can do things to open up the supply side. I do not generally like to intervene in markets, but we should try to work up constructive ways for the Government to apply leverage to encourage schools to admit younger children. We have to deregulate the process of allowing schools to admit younger children. We made it easier for schools to teach children under three by removing requirements to register separately with Ofsted, a move that was well intentioned, but we do not want to make it difficult. So often, by liberating certain elements of the market, we can free it up and increase the supply side.

On helping schools to offer affordable after school and holiday care, I want primary schools to be open for more hours each day—so does the hon. Member for Lewisham East—and for more weeks a year, to better match the working family’s time table. That can be done locally and I am all for empowering people locally to take those decisions—and, boy, are they needed in my constituency.

We should also be helping good nurseries expand, not stopping them. I would be interested to know whether the Minister is working with councils to explore ways that we can expand the supply side in the boroughs, particularly those that are challenged.

[Heidi Alexander]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about the need to expand nurseries, some of which will, of course, be co-located with schools. Does he recognise that the crisis in primary school places in London, which we discussed earlier, means that the physical expansion of nurseries is even more difficult now than it may have been in the past, because sites are taken up with temporary classrooms and the space does not exist?

[Nick de Bois]

The hon. Lady takes me down a path that I am quite interested in, because we have faced an expansion in primary schools, which unfortunately was not planned in advance. I know that London has transition problems, so it is more difficult to plan in London than elsewhere, but some of the planning that we have done has been to meet an urgent, immediate need for the next year, and we could have used the space much better in some primary schools in my area. We need to free up the planning regulations to make sustainable expansion that much easier. We have seen that done actively in schools. The hon. Lady may have encountered the same problem that I have—that temporary expansion encourages complaints from residents—when we try to meet extra demand in our area.

I often feel that we have missed out on long-term planning. If we could free up planning regulations and look ahead, a strategic plan would allow us to expand provision for both the younger child and the schoolchild. I should add that the problem is not just with primary; we are now passing it on to secondary, and that will be the next challenge.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

We might all support the hon. Gentleman and think this is a great way forward, but somebody has to provide the finance. It is impossible to build a new school and employ new teachers, in whatever way that is done, if the finance is not available from his Government.

[Nick de Bois]

If we expanded schools to take more students—putting in temporary accommodation--we could have more longer term planning, instead of what I call knee-jerk planning, and get better value, as well as the physical premises. We are providing the money to increase demand. Money is much less the issue when schools are being expanded—and we are expanding them—but I want that to be done more cleverly.

On fiscal intervention, the Government’s changes are designed to ease the burden on parents and those from the most vulnerable areas. Of course, that will help to sort out the immediate problems that people are facing now, but that should go hand in hand with a massive improvement in the supply side locally. I really welcome—I am not going to be shy about it—yesterday’s policy announcement. The Government’s new tax-free child care scheme will have a significant impact on child care costs, potentially providing support to up to 400,000 families in London. We should be proud of that, because it will help to ease the financial challenges parents face even in outer-London suburbs, where the costs are not as high as in some inner-London areas. Parents who want to go back to work will start to breathe a sigh of relief because they will feel that the measure is helping them to do so.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

The hon. Gentleman is generous in giving way again—

[Nick de Bois]

Save some time for the Minister.

[Dame Joan Ruddock]

I have a brief question. Does he not appreciate what a difference it would make if that money was allocated to those who earn much less? Helping families with an income of £300,000 a year is one thing, but the benefit for families on average incomes is so much more significant. The measure would make a much greater difference to those who are less able to provide for themselves.

[Nick de Bois]

Few people in my constituency are on an income of £300,000. I ask the right hon. Lady to wait for the end of my speech, because I will point to how the specific targeting of those on very low incomes has had an unforeseen consequence for those on slightly higher, edging towards middle incomes. We need to be careful of the outcome of any intervention and I will address that shortly.

The hon. Member for Lewisham East touched on this point, but I think the most significant part of yesterday’s announcement was that more families will be helped to move off benefits and into employment. As part of that strategy, the Government announced that they will cover 85% of child care costs for some 300,000 families in receipt of universal credit. I would have expected that to be talked about more widely yesterday because it is a fine example of excellent joined-up thinking. In some ways, it answers the question that the right hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Dame Joan Ruddock) has just asked.

We have made money available to help child care providers to support disadvantaged children. Some £50 million will be invested in 2015-16 to offer 15 hours a week of free child care to all three and four-year-olds. That is another welcome intervention. We are helping schools to offer affordable after-school and holiday care. I want to see primary schools open for more hours each day and more weeks each year—I think that will work.

We are also extending free child care to just over 250,000 two-year-olds from low-income families, which kicks in this September, but I want to address the unintended consequences in my constituency. The extension of the scheme to two-year-olds is the pet project of the Deputy Prime Minister, and I would dearly love him to explain the scheme to my constituents who have children at Carterhatch children’s centre in Enfield. About a month ago, parents who have been doing the right thing by working and paying, in some cases for a number of years, for their children to be at Carterhatch children’s centre were, to be frank, brutally informed that their children are no longer welcome because they are fee-paying and the centre’s priority will be those who now qualify for the extended free places for two-year-olds, which from memory includes people on working tax credits of up to £16,900. The centre has said, “We don’t want you because you are paying your way. We are going to focus entirely on those individuals who are now covered by the new Government intervention.” I put it to Members that that is a perverse unintended consequence. People who are working, doing the right thing and paying to get their children into the centre have basically been told that their child can longer attend.

That brings me to the supply side, because being told to find somewhere else is not helpful as there is not much choice in our area. I tackled Enfield council on that, saying, “Look, this is your policy. Have you directed schools on how to implement the Government’s policy?” The council frankly admitted that what happened at Carterhatch is what it would like to see, but says that it is not directing any headmaster to do it; it is entirely the school’s free will. Schools are not working to Government directives, or so I was told by the council an hour ago, but the consequence of intervening in the marketplace is that we have distorted it at the expense of parents who are doing the right thing.

[Lucy Powell]

Does the hon. Gentleman realise that it is his Government who have taken away the local authority’s role in planning for places? The strategic local commissioning responsibility no longer exists. It is a free-for-all, and it is the Government who took it away.

[Nick de Bois]

The hon. Lady is keen to apportion political blame.

[Lucy Powell]

I am not doing that.

[Nick de Bois]

Saying, “It’s your Government’s fault” is making a political point when, with all due respect, it is not the Government’s fault.

[Lucy Powell]

I am not saying that, either.

[Nick de Bois]

I will tackle the point. The choice has been made by the head of the school. He is not responding to a central directive from Whitehall or, it appears, from the local education authority. Although the LEA has expressed a preference, it is not a direction. I am highlighting that we now have a situation in which a head teacher finds it more attractive to follow the direction of the Deputy Prime Minister by disregarding parents, many of whom have used the child care centre for a considerable period of time.

Central direction is not the solution, because it is close to the market intervention that we are talking about and will create another dysfunctional consequence somewhere else. Even if we intervene with the best of intentions, it strikes me as odd that the education establishment thinks it is perfectly acceptable to remove some parents in favour of others. That touches on my supply-side argument: if I was a parent who was told that that was what the school had chosen to do, I would look for somewhere else to go because I would not value the school that had made that decision. We therefore have to accept that the weakness on the supply side, which goes back as far as 2003, is at the heart of our problems. That is what we should address, instead of making the wider interventions with which we seem to be obsessed. That is the ultimate solution to the problem.

I apologise for going on for far too long, but I think I have initiated a lively discussion.

Several hon. Members rose—

[Jim Dobbin (in the Chair)]

Order. I give notice that I intend to call the shadow Minister at 20 minutes to 4.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

I am grateful to the Minister for giving way and for his generous words. I put on record that many of my constituents, and many people from outside my constituency, have contacted me on this matter. I have been able to say to them that this has been Parliament at its best, working with Ministers on this subject. I am grateful to him for the advice and support of his office in moving towards an acceptable solution.

[Mr Timpson]

I thank my hon. Friend for those words. As he knows, this has been a long-standing issue on which we have sought the advice of the Law Commission and others to establish a way forward. The fact that we can now legislate and implement these provisions represents a good outcome for many people, including his constituents.

In amendment 2, we have clarified the point at which the fostering for adoption scheme must be considered for a child and established that before a local authority considers placing a child in this way, it must first have considered kinship care and decided that it was not the most appropriate placement. Also in part 1, through amendments 7 to 10, we have introduced an affirmative resolution procedure in relation to the Secretary of State’s powers to direct local authorities to outsource adoption functions, in relation to the use of personal budgets and in relation to allowing approved prospective adopters to search and inspect the Adoption and Children Act 2002 register in pilot areas.

On part 2 and family justice, many hon. Members will be pleased that the noble Lords accepted the principle and purpose of clause 11. However, we have accepted amendment 12 to clause 11 from the noble and learned Baroness Butler-Sloss. As hon. Members will also be aware, clause 11 introduces a presumption that a child’s welfare will be furthered by the involvement of each parent, where this is safe and subject to the overarching principle that the child’s welfare must be paramount. Baroness Butler-Sloss’s amendment addresses concerns raised that the clause could be misinterpreted as giving a parent a right to a certain amount of time with a child. That was never the intention, as I have said several times during the Bill’s passage. The amendment addresses those concerns by clarifying that “involvement” does not mean a particular amount of time.

Importantly, the amendment does not change the effect of clause 11, as it will remain for courts to determine what arrangements are right for each child in the light of the evidence before it. I want to put on the record my gratitude to my hon. Friends the Members for Dover (Charlie Elphicke) and for Northampton South (Mr Binley) and, in particular, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has championed this change in the law for many years. I have no doubt that had he not done so, we would not have made the significant progress we now have.

Secondary Schools (Accountability)

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

We were concerned by what was happening in increasing numbers in some schools before the announcement was made. I draw the hon. Gentleman’s attention back to the massive expansion in the last couple of years in the number of students doing multiple GSCE entries—170,000 in summer 2013. Almost a quarter of maths entries were multiple entries from students who had not reached the end of key stage 4. Several bodies have expressed concern that some of the youngsters might get a C when they could go on to get a B, an A or an A*, and they are potentially being let down. It also means that teaching in those subjects ends at a much earlier stage than it should, with a year only of preparation in the subject rather than the full two years. It is crucial that we have a school system that acts in the best interests of the students, not simply of the schools.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

Employers will tell the Minister that it did not need an OECD report to show that England has—shockingly—some of the least literate students, because they only have to look at job applications to see that. Will he ensure that his system will have widespread effect, especially on literacy and numeracy, as opposed to focusing on a few?

[Mr Laws]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. The new system will reduce the amount of gaming behaviour across the C/D borderline and the amount of teaching for the test, which often distorts our appreciation of educational standards, and all of the changes go hand in glove with the further changes to GCSEs that were announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State earlier this year, which will try to ensure that GSCEs in English, maths and other subjects are fit for purpose and will ensure that young people in this country are as well prepared as those in other top education countries.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Elizabeth Truss]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, in that we are ensuring that students gain a good chronological understanding of history throughout their school career. During my own school career, I spent one lesson studying Sir Francis Drake and the next talking about the princes in the tower. I would certainly have preferred a school career that enabled me to learn about chronology and understand our island story.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

3. What steps he is taking to improve outcomes for adopted children in (a) Enfield North constituency, (b) London and (c) England.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

Adoptive families can struggle to get the help that they need, and I am determined to change that. We have already announced measures that give adopted children rights to priority schools admission and free early education, and we are introducing an “adoption passport” so that adoptive families know about their entitlements. Further measures in the Children and Families Bill are aimed at tackling delay and improving outcomes for adopted children, including children in Enfield North.

[Nick de Bois]

Is the Minister aware that the children of adoptive adults who have died without locating their biological families are often left in a quandary, as they are unable to gain access to vital information about their parents’ families, including information about hereditary medical conditions? What steps will he take to rectify that? Will he agree to meet me to discuss this important matter, in which the British Association for Adoption and Fostering is taking an interest?

[Mr Timpson]

My hon. Friend is right to raise what is indeed an extremely serious and important matter. We must think carefully about the information that adopted people have to find out about their parents’ families, particularly when there may be hereditary medical problems. I know that the matter was referred to the Law Commission in 2010, but we must do more work to establish how we can ensure that more information can be provided when it is needed. I should be happy to meet my hon. Friend and discuss the matter in more detail.

Oral Answers to Questions

Nick de Bois Excerpts

Thursday 7th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

It is very important not only for people to enter the workplace, but to improve their skills within it. For instance, 99% of those on management apprenticeships had some previous experience of work in the company, which is to be expected. It is about getting people out of unemployment, but also ensuring that their skills improve while they are in a job.

[Nick de Bois (Enfield North) (Con)]

North London chamber of commerce and Enfield’s Johnson Matthey are tonight hosting a local business awareness of apprenticeships programme, and are determined to exceed last year’s recruitment of 107 new apprentices. Will the Minister offer a message of support for tonight’s event and, in particular, for Mr Barry Connelly of Johnson Matthey of Enfield who has led that programme?

[Matthew Hancock]

I would be pleased to support Johnson Matthey and the work it is doing to expand the number of people in apprenticeships, and indeed to increase the quality of apprenticeships. I know that the apprenticeships it offers are of high quality and it is well worth raising awareness of that and getting involved.