Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Nick Gibb and Mary Creagh

Monday 11th December 2017 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend should know that no academy trust can profit from its schools, and the Wakefield trust will not be able to retain any reserves that it has at the point of dissolution. We are working with all the academies and the preferred new trust to determine what is appropriate support and proper funding.

[Mary Creagh (Wakefield) (Lab)]

I hope that the standard of the question is up to that of the jumper, Mr Speaker, but I fear that it may not be.

Notwithstanding what the Minister has said, the acting chief executive of Wakefield City Academies Trust managed to pay himself £1,000 a day in a company owned by his daughter and to pay £60,000 a year for clerking services. Despite those excessive sums, however, it appears that the audit committee did not meet for a full calendar year to sign off the probity of those payments. How many more academy trusts across the country are in special measures? Into how many more trusts has the Minister sent his special auditors so that they can have a look? He sent them into Wakefield, but he did not tell anyone else about what was going on, leaving the trust to fail in September during the first week of the new term.

[Nick Gibb]

All related-party transactions must be disclosed, and they are. We are working with the trust to transfer all 21 academies to new sponsors with a track record of improving schools and delivering high academic standards. Those transfers will take place in a way that secures the financial future of each school.