Building Schools for the Future

Patrick Mercer Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Westminster Hall

[Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Con)]

I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna), who made some extremely good points, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) on having procured the debate. He knows how much I respect his views, but he weakened his case with needless party political posturing, especially with his reference to the burden of the changed scheme falling particularly on Labour-held constituencies. That is not the case, as I am about to explain.

I thank the Minister for two things. First, the Secretary of State has promised that I may visit him to talk about this subject—I shall return to that in a moment. Secondly, the Minister will be aware that a promise has also been made that either the Secretary of State or a Minister will visit my Newark constituency. I am extremely grateful, and I await both dates with great interest. My point is that, in just a few weeks, I have received two promises from this Government that I got absolutely nowhere near receiving from the previous Government.

The Minister and all Members present will know that in 2001, very few seats changed hands from the Labour party to the Conservative party. Newark was one of those that did. I campaigned hard upon the fact that the disgraceful state of the schools in my constituency would be addressed, and with urgency. To give credit where credit is due, two outstanding schools have been refurbished in the west and north parts of my constituency: one in Tuxford, of which I am a governor, and one in Southwell. They are both excellent schools and look grand, they really do. However, the four secondary schools—now three—in the centre of Newark remained in a dreadful state. I campaigned again in 2005 on the principal point that something would be done about those schools. I constantly asked Labour Ministers for meetings. The requests were refused. I constantly asked Labour Ministers to visit the constituency. That was refused. Views constantly changed, amounts of money changed and there was obfuscation about which particular wave of the Building Schools for the Future programme my schools would be in. I never knew. When the education authority came under Conservative control, it was similarly frustrated by a process that left it flabbergasted by its incompetence.

Enough. Enough of complaining about the past. The hon. Member for Streatham made the point that this debate is about the future. It is about our children and delivering the education that they need. I am not interested in knowing what has gone before. I am not interested in the incompetence. I am interested in why The Grove school in Newark has to cease teaching when there is a heavy fall of rain and the children have to hold buckets under the roof. I am interested to know why Magnus school, which is just coming out of special measures, has nothing to look forward to. I am interested to know why the Orchard special needs school similarly has no idea what its future will be. Whatever the faults of the past, I am interested to know what the future is for these three schools on four sites—covering all the secondary schooling in the centre of my constituency—which have had their projects cancelled without a glimmer of hope being given to them.

We are told, “You can teach in a tent,” and I am sure that that is possible. The staff in Newark are first class, but the grave difficulty is recruiting new staff to a site that is a shambles. The new schools that I have are recruiting staff and pupils easily. The difficulty in Newark, which is right on the border between Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire, is that so many of my children are drifting away over the border into Lincolnshire to be educated there.

My message is very simple: one does not take away a lollipop without promising a child a visit to the zoo the next weekend, or something similar. It is basic psychology. All sorts of members of staff from The Grove, Orchard and Magnus schools have expressed their disappointment and horror and have asked why schools in north Lincolnshire and Sheffield, for example, are totally unaffected while all Nottinghamshire schools are affected. The Grove school has been described by the local authority as having the worst buildings in Nottinghamshire, although I think that it has strong competition from Toot Hill, in Bingham, which is also in my constituency. What is the future for those schools?

The Building Schools for the Future programme was deeply flawed. I had nothing from it but frustration, anger and obfuscation, and the performance of those who were trying to administer it was simply bathetic—not pathetic. I ask the Minister please to give me some dates for the visits and for when I can see the Secretary of State, and to let me say something to my head teachers that gives us some hope that the schools’ capital projects will help Newark and that I can deliver on the promises that I made in 2001, 2005 and 2010, which took Newark out of the hands of Labour and delivered it to the Conservative party with a 16,000 majority.