Education and Local Government

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Alex Cunningham

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Let me echo the comments that have been made by colleagues on both sides of the House about the many excellent maiden speeches that we have heard today. Some of those new Members are still here, and I think we can look forward to hearing more from a number of robust representatives of their constituencies over the years ahead.

One of the things I do each year in the conference recess in October is organise a community consultation, to give constituents the chance to set out their concerns to me and to shape my priorities in Parliament. There were something like 40 different events involving more than 1,000 people last year, but one of the things that I am always keen to prioritise is meeting young people who are not yet old enough to have a vote, but whose lives will be shaped by many of the decisions we make, so I met year 12 and 13 students at Sheffield Park Academy and King Edward VII School, students at the University Technical College Sheffield, and students in further education at Sheffield College. I have to say that these discussions are some of the liveliest and best informed meetings that I hold each year, and they are a great advert for why our democracy would be strengthened by extending voting rights to 16 and 17-year-olds.

It seemed to me that today’s debate was a good opportunity to raise some of the students’ concerns, as people who are at the very heart of our education system. Those concerns were not simply about education, although some were and I will come to those points. I represent a very diverse, socially mixed area, but right across the constituency the students I spoke to were overwhelmingly opposed to our departure from the European Union. I think they were widely representative of young people across the country, so I urge Government Members to recognise the views of that generation as we seek to navigate the difficult months ahead.

The top concern of these young people was the climate emergency. Some had been involved in the school students’ actions, although the majority had not and their concern was just as deep. They are looking for us to take the sort of radical measures needed to tackle the crisis that are absent from this Queen’s Speech, which repeats the 2050 net zero target; that commitment fails them. The Queen’s Speech also wrongly describes the Government’s policies on climate change as “world-leading”, which they simply are not.

I think that the students I talked with would be concerned about the Government’s reaction to the Flybe problems that we were talking about earlier. A strategic intervention to support a company is clearly something that the Government should be looking at, but I think that a general response to encourage and provide further financial subsidy to the most carbon-emitting mode of transport would worry those students. Aviation already enjoys the advantages of tax-free fuel, and offering a further general concession across the industry to deal with the problems of one company would be a mistake.

[Alex Cunningham]

I have just been reflecting on the fact that 44% of the flights at Teesside rely on Flybe, as do, as we heard earlier, 90% of those at Southampton and two thirds at another airport. It is absolutely critical for our country that that company survives, so intervention might be the way forward after all.

[Paul Blomfield]

I very much agree with my hon. Friend, but a strategic intervention to address the needs of one company is very different from a generalised further additional subsidy to a carbon-emitting industry. We also ought to look, in a way that goes well beyond the ambition of this Government, at much more investment in rail to enable us to take more people out of the air and on to other modes of transport.

The students I spoke to were clearly concerned about their education and had very strong views about it. They did want to see more spent on schools. I know that the Queen’s Speech has a line about levels of funding per pupil in every school being increased, and the Secretary of State, who is now in his place, took that up in his opening comments. However, the Government’s ambition will fail Sheffield students unless, at the very least, they restore the funding for the 8% real cut that we have seen over the past nine years for our schools.

Last year, I brought a group of headteachers with a petition from every headteacher in the city to meet the Schools Minister. I am grateful for the time he gave to them and I am sure he will have seen the concerns that they expressed about the consequences of the funding cuts in their schools. They have had an opportunity to look at the money that they think will be available to them under the Government’s plans and believe that it will still leave 80% of Sheffield schools worse off in 2020 than they were in 2015.

Asylum Accommodation Contracts

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Alex Cunningham

Wednesday 10th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham]

That is most certainly the case. If it were not for the community organisations in my constituency and throughout the Tees valley and the country, the people who are refugees in our country would be suffering a hell of a lot more than they currently are. The current contract fails in so many ways, and the new one will also fail if it is not designed and monitored properly. We need to listen to these organisations, be they local authorities or third sector groups. Daily, they meet and work with asylum seekers; they know where the failings are and how services could be improved.

A briefing from Asylum Matters says that the Government’s asylum accommodation contracts are worth more than £4 billion. That is £4 billion of public money, but Parliament seems powerless to influence the procurement process in order to ensure that some of the most vulnerable in our society get the support that they deserve as human beings. I hope that that will change today.

I want now to take a few moments to talk about simple matters: duvets, pillows, plates and mattresses. I am appalled at the poor quality of the ones provided to asylum seekers in Stockton. The contract says to provide a duvet and pillows, and the contractors do, but it is possible to get two pillows into one pillowcase, and the duvets are so thin as to provide no warmth at all. The mattresses, too, are poor; they are uncomfortable and often dirty. Then there is the single plastic plate issued to some refugees. The contract says to provide a plate, so the contractors do, but the plates are not fit for purpose and end up stained with knife marks cut into them from the simple task of cutting up food. If it were not for the churches and charities in my area and, I am sure, elsewhere that provide better quality goods, refugees would be freezing in houses where heating is often restricted.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight those cases. All of us are present at the debate, I guess, because we have dealt with very distressing individual cases and too many of them. I had one recently in which for six months and after 30 telephone calls, G4S failed to deal with accommodation where there was damp and cockroach and rat infestation. My hon. Friend mentioned the Home Affairs Committee report. The Government have said that they want to—

BIS Sheffield/Government Departments outside London

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Alex Cunningham

Monday 9th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield]

I very much share my hon. Friend’s sentiment that there are many benefits derived from locating jobs outside London. These include cost benefits and the enrichment of decision making by involving people located around the country in administering government and advising the Government. My hon. Friend made a very important point.

When we asked the permanent secretary for a cost-benefit analysis, we got no answer. A cost-benefit analysis of moving a departmental office is not commercially sensitive and, so far as I can see, it is not a matter of national security. Why, then, right from day one, has the Department refused to provide the evidential basis for this proposal? Members have asked for this analysis in a Westminster Hall debate, in oral questions, in an urgent question, in written parliamentary questions, in over three separate evidence sessions of two Select Committees—the BIS Committee and the Public Accounts Committee—and in written correspondence. Yet we are still to see this information.

We can only assume that the reason for that is that the decision does not stand up to scrutiny. Such information as we have managed to wheedle out through written questions and other ways seems to confirm that. The answer to parliamentary question 33917 tells us that each year it costs £3,190 on rent, rates and maintenance to have an employee in the Sheffield office, compared with £9,750 in the London office. The Department rightly offers the London salary weighting of £3,500 a year, so we are already up to more than £10,000 per employee in London in comparison with Sheffield. That is before we even consider recruitment issues in London, where a more competitive jobs market inevitably drives salaries up further, which was acknowledged by the permanent secretary. When questioned on the issue, the permanent secretary told the Public Accounts Committee last month:

“We have not sought to put a price”

on those additional costs. That is extraordinary, and it is not good enough.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent financial case to show why this change should not happen. The BIS office at Billingham in my constituency is not a headquarters, but it lies three miles from the constituency of the Minister responsible for the northern powerhouse. What kind of message does my hon. Friend think is being sent about the Government’s commitment to a northern powerhouse when they close down offices even in the constituency of the Minister who is supposed to be responsible for it, as well as next door?

[Paul Blomfield]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point, and he will not be surprised to learn that I shall come back to the point a little later in my contribution.

The Government say, quite understandably, that they want to save money, but we have done the maths from the limited information that we have managed to get. This decision will cost the Department in operational costs an additional £2.5 million a year, every year. I shall press the Minister further on the figures. When we tried to get a proper cost-benefit analysis, the permanent secretary told the BIS Select Committee:

“I do not think I can point to you one specific document that covers specifically the Sheffield issue.”

Furthermore, when the Minister for Universities and Science drew the short straw in having to defend the seemingly indefensible at a Westminster Hall debate back in February, he was clearly briefed by civil servants to respond to the repeated requests we made for a cost-benefit analysis, by saying:

“I am unable to provide a disaggregated breakdown of that figure because we are talking about a system change.”—[Official Report, 24 February 2016; Vol. 606, c. 138WH.]

That is not so. I have it here in an internal BIS management document on a page entitled, “Potential Savings from Sheffield Office Closure”.

I think that there are some serious issues here relating to the hand that Ministers have been dealt by senior civil servants in their Department. Indeed, when answering an urgent question asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Louise Haigh) immediately after the announcement, the Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise said:

“We are confident that many of the workers will choose to take new jobs down in London.”—[Official Report, 29 March 2016; Vol. 605, c. 562.]

I am afraid that that is not the case, according to the leaked internal document, which states that

“90% of the potential savings are dependent on how many jobs are retained and moved to London.”

In other words, the more people reject the non-offer to up sticks, try to find a house in London’s hugely overheated housing market and move their children to different schools, the more money will be saved—and, to make sure of that, no relocation package was offered to the staff.

That takes me back to the obfuscation that we have encountered throughout the months during which we have debated this issue. In response to my most recent attempts to obtain the figures via written parliamentary questions, I was referred to a letter from the permanent secretary and the Chairs of the Business, Innovation and Skills and Public Accounts Committees. It sets out quite exaggerated costs for the Sheffield office, and some incredulity was expressed in the Public Accounts Committee when the issue was discussed there. Unless none of the functions being carried out in Sheffield—relating to the higher education White Paper and higher education in general, to apprenticeships, and to further education funding—is to be replaced in London, the letter provides only one side of the story, because the costs will be incurred in the replacement of the posts of people who do not move in London.

Is this simply a case of cutting 247 posts because they happen to be in Sheffield—posts which, because they are in Sheffield, are by definition, as I have said, £10,000 cheaper? A decision was made without regard for costs, without regard for the policy areas in which the people involved were working, and without regard for the expertise that would be lost. Indeed, the former—and highly regarded—Conservative special adviser in the Department, Nick Hillman, who is now head of the Higher Education Policy Institute, has lamented the loss of institutional expertise that this move will involve, and has condemned the decision for that reason.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her question, and for her robust questioning of the permanent secretary at the Public Accounts Committee. She is absolutely right to say that this sends out the wrong message. When we raised this matter with the permanent secretary, he pointed out that there were many other BIS jobs around the country. It is almost as though BIS is happy to have administrative functions carried out around the country but policy people have to be together in London. This raises another point about silo thinking within Government. As my right hon. Friend points out, there is a synergy involved in having civil servants in policy roles in BIS and the Department for Education working together on a similar agenda. Taking them away and moving them to London will diminish their role.

[Alex Cunningham]

I am really interested in this idea of policy people having to be at the centre. The Department argues that the move will bring BIS policy operations closer to Ministers and contribute to the huge saving of £350 million of running costs. However, the “Government’s Estate Strategy” states:

“With modern IT, officials no longer necessarily need to be physically present, for example to brief ministers. Having offices on the periphery will also encourage local growth and regeneration.”

That is the Government’s own strategy. Does my hon. Friend not detect a conflict there?

[Paul Blomfield]

I do indeed. I would simply reflect that this is the Department responsible for innovation. It is supposed to lead on creative thinking and thinking outside the box.

I worry, as do colleagues, that proper consideration has not been given to better options. The Department set itself an ambitious cost-saving strategy in “BIS 2020”, but what is its thinking on how it is going to get there? Normally, faced with decisions such as these, big organisations would think about the resources they needed to achieve their objectives, look at the matter in the round, model how those resources should be most cost-effectively located around the country, then make the decisions. Decisions about office closures would naturally come at the end of that process, not at the beginning, as has been the case here. The Department is putting the cart before the horse.

Youth Service Provision

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Alex Cunningham

Wednesday 3rd December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham]

My hon. Friend is correct. I will not take anything away from the NCS; I think it is a tremendous and very effective programme. The young people whom I spoke to were really enjoying it and they told me that they were learning tremendous things, but as my hon. Friend said, it does not address year-round provision. It is six weeks, then there is a cliff edge and the provision ends.

The loss of specialist staff and locally tailored services should worry us all in that context. Young people want and need to be able to socialise in a safe and secure environment, but they also need specific professional support in many areas of their life, yet the Government measures forced on local authorities will leave many young people with nowhere to go but street corners. What my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) mentioned is probably an example of that. It does not just risk encouraging antisocial behaviour; more importantly, it will leave young people in very vulnerable situations and potentially victims of who knows what as they spend their time on the streets.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is outlining some consequences for socialisation and for the benefits of engaging young people in constructive behaviour. Does he agree—this is on the basis of my discussion with youth workers in Sheffield—that there is an even more significant loss related to youth provision during school holidays, because youth workers have said to me, “Frankly, if people do not engage in these schemes and these schemes are threatened, they will not eat that day”? Is the provision of food within these activities not a serious dimension of this problem that we ought to consider?

[Alex Cunningham]

Most certainly, because a lot of these programmes are aimed specifically at young people from deprived backgrounds who may not have access to the theme parks and holiday experiences that are enjoyed by other young people. It is all the more important that the service provision is there—and that they can eat there. When I went to the NCS in Stockton, they were doing some cooking. I did not care for the famous Parmo pork, with cheese spread over the top, and the pizzas that they made, but they were actually doing something. People said, “It is not very healthy food,” but at least they were eating, and we need to make sure that young people can eat along the way as well.

In many poorer communities, youth clubs and similar facilities are the only service available to young people and provide opportunities to learn new skills and channel their energies productively, but youth centres are so much more than simply a hangout place for young people. Yes, that is one element of the function they serve, and a very welcome one, but well-managed youth centres serve a dual purpose that will now be missed.

That open-access provision is a gateway to early intervention, reaching out to vulnerable youngsters who might otherwise be missed by other services or whose needs might escalate before they are picked up by targeted services. These open-access services are often more appropriate than targeted interventions when it comes to improving outcomes for young people. However, the large numbers of young people at risk of falling through the cracks in provision will not become evident for perhaps five or 10 years, by which time it will be too late.

Stockton-on-Tees borough council, which is responsible for youth services within my constituency, has seen the number of youth centres halved to just 12. That said, through much hard work, I understand that they have succeeded in attracting greater numbers of young people and on a more frequent basis. I take my hat off to them; that is very positive. However, in outlying areas, where provision for young people is generally poorest, the loss of somewhere to go that is close to home is a real problem for communities.

Across the country, the remaining youth provision is provided by youth workers who are thinly spread, overworked and, consequently, less able to fulfil their roles effectively. There is an obvious detriment to the services that they provide and to the young people with whom they work. Although local authorities are limiting the extent of cuts in youth service spending as best they can, that has largely been achieved by reducing the numbers of professional youth workers with the important JNC—Joint Negotiating Committee for Youth and Community Workers—qualification and the skills that come with that.

Again, the context is crucial. In the same two-year period that has seen the number of youth centres dwindle, 2,000 valuable skilled youth workers have been lost from the system. The Unison report highlighted the fact that, as a result, 41,000 youth service places for young people have disappeared, meaning that 35,000 hours of outreach have vanished from youth service provision. That loss is particularly concerning because by building relationships of trust and support with young people, specialist youth workers can actively engage with their communities and help young people to make their own informed decisions about their lives and develop confidence and resilience. In short, youth workers play a central role in supporting young people, yet their years of hard work are being dispensed with and the successes that they have worked hard to achieve are being jeopardised by scything Government cutbacks.

As if that was not bad enough, it has emerged that, as has often been the case under this Government, the impact of the cuts has been felt particularly hard in some of our most deprived communities. In such areas, youth services play an even more significant role: helping young people into work, avoiding and preventing substance abuse and tackling problems of antisocial behaviour and gang violence, as well as boosting community cohesion. However, the effects of austerity have been concentrated in those very communities. The education maintenance allowance has been removed, while support from the access to learning fund and the student opportunity fund has been cut. Housing benefit for the under-25s has been cut, tuition fees have trebled, making higher education more expensive than ever before, and careers services have been slashed. Those cuts are severely short-sighted and will add up to even greater problems as we move forward.

Let us take, for example, the careers service. At a sitting of the Select Committee on Education last week, Lorna Fitzjohn, Ofsted’s national director for further education and skills, reminded MPs that their assessment of the quality of careers advice in schools was that it was less than good in four out of five. It is no wonder: the Government dumped the careers service on schools—I acknowledge that they have the National Careers Service—but did not provide them with the funding that went with the responsibility. They were relying on the national service to offer additional guidance, but few young people have even heard of it.

There are some examples of very good practice, but in most cases, it is left to ill-equipped teachers to cobble something together and, if they have the right contacts, encourage a few employers to come in and chat to the young people. Association of Colleges research indicates that less than half of all colleges have reported that schools in their area are delivering the requirement to provide independent careers advice and guidance. Largely gone are the professional people who had the breadth of knowledge of different opportunities that provided the young with options best suited to their needs.

The Unison survey found that the majority of schools had reduced their careers advice and had no place for careers experts. Research by the university of Derby found that out of 144 local authorities, only 15 would maintain a substantial careers service. Ofsted’s promised review of careers guidance—that particular area of youth services—in 2015-16 cannot come soon enough.

In the current economic climate, which has seen unprecedented levels of youth unemployment and witnessed 1 million young people being out of work, education or training, there can be no doubt about the need for qualified youth workers, who are able to guide our young people into making the right choices for their lives and provide the support necessary for them to enter the work force. We cannot ignore the fact that young people are far more likely to be unemployed than those in older age groups, who are more likely to have experience on their side.

I am fortunate that Stockton borough council is very much a forward-thinking local authority. Its Youth Direction service is therefore geared to provide to young people across the borough a range of resources, including careers advice, business support and an array of targeted youth support projects, but it is the innovation that comes with that proactive provision that is particularly impressive. Working alongside the council’s antisocial behaviour team to carry out joint patrols in Billingham, the Youth Direction service is assisting with the targeting of identified hot spot areas and is actively contributing to reduced instances of antisocial behaviour according to police statistics.

Teaching Assistants

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Alex Cunningham

Tuesday 18th March 2014 Westminster Hall

[Alex Cunningham]

I have been amazed by somebody working with children with special needs; I will give that example later. Those people play a vital role and children with special needs in particular would suffer directly as a result of any reduction.

The aim of the workload agreement was simple: to allow teachers to teach. To do this, the agreement sought to lessen pressure on teachers by reducing the administrative bureaucracy and cutting teachers’ hours through the creation of new and expanded school support roles, including teaching assistants and higher level teaching assistants, and providing extra resource and high-level support for teachers.

Teaching assistants now make up more than a quarter of the total school work force in England, with more than 359,000 in classrooms across England alone. The vast majority—almost 250,000—work in primary schools; almost 20% are in secondary schools; and 9% are in special schools. With primary schools spending £2.8 billion on teaching assistants and support staff in 2010-11 and secondary schools spending £1.6 billion during the same period, such support accounts for a large proportion of the annual education budget. It is for precisely this reason that the role and worth of teaching assistants have been in the public spotlight, particularly since questions were raised several years ago about the value for money that they provide.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend’s debate is critically important. Many of us have been concerned that the pressure on budgets will lead to the loss of teaching assistants. Does he note that one of our biggest concerns as a society at the moment is adult literacy and numeracy? Does he recognise the research from the Education Endowment Foundation, which highlighted the fact that teaching assistants, used effectively, can play a particularly important role in developing literacy and numeracy among children?

[Alex Cunningham]

Yes, that is most certainly the case. Many years ago my wife was a volunteer assistant with adult literacy. I recognise so much the benefit of one-to-one opportunities for children with particular needs, including language and numeracy, who can benefit tremendously if they have that face-to-face contact with a teaching assistant.

The report by the Institute of Education, “Deployment and Impact of Support Staff in Schools”, was surprising, in that it found a negative relationship between the amount of teaching assistant support and academic progress in students. Similarly, Reform’s report also suggested that as much as £1.7 billion could be saved each year, through reducing the costs associated with teaching assistants, and repeatedly contended that teaching assistants

“have a negligible effect on educational outcomes”,

and even claiming that their interventions can

“harm a child’s education”.

However, these findings are very much the result of a Government who focus squarely on resource allocation and productivity per pound spent, rather than on actual educational outcomes and opportunities provided. To put it another way, this is ideologically driven attentiveness to cost at the expense of value. Indeed, several articles last summer reinforced this point. A piece in The Sunday Times, for instance, appearing in the run-up to the comprehensive spending review, argued that teaching assistants should be cut, as the evidence suggests that they do not have a positive impact on pupil attainment. In a similar fashion, an article in the Daily Mail also reported that officials from the Treasury and the Department for Education were considering mass reductions in the number of teaching assistants working in our classrooms, citing an effort to

“save some of the £4 billion a year spent on them”.

Again, the focus was primarily on finances, with the article suggesting that schools

“could improve value for money by cutting the number of teaching assistants and increasing class sizes”.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Paul Blomfield and Alex Cunningham

Monday 16th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

5. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

9. What steps his Department is taking to reduce the number of young people not in education, employment or training.