Relationships Education: LGBT Content

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Monday 18th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I would like to inform Members that the parliamentary digital communications team will be conducting secondary filming during today’s debate for its series of procedural explainers—welcome.

[Elliot Colburn (Carshalton and Wallington) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered e-petitions 630932 and 631529 relating to LGBT content in relationships education.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. Let me begin as usual by reading out the prayers in the petitions. The prayer in e-petition 630932 reads:

“We believe kids shouldn’t learn about this at an early age. I am sure there are many parents who do not want their or other children taught about LGBT in primary school.”

The petition closed on 12 July 2023 with 249,594 signatures, including 490 from Carshalton and Wallington. It did receive some attention because of the person who started it, so I want to clarify that they were a UK resident and that the Petitions Committee therefore felt it was appropriate to schedule this debate on the petition.

The prayer in e-petition 631529 reads:

“We believe kids should learn about this at an early age. I am sure there are many parents who want their and other children taught about LGBT issues…There is a petition to remove this content, which we believe is discriminatory. LGBT people exist, they have the same rights as the rest of us and kids should know them…without judgement or issue. Despite what their parents might believe.”

The petition closed on 20 July 2023 with 104,920 signatures, including 151 from my constituency.

In their replies to the two petitions, the Government stated that they had no intention of revising their guidelines, but they have since commissioned a review of relationships and sex education, or RSE, as I will refer to it throughout the rest of the debate. Today I want to make the case for why we should not go backwards and allow a return to the days of section 28, and to make the positive case for an inclusive, age-appropriate RSE curriculum. This is a policy the Government should be proud of rather than backing away from.

First, I want to share a little of my own story. I was at school before mandatory RSE and certainly before LGBT+ inclusive RSE. I came out very early in my secondary school career at Carshalton Boys Sports College to a few select peers and staff who I trusted. If that had happened in the days of section 28, I would of course have had to be turned away by my teachers and told to shut up about it. Instead, I was part of a school that was well ahead of its time and that not only taught us about healthy relationships and safe sex, but made sure that that teaching was inclusive of all identities, including LGBT+ people like me. I want to be clear: it was not some graphic exposure of how to have sex or the various things that people might want to do with each other behind closed doors; it was simply about the fact that LGBT+ people exist and can form loving relationships with each other just like any other person and about the precautions they should take, but it was also about how to access specific advice and support if we needed it. That was it.

I now want to set out the current framework for RSE in England, and I want to thank the House of Commons Library, Brook, the Sex Education Forum and others for their helpful briefings in advance of today’s debate. The Government’s RSE guidance of 2019 advises schools to plan a developmental and age-appropriate curriculum. Relationships education is therefore approached in ways that are relevant to the age and maturity of the pupils. For example, teaching about “Families and people who care for me” in primary school can be an opportunity to talk about the fact that some people have two dads and some have two mums.

Key messages taught throughout relationships education include that people do not have to conform to narrow stereotypes and that discrimination, bullying and prejudice are harmful and wrong. Indeed, that principle is woven throughout the British values element of school teaching, the aim of which is to encourage and foster respect, kindness, equality and inclusion. Those are British values: they are intrinsic to the ethos of most schools, and families are supportive of them.

Primary schools are not required to teach sex education or explicitly teach about LGBT+ issues; it is more about families and relationships. Parents also have the right to withdraw their child from the sex education part of RSE up to the age of 16.

The Government ask for a whole-school approach from our schools as a vehicle to deliver strategies to tackle violence against women and girls, sexual harassment —which, as we know from Ofsted reports, is rife—peer-on-peer abuse, bullying, forms of hatred such as racism and religious abuse, and much more. My concern is that removing LGBT+ content from relationships education would conflict with the existing obligation on schools under the public sector equality duty and the community cohesion duty and undermine the Government’s strategies to deliver on both.

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[Elliot Colburn]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Member, who makes a good point. Many people who produce children’s content might also produce adult content. For example, many authors write books that are aimed at adults and books that are aimed at children; that it is not unusual. Any assessment needs to reflect what is going on inside the classroom. We need the DFE to be well equipped so it has the expertise needed to ensure that any complaints that come forward can be thoroughly investigated, and that it has adequate resources in place to deal with issues when things go wrong, which is inevitable in a universal service. I would like to hear more from the Minister about that.

I will bring my remarks to an end by focusing on the societal change from the days of section 28 to where we are now. Section 28 was the ban on the teaching or “promotion”, as it was called, of LGBT+ issues. Since those days, we have been allowed to marry, to obtain a gender recognition certificate and to adopt, and we have gained many other hard-won rights. What does that mean in practice? It means there will be LGBT+ people at the school gates dropping off their much-loved children. Are we seriously suggesting to the Government that a child will have no ability to discuss why someone has been dropped off by two mums or two dads at the school gate? Of course not. Are we seriously suggesting in a digital age, when LGBT+ people are allowed to go about their lives out of the closet and in the knowledge that the state has protections against discrimination in place, that there is a way of preventing children from finding out that LGBT+ people exist? As we saw in the data, more children find out from social media than they do from schools or their parents.

It would be next to impossible to hide from children the fact that LGBT+ people exist. The Government think so, too. Their guidance for gender-questioning pupils explicitly said that it was not appropriate to continue to ask schools to hide a student who was questioning their gender from a parent because it would be next to impossible for that parent not to find out anyway in the digital age. If the Government agree with that when it comes to gender-questioning pupils, they have to be consistent and agree with that when it comes to LGBT content in the RSE curriculum.

When such content is done right, it has benefits for all. It tackles discrimination, promotes healthy relationships and reduces poor mental health. In his reply, I hope the Minister will offer a categorical assurance that the review will be focused on materials and training, and not on erasing LGBT+ people from existence. I can tell the Minister and the House quite clearly, as I am sure many others will, that no matter how hard some people might try, we are not going back in the closet. We exist, and there is nothing extreme about knowing we exist. In the RSE review, the Government should commit to examining why teachers lack the confidence to teach the subject, invest in materials to support the teaching of the subject, and not try to erase LGBT+ people from existence in the eyes of the students that teachers are there to look after.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I remind Members to bob if they wish to be called. I also ask Members to address the Chair.

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[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

I am very interested in the hon. Gentleman’s analogy, but it is a bit unclear. Is he saying that we should not teach what two plus two equals at all? In other words, is he saying that we should not teach anything around relationships, including straight relationships and that there are parents, mothers and fathers? Or is he saying that he wants that to be taught, but that the only outcome he wants is that people have to be straight? That is what is not clear.

Every book, whether it be Enid Blyton, Harry Potter or whatever, mentions relationships and we talk about them when we teach literature to children. In primary schools, children are taught about how a hen lays an egg, and the egg hatches—

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Order.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

It would be great to know what the hon. Gentleman wants: only straight, or nothing?

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[Nick Fletcher]

My hon. Friend and I are on opposite sides of this argument. I know he does not agree with me. We have, however, both been able to speak to each other on this with respect, which I really do hope continues. I do genuinely believe that there are people out there who are struggling with gender dysphoria—

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Order. Could the hon. Gentleman speak through the Chair?

[Nick Fletcher]

Sorry, Mr Dowd. I do genuinely believe that there are people out there who are struggling with gender dysphoria, and I think we should treat all these people with respect and kindness. As long as we do not have biological males in single-sex spaces, as long as we do not have biological males in women’s sport, and as long as we are not indoctrinating our children with this, I have not got an issue. I genuinely believe there are people out there who are confused with this. They should be able to go to people and seek help, but I do not think they should be going to people for it to be affirmed; they should be able to have an open and free conversation about this. But there is a time and a place for it, and our schools are not the time or the place.

I and several colleagues have recently written to the Department for Education to request that parents can withdraw their child from RSHE lessons. At present, children can only be withdrawn from sex education. However, we have an industry that seems set on teaching our children that they can be the opposite sex to what they were born. They have published this material in the relationships part of their textbooks, and therefore children cannot be removed from these lessons. Parents must be able to protect their children from this ideology. They must be able to do it now, before more children are affected by this teaching. At present, we have absenteeism levels not seen before within our schools. This material is not helping.

I ask the Minister, why are we allowing this in our schools? It is a false idea with no basis in science, leading some vulnerable children to seek puberty blockers, then cross-sex hormones, then invasive, risky surgery. Those practices impact bone and brain development. They chemically castrate children. They leave vulnerable children, vulnerable young people, living with lifelong, irreversible complications.

I can see why parents would choose not to send their child to a school that is teaching this—I would not either —so what is the answer? I believe this teaching has to stop in our schools. We need to take this literature out of our schools completely, change the RSHE guidance and allow parents, as a safety net, to withdraw their children from RSHE. As a society, we should call out every organisation that is taking part in this. Individuals who are joining in with this rhetoric should stop and think, “Where does this end?” They should stop and think with regard to trans-progressive flags, the lanyards and the pronoun email footers, because where does it end for our young children when they see this? They should stop and think about fuelling confusion in society and especially in the minds of our children.

If we encounter any person who is personally struggling with this, we just need to be kind. We should not have to legislate for kindness; we should all just be decent and treat people with respect. But sometimes we also have to be cruel to be kind. Sometimes we just have to say no. Parents, teachers, every adult just needs to be strong and say no to children—no, they are not born in the wrong body.

Let me say this one more time. There are few things more dishonourable than misleading the young, and I for one will play no part in it. I hope this Department will really step up now. The Department of Health and Social Care is beginning to see the light. The Home Office is, too. I hope the Department for Education can as well.

Safety of School Buildings

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

I looked very carefully at all the data that was published, and I pay tribute to our amazing teachers and school support staff who have been involved in making sure that our children get the best possible start in life. I will always be led by the evidence on what is right for children and what is best for their futures. The one area that, I have to say, did slightly trouble me was that, sadly, we see too few of our children enjoying reading. I think all of us want to ensure that as well as getting that really strong foundation, all our children leave school with a love of reading too. There is much there we can welcome and much to praise when it comes to the amazing staff in our schools, but I do not think any of us can be complacent, coming out of the pandemic, about the scale of the challenge that so many of our children and young people are facing.

There is a real lack of ambition for our schools. While the crumbling structures of too many of our schools are all too real, they double as a metaphor for wider problems. Our schools face a recruitment and retention crisis, as teachers and school staff leave the profession in their droves. At the same time, initial teacher training—the pipeline for newly qualified teachers into the classroom—fails to meet recruitment targets in key subjects year after year. It would be laughable were it not so tragic that the Prime Minister believes that ever more children can be taught maths for longer, with even fewer maths teachers. Perhaps the Minister can answer a question on that: if the Government are responsible for the education system, one in 10 maths lessons is already taught by teachers with no relevant post-18 qualification, they want every young person to learn maths until they are 18 and they have no plan to attract more maths teachers, how many more of our young people will end up being taught maths by non-specialist teachers?

It is not just maths. Too many young people face a narrow curriculum, missing out on creative and enriching opportunities. Too many leave school neither ready for work nor ready for life, but why? Because the wider school system is not delivering for our children. We have an accountability system that simply is not delivering the high and rising standards our children need. It is a system that tells us that almost four in five of our schools are good or outstanding according to Ofsted, in a country where tens of thousands of our children do not get the qualifications they need to succeed.

Either the Government have the wrong idea of what good looks like, or the system they have built is not working to deliver it. Some of our children get good schools, great teachers, rewarding opportunities, the opportunity to achieve, the chance to thrive and the knowledge that success is for them, but too many of our children do not get that start. Labour is determined to change that. Excellence must be for everyone—every child in every school, in every corner of our country.

Although the strengths and weaknesses of our schools are at least public, sadly, the state of their buildings is not. The strengths and weaknesses of so much of what goes on in our schools tend to be clear to parents. They can see when teachers keep leaving. They know when their children no longer get to go on trips to museums and when they are asked to pay for stationery or books. They can see that there are almost no music lessons. They know that their kids do not get the same chances for drama as others. But the fabric of the buildings is something that they generally do not see, because the Government are determined to shroud it in darkness. That cannot be right.

It is 13 years since the Government, led by the Conservative party, cancelled the ambitious programme of the last Labour Government to deliver modern, first-class schools for all our children. In those 13 years, not once has capital spending for the Department of Education matched in real terms the level that it was when the Government entered office. But the test is not the money that the Government put in but the state of the buildings in which our children learn. That tells its own story of how unwilling the Government have become to come clean on that.

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. In my constituency, under the last Labour Government, Springwell Park Community Primary School, Rimrose Hope C of E Primary School, All Saints Catholic Primary School, Litherland High School and South Sefton further education college were all built, and we got rid of all of the temporary portacabin classrooms. All that was in addition to all the other significant investment by the Labour Government. Does my hon. Friend agree that Labour delivers—we do not just have words?

[Bridget Phillipson]

Like my hon. Friend, I saw the difference that a Labour Government made in transforming life chances through the fabric of our buildings with the transformation of the schools estate across our country, but not just that: lifting children out of poverty; more teachers in our classrooms; children better supported; and Sure Start programmes. That is the difference that the Labour Government made, and it is the difference that we will make once again.

It was in late October 2021 when the now Prime Minister announced as part of his spending review no fresh money for school maintenance and rebuilding, reaffirming 13 long years of continued underfunding of school capital costs. A decision not to fund is a decision to bear the risk. Although Ministers make the decisions, they do not bear the risks—it is not Conservative MPs or any of us in this Chamber. It is the children, their parents and school staff.

When things are not mended, they break; when buildings break, they cause damage. Of course, they do not need to collapse to cause damage. By the Department’s 2019 estimate, over 80% of England’s schools contain at least some asbestos. More than one in six schools complies with the law on asbestos, but not with the Department’s guidance. Almost 700 schools were reported by the Department to the Health and Safety Executive. These are Government estimates and Government decisions. The trade union Unison estimates that at current funding rates, it will take hundreds of years to fully remove dangerous asbestos from the schools estate. How on earth is that good enough?

It is not just asbestos. It is becoming clearer and clearer that there is a problem right across the schools estate, just as there is across the NHS estate, with reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete, which the Government describes as a “crumbly type of concrete” that is “liable to collapse”. In 2018, we saw exactly that, when the roof of Singlewell Primary School in Kent collapsed without notice, fortunately at the weekend. In the intervening five years, have we seen decisive action from the Government? Have they got a grip of the scale of the problem? Have they set out a timetable by which they will deal with these challenges, to protect children, parents and school staff? Of course they have not. They have circulated a survey, and that is it.

The Government could be matching the ambition of the last Labour Government by rebuilding schools the length and breadth of the country; modernising school buildings, so that they are fit for children to learn in and for staff to work in; raising aspirations and standards for every child, in every community; and giving children the first-class facilities and education that they deserve. Instead, the now Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), cancelled Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme, a botched decision about which even he now admits that mistakes were made. Since then, the revolving door of Education Secretaries have failed to get a grip on the condition of our schools estate, allowing too many buildings and schools to fall into the state of disrepair we see today.

Our motion today is simple, but it is extraordinary that we have to bring it to the House in this form. In May 2021, the key findings of the Government’s condition survey revealed the alarming state of school buildings. In May 2022, an internal Government document was leaked to The Observer newspaper. It revealed that many school buildings in England were already in such disrepair that they were a “risk to life”.

In July 2022, over a year after the summary report, the Minister said in answer to a parliamentary question that the Department was still not committing to a date for publishing the underlying buildings condition survey data. Later in 2022, Ministers had changed their minds. They said it would be published “later this year”. In December 2022, the Minister for Schools said it would be published “by the end” of the year.

Buried in the Department for Education’s annual report, published in December, we read that a revision of the departmental risk register has moved the risk level of school building collapses to “critical: very likely”, after an increase in serious structural issues being reported. The information was not published by the end of 2022, nor was it published in January 2023. February 2023 came and went: nothing. March 2023 came, and again Ministers were not coming clean. April 2023: again, nothing. And here we are in May, two years on from the summary data being published, and there is nothing at once public and specific about the risks and needs of individual schools. What is there to hide? Why will they not come clean with parents and the public?

Concern about the state of school buildings is not limited to Opposition Members but shared across the House. Conservative Members have pressed their concerns, not merely privately but in the Chamber, directly with Ministers, about schools in Norfolk, Dorset, Lancashire, Stoke-on-Trent and Essex. Across our country, schools are crumbling. Some of them are dilapidated, some are rat-infested, and the Government will not tell parents where they are, how bad they are or how bad the issue has become.

BACKBENCH BUSINESS

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call Lloyd Russell-Moyle, I want to indicate that I will call the Opposition spokesperson at 4.08 pm; he and the Minister will have 10 minutes each. There will be a couple of minutes for Miriam Cates to respond at the end. Informally, that is about six minutes a speech. However, if we have too many interventions or the interventions are too long, we will have to cut that back.

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[Dame Nia Griffith]

I will not, as I am so short of time—normally I would. We need to gradually increase the degree of explicitness, as is age appropriate. However, it is absolutely essential that the information is taught in context and that, if children raise issues about violent behaviour and different types of sexual behaviour, teachers can talk through the dangers and consequences. That is a valid discussion. Talking about a particular piece of material on its own is not necessarily the context in which it might be taught.

I would like to move on to the issue of trans individuals. Young people will know of or will have encountered trans individuals—they will certainly have heard about them. They need clarity, because there is so much transphobia out there. They need to have the topic talked about. It is perfectly valid to do that in a school context.

The idea that any young person even begins to think about themselves as trans on a whim is fanciful. It is a very long way from beginning to think like that to telling somebody, never mind going any further. Obviously, a teacher needs to know their limitations and be able to access professional help, counselling and interventions. It is not for a school to make any decisions about a young person in that way.

Children are exposed all the time to all sorts of materials and it is absolutely right and proper that, in a responsible way, those in schools listen, take things seriously and present down-to-earth, factual alternatives to some of the stuff they are being shown.

So let us be clear about this. The overwhelming majority of schools and staff, parents and governors, are highly responsible. If there are instances where inappropriate materials are used, those are the things that need to be dealt with. We should not take a sledgehammer to crack a nut. I would be very wary of rolling back on progressive, fully inclusive LGBT education. We can call out individual problems that have occurred in individual schools in individual types of material.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

We are running slightly late. I call Stephen Morgan.

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[Mr Walker]

It is concerning, and I want to come to that in more detail, because I think I can help provide some clarification.

At the heart of RSHE is the need to keep children healthy, happy and safe. The hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) gave a very powerful example of where more education could make a difference in terms of safety. I sympathise with his deep hurt. My hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock also spoke passionately about safety and the centrality of consent. That includes knowing the law on relationships, sex and health, teaching about relationships from primary school onwards and ensuring that younger children understand the importance of building caring friendships and learn the concept of personal privacy, including that it is not always right to keep secrets if they relate to being safe, and that each person’s body belongs to them.

In the schools White Paper, the Government committed to keeping children safe by strengthening RSHE, as well as our statutory safeguarding guidance “Keeping children safe in education”. The hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) spoke about the centrality of safeguarding in that. That will support schools to protect children from abuse and exploitation in situations inside and outside school. The guidance is updated annually, and it is clear that schools and colleges should be aware of the importance of making it clear that there is a zero-tolerance approach to sexual violence. Sexual harassment is never acceptable. It should not be tolerated and never be passed off as banter, just having a laugh, part of growing up or boys being boys. Failure to do so could lead to an unacceptable culture of behaviour, an unsafe environment or, in the worst-case scenarios, a culture that normalises abuse, so that children accept it as normal and do not come forward to report it.

The RSHE statutory guidance advises schools to be alive to issues such as sexism, misogyny, homophobia and gender stereotypes and to take positive action to tackle those issues. As part of relationships education, all primary school pupils are taught about the importance of respect for relationships and the different types of loving, healthy relationships that exist. Pupils will also be taught about boundaries and privacy and how to recognise and report feelings of being unsafe. To support teachers to deliver those topics safely and with confidence, we have produced RSHE teacher training modules, which are freely available on gov.uk. We have also committed to developing a further package of support for teachers to deliver lessons on sensitive topics, such as abuse, pornography and consent. That package includes teacher webinars delivered from March 2022 onwards and non-statutory guidance, which offers practical suggestions for supporting children and young people to develop healthy, respectful and kind relationships. The guidance has been informed by an evidence review, stakeholder input and an expert teacher group, and we will publish it this autumn.

The Ofsted review of sexual abuse in schools and colleges found that online forms of sexual abuse are increasingly prevalent, with 88% of girls and 49% of boys reporting being sent unwanted sexual images and 80% of girls and 40% of boys pressured to provide sexual images of themselves. The review also showed that children, even in primary schools, are accessing pornography and sharing nude images. We want to make sure that children receive appropriate teaching in schools on topics that are relevant to their lived experience, rather than going online to educate themselves. Through the RSHE curriculum, pupils will be taught about online relationships, the implications of sharing private or personal data—including images—online, harmful content and contact, cyber bullying, an overreliance on social media and where to get help and support for issues that unfortunately occur online. Through the topic of internet safety and harms, pupils will be taught to become discerning customers of information and to understand how comparing oneself with others online can have an impact on one’s own body image. The Department is reviewing its guidance on teaching online safety in schools, which supports teachers to embed teaching about online safety into subjects such as computing, RSHE and citizenship. The guidance will be published in the autumn of this year. The Online Safety Bill will also ensure that children are better protected from pornographic content, wherever it appears online.

The statutory RSHE guidance sets out the content that we expect children to know before they complete each phase of education. We have, however, been clear that our guiding principles for the development of the statutory guidance were that all the compulsory subject content must be age-appropriate and developmentally appropriate. It must be taught sensitively and inclusively, with respect for the backgrounds and beliefs of pupils and parents, while always with the aim of providing pupils with the knowledge they need. Given the need for a differentiated approach and the sensitive and personal nature of many of the topics within the RSHE curriculum, it is important that schools have the flexibility to design their own curricula, so that it is relevant and appropriate to the context of their pupils. The Department’s policy, therefore, has been to trust the expertise of schools to decide the detail of the content that they teach and what resources they use.

As mentioned previously, we have made a commitment in the White Paper to strengthen our guidance in this respect. We will also review and update that guidance regularly—at least every three years. We are confident that the majority of schools are capable of doing this well and have been successful in developing a high-quality RSHE curriculum that is appropriate to the needs of their pupils, but, in the context of this debate, it is clear that that is not always the case and that there are genuine concerns about many of the materials that have been used.

I stress that allowing schools the flexibility to make their own decisions about their curricula does not mean that they should be unaccountable for what they teach. Schools are required by law to publish their RSHE policies and to consult parents on them. As their children’s primary educators, parents should be given every opportunity to understand the purpose and content of what their children are being taught. In the RSHE statutory guidance, which all schools must have regard to, we have set out a clear expectation for schools to share examples of resources with parents. Schools are also bound by other legal duties with regard to the delivery of the wider curriculum. All local authority maintained schools are required to publish the content of their school curriculum, including the details of how parents or other members of the public can find out more about the curriculum that the school is following. There is a parallel requirement in academy trust model funding agreements for each academy to publish the same information on its website. It is our intention that that should form part of the new standards for academies.

My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge raised the point, which my hon. Friend the Member for Aberconwy (Robin Millar) echoed, that last week, in a Committee debate on the Schools Bill in another place, peers highlighted the fact that some schools believed that they were unable to share resources with parents because intellectual property legislation placed restrictions on them. We are clear that schools can show parents curriculum materials, including resources provided by external organisations, without infringing an external provider’s copyright in the resource. For example, it is perfectly possible for a school to invite parents into the school to view materials on the premises. Although of course we have to be mindful of not overburdening schools with repeated requests, we do expect schools to respond positively to all reasonable requests from parents to share curriculum material. We therefore expect schools to share RSHE content and materials with parents openly and transparently, where requested. We are clear that they should not enter into any contracts with third parties that seek to restrict them from sharing RSHE resources with parents.

The RSHE train the trainer programme, which we delivered from 2020 to 2021, brought to light several examples of good practice, including in schools that had engaged with parents effectively, but I apologise that I will not have time in this debate to address those.

Many schools draw on the expertise of external organisations, as we have heard, to enhance the delivery of RSHE, and many will use resources that are produced externally. To help schools to make the best choices, the Department published the non-statutory guidance, “Plan your relationships, sex and health curriculum”. That sets out practical advice for schools on a number of topics, including using externally produced resources. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge quoted from it.

Concerns have been raised today about what schools teach pupils on transgender issues. School should be a safe and welcoming place for all pupils. We believe that all children should be supported while growing up. However, we recognise that gender identity can be a complex and sensitive topic for schools to navigate and that there is sometimes tension between rights based on the two protected characteristics of sex and gender reassignment. We are working with the Equality and Human Rights Commission to ensure that we are giving the clearest possible guidance to schools on transgender issues. We will hold a full public consultation on the draft guidance later this year. Given the complexity of the subject, we need to get this right and we want to take full account of the review being conducted by Dr Hilary Cass.

I realise that my hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge will need time to respond, so I conclude by saying that I hear very clearly the concerns that have been expressed. As a parent of both a girl and a boy, I know that we need to address these issues and to do so in a way that can reassure parents but continue to deliver high-quality relationships, sex and health education.

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

We only have just over a minute left, so I call Miriam Cates to wind up very briefly, please.

Budget Resolutions

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

Mr Deputy Speaker, in the light of the point of order from a Government Member earlier, which I thought was rather churlish, will you pass on my thanks to the Speaker, your fellow Deputy Speakers, the House of Commons Commission and the House staff for all their help and support, and the safety in which they keep us in the House?

Bootle is one of the most deprived towns in England and has five super-output areas in the lowest 1%, so how can it be right that our levelling-up fund bid has been rejected? In the light of that type of Government approach, it is becoming apparent that the Chancellor’s financial statement was pretty shallow and a sort of economic whistling in the dark. Inflation is on the rise; interest rates are on the rise; taxes are on the rise; the deficit is on the rise; the national debt is on the rise; inequality is on the rise; billionaire incomes are on the rise; profits from dodgy covid deals are on the rise; covid infections are on the rise—the Chancellor is taking the rise.

The Chancellor’s statement came three months after the Prime Minister’s levelling-up speech, in which he committed to working

“double hard to overturn…inequalities”—

inequalities that the Prime Minister and other Tory Governments have exacerbated. I am afraid the Prime Minister working “double hard” does not fill me with much confidence: 100% of nothing multiplied by two is still nothing.

What about the Government’s fiscal rules? They have missed so many targets that they have stopped counting. On 18 October, the Institute for Fiscal Studies said:

“There are currently no active fiscal rules in the UK. The fiscal rules adopted in the 2019 manifesto were abandoned just four months later with the onset of the Covid pandemic.”

The Chancellor did announce some fiscal rules, but they are unlikely to be met, like those of other Tory Chancellors, although hope does spring eternal.

How about the national debt? In May 2010, the Tories inherited a national debt of just over £1 trillion, or 63.2% of GDP; in August 2019, it had gone up by three quarters to £1.7 trillion, or 78.4% of GDP; in February 2021, just pre-covid, it had gone up again to £1.784 trillion, or 81.9% of GDP; and by September 2021, it was at £2.218 trillion, or 95.5% of GDP. So the Tories have added £16,000 for every man, woman and child in this country. That is why—to respond to the question from the hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter)—you cannot trust the Tories with the economy. The party of fiscal rectitude has more than doubled the national debt in just a decade—more wrecked than rectitude.

[Jesse Norman]

Will the hon. Gentleman remind the House what the national debt as a percentage of GDP was in 1997 and then what it was when the financial crisis—to which Labour had allowed the country to become enormously overexposed through increased debt in the banking sector—had struck? I will tell him: it went from 46% to 84% while Labour was in government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Peter Dowd]

As the phrase goes, I will take no lectures from the right hon. Gentleman, who served on the Treasury Bench while I served on the Opposition Front Bench. He was there when the OBR confirmed that the UK was suffering the slowest recovery of any major advanced economy, with GDP at the end of this year further below 2019 levels. That was on his watch. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor do not have the self-awareness to acknowledge it, saying it is everybody else’s fault, as the right hon. Gentleman just repeated. The blame game starts and there are the usual tactics of diversion.

What is the latest diversion? Well, unlike Nelson, the Prime Minister sees ships everywhere—preferably French ones. “Vive la France!” he whispers under his breath. What about his handling of the pandemic? The time is not right, he says, to hold anyone—that is, him—to account through a public inquiry, as he needs to get on sorting out the pandemic, yet in the middle of that pandemic he initiates a major reorganisation of the NHS, so clinical and support staff, who are under huge stress, are being distracted from the real job at hand. That is the perversity of this Government.

The Prime Minister seems to forget that, in cahoots with the Chancellor, he implemented a massive cut to aid to the poorest nations during a pandemic. So much for global Britain.

How are the Government going to sort out the country’s economic travails? Another slogan will help out: levelling up. I am not sure whether the Prime Minister shared the levelling-up speech with the Chancellor; if he did, the Chancellor obviously did not bother to read it. In fact, I am not even convinced that the Prime Minister bothered to read it before he delivered it. In his levelling-up speech in July this year, the Prime Minister referred to the scale of the task that faced the German nation on reunification. Does he know the scale of the problem in this country? The Germans actually did something about it: they invested over decades. I suggest that the Prime Minister checks out what they did. Rumour has it—it is a rumour—that he is not a details person, but on this occasion he may want to make an exception.

If the Prime Minister is going to mention German reunification, he would be well advised to look at the scale of the intervention that was undertaken. The Centre For Cities analysed what putting the words of his levelling-up speech into action might mean. The analysis was entitled “What can German reunification teach the UK about levelling up?”; the answer, as it happens, is a great deal. The cost of this scale of levelling up would be at least £1.7 trillion today, which is around 75% of a year’s UK GDP. Closing the north-south divide would cost hundreds of billions of pounds over decades, if done properly. The Government have come nowhere near that level of investment or commitment.

England’s biggest cities, including Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds, have the lowest productivity and life expectancy in western Europe—on the Prime Minister and the Chancellor’s watch. In Liverpool, life expectancy is four years below the European average. All major cities outside London are at the bottom of the western European league table for productivity, after 10 years of Tory control. The evidence of social and economic inequity across the country in terms of health, education, region, environment, cities, towns, countryside, age and gender is there for all to see.

What is depressing is the insouciant—there’s the French again—attitude of the Chancellor to it all. The scale of the task that faces the country is in inverse proportion to the Chancellor’s lack of action. In sum, on the bridge, the Prime Minister sees ships everywhere; meanwhile, below decks, the Chancellor is scuttling HMS UK.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Children and Families: Cross-Government Strategy

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Peter Dowd (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practice to support the hybrid arrangements. Members attending physically should clean their spaces before they use them and as they leave the room. I also remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered developing a cross-Government strategy for improving outcomes for children and families.

First, I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests as a serving councillor and unpaid vice-president of the Local Government Association. I also put on the record my thanks to the LGA and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, whose research I will draw on in my speech.

The NSPCC’s report, “Bringing the global to the local”, suggests that the UK continues to have a child protection system that is among the best in the world. However, a good childhood goes beyond effective protection from harm; we need to consider how we support children to thrive. Child protection is a good example of where cross-Government co-ordination is required. I very much welcome the Home Secretary’s recent comments about corporal punishment and hope that the Minister can press colleagues across Government to consider bringing England into line with Wales, Scotland and most of our international allies with a reasonable chastisement rule—something that is well evidenced in the research for another NSPCC report, “Equally Protected?”

However, the key thing for all Government policy is that it works well in practice. For most children, the key things in their life will be education and healthcare, and on the whole these things work extremely well at giving our children a great start. The challenges arise when we start to address more complex issues in areas such as public health, child poverty, enrichment activity, financial education and preparation for the world of work, and almost every Government Department has an impact on children and their welfare.

I particularly commend the Minister for her work on the programme to support children during school holidays. It has been a great illustration of both how complex but also how effective cross-Government co-ordination can be, with Departments, including the Department for Education, the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, all having a direct stake in both the process and the outcomes for the children involved. This programme, as strong as it has been, has not high- lighted something that is simply a covid issue; it has demonstrated a challenge that has existed for decades, which covid has brought into even sharper focus.

So why is it timely to consider the cross-Government co-ordination of children’s policy now? First, this is an opportunity to consider how we articulate our ambitions—what we as a country want to achieve for our children. Secondly, today I will make the case for the boring but absolutely essential task of sorting out what one might term the plumbing of the system—the complex web of budgets, policies, markets and providers that we need to support our children as effectively and efficiently as possible. Many across the sector argue that we need to think about what our plan looks like for the future.

I will consider first the question of ambition. The purpose of this debate is to press the case for a clear sense of cross-Government ambition for children. All political experience shows that government—manifestations of the state such as local authorities, schools, health authorities and police forces—is very good at fulfilling the specific tasks it is given by legislation. That is why, for example, councils have prioritised their legal obligations under our child protection system in response to the tough choices driven by financial pressure.

However, the downside to that is that by keeping our policies for children in a state of “just about managing” across some parts of government, we forgo the opportunity to make the strategic decisions that bring about the long-term benefits we want to see, which I have heard the Minister and others articulate their desire for. Many of those things have lifetime cost implications for the state, as well as significant human consequences.

It is right, for example, that the Government have set out a cross-departmental strategy on the environment and climate change. The focus brought by COP26 has enabled us to see all parts of government thinking about how our actions contribute to achieving those climate goals and working with all kinds of stakeholders on the action that they need to take. In the same way, I call for a clear, cross-government strategy for children that sets out what we want to achieve for the health, education and wellbeing of our youngest constituents. On the whole, we have a system that supports children well, but it remains inconsistent in some respects. From early years health and nutrition to entry to university, we still have some distance to travel before we can say that our youngest constituents are able to make the best of the opportunities that our country seeks to offer.

I turn briefly to the specifics. Our children would benefit from a clear set of national outcomes—a list, perhaps—starting from consistent, high-quality antenatal support, as argued for by some, such as my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) in her recent review, through to access to vaccinations, early education, the financial benefits from the Treasury relevant to childhood, accountable education providers with a restless ambition for every child, and a clear national offer on enrichment to engage all young people in the opportunities and responsibilities of our society.

That brings me to the heart of the issue. As the Local Government Association publication “Rewiring Public Services” highlighted, setting out ambitions is all very well, but unless we think through how to fulfil them, we are setting ourselves up to fail. The research base emerging from the network of What Works centres brings together a good deal of evidence in this respect. It highlights how the best value for the taxpayer is often achieved through programmes, such as the troubled families programme, that move away from specific, legislatively mandated actions to locally co-ordinated interventions.

We need to consider that schools are the one place where the state has eyes on almost all children. They have a unique opportunity and responsibility in all aspects of a child’s life. Too often, our system has prioritised institutional performance rather than the outcomes for every child. We need to think, across all life stages, how we maximise the achievement of every participant—something that remains a legally mandated responsibility of local authorities, but which currently relies on a complex web of often conflicting interests across different providers. We need to ensure that regulation supports the delivery of those national priority outcomes. Anecdotal examples of high-performing institutions are clearly not a proxy for the rigorous pursuit of ambition for all.

We need to bolster the power of our local authorities to fulfil their statutory role as champions for children. Public health is a clear example of this. In practice, many councils have been pushed to accept mixed-quality contracts passed on from historic NHS providers. We need to ensure that NHS bodies welcome the scrutiny of accountable local colleagues and welcome the opportunity to reconfigure services so that, for example, child protection and health visiting become a seamless experience from the point of view of a vulnerable child, rather than a process of navigating an internal market.

Finally, we need a clear process across government for driving these ambitions. Ofsted would not accept a local authority’s saying that it cannot fulfil a priority because it is someone else’s department. We must apply the same principle in Whitehall. A Government with a substantial majority, ambition for levelling up, the support of great Ministers with experience in the area—all these things are an opportunity for setting out a new ambition for what it means to grow up in the UK in the coming decades. That cannot simply be about addressing deficits and failings; it needs to be about having that sense of ambition. Too often, deficits and failings are patched up—with great, but often piecemeal initiatives—and long- term challenges still need to be addressed.

Growing pressure on the special educational needs and disability system is pushing education budgets to breaking point in many areas. Department for Education figures suggest that there is more than £1.4 billion in school surpluses, and many schools on the Department’s radar have excessive surpluses. Councils are criticised for spending on child protection rather than early intervention, but the law of the land makes this inevitable. In respect of refugee children, the Home Office owns the national transfer scheme, designed with the Department for Education and local authorities to improve capacity, but market failure in the system sometimes means a lack of placements for willing local authority participants to procure.

In conclusion, we need to apply the excellent research base that has developed—from many organisations, including those funded by the Department—to build on the depth and strength of the experience of our local authorities and our schools. We also need to set out across government that clear vision of our national priorities for our children, so that we have a system that consistently supports all our children to thrive and make the most of the opportunities that our country has to offer.

Budget Resolutions

Peter Dowd Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

I thank colleagues who have spoken in this debate today. They have torn this Budget apart. I am talking about my hon. Friends the Members for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), for Lewisham East (Heidi Alexander), for Burnley (Julie Cooper), for Garston and Halewood (Maria Eagle), for Cardiff South and Penarth (Stephen Doughty), for Redcar (Anna Turley), for Gedling (Vernon Coaker), for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) and for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss), my new hon. Friend, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell) and many other people.

Last week, the Chancellor painted a rosy picture of the nation’s finances. He claimed that the Conservative party’s stewardship had been nothing short of miraculous. He was relaxed and attempted jokes throughout his speech. The Prime Minister’s shoulders shook with amusement, and many Government Members chuckled away. Some of the more experienced Government Members were watching cautiously, as the nosedive gained velocity. The Chancellor had got it wrong—big time. Within hours, he was attacked by many of his own Back Benchers. He was left hung out to dry by the Prime Minister, and, unsurprisingly, he has faced universal criticism over his plans to raise national insurance to 11% for millions of self-employed people. As Sir Michael Caine in the iconic film “The Italian Job” said, “You were only supposed to blow the doors off.” [Interruption.] It would have been unparliamentary to throw in that word. Well, the debris from the explosion is still descending. To put it purely and simply, the manifesto pledge was broken.

Since last Wednesday, Nos. 10 and 11 have been in a briefing war, with each trying to blame the other for the fine mess. Ostensibly, No.10 suggested that the Chancellor sneaked the national insurance rise into the Budget. Apparently, other shocked Cabinet colleagues have indicated that he failed to mention that it would break their manifesto pledge. As my hon. Friend the Member for Garston and Halewood said, it is worrying that Cabinet members do not know their own manifesto commitments. Perhaps they do not care. Then again, the Government have an insouciant attitude towards their manifesto commitment—[Hon. Members: “Give way!”]. I will come back to that in a minute. The insouciant attitude goes on. First the Government committed to getting rid of the deficit by 2015—a broken promise. Secondly, they said that it would be pushed back to 2019-20—another broken promise. Thirdly, they vowed that the debt would start to come down after 2015—another broken promise.

The Government will have virtually doubled the debt and doubled the time they have taken to get it down, and this is what they call success and fiscal credibility. They seem to think that they can simply press the reset button when it comes to meeting their own fiscal rules, and that no one will notice. It is the flipside of John Maynard Keynes’ approach—namely, “When I change my mind, the facts change with it.”

[Sir Oliver Letwin (West Dorset) (Con)]

Now that the hon. Gentleman has had his bit of fun, would he possibly explain how he proposes that the Labour party would find the money required for social care?

[Peter Dowd]

By fiscal rectitude. When the Government miss a deadline, their modus operandi is to set a new one and brazenly move on. It is the immutable law of Tory economics—make it up as you go along. What happened to the long-term economic plan? Well, it did not last very long. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor have their fingerprints all over every single financial decision that has been made during the past seven years. It is no surprise that they have come under criticism from many in their own party, including the former Member for Witney, and the former Chancellor Lord Lamont who called the national insurance debacle a “rookie error”—otherwise known, in the real world, as gross incompetence. But, regrettably, other people will pay the price for that incompetence.

Turning to Brexit—I will mention it even if the Chancellor does not want to—it is the 10th anniversary of the production of “Freeing Britain to Compete: Equipping the UK for Globalisation”. The publication was a wide-ranging policy document authored by the right hon. Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) and friends. It was endorsed by the then shadow Cabinet, which included the current incumbents of No. 10 and No. 11 Downing Street. The publication was hard to track down as it has been removed from the Conservative party website for good reason, but I found a copy. Its contents were toxic—all the more so in the wake of the subsequent global financial crisis—and remain so. But in the light of Brexit, and the resurgence of the right hon. Member for Wokingham’s influence, it will soon get a second run out.

It is worth apprising the House of a few nuggets in the document’s pages. It includes policies such as the abolition of inheritance tax; charging foreign lorries to use British roads; the potential abolition of the BBC licence fee, which it refers to as a “poll tax”; the watering down of money laundering regulations; and the deregulation of mortgage finance because

“it is the lending institutions rather than the client taking the risk.”

Try telling that to someone whose home has been repossessed.

The publication goes on to say:

“We need to make it more difficult for ministers to regulate”.

Remember that this document was dated August 2007, and was rubber-stamped by the current Prime Minister and the Chancellor at the time that Northern Rock was about to go under. The document continues—listen to this one—to say that the Labour Government

“claims that this regulation is all necessary. They seem to believe that without it banks could steal our money”.

Well, that might not be the case, but, at the peak of the banking crisis, we had liabilities of £1.2 trillion. Many people did believe that the banks were stealing money and queued up outside banks accordingly. The document refers to wanting

“reliably low inflation, taking no risks by turning fiscal rules into flexible friends”—

not that the Chancellor has many of those nowadays. As for Europe, in search of jobs and prosperity the document says:

“An incoming Conservative government should go to Brussels with proposals to deregulate the whole EU”.

No wonder they wanted to bury the evidence—it is the autobiography of the hard-line Brexiteers, and the Tory blueprint for a post-Brexit, deregulated Britain. It is a race to the bottom.

These policies are a telling narrative of the views of the fundamentalist wing of the Conservative party. The Prime Minister is hostage to that right wing, and she is on the hook. The stage directions are coming from Wokingham, Haltemprice and Howden, North Somerset, and Chingford and Woodford Green, with occasional guest appearances by the Foreign Secretary. The forlorn, melancholic Chancellor is briefed against—he is not laughing now—because he may just have a less hard-line approach to Brexit than his colleagues.

These are the dusted-off policies of hard Brexiteers, who will stop at nothing until Britain becomes a low-wage, low-tax, low-regulation economy. They want to turn our country—not their country—into the bargain basement of the western world, and they have the Prime Minister in tow. Parliamentary scrutiny is a hindrance.

Meanwhile, the Prime Minister has put kamikaze pilots in the cockpit. The Chancellor knows this too well, and that is why there is a reported £60 billion set aside as a trauma fund—a failure fund. It is not Brexit-proofing the economy, but proofing the economy from the toxic ideology of the hard Brexiteers.

The Government’s proposal to increase insurance premium tax from 10% to 12% is a regressive measure and a charge on households, and we will not support it. It was a surprise to see it in the autumn statement, coming as it did from a Government who use the high cost of insurance premiums as an excuse for curbs on victims’ rights to claim compensation, and we will oppose that rise. While the Government drive up the price of insurance for millions of families, through other policies they will forgo £73 billion of revenue.

The Budget claims it is for lower and middle earners, the NHS, social care agencies, the self-employed, schools, businesses, pubs, the strivers and the entrepreneurs. It wants to give them the thumbs-up, but, in practice, it is not doing that; on the contrary, it is putting two fingers up to them, and that is something Labour will never do.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Eliminating the gender pay gap remains an absolute priority for this Government. Transparency is one of the most important and powerful tools for shaping behaviour and driving change. That is why we will be requiring large employers to publish their gender pay gaps. Draft regulations were laid on Tuesday 6 December, and if Parliament approves this legislation, which I hope will happen, the regulations will commence in April 2017.

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

T7. Does the Minister agree with the Resolution Foundation that cuts to the work allowances of universal credit risk undermining work incentives for disabled people? Should not those cuts be reversed now?

[Caroline Nokes]

As the hon. Gentleman will know, changes were announced in the autumn statement to the taper rate of universal credit. The reality of our changes to the welfare system is that universal credit is encouraging more people into work, and once they are in work, it is helping them, via our work coaches working in every single jobcentre, to make sure that they get more work and indeed better work.

Education (Merseyside)

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Sir Roger. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) for securing this debate and for giving us the opportunity to make contributions that cover a wide range of issues.

I want to start by picking up a theme that has been developed by the Opposition—that is, the question of grammar schools. Grammar schools are a complete and utter distraction from the things that we need to get to grips with in the short, medium and long term. We need to put that on the record. It is not ideological; it just does not work. People talk about going backwards. This is not just about going back to the ’50s—we will be going back before that and it really is not acceptable.

In a debate such as this, the question is where we begin with such a vast area to cover. There is the whole range, from early years right the way through to university education. I wanted to look at the issue systematically in my neck of the woods, so I wrote to a number of education charities and asked them whether they would be prepared to talk to me about an analysis—research potentially in collaboration with one of the local universities—of my constituency.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram) referred to the fact that more than 35% of students in his constituency get grades A to C. The situation is broadly similar in my constituency, at about 40%. I want to tease out some issues related to that, because our schools do fantastic work. Teachers, governors and parents work hard. Day in, day out, they do the work that we ask them, but we can ask of them only so much.

I want to look beyond the narrower situation regarding education and try to determine what the other factors are. I have an idea what they are. In fact, a local group of headteachers came up with their views, serendipitously, and I will be working with them to tease them out. The issues were pupil welfare—diet, dental health, deterioration in accommodation, behavioural problems, mental health issues and stresses relating to the bureaucracy, as it is put. They have stresses and strains all over the place, and this is in an area with a partnership that has 24 schools, most of which are judged to be good or better, with two outstanding schools. One of those outstanding schools has had five outstanding Ofsted inspections on the trot, which I think is unprecedented. At this point, I pay tribute to the former headteacher of that school, Brian Mulroy, who died recently. He spent his life in education and was one of the men who got the school to that status. I put my thanks on the record for the work that he did, and he is not the only one who does such work and who puts their time and effort in, day in and day out.

What happens when the Government introduce things that result in the problems we have had with Concentrix recently? Hard-working families have been put under even more stress because their tax credits have been drawn away from them, and as a consequence, their children have not got free school meals. Whether we like it or not, that has an impact on children’s education. Those sorts of policies are not doing anybody any good. The late Chris Woodhead said that my constituency was doing fantastically against all the odds, and that is because we care for our children. Teachers and families do, and everybody tries to do their best, but they can do only so much.

The Government have to get to the stage where they stop the centralised control of education. Frankly, what Dorset does in relation to Dorset is a matter for Dorset. I do not care. Within parameters, it is for Dorset and any other place to get on with their education systems. I support my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton in saying that we have to stop the atomisation and fragmentation of the education service, and the shilly-shallying around with structures yet again. We have to bring that responsibility back—that might mean bringing it back to the city region in collaboration with renewed and reinvigorated local education authorities. I support my hon. Friend and look forward to working with him on that.

We also have to put the resource in. There is something wrong when we have the situation we have in Merseyside. This is not about picking on other local authorities, but my local authority is the lowest-funded authority in Merseyside per pupil: we get about £300 less than Liverpool. However, we get £1,000 less than Westminster, and there is something wrong with that type of allocation of funding. Westminster is getting about £1,000 more per pupil than my constituency—that is quite shocking and it is just not acceptable. The Government should be getting to grips with that rather than fiddling about with grammar schools and the national formula. The history we have with this Government shows that they will fiddle the formula, which is exactly what they did with local government.

If we are to have a regime, let it be a localised one. If we are to have a funding formula, let it truly be a funding formula and let the children of my constituency get as much money as they need to get a decent education. That is the key.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane]

Let us get on to the real issue at hand.

In my opinion, the Government have failed to build an education system—as a former teacher, I see this day in, day out—that provides opportunity for all. They are increasingly obsessed with structures—which matter—more than the outcomes for young people. My hon. Friend the Member for Bootle (Peter Dowd) talked about shilly-shallying, and it is shilly-shallying of the first order. They are not tackling the key challenges facing our system: declining budgets and chronic shortages of teachers and places, as alluded to by a number of Members. They are failing to invest and our schools are facing, for the first time since the 1990s, real cuts to their funding.

As a teacher doing my teacher training course after Tony Blair got elected in 1997, part of my day job was going round with a bucket to try and catch the rain coming in from the roof. At the end of that Labour Government, if the roof had not been replaced, the school had been rebuilt, and the only thing going through the roof was children’s attainment. We have a very proud record of achievement in those 13 years.

There is still no certainty about how Merseyside will be affected by the Government’s proposed changes to the national funding formula. The Government continue to add to that uncertainty, despite the written ministerial statement on 21 July that the Secretary of State would set out proposals in Parliament in the early autumn. The Secretary of State still has not done that. It is important that the Government ensure that schools do not lose out as a result of changes in the funding formula.

Although the Labour party supports a fair national funding formula, we believe that it should be achieved by investing in all our schools, rather than by taking money away from some schools to give to others. The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies has shown that school budgets will fall by 8% over the course of this Parliament, as the budget was protected in cash terms, rather than in real terms, meaning that the schools budget is at the mercy of rising pressures and pupil numbers, and the impact of inflation on its true value.

With inflation today rising to a two-year high and many predicting it will rise again in the wake of Brexit—particularly a chaotic Brexit without single market access, which is the course we are pursuing—schools are facing real-term cuts. We have already warned that the Government’s proposed new school funding formula will hit areas such as Liverpool. As my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Riverside (Mrs Ellman) pointed out, Liverpool has seen a 65% cut in core funding. Labour supports fairer funding, but areas such as Liverpool are likely to take the big hit. There should be mitigation in the system to protect school standards and ensure that a loss of funding does not hamstring local areas.

If the northern powerhouse strategy is to mean anything, it must enable local communities to tackle the root causes of low attainment and it must improve special educational needs provision, as highlighted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Knowsley. However, there was no SEN provision whatever in the Government’s recent schools paper, which included grammar schools. My hon. Friend the Member for St Helens South and Whiston (Marie Rimmer) pointed out that we need SEN provision within our school system, particularly for people with autism. If the Government were really committed to fair funding, they would invest in schools instead of cutting schools’ budgets for the first time in nearly two decades.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) on a terrific speech and on getting the subject on the agenda. I also congratulate Mayor Anderson, who appointed a commission for the city. We welcome, in principle, the introduction of the Liverpool challenge, and I hope the Minister matches our welcome.

The shadow Secretary of State has often mentioned how effective the London challenge was and how it provides a model for steps we could take to improve schools, with a focus on investment, leadership and collaboration. It would definitely be good to praise the initiative, which shows how Labour, in Labour areas, is taking steps to improve schools for all children, while the Government are pushing grammar schools, which would cause most children in our communities to lose out, as highlighted by my hon. Friend the Member for Bootle.

I remember the introduction of the Manchester challenge in 2008. That was cut when the coalition Government came into power, because of austerity. The reason that the London challenge was successful and improved schools right across the region in which we currently sit was that it lasted for longer and more money was put behind it. The outcomes showed that we can improve every area of the country if we match that provision.

Labour has called for more powers to be developed in local areas to help to tackle educational underperformance. The elected metro mayor of Liverpool would be a good place to start. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Walton (Steve Rotheram), but he says that if he is elected as Liverpool’s metro mayor next May—and I hope he will be—he will start with one hand behind his back because of the current powers.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby talked eloquently about the principle of subsidiarity. The Government seem to have nationalised the school system and privatised it at the same time. Today, the BBC is showing that the Government are taking away councils’ powers to set their own standards for maintained schools. That is a ridiculous system. Subsidiarity tells us that the best decisions are made close to the ground by the people who need to be involved. Labour will go back to that principle when we form a Government.

[Peter Dowd]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the Government are well and truly supportive of subsidiarity when it comes to Europe and Britain, but that they take a different view of Westminster and the regions?

[Mike Kane]

It is astonishing to think of the work that the Liverpool and Manchester city regions have done over the last few years—a devolved spatial strategy, business rates retention, a devolved skills strategy, a devolved housing strategy and devolved health and criminal justice strategies in Manchester—and yet for whatever reason we cannot seem to devolve the schools system. We already have regional Ofsted quality inspectors, so it is not beyond the wit of man to get a proper deal in place so that local politicians have more say and can help to improve standards.

The Education and Adoption Act 2016 goes in the opposite direction, further centralising powers in Whitehall and fragmenting our schools system, rather than giving local areas the powers and responsibilities to ensure a step change in our schools’ results. Sir Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector of schools, said that secondary education in our cities, particularly in Liverpool, is going into reverse, as the hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) alluded to.

The chief inspector of schools also called on local politicians to act urgently and champion their schools. How do we do that? How do we show leadership? My hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, West Derby and for Bootle, and others, have championed those schools, but there should be powers as well. It is not the first time that the chief inspector of schools has highlighted concerns about secondary education in the north of England. In his annual report last December, he described his alarm over the emerging educational divide between north and south.

Turning to early years funding, it is clear that the Government’s proposals to offer 30 hours of free childcare a week are unravelling. As my hon. Friend the Member for St Helens North (Conor McGinn) highlighted, this is the most critical time. In theory, a 30-hour free childcare entitlement would see a welcome reduction in childcare costs for families. However, it is clear that the Government’s reforms are risking the sustainability of early education providers and the quality of provision available.

We have seen the decimation of Sure Start units in our cities and, currently, 750 nursery providers across the country are under threat. Many providers are unsure how they will meet their financial and statutory commitments, which is unsurprising given that their situation was precarious even before the proposals were announced. Freedom of information requests reveal that nearly 75% of councils have been given funding levels over the past five years that have failed to keep pace with inflation.

Figures published by the Department for Education in its consultation on the new funding formula state that about 40 local authorities face further falls in rates. As a result, hundreds of nurseries across the country are publicly expressing their fears, with a comprehensive survey from the Pre-school Learning Alliance showing that 750 providers fear being put out of business by the current Government plans. That would be a disaster for areas such as Merseyside. Maintained nursery schools account for many of those providers, as they have had no supplementary funding guaranteed beyond two years as outlined by the Government. The Minister should take this opportunity to end the anxiety and uncertainty that exists for many childcare providers by offering the extra financial support that will allow them to cope with the pressures created by the Government’s new funding formula.

In conclusion, Labour remains fully committed to ensuring that all our young people are given the opportunity to succeed on whatever educational path they choose, and that their opportunities are based on what they aspire to, not on what they can afford.

Early Years Development and School-Readiness

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Westminster Hall

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

We all recognise that the achievement of development goals in the early years is the foundation for a healthy life, whether that is socially, psychologically or economically. Given that, it is all the more important that state agencies and voluntary, community and faith sector schools, in partnership with and in support of families, do their utmost to play their part in ensuring that our children get the best start in life.

In my professional career as a social worker—I started in a day nursery—I never ceased to be amazed by the capacity of children to gain so much from play, social interaction, direction, encouragement and simple kindness. Children’s first smile, first wave, first frown, first crawl and first “no” are all part of the development process that brings joy to families. Of course, there are the downsides to child development, such as the sleepless nights, the tantrums, the crying, the sickness, the worries—and that is just the parents.

Notwithstanding the significant amount of research over the years in the whole field of child development, it is clear and self-evident that a loving and caring environment in which to grow is the most important gift that can be given to a child. I am sure that many parents in the room would do things differently in how we brought up our children, and I am no exception to that, but one key aspect for a child is the consistency of the care given to them by their parents or carers. At the other end of the spectrum, it is also important to ensure that parents or carers feel that they have a consistent economic environment in which they can nurture and help their children grow. It is therefore the responsibility of Government to ensure that the wider economic conditions in which families bring up children are as stable as possible. There also has to be the effective use of policy drivers, which many Members have alluded to.

It is the responsibility of us all to ensure that we have a nation of healthy children who have been given the best start in life, who live in a safe environment and who have good support and social systems there to help them. In particular, for those children who are not fortunate enough to have a stable, loving, caring family, it is all the more important that we do everything we can to ensure that they have as good a chance as possible to develop into mature, socially and personally confident children whose self-esteem is not damaged by their circumstances.

I hope this debate helps to play a part in keeping this very important issue on the agenda. I thank the hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (James Berry) for giving us the opportunity to say these few words of support. I also thank such organisations as Action for Children and Save the Children, which remind us of our responsibilities in this crucial area of social policy.

Oral Answers to Questions

Peter Dowd Excerpts

Monday 25th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Edward Timpson]

I am afraid that the hon. Lady has given a distorted view of the work being done to improve social work practice across the board. Not only are the Government investing in fast-track graduate schemes such as Frontline and Step Up to Social Work, to which 151 local authorities have signed up, but we have the assisted and supported year of employment and the new knowledge and skills that every children’s social worker will now have to be accredited and assessed against. That is important because for the first time there is a relentless focus on high-quality social work practice rather than a simple theoretical understanding of social work. We need to get that balance right, and that will be at the heart of our social work reforms.

[Peter Dowd (Bootle) (Lab)]

St Monica’s Catholic Primary School in my constituency has had five consecutive outstanding Ofsted reports. It has a fantastic headteacher, teachers, pupils and parents. Can the Minister tell me what benefit there is to forcing that school to become an academy?

[Edward Timpson]

I would answer the question, but I am not sure that it has any relevance to the original question asked by his hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck).