Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Grant Excerpts(10 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Gillian Keegan
Following the union’s rejection of the Government’s fair, reasonable and funded offer, the report has been submitted by the independent STRB. I will not comment on speculation or leaks, or indeed on funding, but we will consider the recommendations and publish our response in due course.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
The Scottish Government did not stonewall the unions and have not claimed that the unions are responsible for all our social ills. The Scottish Government engaged constructively with unions, in education and elsewhere in the public sector, and have agreed a pay deal that means that Scottish teacher salaries will increase by 14.6%—I will say that again: 14.6%—by January next year. In this tale of two Governments, which Government can teachers trust to look after their interests?
Gillian Keegan
Pay awards for this year needed to strike a careful balance between recognising the vital importance of teachers and the work they do, and being affordable and not exacerbating inflation. We have taken that very seriously. We also take standards seriously, and I am delighted that the standards in England are continuing to rise. The question with teachers’ pay rises is always: are they funded? I am aware that the Scottish Government have had to take the funding from other places, including skills and higher education.
National Numeracy Day
Peter Grant Excerpts(11 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
It is my pleasure, Dame Maria, to contribute to this debate. Like the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman), I am a physics and a wee bit of maths graduate. A long, long time ago, I qualified as a physics and maths teacher, although I sometimes say that it is so long ago that I have forgotten half the physics I learned and Stephen Hawking proved that the other half was wrong.
As the hon. Gentleman said, we use numbers every day of our lives, very often without realising it, but a lot of people are scared of them—sometimes, too scared to even try to get over their fears. People go through their entire lives avoiding particular occasions that might show them up or make them think they look silly because their basic numeracy skills are not as good as they would like them to be. For people of my age, some of it is to do with bad experiences at school. Certainly when I went to school, teachers had a habit of humiliating any pupil who was struggling with any part of their work. Thankfully, that does not happen now.
When I go into the schools in my constituency, I am very encouraged by how supportive and patient teachers and other school staff are with pupils who, in my day, would just have been left behind. I am also amazed when I look at some of the techniques that are used now, particularly with children at a very young age, to get them speaking numbers in pretty much the same way as they learn to speak their native language without really understanding how the grammar works. The contribution that is being made by teachers at every stage of education in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom is making a big difference in helping young people to learn essential skills, and there is no doubt that numeracy is one of the most essential.
Not only am I a graduate in two very numerical disciplines, but I was lucky enough to be absolutely fascinated by numbers when I was a wee boy; I could not get enough of them. That, plus the fact that I was probably one of a small minority of children at the time for whom the education system was well suited, meant that I did very well. I sailed through my maths exams at school. I used to do maths Higher papers for fun, to relax after I had spent an evening studying for my other exams.
Sometime towards the end of my first year at Glasgow University, the maths caught up with me and I clawed my way along by my fingertips for the remainder of my degree, but because I still love playing with numbers, it makes it genuinely difficult for me to get the concept that people find numbers scary. There is no doubt that an awful lot of people do. If we could get an honest assessment of 650 MPs, we would probably find that most of them, or certainly a significant number, will try to avoid doing anything with too many numbers in it, or they will get someone in their office to do the number part of a briefing or a speech they are preparing.
On National Numeracy Day, the Deputy Prime Minister did not know how many years the SNP had been in Government in the Scottish Parliament. It may simply be that he had forgotten the year we first got elected, and mistook it for the much more recent coming to power of the Conservatives, but it was an interesting—although I suppose light-hearted—way to mark such an important day.
I have heard people say that they have never tried a sudoku puzzle because they are no good at maths. A sudoku puzzle has numbers in it, but there is nothing mathematical about it. We could put in letters, shapes or wee dogs of nine different kinds, and the puzzle would be exactly the same; there is something about seeing a lot of numbers or an array of numbers that puts people off. The more we try to understand what does that to people, the quicker we can help them set aside their fears and get familiar with numbers, in the same way as when we find out what makes people scared of other languages when they get to certain age, we may be able to change the fact that the UK as a whole is shamefully bad at second, third and fourth languages. Children who are brought up bilingual become expert linguists when they are a wee bit older, so there may be something to think about there.
I mentioned sudoku puzzles, but basic skills in numeracy are not just important to be able to do puzzles—in the sudoku puzzles, they are not important at all. Numeracy is an essential skill for everyone to be able to look out for themselves. As the hon. Member for Harrow East said, it is important for understanding the strengths and weaknesses of different financing offers, such as mortgages or bank loans. We had to bring in regulations about how the annual percentage rate is calculated in order to standardise it across the whole industry and make it a requirement to be brought to the attention of any customer before they sign on the dotted line, because the sales reps—the conmen and women—were presenting numbers in a very misleading way, knowing that a significant number of their victims, or customers, would not spot what they were up to.
Even a lot of people who think they are numerate do not understand what happens when different probabilities are combined. That can make someone who spends their time at the bookies or online gambling an easy target. A lot of people, for example, think that if they are being offered 10 lottery tickets per pound, it is better odds than one lottery ticket per pound, but if everybody gets 10 tickets and there is the same amount of prize money, their chances are exactly the same. People are encouraged to gamble more because the chances of success are made to look much better than they are.
We need people to be more numerate so that they can avoid being taken in when politicians use numbers to try to completely deceive them. There is a well-known saying: “Figures don’t lie, but liars figure.” Clearly, nobody present would ever think to do this, but every single time I go into the main Chamber I will hear a politician deliberately using numbers and statistics in such a way that will cause people to believe something that is not true. Technically that is not lying, but it is still deceitful. We could do with losing it entirely from our public life, but we could also prevent it from being successful by helping people understand what different combinations of numbers and percentages mean.
I am sad to say that the first example I can find comes from the late, much-lamented Margo MacDonald, an absolute stalwart of the SNP. The first time I was old enough to vote was in 1979, and I was swithering between the SNP and the Labour party, which is what my dad, grandad and great-grandad had always gone for. In a party political broadcast a few days before the election, Margo MacDonald was tearing into the record of the Labour Government on inflation. I think she said that over a five-year period prices had gone up by 50%, meaning that the pound in the pocket was worth only 50p compared with five years previously. But that was not true. As an 18-year-old first-year student at the University of Glasgow, I knew that, and I suspect I would have known it when I was 10 or 11. It did dent my confidence in the SNP of those days that it had been able to put that into a party political broadcast and nobody had picked up on it.
More importantly, a few years ago, we had a really serious issue with the marking and awarding of results in Scotland’s exams during lockdown. Students could not have exams, so all results had to be based on the school’s predictions and assessments of how pupils were likely to have done. That is never going to be a fail-safe system. Education Scotland wanted to have a pass rate that was about the same as usual, because universities would not have bought it if everybody had passed, so it had to come up with some way of amending the figures. That meant that it was very difficult to explain why some people had passed and some had failed.
One of the things that got me was that the teachers understandably spoke up on behalf of their pupils, saying things like, “We filled in the assessments, and our prediction was that everybody in the class would pass.” But that is not what they had done. They had considered each individual pupil in the class and said, “I think the probability is that that child will pass.” However, if we add a lot of individual high probabilities, we can end up with a very low probability. For example—I checked this just before I started speaking—we could say that an individual pupil is 90% likely to pass an exam. However, if there is a class of seven pupils, each of whom is 90% likely to pass, the probability that all seven will pass is less than 50%. With a class of 30, it is almost certain that they would not all pass. There is no way of predicting which one will and which one will not—and that is assuming that the 90% estimate is anything other than a guess.
Numeracy is also about interpreting what numbers mean, rather than simply being able to play with them. It is about being able to spot when people are using numbers to put a precision and reliability on a piece of information that does not really deserve it. I do not like it when numbers are applied to something that should be assessed by way of a judgment. We can say that we think that someone will pass their exam or driving test, but putting a number to it makes it look like a hard, scientific fact, because that is what we usually use numbers for. We have to make sure that people are able to tell the difference between numbers that are used in the right context, correctly and accurately, and numbers that are misused, as they all too often are, in a way that is designed to con people.
I have a number of times had to look into investment-type scams that have caught out my constituents. In the information that is sent out to people in order to reel them in, at some point there is usually something that somebody with high numeracy skills would have spotted, so they would have known there was a catch to the guaranteed investment scheme, guaranteed pension scheme or whatever it is. The scams are deliberately worded in such a way as to prevent the vast majority of people from spotting where the catch is.
That leads me to the need for much better financial education. I heard today at the Public Accounts Committee that about 25% of young people leaving school think they are financially educated to the extent that they need to be to survive in today’s financial world. Everybody here knows this, but let me say for the record that 25% is not enough.
I am looking at the number on the clock that tells me how long I have been speaking, and at the faces of Members who are probably thinking that it has been more than long enough, so I will draw my remarks to a close. Numbers are important, but sometimes they do not tell the whole story. The number of Members here today is not a measure of how important our colleagues think adequate numeracy is. It really is an essential skill. I cannot speak for England, but in Scotland we have certainly made a lot of progress in improving numeracy skills, particularly of vulnerable young people and those from disadvantaged backgrounds. That said, we have to go much further.
Education Settings: Wider Opening
Peter Grant Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Gavin Williamson
Where children are not in a position to return to school, we will set out clearly to all schools the basic minimum curriculum requirements we expect them to deliver for all children. That is to be expected and we hope that all schools follow that. It is not just through online learning, but through sharing resources with children. We have seen some excellent practice, but we want to keep driving up all schools to the very highest standards for all children.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP) [V]
Education authorities in England, which have to implement the decisions, knew nothing about the now delayed planned return to full schooling until the Government bounced them into it last month. What steps has the Secretary of State taken to make sure that in future, local authorities, headteachers and unions are kept fully informed about developments, and that schools are given adequate time to prepare for each stage of their pupils’ return?
Gavin Williamson
We always have and will continue to have regular meetings with them to share our most up-to-date plans.
Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Grant Excerpts(5 years, 1 month ago)
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Chris Skidmore
It is absolutely important that girls and women are equally represented at all levels, not only in engineering and STEM, but in all sectors. We invested in programmes such as the advanced mathematics support programme and the stimulating physics network, which aim to increase participation, particularly among girls. This week is British Science Week. I encourage all Members to get involved, not just to stress the importance of STEM education for the future of this country and for the next generation, but to ensure that women and girls can be involved in the wonders of science.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
Damian Hinds
We are proud of our record in reducing the attainment gap in England, but I recognise that one always needs to go further. That starts, of course, in the early years. We are seeing progress at every stage, but there is always more we can do.
Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Grant Excerpts(5 years, 5 months ago)
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The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)
My hon. Friend has raised an important point. In 2017, approximately 91 state-maintained schools entered students for Chinese GCSE. There were 3,654 GCSE entries in that year, and 2,800 A-level entries in 2018. Maintained secondary schools must teach a foreign language at key stage 3, and we fund 64 schools for the Mandarin excellence programme, which is intended to put 5,000 students on track towards becoming fluent in Mandarin.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
The Minister for Universities, Science, Research and Innovation (Mr Sam Gyimah)
Matters relating to our university lecturers and staff and how they are paid are matters for universities, as they are autonomous institutions. As for the new pension arrangements and their potential impact on universities, there will be a consultation to which they can contribute.
Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Grant Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
My hon. Friend is right to identify that area. One element of the early years foundation stage profile is the personal, social and emotional development of children, which is vital. There is a whole range of things we need to think about in this area. One of them is the announcement I made a short while ago about ensuring there is adequate provision of high-quality school-based nurseries, particularly in deprived areas, but we also have to think about what happens at home and in other settings.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
Nadhim Zahawi
We have allocated £1.5 million from the tampon tax fund to that and are looking at further evidence, to see whether there is a link to absenteeism from school.
Transgender Equality
Peter Grant Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Kirsten Oswald
It is incredibly important to make such points. They are vital for education and society at large. We all need to call these things out when we see them.
The Scottish Government’s positive and unwavering stance of supporting LGBTI equality has been incredibly influential and has made a significant difference. That is a great starting point as we aspire, as we must, to go further and ensure that we do everything that we can to eradicate prejudice and enable everyone to achieve their potential.
The young people who thrive in situations where success and equality are at the fore are also influential. They take their outlook into the world—their peer groups, families and communities. Just like the young people whom I heard about on Radio Scotland earlier in the week, they will influence and inspire those with whom they come into contact. I was blown away by their stories, and by their mums, who were powerful and passionate advocates of their transgender children. Their voices and experiences shone through. No one could fail to be moved by their stories—stories of brave, strong people who are different and facing up to the world, and of all the worries and concerns that go with that.
I was pleased to hear one mother say that we have come a long way over the past few years. That is undoubtedly true, but there is more to do and it takes all of us here to stand up to be counted and to push further. We all have a responsibility to challenge those who treat people differently, or who marginalise them, because they do not fit into the boxes that society has traditionally tried to fit people into.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
Given that there are relatively few transgender people in the population, a family with a transgender child in a rural community might well feel that they are only people in the world who have to address this issue. That is why it is so important that events such as this debate are publicised as widely as possible, and that there is enough support to ensure that nobody feels that they have to be transgender on their own.
Kirsten Oswald
That is an incredibly valuable comment. This is about all of us. We must all support people who need our support and are entitled to it. After all, there may come a time when we need the support of others. We do not need to look too far away to find that intolerance and misinformation can be spread by people who are in positions of power and should know so very much better than to peddle nasty, divisive nonsense.
I was interested by the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) about schools. The influence of education and supportive schools was key to the experience of the young women I talked about. Their support for the TIE—Time for Inclusive Education—campaign interested me. Inclusive education pays off hugely by advancing equality and making sure that all our children—and, by extension, all adults—have opportunities to achieve their potential. For far too long, transgender, non-binary and non-gendered people have experienced discrimination, disbelief and far, far worse. Young people are the key to transforming our society, and we need to support them fully to do that.
I end with some wise words from one of the ladies on the radio programme: no one size fits all. We do not expect that to apply to any other aspect of our identity, so why on earth should it apply to gender? That is what this comes down to. We are all a sum of our parts. All our identities are complex, but fundamentally people are just people. We are all different and our legislation must reflect that. Those principles are set out in Scotland’s national plan for human rights, which actively defends the right of everyone in society to be treated fairly, and with dignity and respect.
EU Merger Control
Peter Grant Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Nick Boles
We are probably straying slightly from the subject. In general, I have agreed with everything that the hon. Gentleman has said, but I suspect that there will be a slight note of difference here. There are many fragmented industries in which the merger of two participants would in no way undermine the consumer’s power and might even enable them to become more efficient and productive, thereby lowering costs to the benefit of the consumer. I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, however, that in cases of relatively concentrated industries—we can all think of many, and they are often where mergers are most frequently proposed—it is important to have a robust regime. I am glad to say that we have such a regime in this country. We should therefore allow most decisions about mergers in the UK to take place under the jurisdiction of the UK authorities.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
For a partial takeover—a minority stakeholding—involving two companies registered in the same member state, I understand the argument that the member state should be able to regulate the proposed purchase of shares. Does the Minister appreciate, though, that although the companies may be registered in one member state their activities might have a significant bearing on other member states? Aer Lingus and Ryanair are good examples. Both companies are registered in one sovereign state, but their activities can impact significantly on passengers and businesses in other member states.
My first question is about a similar merger involving two German or two Italian airlines that would have significant impact on passengers in the UK. Is the Minister satisfied that the Government’s proposals would give adequate protection to passengers in the UK? Secondly, on minority shareholdings, there can be a degree of integration vertically along a supply chain for the best of reasons, but it can be used to move profitability to the company in the group that is least likely to have a tax liability. Is the Minister concerned about that? Is he satisfied that the regulations that the Government propose to support give adequate protection against such mergers being used as a tax dodge, rather than to increase competition in the market?
Nick Boles
Those are two excellent questions. On the first, I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Government’s response to the White Paper specifically suggested that the priority should be to ensure that all EU member states should have, as we do already, a domestic regime for the review and, if necessary, control of the acquisition of minority shareholdings. If they did, we could be satisfied that issues relating to the putative purchase of one German airline by another would be covered. Although the hon. Gentleman is of course right to say that consumers in the broader EU might be affected by such a transaction, they are unlikely to be affected more than consumers in the market in which those two companies have their operational bases. I believe that Germany does have a national regime on minority shareholdings, but many other states do not. If such a regime is present, it should be capable of reflecting the interests of consumers from across Europe.
On the second point, the hon. Gentleman is right that tax dodging can be a driving force behind acquisitions, but it is not specifically about competition. Ensuring that the taxes due are received is an important issue of public interest, but it is not for the competition regime, which is about protecting consumers’ interests, to be the adjudicator in such a situation. I am unable to explain the detail to him, but many discussions are taking place at all sorts of levels about the problem of shifting profits around the world. Indeed, the Chancellor has made some fairly robust proposals about how that can be discouraged in the UK.
Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Grant Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
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George Freeman
My hon. Friend has raised this matter with me already, and the Office for Life Sciences stands ready and is taking a close interest. We have already made contact with the local authority and will offer every support we can to its bid to make sure the site remains viable and that we protect local jobs.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
10. What assessment he has made of the potential effect on businesses of the UK leaving the EU.
The Minister for Small Business, Industry and Enterprise (Anna Soubry)
The Prime Minister is focused on reforming Britain’s place in the EU, and rightly so. A wind of change is blowing through the EU, and it is a wind that wants reform. We are in a process of renegotiating, and when we have completed that renegotiation, the question will be put to the British public.
Peter Grant
Earlier this morning, the Secretary of State referred to the difference of opinion on the Labour Benches with regard to our membership of the European Union. Will the Minister take this opportunity to demonstrate the undeniable, 100% unity that exists on the Conservative Benches by confirming that she and all her ministerial colleagues will enthusiastically promote the positive case for remaining in Europe when the time comes?
Anna Soubry
I know that the hon. Gentleman is new to this place, but I do not think the Conservative party has ever shied away from the fact that we are not all as one when it comes to the future of our European Union membership and whether we should stay in or leave. What is absolutely the case is that, unlike other Governments who had the opportunity, we are trusting the British people. We are in a process of negotiation. We will go to the people, and let the people decide whether or not to stay within the EU.
Oral Answers to Questions
Peter Grant Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Nicky Morgan
As we have heard, this Government are going to invest £7 billion in this Parliament until 2021 to create more good school places. I encourage my hon. Friends the Members for Shipley (Philip Davies) and for Keighley (Kris Hopkins) to consider whether an application for a free school might also be in order so that parents and others are in charge of providing more good school places locally.
Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)
15. What assessment she has made of the potential merits of her Department becoming an accredited living wage employer.
Drew Hendry (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey) (SNP)
16. What assessment her Department has made of the potential effect on its staff of it becoming an accredited living wage employer.
The Secretary of State for Education (Nicky Morgan)
My Department has no directly employed staff paid below the living wage, and from the end of August 2015 all agency staff should receive at least the living wage. I have commissioned the Department’s head of property to review how the living wage can be paid to subcontracted support staff by the end of this calendar year.
Peter Grant
I welcome those assurances and hope that other Ministers and Secretaries of State will take note. Is the Secretary of State aware of how many direct or indirect employees of her Department have to rely on state welfare benefits to top up their wages at the end of the week?
Nicky Morgan
I do not have those figures to hand. I am happy to ask, although it could be regarded as quite intrusive to ask members of staff about their personal financial situation. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, which is reflected in my right hon. Friend the Chancellor’s recent Budget: we want people who are working to receive the right wage for their work and not to be reliant on state hand-outs.