Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Monday 29th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

Let me add my congratulations to my hon. Friend on his achievement in the London marathon. He will be pleased to know that in 2019-20 we have introduced a new formulaic approach to the allocation of growth funding to local authorities in the NFF. It is a fairer system, because it is based not just on what the authorities spent in the past but on the actual growth in the number of pupils. We will, of course, always keep this issue under review.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

10. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of education funding in England.

[Rushanara Ali (Bethnal Green and Bow) (Lab)]

14. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of education funding in England.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds)]

While this country is a relatively high spender on state education by comparison with other similar countries, we recognise that finances remain challenging, and we will continue to listen to professionals in the run-up to the spending review.

[Phil Wilson]

Like many other schools in my constituency, Fishburn Primary School is facing severe funding difficulties, to the extent that parents are holding a fundraising event to raise money for essentials. Given that a real-terms increase in funds is not coming from his Department, would the Secretary of State care to contribute a raffle prize to help to raise the money that will ensure that local children continue to receive the education that they deserve?

[Damian Hinds]

It is, of course, exceptionally important for schools to be properly resourced. In the Darlington local authority area, where the typical primary class size is 27, the average funding is £104,000, while in the Durham local authority area— which the hon. Gentleman mentioned—where the class size is slightly smaller at 25, the funding is a shade higher at £105,000. Of course it is right that, through the national funding formula, we ensure that schools are properly resourced for the education that they will need to deliver.

School Funding

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Education is the foundation of aspiration and the engine of social mobility, and it needs continued and growing investment. The best teachers and schools are part of the community, promoting the best educational welfare for the children for that community. But I hear overtures from the schools in the north-east and in Sedgefield and alarm bells are ringing, with budgets being cut, teaching staff being made redundant and parents fundraising for the essentials. Some £7 billion has been cut from the education budget for schools and colleges. Real-terms spending has reduced from £95.5 billion to £87.8 billion. In the north-east of England, 842 schools out of 1,004 that have been analysed face funding cuts. In County Durham, 194 schools out of 243 face cuts to their finances; the authority’s schools will lose £8.1 million by 2020. This is second only to Northumberland in the region, which is set to see a cut of £8.9 million. In total, schools in the north-east will see a cut of £60 million. This is not good enough.

What is also not good enough is that according to the National Association of Head Teachers, 5,400 teachers have been cut nationally—that comes on top of cuts of 2,800 teaching assistants, 1,400 support staff and 1,200 auxiliary staff. The number of pupils being taught in supersize classes has trebled in the past five years. The proportion of local authority maintained primary schools that have spent more than their income rose significantly to more than 60% in 2016-17. Schools are having to make difficult decisions, as budgets have not kept pace with rising costs since 2010. The Bank of England points out that £100-worth of goods in 2010 costs more than £120 today, which is a 20% increase. Obviously school budgets have not risen in line with these rising costs.

Furthermore, there is a growing funding crisis for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities. Because of cuts to local authority budgets affecting services to schools to support children with these needs, schools now have to find the first £6,000 of a support plan, which is taken from the wider school budget rather than specific special needs-related funding. Durham County Council told me that it has a projected deficit in the high-needs budget for children with special educational needs and disabilities of £5 million by 2020. This comes at a time when need is increasing dramatically. The council is now needing to use funding from its reserves on a one-off basis to plug the deficit. A solution must be found in 2020-21, as the council cannot use reserves again for this purpose.

Using reserves to fund statutory duties for the education of our children is not sustainable. The educational opportunities of our children are being challenged now—teachers know it and parents know it. Local teachers tell me that because of the budget restraints, they have to cut back on the teaching and non-teaching staff who provide support for more vulnerable pupils; on repairs to schools buildings; and on the renewal of equipment, among other things.

A couple of weeks ago, a group of parents with children at Fishburn Primary School came to see me. They are leading a campaign against education cuts at the school. Scott Emsbury, Alana Baker and Katrina and Justin Boulton are deeply concerned about the pressure that budget cuts are placing on the school. They know that the teaching staff, led by Danny Eason, and all those who work at the school, are excellent and are doing their best, but they are now deeply concerned. The school will see a reduction in teaching staff because of budget cuts, and the ability to stretch the interests and minds of young children through additional activities is being challenged. The parents are organising petitions and fundraising events to provide the essentials, and doing everything they can to publicise the issues facing their local school.

Durham County Council told me that Fishburn Primary School will have a deficit of somewhere in the region of £20,000 by the end of the 2019-20 budget period. Had the funding formula kept pace with inflation, the school would have received £4,357 per pupil, rather than £4,000—it would have received £170,000 more since 2012-13. The Minister may say that funding has increased and that everything in the garden is rosy, but if parents are having to fundraise for the essentials, such an assertion is not adequate. Parents having to fundraise for the essentials to ensure the education of their children reminds me of when my children were at primary school: we had to fundraise then, back in the early 1990s —and we had a Tory Government then, too.

Mental Health Education in Schools

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Monday 6th November 2017 Westminster Hall

[Chris Ruane]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady. That is what is happening in mindfulness research. Bangor University is looking at mindfulness for the baby in the womb. The biggest cause of low birth weight babies is maternal stress—either directly or through legal and illegal drugs, tobacco or alcohol—and it is working on a curriculum for babies in the womb. Bangor University is looking at a mindfulness curriculum for three to seven-year-olds; it already has one for seven to 11-year-olds. The .b course has been devised for 11 to 18-year-olds by top mindfulness experts who actually teach in the Palace of Westminster. There is another £7 million study into the effects of mindfulness on 11 to 18-year-olds at Oxford University called the MYRIAD project. Hopefully, the interim report will be published around 2020. If that scientific evidence is proven, as decision makers and policy makers we should look carefully at it. If we can get on top and provide that resilience to children and young people from the age of three, we should be implementing that.

I want to draw hon. Members’ attention to what we are doing in mindfulness to help us in our initiative to ensure that the proven science of mindfulness is taken up in the national health service, the education service and the criminal justice service. Some 85% of prisoners have one or more mental health issues, and some people are incarcerated from a very young age. Again, we owe it to them to look after them and to give them the best provision available.

I mentioned this in an earlier intervention, but the bell curve of wellbeing includes people who are well below that curve, the majority who are somewhere above that position of mental ill health, and a few who are flourishing. If we can shift the whole of that wellbeing curve along, the biggest beneficiaries will be those with the poorest mental health, but it will also help everybody on the curve. Mindfulness can be used not just to give people back their equanimity, but for human flourishing. This question has been posed for thousands of years, but something seems to have gone wrong in society over the past 30 years. We have had a tsunami of mental ill health washing over the whole of the world, and especially the western world. We give more credence to the pursuit of money and wealth than to individual, family, societal and community wellbeing. It is time that we took stock and asked ourselves what is important in life. The most important thing for me is to think from a position of balance. There are curricula and courses that can be taught to young people, and we are failing if we do not put those provisions in place.

Again, as I said in an earlier intervention, there is a way that we can help those students who go to university at 18 to become teachers in three or four years’ time, or who go at 18 to be medics or doctors and come out at 25 to be GPs. Many of those young people are in stress themselves—“Physician, heal thyself”. If those young students can be given the skills to get their own personal balance, when they go through their career as a GP, nurse, midwife, teacher or lecturer, they will remember the benefits that they have had—the equanimity and the ability to concentrate, to focus, to improve their grades and to improve their way of living—and they will be able to touch thousands of minds over the course of their medical or educational career. It is a huge problem that is out there, and some of the answers could be quite simple.

[Phil Wilson (in the Chair)]

Before we move on to the Front Benchers, the mover of the motion has indicated that she would like two or three minutes, if we get that far, at the end to wind up.

School Funding: North-east of England

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 26th April 2017 Westminster Hall

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) who secured this important debate. I pay tribute to my hon. Friends the Members for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop) and for Hartlepool (Mr Wright), who will be leaving our ranks. I am sad to see them go. They are both friends of mine and I know they have been excellent representatives for their constituencies over the years.

“Education, education, education” was the mantra of the previous Labour Government, but we do not hear that now. That mantra is finished and no longer there under the current Government. On funding for schools, we need only look at what Durham County Council said about the effect the cuts will have on schools in the county: the funding formula is likely to lead to redundancies with small schools becoming financially unviable; 50% of primary schools will see cuts and 68% of secondary schools will also lose funding; 111 primary schools will see a reduction in funding of about £10,000 on average; and 21 of 31 secondary schools will see a loss of funding of about £48,000 to £50,000.

The National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers have surveyed schools about the funding required from parents, who are being asked to pay for school plays and sports events, and to help fill the funding gaps. One in six parents are being asked to fund their children’s schools; 76% of schools said their funding has been cut; and 93% of schools have said they are pessimistic about future funding. Some parents are paying on average £20 a week to their local school to keep it going.

Parents are being asked to fund sports events, school concerts, arts and design materials, text books, library books, IT and sports equipment. Some 44% of schools are renting out buildings and some are renting out their car parks. That reflects something that happened before. I remember the 1990s when my children were at school under a previous Tory Government, when the schools used to ask for help with funding for text books, pens, pencils and equipment. We have come full circle, but this time it is even worse.

Sedgefield Comprehensive School, which I attended quite a while ago, has been rebuilt under Building Schools for the Future. It is a fantastic facility, with fantastic teaching staff and fantastic children who want to learn and get on, and who aspire to do the best they can in their lives. It was recently named one of the top 50 state schools in the country by The Sunday Times. That is fantastic news. That was established through what the previous Labour Government did. When I compare the school today with what it was like all those years ago, I would say that it has been transformed. The previous Labour Government helped to achieve that. I am proud of our record and of what we have done for that school.

The headteacher, David Davies, has said that

“schools face the prospect of being unable to heat classrooms”

and of being unable to ensure that all the subjects that need to be available can be available. He is the head of one of the top state schools in the country. He has said that it is a “complete and utter myth” that the Government are protecting school budgets:

“In recent years, we have seen pension contributions included as well as moderate pay rises and there has been no increase in the budget”.

Schools NorthEast says that schools in the region would have £42 million to spend on education if they were funded at the national average, and more than £320 million if funded at the London rate. The National Audit Office has said that the cuts will be the equivalent of £3 billion by 2020—£119 million in cuts in real terms for the north-east, which is equivalent to 3,200 teachers. It says that the north-east faces an 8% real-terms reduction in its education funding. Sedgefield comprehensive’s headteacher, Mr Davies, has said:

“This will mean schools having to reduce…services, which could include only heating classrooms for part of the day, reduced investment in school buildings, IT facilities being stretched beyond their usable life and expensive subjects being cut such as music and design technology. It is our responsibility to provide the best possible education, but ultimately parents need to be aware that the future of their son or daughter is at risk with these cuts.”

I am a great believer in aspiration, but it is not achieved with the kind of cuts faced not just in Sedgefield, but around the north-east. When headteachers such as David Davies are coming out and passing those remarks to the local newspaper, we know we have a problem that the Government need to address.

The data for the comprehensives and secondary schools in my constituency show that Ferryhill Business and Enterprise College will have a £253,000 cut through a change in the budget by 2019, which is equivalent to six teachers. Greenfield Community College will have a reduction of more than half a million pounds, which is equivalent to 14 teachers.

[The Minister for School Standards (Mr Nick Gibb)]

Can I just clarify whether the hon. Gentleman is talking about funding to the school, or whether the figures he is citing are the cost pressures facing the school, which is different from the income?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

It is not semantics. Actual income to schools in Sedgefield goes up under the national funding formula by £300,000, which is a 0.7% rise in income. So that we can have a transparent, honest debate about school funding, is the hon. Gentleman talking about the cost pressures?

[Phil Wilson]

The figures have been quoted by headteachers. They know what the budget pressures are and they say that the budgets are being cut. They say that they are under pressure and are losing funds to the equivalent of the number of teachers I mentioned.

Woodham Academy will lose the equivalent of five teachers. Hurworth School, another excellent school in my constituency, will lose the equivalent of nine teachers; Sedgefield comprehensive will lose 11 teachers; and Wellfield Community School will lose nine teachers. The cut in the budget and the pressures that they have to face is equivalent to £2.2 million.

Part of my constituency takes in the rural aspects of Darlington. Every headteacher from primary and secondary schools in the Darlington borough—39 of them—has written to all parents to point out the dangers to the education of their children because of the changes to formulae and the cuts and pressures on budgets between now and 2020.

[Mr Gibb]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Phil Wilson]

I will not. The Minister will have plenty of time to make his comments at the end. I want to get through my speech as other people want to make their comments.

There are also cost pressures and budget changes for the primary schools. For Heighington School in Darlington, which is in my patch, that is £125,000. The primary schools in Sedgefield—Sedgefield Primary School and Sedgefield Hardwick Primary School—will see £120,000-odd changes in their budgets. The Minister can shape it any way he wants, but this is affecting schools, teachers and pupils. Headteachers are coming out and saying that, so there is obviously a problem. We can trade figures left, right and centre, but the headteachers are those who know what is happening on the ground.

I want to raise another issue, which is not related to funding but is important to me. It is so important to pupils Christina Davies, Aidan Wong and Melissa Foster from Greenfield School that they came to see me recently. They are concerned about the new GCSEs, where they are treated differently to those in public schools. Only 7% of pupils are in public education—93% are in state schools.

[Chi Onwurah]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the over-representation of privately and public-school educated people in positions of power on the Government Benches, together with this Government’s obsession with free schools and grammar schools, mean that it is impossible for them to understand the budgeting and funding pressures and what they mean for the experience of our young people?

[Phil Wilson]

There is an element of truth in that, and it comes down to the core of my next point, on which I would love to hear the Minister’s comments. In state schools, 40% of coursework used to go towards a final GCSE mark, and there was a chance to sit it in January or June. That cannot be done now. If someone does an IGCSE in a public school, they have the chance to do that, and the result is still recognised by employers.

The pupils from Greenfield school who came to see me are asking why they cannot have a level playing field. If they cannot have 40% of their coursework counted towards the GCSE, why is it not the same in public schools or vice versa? They just want a level playing field and for everybody to be treated the same. Why is it that, just because someone can afford to pay for their child’s education, they have a better chance in life than those children of the 93% of parents who do not have the chance and opportunity to send their children to public school? I am not saying do it one way or the other, but let us have a level playing field. It affects the aspirations and social mobility of our children and is fundamentally unfair.

[Mr Gibb]

indicated dissent.

[Phil Wilson]

The Minister can shake his head, but I have pupils and headteachers coming to see me about this. It is fundamentally unfair when people in public schools have a better chance in life than those children who are sent to state schools.

[Mr Gibb]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Phil Wilson]

I am going to wind up. The Minister can answer all the points as he wants and I am sure he will. We have a fundamentally unfair system and it needs to be addressed. I am sure my hon. Friends can see that Government Members are shaking their heads. Am I surprised? No, I am not, because they do not believe it is unfair.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman looks very healthy to me. May I just say that the figures I have cited are for 2016-17 and are based on actual pupil numbers in 2016-17. They do not take into account the extra funds that will come forth as pupil numbers rise.

[Phil Wilson]

The Minister is talking as if there is not a problem. If everything in the garden is so rosy, why is the headteacher of Sedgefield Community College saying that the Government protecting the budget is an utter myth?

[Mr Gibb]

I did not say that there are no issues. I said that there are cost pressures facing schools, but I want to get the factual basis of the issues on the record, so that we know what we are debating. It appears to me that hon. Members in this debate are opposing the national funding formula. The national funding formula is designed to address iniquities in the system and will do so. As a consequence, schools that have been historically underfunded on the basis of their intakes will no longer be so, if and when we implement the national funding formula.

Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend is right on both points. The latest statistics show that we are having more success in recruiting male teachers into primary schools. We are also doing more, through our Troops to Teachers programme, to use the talents of many people who have served our country in the armed forces and can now serve our education system, too.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Will the Minister join me in congratulating the leadership of Wellfield community school in my constituency, under head teacher Linda Rodham, on improving the school’s Ofsted rating from poor to good in four terms, and on the improvements we are seeing in qualifications year on year? Does that not prove that there is no smell of defeatism in the schools of east Durham?

[Mr Laws]

I am delighted to hear about the success of that school in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. I hope that other schools in the region, and in those regions where there has been underperformance, will look at was has been done there and realise that there is nothing inevitable about failure in any part of the country.

Munitions Workers

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 26th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to be under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, to debate a subject that is important for many of our constituents, and to remember the tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people who worked in dangerous industries during the war to keep our defences going in that period.

I want to talk about the munitions factory at Aycliffe, now Newton Aycliffe. In 1941, when Royal Ordnance factory No. 59 opened in Aycliffe, the town of Newton Aycliffe did not exist; it became a new town in 1947. The former site of the ordnance factory is now the second-largest industrial estate in the north-east. If people go to the industrial estate, they can still see the blast walls and some of the buildings where munitions workers worked during that period. At its peak, in 1943, the factory employed 17,000 people, 90% of whom were women. Around the country, there were some 64,500 munitions workers who filled the shells and the bullets. The importance of their work was recognised, as they received visits from Winston Churchill, King George VI and even Gracie Fields, who gave a beautiful rendition of the Lord’s Prayer, which is well remembered by many of the workers.

Filling shells and bullets is obviously dangerous work. I understand from a study by Her Majesty’s Stationery Office in 1940 that the Aycliffe Royal Ordnance factory produced more than 700 million bullets during its period of operation. The work was extremely repetitive, fragmented and boring, but there were high levels of companionship among the women as they daily risked their lives filling bombs and bullets. Many of the women started work at 18, but the average age was 34. Workers were supposed to be under the age of 50 to work at the factory, but apparently a Mrs Dillon, who claimed she was 49, was actually 69. She was the best worker in the factory, losing only two days of work in two-and-a-half years. She received the British Empire medal from the King for her work.

The women who worked in the factory became known as the Aycliffe Angels because, in numerous wartime broadcasts, Lord Haw Haw used to say:

“The little angels of Aycliffe won’t get away with it.”

Although there was never a raid on the factory, because it was secret, the workers faced terrible situations. I have a personal interest in this story, because my grandma, Isabella Woods, worked in the factory during that period. Dorothy Addison spoke to the Northern Echo about her time at the station. In a description of what she did, she said:

“I was on ‘Group Five’ and our job was to weigh cordite, put it into linen bags and sew gunpowder on top. This was put into ‘25-pounder shells’ and the next block had to put the detonator on top! We were searched and if anyone was found with matches, it was instant dismissal! We wore protective clothing and shoes that didn’t cause any friction and our hair had to be tucked in a turban. I remember one girl in the next block getting her hair in a machine and being scalped—she died!! German bombers often came over and all the lights had to be out. One night they came over—we knew the sound—the siren went and we all had to go into the shelters. The sky was lit up with hundreds of ‘chandeliers’—our name for bombs.”

That is what they had to put up with, day in and day out for the period of the war.

Let me mention also some of the people who died. There was an explosion on 2 May 1945—just days before the end of the second world war—in which Isabella Bailey, Elsie Barrett, James Bunton, William Clark Hobson, William Mitchell, Christopher Seagrave, Edmund Smith and Alice Wilson died. Phoebe Morland died on the night of 20 February 1942, along with Irene Irvin, and Alice Dixon. Phoebe’s husband was in the Navy during the war; although his job was considered the more dangerous, it was his wife at home who was killed, leaving behind two children. That is what our ancestors had to put up with. Many of us have relatives or know of people who worked in those industries.

I pay tribute to Great Aycliffe town council for doing its bit over the years to remember the Aycliffe Angels. It produced a memorial certificate, which it gave to the survivors. My grandma was awarded one posthumously; she died 30 years ago. To this day, it sits on the coffee table in the sitting room of my mum’s house. The council also helped to prepare and build a memorial in the town centre to the men and women who worked in the industry.

Newton Aycliffe is now a thriving town with a massive industrial estate. The town itself did not exist until after the war; there were only fields. The factory was built on that site because the area tended to get misty, so it could be hidden from bombers. That is part of the proud history of the town. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Robert Flello) on securing this debate. He is right that the munitions workers should be recognised. They were not on the front line or fighting in the desert or in the jungle or at Normandy, but they helped to keep the war effort going and some of them lost their lives in that dangerous industry. A permanent national memorial would suit their endeavours.

Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to emphasise the importance of ensuring that parents are well informed about schools and the curriculum they offer. The Department sends out termly e-mails reminding schools of their obligations under legislation, and most recently Her Majesty’s chief inspector has written to all schools reminding them of the requirement to publish information and pointing out that inspectors will use the publication of this information as a starting point when considering inspection of provision in the school.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

Last week, the Secretary of State said of the schools in east Durham:

“When you go into those schools, you can smell the sense of defeatism.”

Will he tell the House which of those schools in east Durham he has actually visited since he became Secretary of State, and will he apologise to the people of east Durham for his outrageous remarks?

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely will not apologise to the people of east Durham for standing up for better education for their children. Perhaps the most telling remarks about the lack of ambition in schools in east Durham were uttered by Lord Adonis. Having visited a school there, he said that a teacher had told him, “In the past children turned right to work in the shipyards or left to work in the coal mines. Now they might as well walk on into the sea.” That spirit of defeatism reported by the noble Lord is exactly what we need to attack. Instead of attacking the Government, the hon. Gentleman would be better off tackling underperformance in his own constituency.

Mowden Hall, Darlington (DfE Jobs)

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 11th December 2012 Westminster Hall

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr McCrea. I thank my hon. Friends the Members for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) and for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) for supporting me in preparing for this debate.

Mowden Hall is the workplace of more than 400 civil servants who support the education and well-being of children and families across the country. On 13 November, I received a letter from the Department for Education describing Mowden Hall as being in poor condition and requiring significant investment to remain in use. The letter said that the Department would be selling the site and searching for an alternative in either Darlington or Newcastle, which came as a surprise although not as a bolt from the blue.

Before 2010, the Department had secured funding and planning permission to build new offices in the centre of Darlington. The relocation would have brought jobs into the centre of town, providing public transport access and much-needed trade. The coalition Government cancelled the project almost immediately after taking office, saying that they were committed to remaining at Mowden Hall. All seemed relatively well at the time, but it did not ring true to me, given that the feasibility study for the new building highlighted the poor condition of Mowden Hall. It seemed pretty clear that at some point, the Department would either have to move from Mowden or invest heavily in it.

To be helpful to the Department, I arranged for a discussion between officials and a local developer, John Orchard of Marchday, which owns Lingfield Point in Darlington. The Lingfield Point site was built immediately after the second world war to house a wool factory by Patons and Baldwins, a leading British manufacturer of knitting yarn. At 2 million square feet, the site became the largest wool factory in the world. It is now one of the largest employment bases in the Tees valley, employing more than 2,000 people. The award-winning site is also home to the offices of significant north-eastern organisations including Darlington borough council, the NHS, the Student Loans Company, NFU Mutual and the Navy, Army and Air Force Institutes. It is a stone’s throw from the Independent Safeguarding Authority and can truly be described as a public sector employment hub. The business park even runs its own bus service to and from the town centre every half hour, alongside local bus services running to the site every 10 minutes.

In March 2011, discussions with the then permanent secretary and his officials to assess the possibility of a move to Lingfield Point were positive. Shortly afterwards, however, it became clear that any move was on hold and that the Department’s strategy, at least for the time being, was to stay put at the deteriorating Mowden Hall. It is not my intention to argue that the Department should retain Mowden Hall; a move is clearly justified. Nevertheless, the surprising element of the letter I received on 13 November was not that the Department had decided to move from Mowden Hall, but that it was considering moving its 480 staff members to Newcastle instead.

About 60% of the work force at Mowden Hall live in Darlington. The rest commute from neighbouring Teesside, Durham and North Yorkshire. The Minister, being familiar with the geography of the north-east, will know that Newcastle is 40 miles north of Darlington along a busy stretch of motorway. To reach the centre, staff would either have to drive past the Metro centre, which is legendary locally as a congestion hot spot, or travel via the Tyne tunnel, which has lengthy queues at peak travel times. Increased regional congestion and carbon emissions would be the unwelcome consequence of a move away from Darlington. Alternatively, staff could take a packed train, but the journey time—about half an hour, in addition to travel time into and out of Darlington and Newcastle town centres—would add about two hours to their working day. Other travel options from Darlington to, for example, Longbenton in Newcastle and back include two hours and 20 minutes on the train, four hours on the bus or two hours and 20 minutes driving.

Those travel times would make family friendly working impossible. Parents would find it harder to fit their hours around existing child care arrangements, which would increase their costs dramatically. According to Tees Valley Unlimited, our local enterprise partnership, the older, highly experienced work force would be less likely to commute to Longbenton and less likely to find alternative employment locally.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on gaining the debate. My constituency takes in part of the borough of Darlington as well as part of south-east Durham. The issue is important not just for the town of Darlington but for local and surrounding areas. I receive letters and e-mails from people who work at Mowden Hall and places such as Newton Aycliffe. They say that if Mowden Hall is moved to Newcastle, there is no way that they will be able to get there and have a family life. I agree with the point that she is making.

[Jenny Chapman]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his intervention. People who live in outlying areas of Darlington such as Newton Aycliffe would have to get into Darlington to catch the train. An hour and 10 minutes would be an optimistic travel time for someone in that situation.

I understand that the Department will be responsible for the relocation travel expenses of staff commuting to an alternative workplace in Newcastle. What provisions has the Minister made to cover those costs? I hear that the Department may be required to cover staff travel costs for some years. Can she confirm that that is the case?

Staff at Mowden Hall make a substantial contribution to my local economy. The most recent information that I have been able to obtain from Tees Valley Unlimited suggests that nine are senior civil servants, 60 work at senior management grades 6 and 7, 58 work in operational management, 240 are executive grade and 80 work at administrative level. Those are senior posts providing expertise to the education sector across the UK.

Darlington is an attractive area principally because of its low cost base and highly skilled work force. In addition, the town has an excellent quality of life and an easy commute to work. Its main advantage is a stable work force and very low staff turnover, allowing for continuity of the specialist knowledge that makes a difference to children’s education throughout the country. The expertise at Mowden Hall has been built up over decades and includes school formation and investment, improvement and performance, school standards, school resources, early years, extended schools, special needs, safeguarding, international adoption, audit and free schools and academies. I understand that a free school is to be created at the old Mowden Hall, which I support and look forward to.

Mowden Hall has a talented, motivated and dedicated work force with skills that cannot be acquired quickly. A move from Darlington resulting in large-scale staff departures would damage the Department’s ability to continue its business. Schools and children’s services departments across the country rely on those skills. They are not easily, quickly or cheaply replaceable, and they should be highly prized by the Department. It is particularly worrying that the current uncertainty surrounding the future location of the Department’s offices is causing some highly skilled staff members to consider departing from the service sooner than they otherwise would have. I would be grateful for an assurance from the Minister that staff at Mowden Hall will not be required to make decisions about early exit before gaining certainty about where they will have to work.

I am grateful to the permanent secretary for meeting me and representatives from Darlington, including council leader Bill Dixon and the leader of the Conservative group, Heather Scott. Ministers and officials understand the pitfalls of a move away from Darlington, and I know that they will be mindful of the potentially damaging impact of a move on the Department’s performance. I know from those discussions that business continuity is a key concern of the Department in considering where to move the jobs. Staff turnover at Mowden Hall is low. The site has played a leading role in Government initiatives, such as free schools and academies, and we are keen that that role continues in Darlington.

In addition to the 480 DfE jobs at Mowden Hall, there are a small number of Ministry of Justice and Department for Business, Innovation and Skills staff. Will the Minister say something about the future of those posts? Some 500 staff at Mowden Hall are employed by Capita, servicing a DfE contract. Can the Minister say what discussions she has had with Capita about its future accommodation needs?

My principal arguments for keeping the Department’s jobs in Darlington centre on the unnecessary costs of relocation and the potential loss of skills to the Department. Also of huge concern is the impact on the local economy of the loss of such a large number of highly skilled jobs.

Although it is more of an issue for me, as the local representative, than for the Minister, it is worth outlining that Tees Valley Unlimited’s economic model forecasts that the economic impact for Darlington is direct employees plus indirect employees times the median wage of £19,000 per annum, giving an annual economic impact figure for Darlington of up to £21 million. It is estimated that around 70% of that sum is spent in the local economy.

Darlington’s unemployment rate is historically and currently higher than other potential locations in Newcastle. The decision to leave Mowden Hall is the most important issue facing Darlington today. There is cross-party support to keep the jobs in the town. We are not making party political points about this. We have support from the borough council and the local business community, the Public and Commercial Services Union and all political parties. The foremost regional newspaper in the country, The Northern Echo, with its proud history as a campaigning title, has lent its support to the campaign to keep jobs at Mowden Hall. Its Save Our Jobs petition has already attracted more than 1,000 signatures. There is no doubt that the task of persuading the Department to stay in Darlington is a whole-town effort, undertaken with confidence in what we have to offer and an understanding that these jobs are critical to the future economic success of our area.

The case for remaining in Darlington is persuasive. There are at least two high-quality alternatives in Darlington. This is a critical decision for our town. For business continuity, integration with Capita, retention of skills and the sake of the local economy, I trust that the Department will decide to keep these jobs in Darlington.

Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. The greater the transparency in the grade setting and marking process, the better. That is one of the reasons Ofqual exists as an independent regulator, and one of the reasons it should continue to do that job, not Ministers.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

If, when Mo Farah had run the 10,000 metre final in the Olympics, he had been told he had to run a further 10,000 metres before he could claim that he had won the gold medal, he would say that that was wrong, so why is it right to change the way GCSE exam results are marked halfway through the academic year, which is what happened this year?

[Michael Gove]

What is right is to allow the independent regulator and exam boards to decide how these exams should be graded—not, as the Labour party seems to be suggesting, to have Ministers marking papers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Phil Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I think they expect an announcement very soon. The visit was extremely constructive, and my colleague and others have rightly emphasised to us that energy-intensive industries are a key part of manufacturing recovery. It would be totally counter-productive economically and environmentally if they were driven overseas. We are determined that that should not happen, and a package of measures will be announced soon.

[Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)]

3. What recent assessment he has made of the level of science funding over the comprehensive spending review period.

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

Funding for science and research programmes has been protected with a flat cash ring-fenced settlement of £4.6 billion for each of the next four years. We can be proud of our scientific research, and that is why the coalition is backing it.

[Phil Wilson]

Although I welcome the investment in the technology and innovation centres, one of which is in my constituency, will the Minister explain to the House why the Government have continued to cut the science budget by 12% overall when Germany, one of our main competitors, has increased its budget by 8%?