Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rebecca Pow and Lilian Greenwood(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)
Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow) [V]
DEFRA has had extensive discussions with the Department of Health and Social Care on the relationship between air quality and health, recently considering the specific relationship between covid-19 deaths and air quality. DEFRA is actively working with Public Health England and the Office for National Statistics to assess further the relationship for the UK, and DEFRA’s chief scientific adviser is working with relevant experts in health, disease and air quality to assess the relationship between air quality and the risk of infection, based on the emerging scientific research into covid-19.
Lilian Greenwood [V]
Tens of thousands of lives cut short every year—that was the UK’s air quality health emergency long before we had even heard of coronavirus. As my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) said, we now know that there is a strong correlation between long-term exposure to air pollution and covid-19 deaths, so clean air zones are needed more than ever. However, Nottingham’s taxi drivers tell me they are worried about their ability to invest in new clean electric vehicles as a result of lost income, and other businesses face similar pressures. As we come out of lockdown, how will the Government support local councils and small businesses to go even faster to protect the public from toxic air?
Rebecca Pow
As the hon. Lady will know, we have supported Nottingham City Council to tackle its nitrogen dioxide exceedance through a £1 million investment to support the uptake of e-taxis and £1.7 million to retrofit 171 buses, which means that there is not a need for a clean air zone. Nottingham is also one of the Go Ultra Low cities. My officials will be working closely with and will be very interested to speak to Nottingham City Council to see how the impacts of coronavirus are affecting its plans. They are doing that with all local authorities across the country, just to keep a weather eye on how coronavirus will impact our new clean air zones and our drive to reduce air pollution, which of course is all important.
School Funding
Debate between Rebecca Pow and Lilian Greenwood(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Lilian Greenwood
Secondary schools in my constituency are not the responsibility of Nottingham City Council; they are academies, and sadly some of them are still not improving. We already face intense funding pressures. The Institute for Fiscal Studies tells us that all schools face an 8% real-terms cut to their budgets as a result of higher national insurance contributions, increases in employer pension contributions and unfunded national pay rises. The National Audit Office has provided evidence of growing financial pressures, particularly in secondary schools: 59% of maintained schools and 61% of academies were in deficit last year.
The NAO also concluded that the Department’s approach meant that schools
“could make spending choices that put educational outcomes at risk”.
Local headteachers have told me what that will mean: fewer teachers, less pastoral support, bigger classes, more contact time for teachers, less choice at key stages 4 and 5. The added enrichment—the breakfast clubs, the school trips, the reading sessions for parents, the extra-curricular sports, culture and arts activities—will be the first to go, yet these are the very things that can make all the difference to children growing up in poverty.
Lilian Greenwood
I am afraid not.
I know that Nottingham has schools that need to do better, but it is some of these very schools that are losing out under the Government’s new national funding formula. Learning is not a matter of chance. The quality of school leadership and teaching is critical, yet there is a national headteacher shortage and a teacher recruitment crisis. As the Social Market Foundation found, schools in deprived areas are more likely to have fewer experienced teachers, teachers without formal teaching qualifications or degrees in relevant subjects—[Interruption.] I cannot hear what the Secretary of State is chuntering about—and a higher teacher turnover than schools elsewhere.
These latest funding changes will make school improvement harder not easier. The Secretary of State and Minister say they want more good and outstanding schools. It is a noble ambition. It is what I want for every child in my constituency, and I am proud of the work that Nottingham’s educational improvement board is doing to try to make it a reality, but creating more good schools requires more than ambition; actions speak louder than words, and right now actions must mean adequate funding.