Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Debate between Richard Burgon and Graham Stuart(2 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)
It is a pleasure to take part in the debate. Let me begin with the question of the need for a national inquiry into the rape grooming gangs. Given what has been said so far, I challenge colleagues who have opposed the inquiry to name a single proposal from the Jay report that cannot be implemented if we go ahead with it. It really is a matter of “and”. Notwithstanding the political theatre that Labour Members have tried to bring to the debate, the fact that both the Prime Minister and the safeguarding Minister have said that they are open-minded suggests that—sensibly, from a policy point of view and politically—the Labour party may move to the correct position.
As was pointed out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge (Sir Gavin Williamson), this is a Bill in two parts, which could probably most usefully have been two separate Bills. The first half concerns safeguarding, and, for the most part, my party and I support it; the second concerns schools, and that we most certainly cannot support. Rather than accusing our amendment of being a wrecking amendment, as the Liberal Democrats have rather disappointingly done, they should recognise that the second half of the Bill—the schools element—is the wrecking element, because it makes the important safeguarding improvements part of a Bill that cannot be genuinely supported in this House.
There is a troubling theme; a misguided notion that the bureaucrat knows best, as colleagues have suggested—for instance, the proposal to strip academies of the flexibility to set competitive pay for their staff. If the Government were genuinely interested in the levelling up that has just been referred to by the hon. Member for Bury North (James Frith), why not, as Sir Dan Moynihan, perhaps the nation’s most successful headteacher and trust runner, said at lunch time today, give those academy freedoms to maintained schools? Why rip away the elements that have been used by academies to produce schools such as Michaela which are the best in the country? We have an ideologically driven Labour Government—that certainly applies to those on the Front Bench; I would not want to daub everyone behind the Front Bench with the same description—who cannot even bring themselves to congratulate a school that has been the best in the country for three years in a row.
The Government are signalling that they do not trust schools to attract and retain the best teachers, and trust only the Secretary of State to do so. In advocating for new schools to be opened and controlled by local authorities, they remove the contestability. Notwithstanding some of the contradictions in the Secretary of State’s speech, she did describe competition as “harmful”. I represent Beverley and Holderness, and for many years I looked at schools in Hull, where there was a view, expressed sotto voce, that “It is the people here who are the problem”. Generation after generation was failed, and when the academies programme was expanded in 2010, what happened? We saw primary schools leave local authority control en masse. We saw that it was no longer acceptable for a local authority to use its democratic mandate to give a substandard education to the local population. We saw a transformation. We saw academy groups opening up, and teachers and communities seizing that. I cannot believe that Labour Members really want to tear this away when the evidence is crystal clear from the OECD PISA tables. On any measure, English education has become immensely better.
Graham Stuart
I may not believe that of the Labour party generally, but I would believe it to be possible of the hon. Gentleman.
Richard Burgon
The right hon. Gentleman is making various remarks about what he considers to be the failings and deficiencies of this excellent Bill. May I invite him to reflect on the fact that in my constituency, East Leeds, families and children have been really struggling over the last decade? The measures in the Bill to bring down the cost of school uniforms and provide free breakfast clubs in primary schools should be warmly welcomed and supported by all of us who care about children and families in our communities.
Graham Stuart
No one can be against the principle of breakfast clubs and efforts to make sure that families do not have excessive charges imposed on them by schools, although we need to look at the specifics. That has nothing to do with what I was saying. I ask the hon. Gentleman, and indeed other Labour Members, to reflect on the speech made by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh). I chaired the Education Committee from 2010 to 2015, and she and the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Sir Nicholas Dakin), who is on the Front Bench, were distinguished members of that Committee.