Oral Answers to Questions

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I very much appreciate colleagues’ good wishes, but there is no need for them to be added to, because I think it will just delay proceedings. However, everybody’s good will is greatly appreciated.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

And mine, too.

As I am sure the Secretary of State is aware, The Durham free school got a notice to improve from the Education Funding Agency before Christmas, and today it was put into special measures. However, it is extremely difficult for me or anyone else to get information from the Education Funding Agency, so will she intervene to ensure that all information about this school, and the reasons why it has failed and is so badly managed, is put into the public domain?

[Nicky Morgan]

As the hon. Lady mentioned, Ofsted published a report this morning on The Durham free school, and I was very concerned to find that the children had been let down by a catalogue of failures, as reported. Because I do not think there is any imminent prospect of improvement, the regional schools commissioner has today written to the school, informing it of the decision to terminate the funding agreement. I am happy, of course, for there to be a further discussion—if not with me, with one of my ministerial colleagues—about the information that can be made available. There may be some issues of confidentiality or sensitivity, but I will of course endeavour to keep Members updated.

Oral Answers to Questions

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I actually remain as our economics spokesman, but that is a minor internal matter.

I think that most Conservative Members fully support British membership of the EU; they might wish to see it reformed, as I think we all do, but membership is fundamental. It is difficult to imagine that Britain could independently negotiate trade agreements with the US, India and other countries with the same authority as the EU.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

T8. In the Government’s opinion, at what level of RAB—resource accounting and budgeting—charge does the student loan system become unsustainable?

[Greg Clark]

As the hon. Lady knows, probably the most respected expert in the world on this subject, the OECD, has been clear that “the UK higher education system is excellent for individuals and for the Government” and offers the “most sustainable” system in the world. The system is in robust good health and works well. It offers good value for the taxpayer and students.

Inequality

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Thursday 27th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Oldham West and Royton (Mr Meacher) on securing the debate. It is extremely important that the House should consider the growing inequality in this country and specific measures that might be taken to reduce it.

I start by painting a picture of where we are with inequality, both nationally and in my constituency. We know that about 20% of working households rely on some form of tax credit, which shows that a great many people are in work but are relying on benefits because they are earning very low wages. That is compounded by gender. We know that since 2011, the gender gap in wages has been getting worse, not better. The gap between all women working and all men working is about 18.6%; for those who work full time, it is 14.9%. That means that women earn about 85p for every £1 that a man earns. That is important because although inequality affects large numbers of people across our work force, we must be clear that it affects women more than men.

We also know that 3.5 million children nationally are in poor households. That means that they are unable to afford adequate food or transport or to join in activities with their friends. That demonstrates the huge gap emerging between people at one end of the income spectrum and those who are increasing their wages at the other end. I experience that in my Durham constituency a great deal. Take-home pay in the north-east is less than it is in the rest of the country, so although we can give national figures about people relying on benefits, the problem is much greater in the north-east.

Changes to benefits have had an impact on areas like County Durham, where people are losing about £565 per working-age adult—money is going from people who are working and relying on top-up benefits—but the situation is also worsening for those who are out of work and relying on benefits. This is evidenced daily by the increasing number of people using food banks in my constituency. Indeed, some of the people who run the food bank in Durham talked to me recently about setting up a clothing bank and doing so locally, because they recognise that people sometimes cannot even afford to get to the charity shops in the city centre.

My contention is that a raft of measures need to be taken to reduce inequality. Before we look at them, however, perhaps we could stop for a moment and consider what has happened at the other end of the spectrum. The top 100 executives in the FTSE 100 companies took home as much as 131 times the amount their average employee did, yet only 15 of those companies have committed to pay their employees a living wage. Across the country, increasing numbers of companies pay the living wage, and we should stop and recognise that. There are some really good examples—a number of our universities pay the living wage, as does John Lewis—but trying to dig around and find them is difficult. We should have a list readily available. We need to consider what measures could be taken to reduce the income gap, and why we should do so.

Early in the lifetime of this Government, the Prime Minister was keen on looking at measures of happiness. He wanted us to be able to assess what leads to happiness; perhaps he thought that if we had information on that, it would cheer us all up and we would not spend so much time worrying about austerity. I do not know what has happened to all that work, but we do know that people who live in countries where there is more equality are happier. I want to give some advice to the Prime Minister and his colleagues this afternoon: if he wants to make people more content with their life, he and his Government need to address the growing inequality by insisting that companies adopt the living wage and that we get away from a low-pay, low-quality job economy.

Of course, in any economy we need people to work in the service sector. These are important jobs, but we want a much greater variety of jobs, especially high-value ones requiring higher skills. We need to see a real Government programme to support job creation of that type. That is in great contrast to what is available. In preparing for today’s debate, I looked at the jobs available today on my local Jobcentre website in Durham and the levels of income that they offer. The figures are truly shocking. So many of the jobs available do not even pay the living wage. Indeed, about three quarters pay less than the living wage, with about half paying the minimum wage. The jobs available cover everything from care co-ordinators to receptionists and night care assistants. I think we would all regard a senior night care assistant as an important role with significant responsibilities. The job advertised paid £7.35 an hour. These are simply wages that people are not able to live on, which is why so many people rely on in-work benefits.

We need to challenge our employers in a way that we have not done to date. Why do they think they can take home thousands of pounds a month while not paying the majority of their employees the living wage? I do not know about other hon. Members, but I do not want to live in a country that has such growing inequality. I do not want to live in a country where more and more people cannot afford basic rent. Shelter recently published research that showed that 1 million people took out payday loans just to cover their rent. This is clearly ridiculous in a country such as ours that can do so much better.

This afternoon we are challenging the Government to do more to get employers to pay not only the minimum wage—which they have to do, although some still seem to try to get out of their responsibilities—but a living wage. What do the Government intend to do to encourage the creation of jobs with higher-level skills that pay more and can take us forward to a knowledge-based economy? I also want the Government to challenge the companies that pay huge bonuses and whose directors take home obscene amounts of money to plough more resources into their businesses so that they can be successful and pay a living wage.

Free Schools (Funding)

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Monday 12th May 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My right hon. Friend has made a very good point. Last week I had an opportunity to talk to a group of parents in Ealing, thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Angie Bray). Those parents were dedicated individuals from every social background and ethnicity who wanted to improve their children’s education. They were not “yummy mummies”; they were parents who cared, and we on this side of the House stand up for them.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

The free school in Durham will be lucky if it achieves a total roll of 80 students next year at a cost of £30,000 per pupil. Does the Secretary of State think this is good value for money in an area of surplus places, and where local successful schools like St Leonard’s that are crying out for investment from his Department, have been told by his Schools Minister, strangely absent today, that no money is available?

[Michael Gove]

The first thing to acknowledge is that the amount of money we are giving to Durham local authority for basic need is increasing under this Government, and the second is that the Durham free school will add to the quality of education that children in Durham enjoy. In the city of Durham there are some outstanding schools, like Durham Johnston school which has succeeded over generations, but across the north-east the level of educational ambition has been too low for too long, and we need new providers to help augment the quality of education, not just in County Durham but elsewhere.

Oral Answers to Questions

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Thursday 10th April 2014 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Skills and Enterprise (Matthew Hancock)]

We now live in a world in which an increasing amount of trade is carried out online at times that are convenient to consumers and others. We relaxed the rules during the Olympics, and said at the time that we would assess the impact of that relaxation. A debate about the issue is undoubtedly taking place.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

T6. The latest report from the Higher Education Funding Council for England shows for the first time in 29 years a decline in the number of overseas students studying in the United Kingdom. Let me now give the Secretary of State another opportunity to admit that the inclusion of students in the net migration target is hindering the growth and international competitiveness of our British universities.

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

There is no cap on the number of legitimate overseas students coming to Britain, and we will not introduce any such cap. The Secretary of State and I work with the Prime Minister and others on trade missions around the world to encourage young people with the necessary aptitude and qualifications to benefit from study in Britain to apply to come here. We can be proud of our universities.

Oral Answers to Questions

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I assure the hon. Gentleman that we will seriously consider the local authority’s view, but we will ensure that the best possible sponsor is in place, and that is not always the sponsor identified by the local authority, especially if the authority itself has failed over a long period to raise standards in that school.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Does the Minister think that spending £1 million on a free school for 30 children in my constituency is good value for money when we have surplus places and really good local schools that are crying out for investment?

[Mr Laws]

Free schools are being targeted at areas of basic need and where standards are low. We are trying to ensure that the free schools programme complements the Government’s work to provide school places and raise standards throughout the country.

Economic Growth and Employment

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

The audacity and complacency of Government Members is truly extraordinary, given the present state of the economy. The headline figures for UK economic growth are deeply worrying. Growth is flatlining, and it is becoming increasingly obvious to anyone with any sense that the Government’s decision to cut too far and too fast is choking it off. We also know that growth began to stall before the effect of the eurozone crisis kicked in, and that even now the full impact of that crisis has not yet been felt.

[Bill Esterson]

The figures show that consumer and business confidence began to decline when the coalition Government were formed, at the time when the Prime Minister started talking about Britain being bankrupt. Was not the Prime Minister very unwise to make such comments?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

Indeed. We also know that as a consequence of Government policies—and according to independent forecasts—it is very likely that borrowing will have to increase. That is having devastating consequences. Unemployment is rising, particularly among the young, although women are also being disproportionately affected.

The headline figures should concern us, but what should also trouble us greatly is the uneven way in which the consequences of the Government’s disastrous economic policies are being felt across the country. Once again the north-east seems to be bearing the brunt of the Conservatives’ economic policies, but this time—and I hope that this point is not lost on the voters of the north-east—they have the collusion of the Liberal Democrats.

The current unemployment rate is 11.6% in the north-east, but only 6.3% in the south-east. Similarly, the claimant count is highest in the north-east and lowest in the south-east. As I have said, the situation is even worse for young people. In the north-east, unemployment among young people increased by 106.3% between January and October 2011, prompting real fears that the region would return to the economic dark times of the 1980s. Yet this dire situation is so unnecessary.

Contrary to what the Secretary of State said—it is unfortunate that he is not present, because I wanted him to hear this—in the north-east gross value added actually grew between 1989 and 2008, as did GVA per head of population. That was primarily because money channelled through the regional development agency One North East levered in £9 for every pound spent—much more than the national average—and skills levels also improved year on year.

[Angela Smith]

The first technology innovation centre, Sheffield’s advanced manufacturing park, was established by a Labour Government through a regional development agency working with the private sector. Such arrangements have been criticised by Government Members, particularly Liberal Democrats.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend has made an excellent point. It is interesting to note that before the general election, in my region at least, the Liberal Democrats were apparently in favour of regional development agencies.

[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I am sorry; I am running out of time.

We know that the RDA helped to invest in a new generation of advanced technologies with expanding markets around the world, which greatly helped growth in the north-east. Through industry, Government and university collaborations, a number of sectors were identified in which growth should be prioritised, including the processing and chemical industries, automotive and advanced manufacturing, and printable electronics. Those sectors, critically, were underpinned by centres of excellence supported by the regional development agency.

Did the incoming Government seek to build on that? No. What they did instead was get rid of One North East, although it had extensive support from businesses and the community in the north-east, and what we have in its place is the regional growth fund, about which I shall say more in a moment. The loss of the regional development agency led to a loss of expertise in regard to the sectors that needed to be developed in the north-east, and a loss of what was necessary to support that development. In great contrast, the regional growth fund not only has less money but is not strategic at all. I am very pleased that a number of north-east companies have benefited from the RGF, although the Secretary of State must address the fact that getting the money through to the companies is taking a long time.

[Andrew Bridgen]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

No; I am sorry, but I am running out of time.

The RGF along with local enterprise partnerships and enterprise zones do not by any stretch of the imagination add up to an economic policy for growth for the north-east, or for anywhere else for that matter, because they are fragmented initiatives with no local coherence. The RGF will not help to narrow the north-south divide, either. As I have acknowledged, a number of companies in the north-east have benefited from the RGF, and according to the Government’s own figures that will secure about 8,500 jobs, but in the same RGF round money went to the south-east to secure 30,000 jobs.

The north-east’s problems are compounded by the fact that the RGF money is not a sufficient injection to the private sector to enable it to make up for the jobs that are being lost in the public sector. To put the figure of 8,500 jobs in context, last month alone unemployment in the north-east rose by 19,000. The Government must do more, therefore. In the past couple of weeks a number of independent commentators, including the North East chamber of commerce and PricewaterhouseCoopers, have said that the Government need to do more to support private sector development in the north-east, and our five-point plan for growth sets out a clear way for them to start supporting the economy.

School Food

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) for securing this debate, and for making a stunningly good speech. I want to concentrate on one aspect of school food: universal free school meals, particularly for primary school children. It is important, as my hon. Friend said, to keep the debate alive in the face of an uncaring Government, which is evidenced this morning by the complete absence of hon. Members on the Government Benches to engage in this debate. That is unfortunate, because the road that the Government are taking is likely to have an adverse impact on children’s health, particularly those from the poorest communities.

The Children’s Food Campaign notes that healthy school meals are vital to help to tackle the UK’s alarmingly high and rising levels of obesity and diet-related illness, and states clearly that good food habits are established in childhood. That is not rocket science. We know how to do that, and I draw the Minister’s attention to the experience of the universal free school meals pilot in Durham. During the two years of the pilot, 235 schools participated and, typically, around 30,000 free school meals were served daily. The average take-up against the roll was about 86%, but because of pupil absences on some days, it was actually much higher. Most schools reported 100% take-up at some stage in the process. The pilot was absolutely and hugely successful in terms of take-up.

It is interesting to consider how the pilot worked, and I want to say at the outset that Durham county council was fantastic in putting the scheme together. It committed £4 million of capital funding to upgrade the kitchens in every school so that meals were produced locally in the school. It also looked at its procurement practices so that it could source food locally, and achieved really high standards of healthy school meals because it could buy in bulk. Such aspects of universality in the provision of free school meals often do not receive much consideration. The county council did an excellent job, but so did the schools, which embraced the scheme wholeheartedly.

When my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) was a Minister, she visited Durham, and saw with me the incredible effect that universal free school meals had on schools. It changed the whole culture of the school, not just how they felt about food. The really good schools managed to integrate what was happening with free school meals into the curriculum, and ran that alongside an active sports policy.

[Diana Johnson]

I remember fondly my visit with my hon. Friend. One thing that struck me was that to engage with parents and to encourage them to embrace free school meals, there were taster evenings and taster sessions when parents could come in and see what their children would be eating. There was a real sense of the whole community being involved and seeing that the idea was a good one. Will my hon. Friend comment on how things are going now, and whether those taster sessions are continuing?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

Indeed. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point. I will say something about how parents have been involved with the process, because obviously it was important initially to get parents signed up, which is why schools had taster sessions. As the pilot progressed, what schools felt was really important. When they sorted out with children how to have a balanced and healthy diet by choosing different things on different days, and ensured that salad or vegetables and a balanced meal were always available, they decided to get the parents to sign up to whatever meals the children were choosing. That was important, because parents across the board—given that the take-up was 100%, that meant all parents—had to engage with what their children were going to eat in school, and to talk to them about the importance of a balanced meal. That required the schools to undertake work with parents.

That is what we mean about changing the culture. We know how to do it, and the evidence exists. My hon. Friend and I were able to see that before our eyes, and indeed the schools managed to develop, probably inadvertently, evangelism in the children, who were able to explain carefully to us how the food system worked in their school.

[Jim Shannon]

The United Kingdom is a multicultural society where ethnic groups introduce their own food ideas. In the pilot schemes, was the hon. Lady able to introduce some of the benefits of other foods to make food exciting?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

That is an important point. Schools in Durham managed to do that, but perhaps not as effectively as schools in Newham, and it was an important aspect of the pilots, as the evidence suggests. That is what I mean when I say that schools that embraced the scheme were able to add the subject to the curriculum and use it to talk about other cultures, and so on.

I hope that I have made the point that the pilot was really successful. It had started to change the way in which schools, parents and young people think about food and exercise. I saw with very great sadness that the Government’s priorities meant that the first thing they did on taking office was cancel that pilot programme. The Minister has some questions to answer about that. We know that the Liberal Democrats have form on such matters because when they took over Hull city council, the first thing they did was to cancel the free school meals programme. That showed an extraordinary set of priorities, which I simply do not understand.

If the Minister wishes to find allies in the coalition Government, she might like to ask her fellow Ministers why it is that private schools ensure that their children have a healthy, usually hot, school meal at lunchtime. The coalition Government are good at emulating the private sector across the public sector, so how come that aspect of the private sector, which could easily be transplanted to public sector schools, is not on their list of priorities? Instead of concentrating on the needs of children and families, the Government—really quite staggeringly—lifted the ring fence on the school lunch grant from April this year. That money now has to compete with all the other priorities currently facing hard-pressed schools.

Such concerns lead me to ponder the fact that the Labour party has to make a tough call; we have got to win the argument about the importance not only of healthy school meals, but of universal free school meals at primary school level. There is no point in having healthy school meals if no one takes them up or if they are too expensive for most parents to afford, but unfortunately, that is the route down which the Government are taking us.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend makes a strong argument. In Newcastle upon Tyne North, which is to the north-east of her constituency, figures have shown that the take-up of school meals has fallen over the past 12 months. That bucks the national trend and causes me anxiety about the educational attainment of those children in my constituency who require and depend on a decent hot meal during the day. Does my hon. Friend think that the Government’s policies will help or hinder that concern?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising that point; it is clear that the Government’s policies will hinder any progress that has been made. When contributing to the evaluation, many head teachers in Durham schools made the point that a hot meal at lunch time meant that they saw improved levels of concentration in the afternoon. As my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) pointed out, that is essential for helping to narrow the attainment gap.

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about the value of a hot meal for all primary school children and how that impacts on their attainment and success, and she draws attention to practices in the independent sector. The Government are fond of making international comparisons, particularly with countries in Scandinavia where there is a long-held tradition of free school meals in the primary sector. Does my hon. Friend believe that that adds further power to her argument?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Indeed, my hon. Friends the Members for Kingston upon Hull North and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) decided to embark again on a crusade for free school meals once they had visited Sweden and seen how the system worked. Teachers in Sweden scratched their heads in complete incredulity when we said that children at schools in the UK do not receive a free hot meal in the middle of the day. Those teachers also talked to us about the social skills that their children develop by having a meal in the middle of the day, and by sitting down with their teachers and having a chat about what is going on in their lives. It is an excellent source of information for students and teaches them important social skills. As my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North will know, we saw children in Durham learning in that way and the start of such a process, but alas, because of the policies of the coalition Government, that may not continue.

I will conclude by saying that it is a matter of some anxiety that the issue of school food is not higher up the political agenda. When I open magazines and see the rubbish and tittle-tattle about celebrities on which female journalists—and other journalists—seem to spend their time, I am staggered that they do not understand how important it is for the development of our children and their future to have good quality school meals that are available in primary schools at no cost. In addition to challenging the Minister, I wish to challenge those journalists to start writing about things that are important for families in our communities, and not spend their time on tittle-tattle.

--- Later in debate ---

[Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend has made an important point. There was a proud history over the past 13 years of what was achieved in relation to food in schools and encouraging our young people to eat well.

I pay tribute to the trade unions. Unison and the GMB worked very hard to ensure that the pilot scheme that we ran in Hull worked well. Their members were involved as dinner ladies and cooks, and they were passionate about what the scheme was doing for children in Hull. The unions really embraced the scheme.

As my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham has said, when, unfortunately, the Liberal Democrats took control of the council in Hull in 2006, the first thing they did was to say, “Right. We’re not going to wait for the evaluation of the scheme; we’re just going to scrap it. We’re telling you that in 12 months’ time, it will just end.” That was very disappointing, and it was an act of political vandalism that will come back to haunt them. Having read today’s newspapers, I say to the Minister that that was a foretaste of the way in which the Liberal Democrats were to act in government, because we see today that the policy that they introduced on the education maintenance allowance—suddenly saying that they were scrapping EMA without looking properly at evidence and considering their options—is, unfortunately, the way in which the present Government seem to make policy.

That happened in Hull in 2006. It was very disappointing, but what came out of it, which was heartening, was the recognition by the Labour Government that what had happened in Hull was special and that further evidence was needed to see whether it would provide a basis for rolling out free school meals around the country. As a result, we had the pilots.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point about how decisions are being made by the Liberal Democrats in councils and in government without evidence being taken on board. Does that not show that what is happening is ideologically driven? They did not wait for the evidence in Hull or from the two pilots in Newham and Durham before deciding to scrap the whole scheme.

[Diana Johnson]

My hon. Friend has made an important point. The situation is very disappointing. I remember appearing before a Select Committee in the previous Parliament as a Minister and being heavily criticised for decisions having been made on policy development without evidence to back them up. I am passionate about getting the evidence and seeing where it leads us in making our policy. We are talking about what happened in Hull and in Durham and Newham. I was lucky enough to visit both those pilots as well to see what happened in those primary schools and to look at the evidence and the evaluation. It would be criminal not to consider that fully and to take a view about how the Government can best use that information and evidence for the future.

My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham talked about Durham, and I take my hat off to the people of Durham for the way in which they fully embraced the scheme. The same applies to the people of Newham, the mayor of Newham and my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown), who was a keen advocate of free school meals in her constituency. Also relevant is Wolverhampton, where we were trying something different. As my hon. Friends have said, that was about raising the eligibility level so that more young people were eligible for free school meals.

I want to finish on what is happening in Hull now, because this is a little more positive. Unfortunately, there was the decision by the Lib-Dem council just to scrap the scheme. The Labour council that took control in May this year knew very well that the policy that it had from 2004 to 2006 was working and was delivering for local children. It came in on a manifesto promise that it wanted to reduce the school meal price to 50p. The aim is to get rid of any charge at all, but obviously we are in difficult financial circumstances and Hull has taken a major cut in the money coming from central Government. We have seen the ring-fencing come off the school lunch grant, and we see the coalition’s obsession with schools operating independently and not having a wider connection with the community and the local education authority. The previous Lib-Dem council administration decided to increase the price of school meals to £1.60 from the autumn; the price was £1.30. Labour came in and said that it wanted to reduce the price to 50p, but because of the funding issue that the coalition has introduced, it has not been possible. The council has been able to prioritise and make choices, and it has found some money to enable schools to stick at £1.30 for now, with the aim of reducing the price to £1 by Christmas.

We are, therefore, still taking a positive approach in Hull, because we recognise the scheme’s importance. We also recognise that the long-term aim is to have free school meals not only in Hull, but in other parts of the country where our youngsters could benefit from the offer of universal free school meals. Such an offer would ensure that they achieve as much as they should in school and that the nation’s health improves.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Hodgson]

Exactly. A school or a local authority spending money on a path to a fast-food joint, rather than on instigating a stay-on-site policy, is almost as baffling as bringing in a fast-food giant to write public health policy, although, as we know, that, too, has happened. However, there is a serious point: despite all the evidence of the benefits, it is clear that not all school leaders or local authorities place the value that the majority of us in this room would like on children eating healthy lunches.

Everything that the Government have done so far means that standards will start to slide. Why? What possible benefit can there be for our children in giving certain schools the power to throw the rulebook out the window? Perhaps the Minister can at least explain that today. Of course, it is not only in new academies and free schools that standards could slide, because Ofsted no longer has to assess a school’s compliance with the regulations, so how do Ministers expect them to be honoured?

According to the Minister’s letter to caterers, which I mentioned earlier, mums and dads will now have to keep an eye on things, although she does not explain quite how they are expected to do that. However, she promises that, if they tell the Secretary of State about a school, he will use one of his ever-increasing number of powers to direct the school to jolly well buck up its ideas. Unless schools literally go back to the bad old days of turkey twizzlers and chips, however, I cannot imagine that many parents would notice any changes—for example, if the spaghetti bolognese, which might have met the standards before, suddenly had more fat or less vegetable content. That is a meaningless thing for the Minister to say. All that I would ask her is what possible benefit there is to schools or pupils in removing that element of an Ofsted inspection—none that I can think of.

It will be little surprise if nutritional standards slip; after all, the cash that subsidises them has effectively gone. Ministers say that it is within the direct schools grant, but again that is meaningless, because many schools are struggling with their budgets. For many of them, subsidising school meals will be far down the list of priorities, behind staff, materials and many services for which they would previously not have had to pay, such as the broadband bill, to take one example. One more service that they will now have to buy on a commercial basis will be advice from the School Food Trust on how to meet the nutritional standards—not really an attractive option if they do not now have to meet those standards anyway.

As we have heard—it was highlighted in the media last week—school meal take-up is on the rise. I congratulate the Minister on using that for some positive media coverage. I cannot really blame her, I suppose, but there is evidence that that spike could be due to pupil premium-chasing, as reported in The Independent on Sunday. The test of her policies will lie in whether we can see the same rise in three years’ time, and unless there is a radical rethink, I do not think we will. If it should become clear that we are spiralling in the wrong direction, I hope that the Minister will rethink her approach.

My colleagues have spoken at length on the merits of free school meals as a way of closing the gaps in health and educational attainment between children living in poverty and those from better-off backgrounds. It was, as has been said, a cruel blow to hundreds of thousands of young children in working poverty when the Minister and her colleagues scrapped the extended eligibility.

In the Westminster Hall debate on free school meals that I led last June, I noted what my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham has pointed out—that the Liberal Democrats were conspicuous by their absence, as were the Conservatives. That was hardly surprising given their part in one of the most regressive decisions that we have seen from the Government. It is noted that the Minister is here today representing her Lib Dem colleagues as well as her Conservative friends and that she is alone in that task. As my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish said in his excellent speech, the universal credit throws the whole system of free school meals into confusion, which will not be cleared up for some time.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend is making a truly excellent speech. Does not the absence of coalition Members demonstrate that they do not understand the link between a healthy school meal in the middle of the day and narrowing the attainment gap? It demonstrates their narrow and blinkered thinking about education.

[Mrs Hodgson]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised that I agree.

The one thing that I ask the Minister is to ensure at least that least no one loses out because of universal credit. We never know; perhaps under the universal credit system the Government may be able to give a little something back to the half a million or so kids who lost out when the extended eligibility was scrapped last year. However, given the Government’s record so far, I do not think that many of us will be holding our breath.

We have a Government who pay lip service to the importance of school meals—both free and paid for—but whose actions are completely incongruous with that rhetoric. If that were not bad enough, they also do not think that cooking healthy meals is sufficient of a life skill to be taught to young teens. Just as a free school meal may be the only proper meal that some children get, there is a similar cohort for whom the only food skills that they get will be the ones that they learn at school. In fact, they are more than likely to be the same children. Given that fact, the Labour Government put together plans to ensure that all children get mandatory cookery lessons, in the hope that those skills would stay with the young people who received them for the rest of their lives and even transfer to their parents, too. There was evidence of that in the excellent work of Jamie Oliver, of which the Minister is no doubt aware. He has shown that children given knowledge of healthy food and how to cook it go home and influence the food choices made by their parents. In a letter to me, the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb) justifies the decision to scrap the commitment by saying that the Labour Government did not take any legislative steps to make it compulsory—a pathetic excuse if ever I heard one. However, that is not surprising: after all, it might be difficult for those setting up free schools in an old pub or office to accommodate first-rate food technology classrooms. The simple fact is that the Tory-led Government’s half-baked policies are a recipe for disaster for our children.

I want in closing to ask the Minister two quick questions. Will she fight her corner for free school meals when decisions are taken following the report of the Social Security Advisory Committee and try to extend at least some help to the families who were short-changed by her Government last year? If it becomes clear that the policies that we have been discussing today are resulting in a fall in nutritional standards and/or the take-up of school meals—whether in free schools, academies or other schools—will she step in and do something, or does the “hope and pray” or, as she calls it, localism approach to government prevent her from doing so?

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

The hon. Lady would be the first to blow the trumpet if the Labour Government had done so, given the extent to which schools already offer healthy balanced meals. Is she honestly saying that we should always ring-fence everything for ever? I am sure that that is not her view.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

Will the Minister give way?

[Sarah Teather]

I will give way to the hon. Lady, as I have not done so yet, but I shall then need to make some progress or I will not be able to answer any of the Opposition’s questions.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

The Minister speaks of removing ring-fencing, but we are in the process of changing the culture of school food and of the way in which schools consider healthy living. That is why it is vital that the Government give out the message that this tranche of money needs to be spent on school food. That is the point being made by Opposition Members; we are not saying that everything should be ring-fenced.

[Sarah Teather]

Culture has changed significantly, and I join with the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish in paying tribute to Jamie Oliver for the work that he has done in changing attitudes.

I now turn to what Opposition Members said about free school meals. The rise in the number of pupils eating school meals inevitably means that there has been a rise in the number taking up their entitlement to free school meals. The latest figures show that 19.1% of pupils in maintained nursery and state-funded primary schools and 15.9% of pupils in state-funded secondary schools are registered for free school meals. However, for all sorts of reasons, not all children entitled to free school meals currently take up the offer—for instance, because of stigma or because they are unaware that they are entitled, a point made by a number of Opposition Members. Cash-free systems can help in driving down the stigma attached to free school meals. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish mentioned Tameside’s system for online checking. That is part of the Department’s award-winning free school meal eligibility checking system, which has had a huge impact on encouraging parents to apply for free school meals by helping to remove that stigma. It is also significantly cheaper for local authorities to administer.

A number of Members spoke about the universal credit, with its automatic passporting of benefits. If we were to use that system, our way of dealing with free school meals would have to change. I understand that hon. Members want answers now, but I am sure they recognise that it is important that we get the detail right. That is why we are taking our time; we are examining how best to ensure that all those children eligible for free school meals can benefit. We are working through that now, and I shall update hon. Members as soon as I can.

I wish to correct a few misunderstandings on the pilot scheme. We did not cancel the pilots in Durham, Newham or Wolverhampton, but we had to cancel them elsewhere because, unfortunately, the programme was underfunded by £295 million. Being able to offer free school meals to every primary school child is certainly on my wish list; if money were to grow on the trees in the atrium at the Department for Education, that wish would be high up there.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

The problem is that Opposition Members have given no indication of what they would cut in order to fund free school meals. I suspect that the two former Ministers did not see the detailed budgets of their Department, but evidence makes it extremely clear that the previous Government underfunded their pledge by £295 million. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish said that the Labour party had a plan to halve the deficit, but they should make clear where those cuts would fall. It is simply not good enough to say that they have a plan to halve the deficit but not make it clear where the cuts would fall. If we were to have honoured all of those pilots, we would have had to cut the best part of £300 million—

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

rose—

Higher Education Policy

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

The Government are purposefully and quite unprecedentedly shifting the burden of the costs of university tuition from the public purse on to the shoulders of individual graduates, moving away from the assumption that both society and the student should bear the costs of university education. It is notable that the right hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes), who is not in his place, simply refused to engage with that point when he spoke earlier.

The Business Secretary announced to Members in Parliament that a fee cap of somewhere between £6,000 and £9,000 would be introduced, and that fees would be £9,000 only in exceptional circumstances—that £9,000 would be an exception, not the rule. The announcement was much repeated elsewhere, but we know that, of those universities that had made their plans public by last week, the average fees will be £8,678.36—so just marginally less than that £9,000 figure.

We also have to bury the myth that students will pay less under the Government’s proposals. It is true that monthly outgoings, in some circumstances and for some students, might be less, but graduates will pay back their loans for much longer and at an interest rate that has not been fully determined. This is despite the fact that the independent Office for Budget Responsibility said in November and reiterated more recently that increasing tuition fees and funding student loans in 2015-16 will require the Government to borrow £10.7 billion, compared with the £4.1 billion that they borrowed in 2010-11, a point that was excellently made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Oxford East (Mr Smith).

In the context of such sharply rising fees, it is worth looking at some international comparisons. What is happening elsewhere in higher education? A recent article in The Economist on American fees reported that annual tuition and fees averaged £1,639 at two-year colleges, £4,595 at public four-year colleges for in-state students and £7,246 at public four-year schools for out-of-state students—all substantially less than the fees proposed for students in this country.

The situation gets worse if we look at Canada.

[Dr Whiteford]

I remind the hon. Lady that she does not have to look so far from home to find students who do not have to pay fees, because education is an investment in their future.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

Indeed. The hon. Lady makes an excellent point; we should always refer to what is happening in the devolved Administrations as well.

In 2007-08, the fees in the Canadian system were £2,866 and in Australia they were £2,600. What has been proposed for this country is absolutely out of line with our competitor countries across the board. According to quite a conservative estimate, the debt that a student will accrue, if they have to pay the £9,000 maximum and then accommodation and living expenses, could amount to about £48,000. If they then went on to do a master’s and a PhD, the student could come out with a debt of £70,000-plus. That is extraordinary.

[Mr Lammy]

On that excellent point, is my hon. Friend as concerned as I am that the plans will lead to catastrophically low levels of UK students deciding to go on to postgraduate study? Is she concerned that our university sector is actively recruiting abroad—notwithstanding the visa requirements imposed on it—and that we will therefore educate international students but deny that to students from this country?

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

Indeed. My right hon. Friend has made a number of excellent points. It is interesting that we have heard nothing from the Government parties and nothing from the Minister about the impact of the proposals on postgraduate education in this country. The House will have to return to that issue in due course.

Graduates could be incurring extraordinarily high debts. The Government simply have no electoral mandate to do what they have done; it was not in any of the manifestos or in the coalition agreement. The costs are being pushed on to students because of the massive 80% cut being made to the university teaching grant. That does not fall uniformly across all universities; it hits hardest the universities with high numbers of students studying arts-based subjects. We simply do not know what the impact will be on the longer-term career aspirations of our students, but we need to continue to develop jobs in the creative industries. That is important for my region of the north-east, but it is also important across the board.

I am also really concerned that the Government do not seem to be paying any attention whatever to the possible deterrent effect of the proposals. There is an increasing constellation of evidence showing that an increase in tuition fees—particularly to the levels proposed —puts off people from applying to university. An Ipsos MORI survey last year of 2,700 11 to 16-year-olds showed that even marginal increases in tuition fees had a significant deterrent effect on participation among young people. Some 17% of the young people who responded said that they were unlikely to go to university if tuition fees increased to £5,000, with 46% saying that that they would not go if fees were increased to £10,000 a year. If the Government dispute those findings, they need to come up with alternative findings of their own. They have simply not commissioned research into the issue.

The Government say that they are remedying the situation with the national scholarship programme and tuition fee waivers, but we know from work that million+ has carried out on the national scholarship programme so far that it is over complex and that students simply do not know what will be available to them. The information about the programme is not available in an easily accessible format. That could lead to a postcode lottery.

We know, of course, that all these changes are part of a wider trend, with the scrapping of the education maintenance allowance and the future jobs fund, which helped to get young people into jobs. The Government are deliberately engineering a situation where the life opportunities of young people will be increasingly worse than those of their parents, and that is simply a disgrace.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

Education Bill

Roberta Blackman-Woods Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

Like the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie), I have changed some of what I was going to say, because I want to respond some of the outrageous and inaccurate comments made about Labour’s record in office with regard to education.

I want, however, to start a bit earlier than that—in the early 1990s, when I was vice-chair of education in Newcastle. I think that Conservative Members need a history lesson about what we inherited from the previous Tory Government. For very many years, because of budget cuts, all that we did when we met as an education committee was to take money out of the education system. We made teachers redundant, and we made class sizes larger and larger as the teachers disappeared, so that in the end we often had 48 or 50 pupils in our classes. When schools came to us with a request to do something about their roof leaking, we did not tell them how much money they would get or how many years it would take to mend it—we said “Go and buy buckets because there is no capital allowance for schools.” The outcome was that in my constituency and in many areas like it, 30% of young people or fewer got five A to C grades at GCSE in any subject. This generation was, in many ways, failed by that Tory Government.

When Labour came to office, we had to do something to try to reverse that dreadful situation, and we did. In my constituency, education was transformed under the Labour Government. We not only employed lots more teachers so that we could get more specialisms into schools, but reduced class sizes drastically. We did not waste money: we built new schools, which were absolutely necessary because of the appalling state of the school estate that we inherited. Most important of all, we improved qualifications so that by last year young people in my constituency were doing better than the national average for five A to C grades at GCSE, including maths and English. That was the reality under Labour, and it is an important legacy that I hope this Government will build on, rather than simply being trashed by Government Members.

In the time left, it is impossible to go through the Bill in any detail, but there are a few overriding considerations. The first is about the number of powers that are centralised in the Bill that previously resided with parents, schools, teaching agencies, the admissions adjudicator and the admissions forum. I do not see how the Bill is devolving powers to schools. Secondly, there is a lack of any clear direction on vocational skills. Thirdly, a number of the proposals could make the education system more unfair, not less.

I will start with part 8, which contains clauses 70 and 71. On Friday morning, I visited New College Durham in my constituency to discuss with 16 and 17-year-olds what they felt about the abolition of the education maintenance allowance and the introduction of the new tuition fees system. Clauses 70 and 71 are important in operationalising part of that new student funding system. I do not think that that should be done in a Bill such as this and outside the White Paper on higher education. I totally disagree with the market rates that are being introduced for student loans. It was quickly apparent on talking to the young people that fees of £9,000 would put them off even thinking about continuing their education. They cannot comprehend the sums involved—£27,000 on fees alone. When that is coupled with the payback on market interest rates, they just cannot believe that a Government of any description would ask for something that so dampens their aspirations. It was dreadful to witness that. I hope that, even at this late stage, the Government will think again about introducing this appalling and unfair system of student funding.

We have to look wider than just some poor students getting to Oxford and Cambridge. I am getting fed up with how much I hear about that in this House. Although that is important and although I want students from poorer backgrounds to go to Oxford and Cambridge, I want every young person who would benefit from it to go to higher education at the institution that suits them. Unfortunately, I do not think that will be possible with the Government proposals.

I will make a couple of points about early years and charges. I would like an explanation from the Minister about what clause 35 means and what the impact of introducing different levels of charges for services is likely to be on children. For example, people will pay a range of sums of money for milk or school meals. How that is implemented will be important, because there is a lot of stigma when some children get things free and others have to pay.

I am sorry that the Government did not take the opportunity to use the Bill to extend free school meals and to extend the pilots of universal free school meals to all areas. There is an obsession with how schools impact on children and young people, without seeing the wider context within which they live. Children need to be properly fed, and to have good parenting, housing and health to thrive in schools. They need adequate support to enable them to overcome difficulties. It is a pity that when the Government looked at Sweden’s free schools, they did not look at its excellent free school meals system.