Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sam Gyimah and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 1st November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

Every death in custody is a tragic event. As the Minister with responsibility for prisons—I have been in the role for four months—I take every one of them seriously. I look at all the reports and I sign many of the responses to those reports where, for example, the independent monitoring board is involved. We have plans to make sure that we deliver on them.

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that we need bold reform to cut reoffending and that that must mean giving prison governors the powers and the accountability to innovate, especially when it comes to skills training and drugs rehabilitation in the prisons that they run?

Police (Surrey)

Debate between Sam Gyimah and Dominic Raab

Tuesday 3rd July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Raab]

I thank my hon. Friend. He is absolutely right. Oxford Economics considers the issue of flow in some detail. I commend the report to the Minister if he wants to examine the detail of what we are discussing.

Other elements, such as our proximity to high population areas, have also been proven relevant to levels of crime but are not factored into the funding formula, which measures only population levels within the county. Those shortcomings are mitigated by the damping arrangements. It is therefore unfair to remove or revise one without considering the other.

Surrey police do an outstanding job, which is reflected in the public’s 90% confidence rating. Today’s report by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary, “Policing in Austerity: One Year On”, breaks down the situation by individual forces, showing the progress that the Surrey police have made in dealing with austerity.

[Mr Sam Gyimah (East Surrey) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend acknowledge that we should recognise the achievements of Surrey police in maintaining the same level of service to the public in Surrey, despite reductions of about £7 million in their budget so far, and that further cuts could risk public safety?

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The key issue is sustainability. It cannot be right that those who perform best in terms of delivering cost efficiencies while adding further front-line officers should be penalised and find themselves victims of their own success.

Surrey has achieved those net satisfaction ratings despite having faced challenging conditions for a number of years. It is important to put the issue in context; it is not all about austerity under the coalition. Surrey did not share in Labour’s “land of milk and honey” spending spree. While real-terms spending on the police increased nationally by 19% between 1997 and 2010, funding for Surrey police was cut by 39% in real terms. Measured by central funding per person, Surrey got the worst deal of all 43 police forces in England and Wales.

Faced with that legacy, Surrey police responded positively. In July 2010, the Audit Commission and Her Majesty’s inspectorate of constabulary praised Surrey police for their efficiency in work force deployment, the way they centralised cross-cutting functions such as human resources and their rigorous and robust approach to achieving cost savings.

Surrey police followed that up with their policing plan for 2011-14, which rationalised the police estate. That, of course, involved a difficult set of decisions that had to be conveyed, sold and communicated locally. It is a very tangible thing to replace police stations or sell off old estate to make way for new hubs. That was difficult. Surrey police also reformed their procurement practices; it is widely accepted that they were in the vanguard in doing so. They cut middle management, which is also difficult, as it creates morale issues in a force. It was not an easy decision, but they took it. Through the net savings, they focused on putting officers into the areas of greatest need, including neighbourhood policing and serious crime investigations, precisely the areas that the public, and I as their MP, want to be priorities for investment.

Over and above all those savings, Surrey police’s rigorous approach and financial discipline allowed the force to reinvest in an extra 200 police constables. That would be extraordinary given the financial straits everyone is in, but it is particularly so for Surrey, given the legacy that it inherited.

Despite the dire financial legacy left by the last Government, Surrey was the only force in England and Wales able to increase officer numbers between September 2010 and September 2011. As the Audit Commission, HMIC and the Home Office have commented, Surrey police are a model of how to get a financial house in order. They did so proactively, before the financial crisis compelled the wider belt-tightening now under way. They did not wait for the waves to hit; they were on the front foot. Like other forces, they are now halfway through a 20% real-terms cut in central Government funding. Surrey police have dealt with all those challenges while improving their record against several key indicators of performance, such as serious crime detection.

However, Surrey has reached its limits. If the damping mechanism is removed, the force stands to lose, in total—there are two components—£4 million in funding, the equivalent of losing 83 police constables. That would be a serious blow to the force and a kick in the teeth, not only to the force, which has taken such steps to be a model of cost-efficiency, but to the people of Surrey, who pay such high levels of tax, too little of which returns as investment in local public services.

Our police need to be properly funded to deal with the wide range of challenges that they face daily. There is a perception of Surrey as a leafy backwater with no crime, challenges or deprivation, whose sleepy towns and villages are the last place where crime or antisocial behaviour is a real issue; but as my colleagues who have spoken, and others, know, that is a myth. The reality is, as has been said time and again, that Surrey is a county force grappling with metropolitan issues.

Education Performance

Debate between Sam Gyimah and Dominic Raab

Thursday 12th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)]

I join other Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) on securing this timely and important debate. I listened with great interest to a variety of different speeches.

The simple but uncomfortable truth is that, under the previous Government, the British education system let our children down, systematically and consistently. My hon. Friend referred to the UK tumbling down the PISA ranking. We have heard a lot about the related methodological issues, but that is only one of a series of powerful indicators revealing the extent of falling—or at least stagnant—standards, despite the huge amount of money that has gone in. Interestingly, the OECD explicitly criticised the persistent grade inflation at A-level, which has disguised poor outcomes and undermined students’ achievements.

Leading universities have had to offer classes in essay writing to undergraduates who lacked the ability to structure an argument properly—not only the mid-ranking universities, but Bristol, Newcastle and the London School of Economics. I heard directly from the former head of Imperial college, Sir Richard Sykes, about the problems with science and constantly having to spend six months redoing the A-level syllabus, because the standards are not what they were a decade or so ago.

This week the CBI revealed that almost half of employers have to invest in numeracy or literacy training for school and college leavers. That situation would be unacceptable at any time, but it is untenable at the beginning of a century in which Britain needs to be delivering a first-class education for young people, so that they and Britain itself can compete in an increasingly competitive and globalised economy.

I welcome the measures initiated by the Minister and the Government to reverse the trend—in particular the plans to raise the professional status and standards of teachers and the respect that we as a society offer teachers. Some of the measures were set out in the schools White Paper. It is right that we expect a lot from teachers, but it is also essential that they get the best training and that they are better protected from violence in the classroom and from spurious and malicious allegations that we know from the polling is deterring graduates from going into the profession.

One of the Government’s most important schools policies is the academies programme. I commend the Minister on the Government’s record to date: the number of academies has more than doubled in the past year, and more and more schools are embracing the opportunity to acquire greater freedom and to innovate. In my constituency, I am delighted that Rydens school in Walton is currently applying for academy status—a great school, led by a dynamic head teacher, with really committed governors. I wish it every success.

Contrary to claims in attacks by the teaching unions, academies are raising standards. The Harris Federation achieved a 10% increase in pupils getting five good GCSEs in schools last year, while ARK academies saw a 12% improvement. That is a strong base on which the Government can build. We are only a year in, however, and challenges remain, one in England certainly being the pressure on school places—in my constituency, I have seen it cause concern to many parents in Elmbridge. I would like to know a bit more about what the Government will do to address such pressures on school places and parental choices, in addition to the academies and free schools programme.

At a time of financial pressure, funding is difficult and contentious, and the allocation of existing funding becomes even more important. The whole issue of the funding formula—its transparency and objectivity—is of acute concern to parents in my constituency. It is probably the No. 1 issue raised with me at open town hall meetings; I have held six recently. The issue comes up time and again. We know that the funding formula will be addressed in the context of the NHS and local authorities, but I am interested to hear more about the process in relation to the schools budget.

What further consideration is being given to the role of profit-based schools in providing extra capacity? I appreciate that talking about this is regarded as almost taboo, but a recent study by the Adam Smith Institute revealed how well placed such schools are to boost the number of free schools, which are a flagship Government policy.

Proprietorial schools deliver excellent academic outcomes—we all know that—but an impressive one third of them do so while charging less per pupil than is spent in the state sector, exposing one of the great fallacies at the heart of the previous Government’s approach, which is that outcomes are dependent simply on resources. The proprietorial schools also erode the dogmatic argument against any consideration of the idea of vouchers—namely that they allow middle class students to opt into the upper tier of a two-tier system. That accusation cannot be levelled against schools that cost less but deliver more.

Apart from the whole issue of structures, we also need to think long and hard about what we want our school leavers to do and about what they want to do; others have referred to that issue today. The previous Government’s target of 50% of young people going to university was an arbitrary and clunky piece of social engineering, resulting in more degree courses, quite a few of dubious value to the students taking them. Furthermore, quotas miss the point. I suspect that there will be broad agreement, but standards must be improved in our state schools and not dumbed down in our universities.

Does the Minister agree that we also need a cultural shift in this country? We heard one of the leading lights at McDonald’s talk about that earlier in the week. We must certainly do something to reverse the snobbery that insists that people must go to university to be a success in life. That certainly did not apply to my parents, who were both successful without going to university.

[Mr Sam Gyimah (East Surrey) (Con)]

I take my hon. Friend’s point about how 20 or 30 years ago not everyone needed to go to university to become a success in life. However, will he acknowledge that, for most jobs nowadays, the requirement is a 2:1 degree, even to get an application through the main gate? Unless employers agree to accept people without degrees, we have a real problem to deal with.

[Mr Raab]

My hon. Friend makes a perfectly valid point. That is why the question is not just about what the Government do, but about a much broader cultural shift. In my own profession, the legal profession, we can spend six or seven years training, but once qualified we do very little of what we were trained to do.

It seems to me that some of the high street practices could get young, aspirational, talented youngsters into the profession without the huge cost of going through the red brick university parade and on to postgraduate qualifications. There should be a way to open up the professions. They have been some of the worst culprits, and that is true not just of the legal professions. That is precisely why I welcome the Government’s commitment to increase the number of apprenticeships. When considering the UK’s skills needs, two thirds of employers believe that apprenticeships should be the priority for Government funding. From what I have heard in the House and more broadly over the past few months, I suspect that that is an area of emerging consensus among the main parties.

I am acutely conscious of time. I shall close by saying that I am optimistic that the Government’s policies will reverse the decline and stagnation in the standards of teaching and education in our country. The recipe for success is not complicated and bureaucratic. We must trust teachers and parents more, demand academic rigour, and free up schools to innovate. I wish the Minister the best of luck in those endeavours, and I again congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk on securing this important debate.