European Union (Withdrawal) Act

Debate between Sam Gyimah and Richard Graham

Tuesday 12th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Lady makes a powerful point, to which I shall return in a second.

We have this misleading cliché today that we just have to get on with it, as though the result is somehow immaterial so long as we do. That gives me cause for extreme concern about supporting the deal. Let me make two principal points. First, as far as I can understand it, the backstop is there to try to solve an impossible problem: we want to take control of our borders but we want the other side to have an open border. The back- stop exists now because after months and years of negotiation, we have not found a solution to that problem. If those who, like my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), say that alternative arrangements could solve the problem genuinely believe that such arrangements could, they need not fear the backstop.

The truth is that dealing with these alternative arrangements on their own will not address the need for the backstop. The side deal that the Prime Minister has come back with improves things to some extent, but the EU has no need to act in bad faith because it knows that, between now and 2020, we will keep going round the same loop, trying to find alternative arrangements. If we are not careful, we may still end up in that backstop, which is why there is such serious concern.

My second point is on the political declaration.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr Gyimah]

I would like to develop this point.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough said that there is no point in discussing the political declaration. She said that all we need to do is vote for the withdrawal agreement, and discussions on the political declaration will come later. We in this House must get real about what the meaningful vote and the withdrawal agreement mean two to three steps down the line.

Draft Higher Education (Access and Participation Plans) (England) Regulations 2018

Debate between Sam Gyimah and Richard Graham

Thursday 11th January 2018 General Committees

[Mr Gyimah]

We need clarity to be effective, so of course I support absolute clarity in this respect.

The board composition was touched on. The hon. Member for Blackpool South has been looking for much longer than I have at the detail of this. The OFS has quite a wide remit, and board members are bringing different experience from different places to the board so that it can fulfil its wide remit.

I will draw my comments to a close. A very important issue is what happens to access and participation plans in the event of a change of control or ownership. A provider must have an access and participation plan approved by the OFS if it has a fee cap and wishes to charge higher fees. If there is a change of registration or any change of ownership, that would remain in place.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

May I highlight one very important aspect of the regulations, which the hon. Member for Blackpool South may have highlighted in earlier sittings? It is the avoidance of some of the duplication that was happening between the director of fair access and HEFCE. The new OFS will replace the degree of overlap that there was between those two bodies and increase consistency. I would be grateful for a brief comment from the Minister on that.

I also hope the Minister will have a chance to visit the Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education, which is the Ofsted of higher education and happens to be based in my constituency. It has an important role to play, particularly in terms of student feedback on some of the issues that the regulations cover. Since the burden of payment for higher education has shifted from taxpayers in general to students, and the regulations clearly build in student involvement on access and participation, a discussion with the QAA about how it can contribute to student analysis of the higher and further education model would be very useful.

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend makes a forceful point. He is right to say that in bringing together HEFCE and the fair access parts of the regulation of higher education institutions, we remove a significant amount of overlap, but it goes further. Funding for higher education has changed, so the regulatory structure is now catching up to reflect the funding structure.

We have other challenges that need to be dealt with. This is about not only removing inconsistencies and bringing clarity but, I hope, making the regulation of higher education more effective. On my hon. Friend’s second point, I would be delighted to visit the QAA.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Higher Education (Access and Participation Plans) (England) Regulations 2018.

School Funding

Debate between Sam Gyimah and Richard Graham

Thursday 5th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Richard Graham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, but there is another aspect to this, which we must be aware of. I understand that the new Bishop of Gloucester, Bishop Rachel Treweek, the first female diocesan bishop in the land, will intervene in the House of Lords to help the F40 campaign, but she will be aware that fair funding for children across her diocese in the county of Gloucestershire will mean redistribution, which will probably arouse claims of unfairness in her previous patch in Tower Hamlets. This is a balancing act in terms of what is fair for all of us, and the Minister will have to juggle with that.

In the statement on 16 July, the Minister committed himself to making schools and early education fairer and said that he would put forward proposals in due course. I know that he will do so and that he will see the manifesto commitment simply to “make schools funding fairer” come true, but today I should like him to focus on the when, the what and the how. The when, in a sense, is the easiest bit, because the autumn statement is coming and we also have the commitment from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in her letter to the Chairman of the Education Committee, my constituency neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), which may inhibit a little what the Minister can say today.

The what will be all about the rebalancing—the winners and losers. As my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Karen Lumley) pointed out, one person’s fairness may be another person’s slight unfairness, but there is an absolute as well as a relative aim to go for. In addition to the what question, we have to look at the how, which is the process. It is easy for us to highlight the anomalies, but the Minister and his Department must find a solution, a process and a timeline.

The Library briefing paper contains a telling chart—exhibit A, which I am holding up, Mr Walker. In this flow diagram, there are simply too many elements. There is the guaranteed unit of funding, which was based on planned local authority spend some years ago, with three variables plus

“some subsequent additional funding for ministerial priorities.”

Then there is the dedicated schools grant, which was based on assessed levels of need plus locked-in historical decisions on spending, which I suggest led to the gap widening during the five years of the previous, coalition Government. Then there are four other grants, plus the local funding formula, in which there are 14 allowable factors, and local authorities can choose which values are actually used for each factor. That is too complicated, and I hope that the Minister today will confirm that whatever new process is introduced, it will be simpler, easier to understand and much fairer for everyone.

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend rightly touches on the point about the process. What I can say at the outset is that whatever the outcome of the spending review, there will be very careful consultation with everyone concerned, which means, I suspect, that this will not be our only debate here on fairer funding in terms of how we get to a resolution.

[Richard Graham]

I am grateful to the Minister for his clarification, which will help all hon. Members on both sides of the House. We all want to see simplicity in the process, a system that everyone can at least understand, funding that is fundamentally fairer and timing that will fulfil the manifesto commitment. The more light that the Minister can shed today, within the constraints of the upcoming autumn statement and the Secretary of State’s commitment to an early new year proposal, the more that will help us all to go back to our constituencies and our counties and say, “The Government are on the case. We hear what you are saying and we want to fix it as soon as possible.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Sam Gyimah and Richard Graham

Tuesday 24th March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

3. What steps he has taken to uphold the integrity of voting in introducing individual electoral registration.

[The Minister for the Constitution (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

Increasing the integrity of the electoral process is one of the fundamental reasons behind the introduction of individual electoral registration. Unlike the previous system, under which the head of the household registered people, people now have to register and have their entry verified against Government and local authority records. That is one way in which we are ensuring the integrity of the register. Furthermore, we have ensured that anyone wishing to vote by post or by proxy at the elections on 7 May must have been verified through IER. That safeguards the integrity not only of the register but of the ballot.

[Richard Graham]

There are almost 4,000 so-called red voters—I hope the colour is not symbolic—who were already registered in Gloucester before IER was introduced. They cannot vote by postal vote, but if they exist, they are entitled to vote in person. What steps has my hon. Friend’s Department taken to ensure that people do not impersonate others in polling stations?

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank my hon. Friend for a very good question. On the numbers of people, the number of voters carried forward from the last annual canvass who have lost their postal vote is actually very small—it is about 3% in total—and the remainder have been confirmed against Government records. This is in the context of an important safeguard that was introduced during the transition to IER, ensuring that no one registered to vote at the last annual canvass will lose their vote in May. I would add, however, that any attempt to impersonate someone at a polling station is a criminal offence.

Paediatric First Aid

Debate between Sam Gyimah and Richard Graham

Monday 15th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Gyimah]

That is a good question. There is an Ofsted inspection cycle for every nursery, but there is also a cycle for the first aid certificate. If someone has a certificate, it will expire after three years, and they will then have to go back and do a two-day course to have it refreshed. I am counselling against believing that the acquisition of a certificate alone will prevent such awful tragedies from happening again. What will prevent them from happening again is nurseries knowing what best practice is and implementing it, rather than just saying, “Our staff have the certificate, so we are covered.” That is what I want to avoid.

[Richard Graham]

In a sense, there are two slightly different issues. I think the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) was close to implying that, had everyone received paediatric training in the nursery where Millie, very sadly, died, these events would not have happened, but I am not sure that any of us here today is in a position to make that judgment. However, on the wider point, many of us feel that future tragedies would be much less likely if everybody did receive paediatric training, so will the Minister respond to the call for a review, which the coroner, in effect, made?

[Mr Gyimah]

I can commit to a review next year of how the requirements have been strengthened and how they are bedding down in the nursery sector. I welcome my hon. Friend’s intervention. None of us can say what would happen if there was another situation on the ground, but we do have the coroner’s response, and I can commit to a review.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

It is a powerful point. To restate my argument, not everyone with a certificate is necessarily the right person to deal with an emergency. We can argue that the likelihood of not having the right person on hand is reduced if everyone has that certificate, but we want to have a situation where nurseries follow recognised best practice, rather than to mandate it just so that everyone can say, “I have the certificate, and that is it.” We obviously value what St John Ambulance does, which is why the EYFS requires nurseries to use its training or British Red Cross training.

[Richard Graham]

The Minister has helpfully confirmed that the national review will go ahead, as the coroner wanted. To avoid any doubt, will he confirm that it will include consideration of moves to make it mandatory for everybody working in nurseries to receive paediatric training?

[Mr Gyimah]

My hon. Friend is fast bringing me to the end of my speech—I was going to address that right at the end. Yes, when we have a national review, we will look at making this mandatory.