Fair Taxation of Schools and Education Standards Committee

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That the following Standing Order shall have effect until 31 December 2023:

Fair Taxation of Schools and Education Standards Committee

(1) There shall be a select committee, to be called the Fair Taxation of Schools and Education Standards Committee, to consider reforming the tax status of private schools in order to raise funding for measures to increase educational standards across the state sector, including the recruitment of new teachers, additional teacher training, and careers advice and work experience for all pupils.

(2) It shall be an instruction to the committee that it shall make a first report to the House no later than 20 July 2023.

(3) The committee shall consist of eleven members of whom ten shall be nominated by the Committee of Selection in the same manner as those select committees appointed in accordance with Standing Order No. 121.

(4) The chair of the committee shall be a backbench member of a party represented in His Majesty’s Government and shall be elected by the House under arrangements approved by the Speaker.

(5) Unless the House otherwise orders, each member nominated to the committee shall continue to be a member of it until the expiration of this Order.

(6) The committee shall have power—

(a) to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, to adjourn from place to place, and to report from time to time; and

(b) to appoint specialist advisers to supply information which is not readily available or to elucidate matters of complexity within the committee’s order of reference.

(7) The committee shall have power to appoint a sub-committee, which shall have power to send for persons, papers and records, to sit notwithstanding any adjournment of the House, to adjourn from place to place, and to report to the committee from time to time.

(8) The committee shall have power to report from time to time the evidence taken before the sub-committee.

In this House we often talk of tough choices, especially since the Conservatives crashed the economy, but today I present the House with a very easy choice: to invest in the future of every child or to protect tax breaks for the wealthiest. We on the Opposition side know where we stand. Labour believes that excellence is for everyone—excellence for every child, in every school, in every corner of our country. I ask hon. Members to support that ambition by establishing a new Select Committee to consider how to end the inexcusable tax breaks that private schools enjoy and invest that money in driving up standards across all our state schools.

The evidence for ending private schools’ tax breaks is very clear:

“Removing the tax advantages of private schools would boost standards in the state sector and raise vital extra funds”.

I agree, but those are not my words; they are the words of the now Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities. It should be an easy choice, but we have tabled this motion because once again the Government are failing—failing to stand up to the vested interests in their own party, failing to consider the evidence even when their own Members have previously urged them to act and, yet again, failing our children.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

There will be nobody who does not agree with the basic premise that we want to see excellence in all of our schools. Can the hon. Lady explain why she thinks she needs a Select Committee to achieve her aspiration? Surely she needs either an amendment to a Finance Bill or primary legislation? She does not need a Select Committee.

[Bridget Phillipson]

We will be considering all of our options for how to force this issue, but this is a choice for Conservative Members. There is a clear and straightforward way that we could look carefully at this issue, and the motion sets that out. The question for Conservative Members is whether they are prepared to defend inexcusable tax breaks for private schools, or whether they want to invest that money in ensuring that all our children in our state schools get a great start in life.

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for West Ham (Ms Brown), who spoke with her usual passion and great knowledge of her constituency. There are a few of us in the Chamber who cut our political teeth on, or were involved in, the 1997 general election campaign. For every problem that came before us, the Labour answer was the windfall tax. They would say, “The windfall tax will sort this, that and the other.” It seems to me that the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), and her colleagues see the motion as the educational equivalent of a windfall tax to solve all the problems, which many of us are alert to and which need to be addressed.

The money raised—this £1.7 billion—will, according to the motion, go to

“the recruitment of new teachers, additional teacher training, and careers advice and work experience for all pupils.”

In speeches, we have been told that it will address mental health, deal with SEND, underpin TAs, deliver mandatory digital skills and extend free school meals. This is the windfall tax that covers everything. This is the goose that will lay the largest golden egg in educational history.

Let me share a secret with the House: maths is not my favourite subject—please do not tell the Prime Minister—but, by my calculation, on the sums suggested divided by the number of schools in the state sector who would be recipients of that funding, that amounts to about £53,000 per school, per year. That is on the expectation that the £1.7 billion remains a continual, but some schools will get smaller, some will close and so on. It is therefore an entirely false prospectus.

I think that the shadow Secretary of State must have read in the press that her leader is thinking of having a shadow Cabinet reshuffle and scratched her head to think, “What might get me on the front page of the newspaper and to lead a debate?” May I say gently to her that it might have seemed a good idea in theory to have this debate, but the practice is not playing out.

I am a huge supporter of the Select Committee system—I happen to chair one and enjoy it—but we do not need another one to address the issues of what could be done to help education. I am sure that the Education Committee will look into it, if that is what its work programme wants to do—[Interruption.] But let me set out my stall. I will yield to no one in my support for state education in our country. I went to what Mr Blair as Prime Minister would have called a “bog-standard comprehensive” in Cardiff. Of my three children, one goes to a church primary and the others go to one of our local high schools. They are receiving excellent education from first-class teachers. I have been a governor of two state sector schools and my wife is a current school governor, because we understand entirely that education provides the keys that are going to unlock all of life’s doors.

Conservative Members believe in a meritocracy. We are far more interested in where people are going than from where they have come. The motion—this idea—is all about class envy. It is all about divide. It is all about pulling down. May I say gently to the Opposition Front-Bench team that we do not improve things that need improvement by pulling down and reducing the excellent. We should be focusing on fostering that which lots of schools already do. There is a good example in my constituency: Bryanston, which is a leading independent school, teamed up with Blandford School, sharing resources and expertise in a whole load of areas to the improvement of children and their educational experience. That is what we should be focusing on, not pulling down something that is working. The effect on global soft power from the experience of coming to the UK, which the independent sector provides for so many young people, is always overlooked when we come to this debate. It is a very important tool in our arsenal; we must not forget it. We need to focus on those important issues. Nobody in my constituency says, “You are going to make my school better by stopping that school having VAT relief and charitable status.” They want to know what the Government are going to do to make their schools better and the attainment of their kids better. They are not motivated by this narrative of envy, and it is a shame that the House is being invited to be so today.

The motion presupposes that it will be of no cost to the public purse, but a conservative estimate suggests that about 100,000 children would be taken out of the independent sector and put into the state sector. That would have a cost, as my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) indicated, on already pressured state places, particularly, although not exclusively, in the secondary sector. Bursaries and scholarships would be removed. Who benefits? Nobody, apart from a narrow class interest suggested by some Opposition Members and certainly not shared by those on the Government Benches. I do not believe it is shared in the country either.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Morgan (Portsmouth South) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to have the opportunity to conclude this debate in support of the motion in my name and the names of the shadow Education Secretary and the Leader of the Opposition.

I wish to start by saying thank you—thank you to teachers, school support staff, school leadership teams and everyone who works in schools across the country. Their job can often be a thankless one, but it has been particularly difficult in recent years. The work that they do could not be more important and I hope that they know that they have our respect, our admiration and our support.

My hon. Friends the Members for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), for West Ham (Ms Brown), for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne), for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) and for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) have articulated the importance of this debate in raising educational standards for children in England’s state schools.

My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood made powerful points about the value of quality teaching and the significant challenges of recruitment and retention and morale of the workforce. I know that she is a tireless champion for schools in her constituency and I thank her for her contributions today. My hon. Friend the Member for West Ham spoke with her usual passion and energy about the challenges that schools in her constituency are facing and the 12 years of failure by the Tories to tackle these issues head on.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby made helpful points about his continued efforts on food poverty and the political choices that the Government could make to transform children’s lives. My hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle robustly challenged those on the Government Benches on the views that they have expressed today, and I thank her for her consistent work on raising issues around oracy in this House. My hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East helpfully shared issues in her area with regards to school funding and concerns about the impact that is having on the education of children in her local community.

Members of the Conservative party may be trying to airbrush their former leader out of history, but they cannot airbrush their record in Government. Over the past decade, the Conservatives have turned back the clock on education, with attainment gaps widening, teacher pay falling, SEND education broken, school buildings crumbling, and teacher recruitment and retention in crisis. This situation is not fair, it is not sustainable, and Labour will not stand for it. We believe that excellence is for everyone. Labour wants to raise educational standards across the country. We want to pay for teachers, pay for mental health support and pay for careers guidance to drive higher standards for the majority of children in all our state schools, The tax breaks that private schools enjoy must end. That is why we are asking all Members to support that ambition by establishing a time-limited, focused new Select Committee, to report by July this year, to look into how we end these tax breaks and invest that money in our nation’s schools.

Every parent wants the best for their children. We will not criticise any parent for the judgments that they make on how to do that—not now, not ever. But Labour wants to deliver the best for every child, in every school, in every corner of our country. This is simply about children’s outcomes: recruiting more excellent teachers to improve those outcomes; improving the mental health of our children to improve those outcomes; and revitalising careers guidance to improve those outcomes. While those on the Conservative Benches were busy last year each taking a turn at being the Secretary of State for Education, the Labour party was busy building a vision for the future of education. That means funding it fairly and properly.

Labour has set out how we will do that. We will use the money that is raised to drive up standards in every state school. We will do that: through a national excellence programme, recruiting thousands of new teachers; providing professional mental health support for every child; and ensuring young people leave education ready for work and ready for life, with professional careers guidance and work experience for all. As the shadow Education Secretary said earlier, this is what aspiration for our children looks like.

[Simon Hoare]

It all sounds absolutely fantastic, but the shadow Minister is hiding his light under a bushel. If that is not on his Labour party website and if his Leader has not mentioned education at all in his new year launch speech, how are we supposed to know about these things—telepathy?

[Stephen Morgan]

I would expect better of the hon. Member, but I am delighted that he is already looking at the Labour party website. I can send him the membership links so that he can join the party, too.

Arthur Labinjo-Hughes

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I will always go where the evidence leads. The reason why we asked Josh MacAlister to conduct the review prior to the tragic murder of this innocent young boy is that we want to make sure that we deliver a system that is fit for purpose. We have made more funding available, but it depends what the review comes back with, and I will certainly return to the Dispatch Box and go through that with colleagues to make sure that we get this right.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

May I say, as many have, what a relief it is that my right hon. Friend is at the helm on this issue? This has been a bone-chilling case. He was right in his statement to say that no Government anywhere in the world can legislate for evil, and we have seen evil in this case. We also know that hard-working professionals cannot be everywhere all the time.

Quite rightly, the campaign to end violence against women and girls has a high national profile and commands the respect of Ministers across Government. May I urge my right hon. Friend to begin such a crusade to combat neglect and violence against children, so that, as others have noted, the precautionary principle—the taking away of a child if there is a scintilla of a doubt—is at the forefront of people’s minds, the resources are available, and the law stands four-square behind them?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s question and suggestion. I would certainly like to take that away, and to work on a cross-party basis to make it culturally unacceptable for children to be neglected, harmed or abused in any way.

Budget Resolutions

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown). I agree with the point that he made about the shared prosperity fund and the need for it to be announced quickly so that we can get the funding that we need in all areas.

I do not want to be too negative, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I was a little disappointed when, in the Treasury Committee, I raised concerns about debt advice directly with the Chancellor and he did not seem to be fully aware of the situation, so I hope that, today, those on the Front Bench will take this point really seriously.

Hull has been named one of the debt capitals of the UK. We have double the average number of people unable to service their debt levels. At the moment, a face-to-face service is provided by the Money and Pensions Service. I am aware that that does not operate directly through the Treasury, but I am also aware that policy decisions relating to debt are informed by the Treasury. What I am asking for is an assurance that that face-to-face advice service remains, because what the service is proposing is to move towards regional call centres where people can access debt advice remotely. I am sure that everybody here, including, hopefully, Conservative Members, will acknowledge that if a person is in a desperate situation—they are saddled with debt, have perhaps not been opening their bills, and are incredibly worried about the situation that they face—the idea that they can go through all the issues on the telephone with someone is simply unrealistic. That is ignoring the fact that some people might have autism or learning disabilities or be in an extremely distressed state. I do hope the Treasury will take that point really seriously and speak to the Money and Pensions Service.

Let me turn now to the Budget. I had six clear asks of the Budget to provide what I believe was needed by the people of Hull West and Hessle. One was on fuel poverty. I support the Labour party’s call for the ending of VAT on domestic fuel as one way to try to alleviate the problems. This really lovely lady told me that she was worried about the issue. She is a pensioner and reliant on her pension. She likes to be warm, as elderly people often do—when people get older they like to keep their homes nice and warm. She is at home all day, so is extremely concerned about the rise in fuel costs, telling me that her bills have gone up by more than 40%. This is an area that needs a lot more Government action, because the problem will not go away; it will continue. I hope the Government will put party politics to one side and review a sensible proposal from the Labour party to look at cutting VAT on domestic fuel.

I raised the issue of adult social care in interventions on the Secretary of State and on my own shadow Front Bencher. I also raised it at the Treasury Committee. The issue has nothing to do with the type of council in control, or the political party that represents it. My constituency is in the East Riding, and it is also in Hull. Hull is urban and a Labour authority. East Riding is rural and a Conservative authority. Both councils have come to me and said that, as the local MP, could I do everything possible to lobby the Government for support for adult social care. In fact, the Conservative-run East Riding of Yorkshire Council has just passed a motion in its council chamber on this matter.

This should not be a political issue. The situation is a crisis. I said in an intervention on the Minister that East Riding council is unable to provide the amount of care hours that constituents need. It has admitted that in a letter and has been quite open and honest with me, saying that it simply cannot provide the service. Its solution is to tell families that they will either have to take care of the person in need themselves or that person will have to go into residential care. That is not a choice that we want people to have to make, so the council has asked me to lobby the Government for increased funding for adult social care, because it says that it is unable to compete with companies such as Amazon, which is offering £11 an hour, because all that it is able to offer is the minimum wage. It told me that it is facing budget pressures of £1.4 million with the national minimum wage increase that the Government have already announced. Of course I support the national minimum wage increase—in fact, I believe that it should be more, as I think all Labour Members do—but we have to acknowledge that the cost has to come from somewhere, and if it is coming from the adult social care budget, it is not going on providing the hours that are needed. The letter has been sent to the Health Secretary. I hope that he reads it, acknowledges it and sends us a reply.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

My own council in Dorset tells a similar story. Does the hon. Lady agree that it would be helpful if when we were talking about adult social care, particularly in the media, we did not just concentrate on those who are older, but remember the complete age range of people who require daily support from our local government? I agree with her entirely that the local government family, which is hardest hit in hard times, really should be the beneficiary of extra cash as the purse strings loosen.

[Emma Hardy]

I absolutely agree; the hon. Gentleman is completely right. We do often forget all those people with learning difficulties and adults of all ages requiring support. He is correct to draw attention to that point.

The situation really is one of crisis. Yesterday I was talking to the OBR—again, in the Treasury Committee—and it said that it believed that 95% of councils are going to raise their precept to the maximum amount. That is another tax increase that is not being mentioned by the Government and we are not talking about. It is another impact on the cost of living, and councils are having to do that because they simply cannot afford to cover social care as it is.

I want briefly to mention universal credit. Even with the changes to the taper and the other changes that the Government have introduced, a lone parent who is working part-time on the minimum wage still loses £361. All the time throughout this Budget, it seems that people on lower pay are paying more in taxes. That just does not feel right.

I often hear Government Members say, “Well, where would you find the money? What are you going to do with it?” It always comes down to choices; in politics, everything is about choices. We have a certain amount of finance and then we make a choice. My personal priority would be not to give more money to whisky price cuts and tax cuts than I would give to children needing educational catch-up. That is just a principle that I have: children before whisky—call me radical! I would also not spend £5 billion sending a rocket up into space funded by the British Government, when we have lots of children here on earth who might require that money a little bit more. Again, it comes down to choices: rockets and whisky, or kids.

We also need to look more seriously at business rates. Interestingly, Government Members talked about a whole radical change to business rates, which I support. This is a disappointing Budget, filled with many issues that need resolving. I hope that the Government will finally do something about them.

Higher Education (England) Regulations

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I hope that the hon. Lady notes that after having to bring this Government to the House to discuss this really important issue time and again, we have had to do this in Opposition time. I hope that Conservative Members who promised the electorate that they were against rises in tuition fees will take that on board today and support the Opposition’s motion.

Ministers seem to have found a parliamentary Catch-22 which, in effect, makes it impossible for this House to have a say on regulations like these if they decide that they do not want to grant one. They refuse a vote within the time limit, and then afterwards say that the deadline has passed. Even more incredibly, they seem to be suggesting that they would simply ignore this House if we voted the wrong way on today’s motion—that is, of course, if they allow us even to have a vote. In the space of this week they have gone from Henry VIII to King Charles I. Let me be clear that so far as we are concerned, it is unthinkable that this House would pass a substantive motion and that the Government would refuse to honour it.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I do not wish to behead the hon. Lady’s argument, but she is labouring this point of process. I wonder whether that is to mask her lack of policy; let me be charitable and suggest that it is not. When we will we hear what her policy is on this important issue?

[Angela Rayner]

First of all, let me say that my husband would have been Charles I; I probably would have been a Cromwell. On the important point about our policy on tuition fees, we were clear in our manifesto that we would abolish tuition fees. I think the general public absolutely were clear on our policy on that. [Interruption.] The Secretary of State says, from a sedentary position, “What about Wales?” In Wales, we have a policy, despite this Government, of giving maintenance grants. What will the Secretary of State do for the students in England who need maintenance grants? The Government still refuse to give that support to students from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Schools Update

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I do not agree. What is important is that we are able to maintain the rates of per-pupil funding in our schools. That is what I have set out today, and we can only do it because we have a strong economy that is creating jobs, growth and taxes that fund our vital public services. We must not fall into the trap of thinking that, every time we want to increase our public spending, we have to reach into the public’s pocket and raise taxes. That is simply not sustainable. Neither is it sustainable to have increasing debt when our debt interest is still more than the amounts we are investing every year in our schools and high-needs funding. It is vital that we have a long-term strategy to deal with that debt, and I believe that we can make our departmental budget work more effectively and, in doing so, get more money to the frontline of schools. That has to be the first port of call for anyone in my role, rather than simply resorting to higher taxes or more debt.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

As a parent and a Member of Parliament for a rural constituency, I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. May I urge her, as the new formula is finessed, to keep at the forefront of her mind the higher cost of staffing and running a school in a rural area, compared with schools in an urban setting? I hope that will be reflected in any formula.

[Justine Greening]

My hon. Friend has done a good job of raising that issue and setting out his local area’s concerns. This was part of the consultation we launched earlier this year, to which we have had 25,000 responses. We have gone through most of them, but we will set out our full response in September. Suffice it to say that I recognise those issues, and I am looking to get it right.

Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]

Simon Hoare Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Before I call the hon. Member for North Dorset (Simon Hoare), I emphasise that I would like to call the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald) from the Scottish National party as well, so extreme brevity is required.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I rise to speak in warm support of new clause 15 and to congratulate the Government. The Minister will remember that I served on the Public Bill Committee and spoke in support of the then new clause, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy). I very much welcome the two safeguards in the new clause—on age-appropriateness and parental rights to withdraw—which I think address the points that have been raised.

This is a new clause—a 21st-century clause—for a 21st-century education system and for the world in which we live, and it reflects the deep need to provide our young people with the education and skills they require to meet challenges that many of us on the Conservative Benches did not face when we were their age.

Many people rail against the rates of divorce, abortion, teenage pregnancy and the like, and I am absolutely convinced that there must be a causal link between those statistics and the very patchy and relatively poor levels of sex and relationship education we have had in this country hitherto.

The new clause appears to have garnered the support of the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church, of which I am a member, as well as of Barnardo’s, the Terrence Higgins Trust and others. I would therefore suggest to right hon. and hon. Members that the Government are clearly on to something and are approaching it in the right way.

We do nothing that could be described as moral if we leave our young people unprepared to meet the challenges of relationships and modern life. I certainly support the fact—I raised this in the Adjournment debate brought by my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller)—that the clause covers academies and free schools. Given the direction of travel in the education environment, that seems entirely appropriate, and I support the new clause.

[Stuart C. McDonald (Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East) (SNP)]

I wish to speak to the amendments in my name to new clauses 13 and 14. Let me say in passing that new clauses 12 and 11, on universal credit and local housing allowance, both have our full support. On new clause 4, while we sympathise with the sentiment behind it, the method of progression is not the correct one, and we could not give the new clause our support.

Let me turn to new clauses 12 to 14 and to my two amendments. New clause 13 would put the strategy for the safeguarding of unaccompanied refugee children on a statutory footing, and that has our support. Given that many of the laws and services that will be involved are devolved, I have suggested that the new clause be amended to require consultation with the devolved Administrations before the strategy is published.

New clauses 12 and 14 require assessment of the capacity to provide safeguarding and welfare services, including to unaccompanied child refugees. I welcome the cross-party support new clause 14 has attracted, and the Scottish National party fully intends to give it our support. My small amendment to it simply borrows the wording of new clause 12 in relation to the devolved Administrations. It is appropriate to include the devolved Administrations, because, as we have heard, the key driver behind new clause 14 is to force the Government to rethink their move to wind the Dubs scheme down. This was a UK-wide scheme, and Scotland was and is absolutely willing to play its part in it.

With the rationale for closing Dubs falling to pieces, the Government have belatedly come to the Dispatch Box to make a concession. However, in making that concession, they have actually made the case for new clause 14, rather than giving an explanation of why we should reject it, so I see no reason why we should not proceed with it. If it comes to a vote, the SNP will absolutely support new clause 14, whether amended or not.

School Funding

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Burnley (Julie Cooper).

The Secretary of State and her team are to be congratulated. To many Conservative Members, and probably to some Opposition Members, this problem seems almost too large and intractable to wrestle with. However, we are in a consultation process. Of course there will be one or two anomalies and a few little creases will have to be ironed out. There will be unforeseen circumstances that need to be attended to. The scary thing is that those Opposition Members who have spoken so far have been either unable or unwilling to see the inherent unfairness of a system that they not only promoted but fed, either because it was to their advantage to do so or because they had no interest in rural areas.

The Government have been trying to counterbalance the differentials in funding for 2016-17, but when House of Commons Library research shows that Manchester has a per-pupil figure of £4,619 and Doncaster has a figure of £5,281, but the figure for Dorset is £4,240, we know that something has gone wrong. This tells us quite clearly that it is thought that taxpayers in Dorset and their children’s needs are less important than taxpayers and their children in other areas. There was nothing fair in the funding formula that Labour bequeathed to us. We could have had a knee-jerk reaction, which really would have put the cat among the pigeons, but my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and her predecessor have adopted an incremental approach to try to address and arrest the problem, and they are to be congratulated on that.

I concur with many of the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), among others. When we go into our village primary schools, we see the enthusiasm of the teachers, parents, governors and staff in general. We see their enthusiasm for education, but we know that they have been trying to do their work with one hand tied behind their back because they have been penalised for living and working in a rural area.

[Ms Buck]

There is great passion among the teachers in schools such as the Westminster Academy, which has one of the highest proportions of children on free school dinners anywhere in Britain, but that school stands to lose at least £250,000. How is that fair?

[Simon Hoare]

I took over from the hon. Lady as chairman of the governors of Wilberforce primary school many years ago, so I am familiar with the problems facing schools in her constituency, as well as those elsewhere. Perhaps I need to make the point to Opposition Members quite baldly that just because schools that have done very well under an unfair system start to see some rebalancing while the cake is being re-divided, that is not necessarily an argument for saying that there should be no change for those schools that have disproportionately enjoyed funding while those in rural areas have not.

[Rebecca Pow]

Does my hon. Friend agree that many of our rural schools in Somerset and Dorset have been doing so well with the funding they have had? This extra funding might enable them to put in place some of the things that they have not been able to have because there simply has not been enough money to go around.

[Simon Hoare]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Back in the summer, I convened a roundtable of all the headteachers and chairs of governors at my schools. They said that the key thing was the recruitment and retention of teachers, and that the heart of the problem was the inequity in funding and the lack of a formula that recognises rural sparsity and the additional costs that such schools face.

[Amanda Solloway (Derby North) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Simon Hoare]

I will not.

I declare an interest, because I have three young daughters at a village primary school in my constituency and—here is the plug—my wonderful wife is the chairman of its parents, teachers and friends association. The hard-working farmer Spencer Mogridge gets up at 3 o’clock or 4 o’clock in the morning to look after his livestock, but he still goes to the PTFA meeting at 7 o’clock in the evening to organise the school fun run—[Hon. Members: “Were you on the fun run?”] I was not on the fun run. I think the words “fun” and “run” should never be used in the same sentence; it is an oxymoron.

I see such keenness at all levels of the rural educational establishment. That is why people want a fairer funding model that addresses the imbalance, recognises needs, and ensures that the lifeblood of many of our rural communities, which I believe our rural schools are, can continue long into the future.

Sex and Relationship Education

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Monday 23rd January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Miller]

The hon. Lady makes an incredibly important point. We need consistency but, as I pointed out earlier, we do not have that at the moment. Placing provisions on a statutory footing would provide such consistency.

The internet has changed everyone’s lives. For some, it has normalised sexualised behaviours, which children can find it difficult to respond to. I see the Barnardo’s research as a cry for help. Parents have to take overall responsibility, but schools have a pivotal role to play in helping more children to understand what a good relationship is and to make better decisions.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

My right hon. Friend makes a cogent and compelling case. When we are discussing schools in this context, will she clarify that we are talking about not only local authority schools, but the growing academy sector? It is important that academies are included in such provisions.

[Mrs Miller]

I am sure that one of the many challenges for Ministers will be to ensure that every child can have the right sort of support and teaching. I do not underestimate the challenges that that will present, but I agree with the essence of what my hon. Friend says.

We can pretend that what we are talking about today does not affect children, or that parents have all the specialist knowledge that children need. Alternatively, we who are entrusted to shape our communities can do something different and act to clean up the internet, to support parents, and to give children the understanding that they need to make informed choices. Today’s debate is supported by leading charities including Barnardo’s, the Terrence Higgins Trust, the Children’s Society, the National Children’s Bureau and Plan International UK, as well as by the guides, the scouts and Liberty. They all want sex and relationship education to be compulsory. At the moment, schools are relying on guidance that was agreed more than a decade ago when the internet was still out of most children’s reach. They have failed to adapt to what children need, and it is little wonder that Ofsted recently judged 40% of schools to be inadequate in their teaching of SRE.

Who are we to ignore children calling for change? Children have only one chance of a childhood. We know the damage that is being done by cyber-bullying, sexting and the underage viewing of extreme pornography, and we have an obligation to act. I therefore have a question for the Minister, my friend from Hampshire: how will the Government respond to the seven in 10 children who want change? What are the Government doing, and when will that change happen?

Children and Social Work Bill [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting)

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Committee Debate: 5th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th January 2017 Public Bill Committees

The Secretary of State will be able to cancel duties in Acts of Parliament and subordinate legislation in a particular area simply because a local authority wants to test different ways of working. This would be to an amended version of the corporate parenting principles. The Committee will recall that the Government are refusing to bind local authorities to these principles; they only have to have regard to them. In short, the statutory purpose of legal exemptions and modifications is simply to test different ways of working to a set of non-binding principles: not better outcomes, not even the same outcomes, just a different way of working.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

I invite the hon. Lady, either now or later in her remarks, to set out what she has, in principle, against professional local authority officers and elected local councillors seeking to serve their communities to tailor services to meet local need and demand, compared with the man in Whitehall with the bowler hat and the umbrella, who seems, in her mindset, to know best. What has she got against the localism agenda in respect to tailored local solutions?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I will come on to that later in my comments. To clarify, I have nothing against local authorities knowing what is right for them and making decisions. [Interruption.] However, this is a slightly different case and if the hon. Gentleman keeps calm and listens, I will get to my point.

Another change concerns statutory requirements selected by the Government for special treatment. There are six sections of the Children Act 1989 and the Children Act 2004 and one part of one schedule to the Children Act 1989 that cannot be touched by this new power. I am sure I am not alone in wondering how the Minister came to select this list of core legal duties. Can he explain how he decided that the many remaining duties in the Children Act 1989 and the Children Act 2004 and their associated statutory instruments could, in principle, be disapplied? How did he decide that none of the children’s social service functions in any of the following Acts of Parliament are worth saving: the Children and Young Persons Act 1933, the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, the Mental Health Act 1983, the Housing Act 1996, the Adoption (Intercountry Aspects) Act 1999, the Adoption and Children Act 2002, the Mental Capacity Act 2005, the Children and Young Persons Act 2008, the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012, and the Care Act 2014?

Are we really being shown a glimpse of a brave new world where all that will be left of children’s social care legislation could be these six saved sections of two Acts of Parliament? I point the Committee to some of the frightening scenarios sent to us by Dr Ray Jones. We cannot say that we have not been warned how dangerous these new clauses are.

Children’s rights charity Article 39 has listed a number of statutory requirements that could be removed. These include—although this is not exhaustive—a local authority’s duty to provide accommodation to children it is looking after, assess the support needs of disabled children as they approach adulthood, allow children in its care to have reasonable contact with their parents and visit children it looks after. Is the Minister really convinced that none of these duties are fundamental to promoting and safeguarding the welfare of vulnerable children and young people? Why is there such resistance to undertaking a public consultation prior to the introduction of these clauses? Does the Minister not want to ensure that he and his Government have got this 100% right?

Let us also remember that part of this Bill will also be under threat of exemption once—and if—it receives Royal Assent. In fact, every single future children’s social services function that this House introduces will have a fragile and uncertain existence if we allow these new clauses to go ahead.

The Minister has written to the concerned parties, claiming these new clauses are about empowering the frontline. The frontline does not want these powers. The vast and varied range of organisations that have submitted evidence to the Committee want us to reject these new clauses. In fact, 47 organisations have come together specifically with the goal of opposing these new clauses.

The Government set out their stall on this radical new power in their strategy “Putting children first”, which was published in July last year, two months after the Bill appeared. It said that exemption trials would offer

“a controlled environment in which we could enable local authorities to test deregulatory approaches that are not currently possible, before taking a decision to make substantial changes to existing legislation that would apply across the board.”

Any proposed full repeal of legislation would have to come back to Parliament—I understand that—but for trials to have any credible and reliable influence on future legislation, they must be ethical and robust. Nagalro has correctly told us that if a local authority obtains an exemption, all the children in its jurisdiction will be subject to it whether they agree with it or not. They will have no individual say in the matter. What on earth does the Minister envisage happening if some children who do not agree come back to a future Government and claim that they were treated wrongly compared with those in neighbouring authorities?

In “Putting children first”, the chief social worker for children and families asserted:

“We must be enabled to use our professional judgment in flexible and creative ways, rather than having to follow a procedural path”

or a set of “legal rules.” The chief social worker avoiding having to follow legal rules is concerning and not a positive message for social workers or those considering joining the profession. Who would choose to work in a local authority that has fewer duties to vulnerable children and young people than its neighbouring councils?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank the Minister; I will get to what I am insinuating very soon.

Some local authorities are being placed in an impossible situation. If they do not back the Government, is it fair to assume that they will not receive funding—especially given that, last October, many of them received a rather threatening letter from the chief social worker stating that if they did not back the new clauses they could never again complain about bureaucracy and grandly suggesting that this was a once-in-a-lifetime chance for them all to do the right thing? If she is so certain that this policy is in the interests of young people and children, why has she not shared her thinking with the Committee? It is telling that the Committee has received no evidence from her.

The fact is that the Local Government Association is being placed under immense pressure to back the new clauses. Is it not the case that only a small number of local authorities, if any, back them? Can the Minister tell the Committee that the Secretary of State’s intervention powers will never be used to coerce local authorities into applying for exemptions?

My final comments concern the Minister being well aware that much of the anxiety about the new clauses comes from the fear that they pave the way for the privatisation of child protection services. Despite new clause 2(3), those fears legitimately remain. If the Government are so resoundingly against profit in child protection, why, in the explanatory memorandum attached to the 2014 regulations, do they advise companies that subsidiaries of profit-making companies are not banned from running such services?

The Deregulation Act 2015 now means that social work services to individual looked-after children and care leavers operating outside local authorities are no longer required to register with Ofsted. Add to that the LaingBuisson review, commissioned by the Department at the behest of the chief social worker and two others, which gives advice on how the market could flourish in children’s social work and says that independent providers are happy to play the long game on a journey to whole-system outsourcing.

Companies such as G4S, Serco and Virgin Care have all attended meetings with the Department to consider how they can play a role in delivering and shaping statutory children’s social care services. It is little wonder that very few trusted the motivation behind the original clauses or that fears persist that behind this power is an insatiable appetite for breaking up children’s social care. The Minister has tried to distance himself from this report for which his Department wrote the terms of reference and which it funded, yet refused to release for a considerable time. Perhaps it is waiting until the Bill has passed through both Houses.

If the Minister really means what he says about profit and child protection, he should be seeking to prohibit subsidiaries of profit-making companies from delivering social care functions. Getting legislation right in children’s social care is extremely important. Our legal duties are vital in protecting those most in need. We should always approach change in this area with great care and caution, to ensure that children and young people are not put in any jeopardy.

The new clauses have no place at all in the Bill. I implore hon. Members to reject them and to bring an end to the enormous fear and concern that have built up outside the walls of this place. The Minister has not fully responded to the comprehensive critique from the Lords, and there remains a gaping black hole as to which legislation the sector is crying out to be exempted from, and who on earth is crying out for the exemption.

The Government should withdraw the new clauses as a matter of honour and out of respect for the vulnerable children and young people who depend on the legal protections that Parliament has given them over decades. The Minister may then undertake some robust and meaningful consultation, and could return to the House later if he wished.

[Simon Hoare]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. We should be grateful to the hon. Member for South Shields for sharing with us her Momentum-commissioned essay; possibly the instruction was “Write an essay about what you think a wicked Tory Government might want to do with regard to children’s social services”—that is, without actually having seen any of the new clauses that the Minister has tabled.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I assure the Committee that I have read the new clauses, thank you very much.

[Simon Hoare]

It is an enormous shame that having read them the hon. Lady did not include them, or edit her speech having reflected on them. I am not entirely sure—[Interruption.]

[The Chair]

Order. The hon. Gentleman is speaking.

[Simon Hoare]

Thank you, Mrs Main. I have great respect for the hon. Member for South Shields, and it is with great respect that I say that I do not think she has read the clauses. She seemed to conjure up a picture in which the current rules and regulations are perfect and the best practice and statutory requirements set out for local authorities to follow are so beyond any form of change or improvement that there should be no scope for innovation. [Interruption.] I do not want to detain the Committee too long.

One might almost think that the cases of Baby P and Victoria Climbié, for example, had never taken place. I am in no way suggesting that the new clauses tabled by my hon. Friend the Minister will guarantee that such atrocities do not happen again, but there may well be benefits from the use of local professional expertise and from local authorities’ designing of innovative proposals for better care of vulnerable young people.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Simon Hoare]

I give way to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, who looks as if he may burst a blood vessel unless I do.

[Steve McCabe]

My blood vessels are in good shape, I am happy to say. Given the hon. Gentleman’s extensive understanding of the subject, would he care to say which specific item of legislation he would like local authorities to be exempted from at the moment, to advance innovation in child social work?

[Simon Hoare]

The hon. Gentleman has fallen into the trap of misreading or misconstruing, accidentally or otherwise, the purpose of the new clauses. We can all read them, but the Opposition Front Bencher has characterised—

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Simon Hoare]

No. The way the hon. Lady has characterised the proposals in her remarks is—I conjure up a scenario—that someone from some town or city hall knocks on the door of the Secretary of State and says, “I have a whizzy idea: we are going to do this,” and the Secretary of State says, “Oh, that sounds quite interesting—go ahead and do it,” in some secret smoke-filled-room deal.

Let us look at new clause 2: it talks about the purpose of helping to promote physical and mental health. Contrary to what the hon. Lady said, it is also about

“taking into account the views, wishes and feelings of children or young people”.

That is in subsection (1)(c). As to the idea that there is carte blanche for the private sector, I suggest that she look at subsection (3), which specifies a different set of criteria. The hon. Lady talked about six years as a de facto, but if she looks at the new clauses she will see that the period can be up to three years with one further three-year extension, which makes six years—not six years from the outset, as the hon. Lady said. The Secretary of State will also need to be persuaded of the need for an extension.

It is not only the Secretary of State. We are very lucky to have a Minister who, owing to his personal family experience, is recognised for his interest in and understanding of this subject. However, my hon. Friend will not always be the Minister in charge. The Bill is not couched or tabled in a way that purely relies on the bespoke integrity of my hon. Friend. New clause 6 clearly tells us of the new obligations on the Secretary of State. They

“must invite an expert panel to give advice about…the capability of the authority”,

because it is absolutely key that the authority should have the wherewithal, financial skills and so on to be able to deliver the innovation. That advice must also assess “the likely impact” and

“the adequacy of any measures that will be in place to monitor the impact”.

The idea that the hon. Lady did her best to present to the Committee as the root of her opposition to the new clauses—that finger in the air, pie in the sky, blue-sky thinking ideas would merely require the sign-off of a Secretary of State—is, I think, a gross distortion of what the new clauses intend. If the hon. Lady and her Opposition colleagues have no faith in the independent veracity of, for example, the Children’s Commissioner or the chief inspector of education, children’s services and skills, who are stipulated in new clause 6(2)(a) and (b) to provide advice to the Secretary of State, I think that is a poor state of affairs.

On the consultation, new clause 6(4) and (5) clearly state the timetable and the trigger for action that the Secretary of State must follow. I do not see the new clauses as a way for local authorities to duck out of their obligations. I served on a Local Government Association panel for several years, and I must tell the hon. Lady that the LGA is unbeatable and incoercible; if it thinks a Government of whatever stripe are doing something wrong, it will always tell the Government that that is the case.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

The fact is that local government is split on this issue; there is not a consensus. In relation to all of the times the hon. Gentleman refused to give way, he should go back and read Hansard; he has misquoted everything I have said and I look forward to his apology.

[Simon Hoare]

I will certainly be reading Hansard; I do not quite follow William Hague’s example of reading it under the bedclothes at 2 o’clock in the morning, but I shall look at what the hon. Lady said; if I have misconstrued her, I will of course apologise unreservedly. However, I took from what she said and how she presented her arguments that this will give carte blanche to a Secretary of State, in cahoots with a chief executive or a head of children’s services in a local authority, to find a way to deliver below-the-radar financial savings and to deliver some sort of third or fourth-rate children’s protection, and that there is a whole cadre of local authority professionals who are desperate to be freed from the shackles of statute, regulation and guidance.

I was not quite sure what the hon. Lady was moving us towards in her thinking—whether those people will turn around and say, “Gosh, we are now free of all of that, we are saving ourselves a huge amount of money; we can sit around and have a cup of tea and a biscuit and talk about things in a rather ideological or theoretical way”, or whether they are going to pilot things that are so conspicuously dangerous and ill-advised for young people that there would be an enormous rise in the amount of terrible cases. That is the impression with which the hon. Lady left me and, I suggest, other Government Committee members.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

rose—

[Simon Hoare]

I give way to the hon. Member for—

[Kate Green]

Stretford and Urmston.

[Simon Hoare]

I was going to say “Stratford”.

[Kate Green]

It is not quite the same. What concerns me is that as a result of these proposals we will see the risk that currently good joint working across agencies may become fragmented. That particularly troubles me in relation to children within the ambit of the criminal justice system, who are very under-addressed in this legislation. The hon. Gentleman has just said that, as a local councillor himself, he thought that there were really good opportunities to work with officers to devise good quality, flexible local solutions. Can he give me an example of that kind of achievement in the local authority of which he is a member—or indeed any other local authority?

[Simon Hoare]

I certainly defer to the hon. Lady, who has a wealth of experience in this area, far greater and wider than I have. I will leave the point she makes about young people in the criminal justice system for the Minister to comment on, because I am not entirely sure about that. I think it is best to say that.

On the opportunity for joint working, if the hon. Lady looks at local government she will see shared services and joint chief executives and joint directors of this, that and the other, and councils coming together in order to safeguard frontline services, often across geographical boundaries. I was a councillor in Oxfordshire, where we hooked up with three councils in Gloucestershire to do all sorts of things.

The order of general competence contained in the 2011 Localism Act allows for that to continue and flourish, where there is joined-up working between local authorities and statutory partners and others, under these new clauses. All it will mean is a discussion between two, three or four parties to see if they want to buy into an innovative idea which they will then take to the Secretary of State.

To conclude, I think the new clauses are absolutely right. The tone and the tenor of the debate in the other place was a gross distortion of what the Government wish to do. That was certainly echoed in the remarks of my noble friend Lord True, leader of Richmond Council. Chris Wright, the Chief Executive of Catch22 said:

“Rather than restricting social workers to box ticking”—

that is not saying we are taking away all the boxes, there will still be boxes to tick, of course—

“we should give them the power to build interventions based upon their professional expertise”.

This clause moves us closer to the goal of more human services that work for children and their families. The phrase “human services” certainly struck a chord with me. These new clauses should be supported. The argument deployed by the hon. Lady should be resisted most strongly.

[Steve McCabe]

I agree with the Minister in welcoming innovation in our approach to children’s services. It is something he and I have in common. We both have a history of working with children in this area, and I welcome measures designed to free up social workers to do better for children.

When a Government embark on a radical change of this nature, we normally have some kind of preparation for that change. There might be a Green Paper or a White Paper, or extensive consultation to allow us to shape what will happen. What seems to be happening—I do not know whether this is what the Minister intends—is that we are legislating without any real sense of what the pilots are designed to do and without any real description of them. In fact, the Bill does not refer to pilots at all, and for all anyone knows, they could be an exercise in exempting local authorities from long-standing primary legislation.

I accept that the notion of pilots exists in the Minister’s mind and that that is his intention, but it is not clear from what we are debating or from what we are being asked to vote on, and will not be the result of the legislative changes. I do not want to restrict or inhibit any effort at innovation, but it would be useful if he could give the Committee an explanation of why he is departing so radically from the normal approach to these changes in the way he has decided to proceed.

I have some specific questions about what will happen. We debated the three-year limit with the potential extension of a further three years, but what will happen at the end of six years? Let us suppose that a pilot is an outstanding success. Will the Minister then legislate for the change to be applied across the entire country, or will the exemption simply lapse at the end of that period? As the hon. Member for North Dorset reminded us, the Minister might not be in post forever. Let us suppose there is a change. What will happen to the policy then?

Children and Social Work Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Committee Debate: 6th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 10th January 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Edward Timpson]

Of course I respect all the views expressed about the Government’s view on any policy. I am not somebody who will not listen; in fact, I dare suggest that I have a good track record of listening to those who have views on matters that fall within my portfolio. The truth is that no legislation under her party’s Government or this one has ever passed where people have expressed only one side of the argument. Can the hon. Lady tell me any different?

It is my job to listen to both sides of the argument but to come to a considered and informed view as a decision-maker in a position of responsibility to make legislation. I have already alluded to the many representations I have had that I cannot ignore, from the likes of the Local Government Association and the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. I also mention the support from the Children’s Commissioner for the new clause, which I did not mention before. There is a balance to be struck. I accept that this is not an uncontroversial piece of legislation. It has provoked strong views, but is one on which, on balance, I think we have come to the right conclusion.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

Unless I am misreading new clause 2 and onwards, it would provide a power to enable local authorities to explore an innovative way of working: there is no compulsion. If they decide not to do that—if they do not want to do innovative, blue-sky work or whatever we wish to call it—there is no obligation for them so to do. It is an enabling power; it is not an enforcing power.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I want to pick up the point that the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle made about teachers’ confidence in dealing with this subject. As my hon. Friend has explained, in embedding in the inspection regime an expectation that safeguarding standards are part of the way in which the curriculum is delivered, we create a need to ensure that teachers are properly equipped to teach that curriculum. That will have an effect on what is taught in teacher training colleges and on teaching practice. It will have an effect on the way in which schools organise, manage, support, mentor and develop their staff and on the way in which staff time is allocated, to ensure that teachers are able to teach the subject properly.

From talking to teachers, I do not think that their worry about this subject is so much about whether or not they have time to do it—they think it is important and want to make the time—as about a fear that they do not know how to do it. It requires proper attention to equip and educate them to deliver top-quality teaching.

We know that quality is an issue. My hon. Friend pointed out that one in seven children are receiving no sex and relationships education at all. Of those children who are receiving such education, half told the Terrence Higgins Trust in research it carried out that the teaching they received was poor or even terrible. There is little point in offering a poor or terrible education to our children. We have to raise the quality. That is not an excuse for doing nothing. It is an excuse for embedding firmly an expectation and an obligation on schools, along with an inspection regime to ensure that they meet it.

I am troubled that despite all the social progress we have made in my adult lifetime, and particularly the immense progress in relation to equality between women and men, young people’s attitudes to relationships between the sexes remain primitive in so many ways. We have seen shocking research in recent years, which has shown that young men and young women—teenagers—believe it is acceptable, for example, for a boy to hit his girlfriend if he sees her talking to another bloke or for a man to expect the woman in a partnership to put food on the table when he wants it.

The fact that those attitudes should still be pervasive among young people shows that there is a very real need to educate them in relation to not only in the biology of sexual relationships, as my hon. Friend said, but on the much broader dimensions of respect and equality. We have delivered those things in so many other ways—in legislation and social practice—but they need to be underpinned in our education system.

I want to conclude by saying, on my behalf if not on behalf of my hon. Friends, that if the Minister thinks the new clause is deficient, I insist he introduces something else as a matter of urgency. We would be happy to consider that. As my hon. Friend said, time is running out. If such a proposal is not available in Committee or on Report, there is no further chance to achieve the intention that is constantly expressed in this House and which is the will of the House and the wider public: to do so much better than we do now. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say. Without strong assurances that things will now change, I am pleased to support my hon. Friend’s new clause.

[Simon Hoare]

I am the father of three young daughters of eight, six and four. The moment I am dreading is when they start asking what we used to call “those questions”. I am rather hoping my wife will be on hand. I am sure she will then promise to give me some sex education after she has dealt with the children.

This is such a complex and complicated issue, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow set out. I rise to make a few remarks against the backdrop of having attended a faith school and as a practising Roman Catholic. My wife is a member of the Church of England, but my children are Catholics. I very much support what lies behind the hon. Lady’s new clause. I see nothing contradictory in being a practising Christian and wanting to ensure our next generation is equipped with as much resource and education as possible for the challenges that face modern youth—challenges that I, as a 47-year-old, could never have envisaged when I was 14, 15 or 16.

I remember the acute embarrassment—teenagers like to do this to their teachers—when we had a spinster nonconformist Methodist biology teacher in a Catholic state school who was asked by a friend of mine during this biology lesson—one where we had those pictures that were never quite clear anatomically—“Miss, what does a man do if he wants to have sex, but they do not want to have a child?” He knew full well what the Catholic teaching was on artificial contraception, but it threw this nonconformist spinster into an absolute tailspin and her answer was, “I think you should go to talk to the school chaplain”—she did not know how to answer. So it is as much about educating the educators as it is educating those who need the information.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow has been in this place longer than I, and I am reluctant to give her any advice about it—the new clause, that is, not anything else—[Laughter.] Before my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent chips in with anything slightly “Carry On Laughing” or whatever, I think there are some omissions between 2 (a) and (e). For example, it is important to have something about transgender. Likewise, while the hon. Lady said at the start of her remarks that this was not solely about digital, given its huge impact on perception, the curriculum should include an element on digital and the internet.

We have all bandied statistics around, but I remember reading that today most teenage boys that have accessed pornographic websites, just out of interest and teenage curiosity, actually believe that most women do not have pubic hair. That is a direct bit of education from the internet that affects the mindset and changes how we think about ourselves and our potential partners in a relationship.

I also notice—and it slightly belies what has actually been support from my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle and I hope, certainly in theory, from the Minister—that the new clause is tabled solely in the name of Labour Members of Parliament who all happen to be women. This is an issue that should command cross-party support and certainly representation from both sexes. A father, a husband and a boyfriend have as much interest in ensuring a high quality of PSHE as women do. The hon. Member for Walthamstow might want to think about that point, which is why I hope that she will not press this new clause to a vote today but instead think about some proactive cross-party working on Report. That is not to kick the issue into the long grass; it would just help to create a better base.

Some wording—some form of protection—is needed for those who run faith schools, all faiths, to make the position absolutely clear. I have little or no doubt that I will receive emails from constituents who happen to read my remarks. They will say that this is all about promotion, and this or that religion thinks that homosexuality—or another element—is not right. So to provide a legislative comfort blanket, for want of a better phrase, the new clause needs to include a clear statement that we are talking not about promotion, but about education, and where sex education is delivered in a faith school environment, those providing the education should not feel inhibited about answering questions such as “What is the thinking of our faith on this particular aspect of sexuality?”

[Stella Creasy]

The hon. Gentleman has touched on an incredibly sensitive issue. I do not want to misinterpret his remarks, but he should be aware that many of us are concerned about children who are same-sex attracted in faith schools. One of the things that is important about getting this right is making sure that every school is acknowledging those children. Can he just clarify what he means by inhibition?

We did try to work in a cross-party way on this, and I continue to do so—and cross-gender, as well. I agree with him that this is not an issue for women; it is an issue for all of us. We are where we are with the new clause, but it would be helpful if the hon. Gentleman could spell out what he is talking about. Specifying religious inclusiveness and recognition of different religious perspectives is not the same as allowing a religious perspective to inhibit what we might teach young people. We need to give every young person, whether they have relationships with the same sex or different sex, the right education and support to have healthy relationships and to feel good about themselves as well.

[Simon Hoare]

I take the hon. Lady’s point but I think we are looking through different ends of the same telescope. I do not think it would be sensible, or maximise the benefit of the thrust of the new clause, if faith schools were able to say “This aspect of human sexuality is contrary to”—I use that term in its broadest sense—“our religious doctrine, and we will not teach it.” The point I am making is that it should be taught because it is part of human nature—people are born straight or gay, or whatever phraseology one cares to use—but the school would not be in breach of any regulation or legislation to say to the class “We are a Muslim”—or Catholic, Jewish or Methodist—“school: this happens in human life, but the religious teaching of our majority faith in this classroom is that we don’t promote it”, or “That is not what we think.”

That is in part why this sort of debate is not best suited to the Committee. These discussions should take place across the genders and across the parties in preparation for Report. I am conscious that in trying to answer a legitimate point, fairly raised by the hon. Lady, I may have used terms that a 47-year-old white Catholic would use, which some people might find slightly old-fashioned and out of date, or perhaps not as politically correct as they should be. The thrust of what the hon. Lady is talking about is absolutely right, and germane to the whole of the Bill. However, if we are to command support from the religious as much as the secular, the sensitivities and anxieties that people often jump to—“This is all about promotion and trying to convince children at six that they should be gay, and if they are not there is something wrong with them, etc.”—need to be clearly and sensitively identified, so that those particular hares do not start running.

That is why I urge the hon. Lady, if she and her colleagues are serious about the new clause getting a fair crack of the whip, not to press it to a vote this afternoon but to work in a cross-party way to see what can be achieved, hopefully with the support of the Minister—we shall listen with interest to his remarks in a moment—on Report.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

It is a pleasure to speak in support of the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, which would ensure that all local authorities would provide accurate, age-appropriate personal, social and health education, including age-appropriate sex and relationship education. I believe that we speak for most of the hon. Members in the Committee Room, and in the House more broadly, in saying that steps in such a direction are necessary and important to ensure that children can stay safe, happy and healthy in the 21st century. The current guidance in the area, as my hon. Friends have said, is out of date, and therefore woefully unable to address the challenges and possible dangers they outlined. The education system must respond to change in society to provide young people with the skills and knowledge they need to be safe. While guidance in PSHE and particularly in sex and relationships education is not able to do that, the dangers are clear, as is the case for acting.

I welcome the fact that the Minister and the Education Secretary seem to be coming round to the cross-party consensus on the issue, with suggestions in the media that the Education Secretary is planning a change of policy in that area. The issue is not about politics or partisan point scoring, but about protecting the best interests and the health of children. I am sure all Members in this room will agree that that must be one of our highest priorities.

The Bill offers an ideal opportunity for the Government to make the changes in our education system that are so badly needed. I hope the Minister will support the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow.