St George’s Day and St David’s Day Bill

Thérèse Coffey Excerpts

Friday 13th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised if I disagree with him on that point.

This April obviously included an extra bank holiday, and retail sales increased by 5.2% as shoppers took advantage of the additional holiday.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend have similar data for Wales on 1 March?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I do not, but I am happy to source more data for Wales. However, I would not be surprised if something similar happened throughout the country, as when people have an additional day off, they use it to visit retail outlets.

The other beneficiaries would be our local pubs and great British breweries, especially the micro-breweries, which would undoubtedly attract many who wish to toast St George, and in Wales, St David, just as many already toast St Patrick and St Andrew. With the creation of special events building on those that already occur throughout the country, our leisure and tourism industries would also do very well.

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[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I rise to make a short contribution to the debate. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) for bringing the debate to the House. I am sure that the campaign he is spearheading is very popular, if not populist. However, I have some slight concerns about the international comparisons that have been made. The reality is that across most of continental Europe, bank holidays, which are normally associated with particular feast days or national events, are not transferred to the following Monday or previous Friday when they fall on the weekend. For example, if Christmas day falls on a Saturday, in Germany that is it and they do not get the following Monday off. That happens in most continental European countries, if not all. My hon. Friend alluded to America, and I appreciate that they tend to take shorter holidays in the summer, with 10 days' statutory entitlement being quite normal.

I applaud my hon. Friend’s patriotic stand in seeking to ensure that we have holidays that celebrate our country, but I would like him to consider the point made by the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin), which I agree with, that people do not require a holiday to be able to celebrate our wonderful country, as happens in our civic parade in Saxmundham and in similar events elsewhere in Suffolk Coastal.

In reference to the point my hon. Friend the Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris) has just made on how the Government are considering other bank holidays, I see that as a really important contribution to establishing why we need 1 May to be a bank holiday—I know that that may be controversial on the Opposition Benches. Why not choose a day of national celebration? It could be the Queen’s birthday or, as my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher) suggested, Trafalgar day.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I applaud my hon. Friend for thinking through some of the issues surrounding the Bill, but does she agree that, whichever day we settle on, it should be one that the nation supports as the right day to celebrate?

[Dr Coffey]

That is a fair point, and there is no more popular day than a day celebrating one’s country, although, with reference to what was aid by my hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr Chope), who is no longer in his place, I am conscious that we have always to support the United Kingdom. We have had the royal wedding day, and with the diamond jubilee next year I think that such moments of unity may be more appropriate dates on which to build.

[Henry Smith]

My hon. Friend mentioned public holidays in the United States earlier, and until not that long ago some states celebrated some public holidays and other states did not; Martin Luther King day is the most relevant example. We could have national and sub-national holidays in this country. They could work quite well, and I see no problem with having a Trafalgar day, a St George’s day, a St David’s day, a St Andrew’s day, a St Patrick’s day and so on. That works in other countries with subdivisions.

[Dr Coffey]

My hon. Friend makes a valid point. In Scotland they have not only new year’s day off, but 2 January. Perhaps they have such a good time at Hogmanay that they need two days to recover; I do not know the convention around that. Of course, it was not until fairly recently—perhaps within our lifetime, my hon. Friend may note—that Christmas day became a day off in Scotland, so I fully accept that different countries within the United Kingdom might have different traditions that they wish to modify.

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

In Scotland, apart from the obvious public holidays such as Christmas day that appear on fixed dates, many public holidays are local holidays. Different local authorities will choose different days for their spring or autumn holidays, so the system works perfectly well not just within a whole nation, but locally. Will the hon. Lady be clear about May day, however? I was concerned that she was suggesting that the May holiday should not continue, and I hope she was not, because if that approach were to be associated with introducing St George’s day and St David’s day, it would destroy the otherwise bipartisan approach to the debate. I am sure that the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), who has introduced the Bill, would not want that either.

[Dr Coffey]

I am not trying in any way to associate that idea with the Bill; I am trying to suggest that the Government should take some time to think about the public holidays that affect each individual nation and the United Kingdom as a whole, and to decide whether they are well spaced out, whether there is a concentration around a particular time of year and whether we could do with moving some—be they 1 May, 30 May, the one in August or similar—to different points of the year. It is a long stretch from 31 August right through to Christmas day, especially when we have so many holidays granted to us earlier in the year.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon commented on economic activity, and I should like to see more understanding of that issue. I will not oppose the Bill, because it merits further debate, but I look forward to the Government’s comments, particularly given that some of my local business people have said, “Another bank holiday means another day that I have to pay someone who may not be generating value for my business.” That might seem a bit miserly, but it is not intended to be. That is the reality, and we need to ensure that we are as productive as we can be. We should fly our flags with pride on St George’s day, 1 March, 30 November and 17 March, but we must ensure that we do not put ourselves at a disadvantage compared with our international competitors, and not just those within the European Union.

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[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

I, too, congratulate the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) on moving the Second Reading of his Bill, and on making so many pertinent points.

Many great and some not so great men and women have attempted to define the English identity. I will not compete with them by trying to weave tea, Shakespeare, queuing and tabloids into a national narrative. I am even less well qualified to pontificate on the essence of Welshness.

The Labour party strongly supports the celebration of the English and Welsh national identities. We are proud that we helped to reclaim the cross of St George from the British National party. I think it is true to say that when we now see it flying on our streets, all English hearts can swell with pride, rather than fear racist insults. The Welsh have been ahead of the English in maintaining a strong focus on and pride in their national symbols: the flag of St David, the daffodil and their national dress.

Many St George’s day celebrations are held in my constituency of Newcastle upon Tyne Central. Kids of all ethnic backgrounds delight in recreating St George’s feats of heroism, to which the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon referred. I tried to emulate St George’s courage and skill by competing in the egg and pan race at the Villa Victoria’s St George’s fun day in the Westgate area of Newcastle. I am afraid that I was not worthy of his memory, but I will have another opportunity next year to carry off the golden frying pan.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

Perhaps the hon. Lady would have more joy if she participated in “Dragons’ Den”.

[Chi Onwurah]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention. I will consider that in the run-up to next year’s event.

The royal wedding in April was a huge celebration of national identity. A million people came to London to celebrate with good humour and great pride, and all over the country people gathered in pubs, parks, streets and halls to watch. Even republicans managed to enjoy it in their own way and with good grace. We hope that the Government are already putting in place measures to ensure that the Queen’s diamond jubilee next year is as “amazing” as the wedding, as Her Majesty is reported to have characterised it.

The Opposition do not oppose Second Reading and look forward to seeing the Bill in Committee, but a number of important issues have to be considered before we will support it. The hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon considered the economic impact, and we are aware of the Government estimate that an additional national bank holiday would cost £2.9 billion. That would have clear implications for business, trade unions and other stakeholders.

There are issues besides costs for the Committee to examine. For example, we must make fair international comparisons. As the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) said, I am not sure it is fair to claim that we have significantly fewer holidays than others, because in France, for example, if May day falls on a Saturday or Sunday there is no day off in lieu. With our strong sense of fairness, we ensure that a bank holiday is always a working day. Taking that into account, I believe that, on average, other European countries have only a slightly larger number of bank holidays. The French Government are reportedly considering reducing the number of public holidays. The hon. Lady pointed out that the US has more, but the trade-off is that far less holiday time is provided for businesses and workers.

There is a further concern that is the subject of daily and hourly discussion throughout these isles—the weather. As my hon. Friend the Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) said, an April bank holiday has little chance of coinciding with an English heat wave—nor, I am told, is March the best time to showcase Welsh sunshine. As a nation, we are working harder over longer hours, in more stressful conditions, so should we not have a decent chance of decent weather on a day off?

Furthermore, some might question the principle of telling hard-working men and women what they should do with their time off. It does not sound very English, does it? Unlike the French, the English have no need of an académie to celebrate the language of Shakespeare. Some might question whether a bank holiday is necessary to strengthen the homeland of Churchill, Brunel, Boadicea and St Cuthbert, to name but a few, or for that matter the home of Owain Glyndwr and the Eisteddfod.

As has been mentioned, however, a poll conducted for St David’s day 2006 found that 87% of people in Wales wanted it to be a bank holiday, with 65% being prepared to sacrifice a different bank holiday. The hon. Member for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Jonathan Edwards) referred to the strong support in Wales for a St David’s day bank holiday. We therefore believe that there is strong evidence of popular interest in making St David’s day and St George’s day bank holidays, and that it is worth while examining in more detail how the matter can be taken forward. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is in pre-consultation on the May day bank holiday, and as a result we hope to learn more about British attitudes to bank holidays. We hope, though, that we will not lose our May day bank holiday.

We believe that we should celebrate our national identity, and unlike the Government we believe in promoting strong local, regional—we have not yet banned the R-word—and national identities. We look forward to discussions in Committee to see whether the Bill is the best way of doing so.

Education Performance

Thérèse Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship for what I think is the first time, Mr Rosindell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) on securing the debate. I was delighted to support her in securing it, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating the time.

I will start with a quote that might ruffle your feathers, Mr Rosindell: “Education, education, education.” Perhaps that is the one thing on which I agreed with the former Prime Minister, Mr Blair—how important education is in our country. It is very important that we give our youngsters the best chance in life, to allow them to cast their net further and wider, so that they can reap a rich catch in life and become big fish in a big pond, not minnows in shark-infested waters.

Education performance matters for our country at different levels. At macro level, it is about preparing people to be innovative, and making them ready for business and work—ready to be our future doctors, nurses and teachers. It is about creating people who are flexible and skilled—people who will do the everyday jobs, as well as the ones that involve scanning the world for new wealth to come to this country. At micro level, it is about having people who are cultured and enlightened, and having a social country in which we live at peace with one another in a culture of respect and tolerance. At individual level, there is no question but that education is the passport to a bigger choice in life and to social mobility, that magic phrase that we often hear now. For me, nothing else fits the bill as well as education.

Educational performance is about preparing not only for university, but for life. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk said that there is a risk of imbalance between vocational and academic choices. Trying to say that one degree is worth the same as, or a similar amount to, another perhaps suggests that not going to university means that one has failed in life. Far from it; we need people to develop all their talents in whatever way they can.

I genuinely believe that every child has talents that can be nurtured through school and later in life, but every child needs a good foundation in reading, writing and mathematics to allow them to succeed. There is no one more disadvantaged than the voter I met in the streets of my constituency the other day, who said that he could not read. He had struggled all his life to find work that did not involve him using his hands. I am not saying that he did not have a valuable skill, but how much more he could have achieved! For instance, he could have set up his own business or something similar. Frankly, even Wayne Rooney and David Beckham need a good educational foundation if they are not to be reliant solely on their lawyers and accountants and are to get the best out of them; they need to be conscious of that.

I will not rattle off a lot of statistics. My hon. Friend has already given us some good evidence, and I know that others are prepared to do so. Instead, I shall take the House on a bit of a personal journey. I do not pretend that my educational history is typical. I did my first O-levels when I was 13; I then did some A-levels and finished my schooling in the constituency of the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg). I went to university and then changed universities; I effectively stopped attending one and moved to another because I could not cope with the way of learning at the first. I then went on to do a PhD. I do not pretend that that is typical, but during that journey I found out that, in a way, standards have changed, and that is unfair on those who are slightly younger than me. That leads me on to the challenges that the country is struggling with 20 years later. I know of them as a result of my science education.

I am old enough to have taken O-levels; I took them a bit early in 1986. When I went on to do A-levels, I happened for whatever reason to do physics for a year. I was working with students from the lower and upper sixth forms, doing a combined kind of crash course. When I was with one group—I should keep up to date; we now call them year 12 students—I was often told, “Oh, Thérèse, you’ll have to do an extra half hour because year 12 does not need to learn that any more, but you can add that topic during your extra learning out of class.” That happened quite regularly throughout my physics A-level studies.

Some might argue that I took a harder A-level, but that is not strictly fair. I genuinely believe that the year-on-year debate about A-levels, O-levels or GCSEs not being as difficult as they used to be gives rise to a false argument about standards. I do not want to make this into a generational slanging match. I would not say that those studying physics 20 years ago were any brighter than the youngsters doing it today, but the opportunity to stretch the learning, to stretch the imagination, may now be constricted. The differentiation, with more children getting A and A* grades, is the result of youngsters today having to learn a lot less. Frankly, if children now have to learn their times tables only up to three, when before they had to learn them up to 12, it does not surprise me that more children now get their sums right.

[Mr Mark Field]

I am sorry to interrupt my hon. Friend’s journey. As she is a Liverpudlian, it must have been a magical mystery tour. Although I agree with much of what she says, I am not sure that she is correct about the exam system. There has been an utter debasing of the results system over the past 20 years in GCSE and O and A-level exams. The results are now largely discredited, and there needs to be an urgent rethink. As my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss) said, someone who got a grade E in an A-level exam only a decade and a half ago could now receive a mark as high as grade B. That does not allow great confidence in the system. There has been a debasing of the system, and we need to consider it afresh.

[Dr Coffey]

I fully accept what my hon. Friend says, but I am trying not to turn this into an inter-generational slanging match. There is nothing worse than getting these wonderful results in August and then, all of a sudden and from whatever quarter—not from politicians but from others—people say, “Oh well, standards are getting lower.” I imagine that that is really hurtful to those receiving their results because, frankly, they are doing the best they can with the course and the exams that are set. It is not their fault, and I agree with my hon. Friend that we need to challenge the education establishment and the Government.

That brings me to another part of my speech. We should not be ashamed to challenge the education establishment, and even ask it to pause and reflect, in order to improve educational standards and performance. The Government are already doing that with elements of the English baccalaureate. We saw it also with the acceleration of academies under the previous Government. I note that academies have longer school days, and that they build other activities into their school day; school is no longer a half-past 8 to 3 o’clock existence, with pupils then being sent out. Academies allow a much wider existence; they are building an education for the entire person, not just slotting pupils into classes. I accept what my hon. Friend said, but I do not want to attack the young people or teachers of today, because they are already in the system. It is our role to challenge it and to get it changed.

Stepping back a little further, I am sure that many Members who went to university did three-year degree courses. I did my BSc in three years. Just as I was finishing my PhD, I saw that many universities were starting to move to four-year courses, and that is now almost the standard; the degree is now called MSci. Although not many universities will say so, the reason for the change is that when students had finished their A-levels, they did not have enough of the curriculum to grab the university course in year one. It is not that they were doing a remedial year, but they needed a foundation year at university. They could then continue. Some courses were perhaps not really four years; they were three and a half years with an extended research project to make up the time. As a consequence, students now spend four years at university, and with fees going up, that means more money being spent on university courses.

It would be honest to ask whether A-levels are at the right standard for entry to university, so that we ensure that we do not leave the universities with the challenge of making up the gap. The Russell group universities have done a great service to schools and teachers—and, most importantly, students and parents—with their brochure “Informed Choices”, in which they give a list of subjects. The facilitating subjects are maths, English, physics, biology, chemistry, geography, history and languages, classic and modern. The Russell group believes that those building blocks allow students to go on to do almost any subject. I accept that those who want to do a degree in art need to study art, and that it would probably help those who want to do music if they have studied a bit of music on the way, but for most degrees, it almost does not matter what subjects have been taken at A-level; students simply need the ability to think and to analyse, as suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

I am not sure whether my hon. Friend was in the Chamber yesterday when the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) said that he had no idea where the subjects that made up the English baccalaureate could possibly have come from. Would the list from the Russell group university be a suitable response?

[Dr Coffey]

My hon. Friend is right. I hope that the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) has read the brochure; I shall be sure to send him a copy. I do not doubt that some of the softer subjects mentioned, such as media, photography and business studies, are popular. I see them when I visit sixth forms in my constituency, and I accept that they are valid A-levels. I do not decry them, but we need to get the message across to students that such subjects will not necessarily lead them to the wider choice of career and life to which they may aspire. It may take them down a narrow career path, and they should be fully aware of that.

[Kevin Brennan]

Given what the hon. Lady has said, does she think that I wasted 10 years of my life teaching A-level economics?

[Dr Coffey]

I would not say that the hon. Gentleman had wasted any of his life, although if he had had the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) as a pupil, we might be in a better place today. However, I studied a bit of economics at university, and I can assure hon. Members that I did not do A-level economics beforehand. As to whether someone teaching business studies at school will have ever run a business, I do not know, but that may well be a possibility with Teach First and Teach Next.

[Elizabeth Truss]

When I speak to economics academics at university, it is interesting that they often say that they would rather that people did mathematics than economics as a precursor to the subject. There is a question about what level we are studying subjects at, and that is particularly true of law. One thing that economics—

[Andrew Rosindell (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind the hon. Lady that she should make brief interventions rather than a second speech.

[Dr Coffey]

My hon. Friend was perhaps going on to say that we should never forget mathematics as one of the core subjects.

[Kevin Brennan]

In defence of economics, I should say that it is a rigorous academic subject, and mathematics is an extremely important skill to bring to the study of it. However, when a subject is left out of prescriptive lists such as the one the hon. Lady mentioned, we can understand why that can be insulting to some people—not to me, but to those who study it.

[Dr Coffey]

I understand that point. The hon. Gentleman will know the famous joke that there are different kinds of economists: ones who can count and ones who cannot. However, I think the Russell group is trying to help students and parents in choosing options. That can be early in someone’s life—we have talked about children aged 11, and some people have talked about even younger children. If people are not careful, they can narrow their choices later in life, which would be a shame. The Russell group is doing people a good service by making sure that they fully understand the choices they make. We are talking not about people making poor choices, but about people deciding not to do certain subjects in the full, conscious knowledge that that will restrict them later in life.

The hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) mentioned selection. I am not suggesting that we return to selection, but I do praise efforts to differentiate and to ensure that people reach their full potential. One school I attended was a grammar school; it was not a particularly flash grammar school, but it produced Lord Birt, Roger McGough and Brendan Barber, who have all gone on to do extremely well in their chosen fields.

The Government have an opportunity to put the United Kingdom—particularly England and Wales—back at the top of the class. We need an A* and we need “education, education, education” to be the Government’s mantra. I am confident that we can carry on this journey, but I hope that we will accelerate and that the three R’s will no longer be a dirty word, but the founding blocks of a successful education.

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[Kevin Brennan]

Just the Minister and the hon. Member for East Hampshire. [Interruption.] I see there are a few other late developers. Since I asked that question, it is only fair to say that I did not pass the first time round, and I admit to the hon. Member for Wells that I had to do the dreaded resit. We should be careful about banning resits; the Secretary of State would not be able to drive had he not been able to resit his driving test on several occasions. The hon. Lady should be careful what she recommends.

Let us move to the substance of my remarks. The context for this debate was reflected in the e-mail sent out by the hon. Member for South West Norfolk, and concerns the way that the Secretary of State has used data from international surveys as the evidence base for his reforms. We have debated some of those reforms elsewhere—the Minister and I were recently on a Public Bill Committee and I know he is sick of the sight of me.

Part of the context for this interesting debate was provided by the Secretary of State in the White Paper and concerns international evidence. Quite frankly, I thought that all hon. Members present today made a better effort than the Secretary of State to put that evidence into some sort of context, which is why it has been a better debate. When the Secretary of State speaks about our educational performance in international comparisons, he quotes only from the PISA survey. He did not turn up for the Education Bill’s Third Reading, but on Second Reading he stated:

“We moved from fourth to 14th in the world rankings for science, seventh to 17th in literacy and eighth to 24th in mathematics by 2007.”—[Official Report, 8 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 167.]

It is, however, misleading to quote out of context the UK’s raw rankings in figures from the PISA survey between 2000 and 2009 because, as other hon. Members have pointed out, the number of countries that take part in the PISA survey dramatically increased over that period. I am sure that if a survey took place in Norfolk, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk would be found to be the best MP in Norfolk—there is probably no question about that and since there are no Labour MPs in that area, I can say it with safety. If that survey were extended to the whole of the UK, and for the sake of argument, the hon. Lady finished in 11th place—this is purely hypothetical; I am sure she would still finish first—that would not mean that she had become a worse MP, but simply that there was more evidence and more MPs included in the survey. That is exactly what happened with the PISA survey—over time, there has been a huge expansion in the number of countries that participate. Furthermore, the OECD has stated that it is not statistically valid to make the comparisons over time on which the Secretary of State has relied, because there was no statistically valid sample from this country in the first place.

There is no consensus among statisticians and educationalists that the PISA survey can be relied on, let alone treated as a sort of religious text in the way it is by the Secretary of State—I must be careful because the hon. Member for South West Norfolk is an expert in this area. The Secretary of State likes to say that Andreas Schleicher, who compiles the PISA tables, is the most important man in our education system, but if he wants to base his policy on evidence he should consider all opinions, not just that of one person.

The PISA statistics will be examined in the months and years ahead, but I warn the Secretary of State not to rely too heavily on them. A Danish academic, Professor Svend Kreiner, is preparing a paper that will soon be published. He says that the PISA survey does not compare like with like across all countries, and is not therefore an objective performance benchmark. In this country, Professor Stephen Heppell has long contested the accuracy and usefulness of the PISA results, and his website cites research into PISA’s methodology. Professor Alan Smithers doubts its ability to compare like with like. S. J. Prais of the National Institute of Economic and Social Research in London has previously used the example of England’s results to demonstrate serious flaws in the response rates and sampling of Pisa, which necessarily lead to biased results.

Gjert Langfeldt of Agder university questions the validity and reliability claims made by PISA, pointing to

“constructional constraints, methodological mishaps and the cultural bias embedded in the PISA design”.

Svein Sjøberg at the university of Oslo analysed PISA items and found that some involved confusing and erroneous material. For example, he observed that the title of an article about cloning, “A Copying Machine for Living Beings”, was translated literally word for word into Norwegian, rendering the title totally incomprehensible. The questions are supposed to be culturally neutral.

I could go on, but the point that I am making is that it is not accepted universally or even in a widespread way among academics and educationists that PISA can be relied on solely to provide the evidence required. I would forgive the Secretary of State on this if it was the only evidence available to him, but he did not mention in the Second Reading speech that I referred to, which he did turn up for, that other pieces of evidence were available. The hon. Member for South West Norfolk did, but the Secretary of State did not. We might have presumed from what he said that PISA was the only evidence available, but as has been mentioned in the course of this debate and as the hon. Lady mentioned in her remarks, because she is a very honourable lady, there is the trends in international mathematics and science study—TIMSS. She rather played TIMSS down. I will not at this point, having just tried to trash some of the PISA methodology, say that the TIMSS methodology is perfect. All I am saying is that it should be cited at the same time by the Secretary of State when he is making policy that is supposed to be based on evidence.

TIMSS showed that between 1995 and the last tests in 2007, England’s primary school maths performance improved by a greater margin than any of the other 15 nations that had pupils taking tests in those years, including Singapore, Japan, the Netherlands, the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Norway. Our score went from below the international average in 1995 to comfortably above it in 2007. Our ranking improved from 12th out of 16 countries in 1995 to seventh out of 36 in 2007. It was an expanded table in which we had gone up. An example of that kind of performance would be the hon. Member for South West Norfolk going from 10th in Norfolk to 1st in East Anglia.

[Dr Coffey]

No chance.

[Kevin Brennan]

“No chance” says the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal from a sedentary position. I did not notice her sneak back into the Chamber; I would not have said that if I had.

The most recent round of TIMSS brought even more good news relating to other tests. In secondary maths, England was the joint third most improved of 20 countries during the period 1995 to 2007, rising from 11th out of 20 to seventh out of 49 in the table. In science, the country was seventh most improved out of 16 at primary level, with its ranking moving from sixth out of 20 countries in 1995 to seventh out of 36 in 2007. It was the fifth most improved out of 19 at secondary level, its ranking improving from seventh to fifth between those two years, even though the number of countries taking part had increased from 19 to 49. I could go on—I am going on until 5.15 pm if the Minister wants to know. However, there is no mention of the alternative picture reflected by TIMSS in any of the things that the Secretary of State says.

We have had an extremely interesting and serious debate this afternoon about what we need to do to improve the education of our children, to improve our schools and to improve our economic performance. We should be doing that in the spirit of thinking about what the real evidence is, examining the statistics and accepting that we should all be striving for continual improvement.

Taking only one part of the picture, subjecting it to the extreme hyperbole of the Secretary of State, with his rather dramatic style, and making that the only basis for policy making is a serious mistake and undermines our shared wish to improve educational performance in our country, to improve opportunity for young people and to improve our economic performance. I therefore make a plea for a higher plane of debate than we have had from the Secretary of State—one that involves less flummery and exaggeration and that is more evidence-based. If that were the case, we could seriously have the kind of education debate that we need and that we want in order to improve our economic performance and to improve education in this country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Thérèse Coffey Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

I am most terribly sorry, but I wonder whether the hon. Gentleman could write to me. I did not follow his question. If he writes to me, I will respond straight away.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

Saxmundham primary school in my constituency has made remarkable adaptations in order to include the education of a child called Finlay. It might be useful for other schools to learn from that experience. I am particularly interested in his transition to secondary school.

[Sarah Teather]

While drawing up the Green Paper, we met people from schools with fantastic examples of good practice in working to help support young people moving from one stage to the next. We are grateful for all examples of good practice, and we want to encourage other schools to raise the bar. Some brilliant work has been done. For example, some schools have encouraged young people to set up their own enterprises and companies and in doing so given them real employment opportunities. I would be interested to hear more detail about the school in the hon. Lady’s constituency.

Oral Answers to Questions

Thérèse Coffey Excerpts

Monday 20th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The Secretary of State will resume his seat. That response—I use the word response, rather than answer, advisedly—has nothing to do with the subject matter on the Order Paper.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

4. What plans he has to review the curriculum for science and mathematics A-levels.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)]

We will ensure that A-levels assess the knowledge that universities demand from candidates. We have asked the regulator, Ofqual, to examine how to ensure that re-sits and modularity are not damaging in-depth study and we are working with it to develop a process for involving universities and learned societies in the design and development of A-levels, which commands wide support. Mathematics and science A-levels will be reviewed through the new arrangements in due course.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

I thank my hon. Friend for that answer. I am sure that he shares my concern that we have slipped down the international competitiveness ratings for educational attainment, especially in maths and science. My personal experience of A-levels and my more recent experience of speaking to examiners show that the number of topics that students have to cover to get exactly the same A-level has contracted. That is a worrying trend; will my hon. Friend look into it with Ofqual?

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is right to raise those concerns. That is why it is so important to involve universities and learned societies in A-level development and to ensure that qualifications in this country are on a par with those in the highest performing jurisdictions in the world. That is why we have asked Ofqual to review the impact of the recent changes to A-levels, to which my hon. Friend referred. We are talking to universities about how we can ensure their effective involvement in determining the knowledge and aptitude expected in A-levels, not only in science subjects and maths but in other academic subjects, too.

Industry (Government Support)

Thérèse Coffey Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Bailey]

I agree completely. Many companies made the point vigorously that if they went down now, future tax revenues would be lost, and the prospect of us going into a deeper and further recession would be much greater. The previous Government’s short-term measures to sustain local manufacturing were therefore essential.

I looked at what the coalition document says about the coalition Government’s commitment to manufacturing. I was disappointed to find that the only reference to manufacturing was in the section on business:

“Our aim is to create the most competitive corporate tax regime in the G20, while protecting manufacturing industries.”

Although that is laudable and welcome, it is hardly the most robust commitment to sustaining our manufacturing industries. The previous Government’s measures to sustain demand and provide selective support, such as the car scrappage scheme, contributed to the current deficit, which, we are told, it is essential to eliminate if our manufacturing industry is to survive. However, the fact is that without incurring that debt our manufacturing industry would not have survived and would be in a far weaker position.

The title of the debate on the Order Paper is “Government Support for Industry”. The first thing the Secretary of State could do to support industry would be to say to the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister, “Stop making apocalyptic utterances about the state of our public finances.” I am happy to say that the report of the Office for Budget Responsibility on Monday demonstrated that our public finances were very much as reported by the former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and in no way conform to the current Chancellor of the Exchequer’s scaremongering portrayals. That is a serious matter, as it not only has implications for investment in industry and the public services, but for the public climate, which might be very damaging to our industries. Literally millions of public sector workers feel that they could be affected by decisions about investment in our public services. As a result, they are likely to decide to save rather than spend, which will reduce demand and potentially precipitate that double-dip recession.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

I understand the passion felt by the hon. Gentleman on behalf of public sector workers in particular, and I think that it is shared across the House. Does he not recognise, however, that the debt interest payments that we shall soon be making will affect every worker, and every non-worker, in the country?

[Mr Bailey]

I am committed to public sector workers, but I am equally committed to those in the private sector. My point is that unless we sustain our private sector in manufacturing industry, it will be far more difficult to pay off our debt in the long term. We need to sustain our base. That, I think, is a better strategic position, and it is the position taken by the last Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

This is the first time that I have spoken in a debate when you have been in the Chair, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I welcome you to it. I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop). He has a truly charming constituency—it is perhaps not quite as charming as my own—with a distinctive pioneering heritage. Given the eloquence of his speech, I believe that he will be doughty champion for people in his constituency.

My speech follows a long line of maiden speeches made today. The hon. Member for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher) referred to miners and former miners. He may be aware that the Government Chief Whip was also a miner, so he may add him to his little club. The hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) also spoke eloquently, as did the hon. Members for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) and for Bolton West (Julie Hilling), and our friendly doctor, my hon. Friend the Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), even though his joke was the worst that I have heard in a maiden speech. [Laughter.] I am sure he will thank me for that later.

I was terribly surprised that the first debate called by the Opposition was on Government support for industry, because these are the same people who have just been in government while we witnessed the loss of 1 million jobs in the manufacturing sector. I shall bring my personal experience to this debate, because I worked in manufacturing for 13 years for a company—not as a trade union official, but right in the thick of it. I should have said that I also worked for the BBC for six months and I saw where they filmed—I can assure hon. Members that they were the flashiest offices.

I worked in industry only under a Labour Government, and I am sorry to say that I learned the Labour litany “Regulation, regulation, regulation”, “Tax, tax, tax”, and “Reporting, reporting, reporting”. To sum up, I encountered a lot of bureaucracy and complexity wrapped up in red tape. There has been talk today about capital allowances, refunds and rebates, but for me, as a finance director of one of the subsidiaries of the company that I worked for, all I can say is that it got more and more complex. The only people who truly benefited were the tax accountants from PricewaterhouseCoopers and other firms. They were the people who had to take on the job, if we wanted to do it, of reclaiming the money. Better still, I think, is the attitude that we should stop telling industry how to invest and that we should reduce corporation tax instead. I praise the former Government, because they undertook that during their term of office. That was the right thing to do and I hope we will go further.

I want to share two small examples. I am sure that people will have sampled the excellent produce of Adnams, a company in Southwold in my constituency, which built a special new building that required no equipment to keep the beer cool. Because Adnams did not buy old-fashioned technology, it could not get capital allowances for it. It even pressed the former Prime Minister on this point, but people still cannot get capital allowances for a new building. Adnams has suffered as a consequence.

Let me use another example from my personal business experience: car tax. There are a lot of unintended consequences. The health and safety aspects, which I thought were important, meant that we insisted on estate cars for all our field-based employees. We tried to encourage them to buy or lease British-made cars, but the sad reality was that the extra costs of preparing for £600 or £700 of car duty meant that we had to think through the options of recommending that they no longer buy cars from manufacturers that made cars in Britain or to remove two or three jobs to pay for that. That is the unintended consequence of some of the legislation, which might sound good at the time, but in the real world means that jobs go.

Both sides of the House are united in believing that the private sector will lead the recovery—or, at least, most of us are. Of course, we disagree on how to do it. I see the hon. Member for Wrexham (Ian Lucas) on the Opposition Front Bench; he is a great advocate for businesses in his constituency. I know his constituency quite well, not just because he soundly beat me five years ago when I stood for election there, but because I have cousins who live and work there in Kellogg’s and other businesses. For me, it is an example of a one-business town—mining was a big part of it—that has diversified. It needs to broaden its base and I welcome that, but we need to see that more across every region—every county, I should say—in our great country.

The RDAs were one of the flagship policies of the last Government and I am delighted that they are having their sails trimmed—indeed, that they are being scuttled. The hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey), who is not with us at the moment, referred to a report. I am not sure which one he was talking about, but the National Audit Office published its report just three months ago and it was not rosy reading when it came to the effectiveness of the RDAs in helping business. The net cost was £60,000 per job created, which is a hefty introduction fee for trying to get jobs into our economy. The NAO was unable to say that there was value for money and could not conclude that the return for money was optimal. It blamed aspects of poor project analysis, pervasive optimism bias—that is, very rose-tinted spectacles were worn in considering how particular projects would generate benefits—and weak evaluation. Indeed, it made the point that most RDAs were unaware until 2009 of the types of projects that yielded the best and most enduring benefits.

The fact that in a number of cases RDAs struggled to identify market failure and, where an intervention was made, they could not justify why they had done the project, speaks volumes to me. It gives a feel of money being thrown at projects, as my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) mentioned, and throwing money does not solve a problem. That might be backed up by the statistic given by the NAO—30% of RDA funds were spent in one month, the last month of the financial year, when RDAs were desperate to get rid of their budget, no matter where.

I shall not cry to see the RDAs go. I am not saying that everything they have done was bad, but for me they are not necessarily the best way to deliver the support that businesses need. The key point that the National Audit Office uncovered was that targeted business support generated the best return. I hope that the new local enterprise partnerships will focus on that and will learn that lesson.

I welcome the amendment to the motion, because it mentions the college places and apprenticeships that are necessary to rebuild the skills needed to get Britain back on its feet. Local businesses of mine, including EDF at Sizewell and BT at Martlesham, already run apprenticeship schemes that are oversubscribed, and I hope we can encourage more to do so. Companies such as Brafe Engineering in Woodbridge want more technically skilled people coming through—not just people with degrees in any subject, no matter what. We have to do this and it is absolutely imperative to have appropriate Government support and not just the blank, scattergun approach that is the legacy of the previous Government. I support the amendment.