School Funding

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

The word “crisis” is overused in this place, for certain, but it feels very much as though the situation with school resources is a crisis. However, it is a crisis largely in disguise, for two reasons. First, headteachers and the profession as a whole are loth to get involved in what they consider to be politics, or in any way to use the children they serve and teach as pawns in a political debate. Secondly, headteachers do not want to speak about the situation quite so much, simply because, understandably, they fear competitive disadvantage.

[Thelma Walker]

I am sorry, but the fact that 1,000 head- teachers marched on Downing Street last year is symbolic of their frustration at the point we have reached.

[Tim Farron]

And it really takes that. I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her remark, which of course comes from her experience. As I said, the other reason this issue has not been spoken about as much as it might have been in another part of the public sphere is simply fear of competitive disadvantage. If a headteacher talks about having to lose teaching assistants, the children who would have come to their school might go to another school instead. People therefore keep quiet and suffer in silence.

However, as the hon. Lady rightly says, we have got to a breaking point—a point of immense frustration, which has led headteachers, who would normally dutifully have got on with the job, to speak out very clearly. Just this week, 16 headteachers in my constituency, representing primary schools, special educational needs schools and secondary schools, clubbed together to write to parents and others in our community to be explicit about what the cuts mean for them. That is a brave and unprecedented thing to do. They deserve our taking notice, and they deserve the Government’s taking notice. We must listen.

Those headteachers note that in my constituency alone, there has been a £2.4 million real-terms cut in schools funding, even allowing for the fact that, as a rural area, we are a net beneficiary of the fairer funding formula. The net impact on us has been £2.4 million of cuts—£190 per child has been lost from schools funding in Westmorland and Lonsdale. Headteachers in my community talk explicitly about losing teaching posts—indeed, about making some teachers redundant—and getting rid of teaching assistants. They talk about having smaller establishments, meaning the merging of classes and reductions in the options available, particularly at secondary school. Any country’s greatest asset is its people, especially its young people, so to underfund our schools in this way—to undervalue our greatest asset—is not just cruel but incredibly stupid. Investment in our education is an investment in our country’s future.

Teachers are committed professionals. They do what they do not for the money—there isn’t a right lot of it in the profession—but because they are passionate about making a difference in our young people’s lives, so it breaks their heart to see the impact of these cuts on the quality of education. They also see cuts that affect children in other parts of the public sphere. In Cumbria, because of a cut in public health funding, all school nurses have been abolished. Only 75p per child is spent on preventive mental healthcare across our area. Three years after it was promised, there is still no specialist one-to-one eating disorder service for young people in our community. Just before Christmas, £500,000 was sneaked out of public health spending. That affects the community as a whole, but particularly our young people.

Nowhere are cuts in schools funding more noticeable, though, than in special educational needs. Of course, the first 11 hours of special educational needs provision are paid for by the school. One small high school in my constituency with fewer than 500 pupils spends £105,000 a year on supporting those children. That comes from its main school budget. We penalise schools that do the right thing and advantage those that do not. Will the Minister fund special educational needs directly, rather than damaging schools?

I will give the last word to a highly respected headteacher in my constituency, who wrote to me just yesterday:

“In the last two years we have made reductions to teaching and support staffing, with no reduction in the overall workload. All we get is hackneyed and frankly quite pathetic suggestions from the DFE on how to economise…I love my job, but…I do not wish to be head of a school in a state system that is en route to economic meltdown.”

This Government are demoralising our teachers and letting down our children. That must change.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Funding

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 12th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Sir Vince Cable]

Indeed. That is happening on a growing scale, and is augmented by the fact that many children are being excluded because of the lack of support. That, in turn, contributes to home education, which may be inferior.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Does my right hon. Friend agree that the crisis in funding is about not only the overall sum of money but the distribution? Government policy means that schools have to absorb up to £11,000 of the cost of meeting an EHCP. Schools that do the right thing and accept children with special educational needs are therefore punished, and those that do not are rewarded. Does he agree that that is an unfair and wrong distribution?

[Sir Vince Cable]

Indeed. In addition to the problem facing local authorities, schools in effect pay a £6,000 penalty. Many schools that were committed to inclusion now find that increasingly difficult and are shying away from their obligations.

Mental Health and Wellbeing in Schools

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 4th December 2018 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran) on securing this vital debate.

Early intervention and preventive work on mental health are massively important and schools play a colossal part in it. Fifty per cent. of mental health problems in adult life take root before the age of 14; 10% of schoolchildren today have a diagnosable mental illness, which means that in an average class of 30 young people three will be living with a mental health condition. That is three children in every class. Stress about exams, fear of failure, concern about body image, bullying, and the crushing weight of the aspirations and expectations of materialism have a huge impact on people’s mental health. Unchecked, those concerns can spiral into acute long-term mental illnesses that will lead to serious problems all the way through adulthood.

The Prime Minister characterised the colossal failure to treat mental health conditions as a “burning injustice”, but that is an injustice that the Government have failed to fight in practice. There are few things more frustrating than a Government who speak the right political language in a debate but fail to deliver. Investment in preventive measures and early intervention has only got worse in recent years. Councils’ public health budgets, which include funding for school nurses and tier 1 mental health services, have been reduced by £600 million between 2015 and the present. In my constituency central Government cuts to the public health budget mean that the NHS in Cumbria currently spends only £75,000 a year on tier 1 mental health preventive care. That is just 75p per child per year. In 2015 the coalition Government agreed to allocate Cumbria £25 million a year in public health money. Now it gets only £18 million a year. That is a £7 million cut—a huge proportion. It is not just unacceptable; it is an insult. As a direct result, we no longer have any school nurses directly attached to schools anywhere in the county.

Alongside the situation I have described, there are additional pressures. Many young people with special and additional needs are at greater risk of acquiring mental health difficulties. We have a special educational needs funding system that punishes schools that take children with additional needs and rewards those that do not fulfil their responsibility; so the system compounds the difficulties. Like the rest of the hon. Members present, I get letters in my postbag about many issues of great emotional significance. They weigh heavily on all MPs as we seek to help people out of difficult situations. However, nothing keeps me awake at night like the plight of young people with mental health conditions. I have noticed in recent years that the volume of my case load taken up by that issue has rocketed. We are clearly a society that breeds poor mental health.

I am proud of the young people in Cumbria with whom I have worked and who are determined to fight for better mental health provision for themselves and their friends. In my constituency, for example, CAMHS was not available at the weekend or after school hours in south Cumbria until our community ran a campaign and forced local health bosses to change that. What an outrage that we had to fight for those changes. Alongside a focus on the provision of timely, top-quality treatment, there needs to be a focus on preventive care. That is why 2,500 mostly young people in my constituency signed the petition that I shall soon present to the House, calling for a mental health worker to be allocated to every school in Cumbria, so that we can manage to prevent problems before they arise and get out of control.

Perhaps the biggest single issue affecting young people’s mental health is eating disorders. In South Lakeland, three quarters of children reporting with an eating disorder are not seen within the target time of a month. Not a single one of those children presenting with an urgent need is seen within the target time of one week. The most appalling aspect of the situation is not just those statistics but the fact that the number of children they represent is 15 in a year. That is utter nonsense. I deal with at least one new eating disorder case among young people every single week in my constituency. Children are clearly slipping through the loopholes and are not being pushed into the system. As the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) said, they are told that they have to come back when they are more sick as they have not yet lost sufficient weight to enter the system. That is an outrage. In 2016, the Government promised Cumbria a specialist one-to-one eating disorder service, and it has failed to materialise. Wonderful people work in CAMHS, but they do not have the support that they desperately need. As others have said, young people’s mental health is the crisis of our age. It needs more than platitudes; it needs real action, and it needs it now.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 12th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

We believe that any young person who has the potential to benefit from university should be able to do so, and the existing system helps to facilitate exactly that. More than £800 million is being spent on access encouragement from universities. We need to make sure that that is spent as well as it can be, to make sure that any young person from any background has an equal opportunity to benefit.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

A huge block to social mobility is the Government’s policy of forcing schools to pay the first £6,000 of costs to support children with special needs. Does the Secretary of State accept that that penalises schools for taking students with additional needs, incentivises doing the wrong thing, impoverishes those schools that do the right thing and, most of all, hurts children with special needs and their families? Will he agree fully to fund education healthcare plans?

School Funding

Tim Farron Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2018 Westminster Hall

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. There is an anomaly that schools that accept pupils from poorer backgrounds are rewarded and encouraged by the pupil premium that those schools attract for taking those children, but for children with additional or special needs the first 11 hours of the education, health and care plans are funded by the local school, which often places a financial burden on it. There is therefore a disincentive for schools to take on children from those backgrounds who have additional special needs.

[Mrs Main]

I completely agree. I will touch on that issue later in my speech. Links Academy in St Albans says that it is mopping up the very pupils that the hon. Gentleman says are being cold shouldered or refused positions elsewhere.

The National Association of Head Teachers carried out a survey on SEN funding, and a mere 2% of those surveyed said that the top-up funding received was sufficient to meet the growing needs of SEN pupils. That was recognised by both teachers and parents in St Albans. Inevitably, that will have an impact on the way that schools look after SEN pupils. Department for Education figures say we have 2,800 fewer teaching assistants and 2,600 fewer support staff in our schools. That puts even more pressure on teachers and can be especially challenging for teachers dealing with SEN pupils. The increased amount of money paid to some of those who are lower paid and work as assistants or support staff was welcome, but it puts an additional pressure on school resources. We welcome the additional funds for people paid lower wages but we must recognise the true impact.

To return to the remarks of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron), I have been in contact with David Allen, headmaster of Links Academy, which I recently visited, and he welcomes pupils with special needs. He described his despair at the rising number of SEN pupils being permanently excluded from mainstream schools. In fact, I was due to meet him there on Thursday with parents and the SEN group, but as soon as the SEN group heard that I was coming, it said it would pull out. Unfortunately, I have had to pull out in order to ensure a fair hearing for the pupil in that school. I was concerned to hear that SEN children are regularly subjected to bullying at school and have resorted to either drugs or knife crime as a result—that is anecdotal and not in my schools in St Albans, but the teacher has backed that up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Main]

As a former teacher, I know that there are teachers who argue vociferously for universal pay standards across the country and dispute the need for pay to reflect local house prices and so on. That is a debate for another day. However, teachers in my area say—this is awful, but I accept it—that when a valued, top-of-the-range headteacher or head of department goes, there can be a small, collective sigh of relief in the budget department because that means the school can take on a younger, less experienced teacher on a lower pay scale and the budget suddenly becomes a little looser.

It is demoralising for a school not to be able to reward and keep high-value staff because it simply does not have the money to pay them. I am experiencing that cycle in St Albans, where staff are hard to retain. Although it is great to have bright young things—I was one of those once—coming through the door, with all the enthusiasm they bring to teaching, there is nothing like an experienced head of department.

There is widespread unhappiness about the handling of the recent teacher pay rise announcement. The key problem is that schools themselves have to fund the first 1% of that pay rise, which we so generously allocated them but did not provide additional funding to support them with. Declan Linnane, the head of Nichols Breakspear School in St Albans, told me that that 1% alone will cost his school £30,000—money it will have to find from yet further efficiency savings or another member of staff in already difficult times.

With rising national insurance contributions and an impending increase in employer pension contributions, schools are under huge pressure to find more savings at the cost of our pupils’ education. Increasing staffing costs have a huge impact on schools’ budgets. Removing the need for schools to fund the first 1% of pay increases themselves would be welcome. I wonder whether the Minister is in a generous mood and would like to make a grab on the Chancellor’s Budget.

Schools are interested in the Government’s proposal to create a central staffing database to reduce agency fees. Agency staff are a big issue for many schools, which often cannot retain staff and are obliged to use agency staff as cover, or run their staff so tightly that there is no slack in the system if a staff member goes ill, for example. I would be grateful if the Minister updated me on that database and when headteachers should expect it to be available.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies, which reported last month on education funding in England, found that per-pupil school spending has fallen by 8% in real terms since 2010. That must be considered alongside the fact that, according to the DFE’s own figures, half a million more pupils are in our schools now than in 2010. The IFS also reported that school sixth forms have endured a 21% reduction in per-pupil spending since 2011, and it estimates that by 2019-20 spending per sixth-form pupil will be lower than at any point since 2002.

Those are worrying statistics, which address many of the real concerns of teachers and parents in St Albans. We must aim for funding that meets the needs of schools across the country—as my hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) said, certain parts of the country are really struggling—and allows them to deliver excellent teaching that inspires pupils to succeed in life.

Worryingly, we have also heard reports of schools having to use the pupil premium to fund their core budget. A recent poll of headteachers found that 70% had dipped into the pupil premium to prop up their core budget. That is borne out in St Albans, where we are aware that happens. It should be of real concern that a fund designed to help students from the most disadvantaged families has to be used for overall school spending. That cannot be right.

Schools are also concerned about their lack of ability to plan their finances. With the NFF being introduced over a number of years and uncertainty about how it will affect individual schools, headteachers are unwilling to commit to long-term planning. That was reflected in a poll of headteachers, which found that 90% feel the NFF has given them no long-term financial certainty and has resulted in no “meaningful financial planning” being carried out beyond year 1.

I do not just take things at face value. Trading statistics is never good, as I said at the public meeting I mentioned. I believe in listening to what teachers say, and they say they are struggling to do long-term planning under the current system. They need longer-term certainty about their budgets.

[Tim Farron]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the problem with long-term planning and wriggle room in budgets is even greater for smaller schools? In constituencies such as mine there are lots of very small, very good schools of 30 children or even fewer. If a large school has a bad period in which it has an issue with leadership, a poor Ofsted report or whatever, it can absorb the effect of getting fewer pupils as a consequence and still be able to plan ahead. However, that could be curtains for a small school, which would mean a community losing its school for good.

[Mrs Main]

I do not have experience of that, but I recognise the picture the hon. Gentleman paints. It is vital that we address those concerns about funding.

The UK tax burden is at a 50-year high, so the Minister will be pleased to hear that I do not propose additional tax rises. We are at the limit of how much tax we can reasonably ask ordinary people to pay. Working families have felt the squeeze since 2010 as the Government have tried to tackle the enormous financial burden we found ourselves with. It is good that we have made progress. Far be it from me to tell the Chancellor how to do his job, but the Budget is looming, so I am going to put my thoughts on the record. I am certain that the Government can find the money if we prioritise our spending appropriately.

We had a manifesto commitment—the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale will probably profoundly disagree with me about this—to scrap universal free school meals for reception, year 1 and year 2 pupils, but it was dropped. That was misguided. I and some of the teachers who were at the meeting I mentioned think we should have investigated that further. Thankfully, in St Albans only around 6% of pupils are entitled to free school meals. In Hertfordshire overall that figure is about 8%. Perversely, that means we subsidise between 90% and 94% of parents in Hertfordshire who could pay for their own children to be fed. Just as I do not want budgets that should be used for pupils at the poorest margin to be taken away, I do not want wealthier parents to be cross-subsidised when they do not need it. Such largesse is costing my local authority £6 million, and it is money that should be spent on teaching. I would rather St Albans pupils received a universal quality of teaching than that those with more affluent parents should receive a gratuitous free lunch they are not entitled to.

I am a great supporter of the good aid projects that have been carried out around the world, but, again, it seems crazy to me that we ring-fence huge sums of money for foreign aid when vital public services such as the education budget lack funding. The aid budget should be under the same scrutiny and pressures as other Departments’ budgets. We are effectively shovelling money out the door to meet an arbitrary target set in law. That misplaced policy should be brought before the House so we can decide whether to look at that ring-fencing.

I hope that the Minister will listen carefully to the issues raised in the debate, including some of the experiences recounted by teachers and parents. There is a funding problem in schools and it does not seem right that more and more schools have to go cap in hand to parents for even the most basic of provisions, such as textbooks. Alan Gray started the public meeting I attended by asking “What price education?” He did not ask the price for pruning trees, painting the classrooms or replacing some broken paving slabs, but the price of education. Of course it is entirely reasonable for parents to be asked for contributions for bonus offerings such as trips, but when they are asked to contribute for vital reading materials, the central funding formula needs to be addressed.

Teachers in my constituency do not tell me that the NFF is bad policy; they want it to be funded correctly. The aim of ending the so-called postcode lottery for school funding under the NFF is sensible, but the lack of overall funding means that it is difficult to deliver. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response, and I hope to see some movement on the issue in the Budget. We must answer the call: what price do we put on our children’s education?

Secondary Schools (Accountability)

Tim Farron Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for his comments. We would expect such a measure to apply both to schools that go up to age 16 and to those that go up to age 18. Looking at what happens to people afterwards is relevant in giving both a powerful incentive. Clearly, the pathway in each situation would, for many students, be slightly different, but we believe that taking an interest in what students go on to do beyond age 16 makes sense in giving a powerful incentive to the many schools in the country that go up to age 16.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I very much welcome the proposals on increasing the reward for schools that add attainment for all pupils, irrespective of their backgrounds, and the proposals on adding value and support for schools that seek to boost attainment for all pupils, and not just those on the key dividing lines between specific grade boundaries. I am also happy to hear the Minister’s reference to having more carrots than sticks. In that sense, could we offer more carrots than sticks to the teaching profession with reference to Ofsted? Few Ofsted inspectors are currently teachers. Could Ofsted become more supportive and developmental rather than, say, threatening and limiting?

[Mr Laws]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his comments. He is right that we need to guarantee confidence in the schools system about the job Ofsted does. I believe that, on the whole, it does an excellent job. He will be interested to know that, since the new chief inspector took over at Ofsted a couple of years ago, he has very significantly increased not only the number of former head teachers who work for it, but the number of existing senior school staff who act as Ofsted inspectors. I would be happy to write to my hon. Friend to update him on that information, because there has been a radical change in a short period.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Fallon]

I will certainly do that. All unsuccessful bidders are offered feedback from the regional growth fund secretariat, and if that has not happened, I am happy to arrange it for Polestar in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency. There were a number of other successful bids in the Sheffield and Yorkshire region, which I hope he will acknowledge will bring more growth and jobs to Sheffield.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

Perhaps the most valuable long-term economic legacy of the Olympics will be a boost in UK tourism. To achieve that we will need a few high-profile attack brands. London will of course be one of them; another must surely be the Lake district. What plans do the Government have to make the Lake district an attack brand for UK tourism?

[Vince Cable]

I had an opportunity recently to meet my hon. Friend and his local enterprise partnership, which is one of the most dynamic and is dominated by small business, most of it focused on the tourism industry. He is absolutely right that one of the key legacies of the Olympics is attracting people to come to the UK, and I am happy to talk to him even more frequently than I do at the moment about tourism.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I can explain what happened at that conference. My ministerial colleagues and I spend a great deal of time promoting defence exports, which are one of the main success stories in the rapid growth of our exports and one of the main features of the rebalancing that is taking place.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

In my constituency, 3,000 people are waiting desperately for a council house. Perhaps one answer to that problem, both in my area and across the country, might be to consider quantitative easing through social housing bonds, to ensure that there is an explosion in council house building in this country.

[Vince Cable]

I know how passionately my colleague feels about this. I was with him a few weeks ago in his constituency and there is an acute shortage of affordable housing. The issue he raises of how to get resources into affordable housing was partly met this morning by the substantial increase in guarantees of £10 billion to housing associations, which is direct funding support for social housing. I am sure that he will see a good deal of activity in the wake of this.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Farron Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that UKTI is capable of and committed to providing an increased range of activities and a better service even within its budget.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

More than 50% of dairy farms in the UK closed under the Labour Government yet demand for dairy products across the world is rocketing. Will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out what proposals we have to launch an ambitious plan to export dairy products across the world?

[Vince Cable]

Many of the problems of the dairy industry relate to the system of EU common agricultural policy financing, but I will look at the specific issue described by my hon. Friend and see what we can do to promote it.

Independent Debt Advice

Tim Farron Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

I am pleased to have secured this important debate and to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Riordan.

Research from Money Advice Trust suggests that at any given time up to 5 million people report being in arrears with consumer credit and mortgage payments or find that their credit commitments are an unsustainable burden. However, planned cuts to funding will significantly reduce the capacity of independent advice agencies to assist such people, which could result in potentially serious consequences both to the individual and the state.

I shall quote an example from my local citizens advice bureau in Wigan. John—not his real name—was receiving numerous letters from creditors. He came for assistance when his debts were beginning to get on top of him. He had even mentioned suicide. His community psychiatric nurse was concerned that the increasing pressure from his creditors was causing further harm to John’s mental health. An urgent home visit was arranged. A specialist debt adviser went through John’s benefits and discussed his options. John had wrongly believed that bailiffs could take all his goods and that he could be imprisoned and evicted. Time was taken to reassure him and to go through both his options and rights, and those of his creditors. He decided that bankruptcy would be the right option for him. The adviser completed the forms and accompanied John to court. The creditors can now no longer contact him. Moreover, the adviser helped to reinstate John’s benefit entitlement, which had been the reason why he got into debt in the first place.

John now needs less input from his care co-ordinator. He said, “I was in a real state, but I am now no longer afraid to answer the telephone, open my door or open my post.” John needed face-to-face advice to help deal with his problem. Without it, he would still be a suicide risk, living in isolation and fear.

More than 500 specialist advisers in independent local advice agencies are funded by the financial inclusion fund. Since 2006, more than 380,000 people have been helped to manage debt worth more than £6 billion in an extensive network of outreach settings, community centres, GP practices and Sure Start units. People who do not normally feel comfortable about seeking advice are able to go to such centres and speak in a place where they feel comfortable.

The CAB service managed the largest proportion of that funding, and it supports 338 advisers in local bureaux. Loss of the funding reduces the capacity of the CAB service by more than 70,000 cases a year, which is a cut in casework capacity of between 40% and 50%.

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Lady for being generous so early in her remarks. I completely agree with everything that she has said. The financial inclusion fund is of immense importance to my citizens advice bureaux in South Lakes. Most people think that the CAB is a state service; they do not realise that it is a charity, and that its ability to raise funds from other sources is incredibly limited. The fund is critical to its survival and to its ability to help people who are often in the most desperate circumstances.

[Yvonne Fovargue]

I totally agree. Having worked for a CAB, I know that people are extremely confused about where the funding comes from. The organisation gets very few donations. The depth of its service is often misunderstood as well. I have heard people say, “Oh, CAB, they tell people where to go.” We did not often do that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lorely Burt]

I am seeking to be helpful, and am not facing two ways at once.

[Tim Farron]

My hon. Friend is generous to let me butt in. Perhaps I could help Opposition Members. They spent 13 years in power towing the line and voting for things such as cuts in CAB funding—as they did in South Lakeland—and they do not seem to understand that it is entirely possible to be within a Government and at times be a critical friend instead of constantly being told what to think.

[Lorely Burt]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend. [Interruption.]