Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Loughton and Bob Russell

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady is right to raise this subject and it is a problem in many parts of the country, especially when children from London boroughs are placed in areas such as my own part of the country. I issued new guidance that came into effect last April, which made it absolutely clear that local authorities have a responsibility to keep children for whom they are responsible for caring as close to home as possible. If children are placed further afield, there must be a good reason, and local authorities must ensure that they maintain the responsibility to monitor how the child is doing. In too many cases, they do not notify the host authority, and I plan to ensure that every authority is reminded of its responsibilities.

[Sir Bob Russell (Colchester) (LD)]

Market Field school is in the neighbouring constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). It caters for children with special needs from both our constituencies and from the Clacton constituency. Will the Minister agree to meet the three of us to consider why Essex county council’s promise—made by the previous leader to the head teacher, Mr Gary Smith—has not been carried out?

School Sports (Colchester)

Debate between Tim Loughton and Bob Russell

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

It is a pleasure to serve for the second time today under your chairmanship, Mr Leigh. This debate is very different from the earlier one.

I ought to start by saying to the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) that we must stop meeting like this. This is the second time in the past couple of months that I have responded to an Adjournment debate that he has instigated. I congratulate him on securing this important debate. He opened it and kept the flow going with his usual colourful language. Never let it be said that he is a man who only brings problems to this House, because he started his speech with an interesting solution that would involve the football premiership in the cost of school sport partnerships. I am sure that my hon. Friend the Minister for Sport and the Olympics will read that practical suggestion in the record, and I am happy to ensure that it is brought to his attention.

The hon. Gentleman’s speech was also quite original. Not only was he described as being timely and prescient—I believe that that was how the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) described him—but he was also an unashamed plagiarist, in that he used a large part of his speech to quote from yesterday’s Daily Mail. If only making speeches were that easy.

[Bob Russell]

May I correct the Minister? It was Sunday’s paper, not yesterday’s.

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful for that. We would not want the good burghers of The Mail on Sunday not to get credit for the piece.

I know that the hon. Gentleman is a committed campaigner in his constituency and in this House, and it is clear from his speech that he believes passionately in the work of the Colchester-Blackwater school sport partnership, which is also known as the Thurstable school sport partnership. Among other flowery references that he quoted from the article in The Mail on Sunday, he quoted a phrase that suggested that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education considers sport to be

“the sweaty pastime of tiresome oiks.”

May I make it clear again today, as I did in a debate last week on school sport, and as the Secretary of State himself made clear, that he and I and this Government are absolutely committed to the promotion of sport among the population in general and among our school-age citizens in particular? We want them to be involved with sport, particularly high-quality competitive sport, as early and as intensively as possible, and, most importantly, we want that involvement to be sustained through the school years and into adulthood. Too often, the experience in school drops off a cliff when children leave school. We must engender the ethos of the good of sport in children of all ages, and that must be carried forward into adulthood.

As the hon. Gentleman said, sport is good not only for physical health but for mental agility, its socialising benefits, the community engagement that it brings about, teamwork experiences and the personal development of children. It is not a question of being in any way against sport or in any way trying to undermine it. We want more sport, better quality sport and more sustained sport in schools. It is a question of how, not if, and it is important to make that absolutely clear. That underlies the changes that we are looking to make in how sport is delivered.

We are aware of the good work being done in many school sport partnerships, which have played an important part in helping to re-establish physical education and sport as a central part of school life. The Thurstable/Colchester-Blackwater partnership is a good example of that.

My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and I pay tribute to the work of Adam Finch, partnership development manager at the Thurstable/Colchester-Blackwater partnership, and his team for the excellent work that they have done improving the standards of PE and sport for their young people. I was especially pleased that an impressive number of young people are taking part in intra-school sporting competitions. However, although that partnership is performing well in a number of areas, in some year groups it is still not delivering inter-school competition at a level that the Government would like to see and the numbers taking part in competitive sport, which we would like to be better promoted, have fallen slightly below the national average in years 6, 7 and 8.

[Bob Russell]

Did I understand the Minister correctly? Do those figures relate to what was happening within what we call the Colchester-Blackwater school sport partnership? If what he has said is correct, does he accept that those figures are still vastly better than they were four or five years ago, before the partnerships started, and that removing the partnerships will do considerable damage to the figures that he has just quoted?

[Tim Loughton]

In terms of the participation and rates and where the information has come from, the hon. Gentleman gave those figures. One does not deny that. I am saying that the experience and the figures are patchy in different parts of the country and in his constituency. Some partnerships appear to be achieving a great deal more than others. I am not trying to take away from where progress has been made. We question the level of competitive sport, the quality of the sport and its sustainability and whether partnerships are changing the ethos of sport in schools, which is what we need to do.

Let us remember that when the school sports partnership scheme was first funded from 2003, it was never intended to be a permanent arrangement; it was all about promoting sport from a low level and, hopefully, being able to set schools free to be able to carry that work forward. Seven years and £2.4 billion on, we cannot afford to continue that level of funding. We are questioning whether we are getting best value for money and whether we can get better bang for our buck, looking at alternative ways of providing sport in schools. That is what this is all about: not if, but how.

From figures on sports where participation has fallen and those relating to the number of schools offering particular sports, it is an indisputable fact that, after the commitment of £2.4 billion, the number of schools providing gymnastics, rounders, netball, hockey and rugby union has fallen. The number of schools offering swimming has not changed: it was 84% in 2003-04, before £2.4 billion was spent, and it is 84% now, still. There has been no increase in participation in a significant number of sports.

The taxpayer is entitled to better for the not inconsiderable sum that has been spent in the past seven years. That is why we feel that a new approach with a renewed focus on competition is needed to make an impact. To do this, the Government want to build on the good work already being done by schools to encourage more pupils to play competitive sport in their own school and against other schools.

Although school sport partnerships have helped schools to increase participation rates in a range of areas targeted by the previous Government, they have also locked schools into a rigid network while forcing them to achieve a series of targets that this Government feel impedes schools’ ability to promote sport. The Government are concerned that, despite this heavy focus on targets, the proportion of pupils playing competitive sport regularly has remained disappointingly low. Only some two in every five pupils play competitive sport regularly in their own school and only one in five plays regularly against other schools. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has concluded that the existing network of school sport partnerships is neither good enough value for money, nor likely to be the best way to help schools achieve their potential in improving provision for competitive sport.

The hon. Gentleman asked what discussions have taken place with colleagues in other Departments, particularly with the Secretaries of State for Health and for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education has had a number of meetings with those two Cabinet colleagues, particularly the Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, as have I. I sit on the interdepartmental steering group on the schools olympics, which is one proposal being advanced by this Government. There has been considerable engagement between officials in all three Departments. I had responsibility for children’s health in the shadow Health team, under the now Secretary of State for Health, where we had extensive discussion on this matter. We need to tackle not only what goes in but what comes out, in terms of the obesity problem and the activity underachievement. We need to take a two-pronged approach.

In lifting the many requirements placed on them by the previous Government’s PE and sport strategy, the Government believe that schools will be able to use their new freedoms to enable more pupils to play competitive sport. I understand that this decision has not been popular in some quarters. I recently met a group of exceedingly impressive young ambassadors who voiced their concerns eloquently when delivering a petition last week. However, I am convinced that this decision is the right one to ensure that the next generation of young people enjoys and benefits from sport as never before, while laying the foundations for a lasting sporting legacy from 2012.

I have offered to meet a wider group of young sports ambassadors, after we announce our alternative proposals, to try to engage them fully in the way ahead.

[Bob Russell]

Will the Minister give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will, although probably at the expense of being able to finish my speech.

[Bob Russell]

The Minister’s response will not be recognised by the people in the Colchester academy family, whom I have met and on whose behalf I called the debate. Would he accept an invitation to meet people and see what happens on the ground? I think that he might be pleasantly surprised.

[Tim Loughton]

I am always grateful for invitations and the Secretary of State for Education is always keen to devolve invitations to his ministerial team. I have had a number of similar offers from many colleagues, not surprisingly, among the many letters that I have received on this subject. I have visited schools and engaged in physical activities in those schools. The hon. Gentleman is good at issuing invitations to Ministers to visit his constituency; he was good at issuing them to the previous Government and the previous Secretary of State for Education was good at passing them on to the Minister with responsibility for schools, who spent most of his time heading towards East Anglia. If I can make a diversion to take in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, I will endeavour to do so at some stage in future. In principle, yes; in practice, we will see how the diary pans out or I will never get any work done in this place and I will not be able to answer his frequent debates in the House.

The Secretaries of State for Education and for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, in consultation with experts in sport and alongside officials from both Departments, are considering how to take things forward in the best interests of schools and the pupils and parents they serve. One way of doing that will be launching a national Olympic and Paralympic-style sports event that I have already mentioned, which will form the pinnacle of a pyramid of school sport competitions. Other layers will include intra-school, inter-school, local authority or county level competitions. Every school, including mainstream and special schools, will be given the opportunity to get involved. I am keen to ensure that pupils with disabilities are fully engaged in the process. I am particularly keen to meet representatives from Paralympics and disability sports organisations. We intend to use £10 million of lottery funding, distributed by Sport England, to establish this competition for young people.

While I am on the subject, let me dispel the myth that competitive sport is elitist. Competitive sport inspires people to be the best that they can be and should be a vibrant part of school life for all pupils. Sport should be for everyone. That is why we want schools to set up sports teams that cater for players of all abilities. Anyone, from the most serious football player to the pupil who enjoys a kick-about for fun, should be given the opportunity to learn the values of competitive sport and to enjoy and benefit from that experience. We want schools to have not just first teams, but second, third and fourth teams, as there were when I was at school. Indeed, in 10 schools 100% of pupils were playing regular competitive sports against other schools and in 320 schools all the pupils are regularly taking part in intra-school competitions. That does not sound like elitism to me.

We want to see a sharp reduction in the bureaucratic burden on schools, leaving them free to focus on doing what is right for their students. The previous Administration’s school sport programme was about telling schools what to do. First, it specified how many hours of sport were to be made available to pupils, by schools, each week, starting with 75% doing two hours by 2006, then 85% doing two hours by 2008, rising to all children doing four hours by 2010, reaching the ever-more prescriptive heights of five hours of sport for all five to 16-year-olds by 2011. A pupil who joined a secondary school in September 2004 would be expected to do two hours of PE and sport a week by 2006, four hours by 2010 and five hours by 2011. How can schools be expected to make decisions about the best needs of their pupils while trying to deal with the straitjacket of such central control?

Secondly, it created a new hierarchy of people to run the programme for schools, including competition managers and senior competition managers—a new hierarchy of people telling other people what to do. Every one of those people was committed to improving local school sport, but I fear that, at best, they enabled schools to leave sport to someone else and, at worst, they stifled schools’ ability to provide an offer that was best for the needs of their schools and their pupils. That neither enables innovation—

Holidays (Low-income Families)

Debate between Tim Loughton and Bob Russell

Friday 19th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Colchester (Bob Russell) on securing this debate. I am glad that he did not cancel it, as he said he nearly did, and instead, in his inimitable manner, gave a twinkling delivery at high speed about this important subject. I fear that the Hansard reporters might have to revisit his notes on the IMSERSO Spanish scheme, the ANCV in France and assorted other names. He did not miss the opportunity to take us blatantly and unashamedly on a Cook’s tour of the east of England, and not least of his own constituency—and why not?—and the sunshine Essex coast; I am sure he would like me to repeat that phrase. The Essex coast is almost as sunshiney as the Sussex coast, where my constituency is based.

This is an important subject, and it is perhaps appropriate, as the hon. Gentleman said, that it falls on Children in Need day. One of my most important duties this morning was judging the cake competition in aid of Children in Need in the Department for Education—and a fearsome competition it was! I thought it safer than the cycling marathon on the ground floor. However, I am glad to say that the most innovative cake was the “cruffin”, which is a combination of an apple crumble and a muffin, made by somebody in my private office. But I digress, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The hon. Gentleman is a redoubtable and tireless campaigner on behalf of all children and young people, as well as pensioners, whom he mentioned, and many other specialist categories of people. It is no surprise to me that we are here on a sitting Friday—although not in a packed Chamber, alas—discussing one way to improve those people’s lives. I echo his comments about the Family Holiday Association. He is right to praise the excellent work that it does with families who would otherwise be unable to benefit from a holiday, and it deserves our fullest praise and deepest thanks. I am also glad that he mentioned the important Family Fund, which provides much needed breaks for particularly needy families who have children with long-term disabilities. That has proved very effective in the past.

The hon. Gentleman is also right that there is a growing body of research indicating that holidays can greatly benefit families. They allow them time to spend together outside their normal circumstances, relaxing in different places, and they can make for happier and healthier families, as he rightly stated. When holidays are taken in England, as I would always recommend, they provide a boost to local tourism as well—especially in Colchester and Worthing. However, the people who benefit the most from the chance to get away from the trials and tribulations of their daily lives are naturally also those for whom it can be most difficult.

I am fully aware that, in some European countries, such as France and Spain, which he flagged up, family holidays are regarded as a right. Sadly, that is not the Government’s view in this country. Many people who are not in poverty choose not to go on holiday for many different reasons, and we would not want to force them to do so. It is surely up to families how they spend their time and money, and at this time when resources are tight and there are many competing priorities for taxpayers’ money, it is, I am afraid, unaffordable for the Government to subsidise holidays.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation’s calculations for minimum income standards estimate that the cost of one week’s self-catering holiday in the United Kingdom for a family of two adults and two children is about £620, with associated travel costs of about £130. The Family Holiday Association figures from 2004, to which the hon. Gentleman alluded, suggest that each break costs £1,500. However, the Government are determined to focus their limited resources on reducing the deficit, putting public services on a sustainable footing and tackling the underlying causes of poverty, thereby putting everyone’s finances back on an even keel, so that families in the future can decide how they want to use their discretionary spending money.

Living in poverty, particularly at a young age, is a deeply distressing experience that can have long-term consequences. We want to end poverty and to do so not by treating the symptoms, but by eliminating the root causes, hence our commitment to the elimination of child poverty in particular. It is because nothing is more important than overcoming barriers to social mobility that we are investing more in getting early-years education right, for example. We recently announced that the entitlement to 15 hours per week of free education that the Government introduced for all three and four-year-olds will be extended to disadvantaged two-year-olds. We have also protected funding for Sure Start children’s centres and will refocus them on their original purposes, so that families who most need support get it.

It is because we are committed to improving education for the poorest families, so that they can go on to get the good job to which they have always aspired, that we are radically reforming education, including through the introduction of a new pupil premium that will attach extra money to the poorest pupils. It is because we believe that work is the best possible route out of poverty that we are introducing reforms to the welfare system to ensure that those who can work do so, while those who cannot receive the support that they need. We think that the right approach is to give families the power and resources to be able to take advantage of some of the things that the hon. Gentleman rightly flagged up.

With a good education and a job comes choice, and it will then be for families to decide whether they go on holiday and what sort of holiday they may want to take. But such is our determination to tackle poverty and inequality that we have asked Alan Milburn to assist us in our work to reinvigorate the social mobility agenda so that deprivation is not destiny.

[Bob Russell]

Will the Minister ask Mr Milburn to look at how the French and Spanish Governments in particular regard their holiday schemes? Not only do they benefit the children of low-income families, but they boost the economy of seaside resorts and other locations in those countries. They generate income.

[Tim Loughton]

I heard the hon. Gentleman’s point about a double benefit. Social tourism is good for families who need a break, and for the industry and the resorts where they choose to go. I encourage the hon. Gentleman to forward his comments—the Hansard report of today’s debate—to Alan Milburn so that he can take them into consideration. I am happy to support him in doing that.

In addition to the work that we have asked Alan Milburn to do, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) is leading a review of poverty and life chances. Again, the hon. Gentleman’s comments are relevant to that review, and I encourage him to send further details to the right hon. Gentleman. The hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) was also enjoying the cakes in the Department for Education when I was having a conversation with him this morning. He is leading a separate review into how we can support local councils in early intervention because, as we all know, prevention is always better than cure. All that is relevant to what the hon. Member for Colchester alluded to this afternoon.

We announced as part of the spending review that we will bring together funding for services for the most vulnerable children, young people and families through a new early intervention grant, which will be worth around £2 billion a year at the end of the comprehensive spending review period. It will allow local councils to decide how they can best deliver their local priorities. Again, that may focus on leisure opportunities for deprived families.

We fully support the Family Holiday Association, and all organisations that provide support to families who cannot otherwise afford holidays. Their work is admirable, and improves the quality of life of thousands of families every year. We cannot promise large sums of financial assistance to support them at this stage, but I hope that they will continue their work.

I again thank the hon. Gentleman for raising this matter in the House this afternoon.

Question put and agreed to.