Procurement Bill [Lords]

Debate between Tim Loughton and Jeremy Quin

2nd reading
Monday 9th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Quin]

If the hon. Gentleman has not read the Bill, I recommend that he does so. There is a lot of it, but it is a good read and he will find it has a range of measures to ensure transparency at the heart of our procurement. I do not accept the premise of his question—if his question has a premise—that previous procurements were incorrectly awarded; far from it. If he wants to see a Bill that enhances transparency, that ensures there are always proper procedures in place to address conflicts of interest and that ensures the best propositions win tenders, he will support the Bill this evening, as I hope the rest of the House will.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Perhaps I could mention something that is in the Bill, rather than not in the Bill.

I welcome the Bill, and particularly how it will benefit our small and medium-sized enterprises and the local sustainability of good-quality British products, but clause 65 was helpfully added by the noble Lord Alton and a cross-party alliance in the other House to make sure that we do not procure from countries found guilty of genocide or human rights abuses, particularly China. Can the Minister confirm that the Government not only support clause 65 but will extend it beyond just surveillance technology? We should not procure goods and services from countries found guilty of genocide or human rights abuses, such as China in Xinjiang, as verified by a vote in this House. We should just not deal with them.

[Jeremy Quin]

It is a pleasure to respond to a question about a clause in the Bill, for which I thank my hon. Friend. We are thinking through the Lords amendments, and there will be further time to discuss them in Committee. Anything that is added to the Bill must be deliverable and workable. I stress that the Bill already contains much-enhanced provisions to ensure we can prevent inappropriate suppliers from coming into our production chain, not just as primes at the top level but right through the supply chain. For example, we will be able to debar companies for misconduct or illegality. We are taking far more powers than we had under the old EU regime, which should be welcomed by all Members of this House.

West Sussex Schools Funding

Debate between Tim Loughton and Jeremy Quin

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) on securing the debate and on his excellent framing of the argument.

As we look to our newly defined national future, the challenge of improving our national productivity is real and acute. Only through increased productivity will we deliver the public services and increases in the standard of living that every generation expects. Education and skills are among the most important drivers of that vital transformation in our national productivity. We need to continue the already positive improvement in science, technology, engineering and maths, and to my mind our trading future requires better results in foreign languages. Investment in education, properly targeted, is money well spent.

This is an important issue for the whole country, but the challenge is especially important for those of us who represent West Sussex, which is the worst funded of any county authority with funding of £4,198 per pupil. Under the current funding formula, the county receives £44 million less than the national average and some £200 million less than some London boroughs. I and my colleagues were pleased to stand on a manifesto that pledged a change in the funding structure of our schools, and I am delighted that the Government, having secured an overall majority, are pressing forward with far-reaching and long overdue reform. I await with interest the Government’s response to the first consultation.

A wide range of factors was proposed for possible inclusion in the funding formula. I am sure the new formula will be better than the current system, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State described as arbitrary, unfair and out of date, but while the Government’s aim of maintaining higher funding for schools with issues of deprivation is laudable, I hope they will recognise the need for all school places to have satisfactory and effective funding. I am sure they will.

There are pockets of deprivation in every town and rural area. Every school has problems to confront, and ensuring proper recognition of the basic costs of providing the teaching staff and delivering the curriculum will be key. That is especially difficult in areas within commuting distance—subject to Southern rail and the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers—of London. The cost of living in my constituency is very high, which makes it harder to recruit and retain the excellent teaching staff that children and parents rightly expect. That is especially true and worrisome in an area in which school infrastructure rarely seems to keep pace with population growth, adding to the strain placed on headteachers and staff. There is a worrying impact on class size, as at Tanbridge House school or Forest school in my constituency—at Forest secondary school, top set classes in core subjects already have 35 or 36 pupils. That obviously has a direct impact on teachers, but it also has practical consequences in classrooms designed for 30 pupils with a number of PCs to match. Schools that provide targeted support for struggling pupils used to do it in sets of 12 or 15, but now find that those sets have grown to 20, which means less effective lessons in which it is harder to focus.

Fair funding—redressing the balance—is critical. I look forward to the second consultation and what I trust will be an appropriate recognition of the high basic cost of education of every child. We are very proud of the good results generated by the schools in my constituency, but no one, least of all the Minister, would take that as a source of complacency. Excellent teaching, committed leadership and supportive parents all still need a solid underpinning of funding. In the immediate term, that foundation of solid funding is a source of real concern for headteachers across the county.

Costs have undoubtedly risen in the current year. I have had input from a large number of schools in my constituency; it would be invidious were I to go through every single one of them, but I will focus on one in particular. The Weald school in Billingshurst is an outstanding school. The current head has been in place for eight years. He started with 95 teachers and a senior leadership team of nine, including two deputy heads, and 1,440 pupils. He has managed to maintain 95 teachers, although the senior leadership team has been cut by a quarter, with now only one deputy; but the number of pupils has increased to 1,650—a 14% increase—and there has been a real-terms decrease in the per pupil funding of the school.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex said when proposing the motion, this has been a problem for 30 years. With extra costs in recent years, reserves have been eaten into and in many cases eliminated. As did other schools in my area, The Weald predicated its financing on fair funding being introduced from 2017-18. It and other schools have had to contend with particular issues that will arise in the current year. From April 2016 there was a 1% increase in teachers’ pay, which meant a 1.23% increase for schools once national insurance is included. That equates to a £75,000 incremental cost to The Weald. For the past 30 years, schools have contributed 14.1% to teacher’s pensions. From September 2015 that went up to 16.4%—for good reasons, but it has an ongoing annual impact of £170,000 on The Weald’s budget. From April 2016, employer’s national insurance contributions were increased, which is an important and valuable change for the Treasury but will cost the school an estimated £120,000.

Looking forward, the impact of changes to the education support grant are expected to add an extra £45,000 of costs, while the apprenticeship levy will add an extra £30,000—and that is before any future increases in teachers’ salaries. The sum of those figures amounts to an estimated deficit of £425,000 in the next financial year for The Weald school. That is why there is so much demand in the immediate term for transitional funding to help schools to get over the hump until fair funding is introduced.

To appreciate the gearing effect, my right hon. Friend referred to £20 million raising the West Sussex average per pupil funding from where it is now, at the bottom, to being halfway towards the average. That £20 million would equate to £250,000 flowing through to The Weald school. As the Minister will see, no one would say that is easy living or easy budgeting in the context of a forecast deficit getting on for half a million pounds, but £250,000 would make a real impact on managing the short-term costs until the introduction of the fair funding formula.

As my right hon. Friend said, in trying to work out what to do, headteachers have been setting out alternative options that they could pursue. The one that has generated the most attention has been the threat to modify school opening hours, which I do not believe is appropriate in any circumstances. None of the other options being considered has happy consequences either; they include larger class sizes where practical, curriculum shrinkage and further staff reductions. It would be particularly galling if reducing the syllabus or not replacing staff occurred on a temporary basis, only to be reversed as and when—we hope—satisfactory results come through from the fair funding of the schools.

I congratulate the Department for Education on pursuing fairer funding, which I trust will put appropriate weight on basic per pupil costs. I recognise the fiscal constraints under which the Department is operating, but I hope the particular funding pressures on schools are recognised. When announcing the decision to delay the implementation of fair funding, the Secretary of State for Education said she would take a sensible approach to transitional arrangements for 2017-18. She made similar statements to the Education Select Committee, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex referred. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I also look forward to seeing the Secretary of State this afternoon. This is an issue that I very much hope we can address.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

rose—