Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fourteenth sitting)

Debate between Tom Hayes and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Tuesday 11th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Hayes]

I understood the point that the hon. Member made in his speech, and I understand his clarification. I still struggle to see how the new clause fits in with what I regard as the Conservative party’s ideology around schooling and children’s wellbeing. It feels anomalous to ask headteachers and teachers to work within a ban, rather than trusting them to use the flexibility that the previous Government gave them.

One highlight of the Committee’s debate over the last few weeks has been the recognition that our teachers and headteachers know their students best. It is important that we give them all the trust and support that they deserve. I sympathise with what the hon. Member says about addictive apps, but for me it is not about banning, per se; it is about creating a viable and better alternative that gives children and teenagers much better things to do with their time.

[Damian Hinds]

I rise to speak in favour of the new clause. Unusually, I will start by saying what the new clause will not do, and the limits of the change it proposes.

The truth is that the vast majority of online harm does not happen at school. Banning phones or social media in school will not necessarily reduce the total amount of time that children spend online or address schools’ worries about kids being online, such as the concern about the increasing number of children who turn up to school having not slept sufficiently to be ready for the day. Nor does the new clause address the wider problems—not day to day, but more chronic—with attention span and eyesight. We have recently heard a lot about the greater prevalence of myopia.

Rules in this area are still important, however, and behaviour in school is crucial for teacher recruitment and, particularly, retention. Three big things have changed in schools in the last few years. The first is an attitudinal shift that came about around the time of covid, and that it will take us some years to understand. The other two are vapes and phones. It cannot be overstated how much those three things affect what happens in a school, the feel of the school and what teachers and headteachers report back.

The first thing that schoolchildren need for learning is to be able to concentrate. There is good reason to believe that even when a child is not using a phone, the fact that it is in their pocket—that it could buzz, vibrate or whatever at any point—can distract them. I think it is an important principle that the entire school day, including break time and lunch time, should be reserved for what school is about: learning, developing and being with friends. The question, as always, is whether we leave that to individual schools or have a national rule, and the hon. Member for Bournemouth East was right to speak about the tension between the two. I confess that that is a question I have personally had to grapple with on more than one occasion, and there is not a single, simple answer.

In the Bill, there are many national rules for things that arguably do not need a national rule, and that could be left to individual schools so that they can do what is best for their school community—from the precise number of school uniform items to the exact length of breakfast. The hon. Member is right that the Labour instinct is to say, “Let’s have a national rule on everything; we like consistency.” There is nothing wrong with consistency. He is also right that our instinct is to say, “Leave those rules to the schools wherever possible.” There are, however, times when an overriding national rule is beneficial and makes sense.

In 2019, when I was at the Department for Education, this question came up for me. At the time, we decided not to put a national rule in place. Politicians are always expected to have a firm and clear view on everything, and Ministers are expected to be absolutely certain about every decision they make, but it does not always work like that. Things can often be argued both ways. I was never 100% sure at the time that I was doing the right thing, but I thought I was. In 2024, we introduced non-statutory guidance on how the use of mobile phones should be prohibited throughout the school day, which, crucially, included breaks. We were also clear that there was the option to make the guidance statutory if necessary.

The world has continued to change since then. As my right hon. Friend the shadow Minister described, when it comes to mobile phone use and our worries about children, that change has not made things slightly less bad than they were before. Worries have only deepened and intensified.

[Tom Hayes]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Damian Hinds]

If the hon. Member has counter-examples, let us hear them.

[Tom Hayes]

That is not the point on which I am intervening. I was going to say that by using the language of mobile phone and smartphone interchangeably, we are confusing the debate. If our debate is confused, I am not sure how we can arrive at a certain policy.

I called for agreement with the Government around national rules. I want to clarify that I did not mean on everything, but only on the things in the Bill that I think need national rules. I agree with the right hon. Member that that is what provides consistency.

[Damian Hinds]

The hon. Member is right about the difficulty with defining the term smartphone. People talk about a brick phone, a feature phone, a basic phone, a Nokia, a smartphone and an iPhone, but the truth is that there is no definition; smartphone is just a term. It originally came about when people did not want to use the brand name iPhone, because Samsung phones and other types of phone were available. It just means a smarter phone; it has more stuff on it. Some of the things that people worry about are not necessarily only available on smartphones. I looked recently at iMessage, and it is starting to look more like WhatsApp. Anything that can be used for a group chat has some of the issues that we find in schools that cover the teenage and sub-teenage years.

There are other things that people can get on a smartphone but not on a Nokia that are perfectly benign. Some parents are quite keen for their kids to be able to look at the weather. Some are keen to be able to use the tracking device to follow their child, or for their child to be able to use the mapping device to find their way home, so I agree with the hon. Member.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the shadow Minister for refocusing what I was saying, and he is absolutely right. Some of our worries in relation to children apply regardless of the piece of technology. Anything that demands our attention and is ever-present brings such risks.

[Tom Hayes]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way? I promise that this will be my last intervention.

[Damian Hinds]

On that promise, I will give way.

[Tom Hayes]

I want to labour this point, as it were, because I understand entirely the point that the hon. Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston made. It is important to do so, because there are parents and children who wish to retain the option of being in contact with each other for safeguarding or wellbeing reasons. Such parents typically draw the distinction between a mobile phone, which allows for SMS and voice calls; and a smartphone, which typically has addictive social media or games, or particular apps that might cause wider safeguarding concerns. That is why I am trying to draw the right hon. Gentleman into focusing on mobile phones—brick phones, Nokia phones or the ones that Snake can be played on—as opposed to more sophisticated phones.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Tenth sitting)

Debate between Tom Hayes and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Tuesday 4th February 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

The national curriculum is a vital part of our school system, but its centrality does not mean there is never space for deviation from it. A couple of hours ago I was saying that initial teacher training and qualified teacher status is a fundamental foundation of our school system, with 97% of teachers in the state education system having qualified teacher status. It was 97% in 2024, and as it happens it was also 97% in 2010. Similarly, we know that the great majority of schools follow the national curriculum the great majority of the time.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Will the right hon. Member give way?

[Damian Hinds]

I will if the hon. Member wants to correct what I said.

[Tom Hayes]

Can the right hon. Gentleman provide statistics on the extent to which the national curriculum is followed by academies? That feels to me to be more of a contested space.

[Damian Hinds]

That is a question for the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues on the Government Front Bench. He is at liberty to table a written parliamentary question, but I think he will find that it is not possible to get a numerical answer to that question. We did, though, discuss the matter with Ofsted in the evidence sessions—I think the hon. Gentleman was there—and it is a broadly known fact, as any educationalist will tell him, that the vast majority of schools follow the national curriculum for all sorts of good reasons, some of which I will come to.

It is not widely understood that the national curriculum has always been a relatively loose framework, including for maintained schools. That is the British tradition. There are other school systems in the world that are very much more centrally directed. Even for local authority and maintained schools it has always been, relatively speaking, quite a devolved system with relative autonomy. It is not possible, sitting in Sanctuary Buildings, to decide suddenly what children are going to learn. Occasionally we will hear a press story about how the Department or its Ministers have banned Steinbeck from schools in England, but that just is not possible to do. We had a row a couple of years ago about so-called decolonising the curriculum. We had people writing to us saying that our national curriculum glorifies the British empire and instils all these negative attitudes, and I said, “Where? Show me where in this document it does that. It doesn’t.” It does not specify things to study in nearly that much detail.

That brings me on to the Semmelweis question. I first posed the Semmelweis question more than 10 years ago when I was on the Education Committee, because I was curious to know who decides what children learn in schools. For anyone who wants to know what the Semmelweis question is, it is: “Who was Semmelweis?” From visiting schools I realised that everybody under the age of 18 was very familiar with Semmelweis, and young adults and anybody under the age of 25 or 30 knew who Semmelweis was, but nobody over the age of 40 had the first clue who he was.

Would colleagues like to know who Semmelweis was? He worked a hospital in Austria where there were two maternity wards, one of which was staffed by midwives and the other by surgeons. The midwives were women and the surgeons were men. Semmelweis detected, through statistical analysis, that the mortality rates in the two maternity wards were markedly different: the safety rate in the midwife-led ward was much better. This was relevant at the time I looked into it because of the hospital superbug. It is quite difficult to find out who, but somebody had decided that every child in Britain, or in England, should learn this story about Semmelweis, because that would promote hygiene in hospital settings.

Semmelweis is not on the national curriculum. Nowhere does it say in a document produced by the Department for Education that every child will learn that. So who does decide? For most subjects in key stages 1 to 3, it is a mix of what schools themselves decide and individual teachers decide. Historically, it would have been a lot about what was in the textbook, so textbook publishers play a role. In more modern times it is educational technology and platforms like Oak National Academy. Then for English and maths it is very much about what is in the year 6 assessments.

At key stage 4 and sixth form, as the hon. Member for Twickenham set out correctly, it is really the exam boards that decide what a pupil needs to know to get the GCSE or A-level, and it is the same for other qualifications. That in turn determines what children have to learn. That is not the national curriculum but what is called the specification. The specification for a GCSE is about as close as we can get to a definition of who decides what children will learn at school. Although that refers specifically to key stage 4 and above, it also affects what children learn in preparation in lower school and junior schools. The Minister quoted Jim Callaghan and said that things should not be decided in a “secret garden”. Well, that is the secret garden: the specification that determines what is studied at GCSE. It is not, currently, a detailed national curriculum.

Why is the looseness of the national curriculum important? Because the national curriculum is driven by politicians, and keeping the national curriculum loose has helped to keep politics at bay. That can sometimes be frustrating. There will be times when the Minister, like Ministers before her, will say, “My God, I am the Schools Minister—I should be able to determine what happens in schools.” That can be frustrating, but it is also helpful that Ministers cannot affect that directly. I would meet Education Ministers from other countries who said, “We’ve just changed the textbook,” and I would think, “God, I wish we could do that.” But we are a million miles away from saying that we have changed the textbook and every child in England is going to learn the same thing.

By the way, Ministers will still get a procession of people asking for this or that to be put on the curriculum. Spoiler alert: climate change and financial education are both already on the national curriculum, disguised in different subjects, but that will not stop people coming to lobby Ministers to do it for the first time. Ministers will get a lot more of those visits in future.

During the passage of the Education Reform Act 1988—Gerbil, as it was known—the national curriculum could have been made more prescriptive, but self-restraint on the part of the Government of the day, and of Governments since, has meant it has not been. The key point is that we cannot guarantee that self-restraint into the future.

In case colleagues think I am just talking about what children will learn in geography or science, I point out that there are sensitive subjects that a lot of people have an interest in. When we took evidence, I asked the Church of England and Catholic Education Service representatives about someone changing the definition of religious education. Colleagues will know that only one event in history is specified in the national curriculum, which is the holocaust, and no other. English literature is another sensitive subject. Boy, I can tell Ministers that relationships, sex and health education has its controversies—they will not be short of people banging down their door looking for changes there.

[Tom Hayes]

I am listening carefully to the right hon. Gentleman; as a former Secretary of State, he has a lot of insight and experience, so I am enjoying and learning from what he is saying, but could he say a little about alignment with or deviation from the national curriculum, which is the point we are trying to address? I would appreciate hearing more about his point of view on that.

[Damian Hinds]

I do not know whether the hon. Member has a copy of my notes, but that is what I was just about to say.

I argued on Second Reading that the ability of academies—which are now the majority of secondary schools and a large number of primary schools in this country—even if most of the time hardly any use it, to deviate somewhat from the national curriculum is a safety valve against politicisation. I remind colleagues on the Labour Benches that their party is currently in government with a whacking great majority, but it is possible that it might not be forever. We all have an interest in guarding against over-politicisation.

As we have heard, and as my hon. Friend the shadow Minister rightly said, it can be an instrument of school improvement to ease off from some aspects of the national curriculum while refocussing on core subjects.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Hayes]

rose—

[Damian Hinds]

I will give way to the hon. Member for St Helens North as he was the nicest to me.

--- Later in debate ---

[Damian Hinds]

Now we are on to modern methods of construction: scaffolding or a floor? I do not know. I will give way to the hon. Member for Bournemouth East, then I promise I will move on.

[Tom Hayes]

I deeply thank the right hon. Member for taking so many interventions. What is the point of a national curriculum if some schools are not compelled to follow it?

[Damian Hinds]

As my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston has mentioned, it has long been the case that some schools have not had to follow the national curriculum. Even under the proposals in the Bill there will be some schools that will not have to follow it. One of the reasons why I have been banging on for so long, Sir Christopher, is because I have been through a lot of these points already and I am being asked to restate them. I have to ask the hon. Gentleman to forgive me but, as I have set out, it is a broad framework, and there is nothing wrong with having a little bit of innovation within that.

I want to come to a close. There are serious people working on the curriculum review and I wish them well in their work. We must of course await the outcome, not prejudge it. So far we have heard only the good stuff—the things we are going to add. In politics, it is always easy to talk about adding things. We are adding more creativity, art and sport, and those are all things that I welcome. It is great to have those opportunities for young people. The difficulty may arrive when we ask, “What does that mean?” Does it mean a longer school day, which is one option? Or does it mean that something else has to go to make way for those things? I do not have the answer, but it is a relevant question.

To come back to the ceiling point—whether the national curriculum is a floor or a ceiling—it depends how much headroom is needed. In a very loose national curriculum, schools can innovate and so on, but in a heavily specified national curriculum, they cannot, because the floor is already close to the ceiling and there is not that much room to play with.

I do not know whether the hon. Member for North Herefordshire is on Professor Francis’s working group, or what will be in the review document, but there are three problems with insisting on 100% adherence to the national curriculum. First, we are being asked to agree to it before we have the outcome of the national curriculum review. Secondly, Ministers are not obliged to adopt that independent review; they may decide to do something slightly, or more than slightly, different. Thirdly, they are not obliged to stop there. I say “they”, but it is of course not only them. The Bill is going to be an Act of Parliament: we are not legislating for what happens between 2024 and 2029; in the absence of another piece of legislation to replace this one, we are legislating for all time. We cannot know who might come along in the future and decide to do something of which colleagues here might not approve.

We do not have large numbers of schools teaching unscientific facts, creationism and what have you. We do have Ofsted, which evaluates all schools on whether they follow a broad and balanced curriculum. We know that, the great majority of the time, the great majority of schools follow the national curriculum, but some innovate, and that can have some benefits. Like others, I am left asking Ministers, what problem are we trying to solve?

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fifth sitting)

Debate between Tom Hayes and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Tuesday 28th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Damian Hinds]

My hon. Friend, as ever, makes a very apt point. Where we end up on that continuum of scale depends on what we are going after most. Of course, we want all those things. For purchasing power, a bigger scale is better, but for close and easy working relationships, a smaller scale is sometimes better. When we are talking about children, and the placement of vulnerable children, that may well push us towards the smaller end of the scale.

Perhaps it is possible to perform different functions at different levels, with some functions still being performed by the individual local authority. Even then, as my hon. Friend often rightly says, there is an enormous difference in scale between London local authorities, which are actually quite small even though they are in our largest city, and Birmingham, which is one enormous authority. It might be argued that doing some things at a sub-local authority level makes sense in a very large local authority area, but as I say, it might be possible to do some things as the single local authority, some things at a larger level, and some things—presumably principally in terms of purchasing leverage—on a wider scale again.

If regional co-operation arrangements are not materially different in practice from something that already exists in co-operation between local authorities, even if that is on a smaller scale than what is envisaged, is legislation actually necessary? If it is not, we probably should not legislate. I would like to understand a bit more about the legislative basis that is currently missing.

Finally, the Bill sets out that the Secretary of State may add to the definition of the strategic accommodation functions that we have listed in proposed new section 22J(3) of Children Act 1989. What type of additional functions does the Minister have in mind?

[Tom Hayes]

I rise to speak in favour of regional co-operation arrangements, primarily because of what we have seen in two important reviews or evaluations. The recent independent review of children’s social care that I referred to highlighted a system at breaking point, as we also heard from the Minister. The insight from that report was that how we find, match, build, and run foster homes and residential care for children in care radically needs to change. When the Competition and Markets Authority looked at this area, it also identified major problems, such as profiteering, weak oversight and poor planning by councils—the verdict on the system is damning.

The independent review recommended that a co-operative model should sit at the centre of bringing about change. The values of our movement could provide the loving homes that children in care need. I particularly support this clause because this feels like a very Labour Government Bill—one that has at its heart the co-operative model that is obviously such a big part of our labour movement.

My hope is that regional care co-operatives could gain economies of scale and harness the collective buying power of independent local authorities to improve services for looked-after children. There are obvious benefits to using a co-operative model to solve those problems—the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity and solidarity apply directly to how these regional care co-operatives would be run. In a social care market that has been described as broken by the Minister and by those reports, it is critical to bring the co-operative model more into what we provide.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Tom Hayes and Damian Hinds

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Q Before I was elected, I ran a domestic abuse and mental health charity, so I can definitely speak to the value of the mandate, even in a local authority setting, which was excellent. Anne, are the other measures in the Bill proportionate to the aim of driving local integration and making sure that the child is at the centre of all decision making?

Anne Longfield: There are a number of other interventions that we could include that would strengthen children’s participation and children’s being at the centre of their communities. One of those is around children’s play. We know that children’s access to play has reduced dramatically over recent years. Play is the thing that children say they want: it is at the top of their list. We were very worried about access to play and the dominance of social media in children’s lives. Wales introduced a play sufficiency duty in 2010. It was not a huge cost. It meant that local authorities had to plan for play and respond to play. That kind of strategy would be, for a first stage, a very cost-effective way of reflecting children’s needs in the community.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

Q We talked earlier about the measurement of wellbeing. There are surveys of children’s wellbeing by various organisations now: the Office of the Children’s Commissioner—your old office, Anne—does something, the King’s Trust does something, UNICEF has done an international survey and so on. What would the output of the surveys you envisage be used for?

Could you also say a word or two about the mental health of children and young people survey, wave 4 of which was most recently published by the NHS and the future of which is uncertain? Would you like to see that series of surveying and reporting carried on?

Dr Homden: Yes, we would. It is incredibly important that we are able to account for the implementation and for whether the Bill actually helps us to improve children’s wellbeing. It is also extremely important that that happens systematically across local services and in any area in which we can respond and adapt services to meet the needs of children. Generally, we feel that it is extremely important that wellbeing measurement is advanced and made more systematic and consistent.

National Insurance Contributions (Secondary Class 1 Contributions) Bill

Debate between Tom Hayes and Damian Hinds

2nd reading
Tuesday 3rd December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tom Hayes]

I have literally just said that this debate should not be about party politics, but about the scrutiny of this Government’s Budget. Instead of asking questions about the nature and substance of the Budget, the Opposition are resorting to party politics. [Interruption.] As my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) says from a sedentary position, we could list debates such as the Grenfell Tower inquiry debate yesterday, during which Conservative Members were deserting their Benches.

The burden of tax has fallen on working people for far too long under the Conservatives. Working people have suffered in many more ways, too: they have been unable to get the NHS appointments they want, the mortgages they want and all the services they should be entitled to. When I have knocked on doors in Bournemouth East and spoken with thousands of people over the last two years, the overwhelming feeling has been of hopelessness. It is the feeling that nothing ever changes in politics because there is a constant back and forth between our Benches about unimportant things rather than a focus on what those people actually want.

People want an NHS that will truly deliver. They want the 40,000 additional appointments a week. They want the billion pounds that is being invested in SEND. They want the £600 million going into social care. They want the £22 billion going into our NHS to start to fix the problems that have been ongoing for 14 years. I say to Opposition Members that if they are dedicated to their constituencies, if they care deeply about putting our public services back on track, and if they care about an economy that grows so that we have private businesses supporting our investment in the public sector, they should be voting with the Government tonight. I am disappointed to see so many of them saying that they will not be doing so.

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

We are the Opposition. You are the Government.

[Tom Hayes]

We are the Government taking decisions in the national interest. The Conservatives are the Opposition taking decisions on behalf of their party’s interest. That is why, I am afraid, the Conservatives will not be coming back into power any time soon. They are not prepared to listen to what voters want, they are not prepared to take the tough decisions, and they are not prepared to come to the table, be constructive and try to put right the problems that they have created.

We have a long road ahead to put our NHS our economy and our public finances back on track, but this is a Government with a historic majority and a historic mandate to serve our nation’s interest. I call on those on the Opposition Benches—obviously not the Conservatives—to support this Government in what we are doing, because, together, we can put this country back together.