Community Cohesion

Tony Baldry Excerpts

Wednesday 26th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con)]

I read with some interest on the Order Paper that there was going to be a debate on “Community Cohesion”, because I wondered what that phrase meant. Usually, the topic that is going to be debated is clear from the Order Paper, and the policy issues that will be considered and the Department that is likely to respond to the debate are usually implied by that. The phrase “community cohesion” does not lend itself to any of that, so I thought, at first, that it might be shorthand for “the big society” and, as I have listened to the comments made by the hon. Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) in the debate today, that is, I think, what has so far been intended.

On this side of the Chamber, we have certainly made it clear that the size, scope and role of the Government has reached a point at which it is inhibiting rather than advancing the progressive aims of reducing poverty, fighting inequality and increasing well-being. In short, we do not believe that Government with a capital G has all the answers, and the coalition has made it clear that its alternative to big government is the big society, a society in which we all recognise the responsibilities that we owe to ourselves, our families, the communities in which we find ourselves and the nation as a whole. It is a society with much higher levels of personal, professional, civic and corporate responsibility, where people come together to solve problems and to improve life for themselves and their communities, and where the driving dynamic or progress is social responsibility, not state control. I am sure, therefore, that the concept of the big society runs, and will run, consistently through the coalition Government’s programme, which is reflected by the fact that the Minister responding to this debate is responsible for the policy on the big society.

The Government’s plans to reform public services, mend society and rebuild trust in politics are part of the big society agenda. Such plans involve redistributing power from the state to society—from the centre to local communities—giving people the opportunity to take more control of their lives. That is why the Localism Bill is so important, as are similar initiatives. It was heartening to see that so many right hon. and hon. Members wished to speak last week on Second Reading. Some 76 Members put their names forward, which I suspect was a record and which reflects the considerable interest in the localism agenda. It has occurred to me that if the hon. Gentleman wanted to have a crack at the big society, he would have tabled something on that topic at that point, and we would have found on the Order Paper a debate entitled, “The Big Society”.

The phrase “Community Cohesion” should therefore mean something, and as I reflected on that I decided to look it up on Wikipedia, which was not a particularly reassuring experience. The Wikipedia reference to community cohesion starts by proclaiming that

“this article does not cite any references or sources”,

so if there is some great sociological debate going on here, it clearly has not hit Wikipedia. The website then gives a short definition:

“Community cohesion refers to the aspect of togetherness and bonding exhibited by members of a community, the ‘glue’ that holds a community together. This might include features such as a sense of common belonging or cultural similarity.”

I cannot work out why it is necessary for hon. Members to spend an hour and a half considering our sense of common belonging, because it is axiomatic that we have a sense of common belonging.

[Phil Wilson]

The phrase is included in some of the Conservative party documentation that I have read on the big society, and community surveys in recent years also talk about community cohesion. The phrase has not just come out of the blue, and the hon. Gentleman’s own party has used it to explain what the big society is all about. My point is not that anyone is against the big society, but that because of the cuts that you are going to bring about, you will ensure that there is no big society.

[Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)]

Order. I am not cutting anything. I also ask for interventions to be brief.

[Tony Baldry]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman has said, but he chose the topic for this debate, and in the substantial briefing prepared by the Library—it runs to pages and pages—the phrase “community cohesion” is, interestingly, mentioned only once.

After giving the brief description that I cited before giving way, Wikipedia recommends that one should also look on the site for terms such as “gemeinschaft and gesellschaft”, “integration”, “multiculturalism”, “social cohesion”, “structural cohesion” and “social solidarity”. On the basis of those associated terms, it struck me that community cohesion is not a policy that would commend itself to many of my hon. Friends, because it is clearly shorthand for state intervention by stealth. If it is not, I do not understand why the hon. Gentleman has not candidly introduced a debate on the big society.

I then recalled, from the recesses of my mind, that there is one statutory reference to community cohesion—just one—which is that the previous Government placed in statute in the Education and Inspections Act 2006 a duty on schools to promote community cohesion, and an obligation on Ofsted to police whether schools were taking sufficient action to promote such cohesion. I do not know about other hon. Members, but in the time that I have been a Member in north Oxfordshire I have found that all the schools in my patch strive hard to play their part in the local community and do not require a tick-box exercise to determine whether they are full members of the community. Indeed, how can a school be isolated from what other parts of the community do? I suspect that every head teacher and governing body in my patch believes that community cohesion is a fundamental part of their ethos. They need neither Ministers to tell them what they should be doing nor Ofsted inspectors to check that they, as schools, are playing their full part in the community.

I assumed, therefore, that what we would be having today would be synthetic row about the perfectly sensible decision of Ministers at the Department for Education to remove from Ofsted inspectors the obligation to have regard to community cohesion when carrying out inspections, and about the decision that inspectors should, in future, concentrate on four principal areas, namely the quality of teaching, the effectiveness of leadership, pupils’ behaviour and safety, and pupils’ achievement. That seems an eminently sensible approach. Indeed, and perhaps understandably, head teachers and the teaching unions have long urged that there should be less control from the centre and that they should be trusted more to run their schools and to teach for the benefit of the pupils concerned and not for the benefit of bureaucrats. Those four principal areas of focus for inspection by Ofsted show whether a school is performing effectively, but I am conscious that the people who are opposed to Ministers removing an obligation on Ofsted to have regard to community cohesion, are also having a crack at the policy of free schools being introduced by the Secretary of State for Education and other ministerial colleagues at the Department. I find that hostility to free schools truly bizarre.

This year we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Church of England entering the field of education and the formation of the National Society. At that time, the Church of England introduced Church schools into every parish for the purposes of educating local children. It was never intended that they should be faith schools; they were seen as part of the Church of England’s central mission to the local community, and in 1944 Rab Butler was able to introduce his Education Act only because the Church of England was prepared to integrate Church schools into the state system of education.

Then, as now, Roman Catholic and other schools provided diversity, and in recent years that diversity has been extended by the introduction and continuance of academies by the previous Government. Children in Banbury have a choice of going to Banbury school, which is a trust school, North Oxfordshire academy, which as its name suggests is an academy, or Blessed George Napier school, which is a Roman Catholic secondary school with a sixth form. Post 16, they can go to the Oxford and Cherwell Valley further education college. Parents welcome such choice, and head teachers, governing bodies and schools are all, in their different ways, rooted in the local community.

Indeed, the Education Act 1944 makes it clear that as far as is possible, children should be educated in accordance with their parents’ wishes, a concept endorsed fully by Jim Callaghan as Prime Minister in the mid-1970s during his notable speech at Ruskin college on education, in which he made it clear that whatever parents wanted for their children, the state should want for all our children. I thus find it entirely bizarre that the Labour party, which endorsed the academies programme while in government—not just in inner cities but in areas and constituencies such as mine—wants to pull up the drawbridge now that it is in opposition.

Who is it that the Opposition do not trust—head teachers, governing bodies or parents? Occasionally, they seek to show their opposition to free schools by having a crack at faith groups, but faith groups, such as the Church of England, have, as I have said, been running schools in this country very effectively for 200 years. I was fortunate enough to attend a faith school. A couple of months ago, I returned there to take part in a seminar commemorating the life and work of one of the school’s distinguished old boys, Michael Foot. I fail to understand why some in the Labour party wish to pull up the ladder that they and others climbed.

I am pleased that a new free school is proposed in my constituency that will take pupils from age eight through secondary level. RAF Upper Heyford was a United States air force base until the early 1990s. For some years, the base was in limbo while various national house builders who owned the site negotiated the planning process. Heyford Park now has planning permission for 1,000 homes, including the existing 300, and parents there made it clear in a survey that they would like a combined primary and secondary school built at Heyford Park. A Heyford Park parents’ group has grown up as a result of that effort to seek parents’ views, and it in turn has developed into Heyford Park parents’ planning group for a new free school.

I strongly support the initiative. It seems totally in accord with the Government’s policy on free schools and new academies. It also has the benefit of an existing community that will grow over time and from which such a school can be born in terms of parental support and a geographical area. In addition, there is no primary or secondary school in the area whose offering the creation of a Heyford Park academy would challenge, threaten or undermine, as all the existing primary schools nearby are effectively full, obliging many primary school children from the area to travel a considerable distance to Bicester. The creation of the school would allow children to go to school much nearer where they live.

The planning group includes Roy Blatchford, former head teacher of Bicester community college and one of Her Majesty’s inspectors. I am glad to report that the buildings for a school already exist and that there are plenty of grounds and playing space at Upper Heyford dating from when it was an air force base. The developers are willing to commit substantial amounts of money to the new free school.

That project chimes with what we are trying to do to give local people much greater control over their lives. If we are to debate the big society, let us have a debate, but I believe that the localism agenda, which gives people much greater control over their own lives—having regard to the obligations that we all have to ourselves, our families and the communities in which we find ourselves—is the right direction of travel. I am glad that it is this Government’s direction of travel.