Trade Union Bill (Fourth sitting)
Baroness Prentis of Banbury Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Chris Stephens
Q 347 One last question on the thresholds. Do you think that there are also gender equality issues, where in workplaces a majority of women workers might not be able to go on strike because a shift change would impact on them more than it would on male workers?
Professor Ewing: That is a good point, which I had not thought of, and it is something that I would like to think about before coming back to you. I am happy to address the Committee on that point, but I would like to think about it first.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
Q 348 You talked about the ILO conventions. A great deal of your report is concerned with ECHR conventions, and I accept you cannot mention everything in your brief summary today, but would you accept that as recently as last year, the European Court acknowledged that it was legitimate for the Government to legislate to impose some constraints on article 11? Would you accept that there is a wide margin of appreciation for the Government in the way that this can be handled?
Professor Ewing: Are we talking about the RMT case?
Victoria Prentis
Yes.
Professor Ewing: Yes, the British Government won in that case, but what I would say to you is that that case was really quite eccentric. There have been five or six decisions on article 11, specifically in relation to the right to strike, since April 2009, and the only case in which the Court has held in favour of the Government is the RMT case involving the United Kingdom. If I were the Government here, I would not be feeling very complacent or comfortable about that decision, because we have got cases from Croatia, Ukraine, Turkey and Russia in which the Court has said that the right to strike is protected and restrictions have to be justified. That case on its facts accepted that the restrictions could be justified, but you cannot conclude from that that all restrictions will be justified.
Victoria Prentis
Q 349 No, no, and I do not think that anybody on the Government side would disagree that the right to strike should be protected and that restrictions should be justified. That is absolutely the Government’s position. Let me turn it around. Are there any cases that support your view that it is not legitimate for the Government to make proportionate restrictions under article 11?
Professor Ewing: It is quite difficult to answer that question directly, because every case is different. In this case, whatever the challenge is under the convention to this legislation, first, it is not clear yet what the challenge will be, and it will be a strategic question for trade unions to consider which will be the best way in to attack the legislation, I imagine; and, secondly, when the challenge takes place it will also be informed by the influence of other treaty obligations. The European convention is not an island that sits on its own. We have regard to the decisions of the Social Rights Committee of the Council of Europe, which has also expressed criticism about our existing law. We will have regard to ILO supervisory bodies and their views on it. That will help to construct the case, so at this stage, it is hard to know what the case will be. We have got pointers as to what it might be, but the case will have to be built. I guess a very careful case will be built in order to learn from the lessons of the RMT case.
Victoria Prentis
Q 350 Okay. Can we move on to certification officers? I am thinking about the type of person who is a certification officer. It tends to be an Employment Appeal Tribunal judge or people of that type. Do you really feel it is unreasonable for others with a legitimate cause for complaint, because of the results of industrial action, to encourage the beginning of an investigatory process?
Professor Ewing: The certification officer is not a judge. The existing officer is a solicitor or partner in a law firm. Previous officers, I think, were former civil servants who did not have legal qualifications. You are telling me something I did not know, in the sense that the certification officer’s powers are going to be triggered by complaints made to him.
Victoria Prentis
Q 351 No, I am just suggesting that is one type of person who might feel—
Professor Ewing: Are you thinking about employers who might use the certification officer as a kind of surrogate rather than going directly to court?
Victoria Prentis
Q 352 More someone with a legitimate cause for complaint—someone who is affected by strike action.
Professor Ewing: Looking at the powers in schedule 2, we are talking about provisions relating to trade union elections, trade union expenditure and trade union amalgamations. This is about the internal affairs of the union, principally. If employers or whoever have a problem with strike ballots or whatever, they already have a remedy by way of complaint to the ordinary courts, which would be much quicker.
Victoria Prentis
Q 353 I do not want to go on too long, but I was not thinking of employers; I was thinking more of those who are affected by the results of strike action.
Professor Ewing: I am not sure how they would have access to the CO.
Victoria Prentis
Q 354 The certification officer himself might be able to take a view that it was appropriate to investigate non-compliance.
Professor Ewing: Non-compliance with what, in the case of a strike?
Victoria Prentis
Q 355 His job is to investigate non-compliance.
Professor Ewing: Yes, but only with specific obligations. If you look at page 16, the obligations to which the investigatory powers apply are listed in paragraph 1(a) to (h). They do not seem to apply to industrial action. The powers in schedule 2 are to make complaints against a union that he himself will adjudicate. These are powers that relate to the internal affairs and government of the union, so I do not know where the power you refer to arises. This was a power we used to have from the last regime, but I thought it had gone.
The Chair
Professor Ewing, thank you very much. You have been very helpful indeed. We will now move on to the next panel.
Examination of Witnesses
Janet Davies, Jon Skewes, Matt Wrack, Mark Serwotka and Dr Patrick Roach gave evidence.
The Chair
I well understand that. It is not your view; it is the evidence that you have come up with that we need the detail of for consideration. We have got eight minutes left and we have still got four questioners to ask their questions and get a reply, so could we be more succinct on both sides—the interviewees and the Members?
Victoria Prentis
Q 398 I was a public sector worker myself for 17 years, and although you may feel that we have got it in for you on this side of the Committee, I learnt a certain amount about industrial relations in that time and I am fully aware that we are very lucky to have giants of negotiation strategy in front of us, helping us with this Bill.
Mr McCluskey, in a way that does not surprise me at all, has put forward his position in writing and he has given his position is on thresholds: 50% if he gets e-balloting—[Interruption.] Sorry, workplace balloting. Do the other three of you share that position?
Dave Prentis: I do not believe that there is a need for thresholds. If the aim is to increase participation—that was the pretence behind it—I believe in moving to e-balloting, but, more than that, workplace balloting. Do not make the assumption that all of our members have got access to computers. Our refuse collectors do not sit at a computer all day; they are out on the streets, collecting our rubbish, as so many other public service workers are.
We do want to bring in e-balloting. We do want a safe computer in the workplace, but we also want workplace balloting. You may have been a member of my union in the past, but I come from a union that, before our merger in ’93, we always had secret postal ballots that went to the workplace and the turnout was 70%. As soon as Thatcher’s law came in that said that they had got to go to home addresses, it dropped to 22%.
Victoria Prentis
I will take that as a no.
Frances O'Grady: The TUC is clear, as I said before, that it is actually the ILO that the Government need to answer to. The real issue here that all good democrats should be focused on is how we improve participation in ballots across the board.
Victoria Prentis
I will take that as a no, too.
Frances O'Grady: It is a yes to modernising methods of balloting.
Victoria Prentis
I thought you might be.
Sir Paul Kenny: My position is that no vote should not count, but that is a principled position I can hold. What Len McCluskey has done is put down a challenge: if people are serious about improving participation, come and talk. That may mean people have to move their principled positions, but I always understood that the end result was to find something workable and real. I do not know where you are going to put me down.
Victoria Prentis
I am going to put you with Mr McCluskey in my head.
Dave Prentis: It is a no to the two thresholds.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Q 399 The ILO definition of public services talks about “essential”. The Bill talks about “important”. Are you clear from the Government so far how important public services will be defined and, crucially, which workers will be covered?
Frances O'Grady: No, and I do not think the Government are clear either. In particular, the proposal that so-called ancillary roles could be included is extremely interesting but has yet to be defined. It makes it very difficult to have an intelligent discussion about this aspect of the Bill when we do not even know what jobs and functions could be covered.
To give a practical example, if a call centre is providing public services as part of its work and for parts of those call centre workers’ jobs, but it is based in the private sector, does it fall under the 50% threshold or the 40% threshold? Quite genuinely, how are unions supposed to run a lawful ballot when it is simply not clear how that would work in the real world? So far, we have not had an answer to those questions. It could be cleaners, call centre workers, ancillary staff—all sorts of job could be covered—but I am not sure how the Government’s proposals are supposed to work in the private sector that is providing public services.
Dave Prentis: It will be a nightmare, and it will be a goldmine for solicitors because for every work group we try to define, it will be fought out in the courts. None of us want that, surely. It is so ambiguous and so badly worded that it is difficult to find out how essential these people who are caught are. At the moment, it catches teaching assistants, who work in our schools at different levels, may only work at term time and, in many cases, are abused in the way they are treated, yet they may find themselves caught by this idea of important public services. It is ill defined and will lead to litigation going on for many, many months around disputes. Instead of trying to solve the disputes, we will be involved in fighting out in the courts whether or not we should be balloting, or whether we need an 80% majority or half of the members actually voting. It is going to be an absolute nightmare for industrial relations in public services.
Frances O'Grady: What is clear is that the Government are going way beyond any international definition of an essential service. International bodies are very clear that it is not enough to say you are further restricting strike action purely because of—however bad it is, however inconvenient and however disruptive to other businesses, that in itself cannot constitute a reason for further restrictions on the right to strike in certain sectors. In any case, the Government’s definition—carefully worded, I think—of important services goes way beyond any international definition of “essential”.
Trade Union Bill (First sitting)
Baroness Prentis of Banbury Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Jessica Morden
Q 45 Does that mean that you have consulted?
John Cridland: Yes. We have consulted on the Bill as a whole.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
Q 46 It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. As a former Government lawyer, compliance is always of enormous interest to me. Do you feel—this is for all of you—that the enhancements to the role of certification officer are really sufficient and that they will make a difference?
John Cridland: We look to harmonious employee relations. It is very important to us that we work with recognised trade unions and that we work strenuously, as trade unions nearly always do, to avoid these strikes. If there are strikes, they need to be properly and fairly regulated. Compliance is therefore important. You cannot have rules that are not properly enforced. We think these are sensible provisions to strengthen the compliance requirements but I put my answer to your question, if you will allow me, in the context that I have because I think we all want to see these rules applied in the smallest possible number of circumstances.
Dr Adam Marshall: I have nothing to add given my answer to the previous question.
David Martin: Likewise, it is not a provision that I understand in full detail. I need to spend a lot more time to understand the implications of it, so I have nothing to add.
Victoria Prentis
Q 47 The CBI, I know, feels strongly about this, as you have indicated. Do you feel that anything further could be done?
John Cridland: No, I am comfortable with the provisions that I have read and consulted our members on.
Dr Cameron
Q 48 Is it reasonable that clause 13 would give a Minister the power to overrule agreements made by trade unions and employers about the appropriate amount of facility time? Are your members concerned that that could undermine partnership working in the workplace and lead to further disruption?
John Cridland: If I may answer that, it is certainly the case that facility time is best agreed between employers and trade unions. It is primarily an issue of concern in the public sector, not in the private sector. This is not a matter that the employers in the private sector that I speak for have strong views on.
David Martin: I would be quite adamant that I would not want to see it cut across the existing effective working relationships that have built between trade unions, employees and employers.
Dr Adam Marshall: We have a very small number of members whom this affects, so we do not have a mandate to come forward with comments on that.
Dr Cameron
Q 73 The Government are consulting on draft regulations that would repeal the restriction on providing agency staff during industrial disputes. What are your views on these proposed changes? Could they further undermine industrial relations?
Mike Emmott: Our view is that the consultation paper overstates the likely impact of removing the prohibition on employment agencies supplying workers on a temporary basis during industrial disputes. It is already possible for employers to recruit temporary labour without any difficulty, provided that they do it directly. For some of the reasons that emerged from the last witness session, we think that issues of training and safety, never mind the availability of qualified staff, will very considerably reduce the impact of this, which is the third of the consultation issues. It is likely to be pretty much a non-event, except possibly in some cases where employers—maybe large employers—have close relationships with agencies, and on a daily basis they take on quite a lot of temporary labour. It might be difficult to know whether or not particular workers were engaged in replacing workers who are on strike. But in general, we do not think that this particular part of the Bill is likely to have any major impact. I do not speak for recruitment agencies or recruitment businesses, but I think that many of them will be quite reluctant to get sucked into industrial disputes.
Stephen Cavalier: Indeed, the recruitment businesses’ own organisation, the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, has said that this is a very dangerous proposal which it does not support. The Regulatory Policy Committee itself said that there was absolutely no basis for the Government’s assertion that 22% of days lost would be solved by this. Moreover, there are very good emergency arrangements in place to ensure that cover is provided in the public sector, certainly in the fire service and in midwifery. I am sure that people would much rather have those arrangements than agency workers brought in to put out fires or to deliver babies.
Victoria Prentis
Q 74 My questions really relate to the certification officer, which you present in your evidence as a sort of big bad wolf, and you seem very concerned about the prospect of the additional powers. I put it to you that really the prospect of having a certification officer is surely a sensible solution to difficulties with compliance, and an appropriate response to situations where non-compliance may have occurred. What strikes you as so outrageous about having to produce documents?
Stephen Cavalier: Well, first, the certification officer is not a big bad wolf, and his current iteration is doing a very good job. I would be very interested to hear from the Government what consultation there was with the certification officer about his own powers and his current arrangements, and whether he felt that his powers needed to be extended, and indeed what consultation there was with other agencies on the impacts of these powers. The purpose of the certification officer was to enable individual union members who felt that they were getting the wrong end of the stick from a collective issue to have a voice, which they would otherwise not have had. It is not about allowing outside agencies to influence the state regulator or to put pressure on the state regulator to initiate action. I cannot see how a state regulator can be impartial if they can be prevailed upon externally to take action. Also, if they were funded in the way that is suggested, that would completely alter the nature of the role.
Victoria Prentis
Q 75 But would you agree that the purpose is to establish whether or not there has been non-compliance?
Stephen Cavalier: Well, I am not sure that it is to establish whether there has been non-compliance. Non-compliance with what? At the moment if there is an issue to do with rules or statute, a member can complain to the certification officer. What is actually changing here is to take it beyond that and start, for example, requiring unions to report to the certification officer details of industrial action, which are really none of the certification officers’ concern. A certification officer is essentially there to deal with internal matters within unions to do with disputes and rights within unions, whereas here they are talking about the possibility of any person initiating a complaint with no written notice, and calling on unions immediately to produce documents and immediately to explain documents—it is difficult to see what the purpose of it is. It is very intrusive. This would certainly impact on unions’ own regulation and their democratic right to organise and be accountable, which is likely to call into question the European convention and ILO matters.
Victoria Prentis
Q 76 It is not unreasonable, though, to ask that the certification officer be able to have documents produced to him, is it?
Stephen Cavalier: Well, if there is a complaint made to the certification officer by an actual member about a real concern—
Victoria Prentis
Q 77 Forgive me, if the certification officer has a concern, he should surely—
Stephen Cavalier: The certification officer does not range around the country investigating trade unions and looking at what they are doing to find out whether he has a concern. Where are the concerns going to come from? At the moment, the certification officer is dealing with complaints that are made to him from legitimate concerns about individual union members or groups of members. If he thinks that that complaint has some grounds, he can deal with that, and in the course of that hearing, he is entitled to ask for documents and to have documents produced in the same way as an employment tribunal.
Victoria Prentis
Q 78 But you are not happy for him to self-generate concerns.
Stephen Cavalier: For example, were you suggesting that there should be a labour inspectorate that could decide whether it thought there were poor labour practices going on around the country and could call for employers to produce and explain documents, like a health and safety inspector can, that would be a very different situation. The proposal here completely alters the role of the certification officer from deciding on legitimate complaints to going out and fishing around to try to find issues. Where would the certification officer make these decisions? Why would they be making these decisions? The Law Society is very concerned about the complete change in this role and the fact that it fundamentally alters the nature of his role.
Trade Union Bill (Second sitting)
Baroness Prentis of Banbury Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
Q 109 Going back to devolution, on which I recognise you are avowedly not an expert, take it from me that health is a devolved issue. I think my colleague mentioned that. Do you view the Bill as being concerned more with employment and industrial relations than health? Obviously, you look at it from a health perspective, but in your mind, what is the Bill concerned with?
Julia Manning: The Bill from my perspective and the interest I have in it is how patient experience would be affected by the Bill and has been affected by strikes. When we already have a scenario of shortages in the workforce and treatment being curtailed and postponed for other reasons, it is another consideration for us that would mean that people are not seen when they expect or need to be. That is my interest in the Bill.
Jo Stevens (Cardiff Central) (Lab)
Q 110 Can I ask you about clauses 12 and 13? They propose to change the current arrangements for facility time, and facility time operates within the NHS. What do you know about the current arrangements and what do you consider their benefits?
Julia Manning: Of facility time? I do not know about that.
The Chair
Mr Smith, I have been really quite kind. You went very wide of the mark. If you get the documentation you refer to and wish to submit a new written piece to the Committee, I will more than willingly distribute it, but I am going to move the Committee on at this stage. We need to get more questions in, because we have little time left.
Victoria Prentis
Q 163 Amnesty and Liberty are both doughty defenders of human rights around the world in terms of abuses such as torture and execution, particularly in the case of Amnesty. I do not know if you have the Bill in front of you, but subsection (8) of new section 220A, inserted by clause 8, states:
“While present where the picketing is taking place, the picket supervisor must wear a badge, armband or other item that readily identifies the picket supervisor as such.”
Are you telling me that the wearing of an armband really concerns you?
Shane Enright: Absolutely. It is a way of singling people out. It is a requirement that is absolutely unique to this group of protesters. Why should trade unionists be required to undertake a process of identification when they are protesting that others are not required to? It is discriminatory.
Victoria Prentis
Q 164 I understand that the current code of practice says that everybody should wear an armband. That is not normally enforced, of course. Normally, the organisers of protests do wear an armband, but that has not caused particular difficulty.
Sara Ogilvie: There is quite a clear distinction that it is important we draw between when something is in a code of practice or when we do it because it is good practice and we think it will make things easier, and when there is a legal requirement for something to happen. When there is a legal requirement, there are legal consequences. The consequences of this would be not only the person identifying themselves and all the concerns we have heard about blacklisting, but also, if that requirement is not complied with, it is a reason to void the entire strike. That is a secondary consequence of this. It seems a very disproportionate response. It is those two elements.
Victoria Prentis
Q 165 I am glad you used the word “proportionate”, because the Government could, of course, have carried on from the code and said that everybody had to wear a badge or an armband.
Sara Ogilvie: And that is in the consultation document.
Victoria Prentis
Q 166 Which would have been difficult if someone had left them at home; it would not have been proportionate to have voided the whole strike. But surely for the organiser of a particular event, it is not too much to ask them to identify themselves.
Sara Ogilvie: I think we have to be honest about the fact that it is quite a big issue. There are so many human rights issues that we think, “Maybe these are trivial”; there is quite a lot of talk about that at the moment. But for individuals who have wanted, for example, to wear a chain with a crucifix on, that is something that the courts have said is not a trivial human rights issue. When Rosa Parks was asked to sit at the back of a bus, some people then would have said that that was a trivial human rights issue. I absolutely think that asking people to identify themselves, to risk going on a public list, as a result of which they might be discriminated against, and to jump through lots of hoops in order to exercise their rights, that really concerns me; it is not me feigning affectation.
Victoria Prentis
Q 167 And you feel that this is completely different from a code?
Sara Ogilvie: When people choose to do something, and when people are required to do something and there are very strong consequences because of that requirement, I think that is a difference, yes, and it is a significant one.
Seema Kennedy
Q 168 I want to go back to this picket supervisor code. If you have large public assemblies—even on things such as school trips, which I have supervised, I have to wear an orange tabard. Is it the actual armband that is causing the great objection? You might have thousands of people on the streets. Surely, just for public order, somebody needs to be able to identify who is in charge.
Sara Ogilvie: If we want to compare it, there are rules in place that govern marches and other kinds of protest. There are not rules about demonstrations; there are rules about marches. If you have a rule about a march, then the organiser must be known to the police. But that organiser could be, if you take the union example, Frances O’Grady; everybody knows who she is. If you have someone who is in a local trade union, they might not want to be known; as we have heard, there are really serious consequences. It is not so much about the organisation; it is about the identification, and the fact that that can then be used to void a whole strike.
Jessica Morden (Newport East) (Lab)
Q 224 In response to Stephen Doughty’s previous question about the Welsh Government’s previous challenges to things like the Agricultural Sector (Wales) Bill, can I ask you—without expecting you to reveal the content—to confirm whether you have sought advice from the Counsel General about the Trade Union Bill and its potential breach of the devolution settlement?
Victoria Prentis
Q 225 My question ties in quite well. It was held by the court that the agricultural wages case concerned agriculture. There is no way that this Bill could possibly be concerned with anything other than employment and industrial relations. It was argued that the agricultural wages case concerned wages but it clearly did not: the court held that it concerned agriculture. This is quite different, is it not?
Jo Stevens
Q 226 Have you had any discussions with your counterparts in Scotland and Northern Ireland about the measures in the Bill and their application?
Leighton Andrews: I start by saying that I am not in front of this Committee to divulge any conversations that have been held with our own legal advisers in respect of our position as a Government. We will reach our own conclusion as to whether this Bill from the UK Government requires a legislative consent motion. That is something we are currently considering.
In respect of the Agricultural Sector (Wales) Bill, I think we need to be clear about that Bill. It went beyond what was said by the questioner. What it confirmed in that case was that where an Assembly Bill fairly and realistically satisfies the test set out in section 108 of the Government of Wales Act 2006 and is not within an exception, it does not matter whether it might also be capable of being classified as relating to a subject that has not been devolved, such as employment rights and industrial relations. The Trade Union Bill very clearly relates to devolved public services—that is the three obvious ones: fire and rescue, health and, of course, education under 17, but potentially others as well. This clearly cuts across the devolution settlement, and we have very strong issues that we will be raising in that regard.
In respect of relations with Scotland and Northern Ireland, officials certainly have had contact with Scottish Government officials. The legal situation in Northern Ireland is slightly different from that in respect of Scotland and Wales, but I think that there is considerable unease among the devolved Administrations about this Bill.
Chris Stephens
Q 233 I will ask you a question first from the STUC point of view. Can you outline for the Committee what discussions the STUC has had with the Scotland Office on the Trade Union Bill? Do you have specific concerns in relation to check-off and facility time?
Grahame Smith: Perhaps I should introduce myself, given that Members may not know who I am. I am the general secretary of the Scottish TUC. I have had a meeting with the Under-Secretary of State at the Scotland Office to discuss a variety of things, among which was the Trade Union Bill.
Victoria Prentis
Q 234 Presumably, you do not think that industrial relations should be an English, Welsh and Scottish issue. You think they should be devolved.
Roseanna Cunningham: Yes, I do think they should be devolved. I would offer as evidence the different industrial relations picture here from what is happening south of the border.
Victoria Prentis
Q 235 And there was a great deal of discussion about this before the devolution settlement, was there not, and Smith came down in favour of them not being devolved?
Roseanna Cunningham: That does not change my position though. My position is that in an ideal world, they would be devolved. One reason why I am arguing for that is because, quite apart from anything else, there is a different relationship in Scotland. To have our relationship adversely affected by what is going through the Westminster Parliament is unfortunate to say the least.
Victoria Prentis
Q 236 But the fact is that they are not a devolved issue.
Roseanna Cunningham: The fact is that you are choosing not to listen to what I have to say about the different relationship within Scotland, in terms of industrial relations, and why, in our view, it would be preferable if this Bill simply did not apply to Scotland.
The Chair
Thank you very much for sticking with us through this very tumultuous experience.
Oral Answers to Questions
Baroness Prentis of Banbury Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)
13. What progress her Department is making on providing fairer funding for schools.
Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)
17. What progress her Department is making on providing fairer funding for schools.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)
It is deeply unfair that we have a schools funding formula based on historic allocation rather than on actual need of schools and pupils. That is why the manifesto confirmed extra financial support for the least well-funded authorities for 2015-16, protected the schools budget in real terms and committed to making the system fairer. I can confirm that we will be putting proposals before the House for funding reform in due course.
Mr Gyimah
I thank my hon. Friend for his question. I know he has a record of successful campaigning for schools funding. He is right to mention the pupil premium, which is designed to remove the barriers to learning faced by children from disadvantaged backgrounds. The pupil premium will provide almost £5 million in additional funding for more than 4,000 disadvantaged pupils—that is all disadvantaged children, not just white children—in Blackpool North and Cleveleys, and will help them to fulfil their potential.
Victoria Prentis
Following on from the previous question, 3,000 disadvantaged children in my Banbury constituency also benefit from the pupil premium. What other measures has the Minister thought about to promote targeted spending, to help to increase fairness in education?
Mr Gyimah
I welcome my hon. Friend to her place. She may know that her father, Lord Boswell, was extremely generous in his support to me in my early political career— indeed, he helped me to meet my wife—[Interruption.] Too much information. My hon. Friend rightly mentions targeted support. Some £3.5 million has been allocated to Banbury schools specifically to help to narrow the education gap.