Education and Local Services

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

If I could make a little progress, that would be appreciated. I am sure there will be plenty of opportunities for interventions.

As I was saying—[Interruption.] I am sorry, but there is a fly buzzing around. We are determined to build on that strong platform of success, to create an education system that works for all our children and all our young people. Equality of opportunity for everyone—wherever they are, whatever their background—is in the end unlocked only by education.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

The North Shore Academy in my constituency faces a spending cut of several hundred thousand pounds. It serves one of the areas that the Secretary of State is talking about—an area of high deprivation. How on earth can that be fair funding in an area of high deprivation?

[Justine Greening]

I will come on to funding later, but suffice it to say that it is important we make sure that all our schools are fairly funded. That challenge is recognised across the House. Clearly there are difficulties in doing that.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

I congratulate all the Members who have made their maiden speeches today. It is great to hear so many Scottish accents, with Scottish seats on the Labour Benches again! It was also special to hear the Geordie accent of my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock), who follows my good friend Pat Glass in this place.

As I said in my own maiden speech seven years ago, I am proud to have been an adopted Teessider for nearly 40 years, but I am even prouder of the public sector workers who have been so brutally treated by the Tories in power over the last seven years. Thousands of them on Teesside have lost their jobs as local councils and hospital trusts have seen their budgets decimated, while those who remain have had little if any pay increase in recent years. Is this really the way to treat the dedicated public sector workers who clean our streets, care for our elderly, run our school centres, police our communities, heal our sick, repair our public sector houses, and deliver a host of other local services?

I am also proud of my own local authority, Stockton Borough Council, which in the last week has been named the runner-up in the annual local government awards. I suppose that expecting it to win twice in the space of a few years was asking too much. Despite the pressures and the cuts, the council has a hard-working, highly committed team who work relentlessly to provide a better life for those in Stockton. Councils like that must make the decisions about who will be given a home help and who will have to go without. They have had to grass over the flowerbeds and roundabouts in our communities, because they have had to sack the gardeners as a result of Tory budget cuts. They have had to all but close down services for young people as social care has swallowed up more of their diminishing budgets, and they have had to row back on investment which could have created jobs.

I have been pleased to see the last two Governments build a little on the tremendous investment in our children that was made over the 13 years of Labour government, but that progress is now in jeopardy, damaged by budget cuts, the deployment of huge numbers of unqualified teachers, a lack of capital to replace the schools that are falling down and to provide new ones, and a workforce who are downtrodden by the Government and, in many cases, forced to beg parents for cash to ensure that children have the equipment that they need. Across the Stockton borough, schools will receive an average 1% rise over the next few years. That can only lead to sacked teachers and support staff, a restricted curriculum, and the need to get that begging bowl out for parents. While some parents may be able to stump up the cash, the vast majority cannot, possibly because they are public sector workers who have forgotten what a pay rise is like.

The jewel in the local services crown is, of course, the national health service. One of my key pledges during the election campaign was to save North Tees hospital’s A&E department from being closed as part of the Tory sustainability and transformation plans. In the past few days, I have acquired a copy of a report which spells out the future of hospitals in our area. It speaks of the need to hit financial targets, which means that either Darlington Memorial hospital or North Tees in Stockton will be downgraded and the emergency service removed from one of them.

Yes: this is driven by costs. It is driven by the fact that the Government have failed to train and recruit the consultants we need, and it is driven without the approval of clinicians and the general public, most of whom are being bypassed. The Government are trying to solve the wrong problem. They are trying to beat down budgets and use the shortage of clinicians as an excuse to reduce services. They need to train and recruit the people we need. What we really want in Stockton, however, is the new hospital that was axed by the Tory-Liberal Democrat Government in 2010. The Government do not have the cash—yet they found £1 billion or more to buy the votes of the DUP to prop up their shambolic Administration.

Our education system and our local services have reached a tipping point. Either we invest in them, or they will continue to deteriorate beyond use. The Queen’s Speech offers them nothing.