Free School Meals

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

As I stand here once again at the Dispatch Box winding up an Opposition day debate on free school meals, I have a strong sense of déjà vu, because just four months ago I was standing in this exact spot speaking on the exact same topic—extending free school meals over the upcoming holidays. The big difference between now and then is that just hours before the big debate in June, the Prime Minister performed a U-turn. Today, sadly, there has been no U-turn, and 1.4 million children will be without a hot meal from next week during half-term. For some, it is the only nutritious meal they get every day.

We are about to face one of the toughest winters of our generation. With the pandemic, with the flu season upon us and with the furlough scheme coming to an end, parents are twice as likely to be furloughed than anyone else working, and now they have to worry about feeding their children. We should all be hanging our heads in shame. Some 1.5 million people are already unemployed, the Bank of England has predicted that the employment rate will rise above its previous forecast of 7.5% this year, and food bank use in this country is expected to be 51% higher this winter than last. Almost 1 million of the children who are set to lose their free school meals next week are in areas that are subject to tier 1 and tier 2 restrictions.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

rose—

[Tulip Siddiq]

I hope my hon. Friend will forgive me for not giving way; I have a lot to get through.

Before I sum up the important contributions that were made in this debate, I want to thank someone who is not an MP but who probably should be. Marcus Rashford has done us proud. It pains me, as a Liverpool fan, to say that—I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) felt the same when we praised him earlier—but we congratulate him on holding the Government to account and on the amazing goal that he scored last night.

I want to pay tribute to two other people who are not in the Chamber today, my hon. Friends the Members for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), for all the work they have done in championing this issue.

My hon. Friends the Members for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), for Bradford West (Naz Shah) and for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) made passionate speeches about the struggles of the poor children in their constituencies, and I think the speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Bradford West will go down in history for demonstrating the passion that she feels about representing the poor people in her constituency. We also heard a very passionate and personal story from my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) about being on free school meals and how that benefited her. That shows just how important being well fed is for a child. My hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Sam Tarry) also spoke passionately about the struggles in his constituency when it comes to food poverty.

The Government do not think it is worth spending £157 million to ensure that hungry children can get food support in the holidays during a pandemic. Yet, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington North (Charlotte Nichols) pointed out, they think it is worth spending £7,000 a day on a consultant for Serco’s failing test and trace system. I do not know whether the House is aware that that fee alone could pay for 2,300 meals for hungry children next week during half term. The amount that we are paying one consultant per day to deliver Serco’s failing test and trace system could pay for 2,300 meals for hungry children. Please let that sink in.

All the other nations of the UK understand this and have now committed to holiday provision. It is only children in England who will not get the support—again, shameful. I pay tribute in particular to the Welsh Government, who have not only guaranteed support through spring next year, but at every stage announced it well in advance, giving families certainty and the right to plan. The result of that strong leadership is that parents in Wales are not having to worry about whether they can put food on the table next year.

I want to share a quote from a parent who shared their experience with the Children’s Society last month. They said, “I tell my kid to make sure they eat all their school meals, as it may be the only meal they have. I often have nothing to eat and any food I do have I give to my kid, as they only get one meal a day. I don’t have a meal many days.” I would like all the Conservative MPs in the Chamber to think about a child who they know, whether it is their own child, their niece or nephew, a godchild or a friend’s child. How would they feel if that child was going to sleep tonight not having eaten, and knowing that when they wake up tomorrow there is no food in the fridge? Can they imagine that small person having a rumbling stomach when they are going to bed at night? This is what we are voting on today. It is about humanity.

Many people on the Opposition Benches might not agree with me, but I genuinely believe that most MPs came into this House for the right reasons. I believe they came into politics because they wanted to make a difference and because they wanted to protect the most vulnerable. This is a chance to demonstrate why we came into politics. I know it is not easy to rebel against the party. I have rebelled a few times against my own party, and it has never been easy, but this is about principles above party. I know it is not easy to defy the Prime Minister, but I am asking hon. Members from across the House to think carefully about what they are going to say when they go back to their constituencies and there are hungry children because they voted in the wrong Lobby. I know it is a hard thing to do, but once again I am asking Conservative MPs to vote with us tonight.

As the House knows, we are in the middle of Black History Month, so I will conclude by quoting a very famous black person, Nelson Mandela, who once said:

“There can be no keener revelation of a society's soul than the way in which it treats its children.”

Before Conservative Members vote today, I ask them please to think about what Nelson Mandela said.

Awarding of Qualifications: Role of Ministers

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 9th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kate Green]

Nobody has said that centre-assessed grades are perfect. On the day that the Leader of the Opposition called for them, he acknowledged that problem, but we were in such an extreme situation at that point, where it was vital to put the best interests of young people first. It took days and days of agony and anguish for those young people and their families before the Secretary of State made the right decision.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech concentrating on A-level results, but weeks after the A-level issue was resolved, I still had BTEC students who had not received their grades. We talk about lessons to be learned in 2021, but what about the BTEC students who deserve some justice now?

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend speaks for the constituents of hon. Members all around the House. Indeed, I expect that we may hear some examples of that in the course of the debate. Those students had a particularly difficult experience waiting for further re-marking of their awards, and I think it was only last week that the Secretary of State said that they would all be expected finally to receive their results.

We also need to be clear today about the decision-making process that led to the announcement a few days after A-level results day to award students their centre-assessed grades. In his evidence to the Select Committee, Roger Taylor said that that decision was taken by Ofqual. Can the Secretary of State confirm who made the decision to award the CAGs? Did he do it or was it Ofqual? Is it right that Ofqual did not agree with the Secretary of State’s policy to allow appeals based on mock results, believing that that would not be credible?

While responsibility for decision making appears to have been complex and confused, there is no confusion when it comes to who carried the can for the failure. In the aftermath of this fiasco, the chief regulator of Ofqual and the permanent secretary at the Department for Education were forced to resign—but in our democracy it is Ministers, not officials, who are accountable.

Educational Settings

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

As my hon. Friend will be aware, schools have been doing a lot to provide children with work and enable them to continue to study if the school closes. We are working closely with the BBC, and we are looking at putting more resources online in order to support children to continue to learn even if they are not in an education setting.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Secretary of State spoke about teachers getting paid, but many others work in schools, including lunchtime supervisors, caretakers and cleaners, many of whom are contract staff. Will all school staff carry on getting paid, or will only teachers and those on full-time guaranteed contracts be paid?

[Gavin Williamson]

It will probably not surprise the hon. Gentleman that we will continue to fully fund schools, and that those people who are working in schools will continue to get paid.

School Admissions Process

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Kate Osamor (Edmonton) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effectiveness of the school admissions process.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Buck—for the very first time, I believe.

I applied for today’s debate not only because the topic is of national importance, but because of the issues that my constituents have brought to me in recent weeks. Two weeks ago, the parents of one boy in my constituency came to me, beside themselves and at their wits’ end. To protect the identities of the child and the family, I will call the boy John.

John used to attend one of the schools in my constituency. He was on track, he played football and he learnt judo, but after his mock exams things went downhill and he started misbehaving. Eventually, he was sent to a pupil referral unit and excluded for three months. John’s father told me that during those three months, he essentially became another person: he was arrested and charged for robbery and he received a community service order.

John kept trying to turn his life back around and had a job for a year, but his parents saw him withdraw. It soon became clear that he was caught up with a bad crowd, with drugs and with gangs. In July last year, like other vulnerable children in Edmonton, he went missing. John was assaulted and only came back to his family four months later. He now faces another court case. His parents say that he stays in his room. They fear that his mental health is dwindling fast and that he might harm himself. John’s parents do not excuse the things he has done, but they love their child. They want him to be safe, and they wonder whether things could have been different had the school not excluded him so quickly.

Sadly, the story of John and his parents is not uncommon. It is being repeated all over the country, time and again. All across my constituency, parents know a simple truth: whether, how and where a child is admitted to school, and whether they are excluded from it, can set them on very different paths in life. In recent months, growing numbers of parents have come to me, saying how hard they are finding it to access decent school places in Enfield. Across the borough, we are losing too many vulnerable children to crime and gangs. Our pupil referral units and the wider education system are failing them.

The lives of those individuals affected are ultimately why today’s debate matters so much. I called for it because I know many hon. Members who are not here today but who, had they been able to attend, would have scrutinised with me the schools that this Government have built. The Government have now been in power for the past decade, and I hope that the Minister will back up his defence of their record with firm evidence.

Let us look at some of that evidence. Today, the Sutton Trust released an important new report assessing inequalities in the schools admission process, called “School Places: A Fair Choice?”. It finds high levels of socioeconomic segregation across schools and a marked gap in academic quality between schools attended by poor and by non-poor pupils. We often hear the argument that better-off parents are just more proactive about getting their children into good schools. The Sutton Trust research demonstrates that, in fact, parents across the socioeconomic spectrum make choices based on academic quality. The report found that those families eligible for free school meals make as many choices as richer families about the quality of school and about whether to choose a local school.

The report concludes that it is the school allocation system, rather than parental preferences, that means that children of wealthier families do better. In other words, inequalities in schools admissions exist because of how places are allocated, not because of how parents choose. The Government have based their whole education policy for the past decade on the mantra of promoting choice, but it turns out that it is the supply side of schooling, not the demand side, that is the problem.

On the supply side of school places, the arguments are well rehearsed. On this side of the House, the Labour party favours universal equal access and creating more high-quality places. We said in our last election manifesto that we would consider proposals for integrating private schools into a better state school system. We said that we would end the fragmentation and marketisation of our school system by bringing free schools and academies back under the control of the people who know them best—parents, teachers and local communities.

Let us be honest: parents feel there are not enough good places for children. According to the latest figures published this week by the Office of the Schools Adjudicator, the number of children being home-schooled in England has just risen by 13% to 60,000. The real number may be much higher. I ask the Minister whether the Government accept that in many parts of the country there are simply not enough high-quality school places available for parents to choose from, and what steps the Department is taking to correct that.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

One simple change that would help to create a sufficiency of places would be for the Government to allow local authorities to build schools directly again. There is a lack of schools, the process now to create new schools is difficult and schools do not always get built in the right places. Local authorities, as admissions bodies, know where the schools are needed.

[Kate Osamor]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important point; I shall express my support for that later on in my speech.

The new research from the Sutton Trust also highlights the perverse incentives of school accountability systems that have developed under this Government. Both league tables and the Ofsted system encourage too many schools and academies to take on advantaged children and ignore disadvantaged children in the interests of scoring highly. I ask the Minister whether this new Government will look again at the incentives in our school accountability system.

The Sutton Trust has today made important and considered new proposals for making the schools admissions system fairer. They include marginal ballots, expanding the use of banding tests, prioritising applicants eligible for the pupil premium and simplifying conditions for demonstrating religious observance for applicants to religious schools. Will the Government say today what they make of those options, and will they commit to examining them closely?

The incentives that our Government set for schools matter, not just for admissions but for exclusions. The scandal of off-rolling, whereby schools still willingly exclude pupils too quickly just to improve their academic performance, is appalling. The Government must end it once and for all. Will the Minister consider making schools accountable for the outcomes of pupils who leave their rolls and removing the perverse incentives that let pupils such as my constituent John fall through the system?

I will conclude with a note of caution about the illusion of choice that the Government are giving people. Just this week, the schools admissions watchdog released figures in its annual report showing that in the past year, two out of every five complaints it received were about access to grammar schools—but those complaints were from privileged parents about grammar schools enrolling disadvantaged children. Any parent will know that people want the best for their child, but I am extremely concerned that the reintroduction of selective grammar schools under this Government is encouraging support for inequality. It is giving only an illusion of choice, and we need to ask ourselves whether it may be turning parents of advantaged children against disadvantaged families, who are being blamed for the lack of good school places.

I worry that the Government have introduced competition among parents without creating the new school places to go with it and are passing that off as “choice”. That is turning society against itself and dividing parents and communities. Should we not be putting all our efforts in this country into strengthening our whole public education system and creating high-quality new places, rather than encouraging a brutal race to the top for a lucky few while letting others, such as John, fall through the cracks? I look forward to hearing the Minister’s speech.

Equality of Funding: Post-16 Education

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

Yes, it does. I hope the Minister will address that point.

I pay tribute to the work of the Sixth Form Colleges Association in co-ordinating the Raise the Rate campaign, which has been highly effective. As has been mentioned, the Government have responded by pledging an increase of £188 this coming September. That is still far below the £4,700 per student that Raise the Rate is asking for, and it is £822 below the £5,000 that schools receive for each pupil.

That brings me to the second key issue: equality. Young people are now required to participate in education and training until the age of 18, but education funding is reduced for students who have reached 16. This inequality is impossible to defend. It is worth noting that, in the independent sector, fees usually increase at the age of 16 to reflect the additional cost needed to train and educate 16 to 18-year-olds.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Yorkshire College of Beauty Therapy is in my constituency. It is suffering from the fact that the new T-levels in the relevant subjects are being introduced but are not yet ready. The whole area of vocational education is suffering from the same lack of sufficiency that my hon. Friend describes for academic subjects.

[Lloyd Russell-Moyle]

My hon. Friend is quite right. We have debated T-levels previously, and there is the difficulty of transition as we go forward. I hope that we will eventually get to a situation where we have A-levels; good general vocational training, with BTECs continuing as a strong component of that; and T-levels. They all offer something different and important.

Until 2011, the funding for a student at a sixth form in a school continued at the school rate, not at the college rate. Given the concerns about the inequality that that caused, there was quite rightly a campaign. Organisations such as the Institute for Public Policy Research said that we needed to equalise the funding. The Government did that but they equalised it down, meaning that we took away about £800 per pupil in today’s terms from the budget, rather than adding to the college budget. That hurts sixth-form colleges even more, as they generally pay teachers’ terms and conditions and do not get additional remuneration for it. For many years, general FE colleges have got away with underpaying their staff, or rather, the Government have got away without giving them additional resources.

Apprenticeships: SMEs

Alex Sobel Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Emma Hardy (Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) for securing this debate. I must say it is also a pleasure to see the Minister still there in her place opposite me, to continue our discussions from Tuesday.

I will start by commenting on my hon. Friend’s speech. He started with an interesting point about the differences between Germany and England in the status of apprentices and how they are viewed. I saw that when the Education Committee went to Germany, and I was struck by how fantastic the system is there. Of course, there are structural differences that mean we cannot replicate it here in this country, but I think we can all agree that we need to keep selling the idea of apprenticeships, talking them up and explaining what a good thing they are for our country.

My hon. Friend made a very good point about the falling apprenticeship numbers in small businesses. Out of all the figures that he mentioned, the one that struck me was the figure of 34% in small businesses. Small businesses have been hit even harder than medium-sized businesses by the apprenticeship levy. He spoke passionately about apprenticeships in Slough; in fact, I was at the event with him where he talked to some of his fantastic apprentices from Slough, and I was really impressed by their passion and dedication to their training.

My hon. Friend was right to highlight the falling numbers of level 2 and level 3 apprenticeships. Very few people know at 16, or even at 18, what they want to do when they move on in life, so we need to start where people are at. If people are not ready to start at level 3 —if they have not been able to achieve as successfully as we would all like them to in school—they need that level 2 start to enable them to make progress and to fulfil their ambition and achieve social mobility. I am sure that we all agree with that.

My hon. Friend is also right to point out that a question was raised in the debate on Tuesday about the levy for businesses—I am in favour of that levy—and whether the Government expected all businesses to use it. There seem to be conflicting evidence and statements about that, and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s thoughts. Are businesses expected to use all of the levy themselves, or was the intention behind the design that a certain amount of the levy would be kept and used by SMEs? There seems to be a lack of clarity over whether it is a tax that larger businesses contribute to, which can be distributed to small businesses, or whether it is just a system to allow individual businesses to get the money back for themselves.

I am particularly pleased that my hon. Friend raised the question of maths and English and the extra support that is needed. This might not be the right debate in which to talk about that, but I hope that the Department will take it seriously, because we have created a system where the insistence on having people resit their qualification in their first year, even when they are on a two-year course, is causing many people to fail. We have to explore ways to enable everybody to succeed. I would like the Department to go away and think about why it insists that people on a two-year level 2 course should resit at the end of their first year. Why not give them that extra year to practise and develop their skills before they have to sit their exam? Can we not be a little bit more open-minded and creative in coming up with solutions to enable everyone to achieve the maths and English qualifications that we all agree they need?

I really enjoyed the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Perry Barr (Mr Mahmood)—he has gone, but I will let him know. It was nice to hear him talk about how his father’s interest in engineering got him involved, and how he was not sure what he wanted to do. It was a heart-warming speech. I look forward to visiting his constituency and seeing the examples he gave. He is quite right: we need to invest in engineering and manufacturing skills, and support the making of British goods here in Britain. It has been a source of frustration to me for a long time that we continue to import more and more when we could grow our own, and develop and make things in this country, giving people high-skilled jobs and helping to grow our economy. I hope the Minister will comment on how the apprenticeship levy can do that.

I do not usually comment on the remarks of Scottish National party spokespeople, but I really liked the interesting point that the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown) made about the retention of apprentices, which I had not considered before. If we fund apprenticeships, as a Government or through the levy, should we not expect businesses that have had access to those public funds to retain the apprentices? That is an interesting idea to explore, and I look forward to the Minister’s comments on that.

I think we all agree about the importance of apprenticeships, not only for the productivity of our country but for individuals and social mobility. We all agree that SMEs are really valuable to our economy. In fact, during the debate on Tuesday, one Member pointed out that in Northern Ireland, where their constituency is, there are few large, levy-paying businesses, so it is nearly all SMEs. I have not yet had the chance to crunch the data on this, so it will be interesting to see whether the Department has analysed the areas of the country where there are fewer levy-playing businesses, and looked at whether we have therefore created coldspots and areas in which people lack opportunities to access apprenticeships.

[Alex Sobel (Leeds North West) (Lab/Co-op)]

One industry prevalent in small business is hair and beauty. Routes into hair and beauty and other apprenticeships include the level 3 qualification, which the Government just cut thousands of, and T-levels. T-Levels will be the major route into higher-level apprenticeships, but they are not yet ready, and in the hair and beauty industry they will not be ready for years. The pathway to these apprenticeships needs to be solid, small businesses need to know what is happening and the funding needs to come through. Otherwise, we will see an even further drop in apprenticeships, on top of the challenges of the apprenticeship levy.