Public Services

Angela Rayner Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner (Ashton-under-Lyne) (Lab)]

Let me welcome the Home Secretary and the whole House back after the conference season. I echo her words regarding supporting our police. They do an absolutely fantastic job across the United Kingdom. I also want to echo her words regarding our fallen friend PC Palmer. I recognise the commitment across the House of everybody who has worked, and continues to work, on the Domestic Abuse Bill. The Home Secretary emphasises the rights of victims, and I absolutely agree with her on that. I also want to recognise the work the Prime Minister has done recently in relation to Harry Dunn’s family. It is my first opportunity at the Dispatch Box to mention that tragic case. I urge the Prime Minister to continue to support the family through this very difficult time.

The Home Secretary mentions prisons. I suspect that all Members have had individual constituency cases, and one constituent recently came to see me. The suicide rate and the mental health situation for our young men in prison is a really serious issue. I hope that we continue to tackle it and support families and young people into rehabilitation, which is what our Prison Service should be about.

Our conference slogan was “people before privilege”—I think that the Conservative party’s was “people for privilege”. The Home Secretary made a speech at conference denouncing the north London elite. Personally, I look forward to the day that they can denounce me as part of the south Manchester elite, but I have to tell her that if she thinks that this Prime Minister is going to cut it as an anti-elitist, her speechwriters need to get better jokes. Mind you, I imagine that the elites are probably pleased not to be associated with him these days. I certainly would not want to judge old Etonians by the example of the Prime Minister. After all, every class has its clown—even the upper class.

We know what is behind the ridiculous rhetoric. The Conservatives believe that they can somehow con people into thinking that they are not the party of the privileged. We know the depths that they will sink to. There is not just the Prime Minister’s rhetoric on Brexit, but the revelation that they have been polling so-called “culture war” issues, such as human rights, in northern working-class constituencies. Well, let me give them an absolutely clear message from a proud, northern working-class Member representing a proud, northern working-class constituency: you can take your bigotry elsewhere. If the Home Secretary wants to know where the dog-whistle politics appeals, I tell her to look no further than her Cabinet table, because my constituents know better than to swallow the Conservatives’ self-serving spin. They know who stands for people, and who stands for privilege, and there is no better example than what has happened to our public services.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way, though I am surprised by the tone of her speech. Would it not behove us all to remember that the people who suffer most from crime in this country are the poorest and most vulnerable?

[Angela Rayner]

The reason for the tone of my speech and for my upset is the Prime Minister describing my constituents as “letterboxes”, and then my constituents suffer racism on our streets. That is why I get passionate about what is happening on our streets and why I will not defend the cuts to our police services, when police officers in my constituency have faced attacks and cuts, and the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary come here saying that we are getting more police when they have cut the police in the first place. That makes me pretty passionate about what is happening in our northern working-class areas. We will not be hoodwinked by people who believe that they know better for our constituents, who I came here to represent, and that somehow I have lost my way and that I do not care about the people in the north any more. The truth is that the Prime Minister has never cared about the people in the north.

Take the Home Secretary’s Department: the Conservatives were once the party of law and order. Even her hero, Thatcher, did not cut the police, yet they have suffered the worst cuts in their history under her party. She claims that she is recruiting 20,000 new police. The truth is that she has not even restored what her Government have cut. That is the reality of a Tory Government—more crime and less police—and those who have suffered the most from the cuts are those who are already worse off.

[Mr Jayawardena]

If the hon. Lady is so passionate about increasing police numbers, why did Labour vote against making another £970 million available for extra police?

[Angela Rayner]

The Conservative party is very good at trying to do spin, but everybody knows that a Labour Government will invest in our public services and our police. They also know that you cannot trust a Tory with public services.

Take the victims of the Windrush scandal: people who have spent their lives as citizens, working and paying their taxes, only for the Home Secretary’s Government to ruin those lives with their incompetence and contempt. This week’s Windrush Bill is yet another insult: a tortuous process to get adequate compensation, with elderly victims literally dying while the Government drag their feet. We know what she thinks of the working people in Britain from her book, “Britannia Unchained”:

“the worst idlers in the world”,

she called us. This Government have cut every bit of support for ordinary working people, while shovelling endless sums to big business, the banks and the billionaires. The simple truth is that they are the party for the tax dodgers, not the taxpayers. They are not standing up to the elite; they are the elite, and their shameful gesture politics will—

[Priti Patel]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker. May I ask for a retraction of a statement that has been made? The hon. Lady referred to something that she claimed I had written in a book, but those were not my words, and I should like that to be corrected.

[Mr Speaker]

It is incumbent on each Member to take responsibility for the veracity of what he or she says in the Chamber. If a Member feels that an error has been made, it is the responsibility of that Member to withdraw. We had a similar exchange yesterday with roles reversed. The Minister in that case did not feel the need to correct the record. If the hon. Lady does, she can. The Home Secretary has made her position extremely clear, but I must leave it to the hon. Lady to exercise her own judgment in this important matter.

[Angela Rayner]

Everyone has heard what the Home Secretary has just said, but the truth is—my understanding is—that the Home Secretary was part of that book and the author of that book. If she wants to distance herself from those words, Mr Speaker, it is for her to do that.

While the Home Secretary offered a party-political broadcast disguised as a legislative programme, in education we did not even get that. It is two years since I opened a debate on the last Queen’s Speech. I am now facing the third Education Secretary to hold the post in that time, and the three of them have not tabled a single piece of primary legislation. I suppose that it should come as no surprise that the only education bill revealed this week is being handed to parents in schools in Surrey, who are being asked to pay £20 a month simply to keep teachers in the classroom. Instead of action to tackle an education system in crisis, the Government have offered us only more meaningless words—and when those words come from this Prime Minister, they are not worth very much. The Government have said that they will implement a school-level national funding formula at the earliest opportunity, but they have not introduced legislation to implement it.

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

Given what the hon. Lady saying, does she welcome the additional funds that the Government are putting into schools, including a small rural school in my constituency whose funding will be increased by 22% next year?

--- Later in debate ---

[Angela Rayner]

I shall say more about this later in my speech, but the hon. Gentleman and other Conservative Members should look at what has happened in schools since 2010. The Prime Minister promised that he would reverse those cuts, but he is not reversing those cuts. If there is some funding going into schools, that is of course very welcome, but let us not pretend that it will reverse the cuts and support teachers now, because it is not going into schools now, and they are desperate for it.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the problem with the Conservatives is that, having cut and cut and cut funding for schools and the police, they think that providing a sudden surge in numbers can make up for the damage to the sense that people have of working in teams? Those people have been debilitated. Does she agree that it takes much longer than this to reverse such pernicious policies and put things right again?

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, but I also urge the Government to look at what is happening in our schools today. That money is not even going to our schools today. Our teachers and support staff are doing a superb job in all our constituencies, but they do not have that money where it is needed, right now, where the cuts are hurting, right now—as the Secretary of State for Education knows, because his own wife has told him so.

[Christian Matheson (City of Chester) (Lab)]

Pretty much every school in Chester will suffer a budget cut next year, despite what the Conservatives say. Does my hon. Friend have full confidence in the mechanism that the Government are using to put money into schools? We do not seem to be getting any of it in Cheshire.

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend has made an important point. Although increased funding is welcomed by many schools, it will do nothing to reverse the cuts that they face. Moreover, they will not even see the money before a general election, so it could all be toast again. Some would say that that is a cynical move ahead of an election.

[Jack Dromey (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab)]

Schools in Erdington have seen teachers cut, teaching assistants cut, curriculums cut, outside trips cut and music lessons cut. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is simply not true that those cuts have been reversed? The figures demonstrate that, notwithstanding last week’s announcement, 98% of Birmingham schools will still lose out in relation to where they were in 2015. It is a confidence trick.

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, who makes another important point: the curriculum, and what has happened to it. Many teachers and schools are very concerned about the fact that music, arts, culture, drama and all the things that help young people with STEM subjects have been cut—decimated—because of the austerity that schools have faced. I want all children across the whole of England and the United Kingdom to have a diverse curriculum; that is very important, and I think the whole House could agree on that point.

[Mrs Main]

We have excellent schools, both state and private, in Hertfordshire and St Albans. The state schools will have an increase, which they welcome; the private schools are terrified that they will be scrapped under Labour’s proposals. What are the Labour party’s plans for increasing capacity within the state system for all the trashed private schools that will find themselves out of business?

[Angela Rayner]

Conservative Members need not scaremonger, because the only thing that schools across England fear is more austerity and more broken promises from the Conservative party. Let me be absolutely clear: what the Labour party will not do is subsidise private education with taxpayers’ money when our state schools are crippled by the Conservative party. I pledge this to every parent across the country: I will not play party politics with their children. I will ensure that every child in this country gets the opportunity they deserve whether that is through a SEND, the comprehensive system, an academy, a free school, or in private schools. All their children matter to me, unlike the Conservative party.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

Is not the truth that the proof of this policy pudding is in the eating, and that comes down to the reality of what parents and children see in their schools? In many schools in my Grimsby constituency there is now a policy of non-replacement of support staff. That means there is not enough support to go around for children with special educational needs, those working in offices and those doing lunchtime supervision. That is the reality of education in the country today.

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and nobody can move away from the fact that our schools face a tremendous burden from the pressures of the cuts and the additional costs that have been placed upon them. Our support staff and our teachers have done an absolutely superb job and I want to put on record my thanks to the teachers, the parents, the staff and everybody else who, through these really difficult times, has done their utmost for every child in our education system—and quite rightly so. But they need the support of our Government now, and that is what I am pushing for: no more warm words or jam tomorrow, but actual support in schools, where they deserve and need it most.

If the Conservatives really believe in their own proposals for education, when will they be put into law? If this week was not the earliest opportunity for them to do that, when is?

Another issue where parents have been left paying the price for Government inaction is the spiralling cost of school uniforms. Only weeks ago, the Secretary of State wrote to the Competition and Markets Authority committing to

“put the school uniform guidance on a statutory footing”

and promising to do so

“when a suitable opportunity arises.”

The opportunity surely arose on Monday, but it was not taken. In November it will be four full years since the Government first made that commitment. We are also four Education Secretaries and three Prime Ministers on; each has reiterated the promise made by the last, yet none of them has managed to keep it.

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

My hon. Friend is making such an incredible speech—[Laughter.] School uniform grants are available in Wales, which has a Labour Government, in Scotland, under the SNP, and in Northern Ireland; England is the only part of the United Kingdom that does not give school uniform grants. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is because this Government do not seem to count or value the children who might possibly need a grant?

[Angela Rayner]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. Conservative Members might laugh, but the spiralling cost of school uniforms and the problems that the poorest in our society face in dealing with that is no laughing matter. It is a matter for England and for this Government, and it is directly a matter for those Conservative Members who have shamefully done nothing about this issue. Parents across England will be listening to this debate and will recognise who is on their side.

It is the same story on home education. The Government were consulting on new legislation, but it is now nowhere to be seen. Then there is the Augar review, the flagship that has now sunk without trace. When it was published, the previous Education Secretary promised me:

“We will come forward with the conclusion of the review at the end of the year, at the spending review. That has always been the plan.”—[Official Report, 4 June 2019; Vol. 661, c. 58.]

We have had a spending review and we have had a Queen’s Speech, but we have had no conclusion and there is apparently no plan. I can only hope that the Education Secretary will be able to tell us in the wind-up that these remain Government commitments and, if so, when the Government intend to act on them. This is particularly absurd when their legislative programme is a wish-list of Bills that have no chance of getting a majority in this House, because the Secretary of State knows full well that there would be cross-party support for some of these issues.

[Mr Bob Seely (Isle of Wight) (Con)]

I am most grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way, and I apologise for interrupting her leadership speech. I agree that her speech is unbelievable, but not in the same sense.

Every school in my patch is getting more money, over and above the rate of inflation. I am very happy with cash now and cash tomorrow. If she is so concerned about legislative proposals, why will she not agree to have a general election?

[Angela Rayner]

All I can say to the hon. Gentleman is that he needs to get out more.

The Secretary of State’s predecessors, and even the former Prime Minister, have now admitted that the abolition of maintenance grants was a mistake, but unless the Government act in this Session another generation of 18-year-olds will go to university next summer without maintenance support. The Education Secretary has already accepted that the system is unfair. In a recent letter to the Office for Students, he raised the possibility of moving to a new system of post-qualification admissions. I am delighted that he is keen on one of Labour’s many evidence-led radical policies on education. If only that had been in the Government’s programme this week, and if only they had fully acted on the recommendations of another of their independent reviews on school exclusions. So far, they have promised to take up only those relating to formal permanent exclusions, but if they take no action to deal with the problem of children falling off school rolls without any formal process at all, they risk making that situation worse.

The Secretary of State’s predecessor did manage to get almost the whole House to support the passing of one signature piece of legislation: the regulations implementing statutory sex and relationships education. I was proud to support that step from this Dispatch Box. Before I became an MP, I was a volunteer for the Samaritans, a charity that was founded after a young girl took her life because her periods had started. She did not know what was happening to her; she thought she had a disease. If she had had sex and relationships education, she might have been here today. So now we have legislated, but we must support the schools that are teaching the curriculum. We need to set down the resources that they need and the moral leadership that they deserve. I hope that the Education Secretary will make it clear later that there is no opt-out from equality in schools, and that he will stand with teachers and heads in delivering that.

[Mr Betts]

My hon. Friend is making a really important point. Will she emphasise the importance of saying to schools that they are required to do this form of education? If they leave it open as an option, that is when they come under real pressure from those who want to undermine this whole agenda.

[Angela Rayner]

Absolutely. There is a majority across the House to ensure that we push forward with this important legislation and support teachers and heads in delivering it in our schools. We have to lead the way, taking communities with us, in ensuring that our children and young people feel safe, secure and valued. Every young person deserves that in our education system.

School support staff are another section of the workforce who deserve that support, which the Education Secretary rightly acknowledged in our first exchanges. He will have been told at close quarters about the value of teaching assistants as he is married to one, so I will not question his commitment. However, as his predecessors found, commitment from the Education Secretary is not enough if they do not have it from their Prime Minister, so I hope that the Education Secretary will stand firm and make it clear that he will not countenance balancing the books on the backs of our support staff. Perhaps he could look again at the abolition of the national body for school support staff, because restoring it would be another step that he could take with the support of the House.

There is no doubt that the Education Secretary will talk about investment in schools as if they have not faced a decade of cuts. The Prime Minister promised to reverse those cuts, forgetting to mention, of course, that he sat around the Cabinet table and supported those very cuts time after time. Far worse is the gap between his words and his actions, because the Government are not even reversing their own cuts. Not only did the package ignore the cuts to capital funding, central education spending, further education and so much else, but the Institute for Fiscal Studies found that the announcement made in the spending round would not even undo the cuts to schools since 2010 in its final year—another broken promise from a Prime Minister who cannot be trusted. He promised £700 million next year, but councils are already facing such a shortfall. The Local Government Association has put next year’s deficit at £1.2 billion.

The Education Secretary has warm words about further education, but the spending round included less than £200 million for increasing the base rate—little more than a real-terms freeze. If the Secretary of State truly believes in investing in further education, why did the spending round not include a single penny for adult education? After a decade of managed decline and billions of pounds of cuts, why are the Government refusing to give that vital part of the system the investment it needs? Even in apprenticeships—apparently his passion —we are far from on course to meet the Government’s target of 1 million this year. We do not even know whether that is still the target. We have been told it is an ambition, an aim and an aspiration, so perhaps the Secretary of State will tell us which of those it is and what on earth that means?

The story of decline and neglect is the same in perhaps the most vital area: early years provision. The hourly rate for child care providers has not increased since 2017, Sure Start funding has collapsed, and the additional funding for maintained nursery schools runs out at the end of the next financial year. Will that be addressed, or have the youngest children been forgotten?

Even in schools, the extra money promised by the Government is not only years away but is being deliberately skewed to schools with the wealthiest intakes. The Education Policy Institute put it plainly, stating that

“almost all schools serving the most disadvantaged communities would miss out.”

The EPI found that the average pupil eligible for free school meals would attract less than half the funding of their more affluent peers. That comes on top of the research conducted by my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) last week, which found that over £200 million has been lost since 2015 thanks to the freeze in the pupil premium. The EPI concluded:

“If this is the Prime Minister’s idea of levelling up, then his legacy might be even more disappointing than his predecessor’s.”

Frankly, the funding that the Prime Minister has promised for future years will be rendered a fantasy if it comes after a bad deal or a no-deal Brexit.

We are yet to hear, of course, what all this means for higher education. Will the Education Secretary tell us any more about the fee status of EU students or our participation in Horizon 2020 or Erasmus? We are no wiser this week than we were before. The Queen’s Speech may have had nothing to say about education, but I can promise parents, children and educators across the country that a Labour Government will not neglect our education system, as the Conservatives have.

[Layla Moran]

The hon. Lady is giving a powerful speech that shows how this Government are giving with one hand and taking away with the other. Every Member looking at the raw numbers of how much money their schools will get should be aware that the rise in the starting salary for teachers, which we would all agree is a good thing, will be coming out of those very same budgets. Do not assume this money is going directly into the hands of teachers and children; it is not. The Government should be funding this on top of the extra money.

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady, who has a wealth of knowledge from being an educator. She has also been an advocate for ensuring that, rather than hoodwinking teachers and parents across England, we actually support them by stopping this decimation of our education system so that we do not have newly qualified teachers pitched against experienced teachers.

What we want to see in our education system is a wealth of newly qualified and experienced teachers in our classrooms, because we know that is best for our classrooms and for all children. We will radically expand high-quality early years education so that it is available for all two, three and four-year-olds alongside a renewed Sure Start Plus.

We will give our schools the investment they need, fully reversing the cuts that the Tories have imposed. We will end the managed decline of further education by investing in students and staff so that a genuinely high-quality technical education route is available to all those who wish to pursue it. And we will scrap tuition fees and bring back maintenance grants. Free education for all throughout their life—that is the prospect the Government would have us believe is so terrifying.

Finally, I pay tribute to all those amazing staff who work day in, day out to improve children’s lives. In particular, I mention my friend and constituent Lynn Stott, who was a youth worker for many years. She is gravely ill today, and I cannot be there because I am here at the Dispatch Box. I know what a difference she has made in our community, and the difference that all our educators make every day to the lives of our children.

This Queen’s Speech is the last gasp of a Government with nothing left to give. A Labour Government will do so much more.