Free Childcare Entitlement

Baroness Morgan of Cotes Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

I will take no lessons from the Scottish Government, no matter what the hon. Gentleman wishes to read out to us. We have committed £6 billion in this area. We talk about childcare, but this is good quality early years education and 93% of the settings are providing good or outstanding childcare. That is great news for education and great news for those parents who, in many cases, find their working lives transformed by access to 30 hours of childcare.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

This is clearly the right policy and has been demanded by working parents and others up and down the country. The shadow Minister talked about the policy being shrouded in secrecy; I do not know where she was in the general election of 2015, but I think that this is an issue that all parties discussed in many different debates.

Let me ask the Minister about the implementation of the policy by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the operation of its website. He knows that I, as the incoming Chairman of the Treasury Committee, wrote to the head of HMRC over the summer, who replied on 17 August saying that a total of £45,000 or thereabouts had so far been paid in compensation. Can the Minister update the House and will he confirm that, as he said, those parents who had codes by 31 August will be able to access the childcare this autumn?

Schools Update

Baroness Morgan of Cotes Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

I think that the right hon. Lady will welcome a number of things in the statement. Indeed, she has just pointed out that we will introduce a 0.5% increase per pupil for those schools that are currently above the formula, as opposed to those that need to catch up through additional funding. The position taken by both her party and mine was that there would be no cash losers, and we are going beyond that today. In other words, her school will receive more than it would have done had her party won the election.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

Clearly, more money going to the frontline of schools is a very good thing. Obviously, the devil will be in the detail of the funding formula, which I know well having spent many hours poring over it myself. I want to pick the Secretary of State up on two things. First, on the increase to the percentage allocated to pupil-led factors, she will be aware that many people were unhappy with the overall percentage allocated to basic per-pupil funding. Secondly, many schools in Leicestershire and elsewhere have been historically underfunded for many years, but the allocation of £4,800 per pupil is not the same as the £6,000 per pupil that schools in other parts of the country will get. I fully appreciate that the Secretary of State has to operate within the constraints of responsible public funding, but schools in Leicestershire really need that historical underfunding to be corrected at some point.

[Justine Greening]

My right hon. Friend will no doubt welcome the fact that today’s announcement means that there will be an increase in funding through core pupil-led factors. I felt it was also right to protect the amount that was already going to children with additional needs, because we want them to catch up. On the overall amount, I assure my right hon. Friend that the formula takes into account the different cost bases in different parts of the country. Today’s announcement means not only that schools will get more funding, but that they will catch up faster because of the 3% increase for two years, which replaces the previous proposal of 3% and then 2.5%.

Social Mobility

Baroness Morgan of Cotes Excerpts

Tuesday 11th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Lucy Powell]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. The widening participation agenda has been successful in places and is important, but other barriers to getting those jobs remain for kids who perhaps do not have the same social networks or support at home, even if they have the same qualifications as some of their peers.

[Nicky Morgan (Loughborough) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech in this important debate. I think we can build a cross-party consensus, based on the report, about access to social and emotional learning. I might call it character education—I think one of her predecessors as shadow Secretary of State for Education and I debated that issue. Persistence, resilience and grit skills, as well as self-confidence and self-belief, are very important. They are often not given the same weight and therefore those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds do not get that access; access to extra-curricular activities is picked up in a similar way. Would the hon. Lady agree that that is something from the debate that could benefit from cross-party working?

[Lucy Powell]

I strongly agree with the right hon. Lady. I thank her for the joint working we have done on some of the issues in the past, and I hope that that will continue. When she was Secretary of State for Education, she was a strong champion for character education and extra-curricular education. I hope that that is something we can all work on going forward.