School Funding

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I hope to take considerably less than 10 minutes, Mr Walker, although I may take one or two interventions.

We all agree that every child and family deserves the same chance in life when it comes to state-funded education; but at present, as the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) has so graphically shown, that is not the case. He chose to give figures rounded up or down to zero, but I will give the exact figures produced by the Association of School and College Leaders, which show that, on average, the 10 best-funded areas received grants of £6,297 per pupil this year, compared with an average of £4,208 per pupil in the 10 most poorly funded areas. That means that schools in the best-funded areas get 50% more per pupil than those in the worst-funded areas. As he said, for secondary schools of typical size, the gap amounts to nearly £2 million, the equivalent of 40 full-time teachers.

Devon schools are among the worst funded in the whole of England. We receive £23.4 million less than the national average, and our three and four-year-olds receive £3.7 million less. That means that each individual Devon schoolchild receives £270 less per head than the average for England, and three and four-year-olds receive £620 less per year than the average for England.

The situation in Exeter is even worse, because it is the only urban area of any significant size within the former Devon education authority area. Because of the extra cost of providing school transport or of maintaining small village schools in rural areas, my schools in Exeter are, in effect, hit by a double whammy: they are in one of the lowest-funded counties in England, and they lose out again because they have to cross-subsidise the cost of providing education in what is a largely rural county. Places such as Oxford, Norwich, Cambridge and Ipswich suffer similar double discrimination.

[Daniel Zeichner (Cambridge) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for giving me a helpful cue. Does he agree that shire areas in the south-west and the east of England, such as mine, have long suffered from underfunding? That has seeped into the public consciousness, thanks to some powerful campaigns. In my county, the Cambridge News has run a fantastic campaign, and we are beginning to win the argument with the public.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I entirely agree, and I will come to some of the historical reasons for the underfunding in a minute, but first I want to mention one of my fantastic headteachers in Exeter, Moira Marder, who is the executive head of two of my high schools: St James school and Isca college. She has done comparisons of funding with two cohorts of very similar schools around England and found that St James and Isca are the worst funded of their cohorts in the whole of England. All Members’ local authorities will have suffered big cuts, but our local authority has suffered a 27% cut in funding—nearly 40% in real terms—and we still have to find £135 million over the next four years.

[John Redwood (Wokingham) (Con)]

An additional problem Wokingham has, as a very low-funded authority, is that a large number—about 13,000—of new homes are being built in very few years. We need to build extra schools and provide extra school places, and the sum is simply far too mean to allow for the extra costs of setting those up.

[Mr Bradshaw]

We face exactly the same challenge in Exeter, which is a growth area. We have huge additional housing developments everywhere, and I share the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns that the funding formula does not keep up with the growth in demand caused by those developments and growing populations.

I mentioned a moment ago the cost of school transport. I was staggered to discover that transport now takes up 50% of Devon’s total non-schools education budget—that is £20.9 million out of a budget of just over £40 million. Children in Exeter suffer a further injustice. Because none of our schools has a sixth form, all 16-to-19 education takes place at Exeter college. It is an excellent further education college, but as we all know, historically FE has been significantly worse funded per student than school sixth forms. That is now being addressed, but it still has not been addressed completely. FE has also suffered far bigger cuts in real-terms funding under the current Government than schools as a whole—indeed, we are told that further big cuts to FE are in the pipeline. I would argue that children in my constituency therefore suffer a triple disadvantage when it comes to education funding. They are in one of the worst-funded areas of the country—Devon; as urban dwellers, they subsidise the high cost of providing education in a rural county; and from 16 upwards, their only provision is FE, which itself is funded less than schools and faces huge cuts.

In spite of that situation, thanks to the hard work of teachers and students in my constituency, since I have been the MP we have seen a significant improvement in attainment across schools and at Exeter college—but that happened largely in the years of growing investment, when it was easier to deliver. In the past couple of years, there have been worrying signs in some of the schools that that improvement has stalled and might even be going into reverse. I have absolutely no doubt that part of the reason for that is that the headteachers, who are excellent, are struggling to keep the schools running in an effective way and provide the education and the service their students deserve because of the dire funding situation.

I know—my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner) touched on this—that a significant reason for that underfunding is historical. I hope the Conservative Members present will hear me out on this. Allocations are based on historical funding levels. I used to cover the education authority in Devon when I was a local radio reporter, and I know that in the past allocations were based on historical funding levels, largely—as we can see from the number of Conservative Members here today—in Conservative shire authorities, which did not spend as much on education as Labour metropolitan authorities. I know that there are exceptions, as the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness indicated, of Labour authorities that would benefit from a reallocation. That historical underspending is one of the main causes of the current injustice.

Given that the Government have moved almost entirely away from funding education through local authorities and that funding is now passported directly to schools, surely there is now no excuse for central Government to persist with this injustice. It is not fair to the children in the constituencies of all the Members of Parliament who are here today and the many who I know would have liked to be here but cannot. At the very least, what we need in the forthcoming comprehensive spending review is a clear commitment, as other Members have said, not only to an intention but to a timescale for delivery, so that we narrow the gap over a small number of years, so that the children of my constituents and of other Members’ constituents have exactly the same opportunities as those in the rest of England. We owe it to them and to future generations. That is a just system, and that is what we should push for.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carol Monaghan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. He spoke about the discrepancy between neighbouring schools in neighbouring areas, which was a real eye-opener for me. We do not have those discrepancies in Scotland, but I imagine they impact on parental choice on the schools they wish to send their children to, which is an issue.

The right hon. Member for Exeter talked about further education underfunding. We have to consider that education does not always stop on leaving school. Different pathways are open to our young people in education. For many young people, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, further education offers a pathway for them to continue their education.

[Mr Bradshaw]

Is it not the case that the SNP Administration in Scotland have dramatically cut funding for further education to fund their so-called free higher education for university students? The hon. Lady claims that Scottish pupils are performing better than English pupils with higher funding, but her Government’s recent report showed that reading standards for eight and nine-year-olds have fallen by 5% since 2012. Her Education Minister, Angela Constance, has said that Scottish children are not doing as well as they should be. That is why the Scottish Government have put in place the measures to which the hon. Lady just referred—their record is appalling.

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[Mr Gyimah]

I thank my hon. Friend for his confidence in me. It feels rather strange to be urged to be “brave”, as Sir Humphrey would say.

To address the point made by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), if one represents a local authority such as hers in Durham, which is the 57th best-funded local authority in the country, one has the luxury of saying, “It’s difficult, but we have to do all these things.” She does not have to take the difficult decisions. She has the luxury of having a local authority that is very adequately funded, but those Members representing local authorities that have been underfunded for more than a decade, where schools are doing quite well with limited resources, are saying that it is time to rectify the situation. It is right that we listen to them and act.

Before getting into the detail of that issue, I want to respond to the point made by the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan). The Government recognise the importance of long-term investment in education to prepare children for success in adult life. In the previous Parliament, we invested more than £190 billion in our schools—a real-terms increase every year. In this Parliament, we will continue to protect the schools budget, as we promised in our manifesto. We will also ensure that the money reaches the places where it is needed, so all children in all age groups and all locations can access excellent education. We committed in our manifesto to making schools funding fairer, so that every school can support every child in achieving their potential.

The right hon. Member for Exeter made that point extremely well when he highlighted the fact that the root cause of this issue is historical funding. At some point in history—2005, I think—we froze schools funding in aspic, and whatever an authority spent the previous year became the baseline for its funding allocation. Demographics, local authorities and schools’ needs changed, but the funding formula was not updated to reflect current need.

[Mr Bradshaw]

A question has occurred to me during this debate. Broadly speaking—I know this is a simplification—Conservative shire counties had lower education funding and lower council tax, while Labour urban authorities tended to have higher education funding and higher council tax. Given the Government’s policy of capping increases in council tax, has any work been done in the Minister’s Department on the potential impact of redistribution on council tax? It would be unfair for people living in Labour authorities, which have historically had high council tax and high education spending, suddenly to lose that money through central Government, and for people in low-spend, low-council tax Tory areas to have no increase in their council tax but suddenly to have a big increase in their schools funding.

[Mr Gyimah]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, there has to be a referendum for a council tax increase of more than 1.99%. We are talking about how central Government deal with revenue funding for schools. We have got to the point where schools’ capital needs are based on need. If the schools in a constituency have serious problems, we have a thorough process for identifying their needs and allocating funding appropriately, but we do not have a similar process on the revenue-funding side.

It is patently unfair that Knowsley receives nearly £750 less per pupil than Wandsworth, given that more pupils in Knowsley are entitled to free school meals. It is unfair that a secondary pupil with low prior attainment would attract more than £2,000 in Birmingham but only £35 in Darlington. In four local authorities they would not attract any funding at all. That is not right. The hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) spoke very clearly about that injustice.

In the previous Parliament, we took a big step. To those who say that the Government should be brave, I say that we have been brave. In an era of austerity, we invested £400 million to help level the playing field.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Thursday 16th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

2. What recent assessment he has made of the effect of Government funding decisions on the arts and culture outside London.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

3. What recent assessment he has made of the balance of funding for arts organisations in the English regions.

[The Minister of State, Department for Culture, Media and Sport (Mr Edward Vaizey)]

Funding decisions for the arts are made independently of Ministers by Arts Council England, but I am delighted to say that 53% of the funding that the Arts Council recently allocated to non-profit organisations will go outside London. It is the first time that the majority of that funding will have gone outside London.

[Mr Vaizey]

I have to say that the hon. Lady’s colleagues in Hull are much more bullish about being the capital of culture and are looking forward to delivering it in 2017. They have received £3 million of funding from the Arts Council. Indeed, the Arts Council has set up a pop-up office in Hull to assist with the capital of culture.

[Mr Bradshaw]

The Minister has been the only witness to the Select Committee’s inquiry into the balance of arts funding in this country not to accept that there is a gross imbalance in funding in favour of London and against regions such as the north-east and the south-west. Even his own chairman of the Arts Council, whom he appointed, accepts that there is a problem. Will he now read the chairman’s evidence and the evidence from all the other witnesses who disagree with him, join the consensus and do something about it?

[Mr Vaizey]

That is as opposed to when the right hon. Gentleman was Secretary of State and did absolutely nothing about it. I look forward to receiving copies of the many speeches he made when he was Secretary of State talking about the imbalance of funding between London and the regions. We are doing something about it, which is why more funding is now going outside London and why the chairman of the Arts Council said:

“judge us in two years’ time”.

The council accepts that there is an issue and is going to do something about it.

Deaf Children and Young People

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

I absolutely acknowledge that. Jack Ashley was the honorary president of the all-party group and, having at first been sceptical about setting up a discrete group for deaf people, he actively supported it once it was created. That is a key part of this debate. I accept that all kinds of children have special educational needs and have no doubt that the Minister will allude to Government policy on special educational needs, but I hope that he will also accept that deaf children have specific needs that need to be articulated expressly in policy and not just swept up in general issues of special needs and disability.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Before the right hon. Gentleman moves away from the subject of sign language, is he aware of the problems faced by people such as my constituent Rachel Goswell? She has a profoundly deaf son, Jesse, and the only way of communicating with him will be to learn sign language herself. There is no support locally for parents to learn sign language. Does he agree that that and the training of educationalists at a local level cannot be left to a postcode lottery? There must be national guidelines so that everyone in England gets the same level of support.

[Sir Malcolm Bruce]

I am extremely grateful for that intervention, because my speech will make that point powerfully. There has been some progress from the previous and present Governments, but there has not yet been enough. That is a powerful point that I hope the Minister and other Ministers will take on board.

It is estimated that there are 45,000 deaf children in the UK, but no one actually knows how many there are. There is no systematic collection of statistics or data on deaf children, and that is a problem in itself. As we increasingly mainstream deaf children, they become less visible and can also be socially isolated, particularly if they are the only deaf child in the school. There is evidence that they might be bullied, they might suffer depression and not all of them thrive. I am not against mainstreaming in principle, but I believe that some profoundly and severely deaf children will make better progress in a school resourced properly and dedicated to their needs. Schools such as Heathlands in St Albans and Frank Barnes, which serves London, offer impressive education for deaf children but such schools are not found everywhere in the country.

School Governors

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Wednesday 24th October 2012 Westminster Hall

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mrs Main. May I preface my brief remarks by paying tribute to all our school governors? They do an incredible job, many of them in difficult circumstances. I can think of hardly any other role that anyone can play in our community that has more potential to help improve the life chances of our young people.

Two years ago, a friend of mine took over the chairmanship of a governing body in a difficult inner London primary school. He has spent most of his spare time in the past two years helping the head teacher to manage out under-performing staff. That school has transformed its performance in those two years, but it has not been a pleasant task. It has taken up a lot of time. He is not paid for it. He does it out of a sense of dedication and duty to the children in his community and their prospects.

I want to say a little about the importance of training for school governors, based on a recent story from my own constituency, which I have spoken to the Minister’s Secretary of State about on a number of occasions. One of my high schools in Exeter was on the brink of being given final approval for academy status, and it emerged that the head teacher at the school was paying himself more than the Prime Minister. He was employing his wife as his deputy, and some other family members were also employed at the school. What happened in the end, thanks to a freedom of information request from my local newspaper, was a call from me to the local authority to launch an inquiry. The local authority went into the school and carried out an inquiry—a thorough one. It recently reported and it was very shocking and damning.

I can summarise what went wrong at the school—I have had this experience before in schools that have gone wrong. There was a powerful—perhaps autocratic—head, who ran the school like a fiefdom and who had a rather cosy relationship with the chair of governors, who was, I think in this case, too weak. They basically made decisions together about the school—some of them against the rules, according to the report—and they froze out the rest of the governors.

I am not necessarily blaming the rest of the governors for their failure to ask more questions and to scrutinise more effectively. I think they could have done that, but one of the things that struck me when I looked into what went on at this school—I talked to not only the existing governors, but the staff, some of the new governors who have gone on to the governing body since the scandal broke, and some of the very good public servants at Devon county council who were responsible for supporting and training governors—was the lack of a requirement for governors to receive training.

I know that the Government and particularly the Minister do not like regulation. She does not want to ply schools with more responsibilities and duties. The Government are all about localism, autonomy and local decision making, but—I issue this warning in the gentlest possible way—with the Government’s policy driving towards more autonomy for schools, it is even more important that governors are properly trained because they will be assuming a much more significant role as a result of that autonomy. If a school comes under the umbrella of a local authority, at least the local authority still has a locus to intervene when something goes wrong, which is what happened in the case of the school in my constituency. If that school had already gone through the academy process and become an academy, the local authority would have had no means of intervention whatever. I am afraid it would have fallen to the Minister or her Secretary of State to intervene.

I suggest that the Minister and her Secretary of State are storing up all sorts of future potential problems for themselves by removing that level of local authority scrutiny. Given that that is the policy that they are set on and determined to implement, I urge her to at least consider the pleas from the very good public servants around the country who support governors and provide governor training. I urge her to listen to their appeals that the Government should consider making training for school governors mandatory. Since the scandal erupted, the school has invited the local authority trainers in. They are doing a great job. The governors are realising that there are lots of things they did not know about the job, but they do now.

At most schools in Devon the governors are given training, but there are others—most of them academies—that resent any interference and advice from the governor training bodies. Given that academies have no local democratic oversight, the only backstop is the Secretary of State, so it is more important than ever that governors are given the skills to do their job properly, exactly as the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) alluded to in his speech. If they are not given the skills, I predict that the Minister will see more scandals. There was another much worse scandal along similar lines in a school or schools in Lincoln. The Minister should seriously consider the impact of her policy and how important that makes it for governors to be properly trained.

I also urge my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), who speaks for the Labour party from the Front Bench, to consider whether we might adopt mandatory training for governors as a policy. I think it would be popular and not too burdensome. It is the least that parents expect. They expect the people who are in charge of the quality of their children’s education at a local level to be properly qualified and properly trained to be able to do a very important job effectively and well.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

I thank all hon. Members who have contributed to the debate. It has been very instructive and helpful, and we have heard a lot of interesting contributions. I pay special tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) for his tireless work as chair of the all-party parliamentary group on education governance and leadership, on which he has worked hard in the past few years. There is no doubt that his questions have been helpful to many governing bodies. He has a wealth of experience, and he has skilfully covered many of the points that I planned to make.

I thank the National Governors Association for its work, and I completely agree with hon. Members who have expressed their thanks to governors who play such an important role in helping our schools, driving up school and pupil performance and ensuring that every child receives the best possible education. As has been mentioned, hundreds of thousands of volunteers serve as school governors. One of them is my mum, who is a school governor in Leeds. I can assure hon. Members that I receive regular feedback from the front line, at all times of the day and night, about what is going on in schools in Leeds. I am not without a direct feedback loop.

Being a school governor is not only an influential role; it also demands skill, time and energy. We very much appreciate those who volunteer. Governors have four sets of responsibilities. First, they have a strategic function, which many hon. Members have mentioned. Secondly, they use their skills and experience to ensure that the school is doing the right thing, that the school and the governing body run efficiently and effectively and that the school works to continually improve itself. A theme that we have heard in the debate is that school governing bodies need to be not just satisfied with how things are, but to train up and have continuous professional development for the school to improve.

There has been rather a lot of selective quoting of the Secretary of State’s governance speech. He praised many governors and acknowledged the important role that they play. He was describing what he thinks bad governance looks like, as opposed to what he thinks good governance looks like. His comment was certainly not about all governors or in any way meant to be detrimental to the many people who serve their local schools and are an important part of the local community.

I was pleased to hear that the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) continues to support the academy programme, which was, of course, set up under the previous Government. I want to respond to the important points raised by him and the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) on school accountability, and explain the Government’s approach.

In September 2012, we introduced new rules for Ofsted that make governance more central to how schools are assessed. In category 3 of a school requiring improvement, Ofsted may recommend an external review of governance. It can also give schools subsidised training for the chairman of the governors—something mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud. If a school is in unsatisfactory category 4, the Secretary of State or local authority may impose an interim executive board to replace the governing body, or it may be forced to become an academy with a sponsor, who may replace the school’s leadership, head and governors.

The essential philosophical difference between the Government and the Opposition is that we think that governing bodies need to be measured on the outcomes that they produce, rather than on inputs. Although I am a great supporter of training and professional development, it should not be a mandatory requirement, not least, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell) mentioned, because it will impose costs on governing bodies. We do not know what the content will be. In my time, I have been on a fair few training courses that promised a great deal but did not deliver. That is not to say that I do not support training, but simply to say that it is a judgment that the chair of the governors and the school should exercise to ensure that its governing body has the right skills and experience. Rather than mandating the governing body to carry out things in a particular way, we should hold them accountable for the outcomes. They should take up the kind of professional development and training to ensure they have the right skills, as in the case raised by the right hon. Member for Exeter, to challenge the head teacher and understand the finances of the school. That is our broad approach.

[Mr Bradshaw]

I appreciate what the Minister says, but the performance of the school that I referred to was not bad enough for it to qualify under the new Ofsted rules that she has just outlined. The school was still improving and doing well enough. The problem was not the performance; the problem, basically, was corruption within the school. The worry that I have is that there is no local accountability in academies and that there is nothing anyone can do—except for her.

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. What I am saying, though, is that the capability of governors and the outcomes of governance will be assessed as part of the Ofsted assessment. It is not just a matter of looking at the academic performance of the school; it is also about understanding what the governors are doing and how they are carrying out their duties.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a compelling case, and I will recommend that the permanent secretary investigates it closely.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

6. What due diligence his Department conducted on the governance arrangements at West Exe technology college in Exeter when considering its application for academy status.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Michael Gove)]

West Exe technology college received an academy order because the school satisfied the Department’s published criteria for conversion to academy status, but the Department was alerted to matters that bear on the school’s conversion. Concerns were raised specifically about staffing practices. The local authority is therefore auditing the school’s finances and the school’s conversion is on hold, pending the outcome of that work.

[Mr Bradshaw]

The Secretary of State may recall my speaking personally to him in the corridor behind your Chair, Mr Speaker, a year ago. I said that the first school in my constituency to apply for academy status, and the one most impatient to do so, was the one whose leadership I had most concerns about. Yet the Department, in its apparent due diligence, saw no reason not to give the school initial approval. Does that not show that the due diligence process used by his Department is wholly inadequate?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the care he shows in ensuring that every school in his constituency finds itself in the right position and has the right status. When an academy order is granted, it is a rules-based process; if a school satisfies certain criteria, it is appropriate that an academy order be issued in most circumstances. Subsequently, however, a number of concerns—beyond those that the right hon. Gentleman rightly raised—are being investigated. At the conclusion of that investigation, I will make sure that the right hon. Gentleman, as the constituency Member, and others are informed about the decision that is eventually taken.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Prisk]

That is an image that I will not pursue. I am well aware that coastal towns in particular often feel that they are at the end of the economic line. I would welcome the opportunity to talk to parliamentary colleagues about that to see how we can focus in on this important issue.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

May I thank the Minister for the role that he has played and congratulate Exeter’s Labour-led council on its doggedness in ensuring that Exeter has a guaranteed place on the Devon and Cornwall LEP? Will he urge the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) to give urgent and positive attention to the bid for superfast broadband money, which has been submitted today and is supported by every Member of Parliament in Devon and Somerset?

[Mr Prisk]

We have issued a written statement today precisely on the new Heart of the South West local enterprise partnership for Devon and Somerset, as I think the right hon. Gentleman meant to say. I am grateful to him for his collaborative help on the scheme, which we are going to get under way. It is the next local enterprise partnership, and I shall certainly pass on his point to the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey).

Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Thursday 17th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Davey]

I am not aware of that OFT report from 16 months ago, but I will meet the hon. Gentleman to discuss it.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State and his Ministers for what they have been trying to do in talking sense into Devon and Somerset over our local enterprise partnership, and suggest that perhaps west Dorset might like to come in with us as a solution to the problem mentioned by the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke). However, Exeter is still being completely excluded from this process. Will the Minister not sign off the draft LEP until Exeter is guaranteed either a business or a local authority seat on the partnership board?

[Mr Prisk]

We have made it very clear that all partners must be engaged in this process, and I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for participating in it. I am talking to the partners involved, and I have made it clear that they must ensure that this is a genuine, lasting partnership that will help our local economies to grow.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

1. What assessment he has made of the likely effects on businesses of introducing daylight saving time.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Edward Davey)]

I am aware of a range of arguments regarding the effect of introducing daylight saving time on business and other areas of activity. There has been no recent Government assessment of the merits of those arguments. However, as the right hon. Gentleman will recall, in our recent debate on the private Member’s Bill on this issue, I made it clear that Government are willing to publish a review of the available evidence of a move to central European time. That would, of course, include evidence of the effects on business.

[Mr Bradshaw]

We know that this Government are having trouble reaching agreement on a lot of things, but on this issue, where there is overwhelming support from business and other organisations, cross-party support in the House for the private Member’s Bill that the House debated before Christmas, and strong support and promises made by both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister before the election, why is the Minister not moving more quickly?

[Mr Davey]

This coalition Government of two parties can make more decisions more quickly than the previous Government, of one party, did, and I am surprised that the right hon. Gentleman disagrees with the Prime Minister’s statement on this issue, in which he said that there should be consensus across the nations of the United Kingdom. That is a sensible approach to take, and we will follow it.

School Sports Funding

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Tuesday 30th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am keen to make progress, but I shall be happy to give way to a number of hon. Gentlemen on both sides of the House in due course. [Interruption.] I am even happier to give way to hon. Ladies and right hon. Ladies on both sides of the House.

We know that £2.4 billion was spent by the last Government on delivering their sport strategy. Our contention is that although much good work was done, that money was not spent as effectively and efficiently as it should have been. In the letter I wrote to Baroness Campbell, which the right hon. Member for Leigh referred to as “curt”, even though it was four and a half pages of prose, I outlined my gratitude to her for the work she had done. Earlier, the hon. Member for Dudley North (Ian Austin) suggested from a sedentary position that I should have met Baroness Campbell. I had the opportunity of meeting her—indeed, of having dinner with her—before I became Secretary of State. I also had the opportunity of talking to John Beckwith, one of the supporters of the Youth Sport Trust, and with the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), I had the opportunity of assessing the work of the trust. My hon. Friend had the opportunity of meeting Baroness Campbell on three occasions before we made our decision in the comprehensive spending review.

One of the questions that was in my mind was whether we were ensuring that enough was spent on the front line under the current structure. The right hon. Gentleman said that he would support the investment required to retain the infrastructure, but he did not specify what it was. Let me share with the House some of the details of the infrastructure. At present, we have 450 partnership development managers and 225 competition managers. On top of that, there are senior competition managers and on top of that, 11 regional development managers, and on top of that three national development managers. They work alongside the county sport partnerships and the national governing bodies of each sport. How many of those posts are essential to the delivery of an effective school sport offer?

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State recognise that the people he has just mentioned save schools time and money? What would he say to Kealey Sherwood, the director of sport at St Luke’s school in my constituency, about the £300,000 cut to my local partnership? She said:

“We are devastated. There is a real danger that at an exciting time for sport in Britain, all will be destroyed.”

What does the Secretary of State say to her?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to Kealey Sherwood for the commitment she shows. I am also grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the work he did when he was Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, but I have a question, which most people would consider fair-minded. If Opposition Members would like to maintain the infrastructure entirely intact, how much are they prepared to take from other budgets to do that, or if they agree with the right hon. Member for Leigh that a cut is possible to maintain the infrastructure, what level of cut would it be? Which of the posts is dispensable?

Schools White Paper

Ben Bradshaw Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

It was a pleasure to meet teachers in my hon. Friend’s constituency during the local election campaign two years ago. I know that they will welcome our proposals to ensure that investigations are speeded up when teachers face false allegations, and to ensure that they enjoy anonymity if such allegations are made. We will also tell head teachers that there should be no automatic suspension of teachers when they exercise legitimate authority in the classroom.

[Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State’s decision to axe funding for school sport partnerships will be extremely damaging to the fitness, health and attainment of our young people, as well as to our country’s future sporting prowess. May I implore the right hon. Gentleman, who is a reasonable man, to revisit that decision before he destroys the renaissance that school sport has experienced in the past few years?

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. I know that he is a reasonable man as well. I am sure that we can work together in future to ensure that the additional resources that we are investing in education, and the additional emphasis on competitive team sport, provide every school with the support that it needs to give all children the physical education that they deserve.