Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(4 years, 2 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to speak in today’s debate on behalf of the Opposition, and to set out the contrast between a Conservative Government who have spent 12 long years failing Britain and a Labour party determined to make our country the best place to grow up and grow old.
As the Leader of the Opposition set out last week, at the heart of the Government’s programme there is a poverty of ambition for our public services, entirely inadequate for the challenges we face. We see that in the Government’s ongoing refusal to commit to a children’s recovery plan to support children after the disruption of the pandemic on anything like the scale that either their adviser, Sir Kevan Collins, or the Labour party has set out. I remain disappointed but sadly not surprised. After all, this is the Government who reopened the pubs before they reopened schools.
Twelve years in and the Conservatives are out of ideas, out of touch and out of steam. The challenges we face as a country demand vision, leadership, energy, drive and determination. Of course there are the challenges that every country faces, and now there are the challenges bequeathed by the pandemic and its legacy. But there are also the challenges brought by 12 years of Conservative failure, and what they all have in common is that every single one of them is a challenge from which this Government flinch.
A generation of children have been through the education system in this country under Conservative Governments since 2010. Their experience is the core narrative of this Government’s failure: not simply a failure to deliver, but a failure to think, a failure to plan, a failure to resource and a failure to learn. I think of what a child starting school in 2010 will have seen in that time: real-terms cuts to funding per pupil; secondary school classes at their largest for a generation; hundreds of thousands more children eligible for free school meals; school building repairs cancelled or postponed; hundreds of days lost to the pandemic; botched examinations not for one year, but two; and now this historic failure to invest in the children’s recovery plan that the Government’s own expert recommended and that our children desperately need.
The only thing on the up under this Government is child poverty. Now, as that young person looks ahead to university and the years that follow, they can see higher costs than ever before, stretching almost to retirement.
Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)
I thank the hon. Lady for drawing comparisons with what it is like to go to school under a Conservative Government. I went to school under a Labour Government. When I left my secondary school in 2005, it had a pass rate of 11% and one in three teachers were supply teachers. Was that not the real legacy of a Labour Government: a failed generation?
Bridget Phillipson
The last Labour Government transformed the life chances of people across our country—child poverty down, investment in our schools, schools rebuilt, teachers properly supported. That is a record of which we are very proud.
This is a generation of children let down from primary school right the way through to university, a generation of children failed by the Conservatives. I can tell you why they have been failed. The Government have stopped thinking in terms of children, people, parents and families. They have been too long in power, and they are mistaking changing institutions and regulations for improving the lives of our people.
Look at the Schools Bill, published last week. I had genuinely hoped for better, but what did we find? It is narrow in scope, hollow in ambition and thin on policy. It has 32 clauses on the governance of academies and 15 on funding arrangements. On funding, what a sorry sight it is to see a Conservative Chancellor and Secretary of State seeking plaudits merely for aiming to restore, by 2024, a level of real-terms school funding achieved by the last Labour Government, when their Government have spent a decade slicing it away.
The newspapers this weekend made it all too clear that whichever children the Secretary of State cares about, they are not always the children in England’s state schools.
We learnt that he is concerned that the success of our young people in accessing their first choice universities from England’s state schools—the schools which the vast majority of children attend and for which he is primarily responsible—is evidence of “tilting the system” away from private schools, of which, he tells us, he is “so proud”. What an extraordinary remark by the Secretary of State for Education about the success of students in state schools in this country.
If that were not enough, the next day brought further clarification. Not only does the Secretary of State appear concerned by the growing success of state-educated children in entering the universities of their choice, he is not bothered that their schools are crumbling around them. His own officials, within the last two months, have said:
“Some sites a risk-to-life, too many costly and energy-inefficient repairs rather than rebuilds, and rebuild demand three times supply”.
Children are being educated in schools that are a risk to life, and the Government have not lifted a finger.
The children of this country are being failed by an Education Secretary more interested in appealing to Conservative party members than in ensuring the success of our young people.
Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)
The hon. Lady has made two points in the last few minutes about school funding for buildings and about children from private schools. May I address both? Does the hon. Lady welcome the more than £1 million given to Carre’s Grammar School in Sleaford to improve the school buildings and facilities? I went to a comprehensive school in Middlesbrough until I was 16. Just before I was 16 I was on a walk in the hills when I met somebody who went to Gordonstoun, a brilliant public school. They gave me, an ordinary working-class girl from Middlesbrough, a scholarship, for which I am eternally grateful. Were I to have applied for Oxford University, should I have been penalised for that scholarship?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I emphasise that interventions should be brief.
Bridget Phillipson
I am afraid that I did not catch most of that intervention—it was a bit hard to hear the hon. Lady—but I repeat that the last Labour Government rebuilt schools across our country. That has not been the record of the last 12 years.
The next Labour Government will build a Britain where children come first, where we put children and growing up at the heart of how we think about the future of our country, where Britain is the best place to grow up and the best place to grow old, and where young people leave education ready for work and ready for life.
Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)
Since we are all talking about when we were at school, I should point out that I am probably the only Member of the House who grew up under a Tory Government and was at school in 2010. Does my hon. Friend agree that the reality of that was class sizes that were the biggest on record and school buildings that were falling apart, and, with education maintenance allowance having been cut, all we had to look forward to was the prospect of paying £9,000 a year in tuition fees if we went to university?
Bridget Phillipson
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The last Labour Government transformed the life chances of a generation, and it will fall to the next Labour Government to do the same. Because, in a country where we think about children as both a society and an economy of the future, we build a better Britain for everyone: a Britain of children and families where the Government work to enable and empower success and, in particular, a Britain in which the Government see the soaring cost of childcare not as a statistic to be observed but a problem to be solved. That cost is crippling: families suffer financially; children suffer socially, and our country suffers economically. When the cost of childcare, not just for our two to four-year-olds, but the whole time from the end of maternity leave to the start of secondary school—from ensuring that parents can choose, and afford, to go back to work, to affordable breakfast clubs and afterschool activities so that parents do not always need to be at the school gate—is quite literally pricing people out of parenting, children and families are being failed.
That failure is not just about the individual children and families whom the Government fail, though there are millions of them and that is bad enough; our whole country is failed when we let our children down. It is not just childcare. We see it too in the Government’s failure to face up to the damage that their mishandling of the pandemic did to the education of a generation. The Secretary of State’s failure to convince the Chancellor to invest properly in children’s recovery from the pandemic; his failure at the last spending round in the autumn; his failure in the spring statement, and his failure now—that series of failures—above all he does or says now or in the future, is what he will be remembered for. The Prime Minister’s own adviser had the dignity to resign rather than accept such failure, and Labour would have been very different from the Government.
We have a plan where the Government have failure. On the very day that schools and nurseries closed to most children in March 2020, a Labour Government would have started work on three plans: an immediate plan to support children’s learning and development remotely and as fully as possible while lockdown went on; an urgent plan to reopen schools safely and quickly, and then to keep them open so children could learn together and play together; and, critically, a plan to ensure that when lockdown ended, children’s education and wellbeing did not suffer in the long run. Our children’s recovery plan put children and their futures at the heart of how we think about moving on from the pandemic because, after all, every child in Britain did more to follow the covid rules than our Prime Minister. The impact that had on their health and educational attainment needs addressing, not ignoring.
We would introduce breakfast clubs so that every child starts their day with a proper meal; afterschool activities, so that every child gets to learn and experience art, music, drama and sport; mental health support because every report that we see tells us that children’s development has fallen behind in the pandemic; continued professional development for our teachers because every child deserves teachers second to none in support of their learning; and targeted extra investment right from the early years through to further education, to support the children at risk of falling behind, because attainment gaps open up early and need tackling early.
We would go further to lock in the gains of a recovery programme for the long term, with a national excellence programme to drive up standards in schools, because every child deserves to go to a school with high expectations and high achievements. There would be thousands upon thousands of new teachers in subjects that have shortages right now, because every child deserves to be taught maths and physics by people who love their subject and to be introduced to a love of sport, music, art and drama; a skills commission, because every young person needs to leave education ready for work and ready for life; careers guidance in every school and work experience for every child, because each of us deserves to succeed at work, and Labour believes that the Government have a role to play in making that happen; and a curriculum in which we teach our children not just the past that they will inherit, but the future they will build, and in which they learn about the challenge of net zero and the climate emergency that we face.
It is precisely because we have a plan that we would enable our education system to deliver it. It is why we want an approach to how our schools are run that focuses on how children achieve and thrive, not the name on the uniform or the hours that they are there. It is why we have a determination to see childcare not as a passing, costly phase in the lives of others, but as the foundation of opportunity in the lives of every child and every parent.
As our children grow and as they interact more and more with my party’s proudest achievement to date, the national health service, it is sadly not the case that their experience of this Government’s record on public services improves. With health, as with education, there was a decade of failure even before the pandemic began. The national health service did not go into the pandemic strong, well-resourced and resilient. No, the NHS went into the pandemic with record waiting lists, 100,000 vacancies and 17,000 fewer beds than in 2010. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) has rightly said:
“It is not just that the Government did not fix the roof while the sun was shining; they dismantled the roof and removed the floorboards.”—[Official Report, 14 December 2021; Vol. 705, c. 954.]
Last autumn, the Government announced that they would raise tax to fund clearing the backlog and improving social care. The tax rise is happening during a cost of living crisis, sure enough, but it is not clear how they will manage the rest. That is why today, in our health service as in childcare, we are paying more but getting less. The Government are raising taxes on working people in the middle of a cost of living crisis, yet patients are expected to wait longer for care.
Conservative Members would do well to remember that NHS waiting lists are at a record 6 million. Ministers cannot blame the pandemic, because the figure was already at over 4 million before covid struck. Let us think of those millions of people waiting—waiting longer than ever before, often waiting in pain and discomfort, waiting while working or trying to find work, waiting while walking their children to school, waiting while trying to find somewhere affordable to live, waiting while looking after their grandchildren. They are waiting at a cost to themselves, of course, but at an astronomical cost to our country that is not just financial, but economic and social. They are waiting for their Government to give our public services the priority they deserve.
Mental health services are on the brink of collapse. In 12 years of Conservative Governments, a quarter of mental health beds have been cut, and right now 1.6 million people are waiting for mental health treatment. How on earth can any Minister defend that record? The Government’s approach to social care is up there with their failure on childcare: it is not fair, and it will not work. The less people have, the more they will take. Those with homes worth £150,000 will lose almost everything, while the wealthiest are protected.
It does not need to be this way. Labour will build an NHS fit for the future and get patients seen on time. We will provide the NHS with the staff, equipment and modern technology required so that the NHS is there for people when they need it. We will fix social care so that those in need do not go without. Our new deal for care workers will provide fair pay and secure contracts to plug the more than 100,000 vacancies in social care. We will transform training to improve standards of care. Across our public services, Labour will build a better Britain. We have done it before; we will do it again.
I remember a previous Conservative Government who cared little for the challenges that my family faced—a Government keener on judging my family than on supporting it. Then I saw, growing up and as a young woman, the difference that an incoming Labour Government made. I saw a Government who acted decisively to tackle disadvantage, cut child poverty and support families and children. A generation grew up with Sure Start and with children’s centres. A generation like me were supported after 16 with the education maintenance allowance and a level of investment in our NHS unmatched in history, with waiting lists driven down from months and years to days and weeks. I saw then, in my own community, the difference those changes made, and I still see it now in the better lives of young people who grew up with that advantage and the support it unlocked.
For 12 long years, Conservative Ministers have failed a generation of our children. Labour in power will be different, because we see Britain as its people—our children, our families, our future—and we will never swerve from making this country the best place to grow up and the best place to grow old.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Nominations closed at 5 o’clock this afternoon for candidates for the post of Chair of the Backbench Business Committee. One nomination has been received. A ballot will therefore not be held. I congratulate Ian Mearns on his re-election as Chair of the Backbench Business Committee. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”]
I remind hon. and right hon. Members of my stricture about sticking to five minutes, at least for the opening contributions from the Back Benches.
Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Review
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
I start by thanking the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. Children with special educational needs and disabilities and how we support them are subjects close to my heart, as they are to so many of us across the House. I had sincerely hoped to speak today with optimism and enthusiasm about the review the Secretary of State has set out today, because one in six children in England have a special educational need or disability—five in every class.
Supporting children and learners with special educational needs or disabilities is at the heart of our education system and the work that teachers and school staff are doing every day, and it should be central to the work of Government too. But right now children are being let down. Needs are going unmet. Children are stuck on waiting lists, for occupation therapy to speech and language support. Thousands of families are waiting months for education health and care plans. Children and families are facing a postcode lottery in availability and quality of specialist provision, and parents are increasingly turning to the courts to get the support that is their children’s right.
The system is broken. Parents know it, teachers know it, children know it and the Government know it, too. But we have not got here by accident. The Secretary of State says he is ambitious for young people, but where has that ambition been for the past 12 years? Where was that ambition when he was Minister for Children and Families? The Secretary of State cannot disown the legacy of 12 years of Conservative Governments which has left us with a broken, adversarial and aggressive system that is letting down young people and leaving families in despair.
Against that backdrop, it is hard not to be optimistic about any changes to the system. Early intervention, support in mainstream settings, changing culture, supporting families and making the system financially sustainable—who could object to those ambitions? However, just as we saw yesterday, those ambitions remain sadly hollow: hollow because there is no plan to deliver; hollow because other Government policies are working against those aims; and hollow because children and families are still waiting on a pandemic recovery plan. Too many parents told us that during the pandemic support for their children was removed, was not available and to this day has not been restored.
When Labour says it is ambitious for children, it means every child. Labour’s children’s recovery plan sets out the support it would put in place for children and young people now: mental health support in every school, wraparound activities that support every child’s development, and targeted learning support for the children who need it most. The pandemic was hard on us all, but for children with SEND and their families it was harder still. The long shadow of those months in lockdown is holding children back, so I ask the Secretary of State again when will he finally give children and families the recovery plan they need and deserve? At every school I visit, teachers and staff raise as one of their biggest concerns the broken system facing children with SEND. That is why we all want reforms to succeed: intervention earlier, children’s needs identified sooner and support provided more quickly.
Under the previous Labour Government, children’s centres were also crucial. With millions of families accessing those services, children’s needs were identified quickly and support put in place, but more than 1,000 children’s centres have closed. The family hubs that the Secretary of State announced are a pale imitation of that network of services, yet the evidence is even clearer now than it was then that early intervention and co-ordinated support for families transforms children’s lives. As the Minister is keen to consider the evidence—I know he is—will he not look again at the much wider support and services that families across our country are so desperate to see? Many parents who have had to fight for their children’s support will today also want assurances from him that there will be no compromising on care to cut costs. Can he say when he expects promised additional educational psychologists to be in place supporting children and schools?
Families have had to wait almost 1,000 days since the SEND review was announced for the Government to launch the consultation. Families will wait another 13 weeks for that consultation to close. They will wait longer for a Government response and then again before changes are seen on the frontline. Years have passed since reform was needed and children’s time in the education system is slipping away. Nothing we do in this place can be more important than giving children support to thrive and opportunities for the future, but over the past two years of the pandemic, and the past 12 years of Conservative Governments, all too often our children have been an afterthought. When staff across our schools have been asked to do more with less, they have stepped in and stepped up. They have plugged gaps, taken on more, delivered time and again for the children they are desperate to see succeed. They have put children first and done everything they could. It is long past time the Government did the same.
Nadhim Zahawi
The hon. Lady talked about recovery; she will know about the £5 billion announced for education recovery. We have consistently prioritised children and young people with SEND, including through additional weighting for specialist settings. The £1 billion of funding that was announced at the spending review to extend the recovery premium over the next two academic years—2022-23 and 2023-24—should be used by schools to prioritise support for children and young people with SEND.
The hon. Lady also spoke about family hubs. I am disappointed that she is not at least giving herself the opportunity to look at the evidence, which is clear, whether in respect of the Harlow family hub that I visited or the one not far from here in Westminster, where she can go—it is probably within walking distance—to see the great work of multiple agencies that are coming together to deliver the most important must-have services to the families towards whom we need to target help. That contrasts with the Labour plan, which sounded great on paper but did not work implementation-wise because it was obsessed with bricks and mortar rather than helping families.
I do not recall any other question from the statement that the hon. Lady made. Suffice it to say that, yet again, as she demonstrated yesterday, there is no plan from Labour.
Schools White Paper
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for advance sight of his statement today. It has been a little over two years since schools were closed to most pupils and almost 12 years since his party came to power, yet among the many reannouncements that we heard over the weekend, the big ideas were that three quarters of our schools should carry on as normal, teaching the hours that they already teach; that when children are falling behind, schools will be there to help; and that the national tutoring programme—described by providers as being at risk of catastrophic failure—is the answer to all our problems.
Is that really it? Is that the limit of the Secretary of State’s ambition for our children and for our country? He rightly stresses the need to be evidence-led. Is that all he thinks the evidence supports? [Interruption.]
Mr Speaker
Order. I expected good order to be kept during the Secretary of State’s statement, which in fairness it was, and I certainly want the same for the shadow Secretary of State. If somebody does not want to keep good order, will they please leave now?
Bridget Phillipson
The Secretary of State rightly stresses the need to be evidence-led. Is that all he thinks the evidence supports, or is it all he could persuade the Chancellor to support?
The attainment gap is widening. Performance at GCSE for our most disadvantaged kids was going into reverse even before the pandemic. After two years of ongoing disruption, it is clear enough where the focus should be. The Secretary of State says that he has ambitions, but they are hollow—hollow because they are wholly disconnected from any means of achieving them, hollow because there is no plan to deliver them, but also hollow because there is no vision for what education is for, what growing up in our country should involve and what priority we should give our children.
We are two years into the pandemic. Two years is a long time, and an important time—half a lifetime for the children starting school in September. We can all see the impact that the years of disruption, botched exams, isolation and time spent at home has had on our children, yet time and again the Government fail to grasp the truth that time out of education for children and young people means more than time out in the rest of their lives. Instead, our children have been an afterthought for this Government—a Government who showed their priorities when they reopened pubs before they reopened schools, a Prime Minister whose own adviser on education recovery resigned in despair, a Department that closed schools to most children with little thought for how it would repair the damage or reopen them safely.
Labour listened to parents and young people and set out the children’s recovery plan that our children need and our country deserves—breakfast clubs and new activities, quality mental health support in every school, small group tutoring for all who need it. Our children have waited long enough. When will they see a recovery plan that rises to the generational challenge staring us all in the face? Only today, the Department published research setting out that in reading in particular, pupils are falling further behind and the disadvantage gap is widening.
It goes deeper than just the past two years. We see the value and worth of every child. We see them as ambitious and optimistic, with dreams for their future. We see the role of a Government as one of matching, not tempering, that ambition. Education is about opportunity; we want opportunity for every child, in every corner of our country, at every stage.
We want childcare that is high-quality, affordable and available, not a cost that prices people out of parenting. We want every parent to be able to send their child to a great local state school, which is why we would launch the most ambitious school improvement plan for a generation, focusing on what happens inside the school, not the name above the door. We want teachers supported to succeed, not leaving the profession as they are doing, which is why we have set out plans for career development and for thousands of new teachers: because the success and professionalism of our teachers enables the success of our children.
We want to see our children not just achieving, but thriving at school, with a rich and broad curriculum that enables them to flourish. We want to give children and young people real choices and see them succeed through strong colleges and apprenticeships. That is why we would deliver work experience, careers advice and digital skills for all our young people so that everyone leaves education ready for work and ready for life. That is why today’s White Paper represents such a missed opportunity.
However, for all the disappointment that we feel on these Opposition Benches, echoed by school staff and school leaders across our country today—and the Secretary of State, in his heart, probably feels that disappointment himself—it is our children, whose voices are rarely heard in this place, who are the real losers today.
Nadhim Zahawi
I was hoping for a plan, but none was forthcoming. The hon. Lady spoke about schools being closed. Labour, dancing to the tune of its union paymasters, wanted to keep them closed. If the hon. Lady thinks that that is a plan, perhaps she should go and visit one of those schools, as I did earlier today with the right hon. Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms). If she had been with me at Monega school in Newham and observed the brilliant leadership of Liz Harris and her team, she would know that our reforms are working. There is a family of schools in a high-performing trust which is delivering for those children, 24% of whom are on pupil premium. Great leadership and great teachers are being supported by a fantastic teaching hub within the group that is part of that trust, delivering great outcomes for children rather than playing politics with our education system.
I seem to recall that it was the leader of the hon. Lady’s party who wanted schools to remain closed—and, of course, wanted to pause the whole vaccination campaign so that we would lose three months before we could vaccinate teachers. Because we did not do that, and because so many of the Leader of the Opposition’s Back Benchers went against him, we continued to vaccinate, we protected teachers, and we got schools open again.
The hon. Lady spoke about our standing in the world rankings. I can share with her the information that England achieved its highest ever scores in both reading and maths in two international comparison studies, the 2016 progress in international reading literacy study and the 2019 trends in international mathematics and science study. In 2019, following the introduction of the phonics screening check in 2012, the proportion of year 1 pupils meeting the expected standard rose from 58% to 82%, and the figure rose to 91% among those in year 2. That is a record of real delivery for young people of which the Government are proud. Of course we have had a pandemic since then, but the £5 billion invested in our recovery is making a real difference.
The hon. Lady questioned that recovery, and questioned what the national tutoring programme was achieving. We have just announced that the NTP has delivered 1 million 15-hour blocks of tutoring. It will meet its targets. School leaders told us that they wanted a school-led pillar—as well as the other two pillars which are also delivering—and we have provided that for them. Evidence that we published today, to which the hon. Lady referred, suggests that since the spring of 2021, primary school pupils have recovered about two thirds of the progress that was lost owing to the pandemic in reading, and about half in maths. That is real delivery.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(4 years, 4 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Minister for School Standards (Mr Robin Walker)
The Government remain committed to delivering the free school programme, and appreciate the importance of a new secondary school in the Perranporth area. We are continuing to work with the trust and local authority, to secure the site and deliver new school places for Cornwall.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
Does the Secretary of State believe that Randstad’s delivery of the national tutoring programme has been a success?
Nadhim Zahawi
The hon. Lady will recall that the national tutoring programme had two pillars—academic mentors and tuition partners—and that programme is run by Randstad. By the way, last week I announced that we have hit 1 million blocks of tutoring, which I hope she welcomes. Schools tell us that those pillars are important, but also that they wanted a school-led route. That is what we did, and more than half a million tutoring blocks have been delivered that way. We must look at the tutoring programme and make those opportunities available for every child, especially those who come from disadvantaged backgrounds.
Bridget Phillipson
I think families and school staff will find the Secretary of State’s response staggering in its complacency, given the failures that we are seeing as part of that programme. Almost two years after schools were closed to most children, and given the immense disruption to their education that they face, it should have been a national mission to support all our children to recover the learning and experiences they have lost in that time. Our children’s future, and our country’s future, depend on getting it right now. When will the Secretary of State finally get a grip?
Nadhim Zahawi
I notice that the hon. Lady did not recognise, or at least celebrate, the 1 million tutoring blocks that have been delivered, the majority of which have been delivered by brilliant teachers in our brilliant schools, because people wanted a school-led route to deliver that. That is the right thing to do. We are at 1 million blocks, we will hit 2 million this year, and we will go beyond that and hit 6 million in total—then I hope the hon. Lady will celebrate that. It is right for every child to get that opportunity, which was available only to the fortunate ones before.
Higher Education Reform
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for advance sight of his statement and I join him in his comments about the events that we see unfolding in Ukraine.
Given that 1,000 days have passed since May 2019, Members might be forgiven for forgetting the recommendations of the Augar review and the context in which it was launched. Concerns about fairness and affordability for students seem to have been lost entirely today. As the then Conservative Prime Minister outlined in launching the report:
“removing maintenance grants from the least well-off students has not worked”.
There has been little sign of any real concern for less well-off students this week. Instead, we have seen the Government’s total lack of urgency about any matter except their own self-preservation; their lack of ambition for our young people; their lack of ambition for our universities; and ultimately, their lack of ambition for our country. This is a Government whose approach to some of the biggest issues facing our universities is simply to kick the can down the road. They are freezing fees, not changing them, and tying interest rates to measures that they intend to phase out, and there is a deafening silence on living costs for students.
Time and again, this Conservative Government reach for the pockets of working people, with council tax put up twice, income tax thresholds frozen, a national insurance hike and now falling repayment thresholds that will see working people paying more for longer. This Government, who are responsible for a growing failure to support young people to achieve at GCSE, now want to shut people out of university rather than raising standards in schools, slamming the door on opportunity and ambition. As for the lifelong learning loan, which, as the Secretary of State noted, was a core recommendation of the review, why are we waiting even longer for yet another consultation when that was first promised as part of the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill?
This is not the approach that we need. It will not fit our country to face the challenges of tomorrow. These announcements hold back our universities, our young people and our country. A generation of children has gone through education under Conservative Governments since 2010. Let us consider what their experience has been: real-terms cuts to funding per pupil; secondary school classes at their largest for a generation; hundreds of thousands more children eligible for free school meals; school building repairs cancelled and postponed; hundreds of days lost to the pandemic; botched exam arrangements; and a historic failure to invest in the children’s recovery plan that the Government’s expert recommended and which our children desperately need. As those children now look ahead to university and the years that follow, they will see higher costs than ever before, stretching almost to retirement. This is a generation of children let down from primary school right the way through to university.
Those decisions are about choices and priorities, but for this Government, our children and young people are an afterthought—an opportunity for a Treasury saving, not the future that we create together. It need not be like that. In Wales, the Labour Government have chosen to focus on supporting students to succeed. They chose to provide extra help on the cost of living and to widen access—two themes missing almost entirely from the statement that we heard.
Today’s response, for which we have waited all this time, represents a failure by the Government and, sadly, by the Secretary of State. I have a great deal of respect for him and I know how seriously he takes his role, but what we have is 1,000 days of complacency ending in a victory for the Chancellor, not a victory for Britain. There was a failure last autumn to persuade the Treasury that higher education should be central to the economy and success of our country. There has been a failure to rise to the challenges that our universities face and to design a solution, and there was a failure, this spring, to navigate the chaos of a Downing Street paralysed by scandal.
The people who will feel the pain of this failure and that defeat are not in the Chamber today. They are teaching and learning in our universities. They are sitting in school dreaming of the better future that they deserve and which Labour believes we can achieve. Labour sees their future and our universities very differently from the Government. We believe in matching the ambition of our young people, in enabling university staff to support young people and our country to succeed, and in creating thriving universities at the heart of our towns and cities.
The tragedy today is that the Secretary of State knows full well that this is not good enough, but he cannot persuade his Treasury colleagues otherwise. Unlike this Government, the next Labour Government will treat universities not as a political battleground, but as a public good, central to the success of our country.
Nadhim Zahawi
I respectfully remind the hon. Lady that someone from a disadvantaged background today is 80% more likely to go to university than they were a decade ago. Let me go further and remind her that, in 2016, the coalition Government introduced the new apprenticeship standards and made sure that businesses were at the heart of setting those standards, because it is not politicians or experts in Whitehall who can decide what sectors of the economy will change and re-emerge.
There is a common theme—a strategy—running through all our reforms, from the apprenticeship standards, with more than 5 million people entering apprenticeships, to the skills White Paper, the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill, which we just voted on and sent to the other place, and now our HE reforms. What if someone had said to me when I was choosing those new standards as the apprenticeships tsar that there would come a Prime Minister and a Chancellor who would back adults at any point in their life to upskill or reskill, or that we would say to someone in Aberdeen oil and gas who wanted to go and work in offshore wind, “We will stand behind you” with funding of £37,000, the equivalent of four years of education? That is what this Government are delivering and I am proud to be the son of a country that gives real opportunity to people from all backgrounds.
The hon. Lady mentioned the issue of excluding those who may not do so well in GCSEs. That is not what the consultation is about. It is about making sure that there are routes for those people, so that if they do not do well in their maths or English GCSEs, but do well in their A-levels, university is still open to them. However, a different route—an apprenticeship degree—is also open to them, as well as other vocational qualifications. Bringing FE and HE together was central to the Augar panel’s recommendations and that is what we are doing.
Finally, I respectfully remind the hon. Lady, who talked about our financial settlement, that my Department has a settlement of £86 billion for 2024, with £4.7 billion going into schools, £3.8 billion going into skills and £900 million—the highest uplift in a decade—going into our universities. That is our plan; she has no plan.
Points of Order
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
On a point of order, Mr Speaker. Have you been given notice that an Education Minister will make a statement to the House on the Government’s response to the Augar review; the future of student and university finance; and the financial arrangements governing student loan repayments? No less than 1,000 days after Augar reported, it seems that the Government are, once more, more interested in briefing journalists than in informing the House on the future of our universities. It is extraordinary that the Government are yet again choosing to announce serious changes to higher education in that way. This morning, students will have seen their hard work belittled by Ministers—
Mr Speaker
Order. You have raised the point of order; you cannot make a speech on it. The Secretary of State may wish to answer you.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Alex Burghart)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on his report. I very much share his sentiments about the importance of recognising prior learning. Currently, further education providers can use their own discretion when they assess learners’ experience, but we are examining how we can encourage the greater use of knowledge in respect of prior learning. I shall pass on my hon. Friend’s invitation to the Secretary of State.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
Today, I send my love to the family of Jack Dromey, who will be deeply missed by us all. Through you, Mr Speaker, I also send to the Secretary of State my best wishes for a swift recovery.
According to the most recent figures, the number of children who are out of school because of covid has risen by 34%. In the light of that, do Ministers not regret all the time and energy they have wasted on defending the Prime Minister rather than prioritising our children’s learning?
The Minister for School Standards (Mr Robin Walker)
The hon. Lady may wish to play party politics, but we are focused on making sure that children can safely learn in schools.
Bridget Phillipson
If only that were true. It is a year this week since the Prime Minister appointed Sir Kevan Collins
“to oversee a comprehensive programme of catch-up”,
only for Sir Kevan later to resign in protest because, in his words, the Government’s plans risked
“failing hundreds of thousands of pupils.”
We can all see covid’s impact on children’s learning and wellbeing. Labour’s “Children’s Recovery Plan” meets the scale of the challenge we face, so when will the Minister finally put children first and match Labour’s ambition for their future?
Education: Return in January
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(4 years, 6 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
Happy new year to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and to the House.
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement. I am glad that children are back at school this term, and I pay tribute to all the staff working right across education, whose commitment, dedication and hard work make that possible. Labour wants children to be in school, learning and playing together. Every day missed from school is a day they do not get back in their lives and in their learning. Last term alone, children in England missed over 10 million school days for covid-related reasons. More than 1 million children have left secondary school since the pandemic began. Almost 2 million of our youngest children have never known a normal school year. That is why Labour has set out a clear, costed and ambitious children’s recovery plan that would support our children where they have missed out, with school activities, breakfast clubs, and small-group tutoring. The Government’s plans are so limited and inadequate that their own recovery chief resigned in protest.
We will get on top of this disease by driving down transmission through vaccinating eligible children, ventilating our classrooms and testing regularly and frequently, but the steps the Government have taken so far, with further details announced at the very last minute and in the House today, simply do not rise to the challenge we face.
The Christmas break was an opportunity for the Government to ensure proper ventilation was in place in our classrooms, to get eligible children vaccinated and to ensure an ample supply of tests for families. On ventilation, 18 months ago, in July 2020, the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies considered a paper on the aerosol transmission of covid, and recommended:
“Particular attention should be paid to planning for winter to ensure that spaces can be effectively ventilated without significantly compromising the thermal comfort of occupants.”
In July 2021 we were told that an air purifier trial, a pilot study, was under way in Bradford, but by the time the full report of that study is available, it will be more than 30 months since the Government first ordered schools to close. How can anyone look at that timeline without concluding that for this Government our children are an afterthought?
Meanwhile, at the weekend, we heard that a further 7,000 air cleaning units are to be issued to schools. That trial will tell us either that those units are a waste of money, or that for hundreds of thousands of classrooms 7,000 units is wholly inadequate to meet the challenge they face. Which is it? While Ministers take their time to decide, it is winter. Windows are open in schools across England, and children are having to be wrapped up in their coats to learn. It is incompetent, complacent and inadequate. Our children deserve better.
On vaccination, on 30 December barely half of eligible children aged 12 and over had received even their first vaccination. We have seen in the past month with the booster jab what can be done when the political will is there, but for this Government our children are never a priority. On testing, the Government have encouraged parents to ensure their children take lateral flow tests twice a week. I looked last night for lateral flow tests online. There were none available for home delivery. We cannot test our children twice a week if there are not the tests available to do it.
In closing, I ask the Secretary of State some of the questions not addressed by his statement. What guarantee will he offer parents about the availability of vaccination slots for their children, in schools or elsewhere? What is he doing about those who peddle misinformation on vaccines, and will he bring in exclusion zones around schools? How does he plan to ensure that parents can get lateral flow tests for their children? When does he intend to publish the interim findings of the Bradford air purification trial? What confidence has he that 7,000 devices are enough—and why? Can he confirm that they will not be available until the end of February and that he expects children to sit in classrooms with open windows, in their coats, in winter?
Has the Secretary of State spoken to the Chancellor, who said last summer that he had “maxed out” on supporting our children and refused to fund the recovery plan that Sir Kevan Collins recommended? What advice has the Secretary of State had on whether face coverings would still be necessary if vaccination levels among children were higher and ventilation better? Can he explain why he is unable to tell the House today how many retired teachers and others have come forward to help in classrooms following his last-minute call? What guarantees can he give students with exams this month and later this year about whether they will go ahead? Lastly, but most importantly, when does he plan to return to this House to set out the ambitious recovery plan for our children’s disrupted education that they so richly deserve?
Nadhim Zahawi
I fear the hon. Lady has very little experience of operationalising anything, given the way she has attempted to misrepresent the efforts we have made to ensure that schools are safe and hygienic. She omitted the fact that we have delivered 350,000 CO2 monitors to our school system. That has allowed us to be confident that, where schools are able to ventilate, they are doing so and therefore do not need the air purifiers. Where schools do need additional help, those 8,000 air purifying devices are going out as of next week, especially to special needs and alternative provision settings, which as she knows are the most vulnerable, and to all other schools that cannot mitigate the problem of ventilation in the classroom.
There has been some corroboration of that modelling by Teacher App, which I am sure the hon. Lady will look at in her own time online. If we take the 350,000 CO2 monitors and look at the data reported back from schools and which schools have had issues, 8,000 air purifiers is a similar number to the one derived there.
The hon. Lady asked about lateral flow tests. She heard from the Prime Minister earlier that we have trebled the number of lateral flow tests going out, from 300,000 a day to 900,000 a day, and supply from 100 million a month to 300 million a month, but in her response to my statement, she unfortunately chose to traduce a testing infrastructure that is probably the best of breed in the world.
On retired teachers, again operationally, it is a bit difficult to say as we have had only one day of school. I need to wait until the end of the week at least before I can talk to the agencies and hear exactly how many teachers and temporary staff have been needed. I will happily share that information with the House, but, alas, the hon. Lady has clearly not had much experience of operationalising.
Some £5 billion is going into catch-up and there will be 6 million tutoring sessions. By any measure, that is a massive scale-up of tutoring. Half a million training opportunities will also be available—we cannot have a great education without having great teachers—and £5 billion will go into that.
The hon. Lady asked about vaccination. I can report to her that the school age vaccination programme will begin vaccinating in schools again as of Monday, as I mentioned in my statement, which she chose to ignore. Parents can also book online, go to GPs or walk-in centres to have their children vaccinated. We already have over 50% vaccinated.
Finally, on exams, vocational exams scheduled to take place in January will go ahead, because those students have worked hard studying for them and they deserve to be able to take those exams. Those who may be down with omicron and need to self-isolate will be able to get in touch with their awarding bodies and have their exam rescheduled. In the summer, we will also go ahead with exams, and rightly so, recognising that there has been much disruption to students’ studying, which is why we are doing it in two steps to go back to the rigorous grading of pre-covid pandemic levels.
Arthur Labinjo-Hughes
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of his statement.
This has been a truly horrendous case. My heart goes out to everyone who knew and loved Arthur and to all those involved in investigating and bringing to justice the depraved and wicked individuals responsible for his death. I join the Secretary of State in paying tribute to the frontline workers right across children’s social care who work so hard to support families day in, day out.
I welcome the announcement by the Attorney General’s Office that the sentences handed down on Friday will be reviewed under the unduly lenient sentence scheme, and I welcome the Secretary of State’s clear determination to get to the bottom of what has happened and his action in ordering a national review and a joint targeted area inspection. It is right to put in place as soon as possible inquiries into not merely how individual agencies acted but how they acted together.
It is vital that whatever lessons can be learned from what happened and did not happen in Solihull are acted on as soon as possible. Searching questions must be asked about the way in which services operated locally, but questions must also be asked nationally—questions about how the services that should be keeping children safe are overseen and about why, tragically, cases such as this keep happening.
I know that the Secretary of State takes these issues just as seriously as I do. I very much hope he will urgently review the way in which services are inspected, challenged and improved. I ask the Secretary of State, who has not been in his post for too long, also to ensure that his own Department gets its house in order.
In 2016, the Department committed to a target, which was that by 2020
“all vulnerable children, no matter where they live, receive the same high quality of care and support, and the best outcome for every child is at the heart of every decision made.”
The then permanent secretary told the Public Accounts Committee that this target was delayed until 2022 because the Department did not have a detailed plan in place to deliver it. The Committee found that the Department had made only limited progress in improving the quality of children’s social care services. In 2019, the permanent secretary accepted that having nearly 60% of local authorities rated lower than “good” by Ofsted for children’s social care was “terrible”. Indeed, he told the Public Accounts Committee:
“I am not able to sit in front of you and say that there will be no councils failing their Ofsted inspections in 2022. Clearly, there will be. Some schools fail, some hospitals fail and some councils fail.”
Failure should never be an acceptable outcome for any public service, and that is especially true when it comes to protecting children. For too long, this Government have tolerated failing children’s services and a failure to protect children. Vulnerable children are being failed, and that cannot go on.
The Secretary of State must now set out how he plans to tackle that culture—that failing services are acceptable in our country, acceptable for our children—in his own Department just as much as in Solihull. That is the challenge that he faces, and that is the standard by which he will be judged.
I have one final point. We have heard a lot in recent days about the unimaginable suffering that this little boy endured at the hands of two evil individuals who brought an end to his short life. I hope that we can remember also how, in better days, Arthur lived his short life. I hope that, while we do not hesitate to learn from these tragic events, we also, as far as we can, remember Arthur for who he was, not for what others did to him or for how he was let down. I hope that when we hear his name, we think first of a gentle, caring, happy child, the little boy who was remembered so movingly by so many across our country this weekend, the little boy with the beaming smile who should still be here with us today.
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her words, and especially for her final few sentences about the way that we should remember Arthur, and the fact that there are family members grieving for him today.
The hon. Lady makes a powerful point about making sure that we continue on the path to improvement. Having spent a good amount of time as Children and Families Minister in the Department, I think that the team has really focused on those improvements in children’s social care. The hon. Lady said that we have a long way to go. I recognise that there are challenges, but it is also worth praising the teams both in the Department and in local government up and down the country. Not that long ago, only about 37% of local authorities had a good Ofsted inspection. The one thing I would correct her on is that it is not so binary as pass and fail, because, actually, it is very much about areas of improvement in children’s social care. That 37% has now risen to 57% of local authorities that have a good inspection.[Official Report, 16 December 2021, Vol. 705, c. 5MC.] Of course, we will have to continue on that path and keep going further. None the less, I am very pleased to see her supporting the course of action that we are taking today.
Oral Answers to Questions
Bridget Phillipson Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Mr Speaker
We now come to Bridget Phillipson and welcome her as the new shadow Secretary of State.
Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Secretary of State for his warm welcome, and welcome his intention to make a statement later today on the tragic death of Arthur.
The Secretary of State will be aware that in the north-west and the west midlands, just 40% of children aged 12 to 15 have been vaccinated. Will he use the Christmas holidays to vaccinate our children, support schools in planning for next term and get ahead of the virus?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful for the hon. Lady’s kind words. We will do everything to make sure that we continue to vaccinate 12 to 15-year-olds. Of course, those who had their vaccine early on will be due to have their second jab by mid-December—the middle of this month—now that the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation has recommended that they have second jabs. We will continue to deliver those jabs using not only school settings but vaccination centres to make sure that we really drive the uptake of vaccines for 12 to 15-year-olds.
Bridget Phillipson
It is now more than six months since the education recovery chief Sir Kevan Collins resigned in protest at the Government’s abject failure. Their total failure to support our children risks letting down a generation. Why will the Secretary of State not bring forward proper proposals, like Labour’s clear, costed and achievable plans, which match the scale of the challenge that our children face?