Derek Twigg
Main Page: Derek Twigg (Labour - Halton)Department Debates - View all Derek Twigg's debates with the Department for Education
(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Vernon Coaker
I know. Perhaps it is the way I speak. Anyway, it is a delight to be back here. It does not seem long ago that we were finishing the debate last night—[Interruption.] No, it was not long ago. I am sure we have all had plenty of opportunity to enjoy ourselves in the intervening period and not think of anything but the Academies Bill and all the other relevant papers and documents.
Amendment 70 is an important amendment, particularly given the fiasco—frankly—of the past few weeks with respect to the Building Schools for the Future programme, the cuts to it, the reassessments and the other problems with the list. I will not rehearse those problems, but the relevance of and the need for the amendment are even more acute than they would have been had it not been for what has happened over the past few weeks. Schools up and down the country were expecting capital moneys to be provided for them to improve schools and tackle problems with school buildings. Many of those proposals were developed by local authorities, and many hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber will have helped to work up those plans over a number of months and, sometimes, one or two years, because the school-building programme was linked to school reorganisation for school improvement. But of course that was all dashed by the lists published and the review announced by the Secretary of State for Education in order to prove that he could cut budgets.
The Government are now looking to create new schools using money from their budgets. Their defence is: “Don’t worry, this isn’t coming from Building Schools for the Future money. It’s actually coming from cuts to low-priority computer programmes”, and they talk about £50 million. However, neither the Secretary of State nor the Schools Minister ever add that the £50 million is up until March 2011 only; and neither do they mention that there have been, I understand, 38 expressions of interest to the New Schools Network, which has since sought to talk to the Department. Is it 38? When he replies to the amendment, will the Minister tell us how many free schools he expects to open? I understand that the first is due to open in September 2011. How many such expressions of interest have there been so far? How many of those have changed from expressions of interest to applications? How many does he expect to open in 2011? Alongside that, how many does he expect £50 million will pay for? What will that £50 million mean for those 38 schools?
Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)
Has my hon. Friend seen the podcast on the Department for Education website by the Secretary of State, where he says that all schools will get more money, more efficiently and more cheaply? How is that possible, given that he has just cut the BSF programme?
Vernon Coaker
Frankly, the reality is that it is not possible. What we are getting from the Secretary of State is an explanation for what he has done on the grounds that the money was not there in the budget for the Building Schools for the Future programme, when the letter from the permanent secretary to the shadow Secretary of State quite clearly points out that the money for BSF was set aside in the proper way. The school rebuilding programme in my hon. Friend’s constituency has not been cut; it has been absolutely massacred. That money was there, and the permanent secretary—this is an extremely important point that will bear repeating on a number of occasions—said in the letter to the shadow Secretary of State that if the proper procedures had not been followed according to Treasury rules, the permanent secretary would have required a ministerial direction to proceed with the policy, as my hon. Friend knows. The permanent secretary at the Department for Education has confirmed that, in fact, no such ministerial direction was given, so my hon. Friend now knows the reality.
As for this £50 million, we are now being told, “Don’t worry, it’s not going to affect school budgets. It’s not going to be a problem with respect to school buildings.” However, free schools are already being affected across the country.
Derek Twigg
My hon. Friend the Member for Gedling (Vernon Coaker) will recall that we both made our maiden speeches on Labour’s flagship Bill in 1997. He will also recall the optimism that existed in the country then for education and for the incoming Government. How different the mood is today. My constituency, which has been devastated—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) might laugh, but he is laughing at the fact that 11 schools have been taken out of the project, with three under review, and at the impact that that has had on more than 7,000 children in my constituency. Frankly, I say to him that this is no laughing matter and I shall ensure that my constituents understand that the coalition thinks that it is.
As the shadow Minister said, what has happened in constituencies such as mine has resulted in absolute devastation. The amendment is very interesting because it allows us to discuss the capital programme and how we should see that in relation to what has happened to the BSF programme and how we spend capital in the future. What is also interesting is that this Government are having a review of capital expenditure, yet they are pressing ahead with the Bill. Both have an impact on each other, so this is a remarkable situation.
Let me deal with what is being done and what is being spent. In yesterday’s Westminster Hall debate, the Under-Secretary of State for Education talked about lavish expenditure on schools. I think that our schools deserve lavish expenditure. When he tried to say that somehow this was inefficient, I pointed out to him that last year’s National Audit Office report said that the cost of BSF schools was no more than any other programme and, in fact, was cheaper than the original academies that were built. It is not the case that these schools were in any way inefficient or that the money was not available.
Mr Hancock
I am slightly curious about the hon. Gentleman’s comment that our schools deserve lavish expenditure. What on earth was going on during the past 13 years, when so many schools were allowed to be neglected and none of the resources that were needed were coming from the Government?
Derek Twigg
I am surprised at that intervention, although I suppose I should not be. In the past 13 years, £24 million has been spent on schools in Halton. Let me give the hon. Gentleman one example. Ditton primary school waited years for a new school building, and once Labour came into power it got one built. A number of schools have had major building programmes and major improvements made, so it is not the case—it is plain incorrect—to say that Labour did nothing until the BSF programme. In fact, significantly more was done under Labour than was done in 18 years of a Tory Government. His party now supports such a Government.
The Temporary Chairman (Martin Caton)
Order. I have been indulgent, but interventions should be a lot shorter than that.
Derek Twigg
My hon. Friend makes an important point, which I shall come to when I ask the Minister how his handling of the amendment will affect that specific point, which is very important.
I am not sure how the Bill or, to some extent, the amendment will address the problem of school places and provision. The cancelling of the BSF project caused major problems for schools such as St Chad’s Roman Catholic school and the Heath specialist technology college in Runcorn in my constituency, which were going to expand. How will they now expand? They are popular and successful schools that have seen increases in their GCSE results—the Heath had a success rate of more than 82% last year. Problems were also caused for the likes of Bankfield in Widnes, which is my old school and has been told this week that it has an outstanding report from Ofsted. How can that school expand?
Wade Deacon school has a 100% pass rate in GCSEs at A to C and serves both an affluent area and a disadvantaged area. The previous school, Fairfield, is now being closed down and will amalgamate with Wade Deacon. They were going to be built on one site. How will that happen now? It will mean a split site and all sorts of difficulties, with 400 pupils displaced. That is the consequence.
I am not sure how the Bill and this clause will help the situation in my constituency, and that is a consequence of the decision that the Government took. This amendment is about ensuring that parents’ and the LEAs’ views are known and taken into account. Parents and LEAs will take account of the sorts of buildings that schools need, and that was what BSF was delivering. They were consulted on the buildings, they had a lot of say, and the buildings were designed to suit the ethos of the school and what it wanted to deliver. In particular, they were designed to suit other parts of the community’s involvement in them.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Just last week, I was able to visit Springwell community school, a school that is being rebuilt in Staveley in Chesterfield, which is quite a deprived area that, at one time, had terrible problems. On 1 November, it expects to receive the keys to its new Building Schools for the Future school and all involved are incredibly excited about the facilities that they have there. I have been around the new facilities and they are not in any way lavish, but they will be taking delivery of a high-quality establishment. What was important to me was that they said that the whole BSF programme enabled them to reassess not just what buildings they wanted, but the whole way they did education. Is that something that my hon. Friend has found? The BSF process was about much more than just getting buildings up.
Derek Twigg
Derek, even, Mr Caton. I am happy to be associated with my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), but I must say that we are not from the same branch.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) makes an important point, as he has before. For instance, all the schools discussed with other bodies in the area, such as the health authority, how they could improve the provision of health care and how community involvement could be increased. In areas such as mine, although we have seen significant improvements in education over the past 10 years, the average school gets more than a 72% pass mark at grades A to C, which is above the national average. For a borough that is the 30th most deprived in the country, that is some achievement, which has been given no recognition by the Government in the Bill. That has been an important part of the process. Getting the community involved and getting adults involved to improve the educational ethos and get parents and families to take an interest in their young people—many do, but many more need to—was an important part of the involvement with the schools, too.
Health is particularly important in Halton because we have some of the worst health problems in the country. We have the highest teenage pregnancy rates. That would have been an important part of the programme. These schools were not just educational establishments; they were community establishments that would have dealt with some of the problems that affect the communities in their localities. How will the Government deal with that through this Bill?
Mr Hancock
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. It is strange how things can change and memories can lapse in a short time. I am disappointed that Labour Members have not been more forthright in apologising. The hon. Member for Halton (Derek Twigg) suggested that we were laughing at what he was saying, but that could not have been further from the truth. Certainly nobody on these Benches was laughing; we were nearly in tears over what was happening.
Derek Twigg
It was the Member sitting behind the hon. Gentleman who was laughing, but he has now left the Chamber.
Mr Hancock
If any Member laughed, I would be angry. I feel that in the past 13 years we have wasted opportunity after opportunity. Like the hon. Gentleman, I was full of enthusiasm when we heard the words “Education, education, education” coming from No. 10 —not once, but umpteen times. What did that really mean? Why did it all go so manifestly wrong? Why were schools in my constituency that were desperately in need of help not given it? Why did the city council go cap in hand to Ministers on three occasions begging for the resources to build a new King Richard school—not in my constituency but in that of the then Labour Minister? It was not given the resources that the school desperately needed.
I am sad that this debate is intertwined with the awfulness over what has happened to our schools as regards Building Schools for the Future. I agree with the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) and others who have spoken that this is not just about the quality of education. Schools provide a cocktail for children. As well as a good education, they provide a safe haven and a structure and buildings which give a community a sense of being. That is particularly true of large comprehensives. I have comprehensives in my city with close to 2,000 children in some of the most densely populated areas of Europe, let alone Great Britain. A school is seen very much as a focal point and an important aspect of community life, and it is very sad not to have the resources to rekindle its ability to serve several more generations.
The amendment is correct because it does more than probe. It spells out the inadequacies of the Bill, which does not talk about failure, but about taking resources from other areas. It presents a threat. If the idea of free schools gets off the ground, then fine—if that is what people want, let people choose to have it. I do not support it, and I cannot believe I ever will. However, I do not want to see resources taken from the schools I represent, which are desperately in need of new buildings and more equipment. I do not want those kids or those parents to be persuaded to go to a school that will not have science labs or outside space, and will not allow children to develop to their full potential. There is nothing in the Bill that says a free school will have to ensure that every child who goes there will have every opportunity to fulfil their potential in whatever direction they want to go in educational terms. That is a fundamental failure of the Bill.
I admire the Secretary of State enormously for his gung-ho approach to things. It was long overdue that we had Ministers who were prepared to fight their corner in the way that he does. Even when he is wrong, he comes out fighting. He is prepared to take a few blows, but he also likes to deliver a couple back. His deputy Minister, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), has done an excellent job on this Bill, despite the fact that he must understand, like many of us, that the extreme frustrations felt in this House are mirrored a million times over around the country. There is a lot of uncertainty in the education family, whether teachers, governors or whoever, about where the proposals will lead. In many ways, it is a mistake. That is why I will be supporting the amendment, which I commend to the whole Committee.