School Closures (Thursday)

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I was grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the constructive way in which he began his response, but I think that, on reflection, he will consider the way in which he concluded it to be irresponsible at this time. The whole House wants to see people keeping level heads and maintaining an even temper at this time, and the fact that he chose to ratchet up the rhetoric in that way was not appropriate.

I am grateful to him for supporting the direction of Lord Hutton’s reforms and for his initial words about the responsibility of all local authorities and heads to keep schools open in order to ensure that we do everything possible to minimise disruption. Because teachers are employed by local authorities and individual heads, individual local authorities and heads have to depend on teachers telling them whether they will be on strike before making contingency arrangements. That is a direct consequence of the labour laws that we inherited from the right hon. Gentleman’s Government. If he believes that those laws should change, and that we should reform trade union laws, I should like to know about it.

The right hon. Gentleman asked us to update Members of the House with data, and we will do so. At the first available opportunity when the data are reliable, we will share them with hon. Members, with local authorities and with individual parents. He also asked us to do everything possible to keep children safe and secure. The safety of children is always my first concern, and that is why I want to see schools remain open, and why I have written to local authorities and outlined the flexibilities that they have. It is also why I have drawn their attention to the statutory guidance that covers health and safety and child protection.

The right hon. Gentleman referred to the 3% surcharge that is being placed on pensions. As a former Chief Secretary to the Treasury, he should be aware that every aspect of the pension reform that we are bringing forward is a direct result of the dire mess in which he and his colleagues left our economy. If people want to know why our pensions have to be reformed, they need only look at the financial mess that was made—[Interruption.] I am afraid that the intemperate response coming from the Opposition Benches reinforces the guilty consciences on that side of the House.

The right hon. Gentleman also quoted from a speech that I gave to the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. It is important that he not mislead the House or anyone listening—[Hon. Members: “Oh!”] I am sure that he would never do so intentionally, which is why I hope that he will stress that the proposals that we are putting forward respect the accrued rights of all those who have been in state pension schemes up until this moment—[Hon. Members: “Withdraw.”] I know that he would wish to make that clear.

The right hon. Gentleman also said that, in the last year of the Labour Government, we had the lowest number ever of days lost to strike action. The truth is that, in the past year under this coalition Government, we have lost even fewer days to strike action. If we are to maintain that record, we need calm on both sides of the House, and not the pandering to the union gallery that we heard at the end of the right hon. Gentleman’s comments.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that it is irresponsible for union leaders in the teaching unions who are on six-figure salaries to lead teachers out on strike when two thirds of their members did not even vote in the ballot? Does he also agree that this action will undermine and damage the education of children and the status of the teaching profession?

[Michael Gove]

We all listen with respect to the Select Committee, and its Chairman is quite right. The general secretaries of those trade unions have, throughout their careers, shown a commitment to improving state education. I therefore believe that their motives are right in most circumstances. On this occasion, however, they have made a mistake and they should acknowledge it.

Munro Report

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon]

rose—

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

rose—

[Tim Loughton]

I will give way to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), but after that I would quite like to make some progress; otherwise nobody else will get in.

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful. I am planning a visit to Belfast next month, and if the hon. Gentleman’s colleague would like to meet me, I would be delighted.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

When the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families looked into the training of social workers in the last Parliament, it found that they could find themselves dealing with the most acute and difficult children’s cases having had placements in their training that did not involve children’s social work at all. They went from having no experience at all to the front line. Has the Minister been able to do anything about that yet, and if not will he tell the House what he will do about it?

[Tim Loughton]

The Chairman of the Select Committee on Education again makes a very good point and he has a good deal of expertise in this matter. It is completely self-defeating for newly recruited social workers to be turfed in at the deep end on tier 3 or 4 cases—serious cases—with little experience or expertise. How demoralising is that, let alone the danger it poses for the vulnerable children who need to have the appropriate level of support?

A number of things need to be done and they are being done. We need to ensure that we have the right calibre of people coming out of universities with degrees in social work. In the first year after their qualification, they should be given on-the-job guidance and training, preferably by people with great expertise. They should be eased into jobs at an appropriate rate in appropriate circumstances. My hon. Friend raises a very important point. Virtually every week I speak to social workers and visit children’s services departments—I make a point of seeing social workers on the front line—but I have met too many who are given challenges for which they are not appropriately equipped at that stage.

I should like to make progress now because I am keen for other hon. Members to contribute and I have a few more points to make. I got up to recommendation 10—I do not know why recommendation 9 brought about the pause that it did. Recommendation 10 is that the Government should place a duty on local authorities and statutory partners to secure the sufficient provision of local early help services for children, young people and families. That is very appropriate to the early intervention work that the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) has been doing for the Department.

Recommendation 11 is that the social work reform board’s professional capabilities framework should incorporate the capabilities necessary for child and family social work. That is precisely the point that the Chairman of the Education Committee just raised. That framework should explicitly inform social work qualification training, postgraduate professional development and performance appraisal.

Recommendation 12 is that employers and higher education institutions should work together so that social work students are prepared for the challenges of child protection work, including through better quality placements.

Recommendation 13 is that local authorities and their partners should start an ongoing process to review and redesign the ways in which child and family social work is delivered.

Recommendation 14—I am almost there without taking another intervention—is that local authorities should designate a principal child and family social worker who can report the views and experiences of the front line to all levels of management. I have too often seen good social workers, who have built up good reputations and who are really good hands-on, get promoted, become managers and get stuck behind a desk. In that way, we lose front-line expertise. Some models, such as the one in Hackney, mean that people can gain seniority within their profession but not lose contact with people at the sharp end and the families that they entered the profession to help.

The 15th and final recommendation is that a chief social worker should be created to advise the Government and to bring the voice of the profession to policy. That was discussed recently in relation to the Health and Social Care Bill, and it was a recommendation of my report back in 2007.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady is right and will know that we have been doing a lot of work on adoption. I have set up a ministerial advisory group with all sorts of people, and we have issued new guidance, as I said earlier. We need to balance timeliness with appropriateness to ensure that where it is clear—it is not always so—that an adoptive placement is the best way forward and in the best interests of the child, we get on with it.

There are, I have to say, some people who, usually because of excessive addiction to drugs and alcohol and a complete failure to rehabilitate, will never be able safely to bring up children in their care. I have sat in family courts and seen parents—usually single mothers— have their ninth, 10th or 11th child taken into the care system. If that parent’s situation has not improved, can we be sure that it will ever improve? Need we take that risk, and wait years while a child is kept in an abusive situation? Again, those decisions require the judgment of Solomon, which is why I will shortly be holding a round-table meeting with a group of judges from the family court, directors of children services and chairmen of adoption panels to consider how we can make the adoption process better, more efficient, more robust and fairer; to ensure that we are making the right decisions for the too many children who are left in the system and could benefit from adoption; and to ensure that we are not taking into adoption children for whom it is not appropriate. I know that there are concerns there as well.

Finally, we need to remember in our policies the particular needs of vulnerable young people and the fact that they have the same right to enjoy the rich experiences of growing up, the transition to adulthood and becoming valuable members of society as those lucky enough to be part of safe, loving and stable birth families of their own. I recognise that it is vital for the sensible policy put forward by Professor Munro to be backed up by proper investment. As my hon. Friends will be aware, the Government have already announced some funding to support work force development, but the real cost is the cost of failure. The current system needs fixing. Because it needs fixing, huge amounts of resource are wasted. One local authority that has been working with Professor Munro and the review team as a “journey authority” calculated that around 50% of its children’s social care workers’ time is wasted in nugatory activity that does not add to the quality of service or outcomes, which is something that the authority is now starting to recoup—a resounding endorsement of the need to eliminate unnecessary red tape if ever there was one.

Few things are more important than helping and protecting vulnerable children and young people. In our first year in government, we have shown in the wide range of actions that we have taken—on child protection, children in care, adoption, fostering and dealing with the sexual exploitation of children—that we are deeply committed to tackling these issues, and I am determined to ensure that we make progress. Sadly, we need to recognise that despite Government reforms and the hard work of professionals, tragedies will still happen. There are individuals who will harm children. We cannot eliminate that risk, but we can all work to help to reduce and manage it—indeed, we all have a duty to do so. Society is right to expect professionals to take responsibility and make the best judgments that they can in the best interests of children. Those judgments will not always be the right ones, but they need to have been made for the right reasons and on the best possible evidence.

This Government believe that we need to move towards a child protection system with less central prescription and interference, and in which we place greater trust and responsibility in skilled professionals on the front line. Professor Munro has provided us with a thorough analysis of the issues. It is now for the Government, working with the sector, to help to bring about sustainable reform. That is why I have established an implementation working group, drawing in expertise from local authority children’s services, the social work profession, education, police and the health service, to work with the Government to develop a response to Professor Munro’s recommendations by the summer recess. We are today publishing on the Department for Education website the first account of the group’s deliberations, which started at the end of last month.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tim Loughton]

Before I reach the final line of my speech, I will give way to my hon. Friend.

[Mr Stuart]

I am delighted to hear that those other agencies are represented on the implementation group. Will my hon. Friend say a little more about the group’s remit and how we can ensure that other Departments integrate with it, so that it is not just the social work profession that looks to respond to the Munro review?

[Tim Loughton]

The Chairman of the Select Committee on Education makes a good point. The people serving on the group, whose names are published on the website, have been chosen not because they are the great and the good—although I am sure many of them are great and some of them are good—but because they are experienced practitioners with expertise in their particular areas. For example, we have on the group the chief safeguarding expert from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and a safeguarding expert from the NHS Confederation. We also have the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), who is the Minister responsible for public health, a senior headmistress of a secondary school, a senior headmistress of a primary school, a senior police officer with a long record in child protection, a real social worker from the front line, along with a Labour councillor from an authority with a good track record in child protection, and so on.

This is absolutely about getting all the right parts of the jigsaw together and trying to produce a system that, by working together from the same song sheet and with the same priorities and the Government’s backing, produces an environment that ensures that we can keep more of our children safer. Today’s debate—even though I have taken up rather too much of it, and more than I had intended—will help to inform the implementation group’s response. I very much look forward to my hon. Friends’ contributions this afternoon.

--- Later in debate ---

[Toby Perkins]

The hon. Lady makes a valuable point. The Munro review recognises the significant steps made in the direction of partnership working and some of the challenges, particularly in difficult financial circumstances. The report also deals with other innovations that might be needed to help achieve the hon. Lady’s suggestion in her valuable point.

The report’s recommendations on the education, training and continuous professional development of social workers are an important step forward. We entirely endorse the review’s commitment to the highest standards and consistency of education, the importance of the highest quality of practice placements and the new supported and assessed first year in practice, acting as the final stage of becoming a fully practising social worker. We recognise that more must be done to strengthen the quality of social work in this country, and a real commitment to improving education and recruitment will be very welcome.

We also believe that the recommendation for local authorities to appoint a principal children’s and family social worker could play an important role in ensuring that the voice of those who safeguard our most vulnerable children is heard loud and clear in every town hall in the land.

We particularly welcome the further support for early intervention to identify and work on problems as soon as they are presented. Professor Munro particularly identifies the importance of early intervention whenever it occurs in a child’s life, and we entirely agree with her on that. Although many families that require the help of social services might appear likely to head down the wrong path in life from an early stage, changing circumstances can mean that children and families hit problems and need support at any time in the childhood journey—and the earlier those problems are identified and the more broadly all parties work together, the better the chance that families can be kept together and problems averted before they become impossible to deal with.

The review also focuses at length on the importance of partnership working, extolling the virtues of the existing networks in early years practice and the importance of a constructive relationship with the police, mental health services, adult social services and health professionals. The review expresses the fear that widespread changes and the desperate financial position in which some public services find themselves could lead to a fracturing of the partnerships. Indeed, we are already seeing evidence of that.

We know from the Secretary of State’s letter to Professor Munro, the choice of Professor Munro to head the review team, and the press releases that have emanated from the Department for Education that the need to cut paperwork and bureaucracy in order to enable social workers to do what they should be doing is intended to be a prominent theme, but anyone who focused solely on that element of the report would greatly undermine its quality and depth. I hope that no one will again attempt such a paraphrase, because the quality of the research and the importance of the issue deserve better. I am thankful that the Minister went far beyond that in his speech today.

We welcome the recognition of the importance of administrative support for social workers so that they can spend more time in the field. It is sad, however, that that comes at a time when Unison is reporting that many of its members with administrative roles are among the first to be laid off in councils. Administration and record-keeping vital: they can save social workers’ time, and are invaluable to the quality of their intervention. No one in this House wants to prevent social workers from spending as much time as possible working with children and families, and we all know that social workers themselves do not go into the profession with the dream of sitting at a wooden desk typing away.

There is no doubt that the review team considered at length the amount of central prescription and the amount of time spent on administration—matters that have also concerned the profession and its representative bodies and unions. We support the pilot schemes that are taking place in four authorities with the aim of relaxing time scales. They are at an early stage, but we look forward to the outcome. We urge the Minister to ensure that the additional quality assurance measures referred to in appendix D and implemented in Hackney are tightly observed while those trials are being completed, and that before anything is done to make the changes widespread, the full implications of those changes are understood.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman touched on the subject of bureaucracy, but he did not make his views clear. Does he accept that there was too much prescription from the centre, does he accept that it was getting in the way of effective social work, and will he give an undertaking that a future Labour Government would not seek to reverse sensible, practical and common-sense attempts to reduce bureaucracy and ensure that the priority is given to the front line?

[Toby Perkins]

I shall deal with that point in some detail later. However, I can say that we support the trials that are taking place. If the professionals feel that some measures can safely be dispensed with, that is acceptable as long as safeguards are established, as they have been in Hackney, to prevent slippage of cases. We do not want social workers to lose sight of the importance of some cases along with the paperwork.

The report is evidence based, and Professor Munro identifies both excitement and anxiety in the profession about the steps to be taken. Throughout its time in government Labour took advice from experts seriously, as the present Government are doing.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

We gave an answer to that excellent report with the publication of our White Paper, “The Importance of Teaching”. From that title, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will draw the appropriate inference that there is nothing more important than teaching.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

The James review found that school buildings that are beyond being merely fit for purpose make no real contribution to educational standards and that teaching and leadership are what make the difference to outcomes for children, not least in our weakest schools. Will the Secretary of State explain the difference in spending patterns that will be implemented by this Government as compared with those of the previous Government?

[Michael Gove]

That is a typically good question from the Education Committee Chairman. Unlike the previous Government, we will not be wasting money on a capital programme that is out of control and bureaucratic. Instead, we will be investing money in making sure that more of the very best graduates go into teaching and we will be expanding opportunities for inspirational figures such as Peter Hyman to open new free schools and target the disadvantaged, who need them most.

Vocational Education

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Thursday 12th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Professor Wolf might not have thought that the English baccalaureate on its own could distort and harm outcomes for the poorest in our schools, but I have to say that the Chairman of the Select Committee feels that it could. However, I welcome what the Secretary of State has said today about building a balanced score card. Can we work to create a consensus across the House that what we need is an assessment and accountability framework that gives equal weight to the progress of every child? We do not want too complicated a set of targets, but we need a system that works, allowing schools to get on with it and deliver for everyone.

[Michael Gove]

That is a very good point. It is rather a shame that the view of some Labour Members—which is not shared by my hon. Friend—is that working-class children cannot achieve academic excellence. [Interruption.] I am afraid that that is the view of Opposition Front Benchers. Labour Members therefore feel that this is somehow an unfair and elitist measure, but I think that it is an aspirational measure. My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we need to ensure that all the abilities of all children are recognised, whatever their background. Labour Members need to return to the aspirational educational model that we saw under Lord Adonis, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) and the former right hon. Member for Sedgefield, which was sadly abandoned three years ago.

Education Bill

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Wednesday 11th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I share the sentiments expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) about the need to put the interests of the children first, but, as he said that it was a probing new clause, it would not be right to weaken the protection of those who teach and work in some of our toughest and most challenging schools. We have to send out the message—I think my hon. Friend the Minister has just done so—that, although we will protect and support the rights of the people who work in the toughest schools, we will ensure that we have a performance management framework that challenges underperformance, and we will not be afraid to restructure when putting new measures in place.

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend is right, and the Government are committed to protecting those employment rights.

The underperformance of teachers is not necessarily the only reason why schools underperform; there is a whole host of reasons, one of which is that schools are burdened by bureaucracy. One key measure that we implemented in the opening months of the Administration was a reduction in the amount of bureaucracy and prescription that has been heaped on teachers over the past 10 years. With those few comments, I hope that my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey will not press his probing new clause any further.

I turn to the new clause tabled by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). We welcome the many initiatives in the independent schools sector, assisted by the schools themselves through bursaries and scholarships and by many charities, to support children who would not otherwise be able to receive an independent school education. The right hon. Gentleman may have seen the article in The Times today by Lord Adonis and Anthony Seldon, the headmaster of Wellington college, urging the independent sector to sponsor more academies, and we share the views of those two contributors. That should be happening, and we want to see more independent schools sponsoring academies, but the Government’s priority is to transform the state education system so that all children are able to access a good-quality education regardless of their background.

Our independent schools provide some of the best education in the world, according to the OECD and other commentators, and we are keen to encourage greater collaboration between the sectors so that best practice can be shared and schools can work more effectively together in the best interests of pupils and staff, but the right hon. Gentleman’s new clause is neither desirable nor necessary.

An academy is free to further its education objectives by using any funds it is able to raise through charitable donations or other similar sources, but academy funding agreements regulate the way in which such schools can use taxpayer funding. The general annual grant paid by the Secretary of State can be spent by an academy only on its normal running costs, and we have no intention of changing that. That does not mean academies cannot buy in additional support from independent schools or collaborate with them on joint provision, but the bulk of state funding should rightly be used to raise educational attainment and standards for the benefit of all pupils in the academy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Brady]

Absolutely. The right hon. Gentleman is entirely correct. No new selective schools would be created under the new clause. The country would have the same schools that it has at the moment, but those schools would be able to accept people regardless of parental means and the ability to pay. It would bring more excellent schools into the state sector, satisfying the objective of the Minister.

This is not a theoretical situation. I first became interested in this area because many years ago, two independent schools in my constituency did precisely this. They opted into the state sector, in those days as grant-maintained schools. St Ambrose college and Loreto grammar school, which are both Roman Catholic selective schools, were welcomed by a previous Conservative Government into the state sector, and were allowed to maintain their ethos and admissions rules. St Ambrose college is an excellent school, which educated three Members of this House, including my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds). This could be called the St Ambrose and Loreto new clause.

Not only would the new clause restore the ability for excellent independent schools to come into the state sector in the way that they could under the previous Conservative Government, it would end the unfortunate state of affairs that has pertained since. Again, that is not a theoretical point. Some years ago, William Hulme’s grammar school in Manchester became an academy, but under the previous Government it was forced to abandon its selective admissions policy and become a comprehensive school. It is still a good school, but regrettably, it was required to change its ethos in a way that it had no desire to do. More worryingly, that process is continuing today. As the Minister knows, Batley grammar school is in the process of becoming an academy. Shockingly, under the present Government, it, too, is being required to change its ethos and its admissions policy in a way that would not have been required had it been a state school transferring to academy status.

I am aware of other independent schools that would be interested in pursuing this route if the Minister and the Secretary of State were to open the door to them. That point is important. Typically, these are schools that value their independence and their selective ethos, but have no desire to charge fees that might deny access to some able boys and girls who would benefit from the education that they offer. Frequently, like Batley grammar school, they are not in the most prosperous parts of the country. This measure would clearly extend opportunity to a significant number of children in less affluent parts of the country.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Brady]

I happily give way to my hon. Friend, the Chairman of the Select Committee.

[Mr Stuart]

My hon. Friend paints a powerful picture. It is inspiring to imagine that schools that, because of their economic circumstances, moved away from their original foundation, which was to provide education for some of the poorest scholars in the land, will be able to return to doing that again. The pupil premium will give them the economic incentive to target children from the poorest families and provide them with high-quality education. That is a vision to fulfil the principle that the Minister talked about of ensuring that all areas of education work together to look after the needs of all children, with priority being given to the poorest families.

[Mr Brady]

I am grateful to the Chairman of the Select Committee for his support. As he said, the new clause would simply remove an obstacle that stands in the way of the noble ambition of some excellent schools that are deeply committed to educating children of whatever means. Many schools can do so because they have access to bursary funds that cover the fees for such pupils, but not all can. To give another example from my city, Manchester grammar school, which is a former direct grant grammar school, is a fantastic institution that had the ability to raise a large bursary fund, which allows it to operate its admissions in a needs-blind way. Not all good independent schools can replicate that because they do not all have as many successful and wealthy old boys.

To return to my central point, this is a modest measure that would correct an anomaly, but in doing so would sweep away an obstacle that can only be considered dogmatic. It is entirely in keeping with the existing policy of the coalition Government, who, in the Academies Act 2010, accepted the principle that selective schools can be academies. The Minister is a passionate advocate for the academies programme. He has always made it clear that opportunities should be opened and that good schools, of whatever kind, should be encouraged. I have always welcomed that in our many constructive conversations. This simple measure would open the door to more good schools accepting the principles that he has set out and accepting the hand of friendship to welcome them into the academies programme and the state sector. It would allow more children to enjoy a high-quality education without the threat of fees having to be paid. I hope that he will accept the new clause in that spirit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

Yes, we do, but that is not the central point. In making that move, the Minister is weakening the overall powers of the Office of the Schools Adjudicator and taking away its teeth. We hear that he is also about to weaken the admissions code—I will come on to that in a moment.

My greatest fear is that in Gove’s world, less academic children, those with less parental support and those with special educational needs will be the biggest losers. The Secretary of State is creating by the back door what, as we have just heard, his own Back Benchers are today enticing him to create by the front door—an elitist, two-tier system that is good for some children and some families, not all children and all families. We need safeguards for all parents, and I implore the House to vote to keep them. Otherwise, we will leave uncorrected the real flaw that lies at the heart of the Government’s vision for the reform of public services.

In education and in health, if the Government plan more freedom and autonomy for providers, it is absolutely essential that the change is accompanied by a corresponding empowerment of the public and a greater ability for the users of services to hold providers to account. If the Government do not increase people’s voice, they will create a provider’s market, a free-for-all with an accountability deficit. If primary care trusts or local authorities are no longer there to ensure fairness for all, it is crucial that we keep and strengthen the mechanisms that protect the rights of patients and parents.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Going back to the right hon. Gentleman’s point about the English baccalaureate, does he agree that we need an assessment and accountability framework that gives equal weight to the progress of every child? If he does—I hope that we can get consensus between the Front Benchers on that—does he agree that the current levers and pressures on schools provided by the requirement of five good GCSEs do not deliver that vision, and that Members on both sides of the House need to work harder to create a system that gives equal weight to the progress of every child?

[Damian Hinds (East Hampshire) (Con)]

indicated assent.

[Mr Stuart]

My hon. Friend, who is nodding, has helped champion that issue very effectively in the Education Committee.

[Andy Burnham]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. I agree with his emphasis on the needs of every child, and I further agree that the five A to C-grade GCSEs measure had its imperfections. He might, then, agree with what I am about to say.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

That is not the full answer. If schools are being judged by the gold standard of specific GCSEs, does the hon. Gentleman not accept that he is creating a real disincentive for schools to focus on the kids who are not taking those subjects? I know that he cares about vocational education, and I look to him to give us some more convincing answers that show that the Government are committed to those young people.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?

[Andy Burnham]

I want to make some progress, but maybe I will give way to the Chairman of the Education Committee again later.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The Bill weakens the schools adjudicator and could dilute the admissions code—although we cannot assert the latter as a fact, because we have only media reports to go on. It is a disgrace that the Minister has been unable to give that information to hon. Members, who are voting on life-and-death issues for their constituents: the question for parents is whether they can get the schools that they want. I put it to hon. Members that they will be doing a huge disservice to their constituents if they vote for a weakening of the admissions system without knowing what is in the code, and the full extent of the Government’s intentions.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I asked the right hon. Gentleman earlier whether he would support the principle of an assessment and accountability framework giving equal weight to the progress of every child in our schools. Does he support that? If we collectively introduce such a system, we would not need such massive bureaucratic machinery to try to stop artificial selection in schools, because there would no longer be an incentive to pursue such measures. Rather, the system would encourage schools to attract more children who come with the pupil premium, and we could have a more equitable education system, along with the outstanding outcomes that we all seek.

[Andy Burnham]

I sympathise with the Chairman of the Education Committee. I am reading into what he says the impression that he fears the effect of the English baccalaureate on the proposed free-for-all system, in which there is no power at local level to challenge what schools are doing, and in which the adjudicator does not have the teeth to rewrite admissions policies. I am sensing that the hon. Gentleman has real worries about that, and I ask him to urge those on the Government Front Bench to sort it out, before we drive real unfairness into our school system.

Yes, we should have a system that measures every child’s progress in the important things such as maths and English—that will be the bedrock of any system—but I fear that the English baccalaureate is a highly divisive tool that will set some children against others and give schools the wrong incentive.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham]

We know that the measure was applied retrospectively to schools, so the Government were encouraging the media to see it as a performance-management measure. It is so unfair to schools being sent out into this highly competitive environment to have their reputations so damaged, and to have not one but two hands tied behind their backs. The Government have knocked the stuffing out of some schools that have worked so hard to improve in recent years, and it is totally unacceptable.

Experts’ warnings about the admissions clauses could not be clearer. Children’s life chances are at stake here. The Government have failed to convince the experts that we can gamble with those life chances by weakening the admissions system. I intend therefore to press amendment 13 to a vote this evening. In the face of this free-for-all in education, it is vital that the rights of parents and children are protected, and that the House does not sleepwalk today into a return to selection in our schools.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, and to see so many faces from the Public Bill Committee, as well as Select Committee members, including the stellar four or five Labour Back Benchers under the Gallery there.

I want to discuss my new clause 22 on home education. My hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady) has made most of the key points about his new clause 2. This is not about extending selection in our schools; it is about taking existing institutions—in many cases, institutions originally set up to serve some of the poorest in our communities—and allowing them to serve those communities again. I must confess to having been torn before deciding that supporting new clause 2 was appropriate, although there will be differences of opinion on both sides of the House—the shadow Secretary of State failed to note that supporters of the new clause include Labour Members as well as Government Members.

[Stephen Twigg]

The Select Committee Chair says that new clause 2 would not extend selection, but it would involve its extension within the state system. Does he not acknowledge that a number of independent schools, including Belvedere school in Liverpool, have entered the state system and been willing and happy as a condition to become local comprehensive schools? Is that not a better approach, if we are to widen opportunities for as many young people as possible?

[Mr Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman makes a fair point. Where the institution feels that it best serves its mission to improve education by becoming a comprehensive, it would be free to do so. If I have read it correctly, which I hope that I have, the proposal does not insist that schools should retain their existing selection or non-selection criteria, so the tone of what the hon. Gentleman has said is perhaps unfair.

My new clause 22 would impose an obligation on the Secretary of State to issue guidance to local authorities on how they handle families who seek to home educate their children ahead of changes in the regulations. However, my new clause has been overtaken by events. The Government have let me know today that they have decided not to go ahead with those regulations, which would have changed the rules on what happens when a parent deregisters their child from a school in order to home educate.

The Badman review, which many hon. Members will remember, under the previous Government recommended a 20-day period in which a child’s name should remain on a school’s register, so that if the parents had been pushed into home education because of failures on the part of the school or local authority to meet the needs of their child, they would not automatically lose a place at school, but would have time to think through the implications of home education.

That recommendation by the Badman inquiry was accepted by the then Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families. I always thought that that was right, because it seemed to place no restrictions on the rights of parents and families, but seemed to restrict the rights of schools and local authorities, which, according to Badman, if I recollect correctly, were in some cases using home education to push away children whose needs they were failing to meet, finding it easier to push that responsibility on to parents who did not really wish to pursue it.

On the face of it, that recommendation seemed reasonable, which I am sure is why the Government came forward with proposals to implement it, having seen that both Badman and the Select Committee supported it. However, it was not recognised that the Government’s formal consultation on the Badman recommendations had shown that, far from being uncontroversial, the proposal had attracted opposition from 75% of those who responded, with only 13% agreeing. Why would that be the case? Why would families be concerned about having the power to return their children to school within 20 days, with no restriction whatever on their freedoms and no delay forced on the start of their home education? The answer lies in the behaviour of local authorities.

Many home educators expressed alarm and horror at the proposal when it came out recently—those home educators were not formally consulted by the Government, because the proposal was supposedly uncontroversial—because, they said, it would lead to bullying and intimidation of parents who had decided to home educate. Those home educators said that the proposal would serve as another excuse for local authorities to misinform parents and tell them that the local authority would decide on the quality of the education provided by parents and that it should sit in judgment on whether they were fit and proper people to educate their children. That would be an entire reversal of the long-standing legal settlement in this country, which says that it is the parents’ duty to educate their child. Most parents choose to delegate that to the state, through state schools, and some to private schools, with a small number choosing to carry it out themselves. It is a fundamental basis of education in this country that the parent remains the No. 1 decider of how their child is educated.

In case that response was just overly paranoid home educators who felt that properly caring local authorities would be asking them impertinent questions or who had misread or misunderstood what they were doing or saying, I can share with the House the fruits of my labour last night, which I spent on the internet looking at various local authority websites. A colleague texted me at 6 o’clock to say that we were going to be let go unusually early, and that a night of fun and frolics could lie ahead. I had to say, “No, my fun will involve looking at local authority websites.” Tameside metropolitan borough council’s elective home education guidelines say:

“It is up to parents to show the local education authority that they have a programme of work in place that is helping their child to develop according to his/her age, ability and aptitude and any special educational needs he/she may have.”

But it is not up to parents to justify that to the local authority; all too often, it is the local authority that has let down that family and those children through its failure to provide proper education. The local authority should be the servant of the family; the family should not have to answer to the needs of the local authority.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I absolutely agree that it is important for parents to be involved and in control of decisions about their own children, but I am dismayed that I have heard very little from the hon. Gentleman about the children themselves. The reason that we have frameworks is not to create unnecessary bureaucracy but to make absolutely certain that we are protecting our children and ensuring the best outcome for them. I would like to hear his response to that point, because before coming to the House, I worked for many years with children, some of whom had suffered the most appalling neglect and abuse at home, and for whom the state was a real lifeline.

[Mr Stuart]

The hon. Lady makes some fair points. Certainly the right of the child is central, but I believe that the parent is the best protector of that child’s needs. Of course, the local authority has a role in intervening when there is problem. However, fewer than half the children in this country get five good GCSEs as a result of compulsory state schooling for 11 years, so the state is hardly in a position to lecture parents who make a massive sacrifice to find ways of educating their children themselves. Furthermore, according to all the evidence that I have seen, there is no suggestion that home-educating parents—although they might be rather radical and act in ways that would not fit with my idea of how to educate a child—do a worse job for their children educationally than the state; quite the opposite, in fact.

It is interesting that, although Badman selectively quoted evidence from New Zealand, he failed to mention that, just before he produced his report, New Zealand scrapped the registration guidelines that formed a central part of the report.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Stuart]

Before I give way to the former Chair of the Select Committee, I must deal with the point on which I disagree most with the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy). She has done what Badman did, and what the former Secretary of State did under the previous Government, which is to conflate child abuse with home education. Education and welfare are two separate things. Contrary to what Graham Badman stated in his report, and failed to substantiate in the Select Committee, there is no evidence that home-educated children are more subject to abuse than children in general. When there is a risk, local authorities have all due powers to intervene, and so they should. When such evidence arises, the authorities can and should go in to ensure the protection of the child. However, we cannot have the suggestion that home-educating families are linked to a problem of abuse. Nothing could be further from the truth, and it is important to nail that fact. We must not do as the previous Home Secretary did, which was to smear the reputation of home-educating families by suggesting that there is a problem, because there is no evidence for that.

[Mr Sheerman]

I do not think that the hon. Gentleman means to do so, but he is being a little misleading about what happened in the Select Committee inquiry, in which he failed to persuade the majority of the Committee of his views on this subject. Many of us on the Committee took a rather different view and wrote the majority report along those lines. What he gets wrong is the balance. This is not about a balance between abusive parents doing dreadful things to children, on the one hand, and the local authority letting them down, on the other. Rather, we found a lot of evidence to show that what was supposed to be home education actually did not amount to very much at all.

[Mr Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is incorrect on the central point. Although the report did not take the same form as it would have done if I had written it alone, the central point about the need for registration and licensing of families that want to educate their own children was rejected by the Select Committee—it was Labour-dominated and chaired so ably by him. That point was rejected, and the report said no to the central recommendation of Badman. The previous Government still pursued that recommendation, but it was—eventually and rightly—thrown out by Parliament before the last election.

[Mr Sheerman]

Of course we rejected that element of policy, and quite rightly, but that is not the case that the hon. Gentleman is making. It is a serious concern if we do not know what kind of syllabus or stimulus children will get in the home education environment. Children’s education, and not just their welfare, is their right. The hon. Gentleman is trying to turn the issue into one of welfare against education, but that was not the line that we took.

[Mr Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is entitled to his views on how current regulation should be changed. That, after all, was what the Badman report and our Select Committee report were all about.

What I am discussing today—I do not want to take up much more time—is the current law, which is clear, although it is not properly represented by many local authorities. I will not go through all the legal aspects, but I will mention the 2007 guidelines on elective home education for local authorities, which were produced by the Department for Children, Schools and Families in 2007. It is still available on the departmental website, subject only to the need for an update to take into account changes in the rules governing children missing from education. The report stated:

“Local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education on a routine basis.”

If there is no evidence that education by home educators is inferior to that provided by the state, what is the role of the state? Apparently it is to stick its nose into families that have often been let down by the same instruments of the state and impertinently to try to impose exactly the same kind of regimented approach to education that failed for those children. That is why the parents made the massive sacrifice of taking their children out of school in the first place.

We must defend freedom and a principle that is perhaps even more important than that, which is that the law, as it stands, must be enforced. If the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) wishes to campaign to get it changed and is successful in convincing this place, what he wants will then become the law. Local authorities must honour and observe the law as it stands and not overstate it because they happen to agree with the hon. Gentleman. They cannot make the law up as they go along because they do not like the current settlement. The current settlement is clear: local authorities have no statutory duties in relation to monitoring the quality of home education.

I have already dealt with Tameside, so let me touch quickly on Barnsley. Its elective home education information leaflet says that

“the law allows parents to educate their children at home instead of sending them to school, if they fulfil certain conditions.”

That is subtly done. I am not sure whether it is strictly inaccurate, but it is suggestive enough to make it sound as though the council decides whether those conditions are fulfilled. It goes on to make it clear that that is precisely its conclusion:

“Barnsley MBC will need to be satisfied”—

in other words, the council will need to be satisfied—

“that a child is receiving suitable education at home, and the Assessor”—

these people are even called assessors; who do they think they are?—

“will ask to meet with the family in order to talk to the parents and to look at examples of work and learning.”

That is beyond the law. I want the Minister to confirm that he will make sure that local authorities no longer produce misinformation like that and use it in order to abuse their power over families.

Sheffield provides another example. Parents there are told:

“You must show that the opportunities being provided are helping your child to learn and that development is taking place appropriate to their age, ability and aptitude.”

It is fair enough for parents to have a duty to provide suitable education and meet those requirements, but local authorities have no right to interpose themselves and decide that that is not happening. If they have reason to believe that suitable education is not being provided, they have a duty to challenge, but only in that event. They do not have the right routinely to monitor and interfere.

Sheffield city council continues:

“The Children Service Authority (CSA) is responsible for ensuring that the arrangements provide a suitable education for your child.”

That is not true.

“When you have given the CSA a plan stating your ideas an appropriately qualified”—

unlike you—

“Senior Inclusion Officer (SIO) will arrange an initial home visit and make a preliminary assessment”—

in your home—

“of the education provision the child is receiving.”

It is disgraceful.

South Gloucestershire council is advertising for someone who will provide

“information, support and challenge to parents…The service is responsible for assessing the suitability of the education provided to children educated at home”.

The Lancashire local authority, in one of the most egregious examples, states:

“Lancashire Officers will take the lead on this because they have the responsibility to ensure the safety of all children as well as to monitor the quality of education received by children educated at home.”

That is a nice one, neatly conflating the issues of safety and home education. No one has yet arrived at my house during the summer holidays just to check up on the safety of my children, who are, after all, spending months at home with me. Who knows what my wife and I might get up to, or what the younger or older sister might do? Who knows what visiting relatives might do? What we need are visitors from the local authority, just to make sure. I do not want people such as the director of children’s services in my local authority to lose a moment’s sleep because they feel that they are not pursuing every possibility of intervention to cover their own backsides and telling me how I should run things in my own home. That is precisely what the local authority suggests should be done in the case of home-educating parents, who deserve its intervention no more than the rest of us. The document continues:

“Thus, when a practitioner or professional becomes aware that a child is being educated at home, they should use local information sharing arrangements to help the Lancashire Authority to fulfil both its duty to be confident”—

so it has a duty to be confident now—

“of the well-being of the child and its duty to assure the quality of the education provided.”

That, too, is not true.

As far as I can tell from one evening spent looking at their websites, council after council is entirely misrepresenting the legal position, and I hope that the Minister will put that right.

[Ian Mearns]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Stuart]

I am aware that I have been speaking for too long already, but I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Ian Mearns]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman. For a short time I thought that I was in the back of a bus in Helsinki.

There is a problem with what the hon. Gentleman is saying. If a child becomes unwell or is injured at the hands of parents or other relatives, the focus of attention is often not on the family but on the director of children’s services in the local borough. Will the hon. Gentleman reflect on that? Will he also reflect on the rights of the child who, despite the wishes of their own parents, may or may not receive a good level of education at the hands of those parents? I know that the hon. Gentleman inhabits a middle-class, or possibly upper-middle-class, ideal in which his own children will be extremely well catered for, but that is not always the case. As policy makers, we must provide for the rights of every child in the country, no matter what their circumstances.

[Mr Stuart]

I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Gentleman, who is a distinguished member of the Select Committee and who brings years of experience of education to it, so I hesitate to say what I am about to say. However, he is suggesting, as a Labour Member of Parliament, that working-class families involved in home education should be treated with more suspicion than those in better-off areas, that they are not to be trusted with the education of their children, and that inspectors and assessors and all those other people with acronyms should be wandering into their homes, because of—my God—what they might do to their children.

I have given a great deal of thought to these issues. There are many armchair theorists—I met many of them when we were debating the Badman review—who have not looked at the data and the research, who have not tried to meet home-educating families to discuss their problems and who have not met local authority officers, who deal with difficult cases such as home-educating households where children are abused and are not given an education. There are real difficulties and challenges, but we cannot deal with them from an armchair. If the hon. Gentleman follows that advice, I hope that he will come round to my point of view that the current law is appropriate but should be enforced, and that we cannot allow local authorities to continue to abuse their position and bully parents.

I congratulate the Minister on having listened. He listened carefully to families and to representations from Members both during the passage of the Children, Schools and Families Act 2010 and since then. He listened to representations on the 20-day rule, of which I myself was in favour until I listened to the arguments and was able to follow the evidence and look at the links to the consultation and the response, which I either did not know about or had forgotten.

There is a strong message here. We must listen to these families, and we must support and respect them. We must have challenge that is appropriate, but we must not allow those in power to abuse that power and overstep the mark.

[Mr Sheerman]

I do not quite know how to follow that speech. The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) was a very good member of the former Select Committee, which I chaired. He was always an excellent contributor, but he always got the issue under discussion out of proportion. There has been a full Select Committee report, and I hope that people will read that as well as pay attention to the hon. Gentleman’s speech today, at one stage of which I thought the men in white coats might be coming.

When the Committee was looking into this matter, I got the feeling that the hon. Gentleman was rather taken over by the home educators. Home educators are very good when they are good, but there is evidence, in the Badman inquiry and elsewhere, that there are all sorts of people who use home education because they do not want to send their children to school yet do not want to be prosecuted. Home education is a right, but if people take up that right they must also accept that they have a responsibility to offer the children in question a coherent and stimulating educational programme, and I believe that local authorities have the right to check on that, in the most sensitive way possible. I therefore hope people make a balanced judgment of his new clause 22.

The previous Select Committee spent a lot of time on these matters. One of the great victories for those of us who work on Committee reports is someone taking notice of what they say. That is wonderful, although normally there is about a two-year time lag before notice is taken. I think our report on admissions policy was one of our best, with recommendations such as giving teeth to the schools adjudicator post and making sure that the code of admissions is obligatory and schools do not merely have to take note of it.

When we conducted our inquiry, I was amazed to discover that really nice people—really nice heads and educators—would bend every rule to get the selection process that suited their school. That was the case even for head teachers who looked as though they came from central casting and seemed to conform to the stereotype of the good, confident head teacher. I remember asking one particular lady, “How many looked-after children do you have at your school?” “None”, she replied. I then asked, “How many children with special needs?” She said: “Very few.” My next question was: “How many children on free school meals?” We found that the school did not have any children in that category. I therefore asked whether or not the school had taken notice of the code, to which she said, “Yes, we took note of it.” That is all anyone had to do; that is why the code was not working. Our Committee recommended that if we were to have a code, people should have to take notice of it, and if they did not, the schools adjudicator could say, “Come on! There is a code and you should obey it.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Rogerson]

That is a personal remark—I resemble that remark.

As I said in an intervention on the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), there are matters across government that go beyond the coalition agreement, and decisions have to be taken about where the balance should be struck. From my point of view, the issue is whether we stay true to the principle that both parties have articulated about looking at what is constraining schools and trying to set them free to move forward, while also looking after particular groups of people who might be vulnerable if schools do not operate in the spirit of the code and what the Government seek to achieve.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Going back to an earlier point, this is all about the incentives that apply to schools. The head teachers at the Church schools that the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) mentioned are not bad, but people respond to the incentives they are given. Although I am not positive about all the moves the Government are making—I have doubts about the English baccalaureate—things are moving forward with the measurement of pupil premium and children on free school meals. If we can move to a system that better rewards and reflects in the accountability measures for schools the performance of every child, we will not need to have this suspicion about every head teacher. Heads have responded in the way they have because of the incentives that were created by the previous Government, which led to this large, unwieldy system. [Interruption.] I should be fair: I am talking about successive Governments. We need to come up with a measure collectively that will improve that: then we will not need a schools adjudicator, because schools will simply have a mission to educate their local children and will be supported and rewarded for doing a good job for all of them.

[Dan Rogerson]

I welcome that intervention from the Chair of the Select Committee on Education, which will be providing more evidence over the next few years as we continue this debate. He makes an important point about the incentives that have pushed head teachers into operating in a particular way that was not envisaged when targets and regimes were set up. As the hon. Member for North West Durham said, good people occasionally do things that are less good or bad. Why do they do that if they are essentially good people who want to look after the educational opportunities of all those in the community they serve? It is because incentives are acting on them and pressing them down a particular course of action. We need to tackle those issues.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. Those are concerns to which we are giving careful consideration, but there are strong opinions on all sides of the debate. We want to ensure that we consider the issues carefully and take all those strong opinions into account.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

May I express my gratitude to my hon. Friend for listening to the representations from me and from home educators? That is precisely the way in which the Government should operate, and I know that there is great gratitude out there among home educators who are afraid that there will always be malign forces at work whenever the Government come anywhere near them. As for the local authorities that misrepresent their powers and are, according to home educators, overstepping the mark, can the Minister give any reassurances about what can be done to protect the rights of home educators? Where there is evidence that children are not receiving a suitable education, local authorities should act, as the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) said, but outwith that they should respect the right of home educators to direct their children’s education.

[Mr Gibb]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, just as he made a good speech on those issues. Local authorities are public authorities. They should provide accurate information about their powers and duties, and they are open to challenge if they fail to do so. I hope that that reassures my hon. Friend.

[Mr Stuart]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way again. If, with the help of home educators, I compiled a dossier of evidence about local authorities, would it be possible for me to meet the Minister and talk further with him about ways to ensure both that local authorities are aware of the law and that they observe it?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Graham Stuart]

It is a pleasure to speak again in the debate, and to follow the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who is a fellow member of the Education Committee. He made a powerful speech, but he rather overstated the case. References to the wholesale kicking away of all the ladders of opportunity do not befit the hon. Gentleman, who is knowledgeable and who also tends to speak in a reasonable and balanced fashion. Similarly, attacking postcode lotteries is always an easy way of resisting any form of localisation aimed at ensuring that need is met appropriately in a rural area.

As one who represents a rural constituency and rural further education colleges, I am aware of the need for a more appropriate use of limited funds. I will not go into the details—I am sure that Ministers will do that—but we know that the last Labour Government made it clear that, if they were re-elected, they would look again at the EMA and seek to make savings. If savings are to be made, what better way of making them than to put the funds into the hands of those on the front line who have the closest interest in, and the best understanding of, provision for young people? The hon. Gentleman should not overstate his case, let alone suggest that Government Members, particularly Ministers, have any motivation other than to try to improve ladders of opportunity. It is possible to believe that measures are not going in the right direction without suggesting that they are all calamitous or driven by the wrong motives.

Although I did not table amendment 27, its wording is exactly the same as an amendment that I tabled in Committee. It emphasises the need to ensure that the transition to the new all-age careers service is handled properly, and that in the intervening period we do not indeed see a postcode lottery with some areas not receiving appropriate care.

[Ian Mearns]

That is already happening.

[Mr Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman has a point, which is why it is important for us to be reassured about the interim period. It is worth saying—I wish that the hon. Member for Scunthorpe had been able to say it—that the Government’s vision of a higher quality of careers advice than we have seen in the past is a good one, but, like the hon. Gentleman, I want more reassurance about exactly what will be delivered.

It is all very well to paint a picture of a fantastic service that will be genuinely independent and give people a better overview of all their options—not just the academic options delivered by institutions in their own interests—but we need to see what incentives are provided for the actors in the system to ensure that they deliver that. We do not want someone to tick the box by simply shoving a young person in front of a website, with the result that that young person never receives the information that they need about local provision. I will not rehearse all the arguments, but I have heard evidence about further education colleges being barred from going into schools to advise young people.

There is a clash between institutional interests and what I want to see, which is a truly independent service with highly trained staff who have an extensive knowledge of all the local options—I know that that is also the vision of the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning. It is difficult to imagine that anyone, however clever and hard-working, has an encyclopaedic knowledge of those options, but we need staff with as much knowledge as possible who can give advice as well as, perhaps, signposting young people in the direction of online resources. Such a combination could bring real change, ensuring that young people follow pathways that lead to satisfaction, personal development and economic success. I know that the Minister entirely agrees with that.

I am pleased to note from Government amendment 36 that Ministers listen. I said in Committee that the Secretary of State’s right to withdraw the apprenticeship offer was not appropriate given the new circumstances, and that if employers were prepared to take young people on, the last thing that we should do is introduce a provision allowing someone in the Government to prevent them from doing so. I am delighted that the Minister listened to that, as he said that he would, and has already returned with a Government amendment.

If the Government continue to be firm in purpose and clear in vision, but prepared to listen where the argument is sufficiently strong, we will further improve both the Bill and, most importantly, the education of young people in this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I cannot let what the hon. Lady has just said pass. People from lower-income families can afford to go to university, as they pay nothing up front. People pay only when they earn £21,000; they pay 9% above that, when they are earning the money. Do not send the message to young people from lower-income families in your constituency or mine that they cannot afford to go to college—they can, and they should if they want to. Do not scaremonger.

[Lisa Nandy]

First, it is absolutely clear who is sending a message to young people in this country that we do not value them, will not support them and will not back them, and it is the hon. Gentleman’s party. It is an absolute disgrace that on the things that we are discussing today—Aimhigher, the EMA and tuition fees—all the progress that has been made is being unravelled, with very little humility or apology from the Government. On the hon. Gentleman’s accusations that my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe is overstating his case, I simply ask where on earth the hon. Gentleman has been for the past 12 months. The outcry has not just come from young people in Wigan and Scunthorpe, because there has been a national outcry at the removal of the EMA, which is one of the most successful things introduced by the previous Government. I simply ask him to spend a bit more time outside this place listening to young people who are experiencing serious hardship and a bit less time trying to support his Front-Bench team.

That brings me to the subject of enrichment funding, on which my hon. Friend and I have tabled a provision as we are seeking to protect it today. The withdrawal of enrichment funding will have an astonishing impact in my constituency—my local college, Winstanley college, is losing £200,000 of its funding next year, which represents a 10% cut—yet we have heard so little about this. Over the past year, I have heard Ministers talk a lot in the Select Committee about trying to improve the situation of the most disadvantaged young people, but the withdrawal of enrichment funding is doing a great deal to widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots. Winstanley college is being forced to say that only students whose parents can afford to send them on trips will be able to go on them as part of their course. That is just one of many examples that the college gave me and is distraught about. The withdrawal of this funding will have a real impact, and I urge Ministers to think again.

The withdrawal of enrichment funding will clearly hit hardest those schools that already have a disadvantaged intake. St John Rigby college, which is just down the road from me in my constituency, will take a funding hit next year, because of the withdrawal of £300,000. Half its students receive the EMA and only 2% of the students who come into that college average an A-grade at GCSE. Its very hard-working and talented principal has told me that enrichment funding is not an optional extra, but an essential part of giving its hard-working and talented students the chance to reach their full potential. It cannot replace that enrichment funding, so it must do other things. It is planning to halve the tutorial hours for all students, so that it can ensure that it protects those essential services. Like Winstanley college, which I mentioned earlier, class sizes will go up, which will disadvantage all students but will have a particular impact on the most disadvantaged.

I join my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe in supporting the new clause because unless the Government think again, sports, arts, drama, counselling and career opportunities will be denied to precisely those young people who need them most. Surely that is not the intended consequence of the Government’s policies. I urge the Minister to think again.

Higher Education Policy

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr John Denham (Southampton, Itchen) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House condemns the failure of the Government to deliver the commitment made to Parliament that £9,000 a year student fees would be ‘exceptional’; further notes that the Office of Fair Access (OFFA) has said that it has no powers to set university fees or determine university admissions policies; notes with alarm the warning of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills that average fees higher than £7,500 would mean reducing student numbers or further cutting university teaching funding; condemns the failure of Ministers to explain their policies by publishing a Higher Education White Paper; believes that Ministers are putting at risk the success of universities and the future of generations of students; further believes that current policies are unfair, unnecessary and unsustainable; and therefore calls on Ministers, as soon as practicable, to set out to Parliament how they will meet the promise that fees of £9,000 will only be in exceptional circumstances, to guarantee that there will be no fall in the number of university places or further cuts to university teaching budgets, and to outline what powers, if any, they propose for OFFA on determining fee levels and enforcing access arrangements.

I am glad to see the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills in his place, although I understand that he is not following the usual courtesy of responding to my opening remarks. I am nevertheless grateful to him for attending the debate.

I make no apology for raising for the third time in an Opposition day debate the dismal record of this Secretary of State and the Minister for Universities and Science on university fees. Nothing is more important to this country’s future than the rising generation of young people, including all those who are working hard as we speak on their GCSEs and A-levels. We owe it to them to give them the best opportunities, to make the most of their talents, the most of their abilities, the most of their willingness to work hard and do the best for themselves. All of us depend on them to ensure that, through their innovation and creativity, this country can pay its way in the world and create jobs in the future. Despite fashionable sneers, we need more people, not fewer, educated at a higher level. That is what is happening in every country with which we compete. Young people will benefit from their higher education, but so will the rest of us. That is why our young people deserve a fair deal and good opportunities.

Under the last Labour Government, the number of students in English universities increased by almost 380,000, and 51% of young women now go to university. Now, however, the ladders of opportunity are being kicked away. The education maintenance allowance has been scrapped, and Aimhigher, which persuaded countless young people that they could go to university, has been scrapped. Sir Peter Lampl of the renowned Sutton Trust said:

“I think these fees are going to put a lot of children from lower and middle-income homes off universities.”

A poll today shows that more than half of final-year students at 14 Russell group universities in England would not have enrolled if annual fees had been £9,000.

For those who do aim high, fees are being trebled—to the highest average fees of any public university system in the world, and all because this Secretary of State decided to cut the higher education teaching grant by 80%, to make most students pay the whole cost of their higher education and to embark on a bizarre ideological experiment devised by the Minister for Universities and Science. It was always a bad idea, but these Ministers have implemented it with truly staggering incompetence: they have lost control and are making it up as they go along. Instead of being open and honest about finances and open and honest about their future policies, they are resorting to veiled and not-so-veiled threats, planning the biggest ever interference in the autonomy of universities.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

If a Labour Government had been re-elected, would tuition fees have risen?

[Mr Denham]

We have made it quite clear in every debate since the Browne report was published that it would be unrealistic to say that higher education budgets would be untouched by the deficit reduction that we would have had to introduce. However, we have also pointed that if, for the sake of argument, the reduction in higher education spending had been in the order of 10% to 20%, as faced by most public services, we would certainly not have been talking about tuition fees above about £3,800—and certainly not the £9,000 that this Government are implementing.

Since Parliament voted to treble tuition fees in December, Ministers have ensured through their actions that record numbers of disappointed students will be turned away from university this year, with perhaps 150,000 applicants missing out on places. More of the students across England who are studying hard for their A-levels today will be rejected than ever before, because tens of thousands are rushing to avoid the trebling of fees, and because Ministers have already cut 20,000 places for 2012 from the number that Labour had planned for 2010—and that is before any more cuts that may be in the pipeline.

On 3 November, the Minister for Universities and Science told the House:

“We… are… proposing a basic threshold of £6,000 a year, and in exceptional circumstances there would be an absolute limit of £9,000.”—[Official Report, 3 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 924.]

That was the solemn promise on the basis of which the House was asked to treble fees. The Minister did not say, “Most universities will charge £9,000 or as near as makes no difference”; he said that £9,000 would apply “in exceptional circumstances”, and that is not going to happen. Of the universities that have made declarations, 71% have declared fees of £9,000 and 85% have declared fees of £8,000 or more.

The Minister continues to live in a world of his own. In March he was saying of arts and humanities degrees:

“Most institutions should only need to charge £6,000—or perhaps a bit more once inflation has been accounted for.”

So where are those £6,000 arts and humanities degrees in the most sought-after universities? Where, for that matter, are the £6,000 arts and humanities degrees in less sought-after universities? The truth is that the Minister and the Secretary of State have lost control of the system through their own incompetence. They have created a system in which there is every incentive for universities to charge high fees and virtually no incentive for them to charge low fees, and it is young people who will pay the price. Some will be put off university altogether, while those who go to university will face 30 years of debt repayments, with middle-income graduates paying more money and a larger proportion of their incomes than the wealthiest. They will still be paying off their student debt when their own children have started university.

The Minister is now trying to say that what matters is the average once the reduced fees for some students have been taken into account. How disingenuous can you get? When the Minister promised fees of £9,000 “in exceptional circumstances”, I do not believe that a single Member of the House thought, “Oh—that means that most universities will charge most students £9,000, or as near as makes no difference.” That is not what Members thought; they thought that he meant “in exceptional circumstances”. I do not think they thought that middle-class, middle-income students would have no choice but to pay close to £9,000 a year no matter which university they chose to go to. The Minister’s failure to admit that he got it wrong does him no credit.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Willetts]

I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart).

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will my right hon. Friend nail the misinformation, peddled not least by Opposition Front Benchers, about the increase in fees putting people from lower-income backgrounds off going to university? The truth is that the payments per month will be lower under the new system, that those who earn lower amounts will pay less, that the new system is more progressive and that Opposition Front Benchers, who cry crocodile tears for caring about those from the lowest incomes having access to a university, are scaremongering and providing misinformation. Will he please put them right?

[Mr Willetts]

That was an excellent intervention. After this debate, I hope that Members on both sides will agree to commit ourselves to visit, between now and the summer, the secondary schools and colleges in our constituencies and explain to them that not a single young person is going to have to pay up front for their higher education. They will repay only if they are earning more than £21,000 a year and that means that their monthly repayments under our proposals will be lower than under the system we inherited from the previous Government.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lilian Greenwood (Nottingham South) (Lab)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in today’s debate, as I am very worried about the Government’s plans for higher education and their impact on many of my constituents and the city I represent.

I was deeply concerned when the Government announced their intention to raise the cap on fees, and like every Opposition Member I voted against that rise. I did so not just because of my pledge during the general election campaign but because I felt that the Government were rushing through their plans without proper thought and consultation. Like many Members, I felt that fees of £6,000, £7,000 or £8,000 would deter many bright and able students from low and middle-income families from applying to university, or from applying to the university or course that would best suit them. As university after university has announced its intention to charge fees of £9,000, my concern has only deepened. Far from being the exception that the Prime Minister promised, £9,000 fees are becoming the norm. Why? It is because universities have to fill the huge hole left by the cut in the teaching grant.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Lady confirm for the benefit of her constituents that the monthly payment that each of them will have to make will be lower under the new system than it was under the previous system? The monthly payment will be lower at all times. The bad news is that people will have to pay for longer, but the payments will be more affordable and people will have to pay only when they are earning £21,000. Her constituents need to hear that so that they are not put off. I hope that she agrees.

[Lilian Greenwood]

The concern that many of my constituents express is that they will have to pay back at least three times more than they would if they were a student now or had been recently.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lilian Greenwood]

No, not at the moment. Under the Minister’s scheme, those who earn the most will pay less, because they can pay their loans off quickly, before they have substantial amounts of interest to pay on top.

Sir Martin Harris, the director of the organisation charged with improving access to higher education, says that there is a “real risk” that teenagers from low-income homes will feel unable to attend university, which makes me even more convinced that this Government’s policies are not properly thought through.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Lilian Greenwood]

No—I am not taking another intervention.

Unfortunately, my concerns were further confirmed when I recently met staff from Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Connexions services. Careers advisers were not only demoralised by cuts to their service when young people most need advice and guidance to help them to make difficult choices, but deeply concerned about the impact of Government policies on the teenagers whom they are committed to assist. They told me that fee increases are having a clear impact on many young people, and that many young people in Nottinghamshire feel that they can no longer afford to study for a degree.

The problem is heightened by the increase in youth unemployment. Young people are worried not only that they will rack up debts of £30,000 or £40,000, but that they may not even be able to secure a job at the end of it. It was particularly sad to hear a member of staff of the Aimhigher campaign, which supports young people from disadvantaged backgrounds who have the potential to go on to higher education, tell me that it has become increasingly difficult to convince such young people that university is for them.

Young people and their parents frequently bring this issue up on the doorstep. On Monday afternoon, a constituent asked me how he could afford to send his children to university.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Wilson]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman for making that point, because there are certainly questions still to be answered, which is something I will come to.

I am concerned that the restrictions on student numbers will mean that we fail to realise the full benefits of competition in the higher education sector, which would have encouraged universities to achieve greater efficiency and offer more value for money. As a recent report by Tim Leunig for the think-tank CentreForum put it,

“because government restricts the number of students that each university can take, this is not real competition”—

and indeed, it is not. I am sure that my right hon. Friend the Minister will agree that the Government must devise a system in which universities and courses that are popular and economically important can expand, if necessary at the expense of unpopular courses and institutions. Does he therefore share my concern that capping student numbers will threaten one of the key benefits offered by the Government’s reforms? What further action does he propose to take to ensure that courses that students want to take, at a price that they want to pay, can expand at the expense of courses that they do not want to take, at prices that they do not want to pay? In these difficult times the Treasury is keen not to spend more on subsidies for students than it absolutely has to, which provides the Secretary of State and the Minister with a big challenge if they want real competition in the higher education sector. If the Minister cannot convince the Treasury that removing the cap on student numbers will reduce overall HE costs, there will be no genuine market in HE.

However, I hope that the Government are thinking creatively about seeking micro-solutions to the problem. In particular, I would recommend that they look at three areas that are perhaps worthy of further consideration. The first is how we encourage private sector institutions to enter the HE sector and offer degree courses. There is no reason why they should not be allowed to enter the sector and overcome any real or perceived barriers to entry, which can easily be removed. Secondly, the further education sector needs to be encouraged to offer more degree and higher education courses. The changes that we have made in the HE sector offer huge opportunities for FE colleges to offer high quality, affordable, specialist courses. Once again, we can look across the Atlantic at what is happening in the US community college system as an example of the model that we need to strive to follow in this country.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful speech, the content of which I agree with. Does he agree that many FE colleges are now delivering the quality that should enable them to confer degrees, rather than being dependent on universities, which in times of financial uncertainty tend to reduce what they allow FE colleges to do? We need to give them freedom if they are to compete properly in the market.

[Mr Wilson]

Indeed I do agree with that. There are some fabulous FE colleges that could easily deliver high quality higher education degrees.

Thirdly, if we are to have a Treasury-imposed affordability limit on student numbers, we need to think more creatively about how we tease the best out of a more limited market system. As I have said, we need to encourage the best high-quality, sought-after courses that students actually want to take. We have to design a system that allows good universities with good courses to expand, and poorly performing universities with poor quality courses to decline, or at least take action to improve their offering.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Bailey]

Yes, it certainly was and I was just coming to that. We should have had a White Paper, followed by a full debate, which would have enabled the Government to put forward their proposals and the Opposition and others to probe them. A range of educational institutions —there are an enormous number of them—would have been able to contribute their expertise. What we have had, however, is this seismic shift in Government funding, carried out without adequate research and debate.

I spent 10 years on the Government Benches listening to lectures from Conservative Members about the dangers of hasty legislation and the unintended consequences that almost inevitably arise from it. If ever there was a case in point, I honestly think this is it. Hasty legislation, or hasty regulation in this case, is usually bad legislation, or regulation.

The lack of research and work done highlights a number of issues. The first is the setting of the fee levels. The Minister’s hopelessly optimistic estimates, on which the financial model was predicated, have been demonstrated as completely incorrect. The repayment implications are considerable. A whole range of expert research has been done to demonstrate that the income stream on which the Government predicated their financial model will not be met. There will therefore be a long-term financial liability, possibly an expanding one, that the Government will have to meet.

Another issue that could and should have been explored far more comprehensively if we had had a White Paper is of course the role of the Office for Fair Access. When Ministers were pressed on the setting of the level of tuition fees, they seemed to ascribe to OFFA powers that were completely beyond it, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Itchen (Mr Denham) said in his opening remarks. The fact remains that OFFA is an organisation of four people, to whom responsibility was attributed by the Deputy Prime Minister for setting the tuition fee levels of all universities. That is totally beyond their resources, and they could not do it anyway, because they do not have the legislative basis to do so. This could and would have been teased out in a full and open debate of a White Paper, but by virtue of the Government’s actions it has been precluded.

The outcome is that the figures in the financial model do not appear to stack up. I mentioned the potential long-term financial implications earlier. As the Minister has acknowledged, the options are to cut funding for universities further and to reduce student numbers. I believe that if tuition fees averaged £8,000 per annum, it would be necessary to reduce the number of students going to university by 17,000 in order to stay within the model. There is actually a third option: the Government could change graduates’ repayment conditions. I think that that would open another can of worms, and would provide the basis for further research to assess the possible outcome.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Bailey]

No, I will not give way again.

A reduction in student numbers is inevitable, either because the Government decide to ration them or because of the deterrent effect of the higher fees on student recruitment. I should like the Government to make it clear whether, if the figures indeed do not stack up and the average fees exceed £7,500, they will limit student numbers. I do not know the answer and I am not sure that the Government do, but I should welcome their opinion none the less.

I should also welcome some sort of statement on when we will see the White Paper so that we can debate the issues further. It was originally to be published in January, we were then assured that it would be published in June, and I understand that in subsequent speeches to the civil service the Minister has referred to the summer. It is a bit like Billy Bunter’s postal order. I pressed the Secretary of State on the matter in the Select Committee this morning, and even then he would not give a commitment that the White Paper would be published in June. What I should like him to do today is tell us when it will be published, and whether it will deal with questions raised not just by me but by a range of Members about the funding implications of the current proposals.

Other countries recognise the value of higher education and the number of graduates who make an economic contribution. Other countries, even those that have suffered from the same sort of financial problems that we have experienced during the recession and are subject to the same sort of financial constraints, are investing more in higher education. The long-term implication of not getting this right and reducing the number of graduates is very serious indeed. On the basis of the picture that is emerging at the moment, I think that we are in danger of having fewer graduates, of damaging our economic growth, and of adopting a financial model that will make our public sector deficit far worse in the long term.

Post-16 Education Funding

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for those questions. I am grateful for his reference to people being out of their depth—I will of course acknowledge his expertise in this area. I am also grateful to him on behalf of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills for once more recycling the Mr Bean joke—the copyright on that joke will ensure that the right hon. Gentleman enjoys a successful and happy retirement in years ahead.

The first question that the right hon. Gentleman asked was: where is the money coming from? The answer is that the money for all public spending comes from the taxpayer. It was on his watch that the taxpayer got a spectacularly bad deal from a Government who spent every penny and left this coalition Government with a difficult economic inheritance. He asked whether the money would be allocated by discretionary means. I pointed out in my statement that it absolutely will. He argued that college principals would face an invidious decision, but he must know that it was the Association of Colleges that argued that the new fund should be put in place on discretionary principles. Perhaps he should consult college principals before claiming to speak on their behalf.

The right hon. Gentleman accused the coalition at one point of engaging in no consultation, and of having too much at another. There was no consistency at all in the questions that he asked. There has been a certain consistency in his position in one area, however, and that is his consistent refusal to state what his alternative would be. The truth is that Labour does not have a policy on this issue or any other education issue. We know what the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle thought: he said that we should divert money from the EMA to the poorest. We know what the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown) thought: that we should divert money from child benefit to pay for EMA. However, we do not know what the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) thinks, beyond believing that students should have money to go out for drinks with friends.

We do not know how the right hon. Gentleman would pay for his alternative to our proposal, because he has opposed every saving that we have made. We do not know what he thinks people should be studying when they are not going out, because he has opposed every reform to raise standards. He has no policies on education other than blanket opposition. No wonder he did not join the march for an alternative on Saturday—he does not have one.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I welcome the statement and the funding—which is greater than was originally expected—going into the new bursary scheme. I also welcome the focus on the poorest, to whom it is appropriate to ensure that that funding goes. Can the Secretary of State tell the House on what basis the money will be allocated? Will it be based on free school meals? Indeed, is that part of the consultation? Can he also confirm again that colleges will have total freedom in how they spend the money, so that they can provide directly for transport, for instance?

[Michael Gove]

The Chairman of the Select Committee on Education asks two intimately related and very good questions. On the first, I can confirm that we intend as closely as possible to mirror funding for the replacement scheme and existing funding, which was given to colleges on the basis of EMA entitlement. However, as he rightly points out, in the consultation, which will relate to the implementation of the scheme, we will take on board the points made by college principals and others, in order to ensure the fairest possible distribution of funding. Unlike with the EMA, college principals will have explicit flexibility under our scheme to be able to provide for transport, among other needs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Monday 21st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Thank you. The two manoeuvres for which the shadow Secretary of State is preparing are: a U-turn on his academy position, which he has already executed, and now another U-turn, which I can sense him undertaking on the English baccalaureate. I celebrate the fact that he is manoeuvring out of the way of the criticism of those of us on this side of the House who believe in higher standards.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Can the Secretary of State confirm that the English baccalaureate is not compulsory, that schools retain the right—indeed, the duty—to offer an appropriate curriculum to their pupils, and that schools such as university technical colleges will not be obliged to ensure that at least 80% of pupils’ time up to the age of 16 is spent on academic subjects?

[Michael Gove]

The Chairman of the Select Committee on Education has not only asked an excellent question but given a superb summary of the beneficial effects of the English baccalaureate and the flexibility inherent in the coalition’s education proposals.

Sure Start Children’s Centres

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. It is a pleasure to take part in a debate which will, I hope, rise above semantics. I do not know whether “initiation” is a partial word or not; I suppose it depends very much on what ceremonies one has undergone earlier in life.

This debate takes place in the context of a crisis of confidence in our education system and, more broadly—if I may pick a few headings at random—in our society’s ability to raise children so that they achieve, enjoy life, are safe and healthy, make a contribution, and go on to prosper. The PISA—programme for international student assessment—tables to which the Government frequently refer indicate that, on a comparative basis, this country’s performance has declined.

The first 10 years of the last Government, between 1997 and 2007, preceded the credit crunch. I should it put on record, in my party’s interests, that the period of solid economic growth between those years had begun in 1992. During that period, the number of young people aged 16 to 24—pick your age range—who were not in employment, education or training remained about level, but once the credit crunch arrived it spiralled up, and now as many as 1 million young people may not be in apprenticeships, at college, at school or in a job. That is a pretty tragic situation.

I have always believed that those who seek a crude proxy to measure the effectiveness of an education system should consider not so much the outcomes of those who go to Oxbridge—important though that is—or those who go to universities in general as the number of young people who end up as NEETs. We engage in an annual argument about whether exams are becoming easier, and how we are placed in comparative terms. I used to point out to Labour Ministers in the Select Committee that existed under the last Government that the system of which education forms a part was intended to deliver Every Child Matters outcomes, and to ensure that young people were able to go on to prosper in life. They cannot do that—and, indeed, they are signally failing to do it—if they end up as NEETs.

As I have said, those who seek the best proxy to measure the effectiveness of society’s systems for bringing up children—which, I suppose, include families—should consider the number of NEETs. That number is at a record high, and we need to tackle it. However, we are also concerned about social mobility, and the fact that our record on teenage pregnancy, fatherless households, drug use and other issues connected with social breakdown and social failure is not good in comparison with the records of other European countries.

The intellectual running under the new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition Government seems, ironically enough, to be being made largely by current and former Labour Members of Parliament. I am pleased to see that the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) is present. Whether we cite the Field report, the Allen report on early intervention or Alan Milburn’s report on social mobility, it is clear that a huge amount of work is being done, which indicates a general consensus in the House that we should try to become more effective.

The Select Committee produced its report as the Labour Government moved towards their target for full service delivery, which was at least 3,500 centres. I believe that there are now more than 3,600. Having initially established children’s centres in the most deprived parts of the country, the Government wanted to ensure that they existed in every part of the country. While it is fair to say that they wanted to provide a universal service, their rationale for taking Sure Start everywhere was the need to reach the poorest and most disadvantaged children in areas that were not themselves generally disadvantaged. They recognised that if they focused only on the most disadvantaged areas, many children elsewhere would be missed out.

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

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Stuart]

I will happily give way to my predecessor as Chair of the Select Committee.

[Mr Sheerman]

May I ask the hon. Gentleman to think again about what he has said? According to evidence given to the Select Committee, most children from deprived backgrounds lived outside the 500 most challenging wards in the country. That was the point: more young people with deprived backgrounds lived outside than inside the targeted areas.

[Mr Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is, of course, right, and if I suggested otherwise I did not mean to. I meant to say that the main driver was not the need to provide a universal service, but the need to reach poor children wherever they were. In rural constituencies such as mine, which may in general contain high levels of wealth, there are still many people from poorer families. The aim was to provide a universal service that would reach those people, but the Committee concluded that the policy had not been as effective as we should have liked it to be.

I hope that we shall learn from Ministers today about their vision of the future of children’s centres. We know that the Government agree on the importance of early intervention, and we know that they see an important role for children’s centres within that. We also know that they have rolled funding for children’s centres into the early intervention grant. They say that they are providing enough funds to keep all the existing children’s centres open, but they have not insisted that local authorities do so. Moreover, the larger fund in which they have included the funds for children’s centres has itself been reduced this year from about £2.7 billion to £2.4 billion, and from 1 April it will be 10.9% lower than the 2010-11 notional figure.

[Rehman Chishti (Gillingham and Rainham) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend congratulate authorities such as Medway, which has 19 Sure Start centres—seven of which are in my constituency—and has agreed to keep all of them open? That clearly demonstrates that it is not inevitable that Sure Start centres will close. I should declare an interest: I am a sitting Medway councillor.

[Mr Stuart]

I am happy to congratulate my hon. Friend’s council on adopting what it considers to be the most effective way of delivering the improvements that we so desperately want for young people. However, the number of NEETs has been rising, and research suggests that the outcomes from children’s centres so far are not what we would wish them to be.

We have heard about the bundling of funds and the relaxation of ring-fencing. Ministers are still saying that every Sure Start or other children’s centre should be able to stay open, but “should be able to stay open” and “will stay open” are two separate concepts. I should like to know from Ministers, and indeed from Opposition spokesmen, whether they are fixated on the importance of maintaining buildings from which services of varying quality emanate. Is that the be-all and end-all, or are we prepared to give local authorities the power to decide how best to provide early intervention, which may well be through a rationalisation of children’s centres? I do not know whether the Front-Bench teams think that the buildings are the be-all and end-all and that any reduction from 3,600 will be a disaster for our young people, or that local authorities should be allowed to think for themselves and tailor local solutions to local needs. I would like a clearer steer from both Front-Bench teams so that we have a better idea of where we are going.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

In the last Parliament, the hon. Gentleman and I served together on the Select Committee and I respect his opinion. He has touched on the key question. The Government are cutting the funding to my local authority by about 13% and they say that leaves enough money to keep the network open, but the local authority is cutting by 45%, which clearly will not leave enough, so the majority of centres will close. In such a situation should the Government intervene or should there be localism at its purest, and if the local authority wants to close down most of the centres should it be allowed to do so?

[Mr Stuart]

The hon. Gentleman is right to pose this question about the right response, and we need a clearer steer. While making claims about localism, will the Government in fact quietly put pressure on councils and say, “You must keep these centres open”? I recognise why the hon. Gentleman says the last Government put all these things in place and the new Government are threatening to dismantle them while denying doing so, as that is an understandable line to take in opposition, but rationalising these centres could be the right thing to do. It could be that, after sober analysis and assessment of the needs of its local community, a local authority decides that its children’s centre buildings are not working well enough and it cannot get the teams to deliver in the right way but thinks it will be able to find a better way of providing these services. I would like to know how fixated we are going to be on children’s centres per se, rather than on delivering the outcomes for young people.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

rose—

[Mr Stuart]

Perhaps the hon. Lady, who is her party’s Front-Bench representative, will explain the Labour party’s position on that.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way. I too served on the Select Committee with him in the last Parliament, and I think he is doing a sterling job as Chair of the new Select Committee. I am also pleased that we are having this debate today.

I can assure the hon. Gentleman that the Opposition are not fixated on the buildings. Our priority is that the provision should still exist. We still believe it should be a universal provision targeted on those most in need. It is not about the buildings; it is about ensuring that there is a service within them. When the Sure Start children’s centres were first introduced the aim was that everybody would be within a pushchair push of one of them. If a local authority decides to have just one or two such centres, people are not going to be within a pushchair push of their nearest one, and they will therefore not be used by those who need them most.

[Mr Stuart]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. She makes a fair point, but service delivery is the key and there is enormous variation in that between children’s centres across the country. In the last Parliament, the National Audit Office investigated the cost-effectiveness of centres at our behest, and it concluded that

“it remains very difficult to examine and compare centres’ cost effectiveness.”

It also said:

“Where we have been able to calculate unit costs we found wide variations. Together with other evidence this suggests that there is still scope for improving cost effectiveness.”

That suggests that there could be savings. The Government reasonably say that reductions in budget should not necessarily lead to closures. Children’s centres could, perhaps, be improved and operate on a lower budget.

The NAO also said:

“There is qualitative evidence of improvement; for example, some local authorities and centres are developing and implementing means of managing children’s centres to make more effective use of skills and resources. And most centres and local authorities have made substantial improvements in their monitoring of performance since our 2006 report.”

There is progress, therefore.

I ask the Minister to set out the Government’s vision, and explain to what extent they wish the existing infrastructure to be maintained, or whether, in the spirit of localism and the tailoring of services to meet local needs, they want local authorities to make up their own minds, which might lead to great discrepancies. It could certainly lead to the loss of a national entitlement to children’s centres, but that might be an improvement. A true localist looking at the analysis of the results so far may conclude that a more localised and differentiated approach would be better.

I went on a Select Committee trip to Finland two weeks ago. Learning lessons from Finland is hard, and I know my predecessor as Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), hated any mention of Finland. I do not think he ever explained why, but I guess it was because of the difficulty of applying its experiences and contexts to our experiences and contexts. There was one thing I did learn from Finland, however. Someone in its central department of education said, “We’ve been trying to achieve a particular outcome, but although we’ve been working at it for 10 years, we haven’t really made as much progress as we want, so we’re going to work harder and carry on trying to make it happen.” That is very different from the way things are done in our country, where, typically, 18 months into a new initiative new Ministers arrive and throw it overboard because they decide it does not work, and they stop doing the long, hard, grinding work that leads to the improvement of existing services.

I would hate the groundwork that has been done by children’s centres across the country to be dismantled, not because they are universally successful but because it takes a long, hard slog to improve performance and management, to bring on more leaders, and to learn what certificates they should sit for so that we have higher quality staff who can identify the areas that are brilliant and share that practice, and identify the areas that are poor and need to be challenged. I would rather we did that than what this country seems to do, which is just throw everything up in the air again when a new set of Ministers come into office.

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a powerful case. One of the Select Committee conclusions is:

“Children’s centres are a substantial investment with a sound rationale, and it is vital that this investment is allowed to bear fruit over the long term.”

The hon. Gentleman is reminding us of the necessity to consider the long term. The long term is even longer than 10 years, as he rightly points out, so now is not the time to fiddle with this provision.

[Mr Stuart]

It is certainly a time to fiddle with it. There is ample room for improvement, but it would be a shame if these centres were inadvertently dismantled before what they could deliver had been properly thought through. I certainly agree with the hon. Gentleman about that.

I also want the Minister to say whether there are any incentives in place for local authorities to ensure that they focus on changing the life chances of young children, because all too often people will pay lip service and say, “Of course we’re on board with this.” I am reminded of another Select Committee trip, this time to the Netherlands in the last Parliament. The Dutch changed the way local authorities were financed in respect of young people’s services. I think they froze the money from central Government so that if there was a spike in youth unemployment and so forth, local authorities would be at serious financial risk, but if they addressed such matters, they would be much better off. As a result, local authorities stopped just processing young people and putting the financial claim for that into the centre. Instead they became locally responsible for the financial consequences of young people remaining as NEETs. I believe—the previous Select Committee Chairman will put me right if I am wrong—that they more than halved the number of NEETs over the years.

If there are incentives for local authorities that are real and that bite and that mean they take this issue incredibly seriously and focus on it, that would give me more confidence than even the maintenance of the centres. If I felt that local authorities were driven by a desire to grasp this agenda and make a difference to their young people’s lives and one of them told me it was closing some of its children’s centres, I would find that more encouraging than watching, in this time of fiscal retrenchment, centres close apparently because they were especially local and apparently because things would then get better.

[Ms Karen Buck (Westminster North) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making a very powerful case, as always. On local authorities and incentives, I wonder whether he shares my concern that some authorities may do what it looks as though my local authority is doing. Westminster city council is trying to keep the children’s centres open so it can avoid the controversy attached to closing a building, but it is slashing outreach and drop-in services and other services that actually work and that are provided from within the bricks and mortar of those buildings. That is likely to have an even worse impact on children’s outcomes.

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Just before the Chairman of the Select Committee responds to that intervention, I want to make the point that, although there is no time limit on Back-Bench speeches and the House is listening attentively and with respect to the Chairman of the Select Committee, I know that he will want to take account of the substantial interest in making contributions to the debate, and I am keen that everyone who wishes to speak should have the chance to do so. I know that the hon. Gentleman will tactfully take account of my gentle ministration.

[Mr Stuart]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for that gentle and quite proper intervention—and those who wish to speak will be even more grateful.

The hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) is right. We need to ensure that the resources are used for the best purposes, not political purposes—not in order to make it look as though something has been protected, or to avoid embarrassment, but to help to look after the most vulnerable children for the long term. That is what we must all hope for.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Mr Stuart]

I am minded to follow your advice, Mr Speaker—

[Mr Sheerman]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way just on that point?

[Mr Stuart]

I will.

[Mr Sheerman]

I intervene only because the hon. Gentleman, who is a good friend of mine, mentioned Finland and has now moved on to Holland. It is true that, although I like the Finns, I do not think that many lessons can be learned from their experience. However, he did not give the full picture of the core of the Dutch answer to NEETS, which is very successful: in Holland people cannot draw benefit until they are 27 unless they are training and learning the Dutch language.

[Mr Stuart]

I believe that that measure was originally introduced by the mayor of Rotterdam, who picked the 27 threshold. It was about creating incentives at a local level in order to tackle the root of the problem. The hon. Gentleman, as befits a previous Select Committee Chairman, tries again to correct me by pointing out that I did not necessarily give the full story.

Will Ministers explain the rationale for the things included in the early intervention grant? I should like to understand how they hold together. Will they take us through the finances of the grant in some detail, and tell the House whether the Government have acted on the Select Committee report recommendation that they pull together all the funding that goes into Sure Start children’s centres? How much will come through health visitors? Also, can Ministers tell us more about health visitors? One of the most important things that children’s centres can do is be more effective in outreach. The National Audit Office and the Durham university study found that, in fact, children’s centres were not as effective in that respect as they could be. The growth in health visitors could play a major part in creating a more effective outreach service that identifies such children earlier and gets them the services and support they need, so that they are school-ready.

Mindful, as ever, of your ministrations, Mr Speaker, I shall sit down.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I would say that that is the experience of Sure Start in one situation, but we need to be sure that all Sure Starts deliver high standards for all the children who attend.

I want to make two general points about Sure Start. First, there is the issue of localism, which has cropped up several times. The real need is to ensure that we shape our services for the needs that we find on the ground where we see the problems. It is therefore right that local authorities have more influence in allocating and shaping provision. This is the converse of the previous Government’s approach, which was always top down, telling everybody what it was important to do and ensuring they did it, but not taking into account people’s needs, especially local circumstances. That obsession with top-down control often means that people end up worrying too much about the structure and too little about those within it and the children needing to benefit from it.

Secondly, we are no longer ring-fencing funding. That is right, because it is important to have local accountability for the provision of services and to enable local authorities to make the decisions that they want to make. The way in which the Government are now funding Sure Start is the better way to ensure that these facilities can be more flexible and adaptable. I make the case for localism on those terms.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I would like to pull together the point that my hon. Friend has just made and the point about evaluation. Does he agree that if we are to have a more localist approach, national Government need to ensure that evaluation takes place so that we have the data to see whether local authorities are making a difference to the school-readiness of children when they turn up? If we spend all this money and it does not make any difference, as the Durham studies have shown in too many cases involving poorer children, then we are spending money to no positive result.

[Neil Carmichael]

My hon. Friend is right. We need to be sure that we deliver the outcomes that we want. If we are obsessed with process, structures and all the rest, and not with outcomes and delivery, we are letting down the very children we aspire to help.

The Education Committee went on a trip to Finland, where there were some interesting points to note, one of which was schools’ involvement in more than just teaching the children. Schools always had social care provision and, in effect, district nurse provision, and there was proper, regular consultation between those providers and the teachers if there was a problem. That is well worth thinking about. It is important to consider other ways of doing things than simply the prescribed way from central Government. As I have often said, it is sensible to look at other systems, not necessarily to copy them completely, because that cannot be done effectively—there are too many obstructions such as different cultures and priorities—but to pick up ideas that can be transferred. I urge people to keep an open mind about that kind of arrangement.

Before we got to Finland, we were in Germany. There, too, I learned something, which was that the Germans have a different approach to NEETs, and they did not seem to have nearly as great a problem as we have had. They were taking relatively proactive measures to encourage young people to become involved in society at an early stage and to give them signposted ways into further education and employment. That is something that we could pick up on. There is a lot more detail that we could discuss about those trips that would be useful to the debate, but I mention those two examples.

The right hon. Member for Birkenhead was entirely right, and very moving, when he spoke about family structures where parents were sometimes unable to provide decent parenting for their children, and wondered whether he could have survived in certain circumstances. We must recognise that this is a very serious issue. We cannot, as a society, be happy when such comments can be made and readily accepted without question. We must concentrate on improving parenting—not in the case of all parents, obviously, but those with the biggest challenges and problems.

I met a lady in my constituency who is in charge of the Nationwide Community Learning Partnership, which focuses on providing strong and effective programmes for improving parenting. I urge the Minister to think very carefully about such programmes, which offer a way forward. That organisation is of a very high standard. It is based in the county of Gloucestershire but has functions across the country. I think that, allied to Sure Start activities, helping people in need of parenting skills is a way forward. I invite the Minister to meet the Nationwide Community Learning Partnership, because I think that it would bring something of value to the discussion.

We need to be more flexible and open-minded on this issue. We need to recognise that Sure Start has a strong role to play. It is sensible to have a localist and flexible approach to providing such support.

In this debate, it is worth remembering the role that the pupil premium will have in helping children. I do not think that it has yet been amplified, but I believe that it is an important way of getting financial support to the right place at the right time. The schools I have visited in my constituency that will receive a large amount of pupil premium recognise its value.

The Government’s decision to provide funding for two and three-year-olds is a big step in the right direction. As hon. Members have said, one can tell when children who need that support have received it and when they have not. To solve the problems of children in this category, it is logical that we must help them when it really matters, and it really matters at that young age.

This is an important debate. We have to be sure of the quality of the services that we provide. We need better evaluation and a wiser way of interpreting the data. We must capture the needs of local people and children in a much more intelligent way. To a large extent, that means trusting local authorities to do just that. It is right to have this debate at this time. There are a lot of challenges and we should not rest until the headline figures that I referred to at the beginning of my remarks come down much faster than they have done thus far.

[Stephen Twigg (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am delighted to have the opportunity to contribute to this debate. I give my apologies in advance in case the debate continues beyond 4 o’clock, because I am hoping to speak in Westminster Hall.

I agree with the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) about the importance of evaluation. There have been constructive speeches from Members from across the House. As my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) said, we have to start by looking at the evidence of what is working in our country and, as several hon. Members have said, what has and has not been successful in other parts of the world. Several hon. Members talked about the balance between having universal expectations of services in all parts of the country and local flexibility. I am a fan of local flexibility. The hon. Member for Stroud said that the situation must depend on the needs on the ground. I say to him gently that although that is true, meeting those needs on the ground depends on the resources being there. In the latter part of my speech, I will talk about the impact of the Government’s cuts to these grants on children’s centres and nursery provision in Liverpool.

I absolutely concur with the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) on the need to focus on those who are not in education, employment or training. Ultimately, the success or failure of Sure Start and other investment in early years will be assessed by whether we succeed in cracking the nut that all speakers have referred to: that so many people’s life chances are set before they go to primary school or even, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) said, before they enter a Sure Start children’s centre.

Before 1997, I had the privilege of working with my right hon. Friend the Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge), who is now Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. She was asked by the then Leader of the Opposition, Tony Blair, to develop a policy for early years. That ultimately became the Sure Start policy that was taken up in Government by my right hon. Friends the Members for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and for Dulwich and West Norwood (Tessa Jowell). Our approach then was very much the one that my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield set out. We looked at the evidence and at the examples of excellence from our own country. They did exist, but they were individual cases rather than occurring nationwide. Perhaps more importantly, we looked at the head start programme in the United States, which seemed to be having such a big impact on the life chances of children and young people from poorer communities, and at similar programmes in European countries.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead has had to leave the Chamber, but his speech was an important contribution to the debate. In the latter part of my remarks I will focus, as I am sure will other Labour Members, on the impact of Government cuts, and in doing so we are saying that not everything in the garden is rosy. Of course some children’s centres are doing better and are more effective than others, but we need a proper quantitative and qualitative analysis of what is working so that lessons can be shared across the country.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I believe it was the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) who had the courage to say that if one believes in early intervention, in the current financial situation one must reduce funding further up by taking money away from primary schools, secondary schools and colleges, and give it to early years. Does the hon. Gentleman therefore support the fact that two-year-olds will now have nursery education at a cost of more than £300 million, which perhaps reflects a redistribution from later school years by this Government?

[Stephen Twigg]

I welcome that element of what the Government have done. On its own, it would represent something of a redistribution. The trouble is that it exists alongside other changes that work in the opposite direction—principally the removal of the ring fence. The hon. Gentleman referred to the debate on ring-fencing. It has always struck me in debates about education and other public services that people tend to be against ring-fencing in general, but in favour of it in particular. We all want our favourite thing to be ring-fenced, but we do not like the general idea. The principle of moving away from central Government saying, “You must spend this funding on this, regardless of local circumstances,” is good. However, it is concerning in this instance, not least because it is happening in the context of cuts in many areas. With the best will in the world, it is very difficult for local authorities to maintain expenditure on early years with the ring fence removed, when they are having to make such big cuts in other areas of their budgets. I will come back to that point, but I urge the Government to think again about the proposal to remove the ring fence for this area of spending.

I think that the case for investment in this area is now accepted across the House. It can make such a difference to the life chances of all children, and in particular those from the poorest and most deprived areas with the greatest need. The formulation set out by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead is right: we want a universal service, but within that, we must focus without relenting, and without any apology, on the needs of those from the very poorest communities.

That brings me to the financial predicament that is being faced by local authorities of all parties up and down the country. There is no quarrel about the need for cuts, or about the fact that some of the cuts will affect children’s services, but our concern is that the scale, speed and distribution of those cuts, combined with the removal of the ring fence, will cause enormous damage.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Hancock]

I am puzzled; I hope I will not be shocked. I know that Liverpool council’s total spending power is falling by 15% over two years in real terms. The hon. Lady has just claimed that spending on children’s services is falling by 35%. Is it true that Liverpool council—

[Mr Graham Stuart]

A Labour council.

[Matthew Hancock]

Is it run by the Labour party? Is it true that that council is cutting children’s services by so much more than the total overall cut?

--- Later in debate ---

[Luciana Berger]

I look forward to the Secretary of State’s forthcoming visit to Liverpool.

From many pieces of correspondence with families in my constituency, I have learned that they cannot understand why, when they play by the rules—many are in work and paying their taxes—their most prized and precious asset is the among the first to come under the axe. Councillor Jane Corbett, whom I mentioned—she is Liverpool council’s education and children’s services cabinet member—spoke for so many in our community when she said:

“The Government is showing complete contempt for the youngest children in Liverpool by putting forward these politically motivated cuts. I cannot believe the lack of concern for children and families in Liverpool.”

Liverpool people have a strong sense of fairness. They know that the Government are not treating them fairly, and they will not forget it. If the Government want a big society, they need not look much further than the Sure Start centres at Childwall and Woolton, and at Church and Mossley Hill.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady was just asked how she would like the deficit impacts to be dealt with on a local authority basis, and said that she would welcome a meeting. However, if there were a Labour Government, how would the money have been divided up? Undoubtedly, under a Labour Government, there would have been pain in children’s services, as in other areas, just as under a coalition.

[Luciana Berger]

I will come to what needs to happen in the final part of my speech.

To go back to my previous point, the Government seek a big society, but we already have that—in the two Sure Starts that are under threat of closure. We have committed staff, engaged parents and fantastic children. However, if we are looking for a big betrayal of children’s hopes and futures, we need look not much further than those on the Government Benches.

My hon. Friends have spoken previously about pledges that were made before the election, and I want to repeat those in this debate, because those important points have not been made today. The day before the election, the Prime Minister said:

“Yes, we back Sure Start. It’s a disgrace that Gordon Brown has been trying to frighten people about this. He’s the Prime Minister of this country but he’s been scaring people about something that really matters. Not only do we back Sure Start, but we will improve it.”

Also on the day before the election, the Deputy Prime Minister said:

“Sure Start is one of the best things the last government has done and I want all these centres to stay open.”

On behalf of all parents and children in the communities in my constituency who today depend on Sure Start in these challenging times, and those who will depend on it in future, I urge the Government, the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister to honour the pledges that they made the day before the election. As my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition said earlier to the Prime Minister, it is not too late to ring-fence the money to save our Sure Starts.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I am delighted to follow my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) in speaking in this important debate. The fact that three Labour MPs representing Liverpool constituencies have contributed shows the depth of feeling in our city about the issue under discussion.

In a move designed to detoxify the Tory brand and cultivate cuddly, compassionate Conservatism—allegedly big on children and the family—the current Prime Minister told Tory acolytes back in 2009:

“Sure Start will stay, and we’ll improve it.”

Actions speak louder than words, however. Eighteen months and one election later, 250 children’s centres are due to close nationwide and some 2,000 will be forced to reduce their services. Sure Start as we know it looks set neither to “stay” nor “improve”. This is another example of Cleggism, if one was needed: saying one thing, but doing another.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Steve Rotheram]

No, not just yet.

It is glaringly obvious that the Government do not understand the holistic nature of the Sure Start children’s centres—their qualitative as well as their quantitative value. Yes, they are about providing a co-ordinated range of practical facilities and services, but, equally importantly, they are also about offering social and emotional encouragement and support, often to parents living in some of the most disaffected, marginalised and hard-to-reach communities in the land.

Sure Start children’s centres do not cater only for the most disadvantaged—whom our Cabinet of multi-millionaires clearly finds so tiresome. They also support hard-working low and middle-income families. Ministers would do well to remember that. Isolation, chaos and dysfunction are both causes and symptoms of family deprivation and marginalisation, and are not the preserve of the least well-off.

I fully acknowledge that the children’s centre programme, which is still in its infancy, is far from perfect. The quality of provision is sometimes patchy, there is room for standardisation and improvement, and although all the indications are good, it is much too early to evaluate the benefits fully.

--- Later in debate ---

[Steve Rotheram]

As we have heard, the Government and certain Members just do not get any of this, but actually, Liverpool city council does get it. It is much maligned of late by the Con-Dems, of course, but, no thanks to the coalition, and despite an 18% cut to its early intervention grant, from which Sure Start funding must now be drawn, it has managed to secure the future of 22 of its centres and will work hard through its consultation process to find ways of avoiding the closure of the four that are threatened, which my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby referred to earlier.

However, this is no vindication of the Government’s approach, as unfortunately, service reductions are inevitable. City-wide, under-fives and their families will suffer as a consequence and, needless to say, Liverpool city council has been forced by the Government into the iniquitous position of having to take from Peter to give to Paul. Shuffling reduced resources has inevitably meant that protecting children’s centres has come at the price of other vital services.

I am particularly concerned about the broader, vaguer proposal tucked away in the coalition agreement to introduce payment by results into the Sure Start equation. Market forces bring with them risks, competition and inconsistency. People such as the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) may disagree, but in my book there is no place for any of those in the delivery of services to children and young families.

All this would of course be all well and good if the Government could present a reasoned, evidence-based case for change, but as usual they cannot. In fact, in their arrogance they appear to have gone out of their way stubbornly to ignore popular opinion and expert advice, proffered well in advance of their budget deliberations.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The evidence that we need to change the system of accountability is available, both from the National Audit Office and from Durham university, whose team analysed primary schools and the young people attending them over seven or eight years. It found that the readiness for school of young people from the poorest families was not improving, despite all the expenditure by the previous Government. Therefore, moving to payment by results, so that local authorities and children’s centre staff are absolutely focused on transforming the life chances of children, is precisely what we need to be doing, and I think the hon. Gentleman should think again.

[Steve Rotheram]

What a bizarre argument. Saying that an area such as Liverpool, which is among the most deprived, is having its money reduced and that that will somehow result in improved services to the groups that the hon. Gentleman is talking about is bizarre. As we have heard, almost a year ago the Children, Schools and Families Committee, as the Select Committee was known then, published a progress report on Sure Start children’s centres, having conducted a lengthy inquiry involving dozens of expert witnesses and practitioners—apparently, Jamie Oliver was the only one to turn down this fantastic opportunity. The Committee’s analysis was rigorous and measured, and it was firmly rooted in common sense and fairness. Three of its recommendations are worth highlighting again today.

First, the Committee warned that any reduction of funding

“would undermine the programme to an unacceptable degree and jeopardise the long-term gains from early intervention… we would not wish authorities to be bequeathed an underfunded statutory duty.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I thank the Chair of the Education Committee for securing this timely debate. We served together on the Children, Schools and Families Committee in the previous Parliament and he is already making a name for himself. Although I am very grateful to him for securing the debate, I doubt that the Minister will be quite so grateful given the opportunity it has created for colleagues to air their experiences of the impact on the front line of the decisions that she and the Secretary of State have taken about funding and the removal of ring-fencing.

The debate is timely for several reasons, but primarily because many local authorities are taking decisions that they do not particularly want to take on the future of children’s centres. That is especially true of Liverpool. Contrary to some of the disgraceful comments that have been made in the past week and even in this debate, those decisions are not politically motivated. Liverpool is having to take them because of the terrible settlement it has received, which is one of the worst in the country even though it is the most deprived local authority in the country.

The debate is also timely because it fortuitously follows a seminar on Sure Start that was hosted in Parliament this morning by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), as well as the 4Children conference at which the Minister of State and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), who is not in his place, also spoke. I understand that she thanked them this morning for their constructive criticism, so I hope that she will take my remarks in the same spirit.

If the Minister had been able to come to the seminar, I am sure she would have found it very useful. We heard from a number of parents and others involved in children’s centres about what services mean to them and their communities and about the impact that budget cuts could have and are having. We heard from everyone, including some of the Minister’s colleagues, whom we were pleased came along. We heard, as we have heard in this debate, about the difference that good children’s centres can make to the lives of children and parents. We heard from Willie Wilson, whose children attend the Pen Green centre in Corby. He told us how being involved in its Sunday dads group had helped him to overcome his mental health issues and how much his children enjoyed using the centre. He said:

“Everything good in my life in the last five years has been down to Pen Green Children’s Centre”.

Those sentiments were echoed by a young mum who told us how her local centre had helped her and others to get over post-natal depression. Pen Green is facing big cuts to its funding and might have to cut services. I understand that the Minister’s colleague, the hon. Member for Corby (Ms Bagshawe), has said that that will happen over her dead body. I do not know whether the Minister just caught that but I think the Secretary of State did and I hope that they will talk to the hon. Lady about that, as such comments are not necessary.

The panel at the seminar agreed with something that the Minister will have heard at her engagement this morning: the ring fence to Sure Start funding is key to the stability of the service on the front line. It also agreed that it is no good keeping centres open if they are not providing a good quality service.

We learn, as we have today from Hammersmith and Fulham, the Prime Minister’s favourite council, that centres that are apparently being kept open will have to survive on a budget of £19,000 a year. No doubt the Minister will agree that that will not go far. It is hardly enough to pay for a caretaker, let alone the running costs and a work force. If we want good results from centres, they need the funding and the stability of funding to employ qualified staff and provide quality services. Cuts and the removal of ring-fencing will not help.

The Minister has been conspicuous by her absence from the past two meetings of the all-party Sure Start group, although we were pleased that the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) was present. The hon. Lady recently got round to replying to a letter sent from the group in December, to which I referred earlier. Given the Minister’s absence from the meeting as she was ill, I was surprised to receive, during the meeting, a Google alert informing me that she had published a local media release that very afternoon criticising her local Labour council in Brent for closing or downgrading

“10 out of 20 children’s centres”.

Apart from that not being strictly true—I have checked—I thought it was a bit rich that the hon. Lady should be criticising her local council, which is having to deal with a real-terms cut to its budget for early intervention of almost £10 million over three years, or 18%, according to figures that I have from the Library. That is a cut that she handed to the council, and a decision that she made. She even had the sense of humour in that press release to portray that as a rather good deal. I doubt whether many of her constituents will see it that way, even if Brent council manages to protect the majority of front-line services.

We keep hearing the refrain that there is enough money in the early intervention grant to maintain the children’s centre network. We heard it from the Prime Minister earlier, and a couple of weeks ago he even said that funding for that grant is going up. Both those statements are misleading to the public. The early intervention grant might be increasing by a small amount between 2011-12 and 2012-13, but from the baseline—the budget that councils originally had for services that will now be provided by that fund—there is a significant cut. The EIG covers more than 20 other funding streams, as well as children’s centres, and according to the Department’s publications it is being cut by a total of almost £1.4 billion over three years in cash terms. In real terms, Commons Library research shows that that will be more like 18%, with the worst-hit areas seeing cumulative cuts of more than 22%.

Funding for children’s centres is not ring-fenced within the early intervention grant, which itself is not ring-fenced from the rest of the local authority’s budget, so there is nothing to stop that money being used to fund things entirely separate from what it is supposed to be for. There is therefore no way in which the Minister can realistically tell us today that she is protecting Sure Start. She will call it localism, no doubt, but I call it naiveté in the extreme. Why be a Minister if all she can do is cross her fingers and hope for the best?

I am sure that very few local authorities want to cut budgets for children’s centres or other early intervention schemes, but given the scale of the cuts to their budgets across the board, many of them will have no choice. If not children’s centres, do they cut breaks for disabled children, programmes to combat teen pregnancy, family intervention or targeted mental health in schools, all of which save money in the long term, which is the purpose of early intervention projects? We all know the old adage about a stitch in time saving nine. In short, cutting early intervention funding is ill thought out and will create long-term problems for the sake of short-term savings.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, all the more so after her kind words. It is early days and, as I said in my remarks, I hope we do not see the dismantling of a service that is still embryonic. It is not about buildings or budgets, but about outcomes. How does she think we can best ensure that it delivers the outcomes we want? Would she support a movement to payment by results, for instance?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I would support a return to the ring fence, if not for the whole early intervention grant, then specifically for the Sure Start element within it. [Interruption.] The hon. Gentleman wanted my opinion and I have given it. The proposals are also contrary to the considered views of the Select Committee, which he now chairs, of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead and of my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen).

The Minister of State seems to be continually distracted and keeps missing important points I am making. She has already had to ask the Secretary of State about my comment on the hon. Member for Corby, and I would not like her to miss anything else I say.

As I said, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North, whose opinions the Minister actively sought, have both championed the prioritisation of early intervention schemes such as children’s centres.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

I am afraid that I cannot answer the hon. Lady’s question at the moment.

Children’s centres are a priority for us, so we have ensured that there is enough money in the system to maintain the network of Sure Start children’s centres through the early intervention grant, or EIG. The spending review announced that funding for Sure Start children’s centres would be maintained in cash terms, including new investment from the Department of Health for 4,200 health visitors to work alongside outreach and family support workers. I understand that many in the sector are concerned about the removal of ring-fencing. However, this is not about a lack of priority for the sector; on the contrary, it is a recognition of its growing strength and maturity.

The removal of the ring fence is not taking place in a vacuum. Across the piece, this Government are removing ring fences in many areas because we believe that the right way to make decisions is to trust people on the ground to decide how best to prioritise funding. In that way, we get much better decision making.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the Minister give way?

[Bill Esterson]

rose—

[Sarah Teather]

I give way first to the Chair of the Select Committee and then to the hon. Gentleman.

[Mr Stuart]

The Minister said that the budget will be protected in cash terms, including the funding from the Department of Health for 4,200 health visitors. Will she spell out precisely what sums are coming from where and when they will be appearing in the budget?

[Sarah Teather]

I do not want to spell out exactly which bits of the EIG go to what, because I want local authorities to make decisions on the ground about the best ways to do that. As the hon. Gentleman says, the money for health visitors comes from the Department of Health. I will write to him to provide some information about that, because I do not have it here with me. However, I do not want to—

Education Bill

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Tuesday 8th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

As so often, the hon. Lady is absolutely right. One problem in the education system is that we need to make it easier for good heads to tackle underperformance by encouraging staff to do the professional development that they need to improve. If they do not improve, they should move on. No one benefits when poor teachers are in the classroom. It not only places an additional burden on hard-working and talented staff, but denies children the chance that they need.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Michael Gove]

I am delighted to give way to the Select Committee Chairman.

[Mr Stuart]

The Secretary of State plans to keep a register of teachers who are barred from teaching. Will he confirm that schools will be able to refer someone who is sacked for gross misconduct to the Secretary of State to be put on the register, but not someone who is fired for incompetence? If that is the case, will he explain the reasoning behind it?

[Michael Gove]

I am delighted to confirm that. We want to ensure that people who are barred for gross misconduct are kept on a central list, which is updated continually. As my hon. Friend and I know, the General Teaching Council, which was responsible for dismissing and barring incompetent teachers, succeeded in barring only 14 teachers over the 10 years that it was in existence. We need to ensure that at school level, head teachers have the power to dismiss those whom they consider to be inappropriate. We must ensure that head teachers who are doing a fantastic job and are generating improved results have freedom and flexibility over the staff that are required to carry on doing that great work.

[Mr Stuart]

I agree with the Secretary of State that the previous system was not working effectively. However, that is no reason to believe that we should not have a system that ensures that an incompetent teacher who is removed and sacked—we know how difficult that is, as the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Kate Hoey) just said—does not reappear in another school. That will happen if the Secretary of State does not put that person’s name on a register. I ask him to reconsider this issue.

[Michael Gove]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point, and we will have an opportunity to consider it in Committee. The phenomenon that he refers to is known in the United States as “the dance of the lemons”, whereby teachers who are not up to the job are removed from it and reappear in another educational setting. We have explored with a variety of professional bodies the best way of ensuring that that cannot happen. There is no consensus that a central list of the kind he mentions is the answer. I am happy to discuss with him, in Committee and elsewhere, how we can ensure that teachers who are not effective do not continue in the classroom.

I mentioned that there are six principal areas in the Bill. The first is investment in the early years. It is critical that Opposition Members appreciate that if they vote against the Bill tonight, they will be voting against additional funding to guarantee 15 hours of learning for all disadvantaged two-year-olds. Under Labour, 20,000 of the poorest two-year-olds would have received 15 hours of free learning. Now, under the coalition Government’s proposals, 120,000 two-year-olds will be able to have the best possible free learning. Because of that investment, we will be able to ensure that those children are school-ready when they arrive at primary school. We can ensure that when we have in place the literacy check at the end of year 1 that we intend to impose, those children will have a grasp of the basic skills required to make the most of their time at primary school.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andy Burnham (Leigh) (Lab)]

It is only weeks since the Government asked the House to pass an education Act using procedures normally reserved for counter-terrorism legislation. Today the Secretary of State is back with an even more audacious request. He is asking Members of the House of Commons to give him more than 50 new powers, and near-total control over almost every aspect of our school system in England. He wants the power to seize land, to close schools, to overrule councils on budgets, to ban teachers from working, to define early-years provision, and to rewrite the curriculum without reference to parents or the public.

The Secretary of State has been known to claim—and he did so again today—that he is continuing Labour’s reforms. Labour Members empowered parents with guarantees, but the Bill does precisely the opposite. It constitutes an unprecedented power grab from pupils, parents, professionals and the public, leaving them without essential safeguards in a free-for-all. As we have heard, the Secretary of State wants to tell children what subjects and facts they must learn, and what kind of schools they must go to. Student and parent choice is being restricted.

During the passage of the Bill, the House will have to reflect very carefully on whether it can ever be healthy for so much power over something as precious as our children’s education to be vested in one person. Given the Secretary of State’s record in office to date, would it not be downright reckless to give him a free hand in such crucial issues? Local authorities will be stripped of their long-standing role of looking after all children in their areas, balancing the wishes of one group against those of another and thereby ensuring that service is shaped by need and not by the loudest voices.

Where does this leave Government promises of localism? I look to the Liberal Democrat Benches. Where does it leave those promises? Absolutely nowhere. By preaching freedom and autonomy—as he so frequently does—only to come up with a highly prescriptive reform of the curriculum, the Secretary of State places himself in serious danger of collapsing under the weight of his own contradictions.

As with the Government’s national health service reforms, the fabric of public services is being ripped up. Power is being taken from people and handed back to the system. The result is a huge void in public accountability at local level. Liberal Democrat councillors can see that; why cannot Members of Parliament see it as well? The Bill reveals an unhealthy obsession with structures, and the mistaken view that structural reform automatically leads to higher standards. It does not. The Bill has little to say about what really matters to parents: high standards in the basics, a rich and balanced curriculum, and quality teaching in every classroom.

There are elements of the Bill that we support, such as the proposals relating to early-years provision and discipline, and I shall say something about those later. However, what we are witnessing from this Secretary of State—and, indeed, from the Secretary of State for Health—is an unseemly rush to reform in which the normal processes of government are simply ditched. There will be no pilots, no evidence and no consultation. No time will be taken to listen to parents and children, consult teachers, and build the broad consensus in the country that should properly underpin any education reform. We will oppose the Bill tonight because it represents too big a gamble with the life chances of our children, and because—as I shall now set out in terms—it takes power from pupils, parents, professionals and the public, leaving them with fewer protections in a less publicly accountable education system.

Let me explain first how the Bill takes power from pupils. It restricts student choice and takes away guarantees at a time when youth unemployment is at a record high. It strips yet more support from young people, adding to the growing risk of a lost generation. This is national apprenticeships week. Debating the abolition of a guarantee of an apprenticeship for all suitably qualified 16 to 19-year-olds seems to me an odd way in which to mark it. It cements the impression that this Secretary of State gives very little thought indeed to the hopes and life chances of the 50% of young people who are unlikely to go to university. That is further strengthened by clause 29, which lifts the requirement on local authorities to ensure young people have access to studying for the diploma. Both the Association of Colleges and the Association of School and College Leaders have expressed concerns that that sends the

“wrong message about the future of vocational education.”

[Interruption.] The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning shakes his head, but that is what they say. Does it not also send the wrong message about student choice in this day and age that young people might not be able to choose the courses that will give them the skills they need?

[Mr Graham Stuart]

May I gently request that the right hon. Gentleman does not take this line on apprenticeships? I served on the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill Committee. One criticism was that the Bill gave a statutory right to an apprenticeship when one needs a job to get one. The right hon. Gentleman can correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that the current Bill simply recognises that reality, but does not alter the right of a young person who secures a job that needs apprenticeship funding to get that funding from Government. I therefore do not think the right hon. Gentleman is taking the right line on this very important issue.

[Andy Burnham]

I hear what the Chair of the Select Committee on Education says, but this guarantee was important because it was about bringing forward offers of apprenticeships, particularly from the public sector, so that there are sufficient opportunities for young people who decide that university is not for them. I put it to the hon. Gentleman that we in Parliament have neglected debating the opportunities for those 50% of young people who do not plan to go to university. We owe it to them to do more by debating the quality of the opportunities that we are going to give them so that they can have a foothold in the future and hope of a better life. We endlessly debate higher education, and that is very important, but is it not about time that we gave more thought to young people who want to get a good skill so that they can get on in life? The hon. Gentleman’s Secretary of State has absolutely nothing to say to them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate. Last year, the Academies Act 2010 flew through Parliament. Today, we are debating the Government’s second education Bill, which follows on from the White Paper entitled “The Importance of Teaching”. Disraeli told the House 136 years ago:

“Upon the education of the people of this country the fate of this country depends.”—[Official Report, 15 June 1874; Vol. 219, c. 1618.]

That view was true then; today, it is even more obvious and is shared across the House.

There is a lot to support in the Bill—a lot that even the most opportunistic of Oppositions would struggle to oppose. I welcome the priority given to behaviour and discipline, the subject of the Education Committee’s first report, which was published last week. Anonymity for teachers prior to criminal charge and clarity about teachers’ powers will materially help, as will the more focused brief for Ofsted. The Committee urges the Government to collect appropriate data to monitor the actual, as opposed to the perceived, state of discipline in our schools. I hope that Ministers will think on that.

The emphasis on international comparison is also right. What was the point of the previous Government claiming higher standards at home if, compared with others, our relative position was collapsing? The changes to Ofqual are therefore also correct. The duty on schools to bring in specialist careers advice from outside is hugely welcome. The provision of advice is often woeful and exacerbates pre-existing disadvantage for those who do not have strong family networks. The change is a great move and needs to be extended to academies and free schools. If that cannot happen in the Bill, I should like to hear from Ministers that it will be included in the funding agreement.

Those are all good things, yet I cannot help feeling a little disappointed with the Bill. When I saw “The Importance of Teaching”, I thought, “Maybe the Government have got it. Maybe they’ll be obsessed with teacher quality above all else”, as the research suggests we should be. Attracting, retaining and motivating the brightest and best in teaching is a matter of existential importance to this country’s future, and removing the incompetent is likewise essential, so what does the Bill offer on that front? Less than I would like.

We know that Teach First, the highly selective programme to get the brightest graduates into teaching, is being doubled in size, which is extremely welcome. The entry level for teacher training is being raised to a 2:2 degree, and training will be reformed, with a big expansion of school-led initial teacher training, which the Education Committee has welcomed.

However, it seems to me that the biggest challenges are to increase the accountability of teachers and to manage variability both within and between schools. The Government have inherited a performance management system for teachers that is toothless. The so-called social partnership was a surrender to the teaching unions and the producer interest, strangling every effort to put the interests of the child brought up in poverty ahead of those of the well-paid, qualified adult who teaches them. Our professional standards, by which the performance of teachers is judged, were written as much by union leaders as by leaders in education. When will the Secretary of State rewrite the professional standards? That cannot be started too soon.

If the Government’s promise of autonomy and accountability is to be delivered, we need more than a refocused Ofsted. We need action when children stop progressing in a teacher’s class. We need a considered resetting of the rights of the child and the rights of the work force. Where are the provisions in the Bill to ensure that the teachers who do not help pupils to learn cease to teach?

The Government have stressed the importance of autonomy in their proposals for free schools and academies, which I broadly welcome. The best education systems in the world all give their schools and heads a lot of autonomy. However, we need to be wary of concluding that greater autonomy by itself brings higher standards. High-performing leaders tend to demand and be granted more autonomy in any organisation—it is a by-product of top performance rather than an initial driver. In business, a top manager is granted more freedom because of his success. He then uses that freedom further to improve his practice. A management consultant looking at businesses with branches would find that the best-performing branches in a variety of businesses tended to have leaders with greater autonomy from the centre. Observing that, the consultant might conclude that if only all managers had those greater freedoms, standards would necessarily rise elsewhere. I believe that that would be an erroneous judgment. Can Ministers assure me that we are not making that mistake in education?

McKinsey’s excellent report, “How the world’s most improved schools systems keep getting better”, shows that different interventions are required at different stages of school system improvement. Ministers should reflect on its analysis and recognise that in a system as large as England’s, one size does not fit all. Will they also expand on the respective roles of competition and co-operation? How will the Government ensure that competition, which is so critical to improvements in the business sector, will not stifle the exchange of best practices that is often so important in the education sector?

I entirely understand why Ministers have proposed what they have proposed on the English baccalaureate—they want to ensure that young people are not put on Mickey Mouse courses that should be removed for their lack of rigour. However, that rightful intervention does not necessarily mean that one should assume that all courses that are not academic courses are Mickey Mouse courses that lack rigour. Surely we should ensure that we remove inappropriate courses rather than condemn them all. I am concerned that we could end up getting the mix between vocational and academic courses wrong.

Chris Goodwin is the head teacher of Beverley grammar school in my constituency, which must be one of the highest-performing state schools in the country. Despite its name, it is the oldest state school—and indeed the oldest school—on one site in the country. It is a comprehensive school for boys and it has been found to be outstanding in its last three Ofsted inspections. Chris Goodwin and his team have extreme concerns about the potential impact of the baccalaureate. He said:

“I thought the whole drive of the government is to give power to the Headteachers to enable them to make the right choices for their students. By publishing tables and rating schools in this way, you are placing me, the staff and students in a strait-jacket. We will have no choice but to comply, to the detriment of all concerned…This is ironic, as my entire Senior Team are in favour of a better constructed English Baccalaureate—just not this one.”

I hope the Government remain open minded on that. I absolutely understand their desire for rigour and to make the basic right to a decent academic education an opportunity for everyone in our society, but we must ensure that vocational and other courses that schools often use are not squeezed out by the baccalaureate, thus undermining so much of the good work in many of our schools.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Rob Wilson (Reading East) (Con)]

I rise to support the broad thrust of the Bill. It is unlikely to be remembered as one of the great education reform Bills—such as, arguably, the Bills of 1988 and 1944—but the sum of this Bill is probably much greater than its parts; and, if we add the changes that have already been pushed through in the Academies Act 2010, it is likely that this Government will have a claim to be remembered as a really radical reformer of education. For all the arguments that we have heard—and will hear again—against this Bill, few would disagree with the broad principles that lie behind it. Those principles are about devolving power down to schools; ensuring that exams reach the highest possible standards internationally; improving social mobility; and reducing the bureaucratic burden on schools, allowing the quality of teaching and leadership to flower, which, as Baroness Morgan, the new chair of Ofsted, has said, is the bedrock of any successful school.

Crucially for me, what this Bill has at its core is support for teachers. I particularly welcome the measures aimed at strengthening the power of teachers to maintain school discipline. We all know how one badly behaved child can threaten the prospects of all the pupils in a class if they are not dealt with firmly and quickly. The national statistics are quite shocking. Every day, nearly 1,000 children are excluded from school for abuse or assault against staff or fellow pupils. Major assaults on staff have reached a five-year high. Good teachers are leaving the profession because of bad behaviour, while talented graduates are discouraged from coming into teaching owing to fears for their safety. Across Reading in 2008-09, we had 390 suspensions for assaults and abuse, which is equivalent to two exclusions for every school day in the last recorded year. Why should we expect teachers to put up with that? We would not expect any other profession to put up with such violence.

Put simply, the substantial improvement in pupil attainment that all Members across this House wish to see will not be possible unless we give schools all the help that we can to set and maintain school discipline. Rules imposed by the previous, Labour Government deliberately made it more difficult for schools to expel pupils, undermining the authority of head teachers. By contrast, the measures in this Bill will ensure that we get adult authority back into schools. The fact that exclusion review panels will no longer be able to enforce the reinstatement of disruptive pupils will help to set boundaries for acceptable behaviour and ensure that teachers are not second-guessed all the time. The new powers on detentions and searching for items banned under school rules will help to give the necessary legal backing to enforce school rules whenever that is needed.

Pupils go to school to learn. That must be our message to parents, pupils and teachers. I am confident that the long-overdue measures in the Bill will considerably reinforce teachers’ authority in schools. But action on discipline on its own will not be enough to drive the vast improvement that we need to see in England’s schools. The latest OECD report, the “Programme for International Student Assessment”, made it clear that, under Labour, schools in England plummeted down the international league tables. As we have heard from the Secretary of State, we went from seventh to 25th in reading, from eighth to 28th in maths and from fourth to 16th in science.

This trend is deeply worrying for our economic future. Reading was recently named in Centre for Cities’ “Cities Outlook 2011” as one of the five cities best placed for a private sector-led recovery. Among the major local employers are international companies that require a highly skilled work force. In information technology, for example, Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco and Symantec all have important headquarters in Reading. To ensure that those employers continue to feel that Britain is the best place in which to run major parts of their operations and to enable them to draw on the skilled work force that they need, we must take every possible step to ensure that we reverse the decline, relative to other countries, and strive to get to the top once again. To do anything else would be to sell future generations short.

I welcome the provisions in the Bill that will require Ofqual to compare standards in England with others internationally. I also welcome the proposals to give the Government the power to require schools to make themselves accountable to international surveys.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful case. Does he agree that big international companies such as Microsoft need not only excellent PhDs but first-class technicians to support the work that they do?

[Mr Wilson]

I thank the Select Committee Chairman for his question. Of course technical skills will be important, and I hope that university technical colleges will play an important role in that regard. I shall return to that point in a minute.

Rigour is absolutely essential, but we must not lose sight of the fact that not every pupil is right for university and the academic route. There has been a danger in recent weeks that all the emphasis might be placed on academic subjects and academic achievement. I have no doubt that that emphasis might be necessary temporarily while we are changing the prevailing philosophy that has surrounded education over the past decade, and, yes, we need academic rigour, but we also need alternative, equally valid and equally celebrated pathways in education. However, this should not come down to pushing some young people towards easier subjects, which is what the previous Government did. We have to find different ways of teaching and learning. I am looking forward to the findings of the review on vocational qualifications that is being led by the excellent Professor Alison Wolf. Unfortunately, they were not available in time for this debate, which was disappointing.

I welcome the Government’s support for initiatives such as university technical colleges under the academies and free schools programme. UTCs, as championed by the endlessly energetic Lord Baker and the Baker Dearing Educational Trust, offer 14 to 19-year-olds the opportunity to take a highly regarded, technically oriented course of study at a specialist college that is equipped to the highest standards. Those colleges specialise in subjects that require particular, modern equipment, and local employers, large and small, are asked to help to shape the specialist curriculum. The colleges offer a promising way of engaging young people through a different type of teaching, which is, as the name suggests, more technical in its orientation. They do not neglect the academic subjects, however, and they also help to ensure that local employers continue to have the skilled work force they need.

I welcome the priority given to academies in the establishment of new schools. This builds on the previous Government’s most successful reform programme, which in turn built on the success of city technology colleges. Academies are a proven success story, with their academic performance improving at almost twice the rate of other state schools. In 2009-10, the proportion of pupils in academies achieving the expected level at GCSE of five A* to C grades, including in English and maths, increased by 7.4 points on the previous year, compared with an increase of 4.1 points across all maintained schools. The OECD has concluded that

“in countries where schools have greater autonomy over what is taught and how students are assessed, students tend to perform better”.

Labour Members might not like the reforms, but teachers and parents in my constituency do. Three schools in Reading have already become academies, and all the secondary schools there will probably have converted by the end of next year. The number of proposals for new free schools is rising at what the Secretary of State might regard as an alarming rate. There is clearly an appetite among parents and professionals for our policies. With the extra priority being given to academies in the Bill, Reading might finally be relieved of the absurd situation in which Reading children cross into neighbouring local authority areas in search of good schools while pupils from other local authorities cross into Reading to attend what are successful but almost regional grammar schools. The quality of schools should not depend on the local authority in which they are situated. The measures in the Bill will give head teachers more freedom to determine what goes on in their schools and greater powers to drive improvement, wherever they might be. As such, I welcome these measures as a step in the right direction.