National Funding Formula: Schools/High Needs
Helen Goodman Excerpts(7 years, 5 months ago)
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Justine Greening
I believe that this will be a fair funding formula that will be in everyone’s interests, including those of my hon. Friend’s constituents.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I have a letter from the National Union of Teachers, which is extremely alarmed that pupils in Bishop Auckland will lose £452 over the Parliament. Will the Secretary of State tell me what will happen in my constituency? She has reassured London MPs and the home counties. In the interests of intellectual honesty, will she say who are the losers out of her funding formula?
Oral Answers to Questions
Helen Goodman Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The Leader of the House of Commons (Mr David Lidington)
I have had no such discussions to date, but while we are a member of the European Union, our obligations remain in place, as does the scrutiny reserve resolution, so the scrutiny Committees will be able to examine and interrogate EU dossiers in the usual way.
Helen Goodman
Does the Leader of the House agree with the hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg) that the document to trigger article 50 is one that the European Scrutiny Committee would recommend for debate and possible vote in the main Chamber? If he does, would that be before or after the Prime Minister has served the notification?
Mr Lidington
As the hon. Lady knows, the Government take the view that the triggering of article 50 is a matter for the Executive to determine. This, as the House knows, is an issue that is being contested in the courts at the moment, and we are currently awaiting a judgment.
Key Stage 2 Tests
Helen Goodman Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Mr Gibb
Following the problem with the key stage 1 spelling test, we asked the Standards and Testing Agency to go through all the material with a fine-toothed comb to ensure that there were no further problems at either key stage 1 or key stage 2. We have been assured by the chief executive of the Standards and Testing Agency that those tests are safe and secure. Also, I spoke to Rod Bristow, the president of Pearson UK, this morning, and he assures me that Pearson UK is making sure that its processes are secure and tight so that such breaches cannot occur in the future.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Last Wednesday the Prime Minister was not able to tell the House his definition of a modal verb or what the past progressive tense is, or to distinguish a subordinating conjunctive from a co-ordinating conjunctive. I want to give the Minister a second chance. In the sentence “My baby was born in the hospital where my father works”, are the words “where my father works” a preposition phrase, a relative clause, a main clause or a noun phrase?
Further Education Colleges (North-east)
Helen Goodman Excerpts(8 years, 3 months ago)
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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered further education colleges in the North East.
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I requested the debate after a meeting that north-east MPs had with the further education colleges in our region. We believe that the quality of education that young people get in FE colleges is central, not just to them and to their life chances and futures, but to the economy in our region, and we therefore have a number of questions to put to the Minister, which I hope he is able to answer.
The economic needs of the north-east are clear. We have the largest proportion of our economy in manufacturing, and it is very good manufacturing. We are the only region outside London to have a balance of payments surplus, because we are extremely successful exporters, and we want to build on that platform.
In preparation for the debate, I contacted the North East chamber of commerce, because it does fantastic work in our region, and it alerted us to where the skills needs and shortages are at the moment. It told me that according to the Office for National Statistics the proportion of adults in the north-east qualified to national vocational qualification level 4 was 7% below the national average; meanwhile the North East local enterprise partnership’s strategic economic plan highlights that by 2020 a staggering 120,000 more jobs will need a level 4 qualification.
The latest quarterly economic survey conducted by the chamber of commerce found that 71% of businesses in the service sector and 83% in the manufacturing sector were experiencing difficulties in recruiting staff, and the UK Commission for Employment and Skills’ employer skills survey reports that 18% of employers face a skills gap—the largest of any English region.
We know that there will be an increase in demand for skilled workers in contact centres, warehousing, manufacturing, construction, customer service, sales and food production and that it will be compounded by the demographic changes that our region faces. We know that 3,500 construction jobs will be created each year between now and the next general election, but we also know that the total population growth in the north-east is less than a third of the national average. We know that many people with skills are retiring—in engineering, the average age of welding machine operators is 50. The skills shortages are completely predictable, and it is absolutely straightforward and simple for us to know that, even to continue as we are, we need to train more people. That is why we are extremely concerned by the prospect of reviews that destabilise and threaten the FE colleges.
The FE colleges in the north-east are much better than those in the rest of the country. According to Ofsted, 95% of them are either good or outstanding, compared with a national average of 79%. Consequently, they are educating 200,000 young people. Bishop Auckland College is absolutely typical of the colleges in our region. It teaches technology subjects, such as construction, along with skills that are needed in the automotive industry, which are even more important now that we have not only Nissan but the new Hitachi plant in Newton Aycliffe. Also, everyone knows we need more skilled workers in childcare and in health and social care, and the college provides courses in those skills, too. It has approximately 900 full-time students and the number of apprenticeships has gone up to almost 1,000.
I am sorry to say that the policies that this Government implemented in the last Parliament and also seem to be proposing now give Bishop Auckland College the feeling that it is being destabilised. What are the Government’s policies? The first thing they did was to cut the education maintenance allowance. The Minister, when he went to Winchester, Oxford and Harvard, might not have needed the support of an education maintenance allowance, but many of my constituents do.
According to National Audit Office figures, there have been real-terms cuts in the sector of 27% since 2010, and although the funding settlement announced by the Chancellor before Christmas was flat in cash terms, it represents another 10% real-terms cut, and I ask the Minister why that is. Why does he believe that it is okay to spend £9,000 per student on university tuition, but only £3,000 per student in FE? That is not a sign of a country that takes its technical skills base seriously, and I urge him to look at the experience on the other side of the North sea—at what is happening in Germany—and say, “We were lagging behind in this area 120 years ago and we are still lagging behind.” Alison Wolf found that in her nationwide survey.
I also ask why the Minister has instituted area-based reviews. Obviously, if there are failing FE colleges in some part of the country, he can review them all he likes, but that is not the situation in our region. The hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mrs Trevelyan) smiles and nods, because she knows I am not making a political point. I am making a point about the quality of education in the north-east. When the Minister made the announcement about the reviews, he said that he did not want any arbitrary boundaries, but we have arbitrary boundaries. The Tees valley review is under way, but the north-east one has not yet started, yet constituents of mine are educated both in Darlington and Stockton and in Bishop Auckland and Durham. That seems very arbitrary to us. What will the Minister do to resolve different possible upshots from the reviews? We have been told that there is slippage, so we would like to know when he expects the north-east review to take place.
When the Minister announced the reviews, he said that he expected policy options to include rationalising the curriculum and considering opportunities for specialisation, merger, collaboration and closure. Improving the curriculum is always a good idea, as is collaboration, but closure is unacceptable and particularly problematic in a rural area.
The average distance travelled by the 16 to 18-year-olds who go to Bishop Auckland College in my constituency is 8 miles each way each day, and for those over the age of 19, it is 14 miles. If the college was closed and they had to go to Darlington and Durham, some of those young people would have journeys of 28 miles. It is not just the time and distance that are the problem; it is the cost. The bus fare from Barnard Castle to Darlington is £7 return—a £35-a-week bill—and for a young person living in Cockfield and going to Durham the cost would be £11 a day, or £55 a week. Those amounts are simply unaffordable. The Minister must know, notwithstanding his own wholly different educational and personal experience, that that would put some young people off doing what was best for them and for the country. Their whole future life possibilities will be limited by extortionate fares and excessive travel times.
When the Minister announced the reviews, he also said that any changes should be funded by the local enterprise partnerships and the local authorities. I was absolutely astounded by what he meant by that. Durham County Council is having to undertake cuts of 40% between 2010 and 2020. Against that massive reduction in the available resources, I simply cannot see how the council can be expected to take on new responsibilities for financing FE.
As I said earlier, Bishop Auckland College is facilitating 1,200 apprenticeships. In fact, I have an apprentice in my office—my third apprentice—and I have had extremely good experiences with them. They have improved the efficiency of the office no end. When I talk to the college, it says that the key logjam in increasing the number of good-quality apprenticeships is not what goes on in the colleges, but finding the placements with the employers.
I was interested to hear the questions that the chamber of commerce had about the apprenticeship levy. The first point it asked me to raise was whether the Minister intends to wrap up the apprenticeship arrangements under the Construction Industry Training Board with the apprenticeship levy. The construction industry has a good scheme that is working well. Everyone is happy with it. Rather than asking for it to be closed down and for the industry to get involved in something new, would it not just be simpler to let the industry carry on doing something that works well and to exempt it from the new arrangements? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The second point that the chamber of commerce made was that its members want longer-term funding, with agreements of at least two years to tie in with the fact that apprenticeships last for two to four years. That point was reiterated by the colleges. On numerous occasions in recent years, decisions about funding have been taken after they had begun to recruit for the following academic year, because the academic year and the financial year do not coincide. They are calling for three-year settlements. That proposal seems perfectly sensible, and I would like the Minister to consider it.
The thing that is really unclear is how the levy will be distributed. Which sectors will receive the money, and how will the Minister ensure that it reaches small and medium-sized enterprises? As the chamber of commerce pointed out, it is important that we prioritise current skills shortages and future skills shortages that we can predict from economic forecasts and how the regional economy is training. It also said—this seems completely reasonable—that we should prioritise those employers who already have a good training record.
The colleges and the employers are united in wanting a good inspection regime. It could continue to be Ofsted, but that good regime is vital to maintain the quality and, with that, the confidence that people have in apprentices. A recent survey for the UK Commission for Employment and Skills found that 18% of employers in the north-east offer apprenticeships and 37% of employers wish or intend to do so. That is the highest level in the entire country. They are showing their commitment, and they, the colleges and we wish to see that matched by the Government with resources and stable frameworks for policy and delivery.
Nick Boles
No, I am not going to give way. I am going to move on—[Interruption.]
Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)
I was going to call the hon. Lady to wind up at the end if she wants to, so does she want to let others come in first?
Nick Boles
In which case, I am happy to give way to the hon. Member for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham).
Helen Goodman
First, the Minister began his remarks by suggesting that some of us who spoke in this debate were scaremongering and that we had no evidence to suggest that options coming out of the reviews might include the closure of institutions. That is not the case. It was his document, “Reviewing post-16 education and training institutions: guidance on area reviews”—published on 8 September 2015, when he was the Minister—that floated that option. That is what people have noticed.
Secondly, the Minister knows perfectly well—he is an extremely well-informed man—that flat cash means real-terms cuts. That is what we have pointed out.
Thirdly, I asked the Minister why he thought it was right that the capitation was lowest in FE, as compared with universities and, of course, with sixth-form colleges. If this country is going to continue to develop a high level of technical expertise and manufacturing, we need to put more money into this kind of education, which needs small groups and high-quality equipment to teach these young people.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered further education colleges in the North East.
Childcare Bill [Lords]
Helen Goodman Excerpts(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Emily Thornberry
I think that that is right, and there was a hint of that, I think, from the hon. and learned Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer) when she was talking about the importance of the rate that is being paid in order to ensure that there is childcare provided in her area. Although Cambridge is not as expensive as Islington, I imagine that it is another area where childcare is likely to be provided at a fairly high rate, and is likely to be very expensive.
Having looked at the Blue Book, I have another question. As I understand it, to pay for these additional hours of childcare, the Government will not provide free childcare for parents whose income is more than £100,000—I do not think that there is any problem with that—but the other part is—[Interruption.] I am sorry, but I am asking the Minister a question. I can say it again. The other part of the condition is
“and a minimum weekly income level per parent equivalent to 16 hours (worked at the national living wage)”.
Does that mean that my single parents on the Market estate, who are currently working nine hours, will not get free childcare, and that in order to get free childcare they will need to work not only 16 hours but—because they are all on the minimum wage—16 hours at the equivalent of the national living wage, which presumably means that they will have to work something like 24 hours?
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)
Order. I am sorry. You are winding up the debate, so you will have a chance to come back to the hon. Lady, but I am sure that she will give way, as she has been very generous so far. At this moment though she has given way to Helen Goodman.
Helen Goodman
My hon. Friend is pointing out that, according to the Chancellor, to qualify for this free childcare, a parent needs to be working 16 hours. Coincidentally, I found out that Asda employs 30% of its people on less than 16 hours a week, and they are paid less than the living wage, because they are on the minimum wage. That is probably the case in supermarkets across the land. We are talking about hundreds of thousands of women here.
Emily Thornberry
The point is—[Interruption.] I am just pointing out that the Blue Book refers to
“a minimum weekly income level per parent equivalent to 16 hours (worked at the national living wage)”.
A parent could be working 16 hours at the national minimum wage, but still not get free childcare. That is as I understand it, but we are not in Government. We are involved in scrutiny.
Electoral Registration
Helen Goodman Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Mr Streeter
As I said, Mr Deputy Speaker, it is not a pleasant thought from my point of view.
The truth is that a vast amount of work is being done around the United Kingdom to get people to register before the general election, but it is important to remember that anyone who is already on the household register and is residing at that address has not been removed as a result of the shift to IER. The Electoral Commission is running a national campaign across the UK to encourage people to register to vote ahead of the 20 April deadline. It will reach all adults, with a focus on groups—already mentioned in this debate—that research has identified are less likely to be registered to vote, such as people who have recently moved home, those who rent their home, young people, and people from black and minority ethnic communities.
Some of this work is being undertaken with the support of organisations and private companies that represent these communities or have a special reach into them. For example—this is very good news—the Electoral Commission and Facebook have today announced that on national voter registration day, which is tomorrow, every person on Facebook in the UK who is eligible to vote will see a voter registration reminder message in their newsfeed. Some 35 million people use Facebook in the UK every month, which is more than the number who voted at the last general election. This is using innovative methods to reach people and encourage them to vote. We must keep returning to the point that people can now register to vote online. It takes 30 seconds, and the only thing they need is their name—[Interruption.] Yes, I have seen it done. [Interruption.] I was already registered; I was data-matched. People need their name, address, date of birth—most of us know those things—and national insurance number; ring your mum and find out what it is. If people have those four things, they can register; it takes 30 seconds. This is good news.
Mr Streeter
I do that every week. I don’t know what the hon. Lady is on about.
This builds on the important work the Electoral Commission is doing to get the message across that everyone should register to vote. I am also pleased that the commission is strongly supporting national voter registration day—an excellent initiative launched by Bite the Ballot last year—in a number of ways, including by re-launching the “Ballot Box Man” YouTube advert aimed at encouraging young people to register to vote. If you have not seen it, Mr Deputy Speaker, it is very entertaining and makes the point extremely well. A wide range of social media activity is being undertaken, including on Twitter and Facebook. A range of resources is being sent out to electoral administrators and the commission’s partners from across the voluntary, public and private sectors to help them get people registered. The commission is also supporting the launch of Operation Black Vote’s bus tour across Great Britain—that also begins on national voter registration day—to get more BME people on the electoral register.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I am pleased to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Paul Blomfield). I want to pick up where he left off—on young people.
One of the worst things about the big fall in the number of people on the register is the massive reduction in the number of young people. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) said, if young people do not get the habit of voting when they first can, they are highly unlikely to take it up later in life. In a written parliamentary question, I asked the Minister, who is not quite in his place,
“how many people have been informed that their application for inclusion on the…register was not valid because their national insurance number was not provided”.
He replied:
“Failure to provide a National Insurance number does not result in an application being declared invalid.”
He does not know what is going on. I have a letter from an ERO in response to a young person’s application to register to vote. It read, “Thank you for your recent application to register. Unfortunately, I am unable to process your application because it was incomplete. The following information is required and was incorrect or missing: national insurance number.”
There are 440,000 young people still at school who turned 18 between 1 September and 1 May. The person that letter was sent to could not register because she did not have her national insurance number. I do not know how many hon. Members spend a lot of time with teenagers, but a letter with a young person’s national insurance number arrives before they are 16, and we are suggesting that two years later teenagers will know where that letter is and have kept it in a safe place. I cannot think of anything more naïve. How many young people will have lost it?
Helen Goodman
Yes, the hon. Gentleman mentioned the “ring mum” solution before. How outrageous. What about young people in care? What about young people estranged from their families? What a disgraceful attitude to large numbers of young people.
We rang the council to find out what to do. It suggested that the person bring their passport, which costs £72. It suggested a driving licence, which costs £34. These are all things that young people do not have.
Helen Goodman
I tabled a PQ to the man who is commenting from a sedentary position now asking how young people were supposed to know what their national insurance number was. His answer was: payslips and correspondence with HMRC and the Department for Work and Pensions. The truth is that 18-year-olds who are still at school do not have payslips or correspondence with HMRC or DWP. The Government have not thought this through.
The other thing the council asked for was a council tax bill. No 18-year-old gets a council tax bill. This is completely incompetent. Ministers have not thought this through. I went to the website to find out what to do. Nobody can get their national insurance number on the website. That is not how it works. They can, however, ring a very nice man on: 0300 200 3500. They will get a very nice man with a lovely Lancashire accident, and he will put their national insurance number in the post.
The suggestion that we have heard from Ministers that this information is readily available is totally naïve. The DWP Ministers who are responsible for giving people their national insurance numbers and informing them cannot even be bothered to turn up and sit on the Bench for this debate. They have a central role. The truth is that it displays all the attitudes of DWP Ministers to young people: they want to take the housing benefit off 18 to 21-year-olds; now they want to take the vote from those very same young people. It is a total disgrace. [Interruption.]
Tom Brake
First, as the hon. Gentleman may know, EROs can advise on alternative sources of that information, and I am sure that best practice in helping young people in that respect will be disseminated. I should also say that given that the Labour party supports, as I do, the idea of young people being able to vote at 16, I am a little worried that Labour Members seem to think that young people are completely incapable of keeping any records themselves.
Last month the Government announced a further package of funding of up to £10 million to support activities to maximise registration.
Tom Brake
I will make a little more progress.
That was on top of the £4.2 million invested last year. The Labour party has rightly wanted to know some of the detail of that, and I will come on to that. Most of this money has already been distributed to EROs, to support their work. Earlier today we announced how the rest of the funding will be used to encourage traditionally under-registered groups to register. If this was part of a Government conspiracy to stop either young people or poorer people registering, as has been suggested by some Opposition Members, then I do not understand why we would have spent £14 million over the last two years on trying to boost registration.
The funding will be provided to a number of national organisations, including the British Youth Council, Citizens Advice, Citizens UK, Homeless Link, the National Housing Federation, Mencap, Operation Black Vote and UK Youth. Many of these organisations work directly with the groups of people the Labour party has suggested the Government are trying to deny the right to vote.
Tom Brake
I am of course very happy to support that initiative, as I am indeed doing.
As a number of Members have highlighted, national voter registration day, organised by Bite the Ballot, which I have worked with, takes place tomorrow. Events will be held up and down the country and I urge everyone here in the Chamber to do what they can to support this and similar initiatives. Of course, we all have at our fingertips the ability—through the many tweets Members send out, through Facebook postings, through the e-mails we send out—to encourage young people to register to vote, and we should all be participating in that.
Tomorrow, the Electoral Commission’s overseas voter registration day marks the launch of its activities over the coming months to encourage British citizens overseas to register and to vote. The Ministry of Defence will also be launching its annual information campaign for the armed forces tomorrow—the start of a range of activity to encourage service personnel and their families to ensure they are registered to vote ahead of the general election.
Helen Goodman
As well as having a publicity campaign with the telephone number for national insurance numbers, why does the Minister not change the letter so that when people get it, they know that they will need it when they register to vote? No mention is made of that at the moment.
Tom Brake
I am very happy to take that point on board and see whether it can be acted on.
The Political and Constitutional Reform Committee will be publishing its report on voter engagement, and it will no doubt include a range of thoughtful recommendations for the future. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) suggested that the use of photo ID might be appropriate, but the PCRC has recommended that the Government do not adopt the Electoral Commission’s suggestion that people take photo ID to the polling station.
There will be things the next Government can do further to modernise electoral registration in this country.
In the time left I will try to respond to some of the specific points that were made. This is all about ensuring that the electoral register is accurate. That is what the right hon. Member for Tooting (Sadiq Khan) wants, and that is what we are trying to do.
On attainers in Liverpool, I have concerns that the best practice that exists in some local authorities is clearly not being picked up by others. My own local authority has successfully exchanged census information from schools with the ERO to ensure that a very significant percentage of young people at school are now on the register. The small number who are not are being individually chased by local authorities to ensure that that happens. So it can be done, and in fact an EROs conference is taking place today at which I am sure some of these issues will be debated.
Yes, we should give special focus to young people, but it is worth pointing out that we will not support the proposed legal requirement for EROs to go into schools. Of course, there are local authorities such as mine where the issue is not registering young people to vote but ensuring that older people in care homes are registered. Forcing EROs to go into schools, where there is not a problem, would tie down resources, which could result in there being insufficient resources to enable them to focus on the areas that they need to focus on. Clearly they have the ability to go into schools now; there is no need for the law to be changed to enable them to do it. We would of course encourage all schools to be participating in this regard. As I have said, there are things that the next Government—
Lords Spiritual (Women) Bill
Helen Goodman Excerpts(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Banbury (Sir Tony Baldry), who made a characteristically interesting and sensible speech. I am also pleased to support the Bill this afternoon. We have had a long wait for women bishops, and it is important that when women are consecrated as bishops in the Church of England they are seen to play a full role at the national as well as the diocesan level. Clearly, it would be unacceptable if there was a seven-year wait, and this Bill tackles that.
The Bill will also be an extremely popular measure. Before Christmas, I went to the annual general meeting of WATCH, the lobby group within the Church of England that has been campaigning, first, for women priests and, now, for women bishops. It is a dynamic group, and many there will be interested in what we do today. I have also received a letter from Rev. David Tomlinson, the vicar of Shildon, in my constituency, and there is support throughout the Church, from both men and women, for this Bill. The role of bishops in the House of Lords is important, and the Bill corrects an anomaly. If the Church of England were to continue to appoint only male bishops once women had been consecrated, it would bring into question the legitimacy of the Church having guaranteed places in the House of Lords.
My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg), who spoke from the Labour Front Bench, mentioned the great contribution that women can make to churches and drew on the experience of Denmark. I was particularly pleased about that—[Laughter.] I am half-Danish, so I was pleased. The first time I saw a woman priest was on Ascension day in 1972. As a teenager, that was a complete revelation to me, but I knew then that it was possible, and it has become possible in this country, too. Like him, I want to see reform of the second Chamber and an elected second Chamber. In 1998, I gave evidence to the royal commission on House of Lords reform, suggesting that we should have a Chamber that was elected, but on a non-geographical basis, rather like the city guilds. That would allow us to have people elected by the trade unions, elected from the professions and, indeed, elected from all faiths—that matter was raised by the hon. Members for Colchester (Sir Bob Russell) and for Gainsborough (Sir Edward Leigh). After all, the House of Commons represents people in their communities, and what matters to people is not just where they live, but other issues, too. However, it is clear to all of us that major reform of the House of Lords continues to be some way off, and as long as we have the House of Lords in its current form and constitution, women should be appointed on an equal footing with men. In particular, women bishops should sit in the House of Lords.
Oral Answers to Questions
Helen Goodman Excerpts(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Vaizey
As I said, we are well ahead of schedule with our roll-out of superfast broadband. On Yorkshire, North Yorkshire was one of the first out of the traps, and more than 60,000 homes have been connected through that programme. We also have a £10 million pilot scheme to connect the most remote parts of the country, and that is going very well.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
Many people were pleased to see the Government’s announcement of 1,000 free wi-fi hot spots across the country, but the map on the Department’s website shows that Glasgow, Newcastle, Nottingham, Sheffield and Bristol, with a combined population of 4 million, have no provision at all. What criteria did the Minister use when choosing locations? How could he possibly miss those great cities?
Mr Vaizey
Well, we worked with the cities, so they came up with up their own proposals. I believe that Newcastle has a cloud computing centre, using its super-connected cities programme, and Bristol, too, has a fast-speed internet hub. So it is up to the cities how they choose to use the money. The criteria have come from the cities and they are the ones that have chosen which public buildings they want to put wi-fi in.
Oral Answers to Questions
Helen Goodman Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
The whole House knows that the roll-out of rural broadband is 22 months late. Yesterday, however, in answer to my questions, the Minister admitted that after three years only two of the 135 sites involved in the mobile infrastructure project had gone live, and that only £20 million of the £150 million for the super-connected cities programme had been spent. The targets are not going to be met. The Minister is lucky that he does not earn his living as a pizza delivery boy. Will he now apologise to the millions whom he has let down?
Mr Vaizey
I am sure that pizzas were not being delivered last night to the Labour women’s dinner, which I gather took place at the Imperial War museum. No doubt the hon. Lady will want to join me in congratulating the museum, which is so ably led by Di Lees, on its magnificent refurbishment, which has introduced the world war one galleries.
I am pleased to confirm that we are bang on target for our roll-out of superfast broadband. We expect to deliver it to 90% of premises by early 2016, but I expect that, given the pace of the programme, we shall exceed that target. The mobile infrastructure project is a pioneering project which has already brought many benefits to rural areas, and I am pleased to see that the super-connected voucher scheme is well under way.
Cyber-bullying
Helen Goodman Excerpts(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Mr Vaizey
All schools will have to have a protection policy in place and they will be subject to Ofsted inspections. My hon. Friend’s intervention gives me an opportunity to say what a fantastic job he did as children’s Minister. One reason why I have such respect for his remarks is because he is one of those former Ministers who has maintained an interest in the policy in which he was so intimately involved, and he continues to make important interventions in our debates.
The Education Act 2011 strengthened schools’ powers—a specific Government intervention in this area—so that teachers can now impose same-day detention, use reasonable force to protect children from harm and have the power to search for and delete images or files that they think are inappropriate. Schools do not exist in a vacuum. Sometimes the rhetoric is such that we almost pass on to schools the responsibility for sorting out all society’s ills. Schools have to work with parents, and parents have to be participants and allies in the work to combat cyber-bullying. Schools need to work with parents to make it clear that no one will tolerate any kind of bullying, and to ensure that parents are aware of the procedures to follow if they believe their child is being bullied. Schools should investigate and act on all reports.
Making parents aware of what they can do to keep children safe online is also important. I am pleased that, as part of our work to protect children from inappropriate content online, the main internet service providers have come together and formed an alliance to carry out a large-scale internet safety awareness campaign for parents. I understand that that will have a budget of approximately £25 million per year for the next three years and will include signposting to further sources of help and advice. I have said to the ISPs on many occasions that while it might be helpful to them in a competitive environment to offer new and up-to-date tools to parents to keep their children safe online, they must also work together as one. They have the experience, they know their customers, they have the highly paid marketing directors and they have the relationships with the advertising agencies and so on to work together as one for the common good to put forward this message. I am pleased we have got this deal with them.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
I am pleased to hear the news about the campaign. Will the Minister clarify whether that will be £25 million per year for three years, or £25 million over three years?
Mr Vaizey
I am so sorry. I misspoke because of what was written in my speech. I now understand that it is £25 million over three years. I thank the hon. Lady for correcting me, and I will double and triple check that.
A range of agencies and organisations have a role in preventing and responding to bullying: local authorities, local safeguarding children boards, law enforcement, schools, parents and the internet industry. Drawing on the breadth of expertise available, the Government are supporting a number of specific initiatives. For example, we are providing four organisations—I think this figure is correct—with more than £4 million in total over two years from spring 2013. [Interruption.] I am assured that that is correct. We are giving £800,000 to the Diana Award to identify and train 10,000 pupils as anti-bullying ambassadors. We are giving £250,000 to Kidscape to work in nine of London’s most economically deprived boroughs to train primary school professionals to deliver preventive and remedial strategies. We are giving £1.5 million to BeatBullying to train 3,500 11 to 17-year-olds over two years as cyber-mentors, and we are giving £1.5 million to the National Children’s Bureau consortium to focus on bullied children and young people with special educational needs and/or disabilities, to work with 900 schools, parents, carers and school staff to reduce bullying and its impact when it occurs.
I have spoken for some time in this short debate on a subject that is important and wide-ranging. I reiterate how welcome the debate is, and how judicious the opening remarks were from the hon. Member for Upper Bann. Building on the work of the UKCCIS—in its time, a relatively unique organisation, bringing together a range of stakeholders, and it remains the forum to debate many of the key issues—the Government have developed a range of measures, such as important legislation to give teachers powers to intervene in cyber-bullying and a campaign to work with ISPs to ensure that we can educate parents. I urge hon. Members to engage with social media on their procedures and thoughts. I look forward to hearing the rest of the debate and to my hon. Friend the Minister when he sums up.
Helen Goodman (Bishop Auckland) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew), who made a heartfelt speech. I congratulate the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) on initiating this important and timely debate. We need to pay more attention to this problem, so I am grateful to him.
Members have spoken about the exaggerated behaviour seen on the internet, and we need to pay more attention to that. Bullying on the net and on social media is clearly not like bullying in the playground, and for a number of reasons. The Minister might want to do some research into the factors that change people’s behaviour and into how their behaviour changes.
Anonymity is clearly a big problem in this regard. When talking about crime on the net more generally, we have considered whether it might be possible—I believe that it is—to make a clearer connection between a person’s identity on the net and their identity in the real world. Tackling that problem is central to tackling many of the problems we have on the net. The behaviour of young people, in particular, on the net can become exaggerated partly because there is no feedback, so they do not need to face the person they are bullying or to see the consequences. That is clearly part of the problem.
I do not wish to suggest that there is a problem with young people only, because I think that people’s behaviour in general shifts with technology. If I was to say quietly to the Minister in a private place that I was going to tell him something that I did not want him to repeat, I am sure that he would respect that. If I was to write him a personal letter, it might be put in a box in his office and would not be published all over the media. However, if I was to send something by e-mail, it could immediately be broadcast nationally and internationally. We had such an incident in my constituency, when someone took a memory stick containing mental health records out of an office and managed to lose it. That is because people’s attitudes to other people are distanced by the technology, and we need to understand that more. We need to look at the work that has been done by Professor Susan Greenfield on changes that take place in the brain when people use technology, because there is clearly a profound change.
We are looking for a strategy that cuts across different Departments and arenas. There has been a lot of discussion about the role of schools, which clearly is important. I would like the Minister to clarify whether the learning that the Government are putting into the curriculum will be in the IT part or in the personal, social, health and economic education part. The Opposition think that it really needs to be part of PSHE, because this is about responsibility and relationships.
I commend to the Minister work that I saw a couple of months ago in Denmark, where people have made curriculum materials to be used by parents and children, who are already doing so in after-school classes. Virtually every Member has said how important it is to involve families in this, because parents need support and help. Again, we can learn from the experience of other countries.
Another aspect that has emerged is the disappointment that people have experienced when they have complained to the industry or to public sector professionals and the police. Another strand of any intelligence strategy must surely involve proper training for the professionals—the police, the courts and the social workers, as well as school teachers.
The Minister said that 900 schools will be reached through the charitable work that is being supported. I very much hope that this is not going to be, as it sounded, slightly London-centric. Although 900 schools sounds like quite a lot, there are 23,000 schools in this country. As the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, we do not want a postcode lottery.
The hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea) spoke about the responsibilities of parents and pointed out that many parents are irresponsible. Unfortunately, adults—parents—are using the net to abuse their own children. This just shows the depths that people can plumb and the complexity of dealing with these problems.
The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham spoke about the inadequate response—that is the politest thing one could say about it—that he received from Google after he had contacted it. Indeed, when Google directed me to what it thought was its excellent advice about young people meeting in the real world people they had met online, I was quite surprised to see that it was a cartoon advising them that if they did so, it should be in a public place. As a piece of advice to young people, that is worse than pitiful. It is very important to get the industry up to speed on all this, as the Minister said, and to take an international, as well as a national, approach.
Hon. Members have noted that the majority of young people now accept cyber-bullying as part of everyday life, as do their parents. According to the Anti-Bullying Alliance, 40% of parents and 44% of teachers said in a survey that they do not know how to deal with cyber-bullying. I hope that the Government are going to tell us that they do know how to deal with it and that they will engage more energetically with our European colleagues.
In August 2013, Hannah Smith killed herself following a series of abusive messages on the social media site, Ask.fm, which is hosted in Latvia and has been linked to four suicides in this country and Ireland since 2010. When this happened in Ireland, the Irish Government got in touch with Ask.fm. Unfortunately, the Government in London did not do so. I went to a meeting with the Latvian ambassador. Given international hosting and the international movement of messages, it is vital that the Government up their game in tackling this with our European colleagues.
As hon. Members have pointed out, the internet has great potential for learning and exploration, but if it is to be safe, it cannot be lawless. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children believes that one in five children is bullied online. Everybody has a responsibility to put an end to this, so I still do not understand why the Prime Minister’s summer announcements about child online safety contained nothing about safeguarding children on social media, or why the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport did not include it in her action list following her conference with the industry. I am grateful to the Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) for offering to arrange a meeting with the industry and I want to take him up on it, because I think we can do more.
I would be grateful if Ministers could look into a couple of legal points. First, is the existing legal framework adequate? Are the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and the Telecommunications Act 1984 specific enough to deal properly with cyber-bullying? It is clear that the activity is growing, so if there is a loophole, it needs to be filled. A systematic look at the legal provisions is essential.
Secondly, it would be helpful to look at what obligations social media have to respond quickly and substantively to complaints about cyber-bullying. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham made a lot of intelligent points about this. He said that there need to be consequences for the individual. I think we also need to consider consequences for the industry if it has not set up proper systems on its websites so that people can press panic buttons and the perpetrators can be found and dealt with. It is clear, as the hon. Gentleman has said, that the industry is completely happy to devote a lot of time, energy and money to gaining customers and increasing its profits, but the tempo is much slower when it comes to protecting vulnerable young people. That is simply not acceptable.
For example, Facebook has an age limit of 13, but it wishes to expose those young people to everything that is available to adults on the internet. That is completely irresponsible. The age limit of 13 was set up because it fits with Californian law. It does not fit with English law. This country has no system for telling whether somebody is 12, 13 or 14. Either Facebook must change its model and treat 13-year-olds as minors, or it must raise the age level at which people can access it. It cannot have it both ways. It cannot encourage children and young people into its site and then treat it as an adult space.
I believe that Ministers can do many things in schools, with families and by looking at the legal framework.