First Aid Techniques: National Curriculum

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Tuesday 10th March 2015 Westminster Hall

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

There is wide interest in the debate. From the Chair’s point of view, it would be helpful if colleagues quietly let the Clerk know who wishes to make a speech and who intends merely to intervene. Aside from the main speakers, it looks as though there will be about five minutes each for the rest.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I am grateful for the opportunity to have one last go in this Parliament to persuade the Government and my Front Benchers that there is a chance simply, easily, cheaply and immediately to save lives and to transform society.

Teaching emergency life support skills in schools and the community is

“a no brainer, it’s just common sense”.

Those words are not mine, but those of Dr Andy Lockey at the Resuscitation Council. There are 150,000 people a year who die in situations in which, if only someone had known what to do, their lives might have been saved. There are 30,000 people who have out-of-hospital cardiac arrests, but fewer than one in 10 survives. If only someone knew how to do cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, and if a defibrillator was available, survival rates could increase to 50%.

Emergency life support skills are a set of actions needed to keep somebody alive until professional help arrives. They include performing CPR, putting an unconscious person into the recovery position, dealing with choking and serious bleeding, and helping someone who might be having a heart attack. Such skills are particularly crucial at the time of a cardiac arrest, when every second counts. For every minute that passes in cardiac arrest, the chance of survival falls by 10%. If CPR is started immediately, the time that the person remains in a shockable, and hence reversible, condition will be prolonged. It also means that there will be more of the person’s brain function left—more of them left—if they are resuscitated. At the moment, it is down to luck.

Three years ago, Fabrice Muamba had a cardiac arrest when he was playing for Bolton Wanderers against Tottenham. Fabrice was lucky because he had his cardiac arrest where there were people who were trained in what to do. He was lucky because the club medics and the paramedics gave him immediate CPR on the pitch, so his brain was saved. He was lucky because medics did not give up on him and worked on him for 78 minutes until his heart restarted. Because he was with people who knew what to do, we still have the charming, intelligent Fabrice in this world with us.

My sister’s friend, Malcolm McCormick, was also lucky. Just a month after Fabrice’s cardiac arrest, Malcolm went to school to pick up his grandchildren and he keeled over, effectively dead, not breathing, heart not beating. Malcolm was lucky because one of the people waiting to collect children was a retained firefighter who started to give CPR. He was very lucky because once a month another firefighter volunteers in the school tuck shop, and it was his Friday to be working, so he came and took control of the situation.

Malcolm was also lucky because a defibrillator was available, and he was rushed to a specialist hospital. Three days later he left hospital with very sore ribs, but alive and with his brain intact. Four months later, he was a Games maker at the Paralympics.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

A mother and daughter were at the launch of the campaign in Parliament square. The daughter had saved her mother’s life by recognising that she was not breathing, and she was able to do CPR until the ambulance came. Seeing mother at the launch, chirpy and with it, was a heart-warming thing.

[Julie Hilling]

The hon. and learned Gentleman clearly caught sight of my speech before he raised his point. I was about to go on to say that Mandy Hobbs was really lucky, too. Her 14-year-old daughter, Samantha, woke up to hear her father on the phone saying that he thought her mum was dead. Samantha had learnt CPR at her swimming life-saving club, and she says that she went on to autopilot and started chest compressions. When she got too tired to carry on, she taught her father what to do. Mandy survived and now Samantha has become the pin-up girl of the British Heart Foundation. Mandy, dad Nick and Samantha are regular visitors to Parliament, trying to persuade the Government to make first aid compulsory in schools.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate and I take the point that she is making as a fundamental premise, but does she agree that there is a role for local community campaigns, such as Heart of Gold and the Stephen Carey fund in Northumberland, which are trying to institute and organise more public access defibrillators around the county of Northumberland so that rural dwellers have that access, which saves lives?

[Julie Hilling]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. For me, it starts in schools. If only we could have—I will go on to talk about this more—a generation of life savers coming out of school. We have millions of people in the community who will not have had the benefit of being trained in schools. I applaud his organisations and the organisations in my constituency and across the country that do amazing work to raise money for defibrillators and for training individuals in how to do CPR.

Survival should not be down to luck. There are far too many other examples of people who suffer cardiac arrest and are not saved because the people around them do not know what to do: children such as Ciaran Geddes, who died aged 7; 12-year-old Oliver King; 16-year-old Daniel Young; or 17-year-old Guy Evans. Their mums are campaigning for defibrillators and emergency life-saving skills to be taught in schools.

[Nia Griffith (Llanelli) (Lab)]

Before I became an MP in 2005, I taught in a school where every single pupil in year 8 did a 12-week first aid course as part of their personal and social education. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is the type of programme that should be implemented so that every single child coming out of school would have those skills?

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[Julie Hilling]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. Absolutely, every school leaver a life saver is what we should be aiming for.

This Government—it may be my Government in two months’ time—have a chance to make a real difference. We want the national curriculum to reflect the essential knowledge and understanding that pupils should be expected to have to enable them to take their place as an educated member of society. Knowing how to save a life would be absolutely in keeping with that aspiration. Knowing how to save the life of a family member or a member of the public would enable children to have an impact on the health of society. Ensuring that life-saving skills were taught in schools would provide the chance to instil in all children how valuable life is and how important it is to be a good citizen.

[Mark Hunter (Cheadle) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing the debate. She is making a passionate case for something she clearly believes in deeply. Does she accept that this is part of a wider awareness that is needed among the community at large to raise the profile of first aid issues, not only in schools and in the workplace, but across the spectrum, because there are still not enough people who know what to do in an emergency of the kind that she has talked about? If I may, I will acknowledge the support she gave to my campaign for Millie’s Trust, which wants trained paediatric first aid nurses in nursery schools to be a statutory requirement.

[Julie Hilling]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right and I congratulate him on Millie’s campaign, because it is absolutely crucial that people do not die when they could be saved. Currently, 7% of the population know how to save a life. Surely we could do much better.

We could join other countries such as France, Denmark and Norway, where emergency life support skills are already part of the curriculum, as they are in various states in Australia and in 36 states in America. In Seattle, children have to learn first aid skills before they can graduate from school, and it is also part of the driving licence requirement. More than half of the population in Seattle is now trained in emergency life support, so people are rarely more than 12 feet away from somebody who could save their life.

However, it is not enough to learn CPR. Michelle, a staff member at Rivington and Blackrod high school in my constituency, knew what to do when her dad had a cardiac arrest. She and others did CPR for a long time before the ambulance arrived far too late to make any difference. Had there been an automatic external defibrillator, they might have been able to shock his heart back into rhythm, but there was not. That is why I applaud the work of the Bolton implantable cardiac defibrillator support group, who work so hard to raise funds and have just donated their 67th defibrillator.

The chain of survival is just that—a chain of action that needs to be undertaken for a person to survive a cardiac arrest. It needs someone to call for help, someone to do CPR, a defibrillator and someone confident enough to use it, and an ambulance to take the person to hospital for treatment. That is why children need to learn how to do CPR and how to use a defibrillator.

The British Heart Foundation is giving Resusci Annies—the resuscitation dolls—to high schools and has produced a CD that teaches those skills in just half an hour, but we should be more ambitious. It is essential that we also teach children to deal with choking and bleeding and to put somebody in the recovery position. Nine out of ten 11 to 16-year-olds have been confronted with a medical emergency, often when no adults are around. Even when there are adults, it is often the child or young person who takes control and, for instance, delivers back blows to stop someone choking or deals with a serious bleed.

According to research by St John Ambulance and the British Red Cross, only 7% of the UK population have the skills and the confidence to carry out basic first aid in an emergency, but 91% of pupils want to learn first aid at school; 98% of parents want first aid on the curriculum; and 96% of teachers think it is important for students to learn first aid. Ninety-five per cent of teachers agree that first aid teaching develops the general confidence and optimism of young people, yet only 21% of our schools equip young people with first aid skills.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)]

I am enjoying the hon. Lady’s speech immensely; she is making a very powerful case. An argument against having CPR training in schools is that it would take up too much time, but surely what she is saying is that it would not require that much teaching time to get across to young people the skills that they need.

[Julie Hilling]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. I will go on to say more about that in a moment, but let me reiterate the point now: if someone goes for half an hour’s training a year over their time in secondary school, we are talking about two and half hours. If they stay on, it is three and a half hours. If they go for an hour’s training, we are talking about five, six or seven hours. In terms of a school day, it is quicker than going on a cross-country run. We are talking about schools being able to take this skill into the national curriculum and to train people in it.

St John Ambulance and the British Red Cross believe that CPR and public access defibrillator training are important, but that other skills, such as the ability to deal with choking, bleeding and burns, and the ability to place somebody in the recovery position, must also be taught in schools. They believe that that could be done for just one hour a year, some of which could be delivered during an assembly. They, too, have provided free resources online for schools to use.

We still have Heartstart schools, where that range of skills is taught for two hours a year. It would take a tiny amount of the time that children are in school utterly to transform our society and have a nation of life savers. First aid provision also helps to meet Ofsted’s requirement on school safety and on the promotion of pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development.

We need to end the scenario in which, when somebody collapses or has a road traffic accident, we all stand around in a circle waiting for someone to act because we are too frightened to intervene. We need to end the fear of companies and organisations that are worried about the consequences of having a defibrillator. No one has ever been successfully sued for attempting to save someone’s life, and as one of my local firefighters said, “If someone’s heart has stopped, they are dead. You cannot make them any deader.”

Schools, companies, businesses and community groups should be far more worried about how they would feel if someone died when, if only they had invested in an AED and someone had known what to do, they could have saved them. Indeed, I believe that we should make AEDs compulsory, like fire extinguishers.

I cannot imagine anything worse than watching a loved one die and finding out that if only I had known what to do, they could have survived, so I have put my money where my mouth is. I have trained as a Heartstart tutor, so that I can teach people to do CPR and deal with choking and bleeding. My staff are Heartstart-trained and all the secondary schools in Bolton West have committed to or have become Heartstart schools.

I have worked closely with Sara Harris and the North West ambulance service to encourage the teaching of emergency life support skills and the roll-out of defibrillators. Sara works closely with the British Heart Foundation on its programmes. I have worked with Greater Manchester fire and rescue service, many of whose firefighters go into schools to teach life-saving skills. I have worked with Bolton Wanderers community trust, which is doing a great job in teaching life support skills and promoting defibrillators. I am working with Bolton implantable cardiac defibrillator support group, who are doing such an amazing job in raising money for defibrillators.

Recently, I have started to work with Lagan’s Foundation, which is a foundation that supports parents of children with heart disease and is also doing CPR training. I have campaigned with The Bolton News for every school leaver to be a life saver, and I have met with Ministers and shadow Ministers, and spoken on the subject many times in this place, including introducing a ten-minute rule Bill.

However, that is not enough, because every time there is a change of head teacher or the staff member responsible for emergency life support skills leaves, we have to start again. The only way to ensure that all children learn how to save a life is to put life-saving skills into the national curriculum. The only way to ensure that a defibrillator is available in our schools and other public buildings is to legislate for them to be a requirement. Since I started campaigning for that four years ago, I have heard some tragic and inspirational stories. I appeal to the Minister and to the shadow Minister to commit to introducing emergency life-saving skills to the national curriculum and, as a bare minimum, to ensuring that pupils know how to do CPR and how to use a defibrillator.

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[Chris Ruane (Vale of Clwyd) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling), who secured the debate, and the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Heather Wheeler). The numbers that have been outlined during the debate speak for themselves. More than 30,000 cardiac arrests occur out of hospital each year, and less than one in 10 people survive. That statistic should worry us all as MPs with constituents, and as members of families and communities where such deaths regularly occur year in, year out. Those statistics mean that, if I were to have a cardiac arrest outside hospital now, my chances of being able to go home and see my family tonight would be minimal.

That does not have to be the case. In places around the world such as Seattle, parts of Holland and parts of Norway, survival rates can reach 25%, which means that a quarter of people who have out-of-hospital cardiac arrests make it home to see their loved ones. If we matched the survival rates achieved in parts of Norway, we would save 5,000 lives a year. That is 5,000 families still together; 5,000 mothers, fathers and children together would see the benefits of such changes.

I am proud to be the chair of the all-party group on heart disease, and I have worked with the British Heart Foundation and colleagues in Parliament to push the case that life-saving skills are essential for young people and society, and that they should not be optional. I take this opportunity to pay tribute to the British Heart Foundation, which provides the secretariat to our all-party group: chief executive Simon Gillespie, policy director Mike Hobday, Maura Gillespie, Rachel Almeida, John Howard and Susannah Kerr. The BHF has done great work on genetics, on the impact of sugars, salts and fats on heart disease, on plain packaging, on exercise and on defibrillators. The CPR campaign is one of its most important campaigns because it is, quite literally, life saving.

I will provide two examples from right here in Parliament. Bob Sheldon, an ex-MP who is now Lord Sheldon, died outside Parliament about 15 years ago. Duncan Goodhew, the swimmer, was walking past and saw it happen, and he brought Bob back to life. Paul Keetch, a former Liberal Democrat MP, was flying from England to New York, and he died over Northern Ireland. He was lucky—I have to make sure I get this the right way around—to be flying on a Virgin Atlantic plane, which had a defibrillator. The defibrillator was used and he was saved. If he had been in a British Airways aeroplane, he would not have been brought back and would not have survived. I apologise if I have got that the wrong way around.

The incident involving young Samantha Hobbs has already been relayed. I met Samantha and her mother in Portcullis House when Samantha gave us a lesson about how she saved her mum. It was absolutely lovely to see mother and daughter still bonded with each other because of Samantha’s skills. The BHF campaign is a great way to get the message across to the public: it tells us to pump the heart to the rhythm of “Stayin’ Alive”:

“Ah, ha, ha, ha, stayin’ alive”.

[Julie Hilling]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Chris Ruane]

I will, as long as my hon. Friend does not ask me to sing a duet with her.

[Julie Hilling]

Those of us who are more musically challenged can do it to “Nellie the Elephant”.

[Chris Ruane]

For those who are not impressed by the examples I have given of people being saved—the mother and daughter, Bob Sheldon and Paul Keetch—in cold-hearted actuarial terms, the insurance industry reckons that every person who dies prematurely costs the country £1 million in lost taxes, lost education and lost life. If we prevent 5,000 people from dying prematurely from heart disease every year, the country will save £5 billion. Over the next 10 years, the saving would be £50 billion. It makes economic sense, but most of all, it makes health sense to introduce lessons about CPR.

Charities such as the British Heart Foundation are doing their part. To date, 930 secondary schools across the country, plus two community groups in my constituency, have signed up to help build a nation of life savers. As has been mentioned, the BHF is providing kits free of charge to schools and clubs. The charity is doing its bit, and it is time for the Government to meet it halfway and help to deliver CPR and public access defibrillator awareness across the four nations. The BHF’s innovative “Call Push Rescue” training scheme teaches CPR and PAD awareness in less than 30 minutes. It takes just 30 minutes to save a life.

Will CPR awareness sessions affect our children’s maths and English? Will they reduce our children’s skills? Will they adversely affect our children’s standard assessment tests, their GCSEs or their A-levels? Such training can be slotted into the curriculum in many different ways, as has been said. For example, it could be taught in biology lessons or—my favourite option—in PE lessons. The good thing about CPR is that it can be taught anywhere in the school curriculum, and it must be possible to find 30 minutes somewhere in that curriculum.

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[Mr Gibb]

If not, I am sure that he or she has been snapped up elsewhere.

We heard powerful speeches from the hon. Members for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) and for Vale of Clwyd (Chris Ruane); I am sure the latter will receive a letter from either Willie Walsh or Richard Branson, depending on which airline did not have a defibrillator. There was also a powerful speech from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon).

I recognise that the intention of the hon. Member for Bolton West is to ensure that more people have the knowledge and skills that could prove so valuable in assisting a child, teacher or someone visiting a school who suffers a cardiac arrest. However, whether teaching such knowledge and skills should be an addition to the national curriculum is another question.

The new national curriculum, which came into force in September 2014, represents a clear step forward for schools. It will ensure that all children have the opportunity to acquire the essential knowledge in key academic and non-academic subjects. However, I am afraid that it has now become somewhat routine for Education Ministers to come to such debates to make the case against the inclusion of a particular new requirement in the national curriculum. Proposals such as this are often supported by a persuasive argument, but their sheer number means that we need to start from a position of caution when addressing them.

The national curriculum creates a minimum expectation for the content of curriculums in maintained schools. Quite deliberately, it does not represent everything that a school should teach. Also, schools do not have a monopoly on the provision of education to children; parents and voluntary groups outside school also play an important role.

Many schools choose to include CPR and defibrillator awareness as part of their PSHE teaching. In the introduction to the new national curriculum, we have highlighted the expectation that PSHE should be taught, and improving the quality of PSHE teaching is a priority of this Government. However, we do not want to prescribe exactly which issues schools should have to cover in PSHE or other related parts of what we would call the school curriculum, as opposed to the national curriculum.

Prescribing a long list of specific content to be covered could be unproductive, leading to a tick-box approach that did not properly address the most important issues. Nor would it ensure that schools addressed those matters that were most relevant to their pupils. Indeed, we should trust schools to provide the right education for their pupils, within the overall framework of the national curriculum.

[Julie Hilling]

I had some optimism at the start of the Minister’s speech, but I have come back to a state of depression after listening to what he has had to say. He is talking about a list of issues that come to him, but how many of them could save 150,000 lives a year and how many would combine a range of issues including citizenship and boosting confidence? I ask him to consider the fact that this subject potentially has a special, indeed unique, position in our national curriculum.

[Mr Gibb]

I am not arguing against the inclusion of CPR in a school’s teaching curriculum; I am arguing about whether teaching these things should be statutory. There is more than one way to achieve an objective.

Also, if we look at the list of issues that people argue should be included for consideration in the national curriculum, we see that many of them would save a significant number of lives each year: relationships; drugs and alcohol; emotional and mental health, and well-being; emergency life support skills; homelessness; forced marriage; violence; transgender issues; tobacco; animal welfare; bullying; gambling; gender equality; cancer; symptoms of brain tumours in young people; fire and road safety; body image; the UN declaration on the rights of the child; environment; the dangers of carbon monoxide; cooking; media literacy; knife crime; parenting; chess; and foetal alcohol spectrum disorder.

Those are all specific cases where Governments, including the previous Government, have been lobbied over the years for things to be included in the national curriculum. It would be easy for any Minister—Conservative, Labour or Liberal Democrat—to say yes to those issues, only to find that there was little time in the national curriculum for the core academic subjects that we want children to learn. However, that does not mean that we do not think those other things should be taught in schools.

CPR is included in the non-statutory PSHE programme of study produced by the PSHE Association, which should please my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North. That suggested programme of study, which was produced by some of the leading experts in PSHE teaching, includes teaching young people how to recognise and follow health and safety procedures and ways to reduce risk and minimise harm in risky situations, and how to use emergency and basic first aid. Many schools also make use of organisations such as the Red Cross and St John Ambulance to provide information to young people about first aid and dealing with emergencies.

The British Heart Foundation has been mentioned by a number of hon. Members. It has offered to provide free CPR training kits to every secondary school in the country, allowing young people to gain first-hand experience of that important life-saving skill. The training kit covers how and when to perform CPR on an adult or child; how and when to put someone in the recovery position, which was referred to in the debate; and how and when to use a public access defibrillator. It contains an educational DVD demonstrating how to carry out CPR while trainees join in by using mannequins, so that no instructor is needed. The kit includes 35 mannequins, enabling every pupil in a class to learn CPR together.

We will work with the British Heart Foundation to promote that kit to schools. Indeed, the DFE is notifying all schools of the foundation’s “Call, Push, Rescue” kit in the next all-school termly e-mail, and we will continue to work with the foundation to promote its resources, as well as those provided by St John Ambulance and the British Red Cross, to all schools.

Many schools are already making good use of the resources and opportunities that are available to teach CPR, and to raise awareness of public access defibrillators. At Fulford school in York, for example, CPR training is managed by the deputy head teacher as part of his responsibility for pastoral care and character. One day each year is set aside to train all year 7 students; CPR training is part of their personal development lessons. At the last training session, around 30 teachers stayed behind to help and to learn the skills themselves. Feedback from the parent council has been favourable, as has been the response from students.

Other schools approach the training in a different way. For example, at Devonport high school for boys, CPR training sessions using the “Call, Push, Rescue” kit have been run in PSHE classes on Friday mornings. Since the school received the kit, year 10 students from three of the school’s six houses have undertaken the training.

I again thank the hon. Member for Bolton West and other hon. Members for their thoughtful and constructive contributions to the debate. I reassure them that I agree with them about the value and importance of first aid skills, and I also support access to defibrillators in schools. Although we do not believe that adding teaching on those issues to the national curriculum would advance the cause most effectively, we will always remain open to further discussions about the best way to promote those issues to schools and to ensure that schools have the resources they need to keep their staff and pupils safe.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

If my hon. Friend knows anything about me she will know that I am not in favour of anything that is top-down, and I agree that the proposed body must be established and owned by teachers for teachers. To be successful, a college of teaching must be free from Government control. Our recent consultation made a commitment to offer support—whether financial or otherwise—if that would be helpful, but the independence of the college from Government remains our overriding concern and our support must not compromise that.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

14. What steps she is taking to ease teachers’ work loads.

[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

Reducing unnecessary work load is a priority for this Government. In October 2014, we launched the Workload Challenge, asking teachers for views on how to tackle unnecessary work load. On 6 February, we published our response with a comprehensive programme of action.

[Julie Hilling]

Teachers across Bolton West are telling me that they love teaching but are thinking of leaving the profession because they cannot tolerate the work load any longer. Will the Minister set a target for the reduction in work load and limit working hours, rather than just monitoring them?

[Mr Laws]

The risk of that is picking out an arbitrary number, but we are clear that we want to see consequences for the actions we are putting in place, and reduce figures for unnecessary work load. We are commissioning biannual surveys to measure the effectiveness of the policy. I hope that the Labour party will sign up to some of the measures included in the conclusions of the Workload Challenge, including the protocol that would set out minimum lead-in times for significant changes in curriculum qualifications and accountability, which has been very much welcomed by teachers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Monday 19th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Sam Gyimah)]

My right hon. Friend has huge experience in this area, having held the portfolio that I hold when we were in opposition. It is absolutely right that we need to give parents certainty to plan their child care needs. Child care hits family finances, so it is right that the Government have a clear plan to give parents of all three and four-year-olds free child care. For parents who want additional child care there is tax-free child care, but the Labour party’s plan, funded by the bank levy, which has been spent 11 times and more, is not a clear plan. Certainly, given its economic stance, it cannot fund that plan.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

According to the Minister, schools should be able to choose whether to teach emergency life support skills, but we do not allow a choice in other subjects. Does he not agree that it is worth two hours so that we can transform our society, make every school leaver a life saver, and so save potentially 150,000 lives a year?

[Mr Gibb]

I understand the hon. Lady’s passion on this, which is shared by Government Members as well, but what is taught in personal, social, health and economic education is up to the schools, and we do not want to have an over-prescribed school curriculum. We have created a carefully balanced curriculum between central prescription and autonomy for professionals, and this is a matter for professionals. All schools are free to teach these very important skills, but we must leave some matters to schools to decide.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

I thank New College and other proposers that have submitted free school applications for their hard work and commitment. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for his work and support for the New College bid. Free schools are giving local communities and teachers the freedom to come together and establish new high-quality schools that are raising academic standards. We are currently assessing all wave 8 applications against the published criteria, and we will soon write to applicants to notify them whether they have been selected for interview.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

We are constantly told that free schools are outperforming all other maintained schools. Will the Minister comment on his own Department’s admission that not only have a very small number of free schools actually been inspected, but that the

“findings cannot be interpreted as a balanced view of the quality of education nationally”?

[Mr Gibb]

Of course, many of the schools have only just opened—they have been open for only one year or two years—and not all of them have yet been inspected. However, many have been inspected, and 24% of free schools inspected have been judged outstanding. That is under the tougher framework that Ofsted now applies. The rate is higher than for schools as a whole.

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[The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws)]

I am happy to welcome that and to meet my hon. Friend to discuss that proposal. He will know that in the year ahead, as a consequence of representations from him and other hon. Members from Cambridgeshire, we are increasing funding for Cambridgeshire schools by 8%, or £23 million. That will certainly help with the recruitment problems and issues that he mentions.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

T5. My constituent, Julia, came to talk to me about the plight of supply teachers who are now paid considerably less than the classroom teachers they cover, despite needing a wide range of skills and the ability to adapt quickly. What will the Minister do to regulate supply teacher companies to ensure that schools and teachers are not being ripped off?

[Mr Laws]

We are not intending to over-regulate that sector, but I agree that we must ensure a proper deal for supply teachers. They form an important part of the school system, and the flexibility and freedom that we are giving schools to run their own recruitment, as well as additional resources through the pupil premium, are allowing schools to tackle those problems.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Thursday 20th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Ann McKechin (Glasgow North) (Lab)]

16. What steps the Government are taking to (a) enforce payment of the minimum wage and (b) encourage firms to pay the living wage.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

20. What steps the Government are taking to (a) enforce payment of the minimum wage and (b) encourage firms to pay the living wage.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills (Jo Swinson)]

The Government are taking tough action on employers that break minimum wage law. We have made it simpler to name and shame employers that do not pay the national minimum wage properly, and have increased the financial penalty that employers pay for breaking the law. The Government will always support and encourage businesses to pay higher than the national minimum wage, where they can.

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[Mr Speaker]

Wow! It is always useful to have a bit of information.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

When many large employers are making vast profits but charging the taxpayer by paying their employees the minimum wage, and when families are hit by the cost of living crisis, why will the Minister not follow Labour’s lead and our plans to incentivise employers to pay a living wage through “make work pay” contracts?

[Jo Swinson]

I do not think the proposals put forward by the Opposition stack up. Providing only a small incentive for only a 12-month period is unlikely to change behaviour, but it is important to encourage employers to pay more than the minimum wage where they can. It is important that we are cutting income tax by £800 for low and middle earners so that they can keep more of their hard-earned cash. That is why this Government will continue to build the stronger economy we need so that people can properly prosper.

Small Business, Enterprise and Employment Bill

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 19th November 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

As I said, not only will any exclusivity clause be null and void, but we are consulting on those powers. If the hon. Gentleman actually wanted to get into the detail of trying to sort this out, he would know that that consultation was happening—perhaps he will even respond to it. One thing that happened during the passage of this Bill was that it became clear that the Labour party had not been engaged in any of the consultations about any of the improvements we are making. Instead of making partisan points, we are making it easier to do business and to employ people, and we are strengthening people’s rights where their employment contracts are abused, but doing so in a way that can allow small businesses to continue to grow, employ and take people on.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

The Minister is trumpeting getting rid of the exclusivity clauses as a marvellous thing, but how does it help workers if, instead of having one zero-hours contract with one employer, they end up with several zero-hours contracts with several employers? That does not get to the heart of the problem, which is the abuse of workers on zero-hours contracts.

[Matthew Hancock]

The heart of the problem is that for 13 years the Labour party, having promised to do something about this issue, did absolutely nothing about it. Tackling this issue is about making sure we remove the abusive practices while also supporting the flexible labour market to ensure that people can get jobs altogether. Our reforms demonstrate that we can both deal with the abusive practices—for example, by tackling people who do not pay the national minimum wage and tackling the abuse of zero-hours contracts—and have a jobs recovery. The best way to help people is to make sure they have access to a job.

I am glad that on Second Reading the Bill had all-party support and that, throughout, we have had more than enough time to consider the issues—indeed, we have had time to spare. The fairness and transparency agenda that is also a crucial part of the Bill is all about making sure that businesses that do the right thing are not undercut by those that do not.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Monday 27th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

We do need to do more to support young carers. We changed the law recently to enable all of them to benefit from a proper assessment of their needs, so that they can be given the support that they require. As the hon. Gentleman will know, we also extended the pupil premium recently to cover children in care, children who are adopted, and, more recently, children receiving early-years education. However, I shall be happy to look at the hon. Gentleman’s proposal. I know that he works closely with the Norfolk young carers forum, and I also know that my hon. Friend the Minister for Schools will be meeting representatives of the Carers Trust in November to discuss precisely this issue.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

T6. About 150,000 people die each year who might have been saved had someone only known what to do. Will the Secretary of State agree to make the teaching of emergency life support skills compulsory, so that every school leaver is a life-saver?

[Nicky Morgan]

Like the hon. Lady, I appreciate the importance of teaching life-saving skills. There have been calls for it to be part of the personal, social, health and economic education curriculum, and we are considering that. The difficulty is that the more I mandate, the less time is available for teaching, and the more burdened teachers become. However, I agree that this is a very important issue.

National Minimum Wage

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Commons Chamber

[Matthew Hancock]

In 1998, when the Labour Government removed the requirement to regulate levels of leverage in the City, the Conservative party complained, and it was that removal which led to the crash being bigger in the UK. It was the result of poor regulation of the financial sector. Labour did not fix the roof when the sun was shining, but instead spent money they did not have even before the crash.

Instead of forgetting about the deficit, as Labour does, and ignoring Britain’s economic challenges, we know that a strong recovery underpins a strong society and that we cannot have a strong minimum wage without a strong economy.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I love the way the right hon. Gentleman is rewriting history. Will he explain why we had three years of a flat-lining economy and why it only started to recover when the Chancellor went to plan B and started to invest in infrastructure?

[Matthew Hancock]

The hon. Lady needs to look at the economic statistics: there was no double-dip recession and ours is the fastest-growing economy in the G7. Economic growth has been strong, the number of jobs is growing at a record rate, our economy is turning around and we have the fastest growth in the G7. Labour might want to deny it, but we want to support the plan and, crucially, ensure that economic growth reaches all parts of the country and that all can benefit. That is why we support and are strengthening the minimum wage. We know that the only route to higher living standards is not through more borrowing, more taxes and more debt, but through fair pay for a job well done.

Today was another test of Labour’s economic credibility, and yet again it was found wanting. Instead, the true supporters of the national minimum wage now reside on the Government Benches. First and foremost, a strong minimum wage requires a strong economy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matthew Hancock]

We know what would be most damaging for the low-paid—if we lost control of the economy and had another great recession like the last time Labour was in office.

[Julie Hilling]

I want to return to the Minister’s point about the number of new jobs being created. I asked him once about this matter and got the following reply:

“Information regarding the number of jobs created is not available. As an alternative…estimates relating to the net change in the number of people in employment are available… Unfortunately the requested information on duration of employment is not available”.—[Official Report, 12 November 2013; Vol. 570, c. 578-9W.]

The Government continue to talk about the number of jobs created, but they do not have the evidence to back it up.

[Matthew Hancock]

The evidence was published at 9.30 this morning. It showed that record numbers of jobs had been created and that in the hon. Lady’s constituency the number of unemployment claimants fell by 32% in the last year. If I were her, I would look at the statistics before complaining about our record on jobs.

True supporters of the national minimum wage know that it is a partnership with business. Jobs cannot be created without job creators. Business is a force for social good, not only because it creates jobs, but because business prospers by finding solutions to other people’s problems. It is something for something, and it is what the British people mean by fairness. After all, the Low Pay Commission was set up because the minimum wage relies on consensus to keep the support of both employers and employees. In fact, the hon. Member for Streatham made that point in his speech, but then sadly undermined it with a policy that I think was probably pushed on him by his leader.

--- Later in debate ---

[Heather Wheeler (South Derbyshire) (Con)]

It was really interesting to hear the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) deliver the last bit of her speech, as it was the most promising and uplifting part of the whole thing. The tone of this Opposition debate has been so downbeat. As usual, it is about doom and gloom. The only way out, say the Opposition, is through regulation and for a would-be Labour Government to layer more and more costs on business. Life is not like that. Labour has not learned its lesson. I find it utterly fascinating that, four years into this parliamentary term, we have this synthetic anger and calls for regulation and layering costs on business, not to do the things that our communities need. We need to lift horizons, especially with regard to education.

One of the things that I am most proud about is the fact that we now have a college in South Derbyshire. We have never ever had one before. It was normal for people to leave school at 14. The boys went down the pits and the girls went into the potteries; that is what they did. Well, it is not like that any more, and it must not be like that. If I can get a college in South Derbyshire, surely to goodness, Labour MPs can think about lifting the horizons for their communities. They should think about how people can get better jobs, because they now have better education. We have 1.3% unemployment in South Derbyshire. When the mines shut, we had 25% unemployment. That is a huge change around in the economy of my constituency.

[Julie Hilling]

I get extremely frustrated with this mantra that people should get better jobs. Actually, the precious jobs in our economy include caring, nursing, sweeping our streets and making sure our communities are safe. The people in those essential jobs are frequently on really low pay. We must drive up the amount of money that employers pay them. We should not just say, “Go and get a better job.” Those jobs are essential to our economy.

[Heather Wheeler]

I completely agree with the hon. Lady. All work should be worth doing and worth paying. There is no difference between us on that. How depressing would it be if ever, God forbid, Labour got into power? That is what its mantra is about. Ours is not about that; ours is about sunny uplands.

--- Later in debate ---

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

There have been more measured speakers since the Minister spoke, but listening to him was rather like listening to the Comedy Store at times, given the amazing claims he made. It would be funny if it was not so tragic for the many millions of people who are suffering under the policies of this Government. According to the Minister, everything in the garden is rosy. Well, tell that to the million people who have accessed a food bank this year—to my constituent, Neil, an ex-serviceman paid at the national minimum wage who could not afford to buy nappies and needed to rely on a food bank; or to the one in four apprentices who do not even get paid the paltry £2.73 an hour apprenticeship rate, a rate that has increased by only 23p since 2010.

The national minimum wage was a great achievement by the previous Labour Government, and I pay tribute not only to my hon. Friends who are still in this place, but to a great Wigan MP, Ian McCartney, who steered the minimum wage through Parliament in the teeth of opposition from the Conservative party. I wish I could believe the Minister when he says that the Tory party has had a damascene conversion, but the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) told us previously that businesses with three or fewer employees should be exempt from the minimum wage, as well as from maternity and paternity rights. The hon. Member for Esher and Walton (Mr Raab) called for the minimum wage to be suspended for 16 to 21-year-olds, and the hon. Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) said that disabled people should be allowed to work for less than the minimum wage. One could argue that those were just renegade Back Benchers, but this afternoon we heard about the disgraceful comments of Lord Freud, the Minister who said that some people “aren’t worth” the full national minimum wage, and that if people want to work for £2 an hour, they should be allowed to.

Another six MPs—including the new UKIP MP—signed a Bill in 2010 calling for employees to be able to opt out of the minimum wage. While I mention UKIP, a week or so ago I had the misfortune of turning on the TV and I found myself listening to a delegate from its conference calling for the abolition of the national minimum wage and the living wage, to resounding cheers from the audience. The hon. Member for Clacton (Douglas Carswell) has already made his views clear, as has UKIP’s business spokesman who said that the national minimum wage was in a long list of workers’ rights that make it impossible to employ people.

[Alec Shelbrooke]

Will the hon. Lady let the House know whether she deplores the use of unpaid interns for more than four weeks of free work?

[Julie Hilling]

I am not going to spend a great deal of time talking about interns. Of course we should be able to pay interns, and we have a real difficulty with people who are on workfare and who are working in different ways. We must work towards ensuring that we can pay interns in some way. I have volunteers—I do not call them interns—and I have no money in my budget to pay them. I will not be purer than pure when talking about this issue.

Even businesses are now calling for a rise in the minimum wage, and a raft of business leaders, including the chief executives of Kingfisher and Nomura, have signed a letter calling for the minimum wage to rise faster. It was signed by Sir George Bain, the former chair of the Low Pay Commission, and Alan Buckle, former deputy chair of KPMG, as well as leaders from household names such as the Findus Group, Stobart Group, Balfour Beatty, and Hewlett-Packard.

I recently held an event for faith leaders in Bolton West. They believe that people at the bottom are not paid enough and that we need to work towards a living wage, not just raise the minimum wage. They also reported a large increase in people turning to churches for help with food, clothing and other support. Not only are people £1,600 a year worse off on average, but the loss of the real value of the minimum wage since 2010 has cost an additional £270 million in extra public spending on in-work benefits and tax credits in the last year alone.

Every time an employer does not pay his or her employee enough to live on, it costs every taxpayer money. I appreciate that some small businesses struggle to pay the minimum wage, but many employers are raking in large profits and not paying their workers the living wage they could afford. That is why we need a Labour Government committed to driving up wages, and who will reward employers who pay a living wage through a reduction in tax. Unlike the Government, we have costed that pledge and know how we will pay for it.

We also need strong action to enforce the minimum wage. The Government have announced their name and shame policy four times, but have named only 25 firms. Last year, the Centre for London found that only two employers in four years had been prosecuted for paying below the national minimum wage, despite more than 300,000 people earning less than that.

On the abuse of the national minimum wage, we are told many stories of employers who will employ migrant labour and make vast deductions for accommodation, food and other things. On paper, they are paying the minimum wage, but in reality they pay far less. That not only exploits those workers, but leads to great damage to community cohesion.

As ever, I want to mention my favourite subject: the abuse of care workers who are paid only for the amount of time they are with a client—they are paid a token amount for travel that does not cover their time, and are usually on zero-hours contracts. That needs to be tackled as a matter of urgency. They do an amazing, precious job. Every day, people such as me entrust the care of our loved ones to those exploited workers. That exploitation leads to instability in the work force. I have previously told the House about the 20 different carers my mum had in less than a month because of workers leaving. That leads to mistakes and a great deal of distress for the cared-for person. Imagine if a person had to tell four different people a day how to care for them.

Many of my constituents from all over Bolton West have come to me with the problems of poverty because of low pay, zero-hours contracts, part-time and insecure work, and agency work. I hope the House supports the motion and that the Government will do better than mere rhetoric.

Oral Answers to Questions

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

6. What assessment she has made of the effects on performance of sixth-form colleges of funding changes since 2010.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

10. What assessment she has made of the effects on performance for sixth-form colleges of funding changes since 2010.

[The Minister for Skills, Enterprise and Equalities (Nick Boles)]

Although sixth-form colleges have had to make a contribution to our efforts to deal with the massive budget deficit left by the previous Government, the number of students in sixth-form colleges attaining level 3 qualifications by age 19 has increased by almost 8% since 2010.

[Nick Boles]

Fairness is exactly what we are trying to achieve, and we want a system whereby students receive the same level of backing for their studies regardless of the institution to which they go. Despite the previous Government having had 13 years to sort out the unfairness of the school funding system, we inherited a system that was byzantine in its complexity, and it is taking us some time to work it out.

[Julie Hilling]

A number of sixth-form providers across Bolton have contacted me to say that the funding regulations for sixth-form colleges mean that they are under pressure to place students on additional courses to meet the minimum hour requirement, which is detrimental to those students who succeed better when they are focused on just three subjects. Will the Minister look again at the regulations that are pressurising students to follow educational pathways that are not in their best interests?

Children with Autism (Education)

Julie Hilling Excerpts

Thursday 17th July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Steve McCabe]

The point is that informal exclusions are not notified or recorded, so the issue is virtually impenetrable. That should be addressed. As I said, to be fair to the Government, they have funded a grant for exclusion advisers who we all hope will help to make progress.

I was talking about SENCOs. At present, the Department for Education does not know how many SENCOs there are across the country, or how many teachers have particular additional skills designed to support autistic children. It might be helpful if we carried out some kind of audit so that we could at least begin to estimate the level of need and the gaps in existing provision.

In theory, a SENCO is involved in the school’s use of the pupil premium for SEN children, although there appear to be no clear guidelines on the extent of that involvement or on how a school secures additional funding from a local authority on the basis of a child’s extensive needs or of having a particularly large number of children with special needs. In fact, it is often suggested that some mainstream schools seek to deter the parents of special needs children, and autistic children in particular, because they struggle to secure additional funding and are likely to be penalised by Ofsted for a decline in results as a consequence of their special needs children, rather than acknowledged for their efforts in supporting them. I am not defending any school’s attempt to exclude or reject children, but we have to acknowledge that how the system is currently loaded does not make things easy for a great number of schools.

When we were dealing with the code of practice, the Minister spoke about how he saw the local offer as a powerful means of highlighting how well a local authority was doing in catering for children with special needs. I do not want to talk about what Lancashire or any other local authority has or has not done, as, frankly, I do not have the detail to hand. However, I acknowledge that the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Preston (Mark Hendrick) has provided us with a broader picture of the situation in Lancashire.

[Julie Hilling (Bolton West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one difficulty we face is the shortage of educational psychologists, making it hard to get timely appointments to diagnose young people and that, sadly, the cuts have made the situation even more difficult?

[Steve McCabe]

The real issue is equity of access. People seem to have access to educational psychologists in some parts of the country, whereas there are phenomenal waiting periods in others. Some services claim that they are so overstretched as to be at breaking-point. That is my analysis of what is happening.

To return to the local offer, my view is that it could provide one opportunity for local authorities and specialist providers to co-operate so that every staff member in every mainstream school has access to the support, information, guidance and counselling they might require to help them maintain an autistic child at school. I recently had the opportunity to visit the Treehouse school at the Pears National Centre for Autism Education in London. That provides an example of what can be done to help educate people with autism and to support other schools in the immediate vicinity. It is, of course, a labour-intensive effort, but surely the very term “special needs” implies something more than just the average in mainstream. We have to accept that this will always be a resource issue. Irrespective of the amount of money available, there will always be competition for such resources.

I want to acknowledge that it is not just school-age provision with which we need to concern ourselves, especially when the new Act places obligations to assist people from the age of nought to 25. There is a dearth of decent facilities for children after the age of 16. Let me mention one new college I visited: the Lindridge Trinity specialist college in Sutton Coldfield, which was set up by parents who recognised that there was no provision in their area for their autistic children beyond the age of 16. Even if parents succeed in finding the school that best suits their child’s needs, getting them the education that best addresses the problem and puts them on the best path for the future, they run the risk that once their children reach 16, they simply fall off the cliff, with nothing available for them. As well as trying to address the concerns raised by the hon. Member for Burnley, we need to think further ahead in terms of what the Act requires, particularly in respect of the provision to carry people through to the age of 25.

I congratulate once again the hon. Member for Burnley and other Members who have contributed to the debate. It seems to me that autistic children deserve a full educational opportunity. With the right structure, care and support, they are capable of so much more; it is up to us in this place to make sure that they do not miss out.