Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Lucy Powell and Marcus Jones
Mr Jones
We are clear that when people are placed in temporary accommodation, access to things such as schooling is taken into account. We are also clear that when people are moved to a neighbouring or different borough, they should be informing the receiving borough and support should be given to those families. I am working to support London authorities that are working with the Greater London Authority to improve the procurement of temporary accommodation across London.
Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)
It is good to hear Members on both sides of the House talking about the value of early intervention and family hubs. I ask the Minister to come to Manchester to see the early years delivery model, which is now transforming lives in those early years, working across the voluntary and private sectors. Critical to those family hubs is the support of the local authority. Does he agree that the slash and burn approach to early intervention moneys is putting children’s lives at risk?
Mr Jones
I am aware that under the northern powerhouse initiative we are putting £3.2 million into Manchester for early intervention. The next time I am in that neck of the woods I would certainly be keen to come and see what is working in Manchester. I can reassure the hon. Lady that the Government are committed to early intervention, both through children’s centres and the troubled families programme.
Education and Local Services
Debate between Lucy Powell and Marcus Jones(6 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)
This has been a good and wide-ranging debate. I am delighted to have listened to so many fantastic maiden speeches—we have been on a tour of the UK. The hon. Members for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker), for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Hugh Gaffney), for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Lesley Laird), for Oxford West and Abingdon (Layla Moran), for North West Durham (Laura Pidcock), for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly), for Glasgow East (David Linden), for Brighton, Kemptown (Mr Russell-Moyle), for East Lothian (Martin Whitfield), for High Peak (Ruth George), and for Nottingham North (Alex Norris) all made passionate contributions from the Opposition Benches.
I would like to take this opportunity to welcome my new colleagues: my hon. Friends the Members for Aberdeen South (Ross Thomson), for Ochil and South Perthshire (Luke Graham) and for Southport (Damien Moore). Those two new colleagues from Scotland are just two of our 12 new Scottish Conservative Members, which is great news. It was fantastic to hear the maiden speeches of my hon. Friends. They made serious but entertaining contributions to the debate and showed that they will be excellent Members of Parliament. All the new Members who have contributed to today’s debate have shown, in their own way, that they will bring a range of expertise and views to this House over the coming Parliament.
A strong education offer is essential to unlock talent, to create opportunities for our young people and to equip them with the skills they will need to help us build and maintain a strong economy that generates prosperity for all. Last year, we consulted widely on how to create more good school places and how to ensure that our schools work for everyone. We will continue to build on the constructive conversations we had with higher education institutions during the consultation, so that we can agree what more they can do to raise attainment and increase the number of good school places.
To meet the needs of our growing and rapidly changing economy, employers need access to a workforce with the skills they require. Our reforms to technical education will help businesses, young people and adults to achieve their potential, as T-levels will become a gold standard for technical excellence.
I will go through some of the points that hon. Members have raised about education. Members on both sides of the House raised the issue of school funding, so it is important to start by reiterating what the Secretary of State for Education said earlier. As she said very clearly, the Queen’s Speech was clear that the Government are determined to introduce a fairer distribution of funding for schools. We will set out our plans shortly and, as was outlined in our manifesto, we will ensure that no school has its budget cut as a result of the new formula. My right hon. Friend was extremely clear on that point.
Mr Jones
Let me make some progress and then I will give way.
The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) mentioned the number of teaching staff being made redundant from our schools. I say to him that there are 15,000 more teachers in our schools today than when his Government left office in 2010.
Mr Jones
I will make some more progress before I give way.
In responding to several Opposition Members on nursery school funding, I would like to say how important our nursery schools are. They are a vital part of our childcare sector. We have already committed to an additional £55 million a year to maintain their current funding levels to at least 2020, in recognition that they deal with some of the children from the most deprived backgrounds in our country. I point out to Opposition Members that our manifesto committed us to immediately instituting a capital fund to help primary schools develop nurseries where they currently do not have the facilities for one.
The shadow Secretary of State for Education raised the pertinent matter of school fire safety in her speech. Sprinklers must be installed in new school buildings if a risk assessment means that they are necessary or if they are required under a local authority planning policy. There are no plans whatsoever to introduce any changes that would make fire safety laws for schools less strict than they are already.
Lucy Powell
I want to go back to the Minister’s comments about funding, because he seems to be missing the point. The redundancies that are being made in schools now are a result not of the national funding formula but of increased costs and real-terms cuts happening to schools now. The national funding formula is on top that, and schools will continue to lose out. Can the Minister give a guarantee from the Dispatch Box that no school will lose funding as a result of those real-terms cuts?
Mr Jones
I can, as a result of the formula that has been put forward. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has made that very clear today.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) mentioned social mobility and the importance of education in our primary schools. She said that we now have more good and outstanding primary school places than we did seven years ago. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) mentioned the importance of tackling domestic violence and welcomed the measures in the Queen’s Speech to do so.
My hon. Friends the Members for Hertford and Stortford (Mr Prisk) and for Cannock Chase (Amanda Milling) made important speeches in which they referred to the opportunities that we have as we leave the European Union. In particular, they said that those opportunities are about not just the trade in goods but the trade in services, which is also critical.
The role that local government plays in providing services is also essential to the smooth running of our society. Despite challenging financial conditions, councils continue to deliver, and council tax is expected to be lower in real terms in 2019-20 than it was in 2010-11. Councils have embraced innovation and transformed the way they work to deliver services for their local areas.
Child Care
Debate between Lucy Powell and Marcus Jones(10 years, 5 months ago)
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Lucy Powell
I will plough on and give way later.
Under this Government, average weekly part-time nursery costs have increased by 30%. Put another way, child care costs have risen five times faster than wages. In the past year alone, they have risen at more than double the rate of inflation. It is typical of the Government to pretend that things are going well when the reality is that many parents are finding it an incredible struggle to find and afford the child care they need. On top of the crisis in places and hikes in costs, parents have also seen their support fall. Families with two children have experienced a reduction of about £1,500 a year in tax credits, hitting low-income families the hardest. At the time of the 2010 spending review, the Office for Budget Responsibility warned the Government that cuts to child care support would have a negative impact, saying that they would
“affect the hours worked and participation in the labour market”.
Yet the Government have taken no notice and parents face an increasingly difficult child care crunch.
Lucy Powell
I am going to make some progress.
Let me turn to the Government’s response. They may have deleted reference to it from their website, but the Prime Minister once promised that they would be
“the most family-friendly Government…ever”.
Yet they have wasted three years doing very little. The Minister’s flagship agenda on ratios has been abandoned; the nursery offer for disadvantaged two-year-olds is being met with delivery problems; and their tax break scheme is too little, too late and benefits the richest the most. On child care ratios, the Deputy Prime Minister agreed with us that changing ratios could even increase prices. He said that the evidence was “overwhelmingly against” changing the rules on ratios, and went on to say:
“I cannot ask parents to accept such a controversial change with no real guarantee it will save them money—in fact it could cost them more.”
While we welcome extra support for disadvantaged two-year-olds, one in three councils tell us that they do not have enough places to meet this policy.
Childminder agencies are up in the air, with no clarity about how they will work or what they will do. The Minister is running 20 pilots across the country. So far, we know that at least two of those pilots will charge, although we do not know who will bear the cost. Will Ministers give us a guarantee that childminder agencies will not push up prices for parents?
The Government’s tax-free child care policy is too little, too late for parents. The extra investment in child care the Government are promising is dwarfed by the £7 billion a year of cuts they have already made for families with children. The scheme does not start until 2015, and it excludes families with children over the age of five. It benefits families earning up to £300,000 a year, helping the richest the most while leaving low and middle-income families struggling to make work pay, particularly for second earners. This policy will do nothing about costs.
By contrast, Labour has a plan to tackle the child care crunch. Our policies will make a real difference to mums and dads, get our economy moving, and help parents to tackle the logistical nightmare they face. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) rightly pointed out, seven out of 10 mums said they would work were it not for the high costs of child care. Expensive child care is acting as a drag on our economy. If our employment rate for mothers moved up to the average of the world’s top five nations, 320,000 more women would have jobs and tax receipts would rise by £1.7 billion a year. The Government gloat about their record, but most of the jobs they have created for mothers returning to work are part-time, low-paid jobs. Over 1 million of those people want to return to full-time work, but the full-time jobs do not exist.
Labour Members take the child care crunch seriously; we are not as complacent as Government Members. We would expand free child care for three and four-year-olds from 15 to 25 hours per week for working parents. That is worth over £1,500 a year. This is a fully costed Labour commitment. We would pay for this policy by ensuring that the banks pay their fair share, increasing the bank levy to an extra £800 million a year.
For school-aged children, many parents increasingly struggle to find decent before and after-school child care. The Government abandoned our extended schools programme. We will set down in law a guarantee that parents can access wraparound child care through their local school if they want it. This will stimulate innovation and collaboration to meet the logistical nightmare described by Members today.
Child care is at the heart of the cost of living crisis for many families. While parents cry out for action from this Government, all we have seen is in-fighting and prevarication while costs have soared and provision fallen. Our offer of 25 hours free child care for working parents of three and four-year-olds will make a real difference to families struggling to make ends meet. I hope colleagues on both sides of the House will support our motion.