Examination Reform

Debate between Nic Dakin and David Ward

Wednesday 16th January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Let me pick out just one quote from Deborah Annetts, the chief executive of the Incorporated Society of Musicians:

“It is as if the Olympics never happened. Design—gone, technology—gone, music—gone. This short sighted, wholesale attack on secondary music education will emasculate not only our world class music education system but also our entire creative economy”.

Those may be apocalyptic words, but they reflect the depth and breadth of the views of people who really care. I recognise that all parties involved in the argument care, but I shiver a little when I hear belief after belief, but no evidence. That is a dangerous way of changing and making policy, and it imperils the quality of what goes on both inside and outside our classrooms.

[Mr Ward]

The hon. Gentleman has been dragged away from a crucial point that he was making about formative and summative assessments. A horse race would have different winners 10 yards before the finish line and 10 yards after it. The crucial thing is not just the who or the what that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned, but the when. It is the judgments made at a particular age that divide people into successes or failures.

Congenital Cardiac Services for Children

Debate between Nic Dakin and David Ward

Thursday 23rd June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin]

I thank my hon. Friend for that important point. One of the things illustrated by the debate is that there are many forms of excellent practice, with excellent people working across the country in this area of medicine.

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

It is good to be working with the hon. Gentleman on this issue, but does he agree that there is a fundamental problem? Newcastle performs only 255 procedures, so it needs the Leeds unit to close to reach the 400 figure specified in the review, whereas Leeds can stand on its own. Together, we have to challenge that premise, because the European regulations state that 250 procedures is perfectly safe. The Newcastle unit is safe and the Leeds unit is safe; they are both excellent. Together, we have to challenge the review.

[Nic Dakin]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for those comments. Leeds delivered 316 cardiac operations in 2009-10 and 372 in 2010-11, so the numbers meet the criteria fairly closely.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) on securing the debate. The Minister will have heard from his comments that there is still not total confidence in the integrity and transparency of the review. I feel that the Minister has helped to allay those fears and I am reassured by his saying that the review will be open, genuine and flexible. I thank him for putting that message across so strongly. The hon. Member for Pudsey clearly outlined the concerns, especially the need properly to engage with the ethnic minority community. Although it sounds as though steps have been taken latterly, they ought to have been taken at the beginning of the process, given the fact that young people in that community have a higher incidence of cardiac issues than the rest of the population.

I hope that the people conducting the review will hear the excellent comments that have been made by Members on both sides of the House, and from all regions of the country, during the debate, and that they will think outside the box, as the hon. Members for Pudsey and for Colne Valley (Jason McCartney) said earlier. We need to be flexible. We do not need to compromise on clinical excellence or clinical outcomes for children, but we should recognise the need for equality of access to excellence, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds East said. I hope that our debate will be part of the consultation process that the Minister assures us is genuine, listening and ongoing, and that it will assist us in reaching an outcome that we can all applaud.

Finance (No. 3) Bill

Debate between Nic Dakin and David Ward

Tuesday 3rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Nic Dakin]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting and valid point, but amendment 9 proposes specifically that:

“The Chancellor shall review the bank levy and publish a report, before 31 December 2011, on—

(a) the Government’s analysis behind the rate and threshold chosen for the bank levy;

(b) the adequacy of the bank levy in the context of other reforms to the wider banking system; and

(c) the total tax revenues expected from banks across all categories of taxation in each year from 2011-12 to 2016-17.’.”

That is what we are debating today, although my hon. Friend makes a good point.

[Mr David Ward (Bradford East) (LD)]

On the hon. Gentleman’s point about the mandate, presumably if Labour had got 3% or 4% more in the vote and a majority of 60 or 70 seats on 35%, he would have considered that to be a mandate to do whatever Labour wanted to do?

[The Temporary Chair (Mr James Gray)]

Order. That has absolutely nothing to do with the amendment we are discussing.

[Nic Dakin]

Thank you, Mr Gray, although I think that the hon. Gentleman was reminding me of the part in my speech in which I referred to mandates, as it was important to reiterate that the Government have no mandate for the NHS reorganisation, for police cuts, for the VAT rise, for abolishing the future jobs fund or for trebling tuition fees, and they certainly have no mandate for cutting too fast and too deep. However, they do have a mandate for listening to the amendment we are considering today on the bank levy. There absolutely is a mandate for the bank levy.

[Mr Ward]

This point has occurred so many times, so can we pick this one off? The figure of £3.9 million is certainly bigger than £2.5 million, but £3.9 million for one year is surely smaller than £2.5 billion for four years. How on earth can this be a cut in the banking levy?

[Nic Dakin]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. We are arguing that because of the fragility of the recovery, it is time to repeat the bank bonus tax. The Government should make their decisions now when they are not constrained. The decision now should be to repeat the bank bonus tax and increase the bank levy year on year, rather than leaving it static. That is what this review of the bank levy would allow us to establish, and that would produce an additional income, he will be pleased to hear, of at least £2 billion in each year of this Administration. That additional £2 billion could be used by the Government on behalf of the British people, the taxpayers and, indeed, the shareholders of these companies.