Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Robert Halfon]

Hear, hear. It was very moving to hear of the experience of my hon. Friend’s family, and I entirely agree with him: we must teach and remind people that there were many righteous Gentiles who suffered while doing everything possible to save Jews. A famous Polish lady, Irena Sendler, saved 2,000 Jewish children from the Warsaw ghettos, and was remembered in a special exhibition in the House of Commons in 2018, which I was pleased to attend. My hon. Friend has made a powerful point, and I am sure that schools up and down the country will be listening to what he says.

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

12. What steps her Department is taking to help improve the quality of apprenticeships.

[The Minister of State, Department for Education (Robert Halfon)]

We are improving the quality of apprenticeships, and Ofsted will be inspecting every apprenticeship provider by 2025. All providers have been asked to re-enrol on the register of apprenticeship training providers. We are intervening to help apprentices and employers as well.

[Paul Holmes]

My local college, Eastleigh College, works alongside 700 regional employers to deliver high-quality apprenticeships all the way to degree level. Last year nearly a third of apprenticeship starts were at the higher level. What steps are the Government taking to broaden the routes into technical education and increase the number of higher-level apprenticeship starts?

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend will be pleased to know that there have been more than 10,800 apprenticeship starts in his constituency since 2010. We are investing £2.7 billion in apprenticeships by 2025. We are spending £8 million of that on promoting degree-level apprenticeships. We have a big recruitment campaign, Fire It Up, to encourage more apprentices. We are transforming careers advice on apprenticeships in schools and colleges, We pay non-levy-payer small businesses the vast majority of their training costs when they hire apprentices.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

The hon. Lady and I have discussed this before. Today’s announcement was all about increasing accessibility, availability and affordability. We want to see an increase in tax-free childcare. There is going to be a big comms campaign, so watch this space.

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

At the YMCA young carers festival which was held at Fairthorne Manor on Saturday, I learned that there was no central Government guidance for schools on providing support for young carers. Attendance policies can have a detrimental impact on their education and mental health. How will the Minister bring central guidance to schools to help these vulnerable people?

Children’s Education Recovery and Childcare Costs

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

That is very generous of the hon. Gentleman—very generous indeed. I am sure we will all be waiting eagerly to hear his contribution.

Let us not forget how important education recovery should be to the Government, and how much it matters to children, to families and to their futures, to our economy, to our country and to all our futures. Almost 2 million of our youngest children have never known a school year uninterrupted by covid. Students sitting their GCSEs this summer lost around one in four days of face-to-face teaching in year 10. Parents, headteachers and nursery managers who I met across the country told me about delays to children’s speech and language development, about how children struggle to use a knife and fork, about a loss of confidence in our young people, and about their frustrations at being unable to get children the help and support they so desperately need. They have also warned, as has Ofsted, about the explosion in mental health conditions among our young people. At national level, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has been clear that failing to support our children’s recovery now will cost the economy an estimated £300 billion. What bar for evidence do those warnings not meet? Who else needs to tell the Government about the crisis our children face before they finally cotton on? What more reasons do Ministers need to act to protect our children’s futures?

The Government have failed our children. We see in the behaviour of Ministers a heady blend of three distinct approaches to the responsibility of Government. Sometimes they do nothing, or sometimes they do not turn up. Sometimes they actively make things worse and sometimes they belatedly accept that the Opposition are right, but not before families and children have paid the price for their pride. The first two sadly dominate their approach to our children. It has been a pattern throughout recent years. Time and again they have treated our children as an afterthought. We saw that when the support that children needed to learn at home was delayed, and when exams were thrown into chaos for not one year, but two. We saw it over 18 long months of inaction on school ventilation. We saw it when Government Members voted to let our children go hungry during the holidays and—perhaps most powerfully—we saw it when pubs were reopened before our schools.

We saw it in the winter when the Government did nothing for months, even after suppliers warned that the national tutoring programme was at risk of catastrophic failure, and we saw it this spring when we discovered that the Conservatives’ lack of interest in our children’s outcomes had gone so far as to pay tutors to sit in empty classrooms. We saw it in March when I asked the Secretary of State whether he believed that the delivery of the national tutoring programme had been a success. Even he was unable to provide a simple yes. He knows that it has been a disaster and he is not even here to defend it. We see it now as millions of secondary school students face exams without any support to recover the learning that they have lost.

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

I remind the House that, if we had followed the Leader of the Opposition’s advice, children would have been out of school for even longer. The Government have put £5 billion into catch-up costs for teachers, schools and pupils. From the shadow Secretary of State’s magic money tree, how much is the Labour party committing, compared with that £5 billion, in its manifesto?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I must pick up the hon. Gentleman on his first point, which, I am afraid, is simply not right. It is just not accurate, but we know that the Government have a habit of this kind of thing. On children’s recovery, I suggest that he looks at the work that the Government commissioned by Sir Kevan Collins, who we can all, right across the House, recognise as an expert in this. The long-term damage to our economy and the costs that our country will face if we fail to get this right now is £300 billion—that is the hit. I assure him that everything that we have set out has been fully costed and I will happily send him a copy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Walker]

We believe that oracy is very important as part of an overall strategy supporting literacy, language and development in schools. As the hon. Lady will know, our package includes specific interventions in early language development. However, I have engaged and will continue to engage with her in the oracy all-party parliamentary group, which she chairs.

We have listened to feedback on tutoring, and next year we will allocate all tutoring funding directly to schools, improving the programme’s simplicity and flexibility. Great teaching transforms children’s life chances, and we know that great teachers are not born but made. That is why we are investing more than £250 million of additional funds to help provide 500,000 teacher-training opportunities through initial teacher training, the early career framework, and our new suite of national professional qualifications. Supporting teachers, including headteachers, throughout their careers is fundamental to delivering the best outcomes for children.

[Paul Holmes]

I thank the Minister for outlining the measures that the Government are taking. When I was a special adviser at the Department for Education, we were constantly hearing from members of the profession about the difficulty of recruiting and retaining good teachers to continue educational attainment through primary and secondary schools. The £3,000 levelling-up premium that has been announced is a vital tool in that regard, but what else can be done to ensure that more good teachers enter the system?

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Julie Marson (Hertford and Stortford) (Con)]

9. What steps his Department is taking to invest in education in low-performing areas

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

13. What steps his Department is taking to invest in education in low-performing areas.

[Nick Fletcher (Don Valley) (Con)]

23. What steps his Department is taking to invest in education in low-performing areas.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I have set out in the White Paper that we share the commitment to raising literacy standards, as I am sure the whole House does, and we want to ensure that all children can read fluently and with that understanding. I thank Henry Warren and Oli Barrett MBE for their commitment to improving literacy levels, and they have championed that campaign. It is a choice for parents and guardians whether their child watches television and whether they do so with the subtitles on, but it certainly makes a difference in the Zahawi household.

[Paul Holmes]

Does the Secretary of State agree that as well as funding, data and transparency matter so that we can monitor things, act quickly and see that the plans that we have announced are working to improve schools right across Eastleigh?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I never tire of saying that data and transparency are our greatest allies in improving educational outcomes. We are absolutely focused on delivering against the ambitious targets that we have set for skills, schools and families, and on holding ourselves in the Department against them. Sharing our plans and performance data is a key lever to drive rapid improvement through the complex system that we oversee in education. I have committed to publishing a delivery plan setting out what we will achieve and a performance dashboard showing progress, and I want teachers and school leaders to do the same on behaviour, absenteeism and, of course, standards.

Oral Answers to Questions

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mark Logan (Bolton North East) (Con)]

What support his Department is providing to help children catch up on learning lost during the covid-19 outbreak.

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

What support his Department is providing to help children catch up on learning lost during the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gavin Williamson)]

Helping pupils to make up learning is vital. That is why this Government have invested £1.7 billion to provide support to help pupils get back on track as they return to school.

[Gavin Williamson]

The national tutoring programme is making great progress in supporting so many children right around the country. I am certainly happy to look into Tutor The Nation in greater detail, to see whether there is more we can do to work closely with it, to ensure that we are able to continue with the great expansion of the national tutoring programme across all constituencies.

[Paul Holmes [V]]

As we support vulnerable and disadvantaged children in returning to the classroom, ensuring that they have routines and structures in place to help them reach their potential will be essential. Does my right hon. Friend agree that we cannot overestimate the importance of promoting behaviour and discipline in schools in our ambition to give every child a quality education?

[Gavin Williamson]

We all know how important it is that we create calm, positive and good environments for children to flourish in, and strong behaviour and discipline policies have been the hallmark of being able to do that. It is particularly important for children from some of the most disadvantaged backgrounds to ensure that we create the type of environment in schools that we want and expect to see right across the country.

Education and Local Government

Paul Holmes Excerpts

Tuesday 14th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Paul Holmes (Eastleigh) (Con)]

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker—I will do my best to follow your instructions.

I congratulate the hon. Member for North East Fife (Wendy Chamberlain), my hon. Friends the Members for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) and for Wantage (David Johnston), the hon. Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) and my hon. Friend the Member for Bury North (James Daly) on making excellent maiden speeches. Being so far down the list of speakers there is a bit more pressure on my shoulders, but I congratulate them and wish them well.

May I just be personally indulged as I say how pleased I am that my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond) is sitting next to me while I make this speech? He gave me my first proper job in politics—he is mad—but he had a fantastic result on 12 December and it is an honour to have him sitting next to me. I will not emulate everything he has done in his career but I am delighted he is sitting next to me.

It is an honour to make my maiden speech as the Member of Parliament for Eastleigh, and it is a privilege to speak in this debate on Her Majesty’s Gracious Speech. I am delighted to speak today on the subjects of education and local government, because through both my time as a lead member for education on Southampton City Council and as a former special adviser at the Department for Education under the leadership of my right hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), I know the tireless work that our teaching staff in all education sectors put into changing the lives of local people, and we owe them a huge debt of gratitude.

I would like to welcome the announcement of minimum levels of funding for both our primary and secondary schools, as well as the further education sector. That will benefit colleges such as Eastleigh College and Barton Peveril College which provide fantastic services to our young people. I congratulate the Secretary of State and Ministers on securing such funding. I know that they will understand that there is much more work to do on the recruitment and retention of teachers in all sectors, but I am encouraged by the announcements they have made. I also have a passion for social mobility, which I know Ministers share. After all, it was social mobility that allowed a council estate boy like me to sit in the mother of all Parliaments today.

It is a tremendous privilege to represent Eastleigh in this House. I would like to pay tribute to my predecessor —my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Mims Davies). Many people in this House say that their predecessors cast a shadow over their successors. Well, I have the living embodiment of my predecessor in this Chamber every day. She laid the groundwork for many campaigns that I continue to champion, and I thank her for her service.

Of course, I would like to thank my local association, my long-suffering association Chairman, Jerry Hall, and all of my activists who worked tirelessly for the result that we achieved on 12 December. I would very quickly like to thank my team—Sue, Emma, Ben and Charlie—who are already working tirelessly for the constituency of Eastleigh and answering phone calls as we speak.

Eastleigh is a fantastic place. Indeed, I would argue that it is the most distinct and striking constituency within the UK, starting in Eastleigh town centre, which was created at the turn of the last century to build and develop the London and South Western Railway. It was originally called Barton village. Eastleigh was renamed by a kind local benefactor who donated £500 to the building of a local church. That is why we have the Eastleigh name today, and long may it continue. Eastleigh aerodrome, or Southampton airport as it is now called, built and flew the original Spitfires and has a long and proud aviation history. Southampton airport is a crucial local employer. As we heard this morning, we must continue to nurture it as such, including the regional airlines that operate out of it.

Also in Eastleigh town centre is Cosy Café, which I would argue supplies the best ham and cheese omelettes in the whole of Hampshire. They certainly kept me going through the campaign, and I look forward to the emails from many of their rivals in the town centre now offering me the chance of trying many more delicacies.

The constituency also covers small villages such as Botley, where Cliff and Steve at the Dolphin inn ran a very successful meat draw—so successful that on the first time that she visited, my mum, who is in the Gallery today, won a huge leg of lamb, which we very much enjoyed on the final weekend of the campaign. Pubs like the Dolphin inn provide a necessary backbone to the villages in Eastleigh, and they should continue to be supported. Another village, Hamble, is home to the finest sailing club in the country. Netley is home to the famous Netley abbey and castle. My constituency is steeped in important local history and I pledge to protect it.

Eastleigh does face many challenges, though, I say to Ministers on the Front Bench, the biggest of which is the vital need for infrastructure. The local Liberal Democrat council has failed to deliver a local plan for over a decade, and the one currently with the planning inspector would be a disaster if adopted. It includes the building of over 5,000 houses on ancient woodland in Bishopstoke, which would present an irreversible decline in the green space and wildlife in the area. I therefore ask my right hon. Friend the Minister whether he will commit to meet me in the coming weeks so that I can outline the grave concerns that my constituents have about that plan. They have not been consulted properly, and Ministers should know that I will do all I can to reset the clock and build a new local plan with them.

Eastleigh also needs added infrastructure. My predecessor, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex, rapidly made clear the need for the vital Chickenhall Lane link road and an urgent resurfacing of the concrete sections of the M27. We also need urgent upgrades to Hamble Lane, which would stop many of my constituents sometimes waiting for over an hour to travel just 2 miles. I am sure the Minister will agree that this is a very small price list to keep my constituents in Eastleigh happy, and I look forward to him writing the cheques in the coming weeks.

I thank the House for indulging me in silence today; I am sure that that will not continue. Once again, I welcome the announcements made on education funding and recognise the commitment made to infrastructure spending by the Prime Minister last week. My constituents in Eastleigh can expect me to be a constant champion of their interests. I know that this Government are a Government who will listen to those concerns, and I intend to act on them.