Department for Education

Roger Gale Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Amanda Martin (Portsmouth North) (Lab)]

In Portsmouth North, we know that education does not just open doors, but transforms lives. I welcome this Government’s commitment to rebuilding the foundations of the education system.

Before entering this House, I was a teacher, and I have seen at first hand the power that education has to transform individual lives and whole communities, and how Government policy can impact it negatively or positively. In Portsmouth, sadly, that power has often been held back by under-investment, postcode inequality and a lack of opportunity for those outside the traditional academic path.

I am proud that more than 6,500 children in Portsmouth will benefit from Labour’s expansion of free school meals and that teacher pay is rising—by 5.5% last year and 4% this year—recognising the dedication of staff across our schools. Combined with rising attendance and the return of 3 million more school days, that shows that Labour’s plan is working.

It makes me cross when those on the Opposition Benches talk about trade union baron pay rises, when it is actually our teachers, doctors and armed forces who got those long-awaited pay rises, which were denied by the previous Government. It is time those on the Opposition Benches were honest about that. [Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order.

[Amanda Martin]

Children with educational needs in Portsmouth still face long waits and a shortage of school places; families are waiting, and schools are stretched. Can the Minister set out how the Department is working with local authorities to expand high-quality provision in areas such as Portsmouth, and whether the spending review includes targeted capital or revenue support for this area?

If education is to drive growth, skills reform must be front and centre, and I am glad that is part of Labour’s priority. Colleges are central to this. Students and staff at Portsmouth college are eager to do more, but need the right investment. Ambition is vital, because the role of education is not just social, but economic. The spending review must be understood as part of the wider industrial strategy that Labour is delivering. Skills reform, youth hubs and the creation of Skills England are vital tools to align training with the future of our jobs, and the Department must ensure that schools, colleges and businesses are integrated into this strategy.

We also need to get serious about apprenticeships—not just for school leavers, but for older learners and those changing careers. We need to talk about access, because apprenticeships must work for everybody. I have heard from constituents in their 20s and 30s and beyond who want to reskill, but cannot afford the drop in income. Although it may seem radical, I wonder whether the Minister would consider a means-tested apprenticeship loan system similar to student finance with an automated repayment tied into income above the living wage. That kind of support could transform access for working parents, carers and those who want to change their career.

As a Government Member and a member of the Education Committee, I am proud of the Government’s work. The spending review lays solid foundations, but there is a long way to go. Portsmouth North is a place of talent, determination and potential. Labour’s plan is already delivering change, but if we truly want an economy built on skills and a society built on fairness, we must keep pushing forward.

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[Sarah Smith (Hyndburn) (Lab)]

Nothing is more important than ensuring that every child in every part of our country has the opportunity to thrive. That is why breaking down the barriers to opportunity is such a key part of this Government’s plan for change We are determined to undo the failure of the previous Government and to see that every school has the necessary resources to offer the education that all our children deserve.

I welcome the estimates. In Hyndburn, the commitment to additional funded early years education will be transformational for family budgets, saving families up to £7,500 a year, and helping mothers such as me to balance careers with family life. Crucially, this will also enable us to achieve the key target of 75% of children achieving a good level of development when they start school, which will equate to over 500,000 more children being school ready across the country.

Furthermore, the £6.7 billion capital investment into our school buildings will support the rebuilding of several schools in Hyndburn, including Hyndburn academy in Rishton and Haslingden high school. It will also help us to tackle the removal of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete in Knuzden St Oswald’s primary school and to make other repairs and improvements to a number of other schools across the constituency.

Thanks to this Government’s commitment to increasing access to free school meals, up to 6,590 children in Hyndburn will benefit. This Government understand that children who are well fed are better able to concentrate in the classroom and better able to learn. I know how much it will mean to families across my constituency to be able to save up to £500 a year because of this change. This is a Labour policy, based on Labour values, and it demonstrates the shared commitment of the Chancellor, the Minister and the Secretary of State to ensure that we deliver on our promises to the next generation.

Having worked hard to tackle educational disadvantage for many years, I also know the importance of the regional improvement in standards and excellence teams and the £150,000 being made available to them so that families and communities will no longer be let down year after year without the interventions needed to tackle failing schools where the standards just are not good enough. On the skills agenda, Accrington and Rossendale college has already received £1.5 million of capital. The £1.2 billion commitment for the skills agenda is crucial, and I will be ensuring that young people in Hyndburn benefit directly from it.

There is so much more to talk about, whether it is mental health support, reforming the apprenticeship levy and apprenticeships, reviewing the curriculum and the current approach to assessment or making progress on hiring an additional 6,500 teachers. There is still lots to do—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. I call Liz Jarvis.

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[Cameron Thomas]

I am afraid I will not.

This is a growing, nationwide crisis being experienced by schools and families, and it has secondary effects on the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury. Responsibility for SEND provision currently falls to local authorities, but councils across the country are struggling to balance their resources between looking after their people and maintaining their infrastructure. I do not accept that those councils are all at fault—that simply cannot be. In fact, I empathise with those councils that observed this month’s spending review with their heads in their hands.

Last month, I held a Westminster Hall debate where I pointed out that Gloucestershire is among the lowest-funded councils for education in England. I am delighted that the Minister for School Standards announced a review of the national funding formula for 2026-27, and I very much hope that Gloucestershire will be firmly in the Government’s mind when it takes place. I ask the Government to acknowledge that they must address the growing demand for SEND provision and not leave it to local authorities or kick it down the road until 2030.

I ask that the Government investigate and address the root causes of this growing problem and implement systems and processes in the Department of Health and Social Care, the Department for Education and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. Until they do, local authorities will continue to buckle under demand, our teachers will continue to break and our constituents across the country will continue to suffer.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. I am sorry to have had to be a little brutal, but we managed to get everybody in. We are, however, 10 minutes over time, so if Front Benchers exercised a little discretion, that would be helpful. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I congratulate the Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), on securing this important debate on the Department’s estimate. Given the constraints you just mentioned, Mr Deputy Speaker, and how the Department’s remit is huge, I want to touch on a couple of areas: day-to-day school budgets and funding to support some of our most vulnerable children. I also hope that the Minister might answer some questions on the recent free school meal announcement.

It is fair to say that since the Labour Government swept to victory a year ago there has been a huge amount of rhetoric about the opportunity mission and putting children at the heart of policymaking, but the reality on the ground feels a little different. Despite what the Government would have us believe, school budgets across the country are at best frozen and at worst falling into deficit. Years of Conservative mismanagement and underfunding from 2015 onwards—[Interruption.] Conservative Members chunter, but the figures are there. We all know that from 2015 onwards, their mismanagement—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order.

[Munira Wilson]

The Conservatives’ decisions cast a long shadow over our schools and colleges. Although the Government trumpeted £4.7 billion for schools in the spending review, they failed to mention that school budgets will see an increase in real terms of only 0.4% over the spending review period. When I speak to school leaders, as I do regularly, they still express the same level of despair as I heard during the last Parliament, when the Conservatives barely mentioned children or schools.

School leaders are tearing their hair out trying to balance the books while shouldering the double blow of an underfunded rise in employers’ national insurance and underfunded teacher pay rises. One school in my constituency has shared its budget figures with me in detail to show what is really happening. It has about a quarter of a million pounds of salary pressures as a result of the NI and pay rises, yet only an additional £30,000 to fund that hole. The result is that the most vulnerable children will suffer, with learning support assistance and inclusion staff most likely to go to protect teaching staff, who are obviously essential. Although prudence in previous years means that reserves can be drawn on and future capital projects cancelled to keep the lights on this year, the school is looking down the barrel of redundancies in 2026-27. Having seen figures from other schools’ budgets, I know that its situation is not unique.

Following the spending review, the IFS said that schools would need to make efficiencies to the tune of £300 million to £400 million to afford the underfunded teacher pay rises and NI increases. When schools are facing ever-increasing pressures—special educational needs demand, student attendance challenges, behavioural issues and much more—it is ridiculous for the Government to ask them to find efficiencies.

I know that school staff are already straining every sinew to find every penny possible, down to banning things like colour photocopying. It was frankly insulting, therefore, when the written ministerial statement came out just before the May recess, which lectured them on taking responsibility

“to ensure that their funding is spent as efficiently as possible”,—[Official Report, 22 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 48WS.]

as if they do not already do that. Those so-called efficiencies are actually cuts, whether to staff, extracurricular activities, school trips or mental health support. To quote one headteacher from my constituency:

“every year you think you’re going to go into bankruptcy”.

I am not sure that was what the Government meant by their opportunity mission. After the Minister accused me last month of imagining these problems, I hope she will confirm to the House how she expects schools to cough up the extra money for the teacher pay deal and national insurance. If not, will she go into bat with the Treasury for more?

I want to touch briefly on an issue that a number of my hon. Friends have spoken about: the cuts in grants to the adoption and special guardianship support fund, which are measures that will hurt our most vulnerable children. We know that the fund provides therapy for children who, in many cases, have been through deep trauma and who, without significant therapeutic intervention, will struggle to have a fulfilling childhood and life ahead of them. After the fund expired, Ministers were dragged to this place to confirm that it would continue, but they then snuck out announcements over the Easter recess of 40% cuts to the grants.

I know that the Minister will come back and say that, at £50 million, the size of the pot remains the same, but that is simply not the point. If £3,000—that is what the grants have been cut to—cannot fund the therapy a child needs, it might as well be zero. Just speak to the professionals and the unsung heroes who have stepped up as adopters and kinship carers, who are dealing with the consequences of the trauma every day. They feel deeply let down by this Government.

We are not dealing with massive figures here. Indeed, when we look at the billions in the departmental estimates, we are talking about small packages that will make a huge amount of difference, and not just to individual children but to the taxpayer in future, with money saved further down the track. It is not only immoral; it is short-sighted. Halving the Department’s spend on consultancy and advertising would allow Ministers to reinstate grants to previous levels by boosting the fund from £50 million to £75 million. As we debate these estimates, I once again call on the Minister to reverse those cuts. Also, now that the spending review is complete, I call on her to announce the ASGSF settlement for 2026-27 very soon, and by October at the latest, so that families and service providers can plan.

I want to touch briefly on the welcome recent announcement to expand free school meals—a policy for which the Liberal Democrats have been calling and campaigning for many years, and for which we have campaigned alongside many others to ensure it was adopted. Even though it is a welcome announcement, there are a number of questions that need to be addressed. How many children are estimated to be losing out on free school meals as a result of the end of transitional protections? There has been some suggestion from some quarters that children currently in receipt of free school meals will now lose access to pupil premium funding, as well as home-to-school transport. Will the Minister clarify on the record to this House what the position is? We are also still in the dark as to where exactly the money for the free school meal expansion is coming from.

In conclusion, while spinners in the Department for Education have made a good fist of ensuring that the headlines proclaimed that the Department was a victor in the spending review battle, there are still a number of crucial issues hidden beneath the top line. Our schools and our most vulnerable young people have been left struggling. The devil is in the detail. I therefore hope that the Minister can persuade us otherwise and convince us that she really believes in extending opportunity to every child and young person in this country.