Free Childcare

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 12th October 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the effects of 30 hours free childcare.

I am here now, Mr Rosindell—thank you.

We are all here because we want all our children to get the best possible start in life and to be as ready for school as they can be, and because we want working parents to know that they can rely on high-quality childcare in a fun, friendly and caring setting that is nearby. Those factors are important to ensure not just that our children are school-ready, but that they are happy and relaxed and make friends.

I have four children, aged between eight and 25. As a mum who has worked all my adult life, I can vouch for how important it is for a child to be happy with their nursery or childminder. There is nothing worse than having to leave a child when they are crying or unhappy. That happens with almost all young children in the first few days, but they soon settle down, trust the staff, make friends and have a great time. The only thing worse than leaving a crying child is getting back at the end of the day and finding that they have been unhappy all day.

I have been lucky in the rural area where I live to have had excellent and friendly childcare nearby for all my children. We all welcome the consistent work to drive up standards in early years, so that 95% of providers are now judged by Ofsted to be good or outstanding. We all want good-quality, affordable and sufficient childcare. Although the policy of 30 hours of funded care for three and four-year-olds aims to increase the affordability of care, the lack of Government funding has raised doubts across the country about affordability, quality and sufficiency.

Why has that policy been so underfunded? At the Conservative party’s childcare campaign day on Monday 15 April 2015, in the run-up to the general election, David Cameron said that he would create an extra 600,000 free childcare places if he was returned to power. That was certainly a popular policy. The weekend before that announcement, the Conservatives had been behind Labour in every poll, but the day after the announcement—16 April—they were ahead in every poll, except one that was tied. At the time, the BBC reported that Labour described the policy as “another unfunded announcement”. BBC political correspondent Carole Walker said that Mr Cameron was “likely to face questions” about how the Conservatives would ensure that sufficient childcare places were available. She was right about the questions, but not about the person who would be questioned.

The Conservatives said that the 30-hour offer would result in more than 600,000 extra 15-hour childcare places every year from 2017, and that it would be funded by reducing tax relief on pension contributions. However, when those changes to tax relief were announced in the 2015 summer Budget, we were told that they would fund Conservative cuts to inheritance tax, not childcare, so the extra 15 hours of supposedly free childcare for 600,000 children were left without any specific funding. It is no wonder that the number of places has reduced to a third of what was promised in 2015 and that providers have been left wondering where all the money has gone.

Concerns were raised as soon as the projected funding levels were announced. Some 62% of all early years providers surveyed by the Pre-school Learning Alliance in March 2017 said that the funding they will receive in 2017-18 is less than the hourly rate they charge parents and less than the hourly cost of delivering a funded place. It is not surprising that more than half—58%—expected that the 30-hour offer would have a negative impact on their businesses, and just 17% predicted a positive impact.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend mentioned the Pre-school Learning Alliance. Some Government Members say that they have had enough of experts, but does she agree that they should listen more to groups on the ground, such as my constituent Jane Reddish and her group What About The Children? Its excellent report on the 30-hours policy raises many of the same concerns as my hon. Friend, specifically pertaining to the special developmental needs of nought to 36-month-olds. The Minister would be well advised to meet that group, as the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin), soon will.

[Ruth George]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention.

A survey of local authorities by the Family and Childcare Trust in February 2017 found that only a third thought that there would be enough childcare for three and four-year-olds using the 30-hour offer, while a third did not know whether there would be a reduction in care quality as a result of the offer’s roll-out. Some 44% of those local authorities said that the 30-hour offer would reduce the financial sustainability of some settings, so some childcare providers would go out of business. The survey found that the extension of free hours could compromise things that parents thought were priorities for high-quality childcare. That is important, because only high-quality childcare helps to boost children’s attainment and close the gap between disadvantaged children and their wealthier peers.

It was good that the Government introduced pilot schemes in September 2016 to see what would happen. The Minister has claimed that those pilot schemes were a great success. In response to the urgent question on 6 September from my hon. Friend the shadow Minister, when we were finally given some figures on the number of children registered for places, the Minister said:

“If we look at the pilot areas that have been delivering for a year now…we can see that 100% of their providers are delivering and 100% of the parents who wanted a place found one, despite some reservations being put on the record…at the very beginning. The pilots have demonstrated that we can deliver and we are delivering.”—[Official Report, 6 September 2017; Vol. 628, c. 163.]

However, some nurseries that were involved in the pilot tell a very different tale. The owner of Polly Anna’s Nursery in York, the only area on the lowest level of local authority funding—£4.30 an hour, of which £4 went to providers—said that he wrote to the Minister to say that although he was in favour of any Government measure to reduce the cost to families of their child’s early education and care and of any improvement to quality and staff qualifications, £4 an hour would represent an increase of only 2% a year in the 10 years from 2010, at a time when costs will have increased disproportionately.

Higher Education (England) Regulations

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 13th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

Our approach means that students make a time-limited contribution, and that the students who are earning the most pay the most. That is how the system works. The bottom line is that if the Labour party is saying that we should have no fees and that this system does not work, and people getting degrees should not have to pay for them, the only way to avoid this outcome is, presumably, although I would welcome any clarification from the Opposition, to place a huge burden on everyone else—on the majority of people who never went to university.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has referred to the policy of no fees quite a few times now. Can she confirm that in 2005 she stood on a manifesto commitment—and campaigned and won her seat—on precisely that policy of no fees?

[Justine Greening]

The hon. Lady just needs to travel down the M4 to Wales to see her own party having two policies simultaneously on the same issue. I will take absolutely no lectures from the Labour party.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

In a few short weeks’ time, students up and down the country, including at the University of West London in my seat, will be going back for a new term. This is supposed to be an exciting time, but it is also an anxious one, because the fee regime they have been subjected to is continually changing by stealth. I am not just talking about the trebling since 2010; even since I have been an MP in the last two years we have seen many shady changes. This week, people have been discussing Henry VIII powers—the things done by shady Committees upstairs, rather than on the Floor of the House—but we have seen that in what has happened to student fees since 2015 as well, with the convenient cover of the teaching excellence framework, which seems to be another way to inflate fees. The worsening terms people are on means their repayments have gone up since they took out these loans; that is moving the goalposts after the game has started, which is very odd.

This £250 increase might look small, but, as has been pointed out, that is for three years, so we times that by three. There is also the monstrous interest rate of 6.1%. So if we add that up, we are looking at increases of thousands and thousands over a lifetime. Even if there is no upfront payment, our fees in this country are higher than those of any of our near neighbours. In France, across the channel, the fee is only a couple of hundred euros, while those in Norway, Denmark and Austria pay nothing at all.

We are seeing £9,000 turn into £9,250; when is it going to be £10,000? It seems that with this Government the sky is the limit. It is no wonder that the Institute for Fiscal Studies puts the average student debt at £50,000—we have heard a figure of up to £58,000, and 75% of it is never going to be paid back.

Proponents of fees often say that this is something for the future and is not paid back until the person is earning £21,000, and that there is a 30-year period so that it can be written off and never paid back, but this is affecting students now. There has been a fivefold increase in 10 years in students presenting with mental health problems, and a record number of suicides. The reasons people give are exorbitant housing costs and debt.

When we reduce everything to a cost-benefit analysis, we take out those kind of human stories and the greater good that education can do. People always say that graduates will earn more over their lifetime, but matters beyond the cost-benefit analysis are frozen out of the figures. When we just look at bald admission figures, we neglect to look at the number of dropouts, which is rocketing, and we neglect to look at the number of non-traditional students, which is going down. There are 61% fewer part-time students since 2010, and 39% fewer mature students. If we want to democratise our education, we are going in the wrong direction.

How this has been done is all wrong as well. If the Student Loans Company was a normal lender, it could be referred to the Financial Conduct Authority for mis-selling because these retrospective changes to terms and conditions would not be allowed for any normal lender—we know that the SLC is not a normal lender. Again, we heard all the arguments on Monday about Henry VIII powers and shady processes by statutory instrument, but that is precisely how these things were done in 2015; I remember that my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford North (Wes Streeting) and I were present.

It has been said that overview and scrutiny have been sacrificed. As it is now, the sector is reeling from Brexit, with the effect on the number of EU students and staffers and access to the grants regime, and all the funding is going. The same process by which that was rammed through this House earlier this week has been followed here. It was smuggled in, too, in the 2015 autumn statement. All students should have been told properly—[Interruption.]—in the small print, exactly, like the WASPI women; this reminds me of those valiant 1950s women who were never informed and things kept changing. I have just seen that I have only 47 seconds left—no way.

The Democratic Unionist party used to have an anti-fees policy, and even the current Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union, the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (Mr Davis), has said that he worries about this. In 2010, he joined us on this side—I was not here then. He said that he was worried about what this would do to student mobility. I urge all right-minded people on the Conservative Benches to join us in the Lobby. The election has changed everything, and the Government need to think again.

Free Childcare Entitlement

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Goodwill]

There are colleagues in the House from places such as York, Northumberland, Newham, Wigan, Staffordshire, Swindon, Portsmouth, Hertfordshire, Dorset, Leicestershire, North Yorkshire and Tower Hamlets, which have been in the pilot for a year. I have not heard a peep from anyone saying that the scheme is not working, so obviously the pilot has been successful.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I must confess that I was something of a secret fan of the Minister, because in a previous incarnation he was very helpful to me with an issue my constituents had. No one is arguing against the idea of 30 hours, but if the picture is as rosy as he paints, how come there are allegations of nurseries forced into bankruptcy and a policy on its knees less than a week in? If people such as those in today’s edition of The Times—a friendly Murdoch paper—are saying that it does not add up, surely it is time to reassess the finances and ramp them up so that the policy is properly funded.

[Mr Goodwill]

We will certainly keep all these matters under review, but the experience from the pilot areas and early deliverers has been that they are delivering on the levels of funding we have put in, and we have responded to concerns by putting in additional funding, with another £300 million by 2020, to make sure that it is more than adequately funded.

Social Mobility Commission: State of the Nation Report

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Thursday 23rd March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I associate myself with all the remarks made about the senseless, horrific events of yesterday, and with the tributes paid to the people who lost their lives, including the brave police officer who was defending us all.

It is important that we continue undeterred to debate this important “State of the Nation” report by the Social Mobility Commission. I was an academic sociologist before I came to this place. Having turned into a politician, I sometimes feel that there is something of a mismatch between theory and practice. Academics kind of think that something works if it works in theory, but, as politicians, we might have the media in our face and have to think of a quick soundbite, or there might be someone in our surgery who needs a problem resolved quickly. I am still grappling with the same questions of social class and life chances that I grappled with as an academic.

It is important that we all reject the notion that we have had enough of experts, and part of the reason that I wanted to speak in this debate is that the people on the commission are eminent academics and practitioners. I want particularly to focus on chapter 2, which is on schools. I am incredibly privileged to represent the constituency I grew up in. I recall the same schools that I visit now in the ’80s, when they had buckets strategically positioned to catch the drips under leaky roofs. Those schools were transformed under Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme: some of them look like spaceships now. My alma mater, Montpelier Primary School, where I achieved my lifetime ambition in June 2015 by cutting the ribbon at the fête, should particularly go on the record.

This morning, the Prime Minister praised London as the greatest city on earth, and I am proud to be a London MP. People have mentioned the so-called fair funding formula, but 70% of London schools will be worse off under these new arrangements.

In my constituency, school budgets will be down by a whopping £5,524,197 by 2019—that is 137 teachers. An average child will receive £485.52 less funding. The problem is most acute in Acton, where we have wards in some of the poorest deciles. I will be doing my surgery in Acton High School tomorrow, and my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) mentioned how people come along to our surgeries with horrific stories about their housing conditions—they bring their mobile phones with pictorial evidence of the conditions they are living in—and about how they have been shipped far away because of the bedroom tax. However, Acton High School will be down £961 per pupil and 26 teachers, and its budget will be down by £1 million.

The recommendations in chapter 2, on page 53, talk about how children from poorer backgrounds are experiencing a worrying drop-off in progress at secondary. The gap in progress between low-income families and their more affluent counterparts has been widening year on year since 2012, and we should be very concerned about that. One of the report’s recommendations is to ensure that funding cuts do not exacerbate the problem of less well-off pupils failing to make good progress at secondary, so the idea that this funding formula is fair is simply laughable.

As has been said, school education does not exist in a vacuum; the whole context of children’s learning is important. I was very fortunate to address a conference by a group called What About the Children?, which deals with nought to three-year-olds. As a parent, I was lucky enough to use Sure Start centres. Sure Start was an amazing, joined-up programme, with education and health services to give kids a good grounding. But the children’s centres I used to use now face devastating cuts and closures. We have also seen cuts in health promotion, with fewer health visitors. All that is contributing to a picture that is getting bleaker. It is little wonder that it was revealed this week that baby teeth removals—extractions of baby teeth from children!—have gone up 24% in the last decade.

The right hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan) mentioned parents’ evenings. I have to say that because of the five-hour lockdown yesterday, I managed to miss my parents’ evening—some people might say, “The lengths people will go to to get out of parents’ evenings!” However, the right hon. Lady is absolutely right that all these things—and having books in the house—make for a positive learning environment.

There is a lot that could be said about this report. Chapter 3 goes on to post-16 education and training. I worry about rising tuition fees. In my seat, I have the University of West London, and I have had representations from staff and students that applications are down because of tuition fees and also because of the vote on 23 June—Brexit has created a climate in which international students no longer feel welcome. The removal of the nurse bursary—the university teaches nurses—is also detrimental to post-16 training and education and to jobs, and chapter 4 talks about jobs, careers and earnings for future generations.

In their Budget just the other week—it feels like it was ages ago, but it was only the week before last—the Government announced not only that they are ploughing on with their dangerous selective school experiment, but that they will provide free transport to grammars, which seems such a misplaced priority at a time of straitened circumstances.

There is much more that could be said. The eye-catching new 30 hours of free childcare sound good in theory, but try finding a provider in practice who can live up to that manifesto pledge by delivering those 30 hours and who thinks that the funding will be adequate to cover the increased costs it will incur in my seat. It is like looking for hen’s teeth. Things are harder than they should be anyway. In London, families spend £15,700 a year on average on nursery fees. We all want the holy grail of affordable, good quality, flexible childcare, but it is a challenge to find it, to put it mildly. The childcare proposal is one of those things—like the decision to have an in/out referendum on Europe—that seem good in a manifesto but do not measure up to their promise.

Many sociologists these days consider the concept of life course, and my casework involves people right across the age range. We heard in the previous debate about the Equitable Life pensioners. The WASPI women, who were born in the 1950s, had high hopes for their futures and their life course, and they feel as though the trajectory of their lives has been thwarted twice by Tory Government changes to their pensions.

As everyone has pointed out, there has largely been consensus in this debate, with its cross-party ethos, and that is very welcome. Rather than pursuing an academic idea of making things work in theory, we need to work together to fix them in practice. It is assumed that every generation will do better than the previous one, but the evidence in the Social Mobility Commission’s report suggests that we are going in the wrong direction. Yesterday we were faced with lockdown, and we really were all in it together. At times like that, cross-party friendships and alliances flourish. Let us continue in this spirit, and let us heed the warnings and correct our erroneous direction of travel.

Visible Religious Symbols: European Court Ruling

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

We have all heard about hijabs being ripped from girls’ heads by people emboldened by the referendum result—admittedly, that was an unintended consequence of the result. I am encouraged by the Minister’s words. Will she do all she can to ensure that this illiberal judgment, which has nothing to do with workplace performance, does not have its own unwelcome by-product? Apparently, Muslim women are 70% more likely to be unemployed than non-Muslim women. The judgment could be a recruiting sergeant for Islamic extremist groups. Will she have a word with colleagues about proposed cuts to provision for English for Speakers of other languages.

[Caroline Dinenage]

The hon. Lady is right: hate crime, whatever form it takes, should never be tolerated. It should be punished with the full force of the law, and the Government take that very seriously.

Civil Partnership Act 2004 (Amendment) Bill

Rupa Huq Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 13th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I rise to support the Bill on behalf of Her Majesty’s loyal Opposition. The Bill has genuine cross-party support. It is backed by colleagues who voted on both sides of the argument on same-sex marriage in 2013, including the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). He made a very powerful case. Indeed, he has nicked many of the points I want to make in my speech. Over 72,000 people have now signed the online petition—I think he has slightly old figures.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned Martin Loat and Claire Beale. They are my constituents—they live in the next road to me in Ealing—and, as he pointed out, they were the first people in the British Isles to enter into a civil partnership. However, they had to go to the Isle of Man to do that. I am sure the Isle of Man is a lovely place, but if the Bill is passed, no one will have to make that journey again. [Laughter.] Let me say, before people write to me from the Isle of Man, that I am sure it is lovely. I have never been there. [Interruption.] I am going to crack on, because my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) is going to speak about workers’ rights, we hope and pray.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the London Assembly, and its unanimous vote in favour of this move. Early-day motion 619 expresses genuine cross-party support, from Democratic Unionists as well as the usual suspects. This is clearly a matter of public interest that the Government ought to revisit.

As has already been pointed out, it is a matter of equality. Civil partnerships currently exist only for same-sex couples in the United Kingdom, but in a democracy, all people should be equal before the law. I am proud to say that my party has authored much of our anti-discrimination legislation: the Race Relations Act 1976, the equal pay legislation, the legislation that abolished the heinous section 28, and the Equality Act 2010. The Bill seems to me to be a logical next step.

Civil partnerships were a new Labour creation in the first place. They were ground-breaking at the time, allowing LGBT people to have their loving relationships recognised by law and to enjoy the same benefits as married couples. The present anomaly is, I think, an unintended consequence that was necessary on the long and winding road to equal marriage, and it needs to be rectified now. Although civil partnerships represented a huge step forward in 2004, that was 13 years ago, and it is now time to open them up to all.

As we have heard, that could easily be done. The Bill is very short: it consists of only a couple of lines. All that we need to do is delete the words “of the same sex” from the Civil Partnership Act 2004. No new law is necessary; this would merely be an extension of what is already on offer. The Equal Civil Partnerships campaign estimates that 2.9 million people are in partnerships and, for whatever reason—a long list of reasons has been given today—choose not to marry, although the figure may be higher, and that 39% of them have dependent children.

When same-sex marriage became legal, many gay couples in civil partnerships had an upgrade, “trading up” to full marriage. Here we have the opposite case. We are talking about people who want to take a leaner, modern, 21st-century option, affording their families the same legal protections. Fairness, consistency and equity in legislation: who would disagree with any of that?

Back in 2013, my party tabled an amendment stating that the Government should consult on allowing all couples access to civil partnerships as soon as possible following the passing of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013. Since then, however, the Government seem to have found all sorts of pretexts for not granting access to civil partnerships for all, or even revisiting the issue in a serious way. They have argued that the results of their consultation were inconclusive, and that they must await the outcome of pending legal action before they can possibly reopen the issue. To the outside world, all that sounds like excuses.

We can look further afield to other jurisdictions. A French case has been mentioned. When I was an international student in France more than 20 years ago, the term was “concubinage”. The French thought it was completely normal, and could not understand why we did not have it here. I could go into all the complexities of international law, but there are academic papers out there that people can google. Articles 8 and 14 of the European convention on human rights—thankfully, we are still in it, and it seems likely that we will not be leaving in any great hurry—promise equality in the application of the convention and freedom in relation to family life. It could be argued that the current law contravenes those provisions. Case law shows that our Government have been on the wrong side of the convention on previous occasions. We do not want a repetition of the waste of public expenditure and time that featured in, for instance, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions v. M.

I shall not eat up any more time. In short, this is the right thing to do. As my constituents Claire and Martin put it,

“Imagine two houses: one says marriage and one says CP on the front. All couples are allowed in the first house, but only gay couples are allowed in the second. Now heterosexual couples like us just want to be let in to the second house, too.”

For the sake of fairness, equality, the tangible benefits that would flow from it and the right of couples to choose the type of partnership that best suits their needs, faith and aspirations, we support the Bill and urge the Government to revisit this matter without further delay.

Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 19th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

We are committed to ensuring, when we see schools not achieving the results they need for their children, that we have a strong approach that steadily improves the schools and works with them to improve. Where they cannot improve, we want to ensure that, through academisation, changes take place in terms of leadership and school sponsorship that mean schools have the flexibility and the freedom to be able to get better.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

As a former Acton resident, the Secretary of State will I am sure share the concern of local parents that the Ark primary school—secured with much fanfare in East Acton to match its near neighbour, which has an outstanding reputation—now has a full roll of students and a secured site but no physical building. Will she do everything she can to pressure the education funding authority to find the shortfall that Balfour Beatty wants for its bid price? East Acton is the most deprived ward of Ealing borough. It is in the bottom decile for the whole country and—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. The hon. Lady has made her point with great force and eloquence, but it does not need to be made at any greater length.

SATs Results

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Let me state from the outset that am a child of the ’70s when grammar purism was not much taught. I think the Secretary of State and I are of the same vintage—from 1972—so I am not going to be a grammar fascist or purist in this debate. We used to play in the sandpit in those days rather than learn the declensions of nouns.

I want to contribute to today’s debate because of a case raised with me over the weekend by a constituent. She is deputy headteacher of Christ the Saviour, a Church of England primary school that is outstanding in all four categories. This is not a Bash Street school gasworks comprehensive or anything like those sort of places. The deputy head, Katie Tramoni, is someone I was at school with. I have lived 44 years in Ealing, so I have spent a lot of time there, and both the schools I attended are in my constituency. I am now a mum, bringing up my own children in the borough.

As I say, Christ the Saviour is a well-regarded school and I was at school with Katie. This weekend, I went to the Acton carnival, and she literally grabbed me by the lapels and said, “Can you tell Nicky Morgan this from me?” When I saw this debate coming up, I thought, “Now is my opportunity.” Katie is worried about the floor standards of key stage 2. Like everyone else, I have read the headlines saying that almost half of 11-year-old primary pupils will not reach the required standard, but Katie’s issues are with the marking, so let me raise them directly.

Katie tells me that the KS2 reading paper was so poorly marked that 55 out of 86 papers—64%—had to be returned for re-marking. The quibbles sometimes seem very minor, but it costs the school £9 per paper if the complaint is not upheld. That does not seem to make sense economically, and the school is in fear of sending things back because of that £9 penalty. For the GPS paper—on grammar, punctuation and spelling—the complaint was that the marking scheme was exceptionally harsh. If, for example, a pupil inserts a semi-colon in the correct place in the sentence, but in too large a size so that it comes out larger than the letters, it is marked as wrong. A zero mark is given, and there are many things like that. Katie said, “I know I go on and on. Don’t get me started on SATs report; let me know if you need more; I must dash.” It was at 7 o’clock this morning that I noticed this debate was on.

The point has been made by Government Members that we are anti-testing, but that is not the case. We presided over tests for all those years in power. As the Secretary of State pointed out, it was Tony Blair’s mantra that his top three priorities were “education, education, education”. We have never been against testing as such, but the particular tests this year have been a dog’s dinner and a shambles. I know this from numerous examples in my inbox, in my postbag and when people literally collar me when I am trying to go to a fun event at the weekend. Surely it is the Government’s responsibility to make sure that these tests are marked properly.

[Nicky Morgan]

I appreciate the constructive way in which the hon. Lady is raising her constituent’s concerns. If she writes to me or to the Minister for Schools, we will of course convey her views to the Standards and Testing Agency. I should point out that any comments relating to the review of the marking should be submitted by 15 July. The hon. Lady may wish to encourage her constituent to submit her thoughts, but I hope that she will contact us and let us know, because the whole point of the system is feedback that will enable us to do better in future years.

[Dr Huq]

I thank the Secretary of State for those constructive and collegiate remarks.

I conduct a great many assemblies in my constituency. Ealing is a leafy suburban borough, and my seat was a Conservative seat as recently as May 2015. While I am standing opposite the Secretary of State, let me point out that one of the issues that arise is the retention rate of teachers in a borough such as Ealing. Headteachers tell me that they can easily recruit trainees in their 20s, but once those young people want to put down roots and settle, they are off to Slough, Milton Keynes, or whatever is the nearest affordable place to live near the M25. I know that this is slightly off the subject, but headteachers have suggested the introduction of tied housing, which exists on some university campuses, because that would make the jobs more attractive. Some heads say that they have lost people to schools where new arrivals can be accommodated in a caretaker’s house.

Conservative Members have suggested that this is just an NUT diatribe. That is why I wanted to raise the subject of real people—the kind of people who would naturally have been on their side. If the Government are losing the good will of people who would naturally be conservative with a small “c”, I think that they have problems. My constituent told me that education was in crisis. The word “crisis” is much overused, but she was in despair, shock and anger as she told me that.

Both the Secretary of State and I were guinea pigs in 1988, the first year of GCSEs. I realise that any system will have teething troubles, but I understand that teachers and educationists have begged the Government not to introduce these changes so rapidly, and to wait for a year. We are where we are. I know that “NUT” has been portrayed as something of a dirty word during this debate. However, the NUT’s Kevin Courtney has described the key stage 2 SATs as rushed and inappropriate, and has said that the curriculum is wrong and bad tests have been poorly marked. I talked about poor marking earlier. This kind of tinkering has led to chaos and confusion. It seems that these kids are guinea pigs as well. Schools should not be exam factories.

Friday’s edition of the Times Educational Supplement quotes Brian Walton, the head of Brookside Academy in Somerset, of whom I had never heard. He argues that we have a “results illusion”, and says:

“So much rides on SATs that the real purpose of education is lost”

in “statistical positioning”. It seems that we are being seduced by the numbers, and not recognising the whole child for who that child is. According to some assessments, one in 10 teachers has left the profession as a result of falling morale. The housing issue is intrinsically linked with that in areas such as west London, and something must be done about it. It is worrying that Ealing should be a borough in which its teachers cannot afford to live. We are seeing a hollowing out of our capital, and that is obviously wrong.

[Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Huq]

This was really meant to be an intervention, in that it was intended to be very short, but I have managed to spin it out into a speech. I will give way to the hon. Gentleman.

[Graham Stuart]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for spinning out an excellent intervention.

I suppose that what frustrates Conservatives is that the Labour Party wants tests, but then talks about the tensions that they can cause. What kind of tests are required that do not already exist? We have heard nothing constructive from Labour Members. The hon. Member for Southport (John Pugh) at least suggested that the grammar test might be a bit over the top. What is wrong with these tests that could be put right, and should be put right, for next year? Any suggestion would be helpful.

[Dr Huq]

I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman was listening to the anecdote from the deputy head that mentioned earlier, but it seems that this time round the proper curriculum has not been in place, and the marking is all over the place. It is not testing per se that is wrong; it is the maladministration of this year’s key stage 2 SATs.

In the recent Brexit debate the Lord Chancellor said we have had enough of experts. That is a real mistake; we ignore the professionals at our peril. These are people at the chalk face. Educationists, heads and deputy headteachers like Katie Tramoni and—dare I say it—the NUT have been warning about this. I hope these problems can be rectified and that we hear from the Secretary of State what will be done to minimise next year’s disturbances so that there are no disturbances; otherwise, it will feel as though we are losing sight of the child.

Education, Skills and Training

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Joseph Johnson]

I hope that my hon. Friend will be proved wrong, but I suspect that he may be proved right during proceedings on the Bill, as we discover the Labour party’s true colours and the reality of its desire to see competition injected into the sector, which I somewhat doubt.

The former Business Secretary is right. The Higher Education and Research Bill, which we introduced last week, represents an ambitious agenda for social mobility. Some, including Labour Members, said when we reformed student finance in 2011 that participation would fall. In fact, the opposite has happened. We have a progressive student loans system that ensures that finance is no barrier to entry, and it is working. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds are going to university at a record rate—up from 13.6% in 2009 to 18.5% in 2015. Labour Members were wrong then and they are wrong now. Individuals from disadvantaged backgrounds are 36% more likely to go to university than they were in 2009. If the hon. Member for Wallasey wants to come in on that point, I will happily take an intervention. No? Okay. We are not complacent. The Prime Minister has set us the rightly challenging goal of doubling the participation rate for the most disadvantaged students by 2020.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

Has the Minister seen the figures from the Sutton Trust that show that only 3% of disadvantaged young people go to the most selective third of universities, compared with 21% from the richest neighbourhoods? Is he proud of that record?

[Joseph Johnson]

Yes, indeed. That is why I have just written to the director of fair access, Les Ebdon, giving him all the political cover that he needs to drive further progress in widening participation at the most selective institutions.

We are strengthening the system of access agreements. They will now cover both access and participation, so that students receive the support that they need right the way through their courses, not just at the point of entry. We will give the new director of fair access and participation, who will be part of the new office for students, a greater set of sanctions to help to ensure that universities deliver the agreements they have made with him.

Some students face additional barriers to accessing higher education because their religious beliefs mean they are unable to take on interest-bearing loans. That is why, subject to Parliament, we will be the first Government to introduce an alternative student finance product that will support those students into higher education. That, combined with other measures, will help us to meet our goal of increasing the number of people from black and minority ethnic backgrounds—one third of whom are Muslim—who go to university. We are committed to an increase of 20% in the number of BME students by 2020.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I want to focus my contribution on higher education and lifelong learning, which has the tortured acronym of HELL. There is plenty to go on not only in the Gracious Speech but in last week’s White Paper, which is titled “Success as a Knowledge Economy: Teaching Excellence, Social Mobility and Student Choice”. I contend that it is the bit after the colon that is simply not matched by this Government’s actions.

Teaching excellence is ostensibly dealt with in the teaching excellence framework, which has already caused widespread concern, uniting Universities UK, the National Union of Students and my alma mater, the University of Cambridge. There are serious worries that linking teaching excellence to fee levels with a performance element will undermine teaching. It will force universities into further competition and represents a homogenisation of teaching standards. This Government said that they were into devolution, after all. Linking fees to inflation could see fees being hiked up to 10 k—who knows?—and there is a worry that the TEF could be a Trojan horse for a further lifting of the fee cap to who knows where. The University of Cambridge has argued that linking the TEF and the fee cap will deter students from lower-income backgrounds. In short, therefore, only the wealthiest will be able to afford the top universities. The NUS is also opposed to the change.

Other eye-catching features include the plan to introduce new universities and so-called challenger institutions, seemingly though a relaxation of the criteria to usher in what is, at best, deregulation and, at worst, privatisation through the back door. The threshold of 1,000 students to qualify as a university is to be lifted. New providers can get degree-awarding powers in three years and full university status after another three years. Due to the probationary period during which institutions can grant degrees, there is the prospect of students getting a degree from an institution that then fails its probation. What would happen to those students?

There are question marks all over the place here. The removal of safeguards means that these untried, untested challenger institutions could expand very rapidly and then contract rapidly if they all start failing their three-year probation. As well as the standards issue, there seems to be a huge oversight on the whole issue of further education, which my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) so powerfully described. Ealing, Hammersmith and West London College in my constituency has recently given its 500th MBA. These institutions already have degree-awarding powers, so what will be the place for them? It is all very unclear.

Caution is being sounded across the sector. The Russell Group, which comprises our oldest institutions—the Oxbridges are all in there—has worries about this move undermining the international reputation of UK universities. Million+, at the other end, which represents the post-1992 sector and, thus, 50% of all full-time students in the UK, including those at the University of West London in my constituency, talks about the risk this approach poses to students. Universities UK says that these new institutions potentially devalue the label. It is important to remember that universities do not just operate to award degrees, but have a much wider civic role in the community, spreading public good and so on.

The White Paper also has a strapline on “improving social mobility”. Everyone has referred to the much talked of letter from the young, promising Member for Tatton in 2003, who promised that he would abolish fees if the Conservatives were elected. It has rightly become an internet sensation, because of some of the things he was incredulous about at the time. He talked about fees, which at the time were £1,000 only—they rose subsequently and there was then a trebling to £9,000 under this Government’s watch. He also talked about how people were leaving with an average debt of £18,000 at the time, but it seems that the sky is the limit on both of those things under the proposals in this White Paper and this Queen’s Speech.

There are worries about these so-called reforms, in relation to the funding cuts, the tuition fee increase and the potential to destabilise the whole sector, which has knock-on effects for students. The Sutton Trust, which I mentioned earlier, has warned that, even if participation levels are going up, there is a yawning gap between those from the richest and the poorest wards, particularly in Russell Group institutions. Again, there are lots of question marks in respect of the Office for Fair Access, overarching powers and how they have the potential to erode institutional autonomy. The idea of covering action and participation in the mission statement for this new office for students is laudable, but let us not forget that if we are talking about lifelong learning, this Government have slashed education maintenance allowance, ESOL—English for speakers of other languages—adult skills and social mobility funding, and have abolished maintenance grants and the child trust fund, which was mentioned earlier. I am therefore not filled with confidence as to what this White Paper and Queen’s Speech will lead to next.

I could go on and on, as I was employed in the university sector before I got to this place. In one way or another I was in universities for 25 years before May 2015. People from my old union, the University and College Union, are on picket lines today because of the plummeting staff morale, the rocketing number of staff on zero-hours contracts, the creeping casualisation and a real-terms decline in pay. All these things have knock-on effects on students, and we all want the best student experience for all. I could talk about the Higher Education and Research Bill, a dog’s breakfast on which there has not been proper consultation with the unions or providers. As everyone is preoccupied with the EU referendum, let me also say that if we were to live in a post-Brexit world, the science budget for this country—even student mobility programmes such as Erasmus—would be seriously imperilled. I know that that is not strictly what we are talking about today, but I caution against voting leave for that reason.

Teaching excellence is not assured in these plans, social mobility is poised to go backwards and student choice is completely illusory in what we are being offered. Lifelong learning should also look at other pathways. The number of part-time students is down 38% and the number of mature students has decreased by 180,000 since 2010. Lifelong learning should not just be about offering a cut-price “Brideshead Revisited”, via pile ’em high, flog ’em off so-called challenger institutions. As I have run out time, I will end there.

Education Funding in London

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) on not only his stewardship of the all-party group on London but his sterling work with the Justice Committee, which I serve on.

Redistribution is usually seen as a principle of the left. The last Labour Government sought to widen educational opportunity, from guaranteeing nursery places at one end of the age scale to pursuing the massification of higher education further up the age scale. They sought to stop education from being the preserve of the select few.

Achieving a fair funding formula to end the postcode lottery might look attractive at first glance, but plans designed to counter regional disparities and funding gaps have resulted in warnings—we have heard all the projections—that London schools could lose hundreds of millions of pounds to other regions.

I welcome the fact that we are having this debate at this juncture, because we are all somewhat in the dark. It would be good to have clarity today, because what is going around on the grapevine will worry headteachers in the capital. As right hon. and hon. Members have said, London contains some of the poorest communities in the country, and it has fared well under the status quo.

Since the dark days before 1997 and new Labour, when I was going through school—the days of leaking classrooms—London schools have become a success story nationally. With competing levels of disadvantage countrywide and a shake-up due, there are bound to be winners and losers in any new funding formula. When funding is reallocated, it is important that London is not left underfunded and that educational success is part of the equation, along with strong leadership, raising aspiration and outcomes, and investment.

London boroughs have received additional funding for years because the previous Labour Government were keen to help struggling pupils in the capital to catch up with pupils elsewhere in the country. We have heard that London councils estimate that school budgets in London could be slashed by 10%, but some press releases say the figure could be as high as 14%. It is rumoured that the consultation is likely to recommend phasing in whatever comes next so that angry London headteachers do not immediately suffer large cuts.

Whatever the motivation behind all this, I urge the Government to quash the rumours, think again, and heed advice—advice that often comes from their own side, as in the very eloquent opening speech in this debate. There have been some other unlikely bedfellows. The Mayor of London has made representations to the Government. He is not here; he also has a part-time job as a Member of this House, I believe. The Mayor of Hackney and the Mayor of Manchester have made representations. The Conservative councillor Roy Perry, chairman of the Local Government Association’s children and young people board, has said:

“Councils know their areas best, and currently work in partnership with head teachers and governors to set a local funding formula which allows local needs and priorities to be addressed. We’d want to see this local conversation continue, rather than having all school budgets set in Whitehall.”

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

A point that has not been mentioned so far in any great detail is the lack of local flexibility in the proposals set out in the consultation and the implications that flow from that. One implication is that the DFE or the Education Funding Agency will have to know, for example, every school that has a private finance initiative agreement, what the costs are, and how they are going to be met at a time of also maintaining the per pupil funding formula.

[Dr Huq]

My hon. Friend makes the excellent point that local accountability seems to be lost in all this. We have a Government who said that they were in favour of devolution, and instead we have centralised diktats coming from on high.

The National Union of Teachers has claimed:

“Without significant additional resources, plans for reallocation of school funding between areas under the heading of ‘fair funding’ will not address schools’ funding problems and will impose even bigger cuts in many areas.”

In addition, there is the already-raised suspicion that forcing every state sector school in England to become an academy, thereby going into the hands of unaccountable private sector pseudo-charities, is privatisation by the back door. Compulsorily taking schools out of local authority control, which my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) mentioned, even when the local community opposes it, and handing them over, with their property deeds, infrastructure and taxpayer-funded education budgets, is massively opposed by many parents.

In my surgery, a complaint that often comes up is insufficient school places. I visit schools regularly; I did the assembly at St Augustine’s Priory School this week and I am doing Derwentwater Primary School’s next week. Teachers there raise a range of concerns, including recruitment and retention in London, particularly fuelled by the pricey property market. They talk to me about curriculum and assessment chaos. I have had 200 pieces of correspondence about forced academisation, with people pointing out that there is no evidence that academies improve outcomes. There is a cost to all this. Barbara Raymond from Acton says:

“We have lost social housing, are losing our health service and now our education system is being decimated.”

Dr Gill Reed of west Ealing is concerned that forced academisation will mean that schools are unable to remove asbestos from their buildings, because apparently Government funding for this was taken away, so if schools are using all their resources to convert into academies, that will put health and safety in our schools at risk as well. Sarah Mitchell, a parent who is also a teacher, is concerned about what will happen to the support services previously provided by local education authorities when they go over to private providers. John Davey of Ealing, in his 46th year of teaching, 21 of those in Ealing, says:

“This doctrinaire stance of the current government, supported by no research and choosing to ignore the available evidence, will do harm to generations of children.”

On the subject of unequal funding, it might just be coincidence, but the boroughs of Wokingham, Surrey, Windsor and Maidenhead have all seen the lowest cuts to their budgets. Between them, they represent the constituencies of half the Cabinet. The constituencies of the Home Secretary, Health Secretary, Leader of the House, Foreign Secretary and Justice Secretary are all covered by those areas, which also received £33.5 million in the transitional grant announced this year. To an alien looking at these things from outside, that seems politically motivated.

It is worth restating the London Councils figure of £245 million. In terms of people, that equates to 5,873 full-time teachers or 11,598 full-time teaching assistants. As has been pointed out, inner London will be hardest hit.

My constituency is in Ealing, which is the most inner of the outer London boroughs. Everyone who has spoken today, from the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst onwards, has said that there are dichotomous divides within boroughs. Some areas of Ealing have inner-city characteristics, such as Southall, which is outer London on the map, and Acton, which is inner London on the map and zone 2 for travelcard users.

Historically, we were never part of the Inner London Education Authority, but we have an excellent track record in delivering accessible education for our pupils. In 2015, Her Majesty’s chief inspector of schools rated the Ealing borough as having the most improved schools of all local authorities across England, but we do have deprived areas and areas with specific educational challenges, so I would say that our needs are higher than those of other suburban boroughs. None the less, all 14 high schools were rated good or outstanding by Ofsted, as were 59 of our 69 primary schools.

The predistributionary—if I can use that word—aspects remain sketchy, but Ealing Council’s ruling Labour group opposes academisation and wants to launch its own trusts to get around it. Should local authorities be trying to get around Government legislation, or should the two be working together? I would suggest that the latter is the better option. We should not be thinking of reasons to avoid horrid policies from the centre.

The average spend per pupil in Ealing is higher than the national average, as is the case in all but four of the other London boroughs. We have more pupils with English as a foreign language than elsewhere, and other hon. Members have mentioned the issue of churn. London Councils points out that all London schools are at significant risk of losing funding under any redistributive model. The bureaucratic reorganisation of academisation will cost the taxpayer £1.3 billion. Surely that is poor value for the taxpayer when we should be justifying every pound of public expenditure at a time of fiscal belt-tightening.

Improving the life chances of local young people in Ealing should be a key objective in education. Ealing has a good record of success and of driving up standards for young people, with the council and schools working in partnership, but there is now a sense of a double whammy from the reallocated funding formula and the academies plan. Ealing Council officers have built up considerable expertise and flexibility, and the proposals are to the detriment of our young people. This is a top-down reorganisation from a Government who said, “No more top-down reorganisations”. One would have thought that they would have learned from their costly and unnecessary experiment with the health service.

Paul Goldsmith of Acton is a politics teacher in the independent sector. He wrote to me:

“I am a Governor of an outstanding primary school that under Conservative policy will be forced to be an academy. This means the Head and Governors over the next few years will have to work to the task of academisation, not maintaining an outstanding school.”

He also points out—remember that he is a politics teacher—that Conservatism can be defined as, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”, and asks what is the actual problem forced academisation is trying to fix if the school is outstanding. There are also questions about the financial stability and viability of academy chains as things stand. Plenty of academy chains have got into financial difficulties in order to meet Government targets. It is worth reiterating a phrase that has cropped up time and again: we should be levelling up, not levelling down.

On educational inequality, a degree of special pleading is necessary on behalf of London, because London is different. Its population is heading towards 10 million and its year-on-year population increase of 3% over the last Parliament was higher than the 1% for the rest of the country. The number of live births in Ealing increased by 31% between 2002-03 and 2010-11, which means that an additional 1,400 children a year have been born since 2002, although I think things have levelled off a bit. As an Ealing mum, I am probably one of the few people here to have experienced a bulge class. I remember being in a bulge class in 1983 as an Ealing pupil, as well.

There are concerns aplenty about the new proposals and the degree to which they tip over towards equalisation. Usually equalisation sounds like a good thing, but the proposals seem to be intended to benefit rural communities and buy off Conservative Members. We know that the Government have a small majority, and the proposals will ward off the rebellions that might be coming their way. There is a sense that the tinkering is a result of pressure from the heartlands.

I will end with one more quotation, from Rachael Stone, a primary school teacher from Acton who has been in the job for 20 years. She said that when she heard about the plans in the Budget to make her school an academy,

“my immediate response was that it is time for me to find a new career.”

We need to be careful about how we approach the issue and mindful of the need to avoid exacerbating the already plummeting morale among the teaching profession through academisation. We do not want to make a bad situation worse.