Academies Bill [Lords]
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The Minister of State, Department for Education (Mr Nick Gibb)
That was somewhat overstated, if I may say so.
This has been an interesting and constructive debate, covering a wide range of educational issues. The Academies Bill is not simply about the nuts and bolts of the conversion process for maintained schools to become academies or for groups of teachers or parents to establish new free schools. It is about changing the deeply unsatisfactory and, for many parents, highly distressing situation where schools in an area are not of the standard and quality they want for their children.
This year in England, nearly one in five parents saw their child denied their first choice of secondary school, and in some boroughs the situation was much worse, with nearly half of parents failing to get a place for their child in their preferred school. These figures do not take account of the fact that many parents have already ruled out applying to the school they really want because they live too far away and know they would not stand a chance.
Sometimes this is discussed, particularly by Labour Members and left-leaning commentators, as if it were just a matter of middle-class angst. This is simply not the case. As the former Labour Cabinet Minister Alan Milburn said in a recent speech to the National Education Trust:
“It is sometimes argued that parents in the most disadvantaged areas are less aspirational for their children than those in better off areas. The figures on school appeals repudiate such assumptions, with a large number of parents in disadvantaged parts of the country using the appeals system to try to get their children out of poorly performing schools and into better ones.”
The problem is that there are simply not enough good schools. Some parents can work their way around the problem, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah) pointed out. The wealthy can move their children to a private school and the socially mobile can move into the catchment area of a high-performing state school—I cannot and will not say how many left-wing journalists I know who have used both methods for themselves—but for the vast majority of parents who care just as deeply about the education of their children, there is often no choice and they learn to suppress their worries and put up with what is on offer. This Bill seeks to change that.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
I agree 100% with the Minister that parents in deprived communities care just as deeply about their children’s future as do those in other areas, but given that he is saying that the problem is that there are not enough good schools, would it not be better to focus his policy on making poorer schools better rather than creating an educational elite?
Mr Gibb
That is precisely what this Bill and this Government’s policy are all about. It is part of a comprehensive approach to driving up standards. This Government are determined to raise academic standards in all our schools, as the hon. Gentleman says. We will do it by improving the teaching of reading so that we no longer have the appalling situation whereby after seven years of primary education, one in five 11-year-olds still struggles with reading. We will do it by improving standards of behaviour in schools, which is why we are strengthening and clarifying teachers’ powers to search for and confiscate items such as mobile phones and iPods, as well as alcohol, drugs and weapons. It is why we are removing the statutory requirement for 24 hours’ notice of detentions and giving teachers protection from false accusations. It is also why we intend to restore rigour to our public examinations and qualifications and restore the national curriculum to a slimmed-down core of the knowledge and concepts we expect every child to know, built around subject disciplines and based on the experience of the best-performing education systems in the world.
Central to our drive, however, is liberating professionals to drive improvement across the system. We want all our schools to be run by professionals rather than by bureaucrats or by bureaucratic diktat. We want good schools to flourish, with the autonomy and independence that academy status brings. I am thinking of schools such as Mossbourne academy in Hackney, where half the pupils qualify for free school meals but where 86% achieve five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C including English and maths, and Harris city academy in Crystal Palace, where 82% achieve five or more GCSEs at grades A* to C including English and maths. Harris city academy was the first school to be awarded a perfect Ofsted score under the new inspection regime, and it now attracts about 2,000 applicants for its 180 annual places. Those schools are delivering what parents want for their children, and the Bill will deliver hundreds more such schools.
Opposition Members have raised concerns about the impact that the new free schools will have on neighbouring schools. Of course the Secretary of State will take those issues into account when assessing the validity of a new free school. However, Lord Adonis said in another place:
“The idea that parents should not be able to access new or additional school places in areas where the schools are not providing good quality places simply because the provision of those places will cause detriment to other schools fundamentally ignores the interests of parents and their right to have a decent quality school to send their children to. If there is not such a decent quality school and someone is prepared to do something substantive about it, they should be applauded”.—[Official Report, House of Lords, 21 June 2010; Vol. 719, c. 1264.]
My hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) made the important point that the Bill builds on the academy legislation of the last Government. However, the new model agreement gives greater protection to children with special educational needs by mirroring all the requirements that apply to maintained schools. That was not the position in the funding agreement signed by the Secretary of State in the last Government.
My hon. Friend also raised the important issue of exclusions, which, he said, were running at twice the national average rate in existing academies. Many early academies that were established in very challenging areas and inherited very challenging pupils did need to exclude some children to bring about good behaviour and a new ethos, but as they became established, exclusion rates tended to fall. Many open academies have exclusion rates that are no higher than those in the rest of the local authority that they serve. Academies are required to participate in their local fair access protocols. The truth is that they have a higher proportion of children with SEN, and tend to exclude such children proportionately less.
Academies are subject to the same admission requirements as maintained schools. They must comply with admissions law and the admissions code, and are required by the funding agreement to be at the heart of their communities. Many Opposition Members raised the issue of social and community cohesion. Academies are required to be at the heart of their communities, sharing facilities with other schools and the wider community.
The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) asked why we were starting with outstanding schools. In fact, all schools have been invited to apply for academy status, not just outstanding schools. Outstanding schools will be fast-tracked because of their outstanding leadership, but we are continuing to tackle the worst-performing schools by converting them to sponsor-supported academies. All outstanding schools will be expected to help a weaker school to raise standards.
Oral Answers to Questions
Toby Perkins Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Speaker
Order. May I gently say to Members that Stoke-on-Trent and Chesterfield are a considerable distance from Skipton and Ripon and, more widely, North Yorkshire? This is what we call a closed question, I am afraid.
Oral Answers to Questions
Toby Perkins Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Willetts
We are strongly committed to enterprise education. People can learn how to be enterprising and learn the skills necessary to run a business. We are indeed committed to supporting such initiatives.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will be aware that of all the important things for small businesses, the most important of all is that people have enough money to buy their products. In that light, what impact does he think the increase in VAT will have, particularly on the retail sector, which relies so much on people having the money to purchase products?
Vince Cable
The Budget made it very clear that the value added tax increase is part of an overall process of reducing our enormous deficit, and it will lead to the strengthening of the British economy in due course. Those who criticise the VAT increase have to explain whether they are recommending that we make even deeper cuts in public spending instead.
Industry (Government Support)
Toby Perkins Excerpts(13 years, 10 months ago)
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Vince Cable
I was in Birmingham last week, and people affected by that problem have approached me—indeed, the city council also raised the matter with me—and I have asked for it to be investigated. It is a complex legal problem, but clearly it needs looking at.
I shall proceed to the second statement in the motion with which we agree. The Labour spokesman was explicit, forthcoming and realistic about cuts. The motion reads:
“That this House notes the need for a clear deficit reduction plan”.
It is now going to get one, because on Monday we launched the Office for Budget Responsibility. We now have believable and independent growth numbers on which to construct a budget strategy, and next week the Budget will spell that out in more detail.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
The Secretary of State will know that he is viewed, in his own party at least, as an economic Nostradamus. Does he seriously expect us to believe that the Office for Budget Responsibility report told him something of which, even with that huge brain of his, he was previously unaware? Most serious financial journalists are saying that the report showed that the previous Government’s forecasts were accurate, so is he seriously telling the House that it led him to a policy so totally different from the one he had been campaigning on for all those months?
Vince Cable
That was starting to morph from an intervention into a speech. It did not require a great genius to see the fallacies in the bubble economy that was being created, and I was one of many people who saw the problem. However, the hon. Gentleman is getting to the issue of my position, which was also raised from the Opposition Front Bench, so let me deal with the question of cuts, the timing and what the sensible response is. The motion refers to a
“critical moment in the…cycle,”
and talks about recovery being fragile, and it is fragile. There are risks in both directions. If there are rapid cuts in public spending, they of course run the risk of having an impact on growth; we all understand that, but there is the risk on the other side that if we did nothing or delayed taking action, there would be a serious crisis of confidence in the economy because of the sovereign risk crisis that is rolling around Europe.
I was specifically challenged to say why I had changed my mind on the subject, and I will tell the hon. Gentleman when I changed my mind. Before I entered this Government, I spoke at some length to some of the key decision makers in the UK, including the head of the Treasury, and we also had advice from the Governor of the Bank of England. Their advice was unequivocal: in the circumstances that we entered, we had absolutely no alternative but to act decisively and quickly. I always made it clear in opposition that we had to act rationally. We had to take account of growth on the one hand and sovereign risk on the other. Those factors had to be balanced. We have balanced them, and we came to the decision that early action was essential in the light of the circumstances that exist. That was objectively based on the evidence in the economy.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
Thank you, Mr. Deputy Speaker. It is a great pleasure to speak for the first time in a debate chaired by you.
I am sorry to see that the hon. Member for Devizes (Claire Perry) is leaving us.
Toby Perkins
That was a brave attempt. Before the hon. Lady spoke, I thought we had already been patronised more than we could stand, but she raised the bar considerably.
Toby Perkins
No, I should like to make progress. Other Members wish to speak.
My background as a small business owner and now as an MP in the east midlands, in a coalfield and manufacturing area, gives me a broad perspective on the debate. That broad perspective is one of the things lacking in the arguments that we hear from the Government Benches. People seem to fail to understand that the private sector and the public sector do not live in two entirely opposite worlds that never have anything to do with each other. As a business man, I rely on people buying products from my firm. Some of those people might be doctors, some might be teachers, some might work in private industry. What all of us who run a business need more than anything else is a strong economy and a strong environment in which to do business.
Of course, everyone running a business and everyone in society wants to pay less tax. More important than a small cut in corporation tax is an economy supported by Government to run successfully. Hon. Members should remember that corporation tax is 5 per cent. lower now for big firms than it was in 1996-97. All the parties are talking about manufacturing, yet only Labour has put in place the financial means to support manufacturing and to boost industry, which is what should be happening.
I was pleased to hear the contribution by the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), who I think might be joining the proud tradition of Tory rebels over the years in his call for more support for industry. He said that the British Government should support our manufacturing firms in the way that the American Government support theirs. I hope that he will continue to stick to that line after he has spoken to his Whips.
In our area, the East Midlands Development Agency is not, of course, the whole solution, but it is an important contributor. In Chesterfield, there is an organisation called CPP that employs 270 staff. When I went to visit it before the election, people there told me that they were able to carry out the initial set-up only because of the support of the development agency, which put in £1.7 million.
The east midlands engages in more manufacturing than any other area. The Secretary of State has said that he wants his Department to be the Department for growth, but cutting investment allowances will not speed the growth that we need in our economy. I was horrified to hear the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan), who is not with us at the moment, say that she keeps speaking to people who tell her that the East Midlands Development Agency is not contributing and is not doing a good job, and they want to get rid of it. In fact, for every £1 the development agency puts into the local economy, we get £9 of benefit coming back. I do not know who the hon. Lady can have been speaking to, because local businesses and business organisations are queuing up to support it.
Chris Heaton-Harris
As a fellow east midlands MP and a former east midlands Member of the European Parliament, I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way. Will he at least acknowledge that lots of the money that is invested by the East Midlands Development Agency goes to the so-called golden triangle, which his constituency falls within, and that areas in Northamptonshire and Lincolnshire have suffered because they have not been getting the inward investment that they might well have got had there been a local enterprise partnership?
Toby Perkins
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows his local area better than I do. I do know, however, that Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire chamber of commerce has spoken out strongly in saying that it would like the East Midlands Development Agency to be left in place. It is up to Members in other areas to ensure that they get schemes before the agency and try to work with it in a positive way. The current lack of certainty from the Government will not lead any organisations to think that they should be talking to the development agency, as they cannot be sure that it will even be there in a few months’ time.
Pat Zadora, the chair of the east midlands business forum, has said:
“We can’t speak for other areas of the country, but there can be no doubt that”
the East Midlands Development Agency
“has been extremely effective. The all-important private sector has forged a strong and helpful relationship with the agency and we believe it has made a positive contribution to the regional economy. There are a number of instances where we believe Emda’s intervention has been crucial in resolving key issues and unlocking opportunities to develop strategically important sites.”
The hon. Member for Mid Worcestershire (Peter Luff), when he was Chair of the BIS Committee, said that every business organisation that he had spoken to, from the Federation of Small Businesses to the CBI, said that development agencies help the economy, and that abolition would send completely the wrong message. We absolutely support his comments. The manufacturers’ organisation, the EEF, argues against a more local approach, saying:
“Local authorities lack the critical mass, the funds and the ability to step outside local politics to identify the priorities for their region, to set out how best meet them and to make it happen.”
What we need now is consistency from the Government. We need to see that there is support for our industries. Business wants Government to take a proactive role, but it also wants support to be there through measures such as investment allowances and the excellent car scrappage scheme that the Labour Government put in place—an example of Government investment supporting private industry. The Secretary of State is saying that he wants to send a clear and decisive message, but in fact he is painting a confused picture. His approach is not supported by manufacturing companies, which want to see Government driving growth, or by local businesses and business organisations in the east midlands, which are saying that we need investment in allowances, in development agencies, and in our manufacturing sector. They need a strong and unequivocal message from the Secretary of State, and in that regard he is failing them.
Mr Willetts
I hope that all hon. Members heard that intervention.
We also had a maiden speech from the hon. Member for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland (Tom Blenkinsop). That was particularly touching for those of us who were here in the last Parliament, because he referred to the sad loss of Ashok Kumar, who was held in high regard on both sides of the House.
As I was listening to those maiden speeches, I recalled a maiden speech delivered in a previous Parliament by a newly elected loyal Blairite Back Bencher who had previously been a London taxi driver. Many of us regretted that, in his new role, he would no longer be able to share his political opinions with us. However, we now have new Members who are certainly going to share their opinions with us in a most vigorous and effective way. Indeed, some newly elected Members are so vigorous and dynamic that they have already made their second speeches, which must be some kind of record. Among my intake in 1992, we had a competition to see which of us would first be referred to in the press as a senior Back Bencher, and I think that we have heard from several candidates for that title here today.
There was a paradox, however, in that many of these new Members, who are changing the character of our House, and rejuvenating and refreshing it by coming from all sides to bring fresh angles to the issues of the day, defined their political loyalties by historic disputes, especially disputes about the performance of our economy. I should like to set the record straight, especially for those Labour Members who have given such a caricature account of this country’s economic history.
In 1979—a year that clearly rankles with some Labour Members—manufacturing industry comprised 25.8% of the British economy. In 1990, when Baroness Thatcher lost office, as a result of the economic policies that Labour Members have been criticising today, manufacturing was down to 22.5 % of gross domestic product. In 1997, when we last lost office, it was 20.3% of GDP; and in 2009, it was 11.8% of GDP. So next time we have any sermons from Labour Members about what has happened to manufacturing industry, I hope that they will come to this House and be willing to accept the simple evidence from those statistics.
Perhaps I can give the House a second set of statistics on another important measure of the performance of our economy—business investment. In 1979, business investment was 13% of GDP. Business investment goes up and down, but there was a trend, and I regret to say that by 1997 that figure had fallen to 11.7% of GDP. In 2009, the last full year in which Labour was in office, business investment was 8.8% of GDP. When it comes to investing in the future of our economy and when it comes to manufacturing and the significance of the manufacturing sector, I hope that Labour Members will recognise the comprehensive failure of their years in office.
Mr Willetts
I have very little time.
Many Labour Members referred particularly to regional issues, and I have to say to them that of course we understand the concern about regional imbalances in our economy. In fact, another measure that deteriorated over the past 10 years has been the gap in GDP between different regions of our economy. If we are to tackle the problem of regional imbalances, we have to look objectively at the performance of regional development agencies. The report from the National Audit Office, published in March this year, made it clear that the NAO was
“unable to conclude that the regional wealth benefits actually generated”
by RDAs
“were as much as they could and should have been, and are therefore value for money.”
The report went on to refer to “weaknesses”, which
“in many cases, undermined the RDAs’ ability to make decisions and set priorities to maximise regional economic wealth”.
It concluded that RDAs were simply not doing the job they were supposed to do. That is why Government Members believe that RDA boundaries do not reflect functional economic areas; we wish to enable local enterprise partnerships to reflect better the natural economic geography of the areas that they serve. We are committed to replacing RDAs with local enterprise partnerships and we will invite local groups of councils and business leaders to come together to consider how they wish to form local enterprise partnerships.