Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Blenkinsop Excerpts

Thursday 18th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

I entirely agree with the hon. Lady, who will know that I have been a champion of the disability lobby for many years, as the chairman of the all-party group on disability. I shall certainly look into this matter. She will know that we have protected adult and community learning in the Budget. Some £210 million has been protected because we know the difference it makes in changing lives and life chances.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

R3, an insolvency body, recently indicated that one in 10 companies are not prepared for the VAT increase in January. The Federation of Small Businesses in the north-east has highlighted a Kingston university study finding that small and medium-sized companies in the north-east will shed jobs. What action will Ministers take to deal with the VAT increase in January?

[Mr Prisk]

The whole point of making sure that the increase does not come during the Christmas period is that that is the most difficult period for most businesses. The increase is being made at the end of that period so that businesses can make the adjustment. Unlike what happened with the VAT change under the previous Government, we have given businesses a full six months and more to prepare. If there are particular cases to discuss, I am happy to talk to the hon. Gentleman.

Education Policy

Tom Blenkinsop Excerpts

Monday 18th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. We are working with head teachers to ensure that the unacceptable level of ring-fencing and bureaucracy that fettered their discretion under the previous Government is removed, so that the money—particularly the money that will be spent on the very poorest children—can be spent in line with their priorities and judgment. Of course schools will be accountable for how that money is spent, but greater freedom combined with sharper accountability seems to me to be the adult way to go.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

The simple fact is that two-year-olds who have never been to school are not yet eligible for free school meals. What new mechanism will the Government use in the eligibility testing process, especially for children without elder siblings, to integrate the functions of the private and voluntary sectors and the tax authorities, and what will that new mechanism cost?

[Michael Gove]

That is a very good question. We are consulting now on how we can identify the broadly 20% poorest two-year-olds. At the moment, the number of two-year-olds who are eligible for pre-school education is just 20,000 and, under the previous Government, they were allocated just 12.5 hours. We intend to increase that significantly, and we expect 100,000 two-year-olds to be eligible for 15 hours of pre-school education. How we identify them is a matter on which we will consult, and I am sure that the hon. Gentleman would be delighted to play a part in that consultation process.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Tom Blenkinsop Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Glenda Jackson]

The hon. Gentleman will be very disappointed. It is not a matter of class warfare, as he describes it. We all understand parents’ vulnerability when they are presented with sending their child to a school, and the agonies that they go through—initially, when they first let the child go out of the front door without their being there all the time. We all understand the anxieties that parents experience if they think that the school is not up to the standard that they desire for their children. However, we must not delude ourselves. Some parents are perfectly prepared to sacrifice the education of other parents’ children if they think they can gain a greater advantage for their own. Academies open the door to that. That is why, apart from the academic downturn to which the Bill will lead, the potential for social division is horrendous.

An inner-London constituency such as mine is multiracial, multicultural, multi-ethnic, multi-you-name-it-we’ve-got-it—and it works. People communicate and get on, and there is an exchange of culture, tradition and identity and a sense of community, which is shared by all. It is inherent in the Bill, however, that it will begin to chip away at that and destroy it. That is inevitable. I remember the terrible rows that took place, the terrible ongoing arguments, when it was first proposed that we should get rid of grammar schools. That situation could be replicated.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I think that my hon. Friend is describing the difference between an admissions policy, which can be manipulated, and a secondary school catchment area. The catchment area will give an impression of the community that contains the school, whereas an admissions policy that is not nailed down or defined in any great detail will not necessarily give such an impression.

Academies Bill [Lords]

Tom Blenkinsop Excerpts

Monday 19th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

We have heard excellent speeches from both sides of the House, but I rise with feelings of real unease about the proposals in this Bill. My unease is real as my constituents’ children will be denied the promise, via Building Schools for the Future funding, of a new secondary school in the town of Guisborough. This school is already the largest on Teesside and, under BSF, it would have partnered a state-of-the-art special needs school on the same campus, serving the whole of East Cleveland. My unease is also real because the Bill contains provisions to allow new, highly dubious and experimental schools to flourish, while schools like the Laurence Jackson, which has given decades of service to our local community, are being actively undermined by the Con-Dem coalition.

I also feel anger as these new academies will be allowed to flourish in a deliberate attempt to marginalise old, long-established local education authorities. Indeed, the new academies will also flourish at the real expense of the equally long-established and highly regarded diocesan school structure, which gave the Church of England and the Roman Catholic community a direct input into education.

I am particularly concerned about the Bill’s implications for the further growth of faith schools—in the context of the recent history of academies, this really means fundamentalist Christian groups—and their ability to deploy significant funds to endow academies. In my constituency, we already have the King’s academy, based in the Middlesbrough estate of Coulby Newham. That school was the brainchild of the Vardy Foundation, which I would describe as an evangelist group. To its credit, the foundation adheres to the national curriculum at the King’s academy—and in other schools it controls—although it has in the past hit local authority headlines for things such as allegedly banning Harry Potter books from the school library. The King’s academy is popular with parents—partly, I believe, because it still organises its classes around the national curriculum. However, this Bill removes that condition. Although I do not believe that the Vardy Foundation will change its stance, the ability to do so is entrenched by this Bill.

Put simply, this deregulation of public education will significantly increase the power and influence of any fringe movement. Worse still, these changes may turn out to be irreversible, entrenching views held by only a small minority and allowing them to be propagated.

[Steve Baker]

Speaking as a committed Christian, I am most surprised to hear the hon. Gentleman talking in these terms about minorities. If Conservative Members spoke in these terms about different minorities, I am sure he would be quick to condemn us. Although I am a committed Christian, I spent yesterday evening in the mosque. I was happy to be there with those gentlemen; I get on terribly well with them. I ask the hon. Gentleman to use more moderate language in his description of Christians. I think Christians in this country have had enough; they deserve to be treated with the same sort of respect that the hon. Gentleman would expect for any minority.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

Speaking as a Christian myself—a Roman Catholic Christian—I take the hon. Gentleman’s words into account. However, I am not making any allegations about minorities; I am talking about checks and balances for all minorities with respect to other minorities.

Put simply, the deregulation of public education will significantly increase the power and influence of any fringe movement. Worse still, as I said, these changes may turn out to be irreversible, entrenching views held by only a small minority, allowing them to be propagated to young and impressionable children under the veil of accepted educational practice. Such potential developments fill me with great fear. I can see the perverse realisation of young children, some of primary age, being taught or indoctrinated with views that border on the near fanatical—and possibly in totally unsuitable premises. There are also curriculum-related concerns about such matters as the teaching of creationism, and the total absence of any compulsion to ensure that elements of personal, social or health education are taught. I believe that some clauses will serve as a Trojan horse in that regard.

Earlier, I referred to maintained schools that are managed by their respective dioceses. I should say that I am a product of Roman Catholic primary, secondary and sixth-form education. Those schools worked in harmony with the local education authority, not against it or separately from it. The same applies to self-governing further education and sixth-form colleges. The National Governors Association, the National Grammar Schools Association, the Catholic board of education and many major charities are now urging the coalition to slow down their consultation for precisely that reason. Indeed, the Liberal Democrat Education Association opposes the Bill.

None of those organisations asked for the Bill, and I suspect that, with good reason, they will be wary and fearful of what may result from it. It could lead to the creation of religious academies which, unlike maintained faith schools, would lack the moderating and sensible constraints and influence of local communities. Such academies would be separate from society, big or otherwise. Unamended and without clarification, the Bill would allow academies run by religious groups to devise and use their own curriculums, to the exclusion of arguments and facts that might question the minority beliefs of those groups. Some provisions might well allow academies to discriminate against children in their admissions policies on the basis of their perception of parental beliefs.

As I said earlier, mainstream faith schools will be fearful of some of the ideas contained in the Bill. Some of its provisions could ride roughshod over them. Clause 5(8) would force a state-maintained school with a religious character—a faith school—automatically to become an independent school with that religious character. It would permanently remove any possibility that state-funded religious schools could choose to become inclusive academies. Such draconian and one-sided powers would remove any element of choice and freedom from the existing school governing body, and thus run counter to the parts of the Bill that refer to increasing the autonomy of schools.

The dialectic between appearance and reality seems to be a recurring theme in the coalition Government. When it comes to consultation, they give the appearance of thoughtful, reticent appreciation of the opinions of all who will potentially be involved, while in reality—in contravention of the procedure for potentially controversial legislation—the Bill was introduced in the House of Lords and then rushed through, and is likely to be given even less time in this place. Indeed, the Secretary of State’s insistence that its passage must be completed before the summer recess may mean only four days of scrutiny.

Will the coalition trot out the same old mantras? Will they say that this is necessary because of the deficit, or that it is the new politics of radical reform? That is more than likely. The “words of appearance” will give birth to a reality of fringe interests. Representatives of such interests, often with deep pockets, will muscle in on the people’s education system, presumably at the expense of the pay, terms and conditions of workers in that system.

Professional school support staff play a vital role in every school, although they are often part-time and low-paid. As a result of the Bill, school support staff as well as teachers would be directly employed by the new academies. That would take staff outside nationally agreed and recognised pay and conditions, leaving them much more vulnerable to cuts, poor working conditions and, fundamentally, uncertainty. Support staff would not be covered by the new School Support Staff Negotiating Body, which has been developed over several years to deliver long-awaited fairness and consistent, decent equal pay for classroom support work that has increased in terms of both scope and demand.

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the content of the Bill differs significantly from legislation produced and speeches made by the former Prime Minister, the former Member for Sedgefield?

[Tom Blenkinsop]

The point is that we do not know. Because of the pace at which we are dealing with the Bill, we do not know what some elements of it actually mean. We have no definitive evidence. Members on both sides of the House have gone into some detail, but have not provided enough specificity for us to discuss it.

Many support staff, unlike teachers, are not paid during the school holidays. The SSSNB was given cross-party support in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, and has a broad range of school, local authority, religious and employee representation. The Bill would effectively transfer workers to the private sector, unilaterally, without due consultation or consideration. It has the potential to undermine the previous consensual approach of all parties to the creation of the SSSNB. That is certainly not an indication of the “new politics”.

However, despite my obvious criticism—and if we are to take the coalition Government at their word—we can agree that there may be merits in widening the educational family beyond the tried and tested mainstream of the LEA. In the past, academies have had a variety of sponsors. Some, to which I have referred, have had a particular religious conviction. Some have been part of higher education—for instance, Teesside university, which is committed to becoming a partner in the sponsorship of Freeborough college, in the East Cleveland part of my constituency. The NHS is also involved, but most sponsors have come from commercial business, although given the coalition’s recent pace and predilection, the NHS may join the long list of private enterprises. Commercial business sponsors range from Lord Harris, of carpet warehouse fame, to companies such as the United Learning Trust, which has links with major public schools, and firms such as Vodafone, Barclays and Honda (UK).

If representatives of one side of society and commerce can be partners in schools, what about those on the other side? I should be fascinated to hear the Minister’s reaction to a new concept that I want to float. I simply suggest that the Trades Union Congress, or individual TUC unions, be encouraged to set up a trade union school or schools. We might also ask representatives of the co-operative movement—an organisation that was dedicated to mutualism, harmony and fairness centuries before Cameron’s “big society” road to Damascus—whether they would be interested in being part of a wider educational family.

The trade unions have a long history of propagation of adult education through institutions such as Ruskin college in Oxford. The TUC still has its own education department, and individual trade unions, with TUC encouragement and help from local learning and skills councils, have developed successful and widespread union learning campuses in workplaces where they have recognition agreements. The co-operative movement is historically associated with early socialist Sunday schools designed to give children a broader view of the world than could be obtained through Victorian churches, and even today it helps to sponsor educational development in parts of the developing world where it sources food for consumers.

The country, and even the coalition Government, can live with co-operative forms of enterprise. The Government could even float the concept as a way of managing former central or local state provision. If a state can ensure our children’s education with car dealers, carpet salesmen and other wider commerce, why should it not do the same with the democratically elected expression of working people, the trade union movement?

I look forward to the Minister’s response to the points that I have made.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robert Buckland (South Swindon) (Con)]

I yield to nobody in my admiration for the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi) and for the passion with which she makes her argument. I think her argument, if it was based on an analysis of the Bill, was that clause 6 should be removed and that no existing schools that select according to ability should be allowed to become academies. She made a passionate speech, but it was based on the fundamental misconception that the Bill is, in some way, all about enshrining selection as the way forward and selection on ability as the lodestar for academies. That is wrong and it is a fundamental misreading of clause 6, which refers to “pre-existing” selective schools being allowed to apply to become academies. Therefore, with the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, I say that she misses the point.

I welcome the Bill in general. I particularly welcome the amendments accepted by the Government in the other place and those resulting from debate there, especially the ones relating to the provision for children and young people who have special educational needs. I should declare my interest as a parent of a child with SEN. The amendments in the other place were the result of considered debate and of contributions by Members in that place from all parties and none. The amendments were an important part of the process by which the Bill has matured as a result of debate, so it would be wrong to say that the Bill comes to the Floor of this House without having had any thought, consideration or detailed debate, or indeed any consideration by the Government. I am glad to say that they have listened to the quality of that debate and taken appropriate action.

That has been particularly important in respect of clause 1, because I was concerned by the original provision that was drafted on special needs, which described how children with varying needs would be catered for. That has now gone and the current provisions incorporate part 4 of the 1996 Act, which fully satisfies those of us who were concerned about a lack of parity in the funding for children with SEN at maintained schools and those at academies. That important amendment solves that problem.

The other good news was the amendment made to clause 2 to incorporate subsections (5) and (6), which make it obligatory for local authorities to set aside an amount of money to spend on services for academy pupils with “low incidence” SEN. In other words, the provisions create a class of expenditure in the non-schools education budget for low incidence SEN. That is very important when considering the provision of resources and places. I am thinking, for example, of units for children and young people with a range of particular needs.

[Tom Blenkinsop]

On resources and the payment of salaries in supporting SEN students, how is the coalition proposing that we deal with the supply and salaries of tutors of, and special needs advisers on, language therapy, when primary care trusts are being proposed for closure?

[Mr Buckland]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. My belief is that the pooling of resources will still occur in LEAs, and it is my belief that commissioning GPs will want to take a similar approach when it comes to the local provision of speech and language therapies. That subject is very close to my heart—I know that it is close to the hon. Gentleman’s, too—and I shall be watching very carefully to ensure that we do not throw the baby out with the bath water when it comes to the important provision and support that speech and language therapists provide to children with special educational needs.

The nub of it is that as a result of the amendments, many of the concerns held by those of us who are interested in the provision for special educational needs have been allayed. However, one or two matters remain to be addressed, particularly the ongoing duty on local authorities to provide a statement of special educational needs, wherever a child goes to school and whatever type of school they go to, and to adhere to the requirements of that statement. Sometimes, unfortunately, problems arise. All Members will have had parents come to them with such problems—I certainly have, both in my capacity as a Member of this House and as a school governor in a former life.

As I have said, a problem can arise when a school does not, for whatever reason, follow the requirements of a statement of special educational needs. We all know that there is a statutory requirement to do so, but how do we enforce that requirement? What will happen in an academy? Will the local authority require the academy to live up to the provision set out in the statement? Questions on those important details still need to be answered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tom Blenkinsop]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Stephen Lloyd]

No, I shall not. I have almost finished.

The pupil premium is directly targeted at those disadvantaged students who need it most, and I am absolutely delighted that the coalition Government are committed to delivering it. I look forward to reading that commitment when I see the detail of the Bill, and I am absolutely confident that, for the youngsters from Shinewater school and for others from similarly disadvantaged backgrounds in my constituency, the pupil premium will make a considerable difference and give them a real opportunity. I look forward to seeing the detail of the Bill.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tom Blenkinsop Excerpts

Thursday 8th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Universities and Science (Mr David Willetts)]

I always enjoy visiting universities, especially when they have enterprising ideas that bring forward business opportunities, so I am happy to accept my hon. Friend’s invitation.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State confirm what communication he or his Cabinet colleagues have had with Corus and Tata Steel Europe, since the announcement of the departure of the coalition Government’s fiscal friend, Kirby Adams?

Free School Meals

Tom Blenkinsop Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2010 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton]

That was a false expectation given by the previous Government. The biggest disappointment is that those people have been misled about something that was never funded. We are not taking free school meals away from anyone who is eligible, nor are we changing the rules for determining eligibility. All those who currently qualify for free school meals will continue to receive them.

We have taken what we believe to be the most important decision: schools should use their budgets this year to focus on our priority of improving attainment, which is key to improving the life changes of all children. Not extending free school meals or continuing with additional pilots will free up £160 million this year—if the hon. Lady who asked the question will put down her BlackBerry and listen to my answer—and we can use that money more effectively and directly to improve attainment in our schools.

Although we will not be extending free school meals, we are still interested to know whether there is a case for expanding the scheme. That is why we are committed to continuing the ongoing pilots in Newham, Durham and Wolverhampton that started in September 2009. I have been to Newham, and I will certainly repeat hon. Members’ praise of its mayor, Sir Robin Wales, not only for what he has done with free school meals but for the free musical instrument programme, which is particularly interesting and something that we want to consider further. The pilots will be carefully evaluated so that we can learn the lessons from them in order better to assess the case for increasing eligibility in the future.

Although we cannot extend eligibility, we would like to see a rise in take-up. At present, many eligible pupils—we estimate nearly 600,000 children, or a quarter of those entitled—do not take up their free school meals. That situation must change. Is it an issue of stigmatisation, as hon. Members have suggested? I am interested in the imaginative use of technology. For example, at Roseberry college, which is in the constituency of the hon. Member for City of Durham, a new cashless payment system removes any potential stigma and has increased the take-up by eligible pupils from less than half to more than 90%. That interesting example could be replicated throughout the country. I hope that all would agree that our schools should do everything they can to ensure that eligible pupils take up their entitlement.

Good free school meals are important not just to tackling poverty, but to ensuring the health of our children. They often represent the only nutritious meal in some children’s day. That is why it is vital that schools continue to serve healthy food and ensure that their pupils eat well, which extends beyond the quality of the meals. Ofsted findings and surveys by the School Food Trust, which was mentioned by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston, show that it is not nutritional changes that put children off school lunch, but poor dining facilities and organisation. If there is nowhere to sit, if the queues are long, if the dining rooms are unattractive or if there is not enough time, children will not eat properly.

School meals also have an important social element. The lunch hour should be a proper part of the day—we view that as a priority. It should include time to eat a good meal, to exercise and to socialise. We know that children do not perform as well in the afternoon without a good break, and we agree that school meals can have social benefits. I am pleased to report that some progress is being made. An Ofsted report last week found that good progress has generally been made towards meeting the standards for school food. That is good news, especially for children benefiting from free school meals.

Despite being unable to extend free school meals, we as a Government are absolutely committed to fighting poverty and raising the life chances of the most vulnerable in our society. Section 14 of the coalition document, which the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North did not mention, confirms the Government’s commitment to ending child poverty by 2020. Although the previous Government can be commended for the introduction of the Child Poverty Act 2010, which both coalition parties supported, we are disappointed by the latest figures showing that 2.8 million children in this country were still in poverty in 2008-09. The previous Government spent a substantial sum on tax and benefits in an attempt to raise people above the 60% poverty threshold, yet the evidence shows that that simply did not work. We believe that the best way to tackle child poverty is to address the root causes: entrenched worklessness, economic dependency, family breakdown, educational failure, addiction and debt.

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I am almost out of time, so I will not.

Those are only some of the drivers of poverty. Our approach must be able to tackle each of them. We will do so by taking a multi-faceted approach that recognises the different factors that trap people in poverty. Only by doing so can we effectively and sustainably improve outcomes for children. That was why the Prime Minister announced an independent review of poverty in the UK, led by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), whom his hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston mentioned in not particularly glowing terms. The review will consider what the Government can do to improve the lives of the least advantaged people in our society. We will be working closely with other Departments to ensure that we tackle the issue head-on. At the heart of the programme is a commitment to spending more on the education of the poorest.

That is why we are introducing the pupil premium. It was one of the first things promised by this Government and it will tackle head-on the problems of the most disadvantaged pupils by helping them get the education they desperately need. The pupil premium is supported by the Conservatives and was championed loudest by the Liberal Democrats. By giving resources to school leaders and teachers—the people who matter most in extending opportunity—we can ensure that our most disadvantaged pupils have better life chances than ever before.

I reiterate my thanks to the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West for securing the debate. We as a Government are committed to ensuring that pupils can eat good, healthy food.

Industry (Government Support)

Tom Blenkinsop Excerpts

Wednesday 16th June 2010 Commons Chamber

[Tom Blenkinsop (Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland) (Lab)]

I congratulate you, Mr Deputy Speaker, on your new position. I also congratulate the new Members—the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), and my hon. Friends the Members for Bolton West (Julie Hilling), for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), for North West Durham (Pat Glass) and for Barnsley East (Michael Dugher)—on their excellent speeches.

I am grateful for the opportunity to address the House for the first time as the Member of Parliament for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, particularly during a debate on industry. I follow in the footsteps of my former employer, mentor and friend Dr Ashok Kumar, who tragically died on 15 March this year. He was a polite, courteous and conscientious local community leader with an exemplary knowledge of manufacturing, processes and industry in general. More than that, he was loved in our area not just for his tenacity and work ethic, but for the warmth that emanated from his every pore. The people living in the hills, valleys and suburbs of Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, whom he served with a selfless and determined devotion, will miss him terribly. He will be a hard act to follow.

It is a great honour and a privilege to represent the constituency where I was raised, and that I call home. Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland is a microcosm of British society. It includes former mining villages such Loftus, Carlin How, Skinningrove, Brotton and Skelton, large estates such as Hemlington and Park End, market towns such as Guisborough, leafy suburbs such as Nunthorpe, Marton and Coulby Newham, and seaside resorts such as Saltburn, where I live today. Those are all areas where I have personal memories of growing up.

Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland encapsulates some of the diverse and interesting communities that make our country great, and those communities are a reflection of their industrial setting. My area bore men and women who assisted a son of my seat, Captain James Cook, to build the Endeavour from local timber to sail and discover Australia. Centuries later, the descendents of those same people helped to build the Sydney Harbour bridge from East Cleveland iron ore and Tees river steel. Today, my constituency still provides and proudly manufactures steel components at Corus Skinningrove and at TC Industries—places I know very well—where, alongside fellow workers at TCP Redcar, whom I represented as their union official, and with our two local papers, the Evening Gazette and The Northern Echo, we have fought to keep our proud steel-making heritage. That campaign still continues.

Many of my constituents work in and around the Wilton and Billingham chemical sites. A proud tradition of mining still continues at the Boulby potash mine; it is still going strong. Important institutions such as TTE bring on and train apprentices to be our next generation of skilled workers.

My seat also has a rich and varied agriculture. It has begun to diversify into a bourgeoning tourist industry, and a rapidly emerging digital economy, supported by our local Teesside university. That rich diversity was represented excellently by Ashok, an Asian MP in a predominantly white seat, who in his own maiden speech reflected upon following in the footsteps of local Labour heroes who overcame prejudice to build a better and fairer country for the minorities of the future. He talked about Billy Mansfield, an East Cleveland ironstone miner who left school at 13, and from the pit face to Parliament, as Ashok said, fought for his class and his people. There was also Ellen Wilkinson, who represented the old Middlesbrough East constituency throughout the early 1920s. She proved, against the conventional wisdom of the day, that a woman could successfully promote the needs, aspirations and dreams of a heavy industrial region.

As Ashok always reminded me, without the Labour party none of these huge cultural shifts could have been achieved. I am proud and humbled to be following in the historic tradition set out by my predecessors. The voices of the people of my area are ringing in my ears when I enter this House every single day. I am thinking of voices such as June Goodchild, a local community activist, who has strived for her estate in Easterside for years and achieved great things for her community by working in partnership with her local Labour authority in Middlesbrough; and Robbie Middlemas, a Skinningrove steelworker and community trade union site official, who for the past 24 months has led his members through some of the most difficult days that they have ever witnessed at Skinningrove. There has been a similar situation down the road at TCP Teesside. I am thinking of voices such as that of Ian, a local entrepreneur who lives next door to my parents, runs a small chemical fabrication business and has been helped by One NorthEast. Their lives will not be improved by over-simplified ideological positions and a reliance on the invisible hand of market forces. Sometimes the reason why that hand seems invisible in areas such as mine is because it is not, in fact, there at all.

The new coalition Government seem intent on a withdrawal of public funding, and a rolling back of the state and of the work of regional development agencies such as One NorthEast. The coalition blame red tape and not the real culprit: a lack of long-term secure capital specifically set aside for a manufacturing base—it is a base that has historically provided revenues to keep leafy idylls in the south leafy. This ideology condemns my area and my people—the people of Teesside—to a bleak future. This ideological short-termism fails to seize the opportunities that the level of sterling currently offers in building on our manufacturing export markets; money could be reinvested in vital research and development projects. This bleak future undermines market certainty for any prospective private long-term investor in my area.

It has always been necessary for the public sector—or, rather, the Government—to take the initial risk in investment, so that private investment would follow with assured certainty. The new coalition Government see this public spending, on my home town area, as a huge waste. They apply a perfectly rational, liberal, laissez-faire logic—they say that if the market does not invest in the area, it should be left—but where does that leave the people I live alongside, who need jobs and opportunities to feed their families? This monetarist logic is not new; neither is the grim condemnation of my area’s people.

Another predecessor of mine waxed lyrical in his maiden speech about the fact that the world-class British TCP site produced 1.5 million tonnes of steel with 25,000 employees and within the period of terminal Tory rule could then produce 2.5 million tonnes of steel with only 5,000 employees. This is a grim logic of no industrial support and a grim Government who defer to an inflated natural level of unemployment. But in this era, the deliberate attack upon jobs in my area is now targeted at the public services, public servants and the voluntary sector. These are all jobs that provide a market for the private sector. Public sector jobs make up the lion’s share of employment in my constituency. Prior to the election, both the Lib Dems and the Tories promised to protect front-line services, but we have seen jobs for the young cut, incentives for employers to employ cut, training for the unemployed cut, grants to build housing for people with learning disabilities cut, funding to offer college places to all 16 and 17-year-olds not in employment or education cut, funding for the police cut and free school meals cut. Those are all the real coalition anti-job policies. In addition, if this coalition raises VAT on 22 June, it will hurt the poorest people and the smallest businesses the most. The only VAT rates that should be raised are the current 0% rates on private health care and private education, which only the rich can afford.

So, I come to this House with great regret for my area that Labour is not in power and with great anxiety and fear over what the future under a Tory-led coalition Government will bring. However, as a newly elected representative, I pledge here and now to be vigilant in the face of every threat to the livelihoods of the people of my constituency and never to give up fighting for those who elected me.