Safety of School Buildings

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

While it is welcome that it has been reported today that RAAC has not been found in any of our schools in Salford, I must stress that the fact that the Government were unable to produce that information until today, having known about the risk since at least 2018, when a school roof in Kent collapsed, is completely unacceptable.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

I am glad that Salford has no schools with RAAC problems, but in Bolton we found out on Friday that St William of York, St Andrew’s Church of England and St Bernard’s were affected. St Bernard’s was not even on any list, and St Gregory’s is still awaiting the result. Do you agree that the Government should publish the full list, not the half-baked one that they published this afternoon?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. The hon. Lady knows that she must not address her hon. Friend as “you”; otherwise, she is addressing me.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

I apologise.

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

I completely agree with my constituency neighbour. I stress that not just schools are affected by this crisis; it extends to public buildings, and concerns have been raised in recent days by the building industry that certain residential properties, particularly social housing, could also be affected. On hospitals alone, a report by the National Audit Office in July this year said that structurally unsound RAAC was present in at least 41 hospitals. The Turnberg building at Salford Royal Hospital is reported to be one of them.

Despite this clear national building safety crisis, there is no detail from Government on what action will or will not be taken, no detail on the urgent funding and support that will be provided to remediate and no assurances so far that the costs will not come out of existing school, NHS and local authority budgets. Worse still, there appears to be an emerging message today from Government that this crisis is stand-alone—that it is simply a sad indictment of less-regulated old building practices that are now outdated.

That is not the true story. The real culprit here is the unashamed pursuit of austerity by this Government and the coalition before them. Let us not forget that, to start with, the coalition ripped up Labour’s Building Schools for the Future programme in 2010 and never adequately replaced it. Worse still, between 2009 and 2022 the Department for Education’s capital spending declined by 37% in cash terms and 50% in real terms. That is in addition to NHS and local authority budgets being slashed on a similar basis, with the effect that most ongoing public sector estate upgrade programmes were torn to shreds.

Sadly, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies states:

“The current crisis illustrates just how costly failing to keep on top of necessary investment in buildings and infrastructure can be.”

How much money was actually required, had the Government taken action on schools when it should have? The National Audit Office in 2017 published a report on capital spending that stated that it would cost £6.7 billion to return all schools to a satisfactory or better condition. That report was also clear that there is a significant risk of major costs arising from deterioration of the estate.

Action was needed in 2017, but in November 2020, in the Government spending review, they allocated only £3.1 billion—less than half the amount of investment required just to keep buildings ticking over safely. Then the story becomes even more absurd: in March 2022, realising that there was a problem, the Department for Education sent a questionnaire to all schools asking if they had RAAC on their estate, but later told schools not to spend any money on surveys to find out.

Even after that, in May 2022, when Government documents were leaked to The Observer showing that school buildings could be a risk to life—causing great alarm in schools up and down the country—half the schools then applied for funding to remediate and did not get a penny from Government. In June 2023, the National Audit Office said the condition of school buildings was “declining” and warned that 700,000 pupils were learning in buildings that it described as unsafe or ageing. It stated clearly that the DfE had received significantly less funding for school buildings than it estimated it needed between 2016 and 2023.

The Government knew that this crisis was coming, and the causes of this crisis were very deliberate. Austerity is, was and always will be a political choice, but it is both immoral and economically illiterate. The only political choice the Government should have made was to ensure the safety of their people. Sadly, if they had made that choice, the cost borne then would be a mere shadow of the cost required today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Alun Cairns (Vale of Glamorgan) (Con)]

It is a privilege to have the opportunity to contribute to this debate, but I must say that I am particularly disappointed by the tone with which it has started. This is a very serious issue: there are a high number of concerned parents and teachers and headteachers who work in those buildings, and obviously, their primary concern is the children.

I would specifically point out the selective interpretation and opportunism shown by Labour Members, because they only have to look the other side of Offa’s Dyke or the Prince of Wales Bridge to see what is happening in Wales. They forget that Labour has been in power in Wales for 26 years—if that has not been sufficient time to reform education and rebuild these buildings, I do not know how long they will need. Let us remember that education in Wales is entirely devolved. That gives the Administration the freedom to survey, assess and repair buildings, and rebuild them where necessary. Labour has been in power for 26 years, but the reality is that we still do not know the state of the buildings in Wales. That is the truth of the Labour Administration.

The synthetic anger we have heard from the Labour Benches has created an awful lot of hot air, but I can direct exactly the same questions and accusations at the Administration in Wales. They have been there for 26 years, but we still do not know. Can we imagine the synthetic anger that we would hear from Labour Front Benchers, and Back Benchers, if the Secretary of State or the Minister said today, “I am sorry, but we still do not know; it is going to take another couple of weeks”? There would be understandable outrage, but Labour Members are completely ignoring the situation and the state of the education service in Wales.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

The right hon. Gentleman is talking about Wales. Speaking as an English MP, the BBC is reporting that at least 13 schools with RAAC were set to be rebuilt under a Labour plan, but those building projects were scrapped by the Conservative-led Government in 2010. The former Secretary of State for Education, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), said that he scrapped that scheme because he did not want to “waste any more money”, and work on 700 schools was halted. Does the right hon. Gentleman not agree that that was an appalling thing for him to do?

[Alun Cairns]

With the greatest respect to the hon. Lady, I am not sure whether she is referring to Wales or to England. The point I am making is that Labour has been in power in Wales for 26 years. Two schools have been identified as having RAAC issues, but we simply do not know about the rest. There would be understandable anger and frustration if the Secretary of State or the Minister dared to come out with that response.

No Welsh Labour MP has participated in this debate, and up until now, none has even been present in the Chamber. Let us remember that the former First Minister in Wales said in relation to education that the Welsh Administration had taken their “eye off the ball”. I do not think their eye has ever been replaced on the ball, bearing in mind the standards in Wales.

Many colleagues on the Conservative Benches have listed a whole host of education outcomes and uplifts—my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) just went through a whole host of successes, and other colleagues have mentioned the number of good, excellent and outstanding schools here in England—but sadly, my constituents do not get the same benefits. Any international comparison, be it the programme for international student assessment or any other, shows that Wales has fallen back in comparison with England.

The Opposition day motion is opportunistic, as we have already highlighted, but let us at least humour it for a moment. When the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) responds for Labour, will she assure me that if my colleagues in the Welsh Senedd table this motion, Labour Members will support it? Exactly the same questions apply in Wales as in England, so I ask her to respond specifically to that question. I will happily give way if any Labour Front Benchers want to intervene now, but I notice that they are all keeping their heads down. They are frightened; I suggest that they are embarrassed to look at me, and to respond to the questions that we are raising.

The investigation started in England 18 months ago, and it started at a much later point in Wales. The reality is that we still do not know the outcome, and we have two weeks left to wait. I can imagine the anger that would be felt by Labour Members if that position was shared by my right hon. Friend the Minister. However, let us be realistic about this: new evidence comes to light and therefore new decisions need to be taken, and that is exactly what has happened in this situation. There is a whole host of Ministers, officials, teachers and parents co-ordinating efforts to make a real difference and get through this immediate challenge, much of which will be very short-term. This has been a long-standing problem, and there is a need for a whole host of quick decisions to be taken, as well as for transparency and for clarity.

Let me close my contribution with the comments of the Children’s Commissioner for Wales. This is not from any party political person, but from an independent individual appointed by the Welsh Government. She has said that the statements issued by the Welsh Government Minister so far

“don’t give families the clarity they need on what this means for them or the next steps for their school”,

and on

“what exactly will happen over the next few weeks and reassurance that schools are safe.”

That is from the Children’s Commissioner for Wales, appointed with statutory responsibility to protect the interests of children, and even she has lost faith in the decision making, transparency and clarity of the Welsh Government.

Finally, will the shadow Minister reassure me that, if my friends or colleagues in the Senedd table this motion, Labour Members will support it?

Kinship Carers

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. We need also to look at this through the lens of our work in the Green Paper on special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision. In my experience, this issue affects not just children in kinship arrangements but looked-after children. My focus throughout this whole process is achieving better outcomes for children. That will always be front and centre of all decisions and all information that I receive.

Despite the good outcomes for children in kinship care, they still lag behind those children who have never had involvement with children’s services. There is much more to do, with greater Government focus and close collaborative working with local authorities, schools and colleges. I am convinced that we can reduce that gap.

As hon. Members will no doubt recognise, the theme underpinning many of my points today is that we have made progress but far more remains to do. Last year we announced £1 million of new funding to deliver high-quality peer support groups for kinship carers across the country. We know that becoming a kinship carer for the first time is often a frightening and bewildering experience, as the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish illustrated.

The support of peers can act as a beacon to help people through. Those support groups are already building powerful communities and enabling kinship carers to connect with those in similar situations. The Government recently confirmed that we will invest a further £1 million next year to ensure that more than 100 peer support groups are established across the country by January 2024.

Hon. Members have raised with me, including in this debate, the issue of educational entitlement for children in kinship care. That area is important to me, and I recognise how much has been done, but there is more to do. Since 2018, virtual school heads and designated teachers have had a responsibility to promote the educational achievement of pupils who leave state care to live with an adopter or special guardian. Children who live with special guardians and were previously looked after by the state are eligible for the pupil premium, as the hon. Member for Twickenham outlined.

Kinship children who were not previously looked after but had been entitled to free school meals, at any point over the past six years, attract the pupil premium funding. We constantly review that and assess the effectiveness of the pupil premium, to ensure that it supports pupils facing the most disadvantage. Last year we consulted on changes to school admission codes to improve in-year admissions. Children in formal kinship care were in scope of those changes, which mean that kinship carers can secure an in-year school place for their child when they are unable to do so via other means. Those new measures came into force on 1 September 2021.

Finally, children living with special guardians who have previously been in state care can access therapeutic support via the adoption support fund, which has already been outlined. This year, we have also made that support available to those children who live with relatives under child arrangements orders. We are looking to improve local authorities’ engagement with the adoption support fund, to increase the proportion of eligible kinship carers who apply.

As hon. Members have eloquently outlined, I recognise the strain that kinship families are under, and will continue to work collaboratively with local areas to ensure that children, young people and families have access to the support they need to respond to the cost of living pressures. I am committed to supporting kinship carers. The independent review of children’s social care recommended a financial allowance for carers looking after children under a child arrangements order and those looking after children under a special guardianship order. My Department is considering each recommendation, and will respond by the end of the year.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

I wanted to be part of this debate, but I had two meetings about my private Member’s Bill next week, so I could not be here at the beginning, for which I apologise. I wanted to implore the Minister, in considering the financial issues, to reflect on a situation in my constituency, where the grandmother ended up having to look after the grandchildren while the parents were having issues. The problem was that she had to spend her own money, and she did not have a lot of it. When we asked social services, they said, “Only if we place the children in her care will she get some financial funding, but not until then.” For weeks and weeks, nothing happened. This issue may have been discussed, but I wanted to raise it.

[Kelly Tolhurst]

I know that the hon. Lady is passionate about this area, and I recognise what she has illustrated. The stories that Members have told in this debate have alluded to similar pressures that they have come across in their constituency casework, and it is something that I have seen at first hand, prior to becoming a Member of Parliament. Given that we recognise the value of kinship carers, we are taking the recommendations very seriously, and I am doing my best to show that the Government are committed to looking at this area and taking reasonable decisions.

Kinship carers often develop strong bonds with children who have just entered their homes, and taking leave from work could play a role by giving those carers time to do so. There is currently a range of Government support for such carers and employers, and some employers provide significant support to employees without a legal requirement to do so. We would encourage employers to continue to respond with this flexibility, but we will be considering the case for extending parental leave to kinship carers as part of our response to the independent review of children’s social care later this year and—I hear the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon)—when I speak to my successors in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy on this topic.

I also recognise the importance of making informed choices about the legal status of children entering the homes of kinship carers. The Ministry of Justice laid a statutory instrument yesterday to make legal aid available for special guardianship orders in private family proceedings, which will help prospective special guardians to get advice and assistance on the order before processing. My Department is working closely with colleagues in the MOJ on implementing the recommendations from the social care review, and on giving access to legal aid to some kinship carers.

Today’s debate has rightly focused on some real issues that we know kinship carers face. My hope is that we will be able to respond to the concerns and recommendations with the implementation strategy by the end of the year. I am absolutely committed to that, and to listening to and learning from kinship carers, who make the selfless decision to care for a child who cannot safely remain with their parents. I look forward to working with them and all hon. Members on this important issue, because it is important not only for many of us across this Chamber, but for our country and for how young people develop and thrive in the United Kingdom.

Children’s Education Recovery and Childcare Costs

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

Every day, tens of thousands of working parents across the country are being failed by inadequate childcare policies that leave families financially crippled, stagnating in their careers and desperate for radical change. Families are being let down by Ministers, who are simply not doing enough. Indeed, in June 2021 the Government’s own education recovery adviser, Sir Kevan Collins, resigned in protest at the Government’s failure to support children’s recovery.

The average price of a full-time nursery place for a one-year-old child is a staggering £14,000, and one in three parents spend more than a third of their entire income on childcare. More often than not, it is families on the lowest incomes or on universal credit, single parents and those with disabilities who suffer the most.

Labour’s Sure Start scheme aimed to help people and was very successful. It supported working families with childcare. Naturally, the Conservative coalition cut its funding by two thirds, despite the policy’s success. One in three parents with a household income of less than £20,000 have had to cut back on essential food or housing as a direct result of childcare costs. A staggering 92% of parents said that the cost of childcare had affected their standard of living because the cost was completely unaffordable and had resulted in a substantial impact on them.

It is not as if the nurseries and childcare workers themselves are the ones benefiting from this. Research by the National Day Nurseries Association found that 95% of nurseries in England did not even have enough funding to cover their basic costs after the impact of the covid pandemic on their incomes. Now, in the midst of a cost of living crisis, nursery finances will be squeezed even more by the rise in national insurance and the cost of heating and electricity bills. Nurseries such as Grosvenor nursery in my constituency are fighting for survival because of serious funding shortages caused by the disparity between funding and overhead and staffing costs, not to mention the large deficit created by the pandemic. In a recent visit last year, I saw at first hand the hard work that its staff and management do in nurturing our future generations This crisis is only going to get worse as more and more childcare providers go out of business, increasing demand for places and pushing prices even higher for families struggling with the rising cost of living.

Until recently, Government underfunding was one of the main reasons nurseries were going out of business, but now we are seeing more nurseries unable to open because of a recruitment crisis, with demoralised staff leaving the profession in droves. Part of the reason for that of course is that wages for early years staff are embarrassingly low. May I remind the Minister that these are people we trust and hand our children over to, to look after? Many of them are on the national living wage, which is not enough for them to survive on, bearing in mind the work that they are doing. Nursery workers do not just play with our children; they are preparing them for school, and helping in their development and with their educational opportunities.

The first 1,000 days of any child’s life are crucial to their development and their life chances. People working in early years care are crucial to this and should be paid fairly as a result. That is even more important for disadvantaged children. Being in early education is one of the most important things that can help to close the gap for them. Lower-income parents will be forced to withdraw their children, who have the most to gain from not being a year behind their peers when they start school.

Childcare has not only been neglected; it has been deliberately starved of funding, and has forced parents—many mothers—out of work and into poverty. Labour would introduce breakfast clubs, and support children in sporting and social activities to broaden their horizons. We would give children access to a counsellor to support their mental health and we would introduce an education recovery premium to prevent children from falling behind.

I remind the House that Nelson Mandela once famously said:

“The true character of a society is revealed in how it treats its children.”

I have to say that the Government’s neglect of childcare is pushing us deeply into this. Finally, I would like to wish Brannagh Logan a happy birthday, bearing in mind that she is the daughter of my constituency neighbour.

Budget Resolutions

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right and I thank him, not least because of his deep experience in local government. We will continue to engage with the MacAlister review and we will take very seriously the points that my hon. Friend made about the pressures on local government.

As I said, this is about skills, schools and families, which is why we are setting aside £50 million over three years—

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

rose—

[Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab)]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Gentleman will know that, as Children and Families Minister, I tried to follow the evidence, and I will do the same as the Secretary of State. I will always be evidence-led. My difficulty with his statement about Sure Starts is that when we look at the evidence, we see that much of the investment went into buildings rather than to the families that we really needed to access those services. The difference here, as I saw through the evidence from family hubs in Harlow and elsewhere, is that with this multi-agency, wraparound approach, we can get to the families that need to access the service. I am glad to hear that he welcomes this announcement, because I know that he will probably be an outlier in his party in wanting to work constructively to get the 75 centres up and running.

We also continue to invest in early education, with around £170 million every year—the sector was slightly confused, but I know that the Children and Families Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), set them straight—to increase the hourly rate for free early education entitlements, supporting families with the cost of childcare. As we would expect from a Government who are as committed to levelling up as this one, much of our focus is on those who need additional help, especially the most vulnerable in society.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Will the Secretary of State give way?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I know that Mr Speaker is looking at his watch, so perhaps the hon. Lady will forgive me if I make some headway and let others into the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kate Green]

I have absolutely no idea where that £400 billion figure comes from. The hon. Member says that it is uncosted, but there is no such uncosted plan; he needs to check his figures. The £15 billion costed plan—a plan advised by the Government’s own expert adviser—will, of course, be covered by the covid funding pot that the Government themselves admit has to be set aside to meet the costs of the pandemic. If the hon. Member cares to examine the tax burden from the Budget, he will see that it is not Labour that is increasing taxes on hard-pressed families. Taxes will hit families by an extra £3,000 as a result of his Chancellor’s Budget.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

The hon. Member for Warrington South (Andy Carter) talks about financial prudence, but this Government spent £39 billion on the failed Test and Trace. How can Conservative Members talk about financial prudence?

[Kate Green]

My hon. Friend makes the case.

Labour’s plan would deliver the wellbeing and academic support needed to meet the scale of the challenge and ensure that all children can reach their potential. That is the level of the investment that the Government should have been making in the nation’s children.

When we look at overall school spending, the picture does not get much better. The Chancellor announced a 2% per annum real-terms increase in school budgets over the next three years. I want the Secretary of State to listen to this very carefully, because we are messing around a bit with figures here. That increase will finally return school spending to 2010 levels, in real terms, in 2025. As Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has said,

“To have no growth in 15 years in such an important part of public services is unprecedented’’.

This means that 732,000 children in state-funded reception classes in 2010 have seen their whole school careers affected. A whole generation of children has been failed by consecutive Conservative Governments.

The Secretary of State spoke of a cash increase in school spending as a result of the Budget, but schools are facing a host of rising costs to set against that: covid costs, energy bills, and employer national insurance contributions. The ending of the public sector pay freeze is overdue, but it is schools that will have to fund the teacher pay settlement.

The impact of this underfunding is plain to see. Some 200,000 children are growing up in areas with not a single primary school rated good or outstanding. Forty per cent. of young people leave compulsory education without essential qualifications. By the time they finish their GCSEs, pupils from poorer families are 18 months behind their wealthier peers in terms of attainment, and a third of teachers leave our schools within five years of qualifying. Last week’s Budget was an opportunity to fix those deep-rooted problems, but the Chancellor failed to do so.

Youth services help to equip young people with the skills and confidence that they need for life. They provide careers guidance and mental health support, they are one of the most effective ways of tackling the root causes of crime, and they help to build community cohesion. However, although they have already experienced a decade of cuts, last week’s Budget went on to inflict on them the single biggest one-off cut in youth services for a decade, leaving a £470 million hole in the youth budget. The Chancellor’s boasts of investment cannot disguise this crippling cut. Under the last Labour Government, youth services were accessible to people whatever their background; today, they are a patchy postcode lottery.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

Last week, the Chancellor came into this Chamber with great optimism, but many of us needed to hear much more than just hot air. Instead, we ended up with a Budget that the shadow Chancellor, my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), has described as offering

“no plan to tackle the growing cost of living crisis”,

and doing nothing to remove the enormous tax burden that the Government have put on working people.

More than 13,000 families in my constituency have just been hit by the devastating cut to universal credit, taking £1,000 out of their pockets. While we welcome the fact that the Government have followed Labour’s lead and reduced the taper rate, the Chancellor will know that nearly one quarter of universal credit claimants cannot work because of disability or caring responsibilities. What does he have to say to them as they face an incredibly difficult winter off the back of the biggest ever cut to our social security system?

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimated that the changes to the universal credit taper rate would fail to cover the rise in energy costs, national insurance and inflation for many families. Can the Minister tell the House how many children will be pulled into poverty thanks to his Government’s £1,000-a-year cut to universal credit? Even before that cut, one in eight working households lived in poverty in the United Kingdom.

The Resolution Foundation found that taxes on working households would increase by £3,000 or more after this Budget compared with when the Prime Minister first entered office. Yet bankers get tax relief, and the grossly undertaxed Amazon and online retailers escape again. This Government do not care about the growing cost-of-living crisis. The Chancellor gleefully boasts about how his economic policies are working, but I want him to tell that to the families in Bolton who are struggling to make ends meet after the £20 cut to universal credit, or the nurses who will be hit by a pay cut as inflation rises.

The money for local government is meagre compared with the £15 billion of cuts to local authorities since 2010 and the punishing effect that that will continue to have on social care, blocking more NHS beds as care homes close. What about the other, less visible services, such as those covering squalid prisons, delayed courts, excluded children and those children who cannot get to child and adolescent mental health services? Working families needed a plan to boost pay across the whole economy, but instead, after 11 years of this Government, they got a triple whammy of tax hikes, fast-rising energy and food bills, and a universal credit cut that was tweaked, not reversed.

I welcome the fact that the Chancellor has listened to the campaign from me and my university for priority funding to be given to the Bolton College of Medical Sciences partnership bid, which will add a huge amount to our local economy and provide jobs. However, £20 million was only half the bid. We asked for £40 million. I must declare an interest here, since the University of Bolton is in my constituency and this year awarded me an honorary doctorate, but that is not why I am pushing for the money—this is something I have been campaigning on for many years with the university. I remind the Chancellor that the towns fund gives back only a tiny proportion of what this Government have stripped away in cuts to our councils, which has seen spending cuts of £16 million over the past 11 years for Bolton Council alone.

While we sit here in the Chamber, in Glasgow, we are hosting the world at COP26. Yet the Chancellor did not mention climate change once in his speech—neither its impact abroad nor its impact at home. Where is the commitment to funding flood defences? In my constituency yesterday, the Environment Agency issued a flood warning. These communities have suffered year on year and they live in abject fear of flooding.

I have raised this question in the House for a number of years. I brought a petition to the House, I went to the Prime Minister—to 10 Downing Street—with a petition, and I have asked Ministers in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to come to see the area in my constituency that gets flooded. To date, no Minister has bothered to attend my constituency to see that, and no money has been given. We are told that some money will be given, but when I last spoke to the Environment Agency locally, it said that there has been no firm commitment. We need £5 million to build flood defences in Bolton, and I ask the Chancellor to consider providing that.

There are many other things that I could say about the Budget, but I will end with a short plea. Many Members will know that for the last nine years I have campaigned for the victims of the hormone pregnancy test Primodos and their families. Their battle has been long, and they are often compared with the forgotten thalidomide victims. Last year, an independent review by Baroness Cumberlege, a former Conservative Minister, found that victims of Primodos, mesh and sodium valproate had all been negligently harmed by their medical treatments. The review recommended that a redress scheme should be set up to compensate the families. To date, the Government have not done that.

The Chancellor has constituents affected by this issue; many years ago, when he was not a Minister, he approached me to register his interest in the all-party parliamentary group on hormone pregnancy tests. The Prime Minister has constituents affected by it, too, as do Mr Speaker and the Leader of the House. Will those Ministers work with the Department of Health and Social Care to set aside funds for a redress scheme?

These people have suffered for decades, through no fault of their own but because of Government negligence and cover-ups—I do not mean this Government; successive Governments have failed to deal with the issue since the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s—and there is now an opportunity. The review was set up by the former Prime Minister, the right hon. Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May). It clearly recommended redress for these families—for all three groups of victims—yet, to date, the Department of Health and Social Care has done nothing and the Treasury has done nothing. I ask the Chancellor to consider this issue. It is time we did the right thing and supported these people.

Remote Education and Free School Meals

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab) [V]]

The provision of home schooling—[Inaudible.]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

Order. There is something deeply wrong with the sound system. We will try to come back to Yasmin Qureshi, but meanwhile we will go to Brendan Clarke-Smith.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab) [V]]

The provision of home schooling is really important, because in the lockdown last year we saw that education provision for those in the private sector was very different from that for those in state schools. We all know that the state school budget is a bare minimum, and the schools were not able to respond to the crisis properly.

The Office for National Statistics reports that 700,000 11 to 18-year-olds had no home internet access from a suitable device, and 68% said that they could not do their work without it. For some reason, last year the Government decided to cut the allocation of laptops by 80%. They have now found another £100 million to get more laptops, but we know that £135 million is required.

Last year, when Scotland used predicted grades for exam results, the Government caused another problem that affected poor people and students in state schools by insisting on using the algorithm. Many constituents rang me about their futures, crying their hearts out, and although the Government did a U-turn, it was too late for some of them.

Now the Government have cancelled GCSEs and A-levels, which I welcome. However, no decision has been made on the BTEC, which about 1 million students will be taking. My local community college principal, Bill Webster, contacted me to ask what he should be doing. In the end, he decided to cancel the BTEC. I have to say, I agree with him. Frankly, the lack of preparation by the Government is unacceptable.

On food provision, since 2010 in my constituency child poverty has gone up from 25% to 39%. That is unacceptable, bearing in mind that we are the fifth largest economy in the world. Recently, we saw those food packages—£5-worth of food from a company given £30. It is not surprising that the company is linked to the Tory party. We have also had countless PPE procurement scandals from using the VIP lane without scrutiny. I ask the Government why track and trace was given not to local authorities, but to Serco, whose bosses are connected with the Conservative party.

A number of Conservative Members have said that we in the Labour party are making a party political point. We are not. The fact is that the children who are suffering the most tend to be in our constituencies, and this Government have not bothered about them. The Government should provide decent food and decent education.

Students’ Return to Universities

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Tuesday 29th September 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I pay tribute to the University of Bolton for all the work that it has been doing in order to be able to welcome back its many thousands of students. The University of Bolton plays an important role in providing education not just for students who have travelled internationally and across the country but locally for many young people. We will continue to work with the University of Bolton to ensure that people understand how the rules are applied. We need to make sure that people understand who needs to isolate and how long they should be isolating for, but equally, they need to understand that many young people can go about their normal business while observing the restrictions and courtesies that we ask all universities and all people within society to observe.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab) [V]]

What concrete action did the Secretary of State put in place over the summer to ensure that all students and staff requiring a covid test will be able to have one?

[Gavin Williamson]

As I mentioned, we continue to work with the Department of Health and Social Care and with Test and Trace to expand the footprint of testing facilities, which are going to be increased to 500. We are making sure that all universities are within walking distance of a testing centre. Many universities will be making some of their facilities available so that testing centres can be placed there. We have also had assurances from the Department of Health and Social Care in terms of mobile testing facilities that will be made available if there are any local outbreaks and that is required.

Early Years Family Support

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. It has been a great experience. When I became City Minister, I was so sorry to learn that I had to drop all trusteeships and the all-party groups overnight. I cannot thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) enough—I have known him for the many years since we were at university together—for picking up the ball and continuing to drive these important issues forward to this day with his amazing dedication, focus and care.

Let me fast-forward through my more recent roles as Energy Minister, Environment Secretary and Leader of the House. On the face of it, there was little scope for me to continue the push on early years, but with the continued collaboration between the right hon. and hon. Members whom I have mentioned and many others, the excellent work has continued, culminating in the Prime Minister herself committing to support the early years agenda and asking me to set up the IMG in the summer of 2018.

The IMG itself comprised my hon. Friends the Members for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) and for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). I pay real tribute to all of them for their hard work on the group, as well as to the dedicated civil servants who supported us. Our remit was to consider the individual, the family and the wider societal risk factors that affect child development in the conception-to-age-two period and the long-term impacts, as well as the issues with central and local government’s approach.

The Prime Minister had asked the IMG to make recommendations to the relevant Secretaries of State that would support local areas in improving the co-ordination of early years services and in spending their current funding more effectively and more efficiently. I am so grateful to the Prime Minister for her continued support for, and interest in, the IMG, which my ministerial colleagues and I felt demonstrated the high priority being placed on that work.

I was delighted to be told that the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill, has already prepared a cross-Whitehall civil service team to take our recommendations forward once signed off by the various Departments. We met as a ministerial group several times and undertook a great many visits to learn from examples of best practice right around the country. We visited Manchester children’s centres, the Lambeth Early Action Partnership, a parent-baby drop-in group in Peterborough and an outreach group in Devon. We held roundtables with charities and families, including parents within the civil service. We had consultations on Mumsnet and spoke to so many passionate and dedicated people working within the sector who want to make a clear difference for parents and babies. It was a wonderful and thoroughly rewarding experience. Out of those visits, meetings and consultations, we quickly began to identify a number of common issues that clearly need attention.

First and foremost is the postcode lottery across the country of the availability of perinatal mental health and specialised parent-infant relationship support, particularly around parent-infant psychotherapy services. In some areas, the provision is fantastic, but in others it is almost entirely non-existent. We heard from parents and professionals wanting health visitors to provide greater levels of support to new parents and their babies, particularly where parents are struggling to form a secure bond, with better levels of breastfeeding support and post-partum care. We also had detailed evidence of the need for greater support for dads, greater support for same-sex parents, better availability for couple counselling and for targeted services for new parents, such as debt and housing advice.

One particular issue that we identified was the need for greater support for non-English-speaking parents. The incredible work of children’s centres was highlighted everywhere we visited, and there is no doubt that parents and professionals want to see family-centred spaces such as these protected. There is a great amount of need out there, and it is clear that we have the opportunity to bring about a huge step change in how we deliver early years family support right across the country, if we seize on the recommendations of the inter-ministerial group.

What did we recommend? First and most importantly, getting the 1,001 critical days right can put children on course for good social, economic and physical outcomes later in life. Getting it wrong creates inequalities and significant costs later for Government and society. Secondly, better focus on both universal and targeted services needs to be a priority in this period.

I will not go into all the key recommendations because Mr Deputy Speaker is looking impatient, but I will mention some of them. First, using the wealth of research and evidence taken by the IMG, Departments should work together to create a clear and cohesive Government vision for the 1,001 critical days. That should be published in the autumn after the spending review. Local authorities should be invited to set out their own service models that work for their local communities, and should be properly measured on that.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

The right hon. Lady has made an excellent speech and I commend her on the great work that she has done. However, she must also recognise that all the suggestions and ideas that have been put forward to deal with this situation require proper funding and new funding: new moneys for local authorities and for different groups to be able to carry out the suggestions. Is that money being promised?

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Lindsay Hoyle)]

Before the right hon. Lady responds, let me just say that I am not impatient—far from it. We have time on our hands. Unfortunately, I do not make the conventions of the House. As a former Leader of the House, the right hon. Lady will be well aware that the opening speech should last 15 minutes and that the Minister will have 10 minutes. I did not make the rules. I am just trying to ensure that hon. Members have enough time to discuss a very important subject that matters to us all.

School Funding

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Wednesday 25th April 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Secretary of State for Education (Damian Hinds)]

I start on a note of agreement with the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner): it is a moral imperative to strive for the very best for the next generation in our country and education plays the most central role in that quest. That is what the 450,000 teachers in English schools are dedicated to and what we are dedicated to supporting them in. To achieve that takes many things, but high on the list of course is money. There is more money going into our schools than ever before—rising from almost £41 billion last year to £42.4 billion this year and then rising again to £43.5 billion next year. That includes the additional £1.3 billion, to which she referred, that we are directing to frontline spending by prioritising money from elsewhere in the Department for Education’s budget, as my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening), announced in July last year. That means that overall we are protecting schools’ per pupil funding in real terms over the next two years.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

As the right hon. Gentleman knows, the Opposition’s motion notes the Conservative party’s pledge that no school would receive cuts to their funding. That is not correct because, in Bolton South East, a number of schools are being affected and the budget is being reduced. If he does not accept that, I invite him to Bolton South East to meet the headteachers of my schools, who have said that there has been a real cut to their budget.

[Damian Hinds]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady, and I will of course come to the specifics of the Opposition’s motion and the important points about the funding formula.

We are also giving primary schools £320 million a year for PE and sport—double what was given in 2016—and investing £600 million a year to provide free school meals for all infants. That is on top of our substantial investment in school improvement activities. This year, we will invest over £60 million in maths, science and computing, and over £100 million—to respond partly to the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle)—in arts and music.

Spending is high by historical standards. The independent Institute for Fiscal Studies—this has come up already—has shown that, in real terms, per pupil funding in 2020 will be at least half as much again as it was in 2000. Looking internationally, we spend more on our schools in total than both the EU and OECD averages and at levels comparable with key competitor countries.

However, although it is true that overall spend is higher—this goes to the point made by the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), the sole, or primary Liberal Democrat representative with us here today—on technical and vocational education, our figures compare less favourably. In Germany in particular, the spend is considerably more than ours on secondary-level vocational programmes. That is why I am so pleased that the Chancellor has committed extra money to boost the size and funding for the new T-level programmes. That will total over £500 million a year in additional resources for post-16 education when T-levels are fully rolled out.

As well as ensuring record funding for our schools, the Government have taken on the historical challenge of introducing a fair national funding formula—something, of course, that has not been taken on by any previous Government—to ensure that money is directed where it is most needed, based on the individual characteristics of schools and pupils, not on accidents of history or geography.

Visible Religious Symbols: European Court Ruling

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

It does send out an unhelpful message, particularly as this Government take really seriously discrimination in any form. We will renew our efforts to ensure that no one is held back by any outdated attitudes or practices.

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

A person’s ability to do 99.9% of jobs, including that of security guard, is not affected by whether they wear a skull cap, headscarf, turban, cross, mangalsutra or tilaka. Can this ECJ judgment be rejected in domestic law to prevent confusion among employers about its having any bearing on this country? As G4S receives public funding and is discriminating against people, can its contract be reviewed?

Budget Resolutions

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Yasmin Qureshi (Bolton South East) (Lab)]

Sometimes we hear Government Members and the Prime Minister herself talk as though when Labour was in power, we did nothing for health, education, children, the homeless, older people and other vulnerable groups, but let me take the six Conservative Members who are sitting in the Chamber on a trip down memory lane. In 1997, when hospital waiting lists were more than three years, people were lying on hospital trolleys, and hospital staff and others were completely demoralised, we spent millions and millions of pounds on repairing hospitals and investing in people—in nurses and in doctors—and in hospital services, so that when we left office in 2010 our NHS was a brilliant service. The Tories inherited that and they are now destroying it.

We had the mantra “education, education, education,” and we followed it with real funding in our education system. I am sure people will remember that there were run-down schools, some with leaking roofs, and demoralised teachers, and all the extra funding that we put in. This Government now take credit for our education doing so well, but that is because of the investment we put in from 1997. We also took half a million children out of poverty and began the Sure Start programme, which helps young people; if we really want to help young people from poorer backgrounds to succeed, we need to ensure that early years education is good, and Sure Start helped many families.

We also introduced the education maintenance allowance for 16 to 18-year-olds, which helped many young people from poorer families to stay on at school or college. That was abolished by the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Government, and now many young people, instead of being able to stay on and study at school or college, are having to go to the jobcentre to sign on, and are not getting any extra training or learning. That is one of this Government’s most counterproductive actions, and it is driven purely by ideological considerations.

Yes, we did create academies, but only when schools were failing, and often in poorer parts of the country, to improve educational levels. Since 2010 this Government have been forcing many outstanding schools to become academies by offering them extra money. Hundreds and hundreds of millions of pounds have been spent on forced academisation and on free schools when many ordinary schools are suffering, and the funding formula has now been changed, affecting many ordinary schools in my constituency. It would have been far better to spend money on most schools than on the ideologically driven academisation of even very, very good schools. I was very disappointed that the Chancellor did not bother to reintroduce something like the education maintenance allowance or redress the funding formula so that all schools can benefit.

Everybody accepts that early years education is very important for children. The Bolton alliance of nursery providers has come to see me on a number of occasions and talked about the fact that although the Government have promised 30 nursery hours, the funding formula that goes with it is just not enough for providers to be able to offer proper provision in nurseries. These providers are not big businesses: for example, one nursery owner says that they will go out of business because they just cannot afford to offer a decent level of nursery provision. I raised this point at last week’s Prime Minister’s questions when I asked, “Can we please reconsider the funding for nursery education?”

I am afraid that, again, this Budget does not address anything. We are told, of course, that a lot of the cuts and the austerity are all to do with balancing the books, but this Conservative Government have borrowed £1 trillion in the last seven years, so our debt is higher than it has ever been. Let us not have lectures from the Government who say that the Conservative party is the party of economic prudence or the party of getting the country going; it is not.

The national debt to GDP ratio is now over 80%, yet when the Labour Government came into office in 1997 it was only about 40%, and after a few years of that Labour Government being in power it was 34% of GDP. Again, no lessons are required from the Conservative party about who is economically prudent and who is not.

We on the Opposition Benches propose a different future, because this Budget has done nothing for jobs, nothing to increase people’s pay, nothing for people on lower incomes, and nothing for many, many people who are worse off and have been the subject of the austerity cuts. We need a Government who will not abdicate their responsibility, nor sit on the sidelines. We need a serious approach to the economy. We do not need a laughing, complacent Chancellor; we need one who protects our living standards and jobs and the environment.