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.

Educational Performance: Boys

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Westminster Hall

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

I just want to make a few quick points. I think it is well accepted that working-class children generally do less well in school, in university and later in professions. We have recently learned that boys are performing worse than girls, especially at a young age, which is concerning. It is a well-known fact that if someone’s linguistic skills are good, and if they have started learning those skills from a young age, they will inevitably perform far better at school and go on to university or an apprenticeship and get a good job.

My constituency is very much white working-class. I have particular concerns because only 71% of children under the age of five in my constituency achieve the expected standard of speech and language skills, which is well below the national average of 80%. There is also evidence of a significant gap between boys and girls. In fact, only 65% of boys are achieving the expected level, as opposed to 78% of young girls. That is a major gap, so it is right that we are debating the need to address the concerns about young boys. In Bolton, 290 five-year-old boys were already behind when they started school recently. If they had performed as well as the girls, 109 more would have met the expected standard.

We need to address the problem. I think everybody understands it and is aware of the issues, but what is the way forward? How do we address the inadequacies and problems? One way is to have more intervention in the early years. I am not trying to make a party political point, but Sure Start centres are a great way of helping a lot of young children from working-class backgrounds to get their linguistic skills up and perform better in school. We should have specialist early learning teachers in nurseries to impart skills and help young children. We also need to spend money on working with families to help them to educate their children within the home.

Some of the social issues that accompany this topic are important, and I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Central and Acton (Dr Huq) about the importance of parents in preventing problems. I reiterate what my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) said, as I entirely agree with her. In some respects, she could quite easily have been talking about some parts of my constituency.

I ask the Government for extra funding targeted at junior schools, primary schools, nurseries, and the families and parents of young people who have difficulties and issues. If we identify and target all aspects of the issue, young boys and girls should be able to do well and achieve their full potential.

Education, Skills and Training

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

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

It is a pleasure to speak in today’s debate, which provides an opportunity to make observations and comments on the entire Gracious Speech. I was pleased to see that the Government intend to bring in legislation to deal with reform of the prison system and bring forward provisions regarding adoption and children in care. Previous Labour Governments spent billions and billions of pounds on the education and health sectors, and put money into rehabilitation programmes and detoxification centres, so I am pleased about these provisions, which should help to tackle some of the issues and challenges in our prison system.

I am disappointed, however, that several things are not included in the Gracious Speech, and I will touch first on a couple of international issues. All Governments, irrespective of their political complexion, have systematically failed to deal with two of the oldest historical disputes that followed the collapse of the British empire after the second world war. On Palestine and Israel, the Prime Minister has accepted that the state of Israel has undertaken half a million illegal settlements and the collective punishment of the people of Gaza. It is one of the biggest festering wounds in the middle east, and it needs to be resolved properly. On Kashmir, a UN resolution from 1948 states that Jammu and Azad Kashmir should be restored democratically through a free, impartial plebiscite, encouraging both the nuclear states to come together to deal with the issue. As a state that was involved with the two countries, we should be able to bring the two parties together and help to find a resolution.

I was concerned, and perhaps dismayed, when I heard about the counter-terrorism proposal and how the Prevent strategy will become even harsher. The way in which the strategy has been rolled out over the past few years has shown it to be ineffective and counter-productive. It has traumatised many young people who have been subject to it, and 90% of referrals have had no follow-up action. Even when such action has happened, it did nothing much apart from traumatise young children. The Home Secretary and the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Staffordshire Moorlands (Karen Bradley), who is present, must have heard about the numerous examples of young people being taken into the system. For example, one young person called a terraced house a “terrorist house” and another was carted off for talking about Palestine. Young children of six, seven or eight are completely traumatised by the experience of having to sit with intelligence officers and police officers. Even if they were not thinking about anything, they will certainly start thinking something after that.

I am not saying that radicalisation, of any sort, should not be dealt with or that it should be ignored, but it can be dealt with under the rubric of internet safety and teaching about online dangers, such as sexting, online bullying and child predators. One component of such training could be on violent extremism. It is a safe, sensible way of dealing with the situation, rather than trying to criminalise people. Even Sir Peter Fahy, the former chief constable of Manchester and head of Prevent, has said that Prevent is a waste of time, and the National Union of Teachers has also passed a motion to that effect. I therefore urge Ministers to re-examine the whole of Prevent, how it is being rolled out and how it is being dealt with in schools and universities. We all want to be safe. I was out of the country when the July bombings happened in London, but I used to take that bus route frequently when going to my chambers and I travelled at about that time of day. If I had not been out of the country, I could have been directly affected by that bombing. Obviously, the safety of people in this country is paramount to me and to everybody else, but the things we put in place to deal with these issues have to be effective.

I was also disappointed that the Queen’s Speech contained no mention of house building; the abolition of the current system for personal independence payment assessments; whether steps are going to be taken to get more GPs and nurses into our NHS system; and reversing the rules on pension rights for women in their 50s. There was also nothing to address the situation of pensioners who live abroad. There seem to be two sets of pensioners, with one getting inflation-linked pensions and the other not getting them, despite having paid in about the same amount. In addition, no constructive proposals have been made as to how to get children out of poverty.

I welcome the U-turn on forced academisation, but this approach of having everything academised by a certain date should also be dropped. As has been alluded to by other Members, it should be left to individual schools, along with the parents and the community, to decide whether they go for academisation. The Labour Government introduced academies, but that was for schools that were struggling; it was not brought in for schools that were already successful. Essa Academy, in my constituency, was one of the first to become an academy under the Labour Government. Its students speak 46 different languages and it has new international arrivals, yet it has been a pioneering school in the United Kingdom in the use of mobile technology in its education system. Schools from across the UK have come to see its practices, and countries in Scandinavia, such as Sweden and Denmark, are following its systems. This school is producing interactive textbooks, and that allows for the accelerated cognition of complex processes. These books will become free to the whole world. I have an invitation from the acting chief executive and the principal, Dr Chohan, for the Secretary of State to visit the school, because he feels that if it was in London, all the Ministers, shadow Ministers and so on would be visiting it. This invitation is for our shadow Secretary of State as well.

Finally, I ask the Government to consider some targeted funding for schools in socially deprived areas. What do I mean by that? I am talking about extra provision for young children who are struggling in maths and English, and who will need extra help outside the classroom. I am talking about extra money for teaching English as a foreign or second language for mothers and parents of some of these children who struggle with English. That would be a constructive step towards helping those people whom we say should be helping their children. I am talking about more provision to help schools identify issues of bullying, drug addiction and gangs bullying young people into committing crimes. A lady came to my surgery recently crying and saying that she did not know what to do about her young son, who was being pushed by gangs into criminal activity. That is not an isolated incident, and we need more targeted resources. When a child gets into trouble schools do try to deal with it, so we are reactive, but we need more proactive policies in place so that we can identify and look at the concerns, challenges and dangers.

Finally, I wish to mention something that has nothing to do with education. I want to make a plea to the Chancellor: can I have a pot of money for my constituency so that I can get the roads repaired, as they have loads of potholes in them? I am happy to send a full costing of that to him.

Oral Answers to Questions

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I touched earlier on the importance of the single market. It is the largest single market in the world, with 500 million consumers, and it brings huge benefits to British businesses in growth and jobs.

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

T9. Will the Secretary of State reconsider the decision to scrap bursaries for nurses? First, that will deter mature students and people from black and minority ethnic communities and disadvantaged communities, and secondly, while nurses are training, they spend 50% of their time doing practical work, looking after people. It is unfair that they should pay to provide services to others.

[Nick Boles]

What I share with the hon. Lady is a determination to ensure that the groups she mentioned and other groups that have been discussed today have the maximum opportunity, particularly in the NHS. That is one reason why we are making great steps towards developing a new nursing apprenticeship, which will offer people a way into the profession, gaining that qualification while they are working and earning.

Student Maintenance Grants

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Tuesday 19th January 2016 Commons Chamber

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

rose—

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

rose—

[Mr Marsden]

I will give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) and then briefly to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi).

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Marsden]

No, I will not give way again, as I have already indicated. A large number of people wish to speak, and I need to give them a chance to do so.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Marsden]

Yes, I have already indicated that I would do so.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

Does my hon. Friend remember that, in the last Parliament, the Government abolished the education maintenance allowance for 16 to 18-year-olds going into further education? They are now abolishing the maintenance grant for poorer people going into higher education, yet they managed to find tax cuts for millionaires in the last Parliament. Does this not show that this Tory Government are really not concerned about the poor and disadvantaged people in this country, whether in relation to housing, to universal credit, to disability or to education? They just don’t care.

[Mr Marsden]

My hon. Friend refers to the abolition of the EMA—

Children in Care

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lucy Allan]

I will move on to my hon. Friend’s point with regard to the court system.

There will always be children who are not able to stay safely at home. It is a difficult and challenging task to identify those children correctly. As such matters are decided by an independent court, we are told that we should be confident that the correct decision will always be made. I must say to the House, however, that a court can decide a case only on the basis of the evidence put before it by child protection professionals and that that evidence is often dominated by opinion. The court does not have the discretion to disregard professional opinion in favour of a distraught parent who is desperately trying to navigate the complexities of the legal system or desperately trying to prove their innocence when up against the full might of the state.

The motion asks the Government

“to support more children to remain safely at home”.

There are many examples of good practice currently being undertaken by the Government, such as the troubled families initiative, the children’s social care innovation programme and the Pause project in Hackney. I will conclude by briefly asking the Minister to consider other alternatives to help children to stay safely at home with their families.

We know from recent research that when a mother has a child removed, the trauma and loss often results in multiple repeat pregnancies. Sadly, such children are almost always taken into care immediately. I have sat on an adoption and fostering panel to which a mother came back 10 times. Nobody ever addressed the mother’s issues, and those 10 children were taken into care. That goes back to the point made by the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) about the cost-effectiveness of dealing with the difficulties experienced by a mother in such a situation. I therefore ask the Minister to consider therapeutic intervention for mothers at the earliest opportunity, because that is cost-effective and because care simply is not the answer that the professionals would like it to be.

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

Before becoming a Member of the House, I represented parents whose children were taken into local authority care. One thing I noticed was that, when a baby was up for adoption, there was an unseemly haste, and local authorities did not try to work with the family or the mother to be able to give the child back to the family. I found that very disturbing.

[Lucy Allan]

I agree with the hon. Lady. There is a requirement to facilitate reunification and rehabilitation. I, too, have worked with those families, and often found that local authorities do not engage. Local authorities are required to consider those points but the preliminary steps are difficult and potentially fraught with risk. That is why they are often skipped over or dismissed. The words used so often are: “It would be inconsistent with the child’s timeline,” or, “It is not in the best interests of the child,” or, “It shows unmerited optimism to assume that rehabilitation and reunification is an option.”

--- Later in debate ---

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

I congratulate the hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) on securing the debate, because how we treat young people and children in our society is really important.

I want to bring to the Minister’s attention my experience of having represented parents whose children are taken into local authority care. I also want to say a little about when I used to represent young people charged with criminal offences and prosecute adults who had been abusing young people. I have worked quite a lot with young people and seen what happens in their homes. I want to concentrate on family law, which does not get enough attention, and especially on what happens in the legal process.

I agree with everyone who has spoken, bar the hon. Member for North West Hampshire (Kit Malthouse)—I do not agree with a lot of what he said. Nobody is saying that children should not be taken into care. We have heard about the case of baby P and the Climbié case, as a result of which I am concerned that the pendulum has swung too far the other way. When there is even a slight expression of concern about children, local authorities come in, take them away and put them with foster parents, and then they start dealing with the parents. They never look at kinship care: often, it is the family themselves, or maybe their lawyers, who talk to the wider family and say, “Would you like to put yourselves forward to be a kinship carer?” Then the wider family members come forward, and it takes about six to eight weeks for them to be assessed to see whether they are suitable. I ask the Minister to urge local authorities and social services to proactively find a family member who could look after a child they have taken into care. I assure him that a child will always feel happier with an auntie, uncle or older brother or sister than with a complete stranger, so maybe we need to change the emphasis.

Secondly, when I was practising in the field I noticed that children often have a guardian appointed—a lawyer—and social services are involved, but very rarely do people talk to the children about what they want. I remember a case where I was banging my head against a brick wall. I asked all the people involved, especially the legal guardian who was supposed to be representing the children, “Have you spoken to the child about this? Have you got any information from them? What do they think about it? Where do you think they would like to live?” I was met with a wall of silence. I was very frustrated, and I said, “You know, if you really want to do it, you should be asking these questions. You should be trying to find alternative sources.”

Thirdly, as the Minister probably knows, sometimes when children are taken into care they have an opportunity to have supervised access to meet their parents in a contact centre. However, that tends to be on an awkward date and time and in an awkward place, and the visits are not frequent. Again, we have to fight social services to increase the number of visits for parents, make the location more accessible and allow parents to have more quality time with their children. If that happens, it means that when the process is finished, six months or a year down the road, the child will not have forgotten his or her parents. I ask the Minister to urge social services to look at those aspects of the system.

Finally, I am sorry to say that there is unseemly haste to place babies in care. We know that most people who want to adopt are happy to adopt a little baby but reluctant to adopt a toddler or older child. Babies are therefore carted off to the adoption system before there has been thorough and proper work with the family to see whether they can help. There will always be situations in which children are vulnerable and their family will never be able to look after them, but in my experience those cases are a small minority. We hear about them in the media, but we do not hear about the cases that do not fall into that category. We need to talk about the thousands of cases in which it would be far better to work with the family at home and spend the money that we would otherwise give to foster parents on allowing the parents to improve their home and helping them to look after their children.

Trade Union Bill

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Monday 14th September 2015 Commons Chamber

[Sajid Javid]

I will give way in a moment, but first I will make some progress, because many hon. Members wish to speak in the debate.

It is also important that any industrial action reflects the current will of union members. As things stand, that is not always the case. Union leaders can secure a mandate for industrial action and then keep using it for as long as they please. For example, in October 2013 the NASUWT justified a walk-out by citing a mandate acquired in November 2011, almost two years earlier. That is hardly a constructive approach to industrial relations.

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

Does the right hon. Gentleman not recognise that the reason the Opposition object to the Bill is that when people choose to go on strike they get only a tiny bit of strike pay, not their proper pay? They have responsibilities and families to support, so nobody goes on strike just for the hell of it; they do so because they need to.

[Sajid Javid]

I think that the hon. Lady will therefore agree with the changes we are proposing today. She is right that strikes should always be a last resort—I think that is the point she is making. If union members wish to take strike action, they will vote for it and meet the proposed thresholds.

Equal Pay

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2015 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury (Emily Thornberry) on securing this important debate. It is important because we are coming to the end of this Parliament, and who knows what will happen after the election? It is also important because, irrespective of what people think, there is a fundamental principle that those who do the same job should be paid the same amount. It is well documented and accepted that, on the whole, women in the job market do worse than men in terms of pay.

I want to place on record my thanks to the Dagenham machinists who took action over equal pay, leading to the 1970 Act. However, 40 years later, women are still being paid less than men, which means they effectively stop earning, relative to men, on 4 November in any year, which is why that is equal pay day. On average, a woman earns £5,000 less than a man, whether they are in a part-time or full-time job.

There are many reasons for that. One is the motherhood penalty—the impact of having children—which affects women’s careers and earnings. There is also the fact that many women were employed in public sector jobs and are now having to go into the private sector, where the pay gap is often big and where no one knows what somebody may be earning. Since 2008, almost 1 million women have moved to low-paid jobs, zero-hours contracts and temporary jobs. Where women have become self-employed, the pay gap with men is 40%. Women are also still the primary carers for their children, elderly parents and other relatives, and we know how much pressure the growth in the elderly population is putting on the family and particularly women.

The good news is that more women are in upper management in different industries, but research from the Chartered Management Institute last year found that female managers aged 40 or above took home 35% less on average than their male counterparts. There is also a difference in bonuses. The average female director gets £41,956, but the average male director gets £53,010.

Some of what I am saying is in the public arena, but many people are still surprised by it. As has been alluded to, some young women probably think they will be paid equally with someone else because they will be doing a similar job, but they will find that the reality is very different. There is also still gender segregation, in that there are jobs that women do not tend to do. There are not many opportunities for women in those areas, whereas there are for men, who can earn quite a decent income.

I do not want to repeat everything that has been said, but my hon. Friend the Member for Islington South and Finsbury put forward some practical steps Governments can take to deal with these issues, and those should be taken on board. In that respect, I was disappointed earlier in this Parliament when the Government changed the rules on employment tribunals, effectively making them even harder to access and inevitably imposing a financial penalty on people. The mind just boggles.

As a barrister, I did not practise much in employment law, but I did a lot of voluntary work, and I went to employment tribunal appeals on behalf of claimants—many were women, some were disabled and some were from the ethnic minorities. It is not an easy thing for people to go to the tribunal system, as the Government suggested when they made their changes. Someone who is dismissed does not simply say, “Right, the first thing we are going to do is go to a tribunal, because that’s the way to deal with this.” The tribunal system was the last resort for many people. Although many people were discriminated against and unfairly dismissed, only a tiny percentage ever made it to an employment tribunal. At that point, however, there were at least judges and others who could independently evaluate the case.

The current financial penalties did not exist then. Putting such restrictions in place means that people can now rarely go to a tribunal. Constituents have come to me in my constituency about work-related issues. They want to go to an industrial tribunal about the way they have been treated, but they are unable to, because they are blocked from doing so. The changes the Government have brought in are punishing people. At least previously people had recourse to a tribunal, to which they could get access without too much difficulty. Now that is not possible, so will the Minister reconsider the tribunal issue and a return to the previous system? It worked fine, and was not being misused. Before a hearing, there would always be a case management hearing in which the tribunal judge would sit with the parties for discussion of the evidence, to learn what the contentious issues were. The tribunal would concentrate on the narrow issues that were the subject of dispute, and not spend time unnecessarily on issues that everyone agreed about.

I am sorry to say that the present Government’s ideology and rhetoric are anti-employee and anti-trade union. They comment all the time in Parliament on the fact that some Labour MPs have union funding, and make it sound as if it is really bad. Guess what? The unions are made up of working people who choose to give the union their subscription. If the union donates money to a political party, that is because the Labour party is the one that has always pushed for equal pay and workers’ rights and campaigned on discrimination. It created tribunals as useful bodies for people whose rights were being taken away. Now the majority of people cannot get access to a tribunal. There is an ideological dislike of the working person, and we should get rid of that mentality. There is a lot of bullying, intimidation and discrimination in the workplace. Women—and other groups as well—are suffering discrimination. That is not good enough. I ask for the question of tribunals to be reconsidered.

My hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) argued for pay to be published. That is important—it is only right and fair. We believe in transparency and think that everyone should know what is going on. We believe in fairness; but where is the fairness in not telling someone what the person next to them earns, especially if they do the same job? The civil service and public sector are open about pay and grading, and what salary goes with what grade. What is wrong with the private sector doing the same? What does it have to hide? It hides the information because that allows it to discriminate without anyone being able to tell. It allows managers to pick favourites and to discriminate in secret, knowing that no one will jump on them for that. If we believe in an equal, fair and transparent society, that should be one of the first things we should deal with. The Government have been asked to do it, and have not.

Primary legislation would not even be needed, because regulations to require pay to be published can already be passed under section 78 of the Equality Act 2010, before the next election. It is not difficult, and it is important, because it would help women and would discourage employers from the practices in question. If they knew that what they were doing would be in the public domain, they would stop doing it. It would be a concrete step, and not a very complicated one, to help women to argue for fair pay. It would effectively stop private employers discriminating against women and getting away with it. It is not too much to ask for; it is a simple thing in a fair and equal society, and I ask the Minister to consider it.

Teaching Quality

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2014 Commons Chamber

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

In 1997, when the Labour party came to power, one of its key mantras was “education, education, education”. In the years to 2010, the Labour party spent an enormous amount of money investing in education: on schools, textbooks and pay to raise teachers’ morale. The educational qualifications and standards in our schools improved tremendously. That is not the end of the story, however, and there is still more to be done. This debate on the training of teachers should be seen in the context of the continuous need to improve the education of our children.

The Secretary of State started his speech by going through a literal interpretation of the Opposition motion. When I trained as a lawyer, we were told that judges have three approaches to interpreting legislation: the literal interpretation, which the Secretary of State was alluding to; the golden principle, where legislation is applied in a liberal way; and the mischief rule, which asks, “What is the mischief that the law intends to deal with?” The mischief we want to deal with in this debate is that we have teachers in our schools who are not qualified properly.

I accept fully that there are some teachers without qualifications who are brilliant. I also accept that there are people with qualifications who may not be as good, or even competent. That does not mean, however, that we should not continue to strive for what I call the gold standard, which is providing training to our teachers. A young teacher, or someone who has just qualified or graduated, may be excellent in their subject matter and have a first class honours degree, but the reality is that in most of our junior and secondary schools they will be faced with classes of 25 to 30 children, perhaps with various levels of learning. To set their classes, to deal with the issue of how to control the classroom, to identify which child may need extra help, and to look at pastoral care and whether a child is being neglected at home—those are all part and parcel of a teacher’s work. If teachers are not qualified and have not received training on these issues, how will they be able to identify them? How will they automatically be aware of what to do? That is where the importance of having some kind of training—we could have a debate on how long training should last—is surely crucial. I am therefore surprised that Government Members, in particular, are deriding the idea that teachers should be trained.

Members might think this is a bizarre example, but we would not let people operate on us if they were not fully qualified. A person might say, “Look, I’ve been in hospital for 10 years and guess what? I’ve done all sorts of things. I didn’t pass my exam, but, because I know what I’m talking about, allow me to operate on you.” We would not accept that, so why are we willing to make that compromise with our children’s education? We accept that what we are trying to achieve will not stop the expert, the talented musician or the singer coming in and giving children lessons, but our provisions concern day-to-day teaching in a classroom, where the teacher will be there for a long time working with the children. The qualification needs to be good.

Members talked ad nauseam about private schools not having that many qualified teachers, or that they can do without them. One has to understand that private schools have a different standing. Most of the kids come from middle class, well-educated families who look after them at home. Those children are going to do very well most of the time in any event, so comparing private sector schools with state schools is wrong.

Free School Meals (Colleges)

Yasmin Qureshi Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Westminster Hall

[Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)]

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) on securing this timely and necessary debate. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Gosport (Caroline Dinenage), who put her finger on it when she said that this is a raw deal. She then spelt out clearly and succinctly why that is the case and why it is not acceptable. It is a long-standing injustice and an issue that I have raised continually since I first came to the House two years ago.

From my 30 years’ experience of working with post-16-year-old students and four years as principal of John Leggott college in Scunthorpe, I know the direct impact that not having access to a college meal in the daytime has on concentration, attendance, retention, achievement and, inevitably, that young person’s progression to other things.

My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge (Angela Smith) described the case of John, who said that because he did not have access to a free meal—he met the criteria, but he chose to go to a college rather than a school—he skipped lunch from time to time. That will impact directly on his achievement. John is being disadvantaged by the system and that should not be the case.

If the eligibility of students who meet the criteria for free school meals depends on the type of institution that they attend, that is not only morally wrong but potentially piles disadvantage on top of disadvantage. To be fair, however, I know that the Minister and the Secretary of State for Education realise that the policy is indefensible because of their answers to questions in the House.

On 11 October 2010, I raised this issue, and the Minister—whom I am pleased to see in the Chamber today—stated:

“I take on board the hon. Gentleman’s comments. I share his view. We have committed to maintaining spending on free school meals this year. Further announcements will be made after the spending review.”—[Official Report, 11 October 2010; Vol. 516, c. 14.]

There was clearly a little bit of hope that the anomaly was to be addressed.

The spending review came and went, and I raised the issue again. This time the Secretary of State answered my question:

“That is a fair point—”

I think he was busking at that point—

“As the hon. Gentleman will know, many FE colleges simply do not have the facilities to be able to provide free school meals; they do not have the cafeterias or kitchens in place.”—[Official Report, 28 March 2011; Vol. 526, c. 59.]

The Secretary of State was not having one of his better days, because a parliamentary question to the Minister revealed that fewer schools than colleges have catering facilities, yet they continue to serve free school meals and get round that problem. In my consultation with the Association of Colleges, it demonstrated through a survey of its members that that problem of facilities could be easily overcome.

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

My hon. Friend raises a point about colleges not having the facilities to be able to cook. Does he agree that numerous young people are affected by the situation under discussion? In my constituency, 1,300 young people attend Bolton sixth-form college and 1,272 attend another college in Bolton. They would benefit from free school meals if they were at a school. We are talking about 3,000 pupils being affected.

[Nic Dakin]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. She makes the point very well. Both the Minister and the Secretary of State know that the situation is not right. That is why, when the Secretary of State was in a corner, he produced an answer that was not up to his usual standard. On examination, it falls apart.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) was the last person to obtain a response from the Secretary of State. He raised the issue in October 2011. The answer had slightly changed by then. That is why I am going through these statements—to see the train of thought in the Department on this issue. At that point, the Secretary of State said:

“I am familiar with that anomaly; it is a situation we inherited from the previous Government. We are seeking to ensure that funding is equalised between colleges and school sixth forms.”—[Official Report, 17 October 2011; Vol. 533, c. 622.]

By that point, it had become an anomaly; the reason for it was that it was there in the past. I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough, who did a mea culpa at the start of his speech. However, there are reasons why it is more necessary now than ever to deal with the anomaly. It is not acceptable. Students are being disadvantaged.

There are three reasons why the landscape has changed and why dealing with the anomaly is even more urgent. The first is the disappearance of education maintenance allowance. In all my years in education, I have never seen an initiative that has transformed to a greater extent the lives of individual students from disadvantaged backgrounds than education maintenance allowance. It had a direct impact on attendance, retention, achievement and progression. I know that from personal experience and from the analysis done by many organisations, including the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the AOC. However, the Government, in their wisdom, have chosen to take education maintenance allowance away and replace it with a much less effective bursary system, although I do welcome the bursary system. That change has exposed the disadvantage of not being able to access free meals even more than before. The existence of education maintenance allowance masked that disadvantage during the past 10 years.

The second reason the landscape has changed and there is now greater urgency is the raising of the participation age, which I was reminded of during the contribution from the hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon). With the raising of the participation age, all students will now progress on beyond 16. Therefore, it is even more urgent that the eligibility for free meals be equalised, because some of the students, or probably most of the students, who would not have progressed beyond 16 in the past will be the very students who should be eligible for free meals.

I come now to the third reason why the landscape is changing. The hon. Member for Gosport talked about the fragmented provision that we now have in the landscape. We have academies, free schools and university technical colleges. Students who go to those institutions can access free school meals. If a new post-16 free school or post-16 academy is set up, it can offer free school meals, but a 16-to-19 sixth-form college or further education college cannot. If I were still a principal of a sixth-form college, perhaps I would have a conversation with my governing body about dissolving as a sixth-form college and re-emerging as a post-16 free school or post-16 academy. Why would that not be a route that I might take? It would enable me to access better resources and provide a more level playing field for the young people of the area that I served.

Those are the three reasons why it is more urgent now to deal with this anomaly; there was still an injustice when my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough was Secretary of State. The three reasons are the disappearance of education maintenance allowance, the forthcoming raising of the participation age and the change in provision—the complete fragmentation—in the landscape of post-16 education.

My hon. Friend the Member for Penistone and Stocksbridge and the hon. Member for Gosport reminded us that the most disadvantaged young people are those most likely to attend the post-16 colleges that we are discussing. They are also the ones who are most likely to travel further, so they have greater travel costs. They do not have access to free meals, and there is no education maintenance allowance; there is a reduced bursary.

--- Later in debate ---

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

I was not here at the beginning of the debate, because the Select Committee on Justice sat at 9.15. I want to mention two things.

I was for 10 years a governor of a college of further education, so I have some understanding of some of the issues and challenges faced by the students and young people attending them. I am pleased that my constituency has both Bolton college and Bolton sixth-form college, so there are a high number of students there. As I said earlier, 1,300 young people in the college come from disadvantaged backgrounds and would benefit from free meals, and in the sixth-form college there are 1,272.

The situation in my constituency is similar to that in the constituency of the hon. Member for Redcar (Ian Swales); many 16 to 18-year-olds go to a sixth-form college to complete their A-levels or further education. Not many schools cater for that. There are 300,000 people living in the Bolton unitary council area. The geographical area encompasses about 7 or 8 miles. Many students must travel at least 6 or 7 miles daily to attend college, often for vocational courses. Now they must additionally pay the cost of travel, and of course there is no money for free lunches. In many areas, many young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are suffering. I urge the Minister and the Government to think about the fact that £38 million to provide free meals for 102,000 students is not a lot of money in the scheme of things. Surely that is an amount that they could find to spend on young people.

The value and necessity of the nutrition from a good meal has already been spoken of. It is fundamental for young people. I urge the Minister to reconsider. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) for giving me the chance to speak, as I have cut into his time. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), and congratulate him on obtaining the debate.