Graham Stuart
MP for Beverley and Holderness · Conservative · United Kingdom
“I hope and expect that we can move forward in the right way and get the balance right between being overly prescriptive to the banking industry and setting a clear sense of direction to make sure that no one is left behind, as so many Members have set out.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wishart. I congratulate the hon. Member for South Devon (Caroline Voaden) on securing this debate.”
“Is my hon. Friend as astonished as I am that the Minister—I know she is new to her post—has come here to propose a six-month extension of the movement of costs from bills to the Exchequer and cannot tell the Committee how much money that will cost?”
“The Minister is being most generous again. I did not ask her about protecting consumers from energy price shocks; I asked about a clear, unequivocal manifesto pledge to reduce household energy bills by £300. She, like her predecessors, refuses to address it directly. It was a clear promise.”
“Banking hubs themselves came out of an industry response from the NatWest executive. Does the Minister agree that we must present the information from the Lloyd review to the banking groups, be clear about what we want, and give them the opportunity to respond and provide a solution, as they did with banking hubs, so that we can perhaps a…”
“I am pleased to say that Lloyds listened and, as of this morning, people can deposit cheques at those places. These issues being raised by Members across the House today are important. I trust that given the timing of the Richard Lloyd report, the Minister in her seat will make sure that they are be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.”
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“To add to that disadvantage, they find that they are in the 5% or 10%—whatever percentage it is in some grand number—that does not get the good thing that we are talking about. That merely compounds a disadvantage that is to be found in so many areas already. What we need to do from the rural interest point of view is recognise that rurality is a need in the same way that deprivation is a need. It drives cost in the way that deprivation does, and we must make the case. We must have a broad understanding of the needs of rural communities.”
“It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to see in their seats so many parliamentary patrons of the rural fair share campaign. Although we are talking today about broadband and mobile coverage, we must see the matter in context. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman) on securing this debate and the Backbench Committee on its work. Let us talk about context. It is a pity that we have no one other than the Opposition Whip and the shadow Minister in their place to hear this. The context is that people in rural areas are, on average, poorer than people in urban areas. They earn less; they have fewer services; they pay higher levels of council tax; and they suffer from lower funding of health, education, police and fire services.”
“That is why if we are to have an equitable country that is fair to all and that closes those gaps, we must prioritise this issue. My hon. Friends must realise that after 13 years of the previous Government—understandably, as we can see the level of interest in rural issues among Opposition Members—fewer than half of all households, and those the easy and commercially available households, have superfast broadband. It is this Government, who in so many ways have had to do the heavy lifting, who have taken that figure to three quarters of households and who, by 2017, will be delivering 95% coverage. As has been said, I am concerned about the other 5%.”
“My hon. Friend is right. I pay tribute to him for how since the moment he was first elected and arrived in this Chamber—and probably before that—he has taken seriously the need to get broadband into his rural constituency. It was a privilege to attend a conference that he organised for hundreds of people in Cumbria some years ago to highlight exactly this problem. I want to move on to talk about the long-term economic plan. When we consider the economic needs of the nation, one thing we see is that there is a productivity gap between urban and rural areas. The analysis of why that productivity gap exists shows that the problem is connectivity. It can be about highways and railways and buses, but, as my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart) rightly says, it is also about the digital divide.”
“I will give way to the shadow Minister and I hope that he will apologise not only for the failure of members of his party to take an interest in this vital issue but for the fact that in government—perhaps preoccupied with other matters—Labour did not focus enough on the needs of people in rural areas or recognise the disadvantage there.”
“Members: “There is one!”] I apologise. We have the opportunity to put an ambitious aim in all the manifestos. Let us ensure that people are not isolated and that we close the gap.”
“With respect to the hon. Gentleman, the only people I have heard who felt that that programme was on track to be delivered were representatives of the Labour party. It is a shame that there are not more of those representatives in the Chamber today to intervene and explain precisely how it was going to be delivered. The hon. Gentleman is an excellent advocate for a difficult cause, and I respect that as a politician, but the truth is, as he knows, that the record of his party was weak. The record of the Conservative party is distinctly better, but we should recognise the context. We are all saying to the Government and to the Minister that it is not enough; we must go further and that is why we are here today. It is great to have the shadow Minister here today, even if we do not have any of his colleagues—[Hon.”
“It is difficult for Government, who have to secure and assure the use of public money, but we must find a way of dealing with small companies, some of which might go down as well as up. We must take some risks if we are to deliver this goal.”
“My hon. Friend is quite right. One of the challenges for the Government is that they are not very good at dealing with small organisations. I have a company offering a service in my area called Quickline. It contacted me and said that it would love to launch a hub in a local pub and then to offer it out to the surrounding community. I was rather rotten to the person who approached me, as I thought they were looking to do it somewhere quite close to Beverley, which would be easier. I said, “What about Holmpton, down near Withernsea?” I thought that it was about the most challenging place I could find for them and, to be fair, they agreed. The George and Dragon had that hub installed a couple of years ago and provided the offer in an area that was otherwise a not spot.”
“Also, as the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report today asks, is enough being done to hold BT to its promises? What about commercial plans from providers such as Kingston Communications, in our area? In those areas where the commercial providers said provision was commercial, they have not always fulfilled that, and then moved on. We need to make sure we have a system in place that holds them all to account, but I congratulate the Government on doing so much more, despite the chuntering from the Opposition.”
“Will the Minister update the House on the innovation fund we have heard about today, which is available for alternative technology providers who can then come up with innovative and radical approaches to reach the most remote communities? If he can do that, we will be grateful. Is there a prospect of the fund being increased? I was delighted to hear that the Minister secured a landmark deal with mobile networks to improve mobile coverage across the UK. I mentioned earlier that, following that agreement, Vodafone will be extending 3G coverage in my constituency from just over 20% now to 99% by 2017. That is a significant move forward. What are the Government doing to ensure that broadband infrastructure is available in areas where it would not be commercially viable for companies to install it?”
“It does not matter what we are dealing with, whether it is the DECC work to reduce home energy use or anything else, the tendency is to pick off the low-hanging fruit, the easy targets. Somehow we need to design a system that starts with the most difficult-to-reach properties and works back. That way, we are the least likely to do as my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) said, which is subsidise something that would happen anyway and not target the money on those who need it the most. That is important for the future. It is estimated that by 2024, the Government’s current investment in faster broadband will be boosting rural economies by £275 million every month—not each year—which is about £9 million every day. It makes economic sense as well as good social capital sense to make the investment.”
“My hon. Friend has put that on the record and I am sure the Minister will try to answer. I hope he has time to answer the many questions that have been raised. As we know, the 95% delivery target for phase 2 funding is a national target, and obviously there are fears among colleagues that the 5% figure may turn out to be larger than that in their area. The aim was that the funding for that, for which £5 million came to the East Riding, should be matched—it is a shame to see that there is not even a shadow Minister now, just a Whip, however marvellous he may be, which he is, of course. However, East Riding of Yorkshire council is struggling to find the other £5 million, so there is a danger that we will not get the 95% provision. What can be done to make sure that we target the most hard to reach?”
“As a society, we owe them that. I ask the Minister to think again, or at least to explain why he believes that a new regulatory framework will not lead to the improvements in quality that we have seen in other settings that are individually regulated by Ofsted. I know that he cares deeply in both a personal and a professional capacity about making improvements. I hope that I have fairly stated that I recognise that the Government and the Minister have made significant strides in improving outcomes for such young people. He has done a lot of great work, and I sincerely hope that he will now take further steps to ensure that young people on the cusp of leaving the care system get a fairer, safer start in life.”
“Ministers said that they wanted to maintain what they described as the “flexibility” of current arrangements, emphasising that they will hold under-performing local authorities to account when poor practice is uncovered. However, that logic is not applied to the quality and safety of settings for children and young people across the rest of the DFE’s remit. If there were a consistent approach in saying that a sample approach delivers better outcomes, one would expect that to be found across the piece, but it is not. Childminders, foster carers, residential children’s homes, secure training centres, schools, sixth-form colleges and further education colleges—each of those is individually inspected. It cannot be right that we do not do the same for the accommodation of 16 and 17-year-olds who have had an extremely tough start in life.”
“We therefore recommended that the DFE consult on a framework of individual regulatory oversight for all accommodation that falls within “other arrangements” to ensure suitability, while allowing for diversity of provision. Many will ask why, as a Conservative, I am so keen on regulation. I, and my Committee, think that children who are as vulnerable as these young people—they may have learned to have a very tough exterior, or a streetwise front, but are in fact deeply vulnerable—deserve to have their accommodation individually inspected to ensure that the injustice they have suffered so far in their lives is not compounded further by a failure of oversight by those in loco parentis, namely us.”
“They include placements in a family or domestic setting where the adults responsible for their care are not approved as foster carers; foyers, which are meant to offer integrated housing, learning and personal development services, and other kinds of supported accommodation; and placements in independent accommodation with “floating support” where housing support workers make regular visits—or are supposed to. Ofsted’s single inspection framework assesses the experiences and progress of care leavers through scrutinising a representative sample of 25 tracked cases. Individual properties or settings are not inspected. That would not be an acceptable approach towards other settings, and it should not be acceptable for the accommodation in which some of the most vulnerable, abused young people in our society are placed.”
“Over the coming months, the Department for Education will undertake work with stakeholders to better understand these issues.” We welcome the seriousness with which the Government have taken this, but we do not think that is good enough. Young people are being failed now—as we speak—and no amount of stakeholder consultation will disguise that reality. I urge the Minister to set out what the DFE has learned from the consultation to date and when we can expect further action on this issue, with a view, in the opinion of my Committee, of moving towards an outright ban. The other issue I want to raise is the regulation of “other arrangements” for looked-after 16 and 17-year-olds. Some Members unfamiliar with this area of policy many wonder what “other arrangements” are.”
“We also say that there should be a strengthened requirement for local authorities to commission sufficient emergency facilities. In its response, the Department accepted our recommendation on temporary measures and asserted that there should be a limit of two working days on the time that a young person could spend in a B and B. That is welcome, but it still falls short of an outright ban. Many children enter B and B accommodation in an emergency on a Friday night, so the limit of two working days means that they could still be there on the Tuesday evening. The Government response said: “We want to test further the arguments for and against the flexibility for local authorities to use B&B where it is the best way of meeting a young person’s needs.”
“We found that it is used mainly as emergency accommodation in cases where a young person needs shelter urgently and nothing else is available. At least, that is the reason we were given, although when we met young people as we travelled around the country we heard about people being kept there for a long time, such as the young lady I mentioned. It was argued that if the local authority did not have the option of using bed and breakfasts, then young people could be even worse off. In our report, we recommended that the Department consult local authorities in order to determine a reasonable time frame to allow them to build up capacity so that there could be a total ban on using B and Bs and they could follow the example of Wiltshire, for instance, which has built up a resource such that it does not need to use them.”
“I shall start with bed and breakfasts. The Department for Education guidance says that bed-and-breakfast accommodation is not suitable. One young person told us of being placed in a B and B as an emergency placement—I repeat, emergency placement—for three weeks. She was the only young person in the building and older residents would come knocking on her door asking her to join them in their rooms, which was an incredibly frightening experience. Imagine being that child, sitting behind the door, waiting for the next knock. For vulnerable young people, many of whom have self-esteem issues and who are desperate for love and attention, such an environment leaves them at the mercy of people who are keen to exploit their situation and weakness. So why, we asked, is bed and breakfast still being used?”
“The care leavers strategy that the Minister launched in late 2013, which encompasses action across a range of Departments, from the Department for Work and Pensions to housing to the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, is giving care leavers a helping hand as they enter adult life. The Ofsted single inspection framework is doing a better job of drawing together data and insight into the lives of older young people and making sure that local authorities can be held to account for the provision that they give them. That is all good news. Our disagreement today is over how fast we should now move towards tackling what my Committee sees as matters needing urgent attention: the regulation of accommodation provided to children in care, and the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation for that age group.”
“I hope the Minister will forgive me if I concentrate on two areas where we think the Government should have gone further towards making the changes that we want to see in order to deliver a vision which I know we share with the Government of improving care for these young people. In doing so, I stress the fact that as a Committee we do not doubt the Minister’s commitment to addressing the problems faced by older children in care, nor do I think that progress has not been made: it has. For example, the new pupil premium plus has seen funding to support children in care at school increase by £1,000 per pupil. Children are covered as soon as they enter care and 10,000 more children in care now benefit, bringing the total to 50,000.”
“Our inquiry looked at the kinds of accommodation that are provided for young people aged 16 and 17 who are looked after by local authorities—young people still in care; the suitability, safety and regulatory nature of alternative accommodation; whether the “Staying Put” principle whereby young people are allowed to stay in their accommodation for a longer period should apply to those in residential children’s homes; and whether the provision of alternative accommodation should be extended to the age of 21. We made a series of recommendations in each of these areas, all of which are important and many of which were picked up by the Government response, which was published in October 2014. Others may wish to touch on some of those issues, such as “Staying Put” or ensuring that young people’s voices are heard in planning their care.”
“During the inquiry, we took evidence from charities and experts, from the Minister, whom it is a pleasure to see on the Front Bench, and from those closely involved in providing care services to young people but, as I think my colleagues will attest when they speak during the debate, the most important and powerful evidence we heard was from young people themselves who were in care or had previously been in care. We were grateful to those who were brave enough to come and speak to a bunch of MPs and speak about often troubling periods of their lives and about their experiences.”
“I am pleased to lead this debate and to have the opportunity to discuss our report, “Into independence, not out of care: 16 plus care options”. The reason we are here is that the issues considered in our report will have far-reaching consequences for some of the most vulnerable young people in our society. We were moved to inquire into this subject by our concern, raised during previous work on child protection, that the needs of older children in the care system were not being properly met. The horror stories we heard about children being placed in unsuitable and unsafe accommodation, often far from home, made it a matter of crucial importance for us to explore what could be done to improve the situation.”
“I beg to move, That this House notes the Second Report from the Education Committee, Into independence, not out of care: 16 plus care options, HC 259, and the Government’s response, HC 647; welcomes the progress made and the commitment to improve the care provided to these vulnerable young people shown in the Government’s response; regrets that the Government has not gone further by exploring with local authorities how to ban the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation for this age group and by moving to inspect and regulate all accommodation provided to children in care; and calls on the Government to do all it can to improve the accommodation and care given to these young people. The motion stands in my name and those of other members of the Education Committee, many of whom I see across the Chamber.”
“Further to the question from the hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson), we recommended in this report that there should be greater awareness of the right of young people who leave care and get into difficulty to come back into care. The Government said that they would look into that more closely. Perhaps the Minister will reflect on that in his remarks and let us all know what progress has been made.”
“The hon. Lady is making a powerful speech. Does she share my concern that in a market of supported accommodation, where there is no real and effective regulation, entirely unqualified people can sit there supposedly supporting some of the most vulnerable young people? When we were doing our inquiry, we heard of such people sitting boarded up in their office while the young people were rioting outside. That is the situation we are putting some young people in by failing to regulate these individuals.”
“The hon. Gentleman says that he has misgivings about the extension and that some of the arguments are bogus or weak. What are his concerns? As a Committee, we made these proposals in a cross-party spirit in the hope that parties such as his would adopt them and put them in their manifestos. Why will he not be making that recommendation to his party’s manifesto group?”
“The idea of staying put, wherever it is, is that it is suitable for all concerned. The aim is not to impose it on anybody. Like our recommendation on extending care services to the age of 25 for those who are not looking for a job or training, it is there if people want it, and if it is not appropriate, there is no suggestion that it should have to happen.”
“The Minister said that data are collected on 19 and 20-year-olds and next year they will be collected on 17 and 18-year-olds. What is the situation for 16-year-olds?”
“Resolved, That this House notes the Second Report from the Education Committee, Into independence, not out of care: 16 plus care options, HC 259, and the Government’s response, HC 647; welcomes the progress made and the commitment to improve the care provided to these vulnerable young people shown in the Government’s response; regrets that the Government has not gone further by exploring with local authorities how to ban the use of bed and breakfast accommodation for this age group and by moving to inspect and regulate all accommodation provided to children in care; and calls on the Government to do all it can to improve the accommodation and care given to these young people.”
“We should give them the care, consideration and extended support that we would give to our own children, because the children in care are our children. We have the same responsibility to them. Question put and agreed to.”
“The Minister should not have feared my words so much that he needed to limit them quite so strictly. One thing we should say at the end of this Parliament is that there has been a significant advance in this Parliament, against a pretty tough economic backdrop, to improve material outcomes for some of the most vulnerable children in care. That is something we should be proud of. Casting aside my impartial Select Committee hat, as a Conservative politician I have to say that, as part of this coalition Government, that is significant. Regardless of who wins the election in May, I hope we can take that forward and that we have a Minister in place as committed as this one to ensuring that we do more to look after young people whose life chances we know are horribly stunted by their time in care. We have a duty to act as their parents.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing the debate. In my home in the centre of Beverley, I lose signal with EE; and I am told by constituents that in the Vodafone shop in the middle of Beverley, there is no signal. It is a woeful level of service, and this infrastructure is critical to business in the area. It sends a message to those outside that we are not open for business. We are open for business. We need the Government to go further and faster to ensure that areas such as the East Riding are well served, not only in towns such as Beverley, where the service is woeful, but in the hamlets, where it is even worse.”
“I am sorry to interrupt a fine peroration to a brilliant and powerful speech, but I want to reinforce the points that my hon. Friend is making. When the Minister is looking at how to ensure that rural areas, which might be seen as marginal, are properly looked after, he would do well to consider Hull and the East Riding as a pilot area. We do not have lots of tunnels or lots of hills, so it is an easy area topographically. It is absolutely absurd that residents do not receive the service that they pay for in an area in which it would, technically, be pretty easy to deliver, but it is simply not happening.”
“21. My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) is right that we need a fairer funding formula for our schools and as part of that we need capital funding to be allocated over three years rather than one. Does the Minister agree that the long campaign for the consolidation of St Nicholas primary school in Beverley will be more likely to be realised if such a change can be effected?”
“My hon. Friend will remember, as I do, that one of the first acts of the previous Labour Government on coming to power was to put a tax on pensions that helped to destroy the healthiest, strongest and most successful pension system in Europe. This Government, however, in much less promising economic times, have managed to bring flexibility and hope to all those who save for a secure retirement.”
“I welcome the Minister’s response—or I think I do—that this is going to be kept under review. Too many maintained nursery schools—centres of excellence anchored, for the most part, in the poorest communities in the country—have been lost under successive Governments. Would not academy status give them the opportunity to ensure that they continue to help the Government in raising standards for all and, most importantly, closing the gap between outcomes for rich and poor?”
“Many of my constituents work in egg production and poultry. Earlier today I was contacted by Elliott Eggs of Bewholme just outside the exclusion zone, which is already struggling to meet the supply demands of its supermarket customers. How will my right hon. Friend strike the balance between effective eradication of the problem and continued production, particularly in this festive season?”
“There are 116,000 more disabled people in work now than there were a year ago. Is it not time that the Labour party stopped using the disabled to smear its opponents, and supported this Government’s and Lord Freud’s efforts to get people mainstream jobs, rather than leave them stuck in joblessness or Potemkin factories?”
“This is a difficult area in which to get policy right, and criticisms can be made of this Government and indeed the previous Government. What is the point of personalising this issue when Lord Freud was wrestling with exactly the issue the hon. Lady has just identified? How do we get the disabled into work, and how do we support them? If, because of their severe disability their commercial value is not right, how do we supplement that? That is what Lord Freud meant and I think the hon. Lady knows that. Perhaps she will put that on the record.”
“My hon. Friend is doing a tremendous job staying calm in responding to the scandalous opening speech by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green). Compounding the cynicism, she tried to make out that discrimination against disabled people is a function of this Government. Is he aware of the 2007 Leonard Cheshire Disability review, which found that 89% of disabled people at that time felt discriminated against in Britain? Conservatives did not try to pin that on the Labour party. For Labour Members to pin that discrimination on us is below them.”
“Will the hon. Gentleman apologise now to the British people for making out the Thatcher Government were the major closer of mines and the cause of lost jobs, given that the Labour Government in the ‘60s and ‘70s closed 129 more mines than the Thatcher Government and caused the loss of more than 30,000 excess jobs? Apologise now.”
“My right hon. Friend will have noticed that the shadow Minister said that coal mining communities would struggle to accept the fact that Labour Governments between 1964 and 1979 shut 283 mines, with the loss of 223,000 jobs—more than were closed under the Conservatives. The fact that those communities would struggle to accept that is because of misinformation and the use of this subject for political benefit, rather than to share the truth. The shadow Minister should go out and tell people in coal mining communities the facts about Labour’s record then and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) has just said, now.”
“The fate of young people is particularly important. Will the Minister share his dismay that so many young people were unemployed throughout even the good years of the previous Labour Government? The welcome news recently has been record falls in youth unemployment. The dignity of work, the pleasure and the future it brings are what we should be celebrating today. We should not be listening to the party political point scoring of the Labour party.”
“On Friday. alongside the right hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Alan Johnson) and the hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin) I helped to launch the Humber careers gold standard, a new programme developed by the Humber local enterprise partnership to provide a rigorous but realistic framework to encourage the delivery of impartial, relevant and inspiring careers guidance for young people that will be rolled out across schools in the area. Will the Secretary of State encourage schools and colleges to participate in the Humber careers gold standard, and will she monitor its performance so that we can derive lessons for the nation as a whole?”
“I agree with the thrust of the hon. Gentleman’s remarks. Does he not think that what lies behind the amendments of my hon. Friend the Member for Richmond Park (Zac Goldsmith) is a belief that trust in the people is the main thing, and that it is not honour, honour, honour from MPs that we need, but trust, trust, trust in the electorate to do the right thing?”
“My right hon. Friend makes the point that those in favour of these amendments believe, as I think we all do across this argument, that most Members of this House behave honourably and that there will be very few instances in which the public, when they reflect seriously on the issues, seek to throw us out, but that is not a reason for not putting in place a recall—put that power with people and put trust in people to exercise it properly. The fact that it will be rarely used does not mean it is not important.”