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.”
The complete record
Every one of 5,829 lines we hold for Graham Stuart, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 73 of 117.
“While the Minister is on the subject of conflict between local authorities and parents, may I press him, as many of my amendments do, on home-educating parents, who all too often have been subject to misinformation and abuse of power by local authorities? Will he give serious consideration to including a provision stating that parents who home educate are not to have their children’s SEN support removed and that local authorities, despite their duty to find children with SEN, do not have their powers to demand access to children strengthened? We should reinforce the primacy of parents in deciding what should happen to their children and ensure that local authorities are the servants of families, not their masters.”
“I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes a powerful speech. I wonder whether he is right to propose removing “wholly or mainly”, because the Bill would read: “Health care provision or social care provision which is made…for the purposes of the education or training of a child”. Such provision does not have to be made for that purpose to be significant to the education or training of a child. I put it to the Minister that a better wording would result in provision that is significant to the education or training of a child or young person being treated as special educational provision. It would capture that which is important to deliver the education a child needs. The original motivator is not the key point.”
“My amendment is intended to prevent the situation from arising, whether through sins of omission or of commission. That is to say, the aim is to prevent local authorities from forgetting that parents have the primary responsibility for their child’s education. My amendment would assert that responsibility and the right of families to be free to educate their children independently, if they so wish.”
“I have particular concerns about parents who have chosen to educate their children at home. From discussions with the Minister, I know it is not the Government’s intention to undermine the parental role, but unless that is made clear in the Bill, there will always be the risk that these things will creep in. That is why I have proposed amendment 59. It would insert a new subsection (e) in clause 19 expressly requiring local authorities to have regard to the right of parents to make their own arrangements for their children, in accordance with the Education Act 1996. Without this, the possibility will remain that local authorities might try to steamroller home-educating parents, who are only trying to do the right thing by their children. I am not saying it will necessarily happen, certainly not in all cases, but it is conceivable.”
“We should not underestimate the significance of these changes. They will deliver a process for assessing and meeting children’s and young people’s individual needs that could be more coherent, comprehensive and compassionate. As always, however, the devil lies in the detail, so my Committee will closely monitor the impact of these changes in practice. My amendments have a common theme: to ensure that nothing in the Bill reduces the centrality of parents in making decisions for their children. I am particularly concerned to ensure that local authorities do not use the Bill to seek to change the balance in their relationship with the parents of children with special educational needs. I wish the Bill to enhance, not diminish, the role, power and influence of parents.”
“His actions to improve the Bill in response to our recommendations have been appreciated, and he was big enough to list the changes that the Select Committee had suggested and which the Government had adopted. Ministers should not be embarrassed—quite the contrary—to change their proposals on the basis of evidence and submissions from people in the Chamber and outside. The Education Committee paid particularly close attention to part 3 of the Bill on children and young people in England with special educational needs. As I say, we welcomed many features of the Bill in our pre-legislative scrutiny, such as the introduction of integrated education, health and care plans and the fact that the new statutory framework for SEN will cover children and young people from birth all the way to age 25.”
“I was a little sceptical at the beginning of this process, and I remain worried that we might create a level of expectation among parents greater than the Bill can deliver, especially in this time of austerity, not least for local government budgets, but my scepticism and doubt have been eroded over time. The way successive Ministers have worked and the way the Bill has taken shape gives me hope that it can be as significant for children with special educational needs as the Disability Discrimination Act was for those with disabilities. I wish to speak to my amendments 59 to 64, but first I want to put on the record my thanks to the Minister for his close and courteous co-operation with my Committee.”
“It is a pleasure to take part in this debate and to follow my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) and the right hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke). The right hon. Gentleman’s final point was right: this is a flagship Bill. Just as the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 turned out to be an historic step forward and a great achievement by the then Conservative Government, so I think this flagship Bill will be a great achievement of this coalition Government. It is symbolic that the Minister’s predecessor was a Liberal Democrat and that he has carried the Bill forward. I know that we have limited time but I want to make a few comments.”
“The amendment deserves support and clause 45(4) deserves to be scrapped. My final remarks will be on the local offer. Getting that right will be essential to ensuring that the Bill overall helps young people. I am confident that those who get an EHC plan will be in a better situation than those under the previous regime of statements. In fact, it is essential to ensure not that it is easier to get a plan—the Minister, surprisingly in my view, said he wanted to make that case. I hope that there will be fewer people having plans than under statements, not because there is an effort to guide them away from them, but because local offers meet so many of the needs of parents and young people that there is not a requirement for the bureaucratic involvement that will be required even in our streamlined EHC system.”
“This runs contrary to the recommendations made by my Committee in our report, where we acknowledge the particular position of NEETs and apprenticeships and the potential of EHC plans to assist young people with SEN into constructive employment. We recommended that the Bill should provide entitlement to EHC plans both to NEETs of compulsory participation age and to young people who are undertaking apprenticeships. We heard from Dai Roberts, the principal of Brokenhurst college, who cited the case of two learners with profound deafness who were then on marine engineering apprenticeships. They had to have signers to help them with their training. These are precisely the young people who need extra support in order to follow their ambitions so they can get on and make a success of their lives.”
“I am concerned that requiring local authorities to review the continuance of EHC plans for young people aged over 18 with specific regard to their age may make it more likely that support would be curtailed or dropped altogether on the basis that the young person would be deemed to have made the transition into adulthood. This concern is heightened by paragraph 231 of the explanatory notes to the Bill, which explains the thinking behind clause 45. It gives examples of potential stages at which EHC plans can be amended or replaced. These include the end of a specified phase of a young person’s education or when a young person becomes a NEET.”
“I welcome that intervention. These statistics are unacceptable and reflect a situation that places unfair pressure on children, parents and teachers alike. The new clause would require schools to engage directly with parents and to co-operate with local NHS authorities in preparing and implementing strategies to head off these risks. I suggest to the Minister that its inclusion would strengthen the Bill and help end the status quo whereby the quality of support available to children and families coping with conditions such as diabetes is largely a matter of chance. I am mindful of your strictures on time, Madam Deputy Speaker, but I would like to speak in support of amendment No. 43, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland).”
“I find the Minister’s answer inadequate. It is shameful that successive Governments have gone for so many years with a significant minority of children simply not having their needs met in school. When they have a condition or a flare-up that requires action, they get sent off to hospital, or their parents get called, whereas if the school had trained someone up, it could meet that need. This is not good enough. The Minister has done so much under the Bill; this is another area where there could be an historic, positive settlement coming out of the legislation. It would be a shame if the opportunity were missed.”
“My hon. Friend says that local authorities must assure themselves that parents are delivering the education in accordance with 1996 Act. I do not think that that is the case. They have to act if they have reason to believe that parents are not providing suitable education. They have no such overarching duty to assure themselves that every single home educating parent is doing so. The parent, not the local authority, has primacy in the education of their child. The local education authority acts only if it finds out that there is a problem. It does not have to seek it.”
“I think there is merit in the work my hon. Friend has done and I pay tribute to her for the effort and energy she has put into it. I am disappointed that it has been brought to a halt. Will she confirm that the Deputy Prime Minister agreed to the proposals initially, only to renege on that agreement later?”
“May I confirm my understanding that the Deputy Prime Minister signed up to this but later, for political or other reasons—who knows?—withdrew his support? That is shameful and it could lead to less flexibility in a child care system that lacks quality and is too expensive.”
“It is about our Committee, working on a cross-party basis, recognising that careers services for young people are not up to the job, and identifying what needs to change.”
“The system will not deliver when schools are not evaluated on the quality of the careers guidance they provide, and when they are not given funding to supply it. In truth, the Committee is perhaps better focused on outcomes than Ministers who made such a hash of the policy in the DFE. What is the point of all the education reforms the Government have undertaken, if there is no decent signposting between education and the world of employment? The honourable exception is the new National Careers Service, which needs proper funding if it is to expand its remit and do a good job for the young as well as the old. But if Ministers think that this is about process, I assure them that it is not.”
“In their response to our report, the Government complained that the Committee “focuses on the process of planning and providing careers guidance, whereas the Government’s priority is outcomes for young people.” With respect to Ministers, our so-called process points were about ensuring that young people can access proper careers advice, at a time when five in six schools are cutting back on it. That could help to prevent obvious mistakes. For example, our report highlights the lack of awareness in many schools regarding apprenticeships, despite their being a flagship coalition policy. Ministers assume that schools will always do the best thing for the children in their care but, in reality, schools will deliver what they are measured on.”
“It can help young people—such as the young man I met in Bradford—to make the right choices first time. With the right advice, that young man could have a clear sense of where his opportunities lie. If the fire service was not recruiting, he could explore a job with another branch of the services, such as the Army. He would not waste time repeating a year, and could get a job when he left education. High-quality, independent and impartial advice has a key role to play in helping pupils to make good choices. If the system fails young people, a human and economic cost is incurred, by both the young people and the wider society that risks squandering their talents.”
“Accordingly, we urged Ministers to pursue the development of more sophisticated education destination measures, to make the data analysis more meaningful. Only yesterday, I questioned the Secretary of State for Education before the Select Committee. He apologised for failing to include destination measures in the Government’s accountability consultation for schools, and he made a commitment to do further work to strengthen the accountability proposals in that way. We support our Ministers’ ambition to expand the time frame of the destination measures and to try to make them a reliable set of data that can be used to hold schools to account—something which, for now, we do not do. Careers guidance can provide a crucial signpost for rewarding employment.”
“At the moment, schools simply do not see careers advice as a priority. Being obliged to publish their plans would put them under pressure to deliver in that area and not merely to focus on things such as GCSEs, which tend to drive behaviour in secondary schools. Regrettably, neither of those recommendations has been adopted. Like all organisations, schools are driven by the things on which they are evaluated, and they are not evaluated on careers advice—except during Ofsted’s rare visits—so it gets neglected by head teachers. We welcome Ofsted’s ongoing thematic review of careers advice and guidance, which is due to report this summer, but Ofsted’s routine inspection framework for schools is simply not designed to make a clear judgment on careers guidance provision, as Ofsted itself acknowledges.”
“I know that Ministers always—well, mostly—take note of the powerful arguments coming from our Committee, which makes for a much more coherent policy. It is a big win for young people, particularly those about to leave the school system, and I congratulate Ministers. However, the Committee was disappointed that the Government rejected several of our other recommendations. We advised that each young person should be entitled to at least one face-to-face careers interview with an independent adviser, an opportunity that 98% of schools consider important. We also suggested that schools should be required to publish an annual careers plan setting out information about the careers guidance provided to pupils and the resources allocated to it. Careers plans could form an important part of the new accountability regime for schools.”
“An opportunity has arisen from the Government policy that established the NCS. An extra £50 million in funding, set against the £56 billion education budget, could make a huge difference and deliver a much more sophisticated and responsive service. There are some changes that the Committee welcomed. We were pleased by the decision to expand the duty on schools to offer careers guidance down to pupils in year 8, and up to 16 to 18-year-olds in school or college. We think that was logical, and our Committee heard strong evidence for doing it. It might seem an obvious thing to do, but the Government should none the less be congratulated on doing it. That decision was taken during the course of our inquiry.”
“On the subject of the NCS, I note with regret the recent resignations of Heather Jackson and Professor Tony Watts from the National Careers Council because they believe that the Department for Education has been “escaping its responsibilities” by proposing that the funding provided by BIS for the National Careers Service should be stretched to fill the gaps in services for young people. They observe that the Department for Education has provided the NCS with only £7 million in funding, compared to the £83 million that BIS has provided for adult careers services. Will the Minister reassure us that the Department for Education is committed to supporting the work of the NCS properly? Will the Department realise the opportunity that the NCS provides to ensure that we have an all- ages, competent, re-professionalised careers service?”
“He also has responsibility in the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, whose performance has been much better. The launch of the National Careers Service is a huge boost to careers guidance for adults. It is essential in an integrated and competitive world, and it is re- professionalising careers advice. The Committee was therefore pleased—nay, delighted—that the Government accepted our recommendation that the remit of the National Careers Service should be expanded to enable it to perform a capacity-building and brokerage role for schools.”
“He did not receive proper guidance about the courses that he needed to realise his dreams, or even guidance about the dreams that he had a chance of realising. That is just one anecdotal example. When the experience is scaled up, huge amounts of money are being wasted. With youth unemployment at 21% and the CBI currently characterising the transition from school to work as “chaotic”, the policy smacks of false economy. None the less, the Committee accepts that the new arrangements involving the statutory duty on schools are in place, and being so freshly put on the statute book, are not immediately likely to change. Schools have the duty. If I appear to be giving the new Minister a hard time, I recognise that he only has one foot in the Department for Education, whose performance on the issue has been so woeful.”
“When the Committee visited Bradford college in October last year, I met a young man whose experience typifies the waste of time, money and potential to which poor careers guidance, or the complete lack of it, can lead. He was taking a course to join the uniformed services. He had wasted the previous year on a course that was not right for him and would not have led to a job in the fire service, which he wanted to join. To add insult to injury, this young man, who wanted to be a fireman, found out during the appropriate course that the fire service is now shrinking, and that there was unlikely to be a job for him at the end of his course. The system let that young man down, and it is doing the country no good at all. How did it happen?”
“That matters, because young people need guidance in order to make good decisions. A recent study by the Education and Employers Taskforce, led by Nick Chambers, underlined the problem. The taskforce surveyed 11,000 13 to 16-year-olds, mapping their job ambitions against the employment market up to 2020. It showed that teenagers have a weak grasp of the availability of certain jobs. For example, 10 times as many youngsters as there are jobs likely to be available were aiming for jobs in the culture, media and sports sector. I acknowledge the pressing need to deliver spending efficiencies where possible, but this is not a spending efficiency; it is the promotion of spending inefficiency, as we waste money by placing students on the wrong courses.”
“Evidence from countries that have transferred responsibility for careers guidance to schools, such as the Netherlands and New Zealand, does not support that approach. In those countries, the schools were at least given funding to supply the service when they were given the duty to do so; nevertheless, the Committee was told that even there, the transfer of the duty had resulted in a significant reduction in both the quality and extent of careers guidance provision in schools. That is why we described the transfer of responsibility as regrettable, much to the Government’s chagrin. Separately, the OECD has highlighted the limitations of a purely school-based model of careers advice. They include lack of impartiality, weak links with the labour market and inconsistency of provision between schools.”
“They were under great budgetary pressure, and careers guidance lost out. None of the £196 million in funding that the Connexions service received for its careers guidance work—£196 million to provide the signposting that we argue is vital for young people to make the right choices and ensure that the public money that serves their needs is spent in the right way—was passed to schools. Following the change, a survey by Careers England found that only one in six schools had the same level of investment in careers activities as the year before. That is, one in six maintained what they had. The Minister needs to take that seriously. The survey also found that not a single school had increased its level of investment, even after the Connexions service, however patchy its performance, had been removed from the scene.”
“In 2009, the Panel on Fair Access to the Professions reported on the low level of satisfaction with the careers guidance work provided by the Connexions service, which is little mourned overall. In 2010, Ofsted criticised inconsistencies in provision. The Education Act 2011 represented a chance for a fresh start. The Education Committee’s report was prompted by the introduction of the new statutory duty on schools to secure access to independent, impartial careers guidance for pupils in years 9 to 11. The Committee came to the conclusion that the transfer of responsibility to schools was regrettable, as was the way it was done. Our view was prompted not by any nostalgia for the previous arrangements but by concern about how the transfer was implemented. At the time, Ministers had other priorities.”
“I am delighted to be here to lead this debate under your august chairmanship, Mr Benton, and to have the opportunity to discuss my Committee’s report. I am also pleased to be joined by so many Committee members and ex-members, and to see that all three main parties are represented in the debate. The reason why we are here is that the ministerial decisions considered in our report will have profound and far-reaching consequences. Young people need good-quality careers guidance if they are to make informed choices about the courses that they take at school and their options when they leave school. That is all the more important now due to the difficult economic backdrop. Is such good advice typically available? No. It is worth putting on record that the Government inherited a bad situation: a dysfunctional system of careers guidance.”
“Does the hon. Lady recall that in Bradford, where nearly all the schools signed up, money was taken from each of them, but the bulk of it was still provided by the council? Adding all that up, if I recollect correctly, the service provision of careers guidance—in a place such as Bradford, where the council had made it a priority—was still lower on the ground in schools than it had been.”
“Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the National Careers Service’s initiative offers a huge opportunity? It is embryonic at the moment, but it is building for adults that kind of local labour market knowledge. Having started to gather that information, why on earth would we not want to leverage that for young people as well? Furthermore, does he agree that if the Government found from the Department for Education not necessarily the kind of money that they were spending on Connexions but a fraction of that and put additional resource into the NCS, they could build on a coalition and the successful policy of the NCS and turn all careers advice for young people in the right direction?”
“The hon. Gentleman is clearly wrong. My right hon. Friend is prepared to give way and I congratulate him. He may not know that my constituency has the highest number of adult apprenticeship starts, and overall has one of the highest numbers in the country. I congratulate him and his colleagues on increasing the number of apprenticeships and ensuring quality. Does he share my surprise that the hon. Member for Streatham (Mr Umunna) does not mention the tripling of apprenticeships that has occurred in his constituency since Labour left power?”
“The point that the hon. Gentleman makes about careers advice is absolutely right. Does he agree that one of the Government’s successful initiatives has been the National Careers Service, and there could be a role for that service, working with schools, to ensure that they fulfil the duty that they have been given? All too often the institutional interest of the school and the individual interest of the young person are not the same, and that is why we need some kind of arbitration to make sure that the interests of the child are put first.”
“Trade with the developing world was an insufficient priority of the previous Administration, yet it is economic dynamism, not dependency, that our development spend should be seeking to encourage. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her speech. Does she agree that British education companies have a key role to play in developing the economic strength of developing countries, which will be good both for them and for us?”
“I am worried about the curriculum for children who are currently being flexi-schooled. The Government recently announced—without consultation and without notice—the abolition of flexi-schooling, which has existed for decades and which meets the needs of many children. How will the Minister ensure that the needs of those children are met in the immediate future?”
“I agree with every point that the right hon. Gentleman has made, but will he join me in paying tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening), who, when she was a Treasury Minister, played such a role in not only finding the money to halve the tolls, but setting out the vision, which he has just described, of a more dynamic board, rather than the Stalinist one we had before?”
“The Minister will be aware that 70% of the bridge’s capacity, with the highest tolls in the country, was unused in an area of high unemployment and low average income. This is a tremendous step forward for the area and, when we combine it with the improvements to the A164 and the Beverley southern relief road, he and other Ministers can be proud of the coalition Government’s contribution to the area and its transport infrastructure at a time of such general austerity.”
“Will the Minister say something to reassure Barnardo’s and others that, given that 80% of current adoption recruitment is carried out by local authorities, Ministers do not plan to force whole swathes of local authorities into the voluntary sector, which might not have the capacity or capability to step up?”
“I agree with the hon. Gentleman about imposing as best we can on health, but the NHS has a constitutional requirement that can conflict with attempts to impose duties on it. Has he thought up some creative ways past that barrier?”
“The regulations relating to local offers need to address our recommendation on the need to clarify what will be available for pupils with low to moderate SEN, particularly those with speech, language and communication needs, who make up a substantial group within the category. That is dealt with in paragraphs 52 to 53 of the Government’s response. The Committee recommended having minimum standards for local offers in the Bill. We wrestled with the idea of a framework, so I was pleased to hear the Minister say today that there would be a common framework. I am not sure whether he will also be summing up at the end of the debate—”
“Of course, those regulations will include the detailed requirements on local offers, which will be critical. I think that I speak on behalf of the whole Committee when I say that we have no doubt that for those with education, health and care plans the framework set out in the Bill will definitely lead to an improvement, although not perfection. Getting it right for those on school action and school action plus schemes—in other words, not the 3% who have a statement now, but the 17% who are on other types of support—is critical, and that comes down to the local offer. I am delighted that the Minister agreed to extend the pilots, but, in truth, as we scrutinised the legislation we had little information back from the pilots that would allow us to understand what local offers would actually look like.”
“It is about doing the right thing in the long-term interests of children, rather than trying to avoid political embarrassment on the day. Fortunately, pre-legislative scrutiny allows no such embarrassment anyway. Although I broadly welcome all the provisions in the Bill, I will focus today on special educational needs, which the Education Committee has looked at. The Committee’s recommendations were addressed very thoroughly in the Government’s response, on which the Minister deserves to be congratulated. The regulations and the code of practice will be absolutely key to whether the legislation delivers for children with SEN, as we hope it will, but we are yet to have any sight of them. It will be so important that the Bill Committee looks at, understands and scrutinises those regulations as it does its work.”
“It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, which has been interesting throughout. I congratulate former Ministers and the Secretary of State on their contribution to the Bill. In particular, I congratulate the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), on the way in which he presented the Bill today, on how he dealt with pre-legislative scrutiny by the Education Committee and on his general willingness to listen. If Ministers have the right attitude, the pre-legislative scrutiny approach is exactly the right way to go about creating legislation. With reference to another issue, I think that Ministers who listen to suggested changes and then change tack accordingly should be seen not as weaker as a result, but as stronger.”
“Briefly—I have 40 seconds left—the Committee’s recommendation was that disabled children with or without SEN should be included in the scope of entitlement to integrated provision and to education, health and care plans, but that was not accepted by the Government, which is disappointing. I accept that they made a cogent case as to why that was, but I hope that they might be able to look at that again. The Committee’s request for reassurance that ensuring statutory protections for 16 to 25-year-olds will not compromise provision for others has not been fully answered, so I hope that can be looked at as well. If we are to have the big improvement we all hope for, we must ensure co-operation and have seamless systems in place across all sectors, including health.”
“The Government’s response explains that pathfinders will redouble their focus on the post-16 sector, along with additional funding for well-performing pathfinders to advise others on implementation, but I ask the House to note that the Association of Colleges is concerned about the implementation of new funding a year ahead of the Bill’s proposed implementation. It states: “The poor management of the funding changes are threatening the goodwill of Colleges towards the Bill.” I hope that Ministers will take that on board. It might be something that can be looked at closely in the Bill Committee. The Minister shares the Committee’s view that special educational needs co-ordinators should be required to be qualified teachers, and he has expressed his intention that regulations should make that a requirement in future. That, too, is welcome.”
“In response to the Committee’s recommendation on independent specialist colleges and independent special schools, provisions have now been included, so the Secretary of State can approve individual institutions for which parents or young people express a preference in their plan. The Bill will entitle NEETs of compulsory participation age and apprentices to a plan, following the Committee’s recommendations, and I am again grateful to the Minister for listening and taking that on board. The Committee expressed concern about SEN pathfinders failing to involve colleges adequately in trialling the approaches to nought-to-25 provision.”