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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“I congratulate the Prime Minister on his speech on Europe this morning. This Prime Minister has a history of going in to bat for Britain; the Labour party has a history of going in and surrendering things such as the rebate. Is not the big difference between that side and this that this side trusts the people and that side wants to deny them a say?”
“My feeling has always been that our children are over-examined, and I had a certain prejudice against AS-level as we go from GCSE to AS-level to A-level, but I was struck, talking to schools in my area and elsewhere, by head teachers saying that the confidence the AS-level brought to some pupils was a benefit. We should, therefore, be careful about any reforms and make sure that we can carry everyone forward. We should encourage as many pupils as we can to think deeply, but make sure that we keep everyone on board. Will the Minister tell us what assessment she has made of those risks?”
“Tens of billions of pounds are spent on post-14 education alone, and the choices made by young people are crucial to their future and to that of the nation. The Education Committee’s report on careers advice and guidance will come out on Wednesday. Does the Minister agree that we must ensure that the right advice and guidance is in place, not only to help those most disadvantaged in our society but to ensure the most effective use of public funds?”
“The right hon. Gentleman has explained the need for change at GCSE and provided an analysis—an accurate one for the most part—of the legacy from the Labour party. Can he explain why abolition of one suite of GCSEs is the right response, rather than simply introducing the measures and changes he has itemised for GCSEs as they stand?”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way; he is being most generous. He is right about signalling. Is there not a risk from the Government’s saying officially that GCSEs as a brand are broken and irrecoverable of sending the signal that the remaining GCSEs—most subjects—for which children will spend an awful lot of time studying are also broken? Surely he must either have plans to abolish GCSEs altogether or recognise that such signalling has risks as well as benefits?”
“May I probe my right hon. Friend a little further on the subject of tiering? The GCSE was tiered in certain subjects, and I understand that, with the introduction of the EBCs, that will be abolished. Will he tell us what share of children took tiered GCSEs last year? What are the positive and negative implications of the loss of the tiering that was found to be necessary to provide an appropriate assessment of a child’s level of attainment?”
“If we exclude equivalencies, in 2011 48% of children did not get five good GCSEs including English and maths. If the GCSE currency is so bankrupt, weak and devalued, and yet half of children are failing to achieve that measure, it is not obvious that pushing it up will magically lift performance, unless the accountability is wrong. However, our accountability is driven and focused to an obsessive and damaging extent. It pushes schools to focus desperately on trying to get people over the line, and yet 48% of kids still do not get over it. That is not because they are not focused enough on it; they could not be more focused—they are excessively focused on it.”
“I am grateful to the Secretary of State for undertaking to do an accountability review, but qualifications and accountability need to be seen as a coherent whole, working with the curriculum and the syllabus. I worry that we have not quite got that right. Appropriateness of assessment is an issue. The Government want to set the bar higher. The Secretary of State is a dynamic man, who wants people to aspire and thinks that a lack of aspiration and acceptance of poor performance has gone on too long, and has entrenched poverty. He is right about that. But if we move the metric up, what is it about the measure that will change teacher quality? It can have some effect, but let us face it, is it the key driver of improvement in education quality? I do not think so.”
“That can be looked at in isolation and work can be done on what we think should be taught. Everything else then needs to be looked at coherently. We need to look at the assessment that matches it, and then at the system of accountability that drives behaviour in schools, drives the allocation of teachers to certain types of pupils in all sorts of ways. The Government have acknowledged that, and we need to get it right. We have had an announcement on new qualifications before we have had the findings of the secondary curriculum review. I think that looks like putting the cart before the horse. It would be helpful to have those findings.”
“Member for Morley and Outwood (Ed Balls) did not listen, and we ended up with much of what was positive about the diploma being lost, with only some of the good salvaged from it. We do not want to make that mistake again. It is important that we carry people with us, not least politically. Otherwise, whatever happens to the Labour party at the next election or the one after that, we will not see the benefits of having a more rigorous system in place. I ask the Government to consider some slowing down. The Secretary of State told the Select Committee that “coherence comes at the end of the process.” Well, I think coherence comes at the beginning of the process. To look at it simply, if we are dealing with assessment, we first need to work out what needs to be taught—the curriculum.”
“To his great credit, as has been acknowledged, the shadow Secretary of State has said that he could see a few problems but that that was as far as he could go. That does not mean, however, that the Government’s particular recommendations are the right ones. It means that there is a case for change. We then have to make sure that we examine it. As for the controversy over the diploma, I recall the now shadow Chancellor, whom I would describe as gleaming-eyed in his certainty, sitting before us as expert after expert came before the then Children, Schools and Families Committee and said, “Slow down; listen to the evidence; take your time; get this right; there is a real chance for a legacy”—leaving something that, if got right, would last for whoever was in government in the future. The right hon.”
“As disasters go, the fact that it has been reconstituted at whoever’s behest suggests that it has not been that catastrophic and that sufficient flexibility exists in the system to allow the good elements to be retained. As I have said before in education debates, we attempt to define what is wrong with the current system, perhaps spending rather too long on that, and we then talk about the nirvana we would like to move towards, doing very little on what is in front of us now—the mechanics of the changes. We do not give them enough protection because we get into a fight with one side defending its period in office and another side pointing out that there are some serious problems and asking whether the other side is going to deny it.”
“I agree with many of the criticisms made by Ministers. I believe there are issues surrounding modularity, and I am delighted to hear from the Minister that he is not moving towards an absolute position on every single subject. It is right to be informed by an understanding that modularity has been counter-productive in too many ways, without necessarily getting rid of it where it is the best way of delivering the most effective assessment. The Government’s move to reduce the number of re-sits is also correct, as is their move to address equivalences. The shadow Secretary rightly raised some issues about one of the few successes that came out of the diploma debacle—specifically, the engineering diploma.”
“It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, which has been interesting and stimulating up to this point. What are the aims of Government policy in education? There are two: to raise standards for all, and to close the gap between rich and poor. I think those two aims bring the whole House together in support. Expert advice from the university of Durham and elsewhere is that there has been grade inflation, which means an undermining of confidence in the currency of GCSEs. It has to be said that we saw some occasionally rushed changes driven by the Department under the last Government, which contributed greatly—although we have not yet reached our conclusions on it—to the GCSE English furore last year. The truth is that changing so many elements at the same time contributed to the difficulties we saw with the English GCSE last year.”
“We must make sure our assessment is appropriate, because otherwise children will sit exams that, unless some genius designed them, put them off learning, rather than encouraging them. [Interruption.]”
“My hon. Friend, who serves on the Education Committee, leads me neatly on to structure. How sufficient was the understanding—I did not have a sufficient understanding—of the nature of how our qualification system works? I come back to tiering. Ministers did not know—they will correct me if I am wrong—the share of young people who were doing tiered exams. Last year, in AQA English—the largest board—45% of children did the tiered exam. One of the Secretary of State’s objections is that by putting them into this thing where, a bit like the old CSE, the top grade they could get was a C, the two-tier system was alive and well within our GCSE system, we just did not know it, and that we must get rid—maybe it came out of coalition politics; maybe it was the leak of the new O-level—of any form of separation or tiering.”
“I have met Engineering UK and employers of all sorts, and notwithstanding their agreement with the Secretary of State on many of his insights about the need to tighten what we have, none of them thinks that establishing a wholly new qualification is the right answer. The second part is the issue of moving to a franchise system. On that, the Department for Transport and its troubles are lesson enough to go slowly. Ofqual itself has said that if we insist on creating new qualifications, we should at least consider decoupling from the market reform. Handing over to lots of people a five-year monopoly on provision of the most sensitive exams before really thinking through the incentives and possible implications is perhaps not the wisest thing to do.”
“There are two parts to the administration of exams. First, there is the wholly new EBC qualification, which has been introduced on the basis that the GCSE brand is broken, at least for the main subjects that are not being upgraded—the hon. Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) was right to mock slightly the idea that one can upgrade one without effectively downgrading the other. I am not sure the case has been made. It takes a long time to establish a brand in the education market, and I do not see why we should not repair what we have got, which I do not see as fundamentally broken.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman, who serves with distinction on the Education Committee. I am sympathetic to the Government’s view on a move to more linear exams, notwithstanding that the Secretary of State must be careful not to tread in areas that are rightly those of Ofqual, the independent regulator. The fact that controlled assessment is being reviewed—I forget exactly what stage it is at—by Ofqual suggests that it, too, has concerns, which I think it has expressed to the Education Committee previously. It is right to ensure that the system has public confidence. If we improve assessment within schools, and our confidence in it, we might be able to move the balance back in the right direction. I think the Government are right to say that the assessment should come more towards the end of the process.”
“My hon. Friend describes his support for a universal exam. To achieve it, the Government have said, the boundary must be higher than the grade C GCSE. There must be a risk, must there not, that quite a number of people will feel that they have failed and that the certificate of achievement will not be a currency of much value in reflecting the work they have done.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again. When grade inflation is inadvertent, denied, counter-productive or whatever, there is an argument about the level at which the qualification should be set. If we cease grade inflation at some point in time, we will be fixing it as being “the level”. It is interesting to reflect on what the appropriate level is: perhaps we should have something much harder, but the Government appear to be talking about reversing that inflation and setting the level of a pass—however it comes out—at a higher level than it is now. Already, 50% of kids do not achieve five good GCSEs including English and maths.”
“Does the Minister agree that local councillors have a big part to play, and will he join me in congratulating Councillor David Elvidge and other Conservative councillors in Beverley who are working hard to find additional football pitch availability in that area? Mike Bryan and other councillors in the Hedon area are supporting Eastside Community Sports, and many clubs are doing much good work, making a real difference and building on the Olympic legacy.”
“We have heard an impassioned case on behalf of Newcastle but the settlement inherited from the previous Government was not only a toxic debt but a situation in which funding for local government is 50% higher in urban than rural areas, despite the fact that delivering so many services in rural areas is more expensive. The real injustice is the historic underfunding of rural areas and the danger that that could be held in place all the way to 2020. It is not so much about Newcastle, although the challenges are everywhere, but we are seeing real injustice in rural areas.”
“Does the Minister accept that too many central initiatives do not reach rural areas, and that if we are to ensure that people in rural areas have access to services, we need to ensure that that is put right?”
“I refer the House to my declaration of interest. Was there any discussion at the Council about co-operation with China to accelerate the reductions in cost in a transition to a low-carbon economy? Will the Prime Minister meet me and other members of GLOBE UK to discuss this issue?”
“Following the outcomes at Doha, it is clear that we need to reconsider how we use our political capital to get a successful deal in 2015. Does the Minister agree with GLOBE’s analysis that much greater focus should be given to supporting action at national level to put in place climate legislation and regulation in order to create the political conditions for that agreement?”
“What are the Government doing for those who are off-grid and use liquefied petroleum gas or oil-fired heating and have much higher bills than those on-grid? Those in rural areas suffer from poor support and funding for many public services, and they need extra help from the Government recognising their plight at this time.”
“The GLOBE climate legislation initiative will be launched in the Foreign Office on 14 and 15 January, and will bring together legislators from 33 countries to discuss national action on climate change. Does the Minister agree that further national action is necessary, and that we should follow the example of countries such as Mexico, which has passed legislation, and China, which plans to do so, in order to establish the conditions that will allow international agreement in 2015?”
“Does my right hon. Friend agree that it is disingenuous, should it be allowed by the Deputy Speaker to say that, of the shadow Secretary of State and Labour Members—”
“Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for that correction, which I required. Obviously, it is an inadvertent tendency towards disingenuousness on the subject. I would like to apologise for pointing out, on behalf of patients right across the country, that for the Opposition to have a debate on health funding, when they were proposing to cut it—when they are actually cutting it in Wales—and when productivity fell, is the height of hypocrisy.”
“The right hon. Lady is speaking movingly about local services. Does she welcome, as I do, the £12.5 billion increase proposed for the NHS budget during this Parliament? Does she disagree with the right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham), who believes that such increases are irresponsible?”
“Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Mr Dorrell), the right hon. Member for Rother Valley (Mr Barron) is a former distinguished Chairman of the Health Committee. My right hon. Friend rightly said that spending on the NHS is broadly flat, and that the most important question we should be debating, rather than scoring points over 0.1% of spend, is how to use the money most effectively. Does the right hon. Gentleman agree with that, and that we must look at the allocation of spend around the country? I represent a rural area and it does not seem as if funds are fairly allocated now.”
“Will the Minister reassure the House that the Government will not repeat the measures introduced in 1997 by the right hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Mr Brown), which undermined the basis of work-based pensions? Does the Minister understand why the right hon. Gentleman is so often absent, which is doubtless due to his embarrassment about that assault on security?”
“The Minister accepts that there are gross funding discrepancies among schools, not on the basis of need but simply because of the local authority in which a school sits. Will the Minister and the Secretary of State consider the f40 group’s appeal again and look to take action in this Parliament? Such gross unfairness cannot be allowed to last into the next Parliament.”
“We live in one of the least corrupt societies on earth, and I congratulate my right hon. Friend and the Prime Minister on doing everything possible to avoid statutory regulation of the press. Freedom is defined not by people doing freely those things we approve of, but sometimes by them doing those things we do not approve of, and it is a precious thing and vulnerable to inadvertent assault.”
“The hon. Lady said that she wants to prioritise ordinary people over millionaires, so would the Labour party, if it were to come into government in 2015, reintroduce the 50p rate?”
“I appeal to my hon. Friend not to be too harsh on the Opposition. Does he not understand that the Labour party now gets 90% of its funding from the trade union movement? If the trade unions insist that there should be a 50p tax rate—even if it does not raise money and undermines public services—it may feel obliged to put it in its manifesto regardless.”
“May we have a debate in Government time on community first responders, in particular on maintaining and improving training capacity? They do such a lot to ensure that people in rural areas are looked after when ambulance response times are often so slow.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that when a child is in the position she just described, although it is essential that the data are shared, we do not need a vast overwhelming database in which focus is lost and in which the victims can disappear? We need a better system than we have today, but not necessarily ContactPoint, which did not provide the focused, laser-like attention on victims that was and is required.”
“I wonder whether my hon. Friend agrees that police forces everywhere, not only in north Wales but across England, should not wait until any inquiries reach their findings before looking again at any evidence that they do not think was fully pursued in the past. If their cold case units or others see evidence that needs to be followed up, they should do that immediately. Just as DNA evidence has opened up old cases in the past, if there is evidence that can be followed, it should be followed, and that should be done now.”
“I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way. Does he agree that a chair from one of the health and wellbeing boards should be appointed as a national lead on child protection, to ensure that their organisations have exactly the right focus and are linked to the safeguarding children boards?”
“I will be very brief. Royal commissions have famously been used to put things into the long grass. Such an overblown inquiry might just put the issue away until the public focus has moved on and so it might be counter-productive.”
“I find it extraordinary that the Minister is standing at the Dispatch Box now, on two grounds: first, the representative for the Government is not listening to the whole of this important debate; and, secondly, with no disrespect to the Minister, it is he rather than a Minister from the Department for Education who is on the Front Bench now. I think the House deserves an explanation on both those fronts.”
“I, perhaps philosophically, would have a predisposition to worry about taking children away from poor parents in the community and into the even worse parenting of the state. What we found, and the evidence we saw, was that in fact the care of the state for those children, although it is not all perfect—anything but—was, for most of the time, far better than what happened before. It is important that young people hear that, especially before they seek help. Why will they seek help if they think the help provided will make them more of a victim than they already feel? We must build up the quality of the service that our care system offers, but we must also ensure that people out there in the community, and children themselves, realise that care can be a really positive step for them.”
“Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) suggested, as many as one in seven children in care are subject to some form of abuse, seven out of seven of those children were subject to some form of abuse before they came into the care system. That in no way excuses failings in our care system, but we must recognise that problems in the past must not be read into problems today, although we should never be complacent. Whatever the problems in our care system, it does offer a place of safety; it does provide a haven and hope for young people. When we met children from around the country who came to a seminar with us behind closed doors, and in our visits to care homes, children told us so again and again.”
“It is just as long-lasting and just as likely to lead to unemployment, drug abuse and, in some cases, a cycle that leads to their becoming abusers in due course if they are not given appropriate support. We were particularly concerned about care leavers and the accommodation and range of support provided for them. We visited care homes in Barnsley and were struck by the commitment of the staff and, after talking to the young people, by the quality of the support they felt they were getting. We must never be complacent in believing that our children’s homes are all safe and that we do not have abuse in our care system. However, we must also recognise that if, as the hon.”
“All strength to the arm of those involved across the agencies in the East Riding of Yorkshire and elsewhere in recognising the severity and prevalence of child sexual exploitation. Let me run quickly through some of the relevant recommendations in the Select Committee’s report on child protection, which came out last week. Older children were a major theme and we wish to see “the College of Social Work, in outlining curricula, and individual institutions delivering social work training must ensure that teaching delivers an understanding of the effect of maltreatment on older children” and “their ability to cope”. The tendency is to believe that they are more resilient, but all too often they are not and the effect of abuse in the teenage years can be just as traumatic as in early life.”
“It is important to ensure that the right people turn up in such circumstances, as it is no good for someone with no authority from an organisation to turn up to tick a box. The group is absolutely right to identify that its members must have decision-making authority for their organisation on child sexual exploitation. It lists the agencies whose attendance is required, makes provisions so that anything less than 75% attendance must be questioned and expects people to attend consecutive meetings. That is all about the nuts and bolts and quite a long way away from the more emotive issues we have discussed this afternoon, but ensuring we have the right people in the right place, taking responsibility and ensuring that the issue does not drop down the agenda, as can so easily happen, is very important.”
“It will never be perfect and will certainly never eradicate child sexual exploitation and we should recognise that, but we want a system that is as attuned as it possibly can be to identifying people at risk, protecting them and taking action against perpetrators who seek to exploit children. I made inquiries of East Riding of Yorkshire council, in which my constituency sits, and I was pleased to find that it is taking child sexual exploitation seriously and has set up a child sexual exploitation strategic group. I read through the terms of reference. In some respects, it is rather a dull, dry document, but it is important that it contains stipulations such as: “This is a strategic group during which those attending will be expected to have decision making responsibility”.”
“Another theme of our report was that older children are poorly served by social services compared with younger children. As many Members have powerfully said this afternoon, there is a tendency not to believe those children and not to see past their behaviour, which can be pretty awful. A troubled teenager who has been abused will not always present in the most sympathetic way. They might be involved in criminal or other antisocial behaviour and people tend not to see past that to the child who has been exploited and abused in various ways, so they do not ensure that the child gets what they need. We all want to see a more effective system.”