Pat McFadden
MP for Wolverhampton South East · Labour · United Kingdom
“In his review Alan Milburn considered that issue and said that, “the UK’s NEET crisis is much more long-term and deep-seated than any decisions taken in the last few years.” As I said earlier, 400,000 more people are in work this year than last year, and the number of young people in employment is up since the election.”
“Since our last DWP questions, both Alan Milburn and the Pensions Commission have published their respective interim reports on young people and on the current state of saving for retirement. I look forward to receiving their final reports later in the year.”
“As Alan Milburn pointed out in his recent report, the UK’s NEET crisis is much more long-term and deep-seated than any decisions taken in the last few years. There are 400,000 more people in work than last year. The number of young people in employment is up by 74,000 since the election.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman and send him commiserations for whatever has left him reliant on his crutches today. I am happy to congratulate the businesses he mentioned in his constituency. He raises a serious point: it is important not only to come up with the right policy, but to make it simple for businesses to use.”
“My hon. Friend is right, and I thank Cardiff football club for being a partner. We are supporting nearly 1 million young people and creating up to half a million opportunities for jobs and training.”
“We are making strong progress on expanding youth hubs, with around 130 already in operation across Great Britain. In March, I announced the locations that we want to open in this year, and I have just announced a further 180 locations for the following two years.”
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“So the attainment gap between children from low-income families and better-off children does not affect all children equally. Although there is an attainment gap, the fatalistic argument that deprivation can be used as an excuse to explain away educational failure does not hold up, because deprivation has such contrasting effects among different groups. While the Education Committee’s report may give us cause for despair, it also gives us reason for hope. There is hope because the report draws attention to things that make a difference. It found that how highly a school is rated by Ofsted makes a “dramatic” difference to the performance of pupils. Just 25% of children receiving free school meals at a school that is rated “inadequate” will get five good GCSEs, but in schools that are rated “outstanding”, the figure is 50%.”
“The second, published yesterday, is the Migration Advisory Committee’s report on the labour market impact of EU migration. I want to say a word about both reports. According to the Education Committee’s report, the proportion of white children receiving free school meals who attain the benchmark standard of five good GCSEs including English and maths is only half the proportion of white children as a whole. Among other ethnic groups, the gap is much smaller. Among children from an Indian background it is just 15%, and among children from a Chinese background there is almost no attainment gap at all. Indeed, Chinese children receiving free school meals are, at this stage, the highest-achieving of any group at school—except for Chinese children who are not receiving free school meals, and even then the gap is tiny.”
“The debate is timely: timely because it is about opportunity and life chances, and timely because the discussion about opportunity and life chances in this country has become tied up with the discussion about immigration and our place in the world. It has been argued that opportunity will somehow be enhanced and pressure on public services will be eased by our keeping out workers who were born overseas, whatever steps that would require in terms of Britain’s place in the world. The debate takes place against the backdrop of the publication of two important reports that shed light on that argument. The first—published a couple of weeks ago by the Education Committee, chaired by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart)—is entitled “Underachievement in Education by White Working Class Children”.”
“The Prime Minister said in his article this morning and in his statement today that it does not matter if he is isolated as long as he is in the correct position. The difference is that in the negotiation on which he is now embarking, he needs the support not of one other member state but of all other member states. How does he intend to move from a position of not so splendid isolation to securing the support that he says he wants? If he cannot secure it, he will end up recommending withdrawal, which is precisely the outcome he says he does not want.”
“I hope that the Minister will not say that this is about timing but will be up front about why the consensus is not there, and admit that she and her colleagues are blocking it.”
“May I get to heart of the point about timing and consensus? We have already heard some quotes from Robert Chote. This is what he said when he gave oral evidence to the Select Committee and was asked whether this could be done by the next election: “It would be difficult but by no means impossible. The key thing that you would need to have is agreement in principle across the parties that it was a good idea to do it. At the end of the day, if Parliament wants us to try this, we will do it to the best of our ability given the resources and the time we have available.” Given that those statements are on the record, does my right hon. Friend agree that if this does not happen, it is because there is not a political consensus?”
“While we are on the subject of extremism, will the Home Secretary update the House on the whereabouts of the two control order suspects who escaped following her decision, and the Prime Minister’s decision, to remove the relocation power in the previous regime, which had prevented abscondences for many years? Does she know where those suspects are, and do they still pose a threat to the public?”
“I agree with the Secretary of State when he says that this issue should not be decided on the basis of whether the proposed takeover comes from a foreign company. There is enough narrow nationalism in British politics without our adding to it here. However, there is a question of whether companies keep their promises. The right hon. Gentleman has referred several times to Kraft and Cadbury. Kraft broke its word when it said that it would keep open the Somerdale factory and then announced, after the bid had gone through, that it was going to close it. The question now is how does the right hon. Gentleman know and how can he ensure that, if the takeover goes through, Pfizer will keep its promises on R and D and the British science base?”
“I am very interested in the figures that my right hon. Friend is reading out. What does he think the implications are for the Government’s policy to sell the student loan book?”
“I therefore welcome the U-turn, and on this point at least, rhetoric and policy are now pulling in the same direction, although needless barriers were placed in the way of investment by the policy previously pursued.”
“The return of growth cannot hide the fact that the outcome of the strategy pursued in the past four years is that one of the Government’s fiscal targets has been missed, and the other—the five-year rolling target—continues to be pushed into the future. The increases in investment allowances are welcome, but let us be in no doubt: this is a U-turn from the Conservative manifesto and from the 2010 post-election Budget. At that time, when the Chancellor was talking about the “march of the makers”, he cut support for investment in manufacturing by £3 billion a year, and called it getting rid of complex allowances and reliefs. Rhetoric and policy were pulling in entirely different directions.”
“The Chancellor told the House last week that his policies had been vindicated. His basic case is that austerity is working so well that we need it for two Parliaments rather than one, as was planned. Of course, it is welcome that we have economic growth after so many lean years, but the inescapable fact is that the targets in the growth and spending plans set out at the beginning of this Parliament have been missed by huge margins. The cumulative effect is that cuts will last years longer than planned, and an extra £190 billion is being borrowed, compared with the figure in the plans set out after the election. If Labour had borrowed £190 billion more than was planned, I am not sure how Government Members would describe it, but I doubt whether they would be reaching for the term “success”.”
“The recent economic growth is welcome, but if it is being funded by consumer spending, people will rightly ask how can we ensure that it has solid foundations and is not simply the froth from another unsustainable housing boom, and how we can ensure that Britain remains engaged with the world and does not turn away from the trade and exports that we need.”
“How do the Government propose to address that issue? Simply shouting that we should trust people with their own money is not enough, given that the PPI compensation alone has had to be set at £20 billion; and nor is it the philosophy that has been pursued on a cross-party basis for auto-enrolment into the pensions systems. If customers are to be well informed, they need good advice and alternative products in which they can trust. It is perfectly reasonable—indeed, a duty—for a responsible Opposition to ask questions about how that is to be achieved, and to point out the dangers if it is not.”
“Of course people can be trusted in that way, and empowering them to make their own decisions is a good thing. It is something that we should support in politics. Choice in public services empowers people. It has worked well in the area of personal payments for social care, for example. As my hon. Friend said, however, what is in question is not trusting people but trusting the financial services sector that sells people these often complex financial products. I serve on the Treasury Select Committee, and we have seen many mis-selling scandals in recent years, ranging from endowment mortgages to payment protection insurance. We should have learned the lesson that there is often a serious information mismatch between those selling those financial products and those buying them, and that customers are not well served when things go wrong.”
“As someone whose father was a labourer and whose mother worked in a local authority children’s home, the only thing I would add is that a more serious working-class aspiration is an education system that opens up opportunity to all; social mobility that is not based on but challenges closed elites; and a path to rising living standards that has been sadly absent in recent years. I suggest to the Government that a poster based on those things might have been truer to the heart of working-class aspiration than the one that was produced. I echo some of the sentiments expressed by my hon. Friend the Member for Sedgefield (Phil Wilson) on the pension changes. There has been an attempt to reduce this proposal to the question of whether people can be trusted with their own money.”
“The stance the Government have adopted on this is a complete failure of leadership: it is party management first, and the interests of the country second. No amount of support through investment allowances would undo the damage that pulling out of our biggest market would do. I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Leader of the Opposition made the announcement he made a couple of weeks ago, exercising leadership on this issue and rejecting the option of following the Government down this path. Perhaps enough has been said about beer and bingo in recent days.”
“If the Government are really serious about supporting UK manufacturing, they should heed the call coming from their own Back Benches today to stop chasing UKIP and putting in place policies that stop the brightest students and workers from around the world coming to the UK. The Government’s arbitrary net immigration target is a barrier to our accessing the best talent in the world, and the exclusion of such talent is not in the interests of UK businesses or the economy; nor is the threat of withdrawal from our biggest export market, the EU. It is no good supporting investment decisions through the tax system with one hand, and threatening to pull away from our biggest market with the other.”
“That is absolutely right: a cut in support for manufacturing was used for business as a whole. Although it makes sense to support investment decisions through the tax system, we should not kid ourselves that investment allowances alone will be enough. The UK’s export performance has been routinely described as disappointing in report after report by the Office for Budget Responsibility. Speak to any manufacturer and they will most likely say that their key challenge is skills. If companies cannot get the right people with the right skills, they cannot innovate, they cannot meet orders in time and they cannot operate as efficiently as they want.”
“At the critical moment a few weeks ago, and during the street protests in Kiev, the Foreign Ministers of Germany, France and Poland represented the European Union. Why was Britain absent from that group? Was it a deliberate choice of the UK Government, or was it a reflection of our threat to leave the European Union in three years’ time?”
“The core fact exposed by the release of documents a few weeks ago and in the Foreign Secretary’s statement today is that advice was given by this country in the run-up to an attack on the holiest place in Sikhism. Given that fact, and given the tremendous pain and grief over the broader events of 1984 in India, does the Foreign Secretary understand that there will be calls in the community for an apology or gesture of reconciliation from the Government, and will he give the House his response to those calls? What can the Government do internationally to get to the full truth of this matter, because the British Sikh community feels that that full truth has never been told?”
“It shows that primary school children in my local authority area of Wolverhampton have a lower chance of going to a good or outstanding school than those living anywhere else in England. If that is not a call to action, and a call to arms, I do not know what is. Wolverhampton does have some good and outstanding schools, and some excellent, inspirational teachers. In places, it also has strong leadership that is intolerant of failure. As the Ofsted table starkly illustrates, however, it does not have enough of those things. That means that too many local children are not getting the education they deserve and are being denied the opportunity to make the best of their lives.”
“I very much welcome this debate and the emphasis that my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Tristram Hunt) has placed on teaching standards and quality. Teaching is a tough job, and those who devote their lives to helping children deserve our respect and admiration. I think we all remember the particular teachers who inspired us. I remember Jack McLaughlin, my English teacher at Holyrood secondary school in Glasgow, who taught me more about the love of words than anyone else I have ever met. So, good teaching can be inspiring, but poor teaching leads to lack of opportunity and to unfulfilled lives. Just before Christmas, Ofsted produced its annual report. In it, a table shows the proportion of children in each local authority who go to good or outstanding schools.”
“It writes off the children and gets everyone else off the hook, and that is a dereliction of duty to children who need, more than anyone, the opportunity that a good education brings. I do not believe that children in Wolverhampton are any less able than children from anywhere else. They should never be written off or be told, as I have been told, that “our black country kids are not that academic.” I will never believe or accept that. What are the other elements of a turnaround? We need good leadership. We know that the people who know best about turnarounds are the good leaders already in our schools. We need more of that, and we need the good schools to mentor the struggling ones to help them raise their game.”
“Secondly, we must set this discussion about deprivation and the attainment gap in the right context. There is an attainment gap. Of course teaching kids from a deprived background is tougher than teaching kids from homes full of books and with the social capital to which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central referred. It can never be right to blame deprivation for educational failure. There are plenty of areas in the Ofsted report with deprivation levels as high as, or higher than, Wolverhampton that have significantly better achievement. Apart from the Ofsted table, there is another more fundamental reason why we cannot use deprivation as an excuse—it absolves us of the responsibility to act.”
“I am coming on to what I would like from Ofsted in that situation. Nothing is more important for opportunity and social mobility than a good education. Mediocrity, low ambitions and a weary acceptance of failure cut off opportunity for young people. We need a strong determined response to this report and its verdict. What should the elements of that be? First, there is no point in shooting the messenger. We cannot confront a problem if we deny that we have one. We must accept the verdict and vow never to be in such a position again. Improving education standards should be accepted as the single biggest challenge facing the city. It should become a cause that unites everyone—schools, the local authority, the university, employers and the local MPs.”
“I have already arranged to meet the regional head of Ofsted to discuss the matter in the next couple of weeks and I know that relations between the Department and Ofsted have been damaged by the events of the past week. I want the Minister to address this specific point: will she and the Secretary of State back Ofsted in a role that involves not just passing verdicts on schools but helping areas such as the one I represent to turn the situation around and improve opportunities for the future?”
“The future landscape will inevitably be a more varied one, and we must learn from the turnaround experience elsewhere. My fourth point is directed at the Minister so that she addresses it in her wind-up. Areas that accept a verdict, such as that of Ofsted, as I have urged Wolverhampton to do, also need help in turning things around. There is not unlimited school improvement and turnaround capacity in every part of the country. As I said earlier, we should not shoot the messenger. However, it is not enough simply to pass damning verdicts and then walk away. If Wolverhampton responds by saying that it accepts the verdict in the Ofsted report, understands that there is a problem and wants to turn things around, the Department for Education and Ofsted have a duty to play their part in helping the city to do that.”
“I agree. The previous Government had a black country challenge for precisely those reasons, and the Secretary of State did not continue with it, which is a great shame given the support that we need. Apart from good leadership in schools, the second thing we need is that the local authority function to challenge standards and improve must be carried out with passion and a determined focus on school improvement. Thirdly, we need curiosity and a willingness to learn from what has worked elsewhere. If that means changing the way we do things, then so be it. The only vested interest that matters in this is the vested interest of the pupils themselves. Nothing should get in the way of improving the opportunities for them. The school environment has changed. The clock cannot be rewound.”
“I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his intervention, and as he has expressed his admiration I would encourage him to tell his Department and those who work for him of that too. I believe that we should respond to the report and not with the usual series of excuses for educational failure, but by saying that the only interest that matters is that of the pupils themselves. They deserve the best, they deserve the highest ambitions and they must never be written off. I hope that Wolverhampton is up for the challenge, but the city will need help to turn around. I hope that the Secretary of State will follow through on what he has said and give us the help we will need.”
“Q12. The Prime Minister will be aware of the grave concern among British Sikhs about the reports in recent days of UK involvement in Operation Blue Star to storm the Golden Temple. He will also be aware that the broader events of 1984 in India resulted in the deaths of thousands of innocent Sikhs and that this has left lasting grief and pain in the Sikh community here in the UK and around the world. This is an open wound, which will not heal until the full truth is told. So, on the process that the Prime Minister has set up, will he ensure that there is full disclosure of all Government papers and information from that time and that there is also, following that, a proper statement in the House, where Ministers can be questioned about this?”
“In advance of the summit, the Prime Minister made great play of new rules regarding access to benefits for EU migrant workers. What proportion of claimants for working-age benefits are made up of EU migrant workers?”
“Following on from the previous question, surely the Minister agrees that we can do better than offer people a choice between having their legs broken and interest rates of several thousand per cent. Government Ministers accepted that logic in their recent announcement about an interest rate cap. Surely it is possible to bring in a system that gives some measure of protection to the consumer without driving them into the arms of illegal loan sharks.”
“The Chief Secretary paid tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh South West (Mr Darling). I hope that he will also condemn the stupid, destructive briefing against him that has been coming out of the Government in recent days. I do not know whether the Chief Secretary has ever seen the film, “Groundhog Day”, but if he has not, I recommend that he go home and watch it later. Infrastructure spending fell by 3.7% in the third quarter compared with a year ago, the CBI has said that progress is too slow, and most of the projects in the top 40 list were begun under the Labour Government. Can he give us a simple answer to the simple question why we should believe this statement any more than those that he gives every year at this time?”
“In many parts of the black country, specifically around the Bilston and Bradley areas of my constituency, it is common to see horses grazing on abandoned former industrial land or small plots of common land. The state of the horses varies. Sometimes they are in a decent state and looked after, but sometimes they are not and are in a very poor state. Sometimes they are tethered, sometimes they are not. Sometimes they can break free and be found wandering round housing estates, going into people’s gardens and causing at least a nuisance and in some cases real danger.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Hollobone. I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on securing such an important debate. I would also like to explain that I might not be able to stay for the full length of the debate, as I face the not unusual House of Commons problem of having to be in two places at the same time. However, I would like to use the minutes that you have allotted me, Mr Hollobone, to make a few points. As the hon. Member for East Hampshire rightly said, although the problem of abandoned horses might be thought predominantly to affect rural areas, that is certainly not the whole case. I can assure the House that it is a significant problem in some urban areas, such as my own black country constituency.”
“Member for East Hampshire raised; and removing the problem of proving ownership—in fact, why not reverse the burden of proof and ask those who claim ownership of the horse to prove it, rather than charging local authorities with running around trying to find out who owns it? The changes should also include improving animal welfare and giving confidence to the public. The problem is growing, and may grow further because of what has happened in Wales. The fact that solving it has been too difficult so far should not prevent us from putting our heads together and trying to come up with a better system.”
“Different provisions apply to public and private land, and there are different approaches for the highway or common land. All that needs to be straightened out and simplified. I do not know whether what the Welsh Assembly Government are doing is perfect, but at least animal welfare groups, landowners and the general public have welcomed it. The Minister should endeavour to clarify and simplify the law to make it easier to remove the animals. The simplification should include introducing easier powers of removal from common land; minimising cost and delay in dealing with some of the issues that the hon.”
“It cannot be right that those who are empowered to deal with the situation, albeit on an imperfect and incomplete legal basis, should be inhibited from carrying through their powers by fear of reprisals. We would not tolerate that state of affairs in other walks of life, and we should not tolerate it in the one we are debating. The effect of what I have outlined is a problem that has gone on for years without a proper solution and without anyone getting a proper grip on it. It is a significant animal welfare problem that causes the public disturbance and distress. We cannot go on as we are. What, then, is to be done? The current law is inadequate. There is a right of removal under the Animal Welfare Act 2006, but only if the horses are in poor or severe condition, which is not always the case.”
“I am not making a partisan point, but we know that money is tight for councils. Wolverhampton city council has one animal welfare officer, who works part time. She is responsible for pet shops, domestically kept animals, the few farms in the city council area and the huge issue of abandoned or illegally tethered horses. I spoke to her earlier today, and by lunch time she had had three reports from the public of concern about abandoned horses. To expect her, on her own and working part time, to deal effectively with the issue alongside her other responsibilities is clearly absurd, and it will not work. Even for officers who have enough time, another issue is at play, which we should be honest about: fear. Although the horse owners may not want to declare themselves, those involved in removing horses fear reprisals by them.”
“The part of my constituency that is most affected by the problem is close to the boundaries of Wolverhampton, Dudley and Sandwell. It is quite easy for horses to be moved, and that makes enforcement more difficult. Sandwell is next to Wolverhampton, and its council estimates that the cost of a removal—for bureaucracy and transport, as well as legal and animal welfare costs—can be up to £1,500. Some councils have tried to tackle the problem by providing grazing space and charging owners to put horses there. For responsible owners, that may work. However, irresponsible owners currently get a free good by putting horses where they should not; they are unlikely to queue up to pay £10 a week or more for what they currently get for nothing. Another issue is the resources of local authorities.”
“The first ownership problem is that it is difficult for the authorities to know to whom the horses belong. The other problem is that they are moved around at short notice, leaving a place and returning to it, which makes it difficult to track them. Another aspect of the ownership problem is that it is not clear who, in law, is responsible for policing the issue, removing horses and dealing with the problem. The police tend not to get involved unless the horse is on the highway, and practice among local authorities varies greatly. Some try to tackle the problem with energy and resources, but some do very little. The owners are aware of that and can take advantage of the situation by moving the horses around from one piece of open ground to another. Horse owners know that councils’ attitudes differ in that way.”
“The hon. Gentleman is right that sometimes the horses die, particularly in winter when they are not fed during harsh weather. The problem is difficult to tackle on two different levels because of what I call the ownership issue. By ownership, I mean that it is difficult to establish who owns the horse. Even if you can establish that, it is difficult to get that person to accept responsibility for the horse’s welfare. In theory, under the law, horses should be microchipped and have passports that enable them to be identified, but the Minister will be aware that the law is routinely breached and ignored. I have been told by the animal welfare officer at Wolverhampton city council that, in her estimate, the vast majority of abandoned horses in my constituency have no microchip. The system is therefore simply not operating.”
“I thank the Minister for giving way; I know that he has limited time. He cites all this legislation. We know that it exists, but it is not working. Does he believe that it is? If it is, why do we have this problem?”
“Children need a good start in life, and parents need help. It is time that we made that a much higher priority.”
“There is an urgent need for more affordable places and for the same amount of national policy attention and energy to go into child care as has gone into higher education over the years. The truth is that child care has not received such attention and energy. When the costs of higher education go up, we often see students marching on the street. I confess that, when I was a student, I marched on the street for various causes. If the parents of one, two and three-year-olds were not so busy looking after their children and having to cope with the choices that we are talking about today, they would be marching on the street too. Parents need our help. They need the same amount of policy attention as has gone into the costs at another point in young people’s lives. That is the priority that we should give to child care.”
“The costs are now similar. A full-time nursery place in Wolverhampton costs £8,000, and studying at university costs a similar amount. The difference is that the further south someone goes, even if they study at one of the best universities in the country, the cost of a nursery place becomes higher than the cost of a student place. For higher education students, there is a system of subsidised loans, with repayment terms contingent on earnings and forgiveness of the debt after a number of years if they do not earn enough. No such help exists for working parents, who are paying similar, and in some cases higher, costs. Working parents are expected to meet all those costs up front. They get almost no help other than a little bit of tax relief at the margins, which has a hugely damaging effect on the labour market and our economy.”
“The offer was introduced by the previous Labour Government, and it makes a really big difference by giving important help to parents. Even I, as a member of that Government, do not pretend that the offer is the whole answer. The offer is often made in five chunks of three hours, which does not allow someone in a part-time job to rely solely on that child care; they still have to top up with other paid-for hours. What we need is child care built around the working day, which would be most valuable for working parents. The 15-hour offer is valuable and important, but I do not pretend that it is the full answer. I am often struck by the comparison between how we fund early years and how we fund higher education. The time spent by children in nursery and by students doing a degree is pretty similar—typically three years in both cases.”
“Facing such costs, mothers end up either working for very little—often because they fear that years out of the labour market will make it difficult for them to go back and that they will lose all sorts of opportunities—or being forced to give up their job simply because they cannot afford the child care. That is a huge waste of talent and experience. If capable people who are willing to work cannot do so because the costs of child care prove an insurmountable barrier, we have to care and do something about it because the country is losing out by forcing women into that choice. This has gone on for far too long. I expect the Minister will stand up at the end of our debate and extol the importance of the 15-hour offer for three and four-year-olds and tell us how it has been extended to some two-year-olds.”
“It has to be remembered that that is £8,000 a year in a constituency where full-time average salaries are just over £20,000 a year. Even though child care is cheaper outside the capital, it is still a huge proportion of a full-time salary. No wonder that mums, particularly mums with two or more young children, are quickly forced into a choice between working and looking after the children. It is sometimes dads, but mostly it is mums who are taking longer parental leave and making that choice. Some parents may want, and are able to afford, to stay at home, which is their choice, but most families need two salaries to survive.”