Sir Stephen Timms
MP for East Ham · Labour · United Kingdom
“I agree with the hon. Gentleman. If he would like to send me details of that particular case, I will happily look into it. On the subject of people with hearing impairments, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Women and Equalities and I will be meeting the British Sign Language Advisory Board this afternoon.”
“Better outcomes require early identification and support for girls and young women with special educational needs, including dyslexia. That is the aim of the SEND reforms and the development of national inclusion standards.”
“Autistic people and people with ADHD have been struggling to get the right support at the right time. Recommendations from Professor Karen Guldberg’s neurodivergence task and finish group directly informed the SEND reforms that were published earlier this year.”
“The Equality Act 2010 places a duty on public bodies to make reasonable adjustments, so that disabled people are not put at a disadvantage by accessibility challenges.”
“The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. This benefit is there to contribute to the additional costs of disability. Too often, what has happened—my hon.”
“I think we can take the hon. Member’s question as a tacit recognition that in 14 years the previous Government should have done something to fix these problems. The steering group is clear that the provision of cash to meet the additional costs of disability is vital.”
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“Today’s Order Paper shows a written statement on the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, although I do not think it has yet been published online. The Education, Skills and the Economy Sub-Committee has already expressed regret at the closure of the commission. Will the Leader of the House join me in commending its achievements, since its establishment in 2008, under its two chairmen, Sir Mike Rake and Sir Charlie Mayfield? In view of its record of independent analysis and advice to successive Governments, is it not a shame that the enthusiasm for independent analysis and advice of the Government who set up the commission is not shared by the current Government?”
“The proposed expansion of London City airport, a wholly private £314 million investment, will increase airport capacity in London and create hundreds of new jobs. When will the Secretary of State announce his planning decision on the application?”
“23. Will the Minister assure us that the Foreign Secretary or his successor will attend the peace conference that the French are planning later this year?”
“I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman’s case. A lot of my constituents—families with grandparents outside the UK in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh—will be encouraged by what he is saying. However, he seems to envisage a difficult role being placed on headteachers. Is he suggesting that any family could take their child out of school for a week or a couple of weeks if that works for them? Should there not be some encouragement for families to keep their children in school if that is at all possible?”
“I agree that Pension Wise is providing a good service, but does the Minister acknowledge that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves) pointed out, take-up of the service has been very low? In my area there is certainly evidence of skilled advisers sitting around twiddling their thumbs quite a lot of the time because the demand has not yet come through.”
“I am grateful to the Minister for giving way again. As he said, Pension Wise is a voluntary service. Has he noticed the point made by the Association of British Insurers that guidance for people transacting in the secondary annuity market, where the pitfalls are particularly troubling, should be mandatory?”
“I thank the Minister for that answer. May I raise one other issue with him? The ABI says that it “would like to see the new guidance arrangements enhanced so that providers who want to block transfers to protect their customers (because of concern about the receiving scheme) can refer their customers to the new body to receive impartial guidance on the risks from transferring funds to potential scams and fraudulent investments.” Is that proposal from the ABI also something that he is reflecting on?”
“As the Secretary of State knows, there are already examples of academies ignoring the concerns and views of parents, and removing the requirement to have a parent-governor or parent-governors will make matters worse. The White Paper proposes that parents should be able to petition to have their academy moved from an under-performing multi-academy trust to a different MAT, will she tell us how that will work?”
“The Chancellor gained his office because he promised in 2010 that he would eradicate the deficit by 2015. He failed on that, as we always knew he would, and he is now giving up on achieving that aim by 2020 or indeed by any specific date. Was not his long-term economic plan, which he has now dumped, only ever just a vacuous slogan?”
“Does the Prime Minister accept that maintaining very strong UK participation in Europe-wide scientific research collaboration needs to be an important strand of the work he has described going forward?”
“Our aid has made an important contribution to bringing that about.”
“It reflects great credit on Bangladesh, with enrolment among girls at a much increased level, as well as among boys, but British aid has made an important contribution to that change. In February—I am sure other hon. Members have had similar experiences—in Dhaka I visited a little, one-room school run by that remarkable organisation BRAC, which receives a great deal of support from DFID. I met hopeful, eager and enthusiastic primary schoolchildren, optimistically looking forward to their future, which underlined for me just how important the transformation that British aid has contributed to over the past 20 years is. I have no idea what happened to the boy whom I met 20 years ago—rightly, he might have his own children now, but, if he has, they can expect a much better start in life than he had.”
“I am pleased to be serving under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson, and I congratulate the hon. Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double) on his introductory speech. I first visited Bangladesh 20 years ago. On that occasion, at a charitable health facility that someone had taken me too, I met a lad probably aged nine or 10, literally dressed in rags. It was explained to me that he was not able to go to school because he had to earn a living and worked at the local hotel. At the time, I think only about one half of primary-age schoolchildren in Bangladesh were in school; today, the equivalent figure is more than 90%. A remarkable transformation has been achieved over the past 20 years.”
“I would welcome that, as I welcome the broad support across the Chamber for that commitment. It is interesting to reflect on the reasons for that cross-party support for the 0.7% target, which I think go back to the Jubilee 2000 campaign in the run-up to the millennium, and the tremendous public support for Britain being more generous to the poorest countries in the world. That was then renewed and strengthened by the Make Poverty History campaign in 2005—the great rally in Edinburgh addressed by Nelson Mandela, with the summit at Gleneagles, chaired by Tony Blair, whose decisions made an important contribution.”
“People sometimes say that the Churches never achieve much anymore; in this instance, the Churches achieved a huge amount, and it is important to recognise the source and strength of the existing consensus.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right about that. During those campaigns, I remember that a Treasury Minister turned up to work one morning to find the Treasury surrounded by campaigners, arm in arm all the way around the building. They inundated the Treasury with postcards with £1 coins sellotaped to the back of them, one of which we worked out had been sent in by Gordon Brown’s mother. The organisers of the two campaigns—Jubilee 2000 and Make Poverty History—estimated that about 80% of the people who supported the campaigns and did those things were from the Churches. That is the reason for this cross-party consensus. It is a remarkable example.”
“I hope that the support rightly and encouragingly expressed in the debate will enable the House to agree my right hon. Friend’s proposal.”
“My hon. Friend is completely right. I welcome the progress, but a huge amount more remains to be done on that, as well as on education. More than 120 million primary-age children around the world are still not in school, with more girls out of school than boys. A great deal more is still to be done. Finally, although I welcome today’s cross-party support for the 0.7% aid commitment, I hope that there will also be support throughout the House for the amendment tabled to the Finance Bill by my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) that would effect country-by-country reporting—the arrangement under which each year international companies would publish the profits made and the tax paid in each country. Years ago, I worked on that idea at the Treasury, and I welcome the growing momentum behind it now.”
“This time, I think the Minister is on to something. The UK is Europe’s leading digital economy, and we have the most to gain from the digital single market. That is why 70% of techUK members and 96% of the members of the Creative Industries Federation want us to remain in the European Union. Will the Minister have a go at persuading his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State how damaging it would be for digital jobs in the UK if we left the EU?”
“The Secretary of State chided my hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Owen Smith) for the tone of his opening remarks, but does he not recognise that the organisations that represent disabled people are unanimously opposed to the scale of the cuts to support that his Government have introduced?”
“I applaud the aspiration for consensus, which the Secretary of State has now set out a couple of times in his speech. Does he not recognise, however, that he will not achieve a consensus against a backdrop of such huge cuts in support for disabled people? The Chancellor tried that again in the most recent Budget. While the Government are cutting support so much, the Secretary of State will not find the consensus that he rightly wants to achieve.”
“It is a concern not just of Hitachi but of any non-European company that has its European headquarters in the UK. The UK is much the most attractive location for them currently, and they would be in great difficulty if we left the European Union. Has the Department made an assessment of what that group of employers contributes and will contribute in future to UK employment, which would be at risk if we left the EU?”
“Does my hon. Friend share the concern of those who are worried that the Government’s 3 million apprenticeships target will be achieved only if the quality of what is offered in those apprenticeships is diminished?”
“It was our understanding that the Government were going to publish a skills White Paper, but that appears to have been downgraded to a skills plan in the documentation related to the Queen’s Speech. Has that change been made, and if so, why?”
“Areas identified by Ofsted as having problems with low educational standards include areas where most of the schools have already become academies. It would be helpful if there were a panacea, such as academisation or some other reorganisation, to overcome the problem of underperforming schools, but there is not; raising standards is a long, tough haul. Ministers are looking for a shortcut, but there is not one. To quote the NAHT again: “Targeted support is what’s needed, rather than forced, top-down reorganisation”.”
“The National Association of Head Teachers said of that declared aim of the Bill that “it will mean that good and outstanding schools can still be made to convert, regardless of the professional judgement of school leaders, the opposition of parents and the best interests of local communities.” The Government ought to listen to headteachers, parents and local communities, rather than continuing with their view that every school should become an academy, regardless of whether it is in its interest. Academisation can be a good thing—there are plenty of examples of where it has turned around a school’s fortunes—but forced academisation is not. Ministers have not been able to provide any evidence that academisation necessarily raises standards, because, in reality, it does not.”
“He is the Secretary of State’s Parliamentary Private Secretary and he assured the listeners to the programme that it was all absolutely fine, but I am delighted that the Secretary of State recognised that I was right about this and her PPS was not. I pay tribute to her for at least executing the U-turn with commendable speed and not dragging out the agony over a long period, as we have sometimes seen in the past. I do not think it was ever her idea that we should force all schools to become academies by 2022. I am glad she has dropped it. It is disappointing that the Bill still has the aim, according to the documentation alongside the Queen’s Speech, to move towards a system where all schools are academies. Ministers really should be listening, not least to headteachers on this very important subject.”
“I am very grateful to have the opportunity to speak in the debate. I am pleased to follow the Chair of the Education Committee. I agree with much of what he said—on our membership of the EU and on his invitation to the Secretary of State to publish the education for all Bill in time for the Committee to undertake pre-legislative scrutiny. That would be very valuable. It is on the education for all Bill that I want to focus my remarks. I start by warmly welcoming the abandonment of the pledge of universal academisation by 2022. That is a very welcome U-turn. I am pleased that the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) is in his place. He and I had a debate about this on the radio. I made the point that it was clear there was not the support on the Conservative Benches to get the proposed legislation through the House.”
“Ministers seem to have given exclusive access to their deliberations on this topic to a group of largely rural authorities, and I am worried that we might end up with an unfair formula as a result. In particular, no London authorities at all were included in that group. I am particularly anxious that the high rate of pupil mobility in some authorities should be included in the formula.”
“When she came before the Committee, she also recognised the importance of parents being able to secure an academy’s transfer to a different trust, where the existing trust has demonstrably failed to deliver adequate standards and improvement in a particular academy, as is starting to happen in some instances. If, with the appropriate standards, parents were allowed to do that, it would be an important protection. She fully recognised the value of such a provision in her evidence to the Committee. Will that be in the Bill as well? Finally, the Bill will also deliver the national school funding formula. The House recently discussed the impact of that on schools in London in a debate initiated by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill) and my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed).”
“One primary headteacher told me that he did not want to academise specifically because the multi-academy trust his school would likely join would not allow the degree of autonomy for his school that his local education authority does. We are starting to see some bad old practices creeping into education administration through multi-academy trusts, and the Sutton Trust is absolutely right to point out that the speed of their expansion makes the problem worse. I welcome the Secretary of State’s assurance to the Select Committee that multi-academy trusts should be allowed to expand only when they have a track record of success and improvement at their existing academies. I hope that that will be reflected in the Bill, when it is published, and that she will tell us that that will be the case.”
“Everyone in the House will recognise that it is difficult to maintain good standards while managing rapid expansion, and that problem will get a lot worse if, as appears to be the Government’s intention, many hundreds and thousands of schools are forced into multi-academy trusts over the next few years. It is worrying that we are starting to see some of the practices we used to deprecate in poor local education authorities cropping up in some of the multi-academy trusts. Under the reforms of the last 20 years, local education authorities have been transformed. Maintained schools now enjoy a high degree of autonomy, whereas academies are frequently not allowed very much autonomy from their multi-academy trust.”
“I would be grateful if she could make sure that her Department delivers on the commitment she made. As the Chair of the Select Committee pointed out, the role of multi-academy trusts will be very important. The Sutton Trust has pointed out that, on achievement among disadvantaged pupils, some multi-academy trusts are doing an outstanding job and delivering very high standards but that the majority are not. In fact, its analysis shows that the majority are doing less well than the average across the school system as a whole—they are underperforming—and a big part of the reason is that many have expanded too fast.”
“My hon. Friend is right about what happened in east London, where we have seen a remarkable transformation of educational standards over the last 20 years owing to the consistent application of the tools he identifies, including academisation, in some cases, as well as other levers. I am worried that that progress could now be at risk, but I will say a little about that in a moment. There are costs to academisation, including legal costs. When the Government’s policy was one of forced academisation, we had a debate about how much it would cost, and the Secretary of State told the Select Committee that she would let it have the Department’s robust estimates of the cost of academisation. I checked this morning but I understand that the information has not been provided yet.”
“The Secretary of State spoke in the Education Committee about allowing parents to initiate the process of changing from one trust to another if things go wrong with the original trust. Will that provision be in the Bill?”
“We were told at one stage that 1 million people would be claiming universal credit by April 2014; two years later, we still have not reached a quarter of that number. Things are a little unclear, but it now looks as though the current plan has transition complete by 2022, which is five years later than originally announced.”
“Gentleman is not entitled to very much credit for the way that he implemented universal credit—the Department got itself into a terrible mess, and the Cabinet Office had to step in to sort out a looming IT disaster. The result is that universal credit is now running extremely late. On the original timetable, set out in 2010, transition from the old benefits system to universal credit would now be almost finished, and the whole thing would be complete by next year. In fact, implementation of universal credit is really only just beginning. According to the most recent figures, from March, 225,000 people are receiving universal credit, of whom almost 88,000 are in work. The initial plan was hopelessly unrealistic, as was pointed out by the Opposition at the time. Unfortunately the Government ignored those warnings.”
“The Opposition have always recognised that there are significant potential benefits from universal credit: simplifying the system, merging six different benefits into one and, in particular, making it much easier for people to work out the effect on their financial position if they were to move into work—that is difficult at the moment but under universal credit should be simpler. The former Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Mr Duncan Smith), who of course resigned from the Government after the Budget fiasco on disability benefits, is entitled to a good deal of credit for coming up with the original idea and driving it through while he was in the Government. Unfortunately, however, the right hon.”
“Once universal credit is in place, it is estimated that about half of all the children in the UK will be in households that are entitled to it at any given time, so it will have a huge impact on children and one that it is important for us to scrutinise. I am pleased to see my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Nick Thomas-Symonds) and the Minister for Employment in their places. I have always enjoyed debating these matters with the Minister, but I often wish she felt as willing to disagree with her right hon. and hon. Friends on her ministerial brief as she is free to disagree with the Prime Minister about Europe. However, I fear I may be disappointed when we come to the end of the debate. I hope that the debate can shed some light on the impact of universal credit on child poverty around the UK.”
“I beg to move, That this House notes that, while some aspects of the universal credit system are likely better to support families with children, some groups of children and families are particularly likely to lose out, and many may struggle with elements of the new approaches to payment and administration; further notes that there has been no revised impact assessment to take account of significant cuts to the work allowance; and calls on the Government to re-assess the effect of its policy on universal credit in light of those cuts and to ensure that the number of children in poverty, and particularly those in working families, falls as a result of the introduction of the new universal credit system. I am extremely grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving us the opportunity to debate this subject.”
“No, I do not think that that is fair. There is now a large and growing group of people who are significantly worse off than they would have been because they have the misfortune of being in an area where universal credit is paid instead of tax credits. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to draw attention to that. When the universal credit project started in 2011, we were told that it would be completed in six years. Today, five years later, we are being told that it will be completed in another six years, by 2022. Five years into this initiative, its expected completion has been delayed by five years. We are no nearer the end now than we were told we were five years ago.”
“Universal credit is now set to be a pale shadow of what Ministers initially announced. The losers, both from the cuts made to the original proposals and from flaws in the original design that have never satisfactorily been addressed, will above all be the nation’s children. The Resolution Foundation has explained the impact of the £3 billion cut announced last summer: “As initially designed, UC gave broad parity with the current tax credit system…Now, UC will…be less generous than the tax credit system for working families.” That is what gives rise to the anomaly and unfairness to which my hon. Friend the Member for Neath (Christina Rees) drew our attention.”
“Of course that is right. There should have been a sensible timetable and plan from the start. It was pointed out to Ministers that the original plan was unrealistic, but unfortunately they took no notice of that. It is not just the timetable that has changed, however, but the substance. What is being implemented is now significantly different from what it was originally going to be. A report published last week by the Resolution Foundation has made that very clear; I will refer to that report a number of times in my speech, but at this point I will quote one observation from its executive summary, which says that “the latest series of cuts—announced at last year’s Summer Budget—risk leaving UC as little more than a vehicle for rationalising benefit administration and cutting costs to the Exchequer.” That is at the heart of this debate.”
“But the equivalent cuts to universal credit—at that time, claimed by hardly anyone in work—went ahead, so the Chancellor’s cuts to tax credits will, over time, be implemented by stealth. Working families on universal credit rather than tax credits saw a big income cut last month, as my hon. Friend the Member for Neath has already pointed out.”
“The 2011 impact assessment, which I hope the Minister will update, said that universal credit would reduce child poverty by 300,000. A written answer in January 2013 gave the lower figure of 150,000, half the initial figure of 300,000. We have not had an update since the really big cuts to universal credit announced last summer. That is what I am hoping the Minister will give us. All of us will recall the furore when the Chancellor announced swingeing tax credit cuts last summer. I pay tribute to those Government Members who, unlike the Chancellor, grasped what those cuts would mean to many hard-working families struggling to make ends meet, such as the family of an ambulance driver earning £20,000 a year, who stood to lose a full £2,000 from the cuts. Thankfully, the Chancellor was forced to abandon those plans.”
“My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is a shocking aspect of what has always been proposed with universal credit—the support for disabled children is being drastically reduced. I hope we will have time to discuss that. Will the Minister publish an updated version of the impact report for universal credit that was published alongside the 2011 Welfare Reform Bill, which introduced it? I will come back to that, because what is now being introduced is certainly not what the previous Secretary of State had in mind when he launched the universal credit initiative six years ago. Throughout the last Parliament, Ministers repeatedly said that they were committed to eliminating child poverty, and they cited the introduction of universal credit as key to helping to achieve that.”
“That was spelt out by the Resolution Foundation in its report, which states: “These cuts don’t just affect incomes, they also undermine the scheme’s incentives structure… Returns to entering work are much lower than anticipated under the earlier design of UC.” It warns that parents—particularly lone parents—will find the incentives to work more hours very weak, and many will reduce their hours for a very small income drop.”
“The Child Poverty Action Group highlights problems for lone parents and states that “lone parents will be hit particularly hard, and stand to lose…around £554 per year if renting, or over £2,600 per year if not…The children of single parents are already at twice the risk of living in poverty as those in couple families, and this will exacerbate their disadvantage”. Cuts to universal credit will drastically reduce the income of working families, and just as big a worry is that incentives for unemployed parents to get into work will be much weaker under current proposals for universal credit than originally intended.”
“The future trajectory for pensioner poverty suggests that it will not rise and will carry on at around 17%. By contrast, child poverty will rocket back up to the levels of 1997. Under the IFS projection, the rate of child poverty in families with more than three children will be more than 30% by 2020. The huge cuts announced to universal credit will come about by reducing the income of working families with children—a lot of families will be much worse off not only compared with what they would have received under the tax credit system, but in comparison with what they would have received if the original universal credit proposals had gone ahead.”
“The statutory target enshrined in the Child Poverty Act 2010—which I took through the House with all-party support—was 10% by 2020, but after 2010 the level of child poverty flatlined for a number of years, and it is now starting to rise. Under the IFS projection, by 2020 it will be virtually back up to the catastrophic level inherited by the Blair Government in 1997. As the IFS states in its report “the projected increases over the next few years simply reverse the large falls seen under Labour.” It is interesting to contrast that with what the IFS says about pensioner poverty. Like child poverty, pensioner poverty in 1997 was at a high level—around 27%—but the policies of the Labour Government reduced that to around 17%, and that level remained fairly stable throughout the previous Parliament from 2010 to 2015.”