Damian Hinds
MP for East Hampshire · Conservative · United Kingdom
“There are moments in debates like the one we have had today that are difficult to sit through and listen to, but it is the most immense privilege to be a Member of Parliament and to hear some of these testimonies.”
“Today is once again a day of heavy responsibility for all of us to decide on what we in this House call “conscience issues”. Many of the people who we represent hold strong and immutable views, and we hear from them. However, we represent many others who hold much more nuanced views and we are less likely to hear from them.”
“Members who support the Bill should not have their motives questioned, Members who oppose the Bill should not have their motives questioned, and Members who have reached a different conclusion from one they reached at an earlier stage should not have their judgment questioned either.”
“We have heard from royal colleges and other professional bodies, many of whom have a neutral stance on the principle but raise significant questions about particular aspects. We know from Ministers that there would need to be some reprioritisation of NHS resources, but we do not know the extent.”
“If there is the prospect of the Parliament Acts being used, that would increase the importance and the salience of the text as it is now. Today, it is reasonable and entirely in order for hon. Members to consider information that is available now that was not available in those previous parliamentary deliberation.”
“The Government have said, rightly, that the time taken to implement other schemes is not directly comparable, because none are as in this Bill. This is a free vote on a matter of conscience—there is no party line on either side of the Chamber. No one, I suggest, finds this issue easy.”
The complete record
Every one of 5,056 lines we hold for Damian Hinds, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 18 of 102.
“Q Dame Rachel, can you talk a little about the register of children not in school? What is the irreducible core of what we need to know and what information should be gathered in those cases? Dame Rachel de Souza : We have always been worried, and successive Governments have felt that maybe there was a need for this—I think you, Damian, did the first consultation on it a long while back—and there has been a debate going on about whether we should have a register of children not in school. I am delighted to see it in this Bill. The number of children missing from education is getting worse. We know that post-lockdown, there was a massive rise in children persistently absent and severely absent, and a massive number of children missing from education. I have made it my business to look into who those children are; I did that in 2021.”
“I think that there is good in that, but speaking as HMCI, as a previous chief executive of one of the largest trusts, as a headteacher and as a teacher for 30 years, I would always want to give headteachers the flexibility to do what is right for their children, as long as it ultimately delivers the broad and balanced education that you would expect all children to receive.”
“Q Thank you for being with us today, Sir Martyn. When your HMIs find academies or academy trusts significantly deviating from the national curriculum, what are the usual reasons and in what ways do they deviate? Sir Martyn Oliver : Actually, the education inspection framework that we currently use significantly reduced the deviation of academies because it set out the need to carry out a broad and balanced curriculum. That was interesting, because it was not what was set out in the articles of the individual academies and those freedoms, so Ofsted has been in tension with those articles for quite some time. The Bill puts everyone on the same footing.”
“Q When they do deviate, what do the reasons tend to be? Sir Martyn Oliver : The most typical reason is a focus on the core standards of English and mathematics. We often see that, but I am afraid that in some cases it goes beyond improving core standards: there are some that hot-house to the exclusion of being broad and balanced. It is important that a headteacher always retains a broad overview of a child to make sure that children get the core standards for their future, but also a well-rounded education in total.”
“Q What would be the impact, in the framework and in the inspection outcome, if the school were not following a broad and balanced curriculum? Lee Owston: That would currently come under our quality-of-education judgment. It would not be seen as good if we could not, through the evidence we collect, determine a broad and balanced curriculum for all children. Sir Martyn Oliver: I am about to consult on a measure that will allow more nuance and better identify that.”
“Q Finally, on the different subject of elective home education, quite a lot of detail is proposed in the Bill about the way the register of children not in school will work, including some requirements on the registration of providers of education to those individuals, whether that be online education or some other form of tutoring. How much consultation has there has been with Ofsted about the drawing up of those provisions? Sir Martyn Oliver: We have been involved in that for quite some time, even with previous Governments, whether it was about online education or all these aspects. I think that all our intelligence, for years, has carried forward into this Bill.”
“Mark Russell: That is a very good question. I understand why the Government have taken the decision they have; I really do. Particularly in a primary school, you want to be as universal as possible.”
“Q I want to come back to breakfasts, if I may. I think this is a question for Mark. The Bill legislates for universal breakfast provision at primary school, but is silent on what happens at secondary school. We do not know what will happen. The Government have been asked, including by Government Back Benchers, to extend the provision to secondary school. They have made the point, which is not an unreasonable point, that you have to make choices in a resource-constrained world, and their choice is to go universal at primary, but with quite a small per child, per day cash allowance. Recognising the resource-constrained world, would you make that choice if you were in the same position, or would you say it was better to target according to how deprived an area is—not by individual child, but by area—regardless of the age of the child?”
“It would be the whole school, as it is now under the school breakfast programme. Mark Russell: Yes. With limited resources, I would probably have targeted it more at those most in need and included secondary school children in that mix. We will continue talking to the Government about secondary school children; I am deeply concerned about them as well.”
“I have not seen anything that has translated into a direct change in practice at this juncture, but we think it is a really important area of work. We think that there is potential to do more in that space, by looking at what might be described as an MHST+ type model.”
“Q This is probably for Lynn or Katharine. In terms of trying to address mental health issues as they arise early on, before they become a crisis, following the change in Government, are you aware of any change in the approach towards mental health support in schools through mental health support teams for clusters of schools? Lynn Perry: I have not yet seen any change on the ground. We deliver a number of mental health support teams in schools. We consider them to be an effective way to reach children and young people at an early stage, and to intervene before they reach crisis point. There are often relationships of trust. Quite frequently, people know their children very well within the school context and can manage that supported and enabled engagement with provision in schools.”
“I promise you, Mr Betts, that it will be relevant to the Bill. As Nigel I think rather charitably said, his schools would be “asked” to sign up to something without knowing what the something is—but I do not think they are going to be asked, Nigel; I think they are going to be told. You also said that we hope—I include myself in that “we”—that it will be a broad framework, which will allow everyone to do their distinctive thing, as they do today. That is a hope, but we do not know. For example, there is a movement to rebrand religious education as “world views”—does that make you nervous? Nigel Genders: I am in danger of getting into the curriculum discussion, rather than the—”
“Paul Barber: Maintained schools have to follow the national curriculum, and over half of ours are maintained schools currently. We have a very rich religious education curriculum. Recently, we published a curriculum directory, which I can share with the Committee if interested. Our position on RE is also well set out in our evidence to the curriculum and assessment review—again, we can give copies to the Committee if that would be helpful.”
“I will, absolutely. Do you feel any nervousness or concern about the removal of the safety valve that says academy schools can deviate from the national curriculum? Nigel Genders: With all the discussion about the curriculum and the national curriculum, RE is part of the core curriculum; it is not in the national curriculum at the moment. Levelling the playing field up or whichever way you want to do it, there is a requirement to teach a breadth of RE within that curriculum as a core subject, but it is not defined in the national curriculum. We are happy with that position but, either way, the important thing is that we enable a broad, rich and holistic curriculum to develop—for the reason of behaviour that Neil mentioned as much as anything. We want children to enjoy coming to school, and the curriculum is a fundamental part of that.”
“Q RE is not the only sensitive subject; there is also English literature, history or RSHE. My question had a religious bent to it, but it was really about taking away that safety valve and that ability of academy trusts to say, “We are not going to follow precisely what has been set out.” Nigel Genders: I think our point is that we would like to see that flexibility within the national curriculum available to everybody. I am very much in favour of levelling up, as long as the curriculum gives the space to do that.”
“In terms of the directive power, my understanding is that the position in VA schools remains the same, and that it is academies that will have a direction-making power similar to that which already applies to voluntary aided schools.”
“Q We have just talked a little about the admissions arrangements for VA and VC schools. You have also alluded to the fact that rolls are falling in many places—they are falling initially mostly in primary, but that will feed through. Are you concerned about the more directive nature of what will be available to councils and the position that that would put your schools in, particularly voluntary aided schools? On the question of new schools, as you rightly pointed out, Paul, it has always been possible to open a VA school—it is not a very well-known fact that some VA schools have opened. With this Bill, do you think it is more or less likely that in the near future you will be able to open more Catholic schools? Paul Barber: From what I can see, I do not think it is any more or less likely.”
“Having some kind of regulation of schools’ published admissions numbers is quite helpful in ensuring that that works smoothly, because if you plan it and three schools then arbitrarily decide to increase their published admission number, that creates some real problems locally with place planning. Nigel Genders: We would agree with that. Not to rehearse all that Paul has just said, but a further point is that when it comes to resourcing local authorities to carry out their role in the allocation and direction of schools to take particular pupils, we are really keen to see that done in a way that makes fairness the arbitrating factor to ensure that there is a real fairness of approach. The collaboration between maintained and academy and diocese and local authority very much needs to happen, and we would welcome that.”
“Q Forgive me—we are very short on time. I was talking about a council’s ability to stop a popular school expanding, for example. You both mentioned earlier that you have some really quite popular schools, and now the council will have much more an ability not to let that happen. Paul Barber: Sorry; I misunderstood. You are talking about the restrictions on schools unilaterally changing their published admission number. Our position on that is that it is because of this relationship between admissions and the planning of school places, which must be planned in some way. Our diocese has a long track record of decades of working with its local authorities and with the diocese in the Church of England to work out what is required in the future, and looking forward for places and planning that.”
“That is not true everywhere—Camden Learning, for example, has a very powerful model of school improvement—but overall, we see that the capacity for school improvement is in the trust sector.”
“For the last 20 years, spanning all political Administrat-ions, trusts have been building their school improvement capacity. Again, I would cite Northern Education Trust, which has an incredibly strong model of school improvement, and that is how it has turned around failing schools in the way that it has. The school improvement capacity sits in the trust sector. That is not to cast aspersions on local authorities—I was a director of education in local government for most of my professional life—but over time, as local authority settlements have decreased and local authorities have reduced their school improvement capacity, so we have seen the rise of school improvement capacity in the trust sector.”
“Q Good afternoon. Leora, how central a role would you say that academy trusts have played in school improvement in this country? Is there any reason to believe that the same results could not have been achieved with just some support to the school as previously structured? Leora Cruddas: I am an advocate for academy trusts, because of the clarity of accountability arrangements, the strong strategic governance, and the powerful, purposeful partnership between schools in a single legal entity. If a school is part of an academy trust and it is perhaps not improving or the quality of education is not as strong as it could be, and a conversation is had with that school, the school cannot walk away. The accountability for school improvement—the partnership mindset—is hardwired into the trust sector.”
“So they play a fundamental role in improving attendance in our academies, particularly for those disadvantaged children—and we serve communities of real disadvantage. We have roughly twice as many disadvantaged students as the number seen nationally across our trust.”
“Q I wanted to turn to Northern, actually, and to Jane. One of the things that you are famous for at Northern is your work on attendance. I wonder if you might say a word about the role that breakfast clubs play in that, and whether that is restricted only to primary schools. Jane Wilson: We have breakfast clubs in our primary schools and our secondary schools that children can attend. Most of those are free or charge a very small amount for the food and care that the children receive. It is an offer that we have across the trust. In terms of attendance, it enables children, often from very disadvantaged backgrounds, to have a very settled start to the day and receive care and attention before the school day starts. It means that once the school day does start, learning can become the priority.”
“Very briefly, Rebecca, what role does uniform play in identity for your school and the sense of belonging? Rebecca Leek: I think that uniform does play a role. It is sometimes a really useful mechanism to improve a school—to sort it out—as well. I do have some further things to say about uniform, if there is time and anyone wants to ask me about it.”
“Q How do you keep it affordable and make sure it is not a barrier? Rebecca Leek: School uniform is generally very affordable. You are asking a primary school, so we do not have blazers, but certainly it is very affordable. It has never been an issue. We also give away free uniform. I think there are problems in the Bill with the uniform wording.”
“We wanted to move as fast as we could to make the impact that children need to see, particularly in safeguarding. We also wanted to make the long thought-through changes to our school system to support our opportunity mission and break down those barriers to ensure that every child has every opportunity to succeed. Admittedly, we are not going to lose any time in making the changes that we want to see, and we have the opportunity in the parliamentary time allocated to us.”
“Q I am conscious that we are short of time. This Bill is really like two Bills, with the children and social care section and the schools section. Were there discussions about making it two separate Bills? You could have pressed on at all speed with the social care material, which has been around for quite a long time—some of it was in the 2022 Act. That would have enabled you to have a Green Paper, a White Paper and pre-legislative scrutiny, and perhaps to address more of the questions up front. Catherine McKinnell: I appreciate the premise of the right hon. Gentleman’s question. I appreciate that he is very experienced in this place and that he has had the experience of being in government for quite some time, and having the opportunity to do all those things and make the necessary changes.”
“The hugely increased housing target for East Hampshire gets further skewed by the extent of its overlap with a national park. Will the Housing Minister meet me to discuss our unusual situation and the case for having two separately set housing targets?”
“This announcement will come as a terrible blow to the people served by Basingstoke and North Hampshire hospital, particularly after the very personal commitment made by the now Prime Minister in June 2024. We assume from what the Secretary of State has said today that, come the spending review, the Government will set out detailed capital budgets stretching into the 2040s. Can he tell us in the meantime what his announcement will do to his projections for operating costs, for repairs and maintenance costs and for the provision of stopgap facilities where they are needed?”
“Would the hon. Gentleman like to reflect on what he has just said, which is that the proportion of children going to private schools has stayed constant? Even the Government’s own analysis does not say that. It says that the number has stayed broadly constant, and in fact the proportion has come down.”
“They will affect large supermarkets—a sector that is one of the biggest employers in the country—and hotels, which are a really important employer, as well as being fundamental to travel and tourism. Will the Minister also say a word about the expected effect on the national health service? The blurb on the Budget says, “We are going to attack distribution centres, including those used by online retailers.” The word “including” does a lot of work in that sentence, because high street retailers also have distribution centres, and the changes will add to their costs, fuelling inflation on food and everyday consumer goods.”
“Because of what is happening to the threshold, there will be a massive effect on part-time workers. That will be very difficult for retail and hospitality businesses to swallow. In and of themselves, the cuts to the multiplier for high street businesses are welcome, but we must remember that they are balanced by increases elsewhere in the system. Sometimes, Government Members talk about big businesses and corporations as some unwelcome part of our economy, but they are the biggest employers in the country and are fundamental to our economy. In the Red Book, these changes involve increases of hundreds of millions of pounds in business rates. Who will the increased rates affect?”
“The Labour Government do not say that any more, but they still want us to believe that they are undertaking some great reform and cutting rates for our high street businesses. I am afraid it is all smoke and mirrors, because for those businesses, including the ones name-checked by the hon. Member for Erewash (Adam Thompson), the big effect that they feel right now is the cut in the relief for retail and hospitality business—not a small one, but from 75% to 40%. It would be bad enough if that was all businesses faced, but it is not. They have to cope with all sorts of difficulties the whole time. We have rising labour costs—we support the increase in the national living wage over time, but not a hike in employer national insurance contributions at the same time.”
“There are problems with all taxes, which is why we end up with a blend of taxes. For businesses, there is tax on payroll, sales, profits and property. However, business rates are a particularly difficult and unpopular tax because they represent a fixed cost on the business that does not vary when the economy goes up or down, or according to the particular company’s success or growth, or a contraction in its sales or profits. Over the years, I have heard many times from businesses in Alton, Petersfield, Horndean, Clanfield, Liss and elsewhere in East Hampshire about a desire for business rates reform. I am sure that a lot of small business owners were very attracted to what they heard from the Labour party—that it would to scrap business rates altogether.”
“Overall, the effect of all these changes—we need only look at the Budget Red Book—is that the revenue from business rates is projected to increase from £32 billion this financial year to almost £40 billion in five years’ time. It is a massive further tax raid on business, and a brake on employment and economic growth.”
“As ever, my hon. Friend is spot on. In the end, there is no such thing as a tax on business—you cannot tax a business; you can only tax people. Any tax on business is ultimately a tax on its employees, its customers or its owners. Before somebody jumps up and starts talking about the owners, the owners are often pension funds who are then paying out the pensions for our mums and dads. My point is that these business rate increases will mean higher costs for bricks-and-mortar companies as well, which come on top of all the other changes, in particular the hike in employer national insurance contributions. And this from a Government who yet again this week keep talking about their growth agenda. It makes me wonder what is actually written in that growth agenda.”
“We also know that children with SEND feature particularly prominently in the independent sector. Many of those schools have an awful lot of children who have special needs, but not necessarily—or not yet—an education, health and care plan. Special consideration should be given to both those types of schools: faith schools—if we wanted to narrow it down further, we could say smaller faiths charging low fees to parents—and those catering to children with special educational needs and disabilities. On amendment 10, with all else that is going on in the independent sector, it is at the very least an exceptionally reasonable ask of the Government that we delay these changes by a year to give the sector a chance to be able to cope and plan.”
“We can line up as many experts as we like, but no one knows how many children will be moving, but we know it will be a non-trivial number greater than zero—there will be children moving out of that sector and there is a lot of uncertainty. It therefore seems to be a very unwise time to add, on top of all those other tax changes, a significant change to a fixed-cost tax. The amendments put forward by the official Opposition are therefore very well worth supporting; my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Sarah Bool) made that case very strongly. On faith schools, we know that whatever the impact assessment says, people of faith, and particularly of smaller faiths, will be disproportionately impacted by this Government’s changes to education.”
“The tax change we are debating today on rates is not the only tax change or transfer of money from independent schools to the Treasury. They were already facing a big increase—5%, I think—in employer contributions to the teachers’ pension scheme. Like all organisations—public sector, private sector, charitable and voluntary sector—they also have employer national insurance contributions to deal with. And then there is the enormous VAT change. Specifically on this tax change, it is a fixed cost, as I mentioned at the start of my speech, at a time when there is all this uncertainty around the independent education sector and children will be moving. I will let Members into a secret: no one knows what the ultimate effect will be.”
“For all those reasons, new clause 2 is both important and a reasonable ask. It says that after a period of time, we should review the real-life effect of these changes and give the Government an opportunity to change course and get back to something that looks a bit like a growth agenda. I turn briefly to the effect of these changes on independent schools. We have debated in the Chamber on a number of occasions the Government’s overall approach to independent schools. Let me say again that we object in principle to taxing education. It makes us almost unique in the world that we would do such a thing and it will be the first time in our national history that we have done so—it has never been done before by any Labour Government, or any other Government.”
“Well, I did refer at the start of my speech to the calls over the years for reform. I also said that there are problems with all taxes we levy on individuals or on business and that is why we end up with a blend. What I am talking about now is the fact that this Government are hiking up the total amount that will be taken in business rates, which will fall on major employers and then be felt in our unemployment rate. The Government are trying to do this thing of saying, “We are cutting stuff,” but they are not, because for all of the companies we have heard name-checked, reducing the relief will outweigh the effect of the multiplier. On top of that, we have a revaluation coming up in the near future. That is probably going to mean an increase in rateable values that will compound those higher multiples.”
“The hon. Gentleman is right to say that there is a challenge in making sure that things are fair, and we all support a level playing field between the online world and bricks-and-mortar businesses, including in our town centres. There is a thing called the digital services tax, which was conceived while we were in government. Will he say a word about the relative advantages and disadvantages of trying to go after online retailers with business rates changes, which will also affect all manner of other organisations, including bricks-and-mortar retailers, and doing it a different way through a more direct type of tax?”
“It is worth reflecting that the education budget goes up every year. It does not go up because there has been a change to business rates, VAT or anything else, which is the logic we sometimes hear from Labour Members. If the revenue from those things is slightly smaller than expected, does that mean less money will go into education? Of course not. We keep hearing about hiring 6,500 more teachers. Does the hon. Gentleman know how many more teachers were hired in the last Parliament?”
“Before my right hon. Friend goes on too much further, I wonder whether he agrees that another effect of this is that, at a time when we need to unlock growth and productivity, it will discourage and disincentivise the investment in our family farms that is so badly needed?”
“We talk about age thresholds and age limits; there is a whole other set of questions about how those apply and how we make age assurance or age verification work properly. Those are both debates for another day. Today, I simply ask the Minister: is it the Government’s understanding of the existing legislation that children under 16 should be able to switch off parental controls? If not, what could be done to clarify the situation? Is a change needed in primary legislation?”
“But the big question is, what else might it allow—or, crucially, what else might it be interpreted to allow? I repeat that I do not believe that it was Parliament’s intent in effect to disable parental safety controls for 13, 14 and 15-year-olds. There is a whole other question about those safety controls themselves and how they work, and how difficult it can be for parents—and even all of us, who tend to think we are quite good at this sort of thing—to keep on top of them, particularly if they have multiple children, different operating systems and multiple platforms. There really should be a single industry standard entry system that can cover all of screen time and basic, entry-level approvals with a default “safety on” version of the different platforms.”
“In setting out why the age was set at 13, the explanatory notes to the 2018 Act say, quite rightly, that that is in line with the minimum age that popular services such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram set, but they go on to say, slightly unrelatedly: “This means children aged 13 and above would not need to seek consent from a guardian when accessing, for example…services which provide educational websites and research resources to complete their homework.” I think that sentence might have a lot to answer for. It sounds very sensible—we would not want children having to get over hurdles to finish their homework—but if we think about it, it is not necessary to sign up to research something on the internet for homework anyway, and educational websites are generally exempt from consent requirements.”
“The 2018 Act was passed before we considered the Online Safety Bill, which became the Online Safety Act 2023, but we were already concerned in this House about online safety, and I am fairly sure that it was not Parliament’s intent to reduce parental oversight. In particular, I do not think saying that a service can have a child sign up to it at 13 is the same as saying that the parent cannot stop them. Still less, it is not the same as saying that the parent should not be able to know what their child is signed up to.”
“I can only assume it is the Data Protection Act 2018, which sets out that “a child aged 13 years or older” can “consent to his or her personal data being processed by providers of information society services.” The genesis of that was European law, and Parliament was debating and voting on it in parallel with, but before actually completing, exit from the European Union. The age 13 is not universal. EU law specified a range between 13 and 16, and multiple countries did select 13, but not all. France set the age at 15, with some limited non-contractual consents for data processing allowed between 13 and 15. Germany and the Netherlands set the age at 16. There is that question of what is the appropriate age, but the other big question is what that age actually means.”