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.”
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“It says: “Congratulations on Fred’s birthday. At this age, certain laws allow them to have more control and choices over their own account settings. This means that they’ll be able to change a number of family safety settings, even if you already have them set up. Fred will also need to allow you to continue receiving data about their activities to guide their digital journey. They can turn off your ability to see their activity on Windows, Xbox, and Android devices. They can turn off your ability to see their devices and check on updates…safety settings like firewall and antivirus…They can stop sharing their location through their mobile phone.” That was for a child approaching their 13th birthday, which leads me to question what “certain laws” are being cited.”
“The account their mum sees is not necessarily the real one—ironically, the one that was called “fake” was the one where their real lives were actually happening. Of course, they could also be on lots of other platforms that parents and others do not necessarily know about. I agree with the hon. Member for Sunderland Central, who opened the debate on behalf of the Petitions Committee, that it is of paramount importance that we are able to put some guardrails around what children can access. That is one of the reasons we have parental controls. How those controls work, and the limits of them, are what I want to talk about this afternoon. I will read out a short note from Microsoft, which is not a company that people normally worry about—it is a very responsible operator—to a constituent ahead of their child’s 13th birthday.”
“There is a separate debate to be had about the extent of that, and what the threshold and process should be. I understand entirely what the hon. Member for Sunderland Central (Lewis Atkinson) was saying. I do not think anybody is proposing constant, ongoing monitoring, but there are situations that a child could find themselves in that I believe warrant the availability of that access. There is also a problem, or a hurdle, with the principle: we can only request access to something that we know exists. It is common for children to have multiple social media accounts on a single platform. They probably have different names these days, but people used to call their fake and real accounts finsta and rinsta.”
“Although we trust our children, we know that children do sometimes get into trouble and can come under pressure, and in some cases severe coercion, from others. Of course, they potentially have ready access to material of all sorts that is much more harmful than we had as children. They can go deeper and deeper down rabbit holes. Parents are not the only ones who can help children, but they have a unique position in children’s lives and are uniquely placed to help and support them. That is why I agree in principle with the petitioner that parents should have a right to see what their child is subjected to or is doing for as long as they are a child and we, as the parents, are responsible for them—and that means at least until age 16.”
“Some parents are abusive, and children must always have ways confidentially to seek help from child protection services, the police, the health service and bona fide charities. That applies at any age. It is also true that everyone needs a degree of privacy, but there have always been different degrees of privacy, and how private something is should be proportionate to the level of risk involved. In discussing accessing online services, we are talking about things that can have very serious consequences. We want and need to be able to protect our children from harm—from bullying, from unwanted contact, including from adults, and from being drawn to dangerous interests, which can become dangerous obsessions. We also have a responsibility, and we should be held responsible, for them not perpetrating harms on others.”
“I hope the Minister will be able to say a word about whether the data Bill is the opportunity to put it beyond doubt that, ultimately, the parent has an absolute right, with the right safeguards and verifications, to see the information related to their child. Let me turn from the most tragic of cases to all families and all children. I start with the most important point, which is that trust, support and love within families are the most effective things. Most of the time it is irrelevant what the law is because, within families, we set our own rules. Generally, it is clear that even if our rules are, at times, a pain for our children, they are well-intentioned. We must also note that not quite all families are loving families.”
“The Government’s response to the petition notes not only that, under the Online Safety Act, platforms have to set out their policy for dealing with such tragic situations, but that the Act “introduces measures to strengthen coroners’ ability to obtain information” from platforms via Ofcom, thereby providing a route for parents. We will have to see how that works in practice and how timely it is. What we must not do is put a new, onerous layer on top of parents at the most difficult time imaginable, as they are grieving. As has been mentioned, there is also the question of historic cases. There will be future historic cases, because not in every case will the inquest have covered this question.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Twigg. I join colleagues in thanking the petitioners, and Ellen Roome in particular, for initiating the petition and enabling this Westminster Hall debate. We were all deeply affected by hearing the statement that was just read out. Ellen, you have the sympathies of everybody here on the loss of Jools aged just 14. We think also of other bereaved families and other campaigners—in the last few days we have been reminded of Ian Russell and the work he has done since the tragic death of Molly—and all those who take the most unimaginably awful situation for a parent and a family and use it to try to make something better for others for the future.”
“The Minister spoke earlier about age limits. I was not sure if she had finished responding to Members’ comments and questions, and whether she would be able to comment on not only what the various age thresholds should be, but what they mean. In particular, if the GDPR age is 13, does that mean that parental controls can effectively be switched off by somebody of age 13, 14 or 15?”
“Of course, academies and free schools have enabled that diversity to increase further. To have effective school choice, there has to be capacity in the system. There have to be more places than there are children, which is why we have added more than 1 million new places since 2010, following the Labour party’s unbelievable decision to cut 100,000 places in its last years in government. Finally, to have diversity and choice, parents need clear information. The key Progress 8 metric is so much better than what came before, the five-plus C-plus at GCSE measure or contextual value added. Combined with clear Ofsted judgments, this has enabled parents to understand quickly and easily what is going on in different schools.”
“The most effective teachers exist in an ecosystem, and what has really created the potential for these improvements is that brilliant teachers have been supported by our reforms. Those reforms have always had two sides. First, there has been a relentless focus on standards and quality, with a knowledge-rich curriculum and proven methods such as synthetic phonics and maths mastery. Schools have been learning from schools, with a hub system across the country and, critically, within academy trusts, which are the key vehicle for school improvement. We have always known that this focus has to go hand in hand with diversity and choice. Parents must be able to select what is best for their children, and we believe there is a role for big schools, small schools, co-ed schools, mixed schools, denominational schools and so on.”
“The biggest part of this Bill—read the detail—is about attacking school and trust autonomy and giving power back to Whitehall and the local education authority. Colleagues on both sides of the House know there has been a dramatic transformation in educational attainment in this country. We now have the best primary school readers in the western world, and we have seen dramatic improvements in secondary school maths, reading and science. Children eligible for free school meals are now 50% more likely to go to university than they were in 2010. Why has that happened? In one word: teachers. It is teachers who have made that happen. But there are also brilliant, dedicated teachers in Wales and Scotland, where those improvements have not happened.”
“Of course, there are also things in the Bill that are designed to be eye-catching initiatives—something that the Government learned from New Labour—such as the retail offer, to use the jargon, on breakfast clubs. There are already thousands of breakfast clubs in our country. By the way, we would like to know what will happen to breakfast clubs at secondary school, where they would make more of an impact on attendance than in primary school. There are also the provisions on uniform. We have had statutory guidance on uniform for a long time, so I have no idea why it is necessary to write it into law. The principal aim seems to be to outlaw primary schools requiring the wearing of a tie.”
“I am sure that today Labour MPs will cheer what they see as the final demise of the Gove-Gibb reforms, but the Bill before us reverses far further back than that. If this Bill passes in anything close to its current form, it will be as if Lord Adonis was never the Schools Minister and Lord Blunkett had never sat in the Secretary of State’s place. It will be as if Tony Blair had never been Prime Minister, and had never made central to his pledge to the British people in 1997 those famous three words: “Education, education, education.” To be clear, there are things in this Bill that we agree with. There are things that were in our Bill. There are things that build on the work that we were doing on Staying Close, on virtual school heads, on kinship care and more.”
“Or take the statutory pay and conditions framework. I know of no evidence that academy groups are undercutting pay and conditions—if any Labour Member does, they should please intervene. Some academy groups pay more, and what does that mean? It means they are investing.”
“I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for letting the House know that the new Labour party still rejects synthetic phonics, which has the most remarkable depth of evidence behind it, in favour of its fashionable, progressive policies. This is why I say that all the progress achieved by our reforms is at imminent risk. Labour has already stopped new free schools, and now there will be far fewer academy conversions. Even existing academies are about to see their freedoms eroded. What is the practical benefit of all these erosions? Take the qualified teacher status requirement. Schools are not going around en masse recruiting teachers without qualifications, but there can be times when it is right for a school to employ a teacher from the independent sector or another country. What will this requirement achieve?”
“It would be very dangerous if, instead, Ministers came up with a more prescriptive approach to the national curriculum, especially if this Bill removes the safety valve of schools being able to deviate somewhat.”
“This Bill says that schools must follow the national curriculum, before the new national curriculum is set out. It pre-empts the review. We do not know what will be in the review, and we have to keep an open mind and see what comes forward, but I remind colleagues that the Government are not forced to adopt what the independent reviewers come up with, nor are they obliged to stop where the independent reviewers do. In this country, since the start of the national curriculum, we have always taken the approach of not specifying exactly what kids will learn in sensitive subjects such as history, English literature and religious education. People often misunderstand this, but it is not a list of the things pupils learn in school. Having a broad framework has helped to guard against the politicisation, or the over-politicisation, of education.”
“What could that possibly achieve, except creating more disappointed families, children and parents? The one thing these four measures will achieve is ticking one more union demand. This Bill cannot be seen in isolation. Look at the Government’s broader proposals: scrapping the Latin excellence programme; scrapping the expansion of the cadets programme in state schools; making Ofsted judgments less transparent; and taxing independent sector education for the first time in our country’s history, and almost uniquely in the world, in a way that will fill more of the most popular state schools and make it harder for families to get their child into the state school of their choice. Potentially the biggest thing of all is the curriculum review.”
“I am grateful to Labour colleagues for their interventions, and for telling this House and the country what they need to know. All these successful schools and trusts have been doing exactly that. They have brought new talent into the profession, and they have helped to improve retention, but no, they are not the right people to make that decision, are they? No, Labour MPs and Labour Ministers should be making that decision for them. The vast majority of schools follow the national curriculum, but some innovate. What is wrong with that? What is wrong with adding something on top of the national curriculum? In any case, every school is statutorily required to deliver a balanced and broadly focused curriculum, and they are checked on that by Ofsted. Finally, there is the power for councils to prevent good, popular schools from expanding.”
“The progressive phrases we hear from Labour Members sound good—“accessibility”, “relevance”, “modernity”—but though they are beguiling, those things rarely actually help the children they are thought to help. The pursuit of true excellence in state education is not elitist. It is the opposite of elitist; it levels the playing field, and it means that people from all backgrounds can be up with those elites. Whatever attacks Labour makes on the independent sector, or to try to take down top-performing state schools, the advantage and the privilege will always lie with children, wherever they are, whose parents are actively involved and engaged. They will always do well. It was not they who needed our reforms—it was everyone else. Under this Bill, it will be everyone else who suffers.”
“Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), we had an inquiry on grade inflation. I counted 11 different ways in which the figures were massaged, such that it looked like things were getting better every year but, when the OECD numbers came out, we were tumbling down the international table. It was naive, because what gets measured gets mangled, and I worry that is about to happen all over again. It does children no favours. Also on international rankings, at the end of Labour’s last term in Government, we were the only country in the developed world where the literacy and numeracy of young adults was poorer than that of the generation about to retire. At least in the new Labour era, Labour Members believed they were pursuing academic excellence, but I am afraid that has now gone out of fashion.”
“The hon. Gentleman should have added the GCSE numbers to the numbers for technical and vocational qualifications, otherwise it is misleading. We all want kids to study the subjects they wish to study, and the subjects from which they will benefit. I am not sure how what the hon. Gentleman says negates what I just said, which is how we normally debate. The curriculum review is also an assessment review, and we have heard much less about what that means. We know that the Labour party had form on this when it was last in government, with its target-rich—I might say target-obsessed—approach to achieving five or more GCSEs at grade C or above, including English and maths. On the face of it, that is a perfectly good target, but when I was on the Education Committee back in 2012, when it was chaired by my right hon.”
“The hon. Gentleman just said that the Government would bring a mental health worker into every school. Could he repeat that, for the avoidance of doubt?”
“Is the mental health support in schools that the Minister just mentioned the same as or different from the plan for mental health support teams in schools that was already being rolled out by the previous Government?”
“I wonder if, when they look back, they might regret adopting “Things Can Only Get Better” as their anthem. It is not true. This is all about the decisions that they make. I hope this Government, reflecting on this petition and this debate, will take the opportunity to rethink some of theirs.”
“They make choices about how to do it, and they will be held to account for those choices. Even in this 24-hour media and social media age, government is still not actually a popularity contest. Most Governments will look over a four or five-year period and will try to do the unpopular things in year one—the difficult things—in the hope and expectation that they will yield positive results later. The difference this time around is that, when we look at what this Government have done in year one, it is difficult to see how it will yield great results further down the line. I talked at the start about high hopes being dashed, and that would certainly be true not only for members of the public but for Labour activists and Labour MPs. There had been a belief that, just by having a Labour Government, things would improve.”
“There was a reasonable expectation that it would be the most growth-focused Budget that we have ever had in this country, so it was a huge disappointment that there were no major growth-driving measures in it at all. In fact, the Budget saw the forecast for growth actually fall. Everything this Government have done has continually focused on this supposed £22 billion black hole, which is itself a mix of one-off and recurring items, so it cannot be considered as a single figure at all. In any case, whenever a Government Minister comes into a new Department, on their day one or day two briefing, they get told a long list of unfunded in-year spending pressures. That is not a black hole; it is a management challenge. It is what Government Ministers at any Department or, on a macro level, the Treasury has to deal with.”
“Through all the years from 2010 through to 2015 and beyond, when we had to make some really difficult decisions—and when, by the way, we faced a £155 billion black hole inherited from the previous Labour Government —one thing that was never touched was the winter fuel payment. That is because it is particularly well-targeted—not in terms of the number of people, but in terms of the exact time of year when they need it—and helps with an expense that falls on older people right in the middle of winter. At the Budget, we heard for weeks from the Chancellor about the importance of economic growth. That is something that everyone on our side agreed with—it was fantastic to hear. Economic growth is what ultimately matters for driving the economy and affording the excellent public services that we all value so much.”
“The same applies to the unrealistic housing targets that are being visited upon the countryside, even while cities like London have their housing targets cut. The hike in employer national insurance contributions was painted as not being a tax on working people, when everybody knows that, in the end, it will only come through as a tax on the wages people are paid or the level of employment, and this will harm jobs locally. Then there is the scrapping of the winter fuel payment, right down to those on very low incomes. When we judge a Government, we never do it just on what was in their manifesto; we also do it on the things that were not in their manifesto, but which they did anyway. With this Government, so far the most striking of those things has been the winter fuel payment. This was a Blair era reform that has been kept ever since.”
“We have lots of petition debates and lots of petitions are made to this Parliament, but the scale of this one, and the rapidity with which signatures have been gathered, is truly striking. In East Hampshire, 5,288 signatures were added by the start of the year. People in East Hampshire feel particularly let down by things like the family farm tax, which is going to undermine the whole structure of agriculture in our area, which underpins the rural economy and society. Then there are the changes to business rates, which were painted as a cut but are actually an increase, particularly for retail and hospitality businesses, which will undermine the small businesses in our market towns and village centres.”
“That is why it is so important that we have these debates in this place and that Governments are properly held to account and made to give an account of themselves. There are always people who are unhappy with the Government, and there are always people who are going to be unhappy with an incoming Government, but the speed of the fall of the current Government really is quite striking. There were very high hopes for this new Labour Government, and they have been very speedily dashed. In our system, no petition can force a general election. It is the decision of the Prime Minister of the day, or if he or she is forced by a confidence vote. However, I genuinely hope that the Government will reflect on the scale of this petition.”
“It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mrs Harris. I thank the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone), for introducing this debate today. This petition has succeeded already in a very important way: it has brought this debate to Westminster Hall. It is a broader debate than we are often able to have, and it has been passionately argued on both sides, with some important points made. I was particularly struck by some of the points made by the hon. Member for Gateshead Central and Whickham (Mark Ferguson). He is absolutely right that representative democracy can do some things that social media and other fora cannot.”
“May I suggest to the Government that this subject really warrants a full-day debate and not just a statement with questions and answers? For now, however, may I ask about one straightforward matter? Will the Minister look carefully at the relatively small number of places, including East Hampshire, with a planning area that is part-in, part-out of a national park and at the case that housing targets should be set separately for those two parts of the planning area?”
“That would not be acceptable for A-levels so, as I asked in Westminster Hall the other day, how can it be possibly acceptable for T-levels? What does that say about this Government’s commitment to parity of esteem?”
“When the Minister’s other noble Friend—the distinguished Labour peer Lord Sainsbury—conducted his landmark review of technical and vocational qualifications, he found that they were not only multitudinous and heavily overlapping but had become divorced to a large extent from the very sectors of industry that they were supposed to serve. The overhanging qualifications reform is a massive power grab that the new Government are carrying out, creating a body called Skills England and abolishing the independent institute that oversees technical education standards. Skills England is not even a separate body; it is part of the Department for Education management structure. Under the legislation going through Parliament, the Secretary of State will take to herself the power to oversee standards in technical education.”
“I welcome the Minister’s continuing with the previous Government’s programme. I just hope it is more successful than when Gordon Brown’s Government tried to build the Titan prisons. If they had been built, we would not be having this conversation at all.”
“The Minister likes to talk about inheritances, but if she checks the record, she will discover that prison overcrowding was higher in 2008, 2009 and 2010 than it was in 2024. It is true that we brought back longer sentences for the worst offenders. That was the right thing to do. It is also true that crime came down. There are two enormous areas that the Minister needs to work on—or perhaps I should say continue the work we were doing in government. One is the population on remand and the length of time people spend on remand. The other is at a different point in someone’s sentence, and the length of time they wait for a Parole Board hearing. We need more capacity to replace the older capacity with newer prisons, which are more conducive to rehabilitation and to getting people on to a stable path and into work.”
“Moreover, it makes no sense at all to look at gradual price increases over a 10, 20 or 20-plus year timeframe and to say we could conclude anything from that on the effect of an overnight price increase of 15%, 20% or more. The Government have come to the conclusion that we will end up with a long-run steady state of 37,000 fewer pupils in private education in the UK.”
“To inform their conclusion on how many children will be displaced in the private sector, the Government have, to an extent, relied on one statistic. They say that the number of private pupils has remained steady, despite a large real increase in average school fees since 2000. Considering price elasticity is a mathematically flawed approach. Up until very recently, we used to talk about 7% of children going to private schools. Now we say that it is 6%, because the proportion has come down. But at a time when pupil numbers have been growing, other things being equal, we would expect the number of children at private schools to have been increasing as the proportion stayed roughly constant.”
“More significantly, we must put it in the context of everything else that is going on. This year, we are also seeing a business rates increase for about half of private schools, an increase in contributions on the teachers’ pension scheme, and as with so many other sectors, a massive hike in national insurance contributions. Those are on top of any other normal cost pressures that other organisations might have. Those are three things, as well as the VAT increase, that are direct transfers from the independent school sector to the Exchequer. Although, technically speaking, they may not be the measures that we are discussing today, they very much affect the ability of schools to be able to absorb any of those price increases.”
“They expect 3,000 children to be displaced in academic year 2024-25; 14,000 in academic year 2025-26; and 35,000 eventually. These are enormous numbers of children who could have their education disrupted. Parents will be denied a choice that would be open to them in most other places in the world. It is also important that we look at the assumptions behind these numbers from HMRC’s policy paper—they are the exact assumptions that may then come into question in that post-legislative review, which our new clause 8 calls for. The Government first expect fees to rise by 10% on average as a result of these measures. In fact, the actual mathematical cost of putting 20% VAT on fees is, in fact, an increase in cost of about 15%, by the time we net off the ability to reclaim cost on inputs.”
“I rise to speak to new clause 8, and to refer to clauses 47 to 49. Clearly, just six or so months in, we will not have seen the full effects of these measures, but we will have started to see them. We will have heard whether there are concerns from faith leaders, and what the early effects are on the number of applications for EHCP plans and so on. It is also right that we have asked that, within 18 months of this Act being passed, we report back on the impact of the music and dance scheme, on which we know there has been a partial concession from the Government, but it remains a very sensitive area none the less. The Government say that they expect to raise £1.5 billion from this measure in 2025-26, rising to £1.7 billion—I think—in 2029-30.”
“They will find that they cannot afford the extra 20%, so they will apply for an EHCP and the child could get placed back in the same school, with the entire cost now being picked up the state.”
“On why the proposed review is so important, and we need to examine this in the post-legislative scrutiny, the Government say the revenue costs will be £270 million a year. That is, in other words, the cost of educating those extra 35,000 in the state sector. They go on to say that they have calculated the number based on the average spend per pupil in England in 2024-25. That is wrong. It is a mistake to base it on the average pupil because we know children with special educational needs will disproportionately have to transfer, and that will have a higher cost to their education. Moreover, we will get more families—we do not know how many—applying for an EHCP. The limiting case is where a child is in a private school right now and their parents are paying considerably more than the average place.”
“I have lost count of the number of parliamentary questions I have put down trying to get out of the Government where they think those 35,000 children will show up, because there is a huge difference in where they show up. It is worthless having empty places in primary schools in inner London if that is not where the children will be displaced to from private schools. In broad terms, there will not be that much of an impact on state primary schools. There will be on state sixth forms in London, but the big effect will be on individual places, particularly in 11-to-16 education. They include not only in counties we might guess, but also Bristol, Bury, Surrey, Salford and a much longer list besides.”
“The Government will say, “It’s only 35,000.” That is like a pretty substantially sized football stadium if we picture the number of children whose education will be changed by the measure. They say, “Don’t worry because it is only a small proportion of the total number in state schools.” At the end of the day, the number is from a spreadsheet; there is no guarantee that it will be 35,000 or any other particular number. In fact, it is rather odd that they came up with a single number at all. I would think that in any economic analysis like this we would at least have a range in which there is a central planning assumption, but also a reasonable worst-case scenario. More importantly, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hertsmere (Sir Oliver Dowden) mentioned earlier, the effect will not be even.”
“Of course, there has been a huge increase in the number of teaching assistants over the past 14 years, but the hon. Member is right that there are particular issues for children with special educational needs, which I will come on to. The Government estimate that there will be 37,000 fewer children in private schools and of those, 35,000 will go to state schools. What happens to the others? Some will be international students who will not come to this country, so that is a loss of export earnings, and some will be home-schooled. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) mentioned that, and we have not talked about it a great deal, but it is significant.”
“Does it come out of central Treasury coffers, or will the Department for Education be told, “No, we have given you your annual budget, so if more children come into the state sector, you must fund them”? Will councils be reimbursed additionally if more children come out of independent schools and get EHCPs, or will they also be told that they have to absorb the cost of that, and meet it from their already stretched budgets? Then there are the indirect costs, as trade unions have pointed out, such as teachers being made redundant and, because it is not the turn of the academic year, potentially dropping out of the profession altogether.”
“The hon. Gentleman raises an important point. I will come to exactly where the money to meet the costs will come from. We have talked about revenue costs, and the policy paper from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs covers that, but what about capital costs? What if whole new places need to be created? What if entire new year groups need to be created—or even entire new schools in some cities or local authority areas? Where is the allowance for the capital costs? Then there is, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, the question of how the costs will be met. The money follows the pupil, so a school will be reimbursed for any pupil who presents there—but after the census date, so it depends on exactly when the pupil turns up—but the question is: from where does the money come?”