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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“The Minister is very good to give way; I thank him. To be clear, when I was talking about the mix, I was not talking solely or even mainly about the tenure mix, but about the price points and the way that the formula works—he gets the point.”
“I will write to the Minister in more detail—but if, in adding to the stock, we raise the median house price, that has an adverse effect on affordability. We get this ironic situation where the more we build, the less affordable it looks.”
“The Government should also change the way the target itself is set, so that we get the affordable homes we need, but with the totals rebalanced among local authorities—back towards urban areas and away somewhat from rural ones—so that we end up with reasonable and realistic targets for East Hampshire and areas like it. That would be entirely consistent with—indeed supportive of—what the Government are trying to do on overall housing supply, but it would be a sustainable way of providing the services and infrastructure that people need, fostering community, promoting economic growth, and maintaining the public amenity and productive capacity of our countryside. I conclude, as others have, in the spirit of the season by wishing you, Mr Twigg, all colleagues from across the House, and House staff a very happy Christmas.”
“I thank the Minister for his considered remarks and for his constructive approach to date—the cumulative effect, one might say, of the Minister’s approach. However, I hope that after today he will think further. The Government should issue guidance to local authorities to the effect that, at least in circumstances where they face huge increases in their housing targets in short order, and it is not viable or realistic to suddenly have a five-year land supply available, they should be able to consider the cumulative impact of speculative developments that come along.”
“As with business rates and the Budget, it might take a few days for it to be absolutely clear what is in today’s announcement, although I hope that it will not take quite as long as it did with the Budget. I think it possible that some things will be welcome, given what the Minister said about densification and brownfield, if that is accompanied—this would be consistent—by a rebalancing of the housing target formula, which resulted in a doubling of targets in places such as East Hampshire and many places in the far north-west and far north-east, and a reduction in parts of London and Birmingham. Will the Minister now revisit that formula?”
“It also has one of the world’s highest rates of illegal arrivals by sea. Here, employers are already obliged to do identity and right-to-work checks. By the way, if someone who is a legally resident person signs up to deliver food and then subcontracts that job to someone here illegally in exchange for cash, I fail to see how an ID card or a digital ID would interfere with that at all. Ministers say that there would be no penalty for not carrying a card and that there would be no stop and search, but it is very hard to see how digital ID or physical ID cards address illegal immigration unless it is possible to demand the card from somebody in the street or in a workplace. And that is precisely the “papers, please” society that we do not want.”
“In the previous year, 100,000 people were claiming asylum. The Labour Government were talking about ID cards to tackle illegal immigration, but they soon started talking about using them to tackle all sorts of other things as well. In time, it became apparent that there was a huge amount of disagreement among Ministers, and that the Government had not really thought it through and did not know the full cost. The year I am talking about is 2003, not 2025. Eventually, 15,000 ID cards were issued under the previous Labour Government’s plan. However, it ran into massive technical issues and cost over-runs. Eventually, they ditched the idea of cards but kept the overbearing database, which is what we see being resurrected today. Yes, there are pull factors in illegal immigration, and work is one of them. However, Italy has ID cards.”
“Yes, we already have massive databases in the private sector, and we all already have a number for His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, NHS numbers and all the rest of it. The big change here is the single index term—the single identifier that links all these databases together. However much the Government say that the main database will be federated and access-limited, that cannot take away from the fact that all the databases will be linked. If they were not all linked, it would not be a digital ID system.”
“I will add that 4,000 of my constituents have signed this petition. I have also heard directly from hundreds of them by email in response to my own petition. We should listen to all these voices. A lot has changed since 2003, but not my opposition to digital ID. The Government say that it would be non-compulsory, but in practice it would become so. They already talk about opening bank accounts and accessing childcare or benefits with digital ID; of course, in time there will be many more applications for it. It will be one more thing that we will need a smartphone for. That is bad enough in itself, but if digital ID is to be given to children as young as 13, as the Government are consulting on, that will make things far worse again. Most of all, the worry is about the concentration of data.”
“It really is not ideal to have the body responsible for upholding standards in qualifications inside a Department that will be judged on how many people it gets through to passing those qualifications. It was not ideal when it was at the Department for Education; it is even less ideal now that it is at the Department for Work and Pensions. Will the Minister give a commitment that once Skills England is up and running, he will make it independent from Government, with a guaranteed voice for industry, and will he set that out in statute?”
“It is what allows children and people from ordinary families to get on a level playing field with those who are in the elite. I say to Ministers, “Please, please don’t undo the progress of the last decade and a half”—some of which, by the way, built on what their predecessors did in the new Labour Government.”
“I counted 11 ways in which that statistic was massaged so that every year it looked like the results were getting better and better, when all the while we were tumbling down the international tables comparing attainment at school, and not only in the PISA results. The OECD survey of young adults’ skills looks at countries across the OECD, and we were the only country in that survey where the literacy and numeracy of young adults who had newly left school were worse than those of the generation about to retire. At least at that time, the then new Labour Government talked about academic excellence. Now, such talk is out of fashion, because it is believed that striving for excellence is somehow elitist. It is not—striving for academic excellence in state schools is the very opposite of elitism.”
“Alongside that, the Government have abandoned the EBacc, they are unpicking Progress 8 and, in parallel, they have moved the standard-setting function in technical and vocational education from an independent institute to a body that was first inside the Department for Education and then, inexplicably, moved into the Department for Work and Pensions. Will the Government meet their targets? Of course they will, because they are in charge of deciding what counts as meeting the target. We saw that the last time Labour were in government, with the famous “five or more GCSEs at grade C or above”.”
“There is no evidence that there are armies of unqualified teachers marching through our schools. The proportion of teachers in our schools who are not qualified today is 3.1%. Can you guess what it was in 2010, when the Government changed, Ms Barker? It was 3.2%. There are good reasons to have unqualified staff in school sometimes. Then there is the national curriculum. Schools are already obliged to follow a broad and balanced curriculum, and they get measured on that by Ofsted, yet we now have a requirement in primary legislation to slavishly follow the detail of the national curriculum in its entirety, thereby removing the opportunity for any innovation and differentiation.”
“I am sad to say that, all the while, there was what statisticians call a natural experiment going on. While those reforms were being pursued in England, in other nations of the United Kingdom—in Scotland and particularly in Wales—they were not. If anybody doubts the benefit of these reforms, they have only to look at the comparative results of the different nations of the United Kingdom. The Government have already stopped new free schools, and this Bill stops more schools getting academy freedoms and erodes the freedoms of existing academies. I have said that the Bill seeks to fix problems that do not exist, and there is no evidence that academies pay teachers less than other types of schools, yet we have these new rules on the statutory pay and conditions framework.”
“What drove that improvement? It was standards and quality; brilliant teachers with autonomy and accountability; a knowledge-rich curriculum and proven methods, such as synthetic phonics and maths mastery; and a system in which schools learned from schools, with a hub-and-spoke network for different subjects and disciplines. But most of all, it was about academy trusts, where schools could learn from one another. We knew that that system would drive up standards only if it also ensured diversity and parental choice. People need clear information, which is why Ofsted reports are so important, and why Progress 8 replaced the previous, contextual value-added measure, as a much better way of measuring children’s progress at school. That choice is necessary, which is why academies and free schools were at the heart of our approach.”
“It is, I am afraid, a mix of trying to fix problems that do not exist; some retail offers, at least one of which is set to backfire with significant long-term consequences; an over-invasive approach to parents exercising their right, and thereby often giving up a great deal personally, to home educate; and worst, an attack on the school freedoms that have underpinned the great performance improvements that we have seen in schools in England over the last decade. Let us remind ourselves what that record is. Our primary school readers are now the best in the western world. At secondary, our performance has improved from 27th to 11th in maths and from 25th to 13th in reading. The attainment gap has narrowed, and children eligible for free school meals are now 50% more likely to go to university than they were in 2010.”
“Let us be clear—and Ministers, I am sure, will not try to say this today—that if the Government say that they want to withdraw the Bill, it does not mean that they do not like any aspect in it. Ministers are in charge of the Parliamentary timetable and are perfectly capable of withdrawing a Bill, noting that it is nicely set out in discrete units, and coming back the next day or the next week with a better Bill that does not include the bad bits and but does include the good bits. To be clear, there are many things in the Bill that it would be better to be rid of.”
“It is a great pleasure to see you presiding, Ms Barker. This has been a good debate, and very good points have been made by hon. Members on all sides, including the hon. Member for Beckenham and Penge (Liam Conlon), who has just spoken. This is a rare and important opportunity to talk about the vital role of hospital schools. I do not intend to go through every measure in this Bill in detail; we did that at Committee stage, and I took that opportunity to go through many of its measures then. However, I will make a few broad observations about it. First, there are things in this Bill that we like. There are things in this Bill that were in the Conservatives’ earlier Bill, and we should all welcome some of the moves on, for example, multi-agency safeguarding, the expansion of the role of virtual school heads, and so on.”
“We tried in chapter one to define what a Sure Start centre was, but we could not, because there was no actual design. One Sure Start centre that we visited had no children at all in it; some centres were fully fledged nurseries, family centres—you name it. There is very important work to be done with family hubs and other programmes. When we were in government, we made a huge increase in entitlements to early years education and childcare, which was a good thing to do. Ms Barker, I said that I would finish shortly, and I will. I say to Ministers that they should please come back with a Bill that can achieve widespread support, but that does not include these damaging measures that will undermine and harm education and opportunity.”
“I am so pleased that the hon. Gentleman asked me about that, because it is one of the great slogans of his party. One of my favourite statistics, however—people can look it up; it is available in an official publication—is that there were more children’s centres open in this country when I was Secretary of State for Education than in any year that Tony Blair was Prime Minister. The fact is that from 2008 to 2010, under Gordon Brown, there was a massive explosion in the number of things called a “Sure Start centre”. Basically, people could go to any old building, stick a sign on it that said “Sure Start” with a rainbow, and that became a Sure Start centre. The Education Committee, which is a non-partisan Committee of this House, conducted an inquiry in about 2011 or 2012 looking at Sure Start.”
“As a simple, comparative piece of maths, if the Minister is saying that breakfast clubs will save families £450 a year, how much money is the Department for Education providing to the school to provide that breakfast?”
“The Minister says that the limit is three items, but actually, the limit is three in primary school, while I believe it is four in secondary school—she will correct me if I am wrong—so long as the fourth is a tie. Can she tell me for what reason a fourth is not allowed in primary school, if the fourth is a tie?”
“Professor Francis was clear that the EBacc grouping should be kept in the progress 8 measure under the heading “Academic Breadth”. The Government have overruled the review, which is quite a big thing to do. The Secretary of State herself used to be a student of modern languages. Have they learned nothing from their terrible error in 2004, or what does she have today against modern languages and humanities?”
“There is nowhere in the DFE budget from which £6 billion could possibly come other than the core schools budget, so either SEN funding is being cut, the core schools budget is being cut—that implies 5% per head—or the Secretary of State has an explicit agreement with the Chancellor for the money to come from somewhere else, or from new taxes. Which is it?”
“Did the Minister just say that all of these documents would be FOI-able and would then be released, albeit in redacted form, presumably in the usual way, with personal details being blacked out?”
“Does the Secretary of State agree that in future, corrections must always be made swiftly and proactively?”
“The internet is full of people who think they are in touch with a bigger truth and that it does not matter what happens to all sorts of littler truths along the way in getting that bigger truth across. In his letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage), the Chair of the Select Committee, Samir Shah spoke of the “sacred job” of the BBC to use evidence that can be trusted. That is more important than ever. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is events such as these that give ammunition to people who say, “Disregard the BBC—don’t look at the mainstream media” and consider all sources to be the same? The most worrying thing is not that a mistake happened, because mistakes happen in big organisations; the most worrying thing is that it took this long for it be corrected.”
“Let us remember what that is: a set of subjects that is presented clearly to children and their families, including and especially disadvantaged children, who, by studying this core set of subjects, will keep their options most open and have the most opportunity to progress in life. The EBacc did increase uptake for history and geography. It could have been mitigated if the Secretary of State had kept Professor Francis’s recommendation to retain the structure of the current Progress 8. Why did she ignore that recommendation? Is she giving up totally on modern foreign languages?”
“This is a thorough piece of work from Professor Francis. There are things in it to welcome, including the retention of key stage 2 assessments and the triple science entitlement, although the Government will have to say where the resourcing will come from to make that a reality. In truth, there are other things that we just do know yet. It remains to be seen what the changes in English literature mean and what will get squeezed out; it also remains to be seen what the new computing GCSE is relative to computer science—I hope it is not a return to the pre-computer science days of the information and communication technology GCSE. One thing I regret is the demise of the EBacc.”
“There must be wider community facilities, including libraries and nurseries—in fact, anything that just brings people to that specific place. Most of all, it is about people and the shops, cafés, pubs and restaurants that they work in. The great British high street still has a lot going for it, but it faces some very difficult headwinds, principally from out-of-town shopping and online shopping and home delivery. For the avoidance of doubt, I do not blame the Labour Government for either of those things. They are forces that our country and the world has been dealing with for quite some time—and we can add to those more recently the indirect effect on banking, as a couple of colleagues have mentioned.”
“There is the physical environment and its aesthetic appeal, which Members have mentioned. I pay tribute to those who give up their time voluntarily to maintain and improve that landscape, including litter pickers such as those from the Alton Society, the Petersfield Society and the brilliantly named Rubbish Singers. A good events calendar can really make a difference and can go a long way. I think you know, Madam Deputy Speaker, that it is hard to beat an events calendar like that of Alton in Hampshire. It is about having cultural assets, such as Petersfield museum. In fact, this morning the Culture, Media and Sport Committee heard about the role of heritage buildings in creating a sense of place. It is about initiatives that bring people into the town centre, such as Dementia-friendly Alton and “Health on the High Street”.”
“It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is natural in these debates that we repeatedly hear phrases like “lifeblood” and “beating heart”, because colleagues across the House love our town and village centres; they are the essence of our local communities. For me, that means principal towns like Alton and Petersfield and substantial villages like Liss, Four Marks, Clanfield, Horndean and Rowlands Castle. Why do we care? Of course, it is important to have the provision of goods and services for our residents, but mostly it is because these are the places that bring people together; they stop isolation, form social bonds and give life and form to the idea of community. Lots of different things are needed for a successful high street.”
“Given the headwinds that our high streets face, the most important thing we need is more people to come into those places. Efforts to create more residential accommodation in town centres, which the hon. Member for Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton (Jim McMahon) talked about, are useful, as is maximising the use of brownfield land. Most people coming into town centres are coming in for a purpose, and we need to be hospitable to them. Walking and cycling are great, but we must remember that most people are still coming in by car, especially in an area like mine, and we must make sure that it works for them too.”
“I largely agree. In truth, it is a blend. Having distinctive independent traders is what sets all our towns apart; it makes them unique and it makes us very proud of them. But customers want both those independent traders and some brand-name retailers, and there is nothing wrong with being a brand-name retailer. The secret comes from having a combination of both. I was just saying that I want to join in with what other colleagues have said about the need for banking. On the need to review the criteria, I think it is the Financial Conduct Authority that sets the criteria. As this development in banking goes further, we need to ensure that towns the size of Petersfield in my constituency have a business banking facility that is open at least five days a week, and I hope that the Government can look at that with the FCA.”
“I am afraid that will all become worse with the Employment Rights Bill, and the biggest impact will be on those furthest from or newest to the labour market. I encourage the Government to think again.”
“In the case of retail and hospitality, we must remember that as well as their roles as businesses, they are volume employers—two of the three biggest volume employers. As well as being the home of workers, they are a big source of customers who will use other businesses. There was a bit of talk about the national living wage and so on. Of course, it is good that the national living wage goes up. The point is that when that is done at the same time as other things that impose further costs on business, making it harder to employ people, we will see an effect. We are already seeing damage, not in mass lay-offs but in marginal hiring decisions, with employers not taking on some Saturday help and not offering some extra hours. In fact, we see some pubs closing earlier than they would do ordinarily.”
“The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. I might return the favour by mentioning the Robert Bolt theatre, which I think is in his constituency. Colleagues will know of “A Man for All Seasons”, and the hon. Gentleman is something of a man for all seasons himself. As well as bringing more people into the town centre, I think the No. 1 imperative right now is to address the cost of doing business and employing people. There are good arguments against every tax—anyone who has ever worked at the Treasury will know that—and that is why we end up having a blend of lots of different taxes. Business rates are an especially bad tax, because it is a fixed cost being to imposed on businesses. That makes it harder to turn a profit, and crucially it deters new people from coming into business.”
“Let me try to help the Minister, because Conservative Members are very keen to know the answer, and probably many of his colleagues are keen to know it too. It is one thing to say, “We would like to reduce the cost by 25%”—sure you would! The question is: how do the Government think they are going to realise savings of 25%?”
“One of the worries about the new regime and Skills England is the loss of independence, and the loss of what we had in the former Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education: a guaranteed business voice, written into law. How will the Secretary of State ensure that business has a voice in setting standards, and in making sure that those standards are upheld, so that everybody can have confidence in the changed system?”
“Alton and Petersfield hospitals give excellent step-up, step-down and end-of-life care. The trust is introducing more home-based care, which is good, but it also proposes closing a ward in one of the community hospitals. Will the Minister ensure that there remain sufficient beds and sufficient capacity in our local community hospitals for those patients who need them?”
“After the creative reimagining of the Government’s target for hiring more teachers, it would be helpful to have some precision on the record for the target of two thirds of young people in higher learning. We know that higher learning means level 4 or above, but what exactly is a gold-standard apprenticeship? Does it mean one in growth sectors with very high levels of completion?”
“We have not been able to do Progress 8 for a couple of years because of covid and not having a baseline, but it is by far the better measure—much better than contextual value added or a raw score. Please will the Minister confirm that the Government are not looking at getting rid of handwritten exams done in exam conditions? Those are the best way to guarantee security of assessment and to ensure that handwriting development continues apace. We should have an open mind on resits. The point about the policy is not to have more people sitting exams but to carry on studying English and maths. That in itself is a good objective, but we should be open about how it is achieved.”
“SATs are a measure of schools, not pupils—I promise that when someone applies for a job or university in adult life, nobody will ever ask them what they got in their SATs. That is not what they are for. The biggest effect that they could have is what set a child gets into in year 7. But ironically, as the hon. Member for North West Cambridgeshire (Sam Carling) said, schools do that anyway. Even if we got rid of a high-stakes assessment at the end of year 6, there would still be one in year 7. I repeat that no child should be put under pressure about SATs. That is not their purpose. I wanted to say a lot, but that is not going to happen in three and a half minutes. I briefly ask the Minister to confirm that Progress 8 is coming back.”
“First, there are seven, eight, nine or 10 subjects, and typically two papers and multiple formats—multiple choice, short-form open questions, essay questions, orals and practicals in different subjects. Ironically, if we reduce the number of papers we would increase the high-stakes nature of tests that come at the end of study. It is possible that if we had continuous assessments, we might not get rid of stress but just stretch it out over a longer period because, as I said, any assessment inherently has some stress attached. Let me talk briefly about younger children, because that issue is different. SATs are not public exams, and no child should ever be put under pressure coming up to SATs.”
“He poses this as a mental health question, and it is true that there is an upward trend in mental ill health in children in this country and, by the way, in most other countries in the developed world, although they do not all have the same exam system as us. France and the United States have very different exam systems, with one largely a terminal exam system and the other not, but we see a pattern that is essentially the same. A linear study and terminal exams give us some important things. They give us consistency, transparency, and comparability across the country. Because the exams come at the end we can synthesise knowledge, so it is not just a test of what someone happens to have learned for a test, but it is putting together different aspects of knowledge. It is not just one big exam.”
“It is good to see you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. Assessment in education is obviously one of the most important aspects of what we do in education. It gives children a chance to show what they have learned, what they can do, and we want that to be stretching, but also to be fair. Anything that measures our attainment is inherently somewhat stressful. We also want to prepare children for adult life, and part of that is learning to deal with stress and to make it work in a positive direction. We obviously do not want exams to be overly stressful, and I commend the hon. Member for Hertford and Stortford (Josh Dean) for his work on mental health.”
“In the positive spirit in which the Secretary of State speaks, will he commit on the Floor of the House that the reference period used to calculate hours for sectors that have serious seasonality—we have heard about boat building, hospitality, tourism and farming—will not be a ridiculously short period, such as 12 weeks? Will it be long enough to reflect the seasonal nature of that type of work?”
“I intend to speak mainly to the provisions dealing with guaranteed hours, but I begin with a word of thanks to the Government for what they have announced about special constables. It is not quite as good as adopting the amendment, but I welcome the review. I also commend my hon. Friend the Member for Bridgwater (Sir Ashley Fox) for the work he has done. I hope the review will report quickly, and I hope for a growth in the number of special constables, not only in neighbourhood policing, which my hon. Friend rightly mentioned, but among people working in the tech sector. We need cyber-specials to tackle the scourge of cyber-crime and fraud, which is now the single largest category of crime, and is, sadly, growing once again.”
“Many people on zero-hours contracts are students. Particularly in hospitality, there is a pattern of work whereby an employee lives in two places: at home, and at their term-time address. They can stay on the books of their employer at home—it might be a local pub—while they are away studying during term time. It could be the other way around: they could have a job in their university town, and stay on the books when they come home. They can dial up or dial down their hours; for example, many students do not want to work a lot of hours, or any hours, during exam time. Contrary to what we might expect, and contrary to the all-one-word conception of “exploitative zero-hours contracts”, some people actually prefer a zero-hours contract.”