Neil O'Brien
MP for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston · Conservative · United Kingdom
“Following is the full text of the petition: [ The petition of residents of the constituency of Harborough, Oadby & Wigston, Declares that the petitioners oppose any proposal to extend the boundaries of Leicester City Council in a manner that would incorporate the communities of Great Glen, Wistow, Newton Harcourt and Little Stretton into…”
“In the Government’s own consultation about the expansion of Leicester, nine out of 10 people said that they were against it. Now, with millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money wasted so far, Ministers are having to do a complete reworking of this whole chaotic, undemocratic process, amid accusations of gerrymandering.”
“The petition states: “The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to halt and reconsider any proposals for the expansion of Leicester City Council's boundaries, and to ensure that the views of local residents are fully considered before any changes are implemented, thereby protecting the character, ide…”
“The petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Government to halt and reconsider any proposals for the expansion of Leicester City Council's boundaries, and to ensure that the views of local residents are fully considered before any changes are implemented, thereby protecting the character, identity and independence…”
“In the Government’s own consultation on whether to expand Leicester, nine out of 10 people said no. Tens of thousands of people signed petitions against it, yet until Ministers hit this legal snag they tried to press on anyway.”
“Eleven thousand people in Oadby, Wigston and Great Glen recently voted in a referendum against joining the city of Leicester. Ministers know that people do not want this locally, and yet they are forcing it on them anyway.”
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“Did that not set some alarm bells ringing in the Prime Minister’s mind? No, instead he appointed a man who twice had to resign over corruption, and now—unbelievably—his argument is, “If only there had been some sign that Peter Mandelson was like this?” It is unbelievable, and this may be just the beginning. We now really need the Minister to answer a specific point that Ministers ducked and refused to address earlier—the whole House will hear if he does not answer. Will the Government agree to a full investigation into Mandelson’s behaviour while he was our ambassador in Washington? On 27 February last year, Mandelson arranged for the Prime Minister to meet Palantir—a client of Mandelson’s company, Global Counsel. That meeting was not recorded in the PM’s register of meetings and emerged only later.”
“It implies that a person can, to a certain reasonable depth, be involved with the world’s most corrupt man and still be appointed His Majesty’s ambassador. The Prime Minister is now asking to be taken on trust. Well, after this whole sordid affair, I am afraid that is just not good enough any more. The Prime Minister knew that Mandelson had stayed in Epstein’s house while he was in jail for child prostitution. Did that not set some alarm bells ringing in the Prime Minister’s mind, or is that not deep enough a relationship to have worried him? My right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Sir Julian Smith) told the House earlier that the British Government were warned by one of our closest international allies about their deep concerns before Mandelson’s appointment.”
“This has been an absolutely extraordinary day in British politics. It is not often that there is an audible intake of breath in this Chamber, but we all heard it earlier—that gasp when the Prime Minister admitted that, yes, he had known that Peter Mandelson had had an ongoing relationship with Jeffrey Epstein when he appointed him as our ambassador to Washington. It was a truly extraordinary admission. The argument that the Prime Minister is now making, which is quite incredible, is that he knew, but he did not know the depth and extent. That implies that there is some reasonable extent to which a person can be in a long-term relationship with the world’s most famous paedophile and still be appointed our ambassador to Washington.”
“I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I want to know whether the Minister agrees that the ISC should be able to give the gist of documents, even if they are not fully released. Thirdly on this hastily proposed manuscript amendment, can we be reassured that we will not be waiting for months—that this will not turn out like the grooming gangs, where nothing happens in the end? Can we have an assurance that we will not be waiting for ages, and that there will be a clear and short timeframe for getting the documents published and to the ISC?”
“10 who told Labour Back Benchers that they would not change their position on the family farm tax, and then—after people had killed themselves—changed their position on it. They are the same people who got Labour Back Benchers to vote against an inquiry into grooming gangs. That is telling, because that was another occasion on which this weak Prime Minister put his own political interests ahead of respecting victims. Today, we learned a little bit more about the character of our Prime Minister. As a result, it is clear from listening to the debate today that even some Labour MPs are asking themselves the same question as the public out there: doesn’t this country deserve better?”
“My hon. Friend makes an excellent point—he is completely correct. Today, I actually feel quite a lot of sympathy for Labour Back Benchers. Once again, they have been put in a totally impossible position by the Prime Minister and his adviser Morgan McSweeney. The Government wanted the same people who had appointed Mandelson in the first place to be able to control the release of information about the extraordinary way in which that appointment was made. I feel for Labour Back Benchers, because those people in Downing Street are the same people who told them they had to vote to cut the winter fuel payment because there would be a run on the pound if they did not. They are the same people in No.”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster if he will make a statement on the three witness statements in relation to the alleged breach of the Official Secrets Act on behalf of China.”
“In conclusion, this House needs to know what was asked for by the CPS and why it was refused, and we must see all the correspondence and the minutes. If the Government will not publish the China files, people will ask: what have this Government got to hide?”
“However, we can now see that the two witness statements from this year did state the position of the current Labour Government—a direct contradiction of what the Prime Minister said yesterday. The evidence includes lines from Labour’s manifesto, and they weaken the case. They make it less clear that China is a threat to our national security. That is one of the things that changed. The Sunday Times reported on a meeting convened by Jonathan Powell with the permanent secretary of the Foreign Office to discuss this case. Until yesterday, the Government said that that was just made up. Now they admit that it happened, but they still will not come clean about what happened in that meeting, or any other meeting.”
“Cash is said to have told Berry in a message, “you’re in spy territory now”. Yesterday, Government sources briefed The Guardian that the “civil service decided” that decisions “should be done independently of ministers”. No, no, no, Mr Speaker. The civil service does not get to decide anything; Ministers decide. The Prime Minister was not some helpless captive, unable to make sure that the CPS had what it needed. He knew, and he decided not to help. Why? Let us come back to the evidence that was provided. The Prime Minister said yesterday that he was utterly constrained by the position of the previous Government, and every expert had already contradicted the PM on this.”
“I should declare an interest as I am named in the witness statements. As someone sanctioned by China, I was shocked to learn that the Prime Minister knew that this case was about to collapse several days beforehand, but chose to do nothing. We now know that the CPS was not far short of what it needed. The Director of Public Prosecutions told MPs yesterday that it was something like 5% short. However, we do not know exactly what the CPS was asking for—what that 5% was. We do not know why the Government would not go that bit further when they were asked to. That is what we need hear from the Minister today: why did the Government not give the CPS what it was asking for? Nobody is disputing that there is plenty of evidence. The witness statements are shocking. They tell us that China is conducting “large scale espionage operations”.”
“What parliamentary means do we have to get hold of the minutes of meetings in which this issue was discussed and these decisions were made, so that we can find out the truth?”
“Yes, Madam Deputy Speaker. Like you, I am one of the parliamentarians sanctioned by China. Like many Members of this House, I am left wondering whether it was not just our offices that were spied on, but our families, our homes and our children, and in the absence of a trial, I have no way of finding out what happened. The Minister has been asked multiple times whether he will publish the minutes of the meetings in which this case was discussed. We know from the DPP that, over months and months, the CPS asked again and again for evidence that was not forthcoming. However, without the minutes of those meetings, we are not able to find out what was asked for, why it was refused or who made that decision. What means are available to this House to get hold of the minutes of those meetings, which the Government do not want to publish?”
“Further to that point of order, Mr Speaker, I am one of the MPs who is currently sanctioned by China, and as one of the founders of the China Research Group I am one of the MPs who was spied upon here. I find it astonishing not just that this case, which was a slam dunk last year, has now been dropped, but that we are not even being told why it has been dropped. The one bright spot in this whole process has been your leadership on the issue, Mr Speaker, and in particular your decision to ban the Chinese ambassador from this building for as long as Members of this House are sanctioned. I worry that certain people will now come to you with honeyed words. How can I put on the record our thanks to you for your leadership, and also our hope that you will continue to stand strong on behalf of Members of this House?”
“(Urgent Question): To ask the Foreign Secretary if she will make a statement on the process for the appointment of the United Kingdom’s ambassador to the United States.”
“To be clear, this is a Government in which we had a corruption Minister having to resign over links to corruption; a former police officer having to resign over having not been clear with the police; a housing Minister having to resign over not paying tax on a house; and now we have our ambassador to Washington in the middle of the biggest scandal in Washington. This is a weak Prime Minister, with error after error of judgment.”
“Did the Prime Minister’s chief of staff, Sue Gray, give any warning? Have any employees of Global Counsel visited our Washington embassy since Peter Mandelson’s appointment? Next week will be the state visit. This is huge turmoil ahead of that, and I cannot believe that the Government have put our monarch in this terrible position. I am glad that Peter Mandelson has now gone. The Foreign Secretary has said that protecting women, girls and victims is her priority; how on earth does that square with the behaviour of the Government over recent days, squirming and twisting to try to protect Peter Mandelson, rather than the victims?”
“The Minister should not say that the boxes were ticked and the process followed—what did the Prime Minister know at the point of Lord Mandelson’s appointment? The Minister said this morning that his understanding was that all the information was present—is that correct? Did the Prime Minister know? Will the Government now publish all the documents relating to Peter Mandelson’s vetting? If the Minister says that the Prime Minister did not know at the time, when did he become aware of the revelations? Peter Mandelson quietly stayed at Epstein’s house while Epstein was in prison. Mandelson now says that he was wrong to think that Epstein was innocent. That is his defence—but Epstein had pleaded guilty. There are huge questions here. Did the US State Department give any warnings to our Government ahead of this appointment?”
“Mr Speaker, I thank you for granting this urgent question, and I agree with the words of the Minister about 11 September and Charlie Kirk. This is yet another extraordinary error of judgment by this weak Prime Minister. I pay tribute to the Leader of the Opposition for yesterday securing justice for the victims of Epstein. This raises massive questions. It is not just that Peter Mandelson was Epstein’s “best pal” and said that he loved him, or that he brokered a deal for him while he was Business Secretary, but that, as we now know, he was working for Epstein’s early release after Epstein was convicted. The simple question is this: is the Minister now saying that the Prime Minister did not know about any of that at the point when Lord Mandelson was appointed?”
“On a point of order, Mr Speaker. The Minister says that the only reason why Peter Mandelson had to resign was the additional information that he had campaigned for the early release of Epstein. The Government are not saying exactly what they did or did not know at the point of appointment. The only way for this House to know exactly what they knew is for the Government to publish the documents relating to his vetting. If the Government will not publish those documents, as the Minister says they will not, would it be possible for this House to attain those documents using the Humble Address mechanism?”
“The Secretary of State just said that the Government were turning around declines in teacher numbers. Under the last Government the number of teachers went up by 27,000; under this Government it is down by 400. That is the opposite of the truth. One thing that drives people out of teaching is poor discipline, yet the Government have abolished behaviour hubs, despite the evidence that they were working. The Government said they would put in place new behaviour ambassadors, who were supposed to be in place on 4 July, but the contract has now lapsed and the position is vacant. Why the delay on this vital issue?”
“Before the election, Labour said that it would allow employers to take 50% of their apprenticeship levy money and spend it on other things, but since the a while election, different Ministers have said different things about whether that is still happening. The Skills Minister said it would all depend on the spending review, but of course, the spending review was back. Will businesses be able to take out 50% as Labour promised or not?”
“Parents are getting in touch with MPs across the country to ask whether existing special needs support will continue under the planned reforms. The Minister for School Standards has said that the Government will not remove “effective support”, but what does that word “effective” mean? Who will judge what is effective, and on what basis? Why will the Government not just guarantee that all children will keep the support that they currently have?”
“Between 2009 and 2022, England went from 21st to seventh in the programme for international student assessment league table for maths, while Wales—spending the same amount as before—went from 29th to 27th. [ Interruption. ] Labour MPs clearly do not like hearing this, but I am afraid I am going to carry on. In science, England went from 11th to ninth, while Wales—with same amount of money as before but run by Labour, with no reforms—slumped from 21st to 29th.”
“Everybody wants to give children the best start in life. That is why we increased spending per pupil in schools by 11% in real terms in the last Parliament, and why we doubled real-terms spending on the free entitlement for the early years. More importantly, it is why we pushed through difficult reforms to schools, which were often opposed by the Labour party. It is why we brought in the knowledge-rich curriculum, why we brought in stronger accountability, and why we pushed through the academies revolution and more parental choice. The Minister said that our record speaks for itself, and it does. Labour’s record speaks for itself as well.”
“The hon. Gentleman is completely right, and it is not the first time—it is generally the case that no one from Reform is present. On this issue, I am afraid that Reform MPs are chronically absent, as we say in education. I will continue with my theme. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that the huge difference in performance, and the divergence in performance, between England and Wales cannot be explained by poverty rates or ethnicity. It is to do with the reforms that were not undertaken because of trade union pressure in Wales.”
“Ministers implied that that had always been their intention—they said, “How dare you say that wasn’t our intention?”—but they announced this policy in a primary school, and they said they would hit their targets for early years through an increase in primary. Now they say, “Oh, numbers are falling in primary,” but numbers are falling by a lot less than when they made the pledge in the updated forecast. If we apply the same logic, half of secondary schools have falling numbers, so perhaps that will be the next way they try to monkey around with the numbers to pretend that the opposite is happening. I would not mind so much if we did not get these chirpy press releases from the Department saying, “We’re doing so well; we’ve got all these extra teachers.” There are fewer teachers—that is the bottom line in what has happened here.”
“It has been a long time since I studied formal logic, but we cannot spend every single penny on education and also spend that money on housing; we cannot spend it on two things. As it happens, we now know that actually there are not those extra teachers; there are 400 fewer teachers. We added 27,000 teachers under the last Government and under Labour there are 400 fewer teachers. At the point when the numbers came out showing that there were fewer teachers, the Government suddenly declared that primary school teachers do not count—that the fall of 2,900 in primary school teacher numbers did not count.”
“The Government have axed all the forms of support that we were making available to schools for subjects from advanced physics to maths, Latin and advanced computing—they think they are elitist. They have also axed the behaviour hubs, even though there is clear evidence that they were working and schools that went through them were twice as likely to be good or outstanding afterwards. The reform agenda is just not there. At one point, the Government’s big answer was that they were going to employ 6,500 more teachers: they were going to increase VAT and employ all these extra teachers. The Chancellor said at the end of last year that every single penny of that VAT increase would go to education, but then, confusingly, the Prime Minister said that the money had been spent on social housing instead.”
“The greater autonomy for schools that we brought in has been replaced by a tide of micromanagement of curriculum and staff, and the absurd situation where if someone wants to put up a bicycle shed they have to apply to the Secretary of State. On the other hand, the ultimate form of accountability—placing schools under new management via academy orders—is being slowed down and stopped, which has been criticised even by Labour MPs such as the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh). The Labour party’s attempts to mess around with Ofsted to please the trade unions have watered down accountability for parents and made things more complicated, but they have not made anybody happy; nobody is happy with what has been proposed in the end.”
“Children in England were ranked the best in maths in the whole western world in the 2023 trends in international mathematics and science study, and they moved into the top five in the global rankings for science. What happened in Wales and Scotland? We do not know, as their Administrations removed themselves from those competitions because they do not like accountability. It is the same at all levels. Whereas we favoured parental choice and autonomy for schools, balanced by strong accountability, the current Government take a very different approach. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is currently in the Lords, dilutes parental choice, and it gives local politicians more control over pupil numbers for the first time since 1988.”
“I do not think that is true. Looking at the evidence pack produced by the Government’s curriculum review, it is clear that some of the arguments are overstated. It is true that we reversed the decline in the number of young people taking double and triple science; that had been falling for years, and it went back up again because there was more focus on science. It is true that there are a limited number of hours in the school day, but I do not accept that we had some sort of Gradgrindian educational agenda. There continues to be a broad and balanced agenda. If Labour Members want to say that much more time should be spent on a particular subject, they should at least be clear about where it will come from.”
“Ministers like to talk about some of the small interventions they are making, such as the £33 million they are spending on breakfast clubs and the “best start in life” centres and the increases in spending there. But on the other side of the ledger, how is this being paid for? It is being paid for with a £25 billion increase in national insurance, and, unbelievably for a notionally social democratic Government, that national insurance increase is brutally targeted on the lowest income workers. It is incredible.”
“There are several things to say about that. The first is that the overall number went up: the hon. Gentleman said that some were leaving, but the overall number went up by 27,000. He makes a good point about early career teachers and that is why we put in the early career framework, which I do think is a big improvement. It is not that there is nothing in what the hon. Gentleman said, but I do think it is funny for him to stand up and talk about gaslighting when the Government are pumping out glossy propaganda saying that there are more teachers, even though their own Department for Education website says that there are 400 fewer teachers. So do tell me all about gaslighting. My broader worry about the Government’s approach to giving every child the best start in life is that it misses the wood for the trees.”
“I ask these questions because a lot of special needs parents are worried about that; they are concerned about what the Government are planning. Maybe they are wrong and maybe the Government have a brilliant plan on all this, and we are not against reform, but at the moment, there are big questions about the ideas that are now sloshing around in the public domain, worrying people. I encourage Ministers to move quickly to certainty on these questions so that people’s minds could be put at ease. To conclude, we are all in favour of giving each child the best start in life. We have a proud record, we made great progress, and we wish all the Government all the best, but we worry that they are too often missing the wood for the trees.”
“We heard from a Health Minister that the Government want to see a smaller proportion of children in special schools, and we have heard from the Minister’s adviser on SEND that she thinks that they are having a conversation at the moment about not having education, health and care plans for children outside special schools, which covers about 300,000 children at the moment—60% of all children with an EHCP. Those are huge changes, but is it not the case that those two policy reforms are potentially in tension? If we tell people that they cannot get an EHCP outside a special school, more parents will want to go to the special school. Ministers have talked about there always being some kind of legal right to support for special needs, but what does that mean: if the support is not being delivered by an EHCP, how will it be delivered?”
“Can the Minister tell me how that pledge is going? It was made by the Prime Minister and was the big highlight of his ’21 conference speech. How many schools currently offer two weeks of work experience each year? Finally, I have a question of principle really. The Minister quite rightly talked about SEND, and we had an important report from the Education Policy Institute this morning about the overlap between SEND and school achievement, and the Government have said two things.”
“I ask the Minister to answer the question very simply: what proportion of pupils will be eligible for free school meals this year and in all future years across the forecast? How much will we be spending in real terms in each of those years? I like lots of things about the “best start in life” programme—it is a continuation of our family hubs programme—and I wonder whether the Minister could set out exactly how much will be spent on that programme in the ’26-27, ’27-28 and ’28-29 financial years. It is not a bad programme at all and we do not dislike it at all; the only thing that is not right is to pretend it is a completely new thing, when in fact it is a continuity of something that already existed. Something that is new that Ministers promised was two weeks of work experience for every child at secondary school.”
“I think it is astonishing—and I think a lot of Labour MPs will regret it later—that this is the way they have chosen to raise all this money. Let me ask a few specific questions while we are here. The Department for Education has confirmed to the specialist media that it does not hold any information on the number of children who will lose entitlement to free school meals as a result of the end of the universal credit transitional protection, yet it claims to be confident that it knows that the changes it is making will reduce child poverty by 100,000. How can the Department not know how many kids are going to be on free school meals yet be confident that it will have a positive effect?”
“I am very grateful to be put right back in my box by Madam Deputy Speaker, and rightly so. I would not fund that by increasing taxes on low income workers by £25 billion. That means that someone who is earning £13,000 a year loses £500. It means someone earning £9,000 a year is losing 5% of their income. Ministers like to talk about the distributional impact of things like breakfast clubs and so on—they say 100,000 kids will be lifted out of poverty by something they are doing—but they will not produce any poverty analysis or any distributional analysis of the £25 billion. They are happy to talk endlessly about the distributional impacts of tiny measures, but not the £25 billion takeaway from low income working people in this country.”
“As well as risking lives, this extraordinary error has cost taxpayers huge sums. The Secretary of State says that it will now cost £1.2 billion less, but what will be the total cost of all these schemes after that? First, given the extraordinary lack of transparency that this Parliament has been subjected to—and voters too—will the Secretary of State agree to publish the legal advice that led to the expansion of the ARR and other schemes so that we can properly discuss it? Secondly, the Secretary of State did not mention any official resigning or being sacked over this extraordinary episode. I think my constituents will find that quite surprising. Will he name the number of people who have resigned or been sacked over this extraordinary error, and if nobody has been, does he agree that that is wrong?”
“Member for Bishop Auckland, who is quite right to bring this debate to the House. He gave an excellent speech. I am struck by the way the debates on this issue have changed even in the time I have been here. It is more clearly identified as a problem and by synthesising the arguments in such an excellent way today, he has helped to propel the argument forward.”
“I think this is interesting and it needs careful analysis. For 18 to 29-year-olds, the gender pay gap now does not exist. It is actually negative for the youngest of that group and it appears to get bigger with age, but it is actually not a gender pay gap per se—it is a motherhood pay gap. I commend the work of Ruxandra Teslo. I am sure the Chair of the Select Committee is very familiar with it. She shows that the later women delay having children, the higher their income and, unfortunately, the fewer children they get to have. I think I am in agreement with Department for Education Ministers in thinking that that is unacceptable and must be changed. On that rare note of terrifying consensus, let me draw my remarks to a close by once again congratulating the hon.”
“Likewise, in opposition last year, the Government announced plans to help schools develop young male mentors and to teach pupils how to question the material they see on social media, particularly from people such as Andrew Tate. This is a rare example of total agreement between both sides of the House. We completely agree that we need to push back against terrible role models for boys —they are total, total, total losers teaching boys totally terrible ideas. We hope there will be an opportunity to prosecute some of those people, too. What has happened to the pledge to get mentors in place? Let me pick up on something that the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), said in her excellent speech. She talked about the gender pay gap.”
“They are crucial for boys; they are crucial for everyone, to be honest. I totally understand why Ministers are looking at this. According to the IFS, we increased funding by nearly 60%, or £4 billion in real terms, between 2015-16 and 2024-25—that is a fast rate of increase. But of course, it is vital that we get the right answers and certainty for parents as soon as possible. I will end with a couple of questions to the Minister. In opposition, the Prime Minister said that he wanted to improve employability—we have talked about young men who are NEETS—and said, “We will reinstate two weeks of compulsory work experience”. How many schools are delivering that now? What is the Government’s target to be delivered and by when? When will schools be seeing the £85 million that was promised in the Labour manifesto to fund that?”
“The Health Minister has said that the Government want to see a smaller proportion of pupils in special schools, too. Given these issues are now being debated in the public domain, as Ministers think about reform, they will need to move fast—as I am sure they will want to—to answer the big questions about the ideas they have put out that in some cases are causing parents worry. For example, how will the parents of these boys—and they are mainly boys—know that their child will get what they need if they do not have an EHCP? Is there not a tension between wanting fewer pupils in special schools and ending EHCPs outside them? What did the Minister mean when she said that effective support will not be removed? What does “effective” mean? These are all questions that I am sure the Minister is thinking about.”
“Getting behaviour and discipline right is crucial for boys, who are often the victims of violence and fights. I will not relitigate all this stuff, but we had a schools Bill that did not have anything to say on discipline. The Government rejected our amendments to add provisions on behaviour. They have abolished the behaviour hubs, which were working. It went from one third of the schools that went through the hubs being rated good or outstanding to two thirds of those schools, yet the hubs have been axed. On forthcoming policy, as the hon. Member welcomed, boys have 71% of all EHCPs. We know the Government have said they are looking at ending EHCPs outside of special schools—that is, about 60% of EHCPs or over 300,000 children. We are not at all against reform of special needs provision.”
“It has already been mentioned that reading for pleasure is down most sharply among boys. That is one reason why we will continue to press for action not just to get phones out of our schools, but more widely, as the Liberal Democrat spokesperson the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) said, to tackle the public health and educational problems being caused by the wider shift to a smartphone-based childhood, including on issues such as the age of consent for social media. I encourage Ministers to fight the good fight on all that stuff. We know that boys are much more likely to end up in trouble or in fights at school. I remember that was the worst single aspect of when I was at secondary school. A few Members have mentioned exclusions. I am always a bit wary of that—that is the symptom rather than the cause.”
“What does that mean for girls and boys? On PISA, for both England and Wales, we see that boys do better than girls on maths and science, but boys do worse than girls on reading. That gap between England and Wales is now so big that on reading, boys in England do better than girls in Wales, and on maths and science, girls in England do better than boys in Wales, so the absolute level matters. We must remember that while we have talked a lot in the debate about relativities, ultimately, it is the absolute performance that we really care about. We want to raise both levels, particularly given that we are in a global economy. Secondly, I turn to what we will do specifically to try to improve the performance of boys, and I will give a few relevant examples.”
“I will not relitigate old arguments, but for lots of different reasons, the Labour Government in Wales decided not to do the structural reforms that happened in England over the Blair period and our period in government. They did not do academies, accountability measures or the knowledge-intensive curriculum. The results were startling. A report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies called, “Major challenges for education in Wales” points out that—amazingly—disadvantaged children in England are now doing better on PISA than average children in Wales. There is a huge gap. From 2009 to 2022, England went from 21st to seventh in the PISA league table on maths, while Wales went from 29th to 27th. On science, England went from 11th to ninth, while Wales went down from 21st to 29th. There is a big looming gap between England and Wales.”