Defending Public Services — House of Commons, 2016-05-23
Topic: Education
Tristram Hunt (Labour, Centre-left): It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wealden (Nusrat Ghani), who gave a powerful speech about child sexual exploitation, extremism and Wahhabi ideology. I am glad that she sits on the Home Affairs Select Committee. She also mentioned the Trojan horse affair; if she looked into it in detail, she would realise that the speed and nature of the Government’s academisation programme increased the risk to children, as Peter Clarke laid out in his report to the Government. I urge the hon. Lady to read it if she has not already done so To deliver the Gracious Speech, we were told that Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II required a lift to get up to the relevant Floor in the House of Lords. That strikes me as a rather suitable metaphor for the Queen’s Speech, which needs a fork-lift truck to make it relevant, effective and indeed challenging for the modern era. This is, contrary to what the previous speaker said, a rather tinkering set of measures, setting out the narrowness of the current Tory vision, especially on public services Today’s debate is about "Defending Public Services", but I am more interested in the reform of them. What was missing from this Queen’s Speech was what we were told was the guiding principle of this Parliament—productivity. Absolutely no mention was made of the kind of wealth creation and productivity we need to pay for the public services that we all rely on. Productivity has already gone from this Government’s agenda. If we want to move away from the low-wage, low-skill economy, which my new hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Gill Furniss) highlighted in her wonderful maiden speech, and find a way through secular stagnation, we need a focus on productivity. There was nothing in this Queen’s Speech about it Let me turn first to education and schools policy. In March, the Government White Paper on schools policy came out. It said that "every school" would become "an academy"—and I thought the Conservatives believed in choice. It said that "by the end of 2020, all…schools will be academies" We now know that this policy has been junked in a series of U-turns on education policy. What was once one of the intellectual strengths of the Conservative party—education policy—has now collapsed. We have had the stats fiasco and the free school fiasco, where even Toby Young has revealed that the policy he sought to pioneer was doomed from the beginning. We have had the term-time holiday fiasco. We have had a Conservative Government trying to ban parent governors from schools. What could be more un-Conservative? [Interruption.] I am sorry if I am wrong about that; the policy may have already changed during my speech We have also had a U-turn on mass academisation. The Government have devalued the policy on academies: what was a pioneering Labour programme to help the most disadvantaged schools—those suffering the most difficulties—has become a "one size fits all" policy, which is not working. My local secondary schools in Stoke-on-Trent are academies, and their conversion from local authority status has not altered the challenges I must put on record my horror at the sponsorship of St Peter’s School in Stoke-on-Trent by the Woodard Corporation. It has betrayed the prospects of those children. We have seen a regional schools commissioner fail to step up to deliver change, and we have seen Ministers let five years of education collapse under the Woodard Corporation. The fact that the corporation runs any schools in England is, to my mind, totally shocking When it comes to schools policy, we know what matters: strong leadership, well-motivated, well-qualified teachers, and a faculty that is committed to change. It does not matter whether we are talking about a local authority school, a free school, a university technical college or an academy. However, the Government’s "every single school an academy" policy—maybe it comes, maybe it goes—is not the right approach I support the policy on national citizenship service, and I think that the Government should make it a vehicle for more effective teaching of citizenship. I look forward to the proposals on the national funding formula. As for reform of the university sector, I think that the Minister has listened to some of the concerns that have been expressed, but I oppose the fee hike. British students—English students—are among the most indebted, if not the most indebted, in the world, and now we want them to pay even more. If we want more money to go to our universities, it should come from general taxation rather than the pockets of students The liberalisation of entry to the university market is another issue. Universities can play an important regeneration role, and I respect that, but we must also protect the brand of Universities UK and its success around the world, which can be lost quite quickly. I think we need some reassurances about that At this point I should declare an interest, as a university lecturer. I am in favour of rigour in teaching and the teaching excellence framework, but I must urge Ministers to beware of the bureaucracy that surrounds that. University teaching is currently subject to a great deal of quality control. We certainly need more transparency and quality, but the creation of ever more regulations, and perhaps a new Ofsted, requires careful judgment One continuing theme is planning for the northern powerhouse. I am a supporter of combined authorities and of metro mayors, and I hope that our Front Bench will be more supportive of those policies, because I think that they demonstrate the capacity of the Labour party and what it can do in office. However, I should like them to go further. I think that, in creating combined authorities, we have missed an opportunity to reform public services. I should like to see more decentralisation of finance, and more liberalism allowing combined authorities to raise and spend taxes locally. I should like to see the commissioning of schools taken away from Whitehall and given to combined authorities, so that we can have real local control over schools policy. I should like to see a much more innovative programme for local utilities and the provision of local power in combined authorities One of our greatest public services is the BBC. It is bizarre that—just as with universities—a great global force for Britain should spend half its time trying to prevent Her Majesty’s Government from undermining it. In most other countries in the world, the Government would be supporting an institution like the BBC. We need reassurances from the Minister, who I know takes these issues very seriously, about appointments to the new unitary board: will that mean more jobs for the Conservative boys and girls? We need reassurances about the five-year review: will that mean an ability to restrain influence? We also need reassurances about the ratchet of distinctiveness I do not know the lift in which Her Majesty rose to give her gracious address, but something tells me that, rather like Her Majesty herself, it might contain German elements. That is a symbol of the great debt that we in this nation owe to Europe. If we vote to leave Europe, everything in the gracious address that the Government want to do will be lost.