Damian Hinds MP: speeches

Speeches

• 12 Jan 2026 · Local House Building Targets: Affordability Assessment · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to the Secretary of State for his response. The housing formula has resulted in huge increases for parts of rural England, including a doubling of the number in my East Hampshire constituency, and it should be reviewed overall. However, this question is about one specific aspect, whereby in an unintended way, the mix of housing that is being delivered might be skewed. I have written to the Secretary of State’s colleague, the Minister for Housing and Planning, and all I ask is that the Department looks at that with an open mind and considers it fully.

• 12 Jan 2026 · Local House Building Targets: Affordability Assessment · Hansard source

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  1. If he will review the methodology for assessing housing affordability used to set local house building targets.

• 18 Dec 2025 · Jane Austen · Hansard source

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  It is very good to see you, Mr Efford, presiding over this timely debate. Not only is this the 250th-anniversary year, but I think this is the first Backbench Business slot available after Jane’s actual birthday, which was on Tuesday. I congratulate the hon. Member for Basingstoke (Luke Murphy) not only on securing the debate—I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting it—but on his excellent speech. The last time I saw a production of a Jane Austen novel was “Pride and Prejudice” at the Vyne in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency, as part of the 250th celebrations. It was the second-wettest outdoor event I have ever been at. By coincidence, the very wettest was “Sense and Sensibility” earlier that same summer, at Uppark just outside Petersfield. A number of places have a link to Jane Austen, including Southampton, Winchester, Bath and, of course, the rectory at Steventon. But it was at Chawton that Jane Austen’s genius truly flourished, and where she either wrote entirely or revised and completed all six of her globally beloved novels. The house in Chawton is now, of course, the Jane Austen’s House museum, which is in my East Hampshire constituency. The significance of Austen as a novelist can hardly be overstated. Things changed after her work. It was not that she wrote about ordinary people—they were not quite ordinary—but they were a lot more ordinary than the grand, historical figures or the Gothic characters who would typically have featured in novels up to that point. The novels were about ordinary events for those people: the subtle putdowns and the slightly tedious visits they had to withstand. She demonstrated that the domestic world holds just as much drama and just as many moral dilemmas and lessons as any royal court or battlefield. They were not quite what you would call kitchen sink dramas, but they were a social observation and social commentary, so in turn became a sort of social campaigning, because to change the world we first have to observe and explain it. There was then Austen’s own ordinariness, coming not quite from the masses, but still, relatively speaking, ordinary. She was the daughter of a clergyman with a fairly limited formal education, which makes hers also a story of social mobility. That social mobility grew posthumously. We talk about the enduring significance and legacy of authors, but for Jane Austen that grew dramatically with the increasing interest in the 1870s and 1880s. The huge increase then came in the mid-1990s, with the BBC adaptation of “Pride and Prejudice”. Notably, the most famous scene in that adaptation was not in the book. There is an interesting question about how new media adds to what we already have. As the hon. Member for Basingstoke said, we see the storylines in “Bridget Jones”, “Clueless” and “Bridgerton”—there may be no actual Austen link, but quite a few people probably think there is. In any event, we see a kind of genre-spawning going on. I am not a literary critic. Were Jane Austen to describe me, she might say something like, “He was a moderately read man who happily knew the limits of his own scholarship.” I will not go further than that—the hon. Member for Basingstoke did a very good job—but I can and will pay tribute to all those who do so much to keep Jane Austen’s legacy alive, celebrate her work and its wider impact and make sure it gets to a wider and wider audience. It just so happens that many of those people are resident in my constituency and connected with Jane Austen’s house, Chawton House or the Regency day and festival. I already spoke briefly about the significance of the house in Chawton. It was Jane’s place of stability after what had been a period of insecurity, and it was there that she received her own copy of “Pride and Prejudice”—I think she called it her darling child when it arrived from London—and read it out loud to a neighbour with her mother. Not only was the house the place where those novels were fashioned; it was also the place where that “truth universally acknowledged” was heard out loud for the first time. The house became a museum in 1949. Today, it holds an unparalleled collection of first editions, personal letters and artefacts, and receives tens of thousands of visitors from around the world. This year, for the anniversary year, there were 55,000 visitors, a third of whom were from overseas. Under the leadership of Lizzie Dunford, it has done amazing things with the team of 18 staff and 80 fantastic volunteers. However, Chawton is not about only Jane’s own house. There is also what she called the “Great House”: her brother Edward’s house, which is correctly called Chawton House and was the reason that Jane was in Chawton. She was a frequent visitor, even when it was let out to another family. Today, it is a public historic house in the estate run by the Chawton House library trust and is dedicated to telling the stories of women’s history and women’s writing. It has the UK’s leading collection of pre-20th century women’s writing, with around 16,000 items, including the so-called Grandison manuscript in Jane’s own hand. Chawton House is a centre of scholarship and long has been, but these days it is also a fantastic day out. It has had a great upgrade under the chief executive, Katie Childs. There are brilliant volunteers there who help to bring the place to life. Visitors will discover many influences on Jane’s novels around the house. It runs a great programme of outdoor theatre, classical music and walks—countryside walks such as the walk from Chawton to Farringdon were, of course, a great influence on Jane—as well as being a Royal Horticultural Society partner garden. Finally, there is the town of Alton, just outside which the small village of Chawton lies. The whole of Alton is really involved with Jane Austen’s legacy. On 21 June this year, we had a fantastic unveiling of the new bust of Jane Austen, which is now in the Alton Regency garden just outside the assembly rooms and very close to the branch of her brother Henry’s bank on the high street. It was great to have there the sculptor Mark Coreth and descendants of the Austen and Knight families. The bust was made at Morris Singer foundry in Lasham, which—a little fun fact for colleagues—was the same foundry that fashioned the two unique bronze sculptures outside the door of Westminster Hall that mark the late Queen’s platinum jubilee. Every year, the Regency day and festival bring into Alton hundreds of people, particularly those with a fondness for period costume. It is a great spectacle. The Regency ball always sells out. There is great work between Chawton and Basingstoke on some of these commemorative events. That festival is now into its 17th year and attracts people from around the world, with some 50 events. It has a brilliant organising committee, which includes the secretary, Julie McLatch. It was all the brainchild of local hero Pat Lerew. In conclusion, and given the season, I will quote Mr Elton in “Emma”: “At Christmas every body invites their friends about them, and people think little of even the worst weather”— which will be a good thing if it stays as filthy as it is outside right now. Mr Efford, if I might paraphrase Caroline Bingley in “Pride and Prejudice”: “I sincerely hope your Christmas”— in Eltham and Chislehurst— “may abound in the gaieties which that season generally brings”.

• 17 Dec 2025 · Housing Development: Cumulative Impacts · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the cumulative impacts of housing development. It is good to see you presiding once again, Mr Twigg. Let me start with the obvious statement that in this country, and in all of our localities, we need more housing. There has been population growth, and in our constituencies we want there to be customers for shops and people to work in them, and places for people growing up locally to be able to move into. We also recognise that people move, which is important for labour mobility. Part of the population growth is about net immigration, but a big part is about increasing longevity—people living longer—and part of the need for more housing is the tendency of people to live in smaller households. Overall, the record of housing delivery for both Labour and Conservative Governments has had its ups and downs. Both Labour and Conservative Governments suffered from major disruptions—in the case of Labour, the crash of 2007-08, and in the case of the Conservatives, covid-19. However, the peak of the modern era in net additions to housing was the 249,000 achieved just before covid under a Conservative Government, against the peak of 224,000 under Labour just before the crash. The target the new Government have in place is one that has not been achieved since the 1970s, and they are falling far short right now. The provisional number for 2024-25 is 209,000, which is a 6% fall on the previous year of 2023-24. There are aspects of what the Minister outlined in his announcement yesterday that could help to address the shortfall, but I believe that it is inconsistent with the way that the formula currently skews development towards rural areas. What do I mean by that skew and how does it come about? Overall, the Government require a 50% uplift in housing numbers, but in the 58 mainly or largely rural local authorities, the average increase was 70%. In East Hampshire, which I represent, the target doubled, from 575 a year to 1,100. Meanwhile, urban and major conurbations saw a much lower increase, at around 16% to 17% on average, and quite a few places saw a fall, including much of London and Birmingham. To be clear, that is not correcting a historical imbalance. Looking back over 20 years, the proportionate addition of dwellings per 1,000 households has been greater in predominantly rural areas than in predominantly urban ones. We also know from analysis by the Resolution Foundation that tilting development towards cities is good for economic growth. Why is it a problem to have a skew towards rural areas? First, let us acknowledge that when we talk about rural land, this is not land that is typically sitting there doing nothing. It is not idle; often, it is farmland. Of course, these days we are more acutely conscious than ever of the necessity for food security. It is also the home for nature, and important to biodiversity. The countryside is an amenity for everyone, whether they live in the countryside or in a town. We will be back in Westminster Hall tomorrow to debate the legacy and significance of Jane Austen. The countryside of the constituency that I represent is what inspired Jane to write her great novels, and it still brings many people to the area. Yes, there are protected areas of countryside, but it is not only about areas of outstanding natural beauty or national parks—the majority of rural areas are not in one—nor is it about the green belt. In East Hampshire there is a lot of green, but there is no green belt. We have a further complication, in that the district of East Hampshire is shared in Parliament between myself and my hon. Friend the Member for Farnham and Bordon (Gregory Stafford). The South Downs national park represents 26% or 27% of pre-existing housing and population in the district, but represents only 15% of housing completions in East Hampshire since it came into being. That creates extra pressure just outside the national park, in places such as Alton Holybourne, Four Marks and Medstead, which I will come back to, and in Horndean, Clanfield and parts of Rowlands Castle. The Minister and I have had an opportunity to discuss this issue previously and I am grateful to him for his constructive engagement with it. I think that East Hampshire district council is right to assume that in the future there will be a split in housing development, reflecting where the pre-existing population and housing were. There is a 74% and 26% split. However, the council cannot do that for affordability. Unaffordability is significantly more acute inside the national park than outside it. However, I am not here today to talk about the national park primarily, because the bigger problem that is driving these issues is the total target. We now also have effects of the duty to co-operate. It is possible that even with that split between 74% and 26%, the part of East Hampshire that is outside the national park might still get asked by the part that is inside the national park to take on more of its burden, and it is obliged to engage in those discussions constructively. However, we also now have other nearby authorities asking East Hampshire, and by the way a couple of other more rural authorities, to take on more of their housing numbers. So, we have this crazy situation whereby, with all the targets having gone up, people are looking to a district such as the one I represent to take more of their housing. But I should also say that none of those authorities have had an increase in their housing target as large as the one that East Hampshire has had. We also have looming over us the effect of local government reorganisation. I think that some people see local government reorganisation—the merging of districts and boroughs into larger unitary authorities—as an opportunity and a way to address some of these problems. I fear that that might be a false hope. In fact, the creation of these large authorities might deepen or even embed some of these issues, with more housing being moved into countryside that will then be lost forever. I will briefly give a case study of one area; it is not the only area where this situation applies, but it is a particularly striking example. It is Four Marks and Medstead. There is a grouping called Four Marks and South Medstead—it is called that in the planning document—and it is in tier three in the settlement hierarchy. It has already had a great deal of housing development. In the 2014 local plan, Four Marks and South Medstead had 2,030 houses and the target in the plan for the period to 2028 was 175 houses. The total number of new houses that have been built since 2014 is in fact 592, which is three times the original target. However, with further permissions and applications, there could be a great deal more houses. Indeed, there could be up to eight times the target and a two-thirds increase in the size of the settlement, and we even hear of further applications on top of all that. What are the effects of that extra development? It takes a lot for a single housing development to change a local environment, but cumulatively a number of smaller developments can change the whole character of an area, which is at odds with paragraph 187 of the NPPF. And this is not just about character and landscape. It is also about practical matters, such as the A31 and being able to turn right on to it, or the capacity of the waste water treatment plant and the electricity substation at Alton. I have talked about Four Marks and South Medstead. In the other part of the parish of Medstead, Medstead village itself and its surroundings are in tier four in the settlement hierarchy. There was no specific target for it in the plan, because Medstead village was put together with other villages. However, I have seen speculative applications for a number of sites in that area, particularly in the new land availability assessment. So why is cumulative impact not being considered in all these developments and proposals? The main time that cumulative development is taken into account is, of course, at the time of plan-making. With speculative developments, when the cumulative effect is not considered, there is a risk that the developments do not meet the economic, social and environmental objectives set out in paragraph 8 of the NPPF. The East Hampshire district local plan was adopted in 2014 for the period up to 2028, and the update process started in 2018. There have been some delays, including most notably as a result of covid. The key point is that under the old, pre-2024 housing targets, East Hampshire had a five-year housing land supply and the 5% buffer. We then got a rapid doubling of the housing targets. There is now no five-year housing land supply—there is a 2.9-year housing land supply. Given that we have doubled it, the only way we could still have a five-year land supply is if we had previously had a 10-year land supply, and I doubt that many local authorities can say that. That is why, although I am talking about East Hampshire, other colleagues may mention other areas; East Hampshire is clearly not alone. Since the big increases in a number of the targets for different areas, I understand that most councils do not have both an up-to-date local plan and the five-year housing land supply. Speculative development is therefore probably happening in lots of places around the country, but it is especially concentrated in our rural areas, because they have had the biggest increases in targets. East Hampshire is currently developing its new local plan. It expects to reach regulation 19 stage in the summer of 2026 and for the plan to be operational in August the following year. Until the local plan is finalised, the tilted balance principle means that the council is required to approve sites unless they can be said to be not sustainable development—a high bar indeed. Each application can be considered only on its own merits and in relation to its individual impact on traffic, sewerage and the rest of it. The council cannot consider the cumulative effect of, say, five smaller developments that might together be the equivalent of one big one. It cannot say, “Because we have already allowed these four, we are not going to allow the fifth.” While I have the floor, I want to mention something that I have mentioned in passing to the Minister before: that the way the formula works does not encourage a change in the housing mix towards more actually affordable homes. To be clear, in areas like mine, we want more affordable homes. When I say “affordable”, I mean it in both senses of the word. What I call “capital-A Affordable” is the sense known to the public sector: social rent and part ownership. There is also “affordable” in the common English sense of the word—the affordability of housing as it is often expressed to us by our constituents in our surgeries, which is to say homes that young families can afford. Although not everybody does, most aspire to home ownership; I would wager that most hon. Members in the Grand Committee Room today had that aspiration to become home owners and did so.

• 17 Dec 2025 · Housing Development: Cumulative Impacts · Hansard source

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  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. 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. Question put and agreed to. Resolved , That this House has considered the cumulative impacts of housing development.

• 17 Dec 2025 · Housing Development: Cumulative Impacts · Hansard source

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  I know the hon. Gentleman’s constituency quite well—he is my mother-in-law’s MP. I know what a fantastic and beautiful area it is, as well as some of the challenges with the local economy. He makes a very good point.

• 17 Dec 2025 · Housing Development: Cumulative Impacts · Hansard source

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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.

• 17 Dec 2025 · Housing Development: Cumulative Impacts · Hansard source

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  Of course, I agree. It is sometimes frustrating to talk to people who say there is no link between aggregate supply and the price of housing. Of course there is, but there is also the question of the mix, which is what I want to come to. Other things being equal, the best returns for developers tend to be on larger, costlier homes, and new builds are generally more expensive than the existing stock of housing. In East Hampshire, the median price of the current housing stock is an expensive £430,000, but the median price of new houses is £530,000. With development and the increase in stock at a local level, median house prices therefore go up. The formula then calls for more of the same because of how it measures and treats affordability, so it becomes a cycle in which we still do not get the lower-cost homes we need. It could even be said that developers have an incentive to keep the unaffordability ratio increasing, because that extends the pipeline further into the future. I ask Ministers to look again to create incentives for quality, lower-priced housing. I have three straightforward, reasonable asks of the Minister. The first and most important is, of course, to rebalance the formula away from rural—not so there is no rural, but so the balance is right and we do not have targets that mean an unrealistic amount is put into the countryside. It is about having that balance, which requires changing the formula. I asked that of the Minister yesterday, and he was good enough to give me a pithy and clear single-word answer, which was no. I get that, unless and until it changes, the policy is what the policy is, so the answer is no. However, I ask him to reflect further and think about it, not to conflict with Government policy but to complement and support Government policy. A change in the formula—moving back towards the urban, from the rural—would actually support what he is trying to do, including the spirit of what he outlined in yesterday’s statement. My second ask is to change the way the formula works on affordability, to remove the perverse affordability factor I mentioned. Affordability looms large in the overall formula, as it has had its weighting increased, but this is specifically about removing the perverse effect I just mentioned, whereby building more actually makes an area more unaffordable in the eyes of the formula, which therefore increases the target. I think the Minister will say that local authorities can do that in their plan making, but we need it to be systematised to find a way to require a change in the mix of housing so that we get homes that are more in reach of people growing up in rural areas. Finally, in the meantime, as the targets have increased so much and so quickly—the five-year housing land supply in many areas could not possibly have increased nearly so quickly—we have a lot of speculative development. Therefore, pending the change in the formula, will the Minister give guidance stating that local authorities should consider the cumulative impact of all developments together?

• 17 Dec 2025 · Housing Development: Cumulative Impacts · Hansard source

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  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.

• 16 Dec 2025 · Planning Reform · Hansard source

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  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?

• 8 Dec 2025 · Skills England · Hansard source

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  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?

• 8 Dec 2025 · Skills England · Hansard source

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  9. What recent progress Skills England has made on its priorities.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  rose—

• 8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  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. 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.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  You have 18 minutes.

• 8 Dec 2025 · Digital ID · Hansard source

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  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. 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.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  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?

• 1 Dec 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  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?

• 1 Dec 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  David Laws!

• 1 Dec 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  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?

• 1 Dec 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  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. 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, 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. 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. 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. 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. 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”. 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. 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.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  In that case, I give way to the hon. Gentleman.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I am coming very close to the end of my speech, and I think Ms Barker would want me to continue to allow for more speakers.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  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. 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.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Curriculum and Assessment Review: Progress 8 · Hansard source

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  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?