Damian Hinds MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Tenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Fortnight.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Tenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  That is a question for the hon. Gentleman’s colleagues on the Government Front Bench. He is at liberty to table a written parliamentary question, but I think he will find that it is not possible to get a numerical answer to that question. We did, though, discuss the matter with Ofsted in the evidence sessions—I think the hon. Gentleman was there—and it is a broadly known fact, as any educationalist will tell him, that the vast majority of schools follow the national curriculum for all sorts of good reasons, some of which I will come to. It is not widely understood that the national curriculum has always been a relatively loose framework, including for maintained schools. That is the British tradition. There are other school systems in the world that are very much more centrally directed. Even for local authority and maintained schools it has always been, relatively speaking, quite a devolved system with relative autonomy. It is not possible, sitting in Sanctuary Buildings, to decide suddenly what children are going to learn. Occasionally we will hear a press story about how the Department or its Ministers have banned Steinbeck from schools in England, but that just is not possible to do. We had a row a couple of years ago about so-called decolonising the curriculum. We had people writing to us saying that our national curriculum glorifies the British empire and instils all these negative attitudes, and I said, “Where? Show me where in this document it does that. It doesn’t.” It does not specify things to study in nearly that much detail. That brings me on to the Semmelweis question. I first posed the Semmelweis question more than 10 years ago when I was on the Education Committee, because I was curious to know who decides what children learn in schools. For anyone who wants to know what the Semmelweis question is, it is: “Who was Semmelweis?” From visiting schools I realised that everybody under the age of 18 was very familiar with Semmelweis, and young adults and anybody under the age of 25 or 30 knew who Semmelweis was, but nobody over the age of 40 had the first clue who he was. Would colleagues like to know who Semmelweis was? He worked a hospital in Austria where there were two maternity wards, one of which was staffed by midwives and the other by surgeons. The midwives were women and the surgeons were men. Semmelweis detected, through statistical analysis, that the mortality rates in the two maternity wards were markedly different: the safety rate in the midwife-led ward was much better. This was relevant at the time I looked into it because of the hospital superbug. It is quite difficult to find out who, but somebody had decided that every child in Britain, or in England, should learn this story about Semmelweis, because that would promote hygiene in hospital settings. Semmelweis is not on the national curriculum. Nowhere does it say in a document produced by the Department for Education that every child will learn that. So who does decide? For most subjects in key stages 1 to 3, it is a mix of what schools themselves decide and individual teachers decide. Historically, it would have been a lot about what was in the textbook, so textbook publishers play a role. In more modern times it is educational technology and platforms like Oak National Academy. Then for English and maths it is very much about what is in the year 6 assessments. At key stage 4 and sixth form, as the hon. Member for Twickenham set out correctly, it is really the exam boards that decide what a pupil needs to know to get the GCSE or A-level, and it is the same for other qualifications. That in turn determines what children have to learn. That is not the national curriculum but what is called the specification. The specification for a GCSE is about as close as we can get to a definition of who decides what children will learn at school. Although that refers specifically to key stage 4 and above, it also affects what children learn in preparation in lower school and junior schools. The Minister quoted Jim Callaghan and said that things should not be decided in a “secret garden”. Well, that is the secret garden: the specification that determines what is studied at GCSE. It is not, currently, a detailed national curriculum. Why is the looseness of the national curriculum important? Because the national curriculum is driven by politicians, and keeping the national curriculum loose has helped to keep politics at bay. That can sometimes be frustrating. There will be times when the Minister, like Ministers before her, will say, “My God, I am the Schools Minister—I should be able to determine what happens in schools.” That can be frustrating, but it is also helpful that Ministers cannot affect that directly. I would meet Education Ministers from other countries who said, “We’ve just changed the textbook,” and I would think, “God, I wish we could do that.” But we are a million miles away from saying that we have changed the textbook and every child in England is going to learn the same thing. By the way, Ministers will still get a procession of people asking for this or that to be put on the curriculum. Spoiler alert: climate change and financial education are both already on the national curriculum, disguised in different subjects, but that will not stop people coming to lobby Ministers to do it for the first time. Ministers will get a lot more of those visits in future. During the passage of the Education Reform Act 1988—Gerbil, as it was known—the national curriculum could have been made more prescriptive, but self-restraint on the part of the Government of the day, and of Governments since, has meant it has not been. The key point is that we cannot guarantee that self-restraint into the future. In case colleagues think I am just talking about what children will learn in geography or science, I point out that there are sensitive subjects that a lot of people have an interest in. When we took evidence, I asked the Church of England and Catholic Education Service representatives about someone changing the definition of religious education. Colleagues will know that only one event in history is specified in the national curriculum, which is the holocaust, and no other. English literature is another sensitive subject. Boy, I can tell Ministers that relationships, sex and health education has its controversies—they will not be short of people banging down their door looking for changes there.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Tenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  As my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston has mentioned, it has long been the case that some schools have not had to follow the national curriculum. Even under the proposals in the Bill there will be some schools that will not have to follow it. One of the reasons why I have been banging on for so long, Sir Christopher, is because I have been through a lot of these points already and I am being asked to restate them. I have to ask the hon. Gentleman to forgive me but, as I have set out, it is a broad framework, and there is nothing wrong with having a little bit of innovation within that. I want to come to a close. There are serious people working on the curriculum review and I wish them well in their work. We must of course await the outcome, not prejudge it. So far we have heard only the good stuff—the things we are going to add. In politics, it is always easy to talk about adding things. We are adding more creativity, art and sport, and those are all things that I welcome. It is great to have those opportunities for young people. The difficulty may arrive when we ask, “What does that mean?” Does it mean a longer school day, which is one option? Or does it mean that something else has to go to make way for those things? I do not have the answer, but it is a relevant question. To come back to the ceiling point—whether the national curriculum is a floor or a ceiling—it depends how much headroom is needed. In a very loose national curriculum, schools can innovate and so on, but in a heavily specified national curriculum, they cannot, because the floor is already close to the ceiling and there is not that much room to play with. I do not know whether the hon. Member for North Herefordshire is on Professor Francis’s working group, or what will be in the review document, but there are three problems with insisting on 100% adherence to the national curriculum. First, we are being asked to agree to it before we have the outcome of the national curriculum review. Secondly, Ministers are not obliged to adopt that independent review; they may decide to do something slightly, or more than slightly, different. Thirdly, they are not obliged to stop there. I say “they”, but it is of course not only them. The Bill is going to be an Act of Parliament: we are not legislating for what happens between 2024 and 2029; in the absence of another piece of legislation to replace this one, we are legislating for all time. We cannot know who might come along in the future and decide to do something of which colleagues here might not approve. We do not have large numbers of schools teaching unscientific facts, creationism and what have you. We do have Ofsted, which evaluates all schools on whether they follow a broad and balanced curriculum. We know that, the great majority of the time, the great majority of schools follow the national curriculum, but some innovate, and that can have some benefits. Like others, I am left asking Ministers, what problem are we trying to solve?

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Tenth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Clause 43 will give the Secretary of State a power to direct specific actions to comply with duties, rather than just specifying what those duties are. That is what brings it into a different category. It is a much wider set of powers than we would find in a funding agreement. In principle, it appears to include the power to dictate how individual schools are run, which is not to say that the present Ministers would ever do so. I have two questions for the Minister. First, is there a mechanism to challenge or appeal a decision made in that way? Secondly, has the Department assessed how much extra work will be involved for it as a result of handling more complaints? I want to say a little about academies and maintained schools in general. There is no conflict. Defending academy freedoms and what academies can do does not mean pushing down on maintained schools. I have had children at both, and I have both in my constituency. In fact, East Hampshire is relatively unacademised: particularly at primary level, it has a relatively small number of schools that are academies. I love them all, because they are places where children learn, but none of that takes away from the fact that the freedoms and flexibilities afforded to academies are good things to have. On the question of academic studies, as with grammar schools or various other debates, I could find an academic who could give us any answer we want. In fairness, causality is really hard to prove with these things. What I can tell the Minister, however, is that I have a graph. He may have seen it; if not, I will be happy to send him a copy. It is a U-shaped graph of the performance of schools in England relative to their peers in other countries; it relates to the PISA study, but there are equivalents for PIRLS and TIMSS. The graph shows how remarkably school performance in England has improved over the past decade and a half. Nobody should ever claim that a single factor causes these things, but a fundamental vehicle for schools improvement in that time—alongside the hub network and established and proven methods such as maths mastery and phonics—was the ability for schools to convert to academies, and for academy trusts to spread good practice through our system.

• 3 Feb 2025 · School Accountability and Intervention · Hansard source

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  There seem to be a lot of narrative resets around in Government at the moment, but I must say that I for one was thrilled and refreshed to hear the hon. Lady speaking about school standards with pride. I was thrilled to hear her speaking about the role of year 6 assessments, phonics and multi-academy trusts in driving improvement. It is perhaps a good thing the Government Dispatch Box does not have wing mirrors, because not all her colleagues looked quite as excited as I was. I admire her bravery, but I say to her that with words must come deeds if she is serious about this. One thing she could do is excise from the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill those large elements of part 2 that undermine the freedoms and flexibilities for academies and academy trusts that have enabled such improvements to take place. Will she do it?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  It is a very long-standing right in England for a parent to choose to send their child to school or to educate at home. It is a right that the vast majority of parents never take up, but which nevertheless could be considered a fundamental parent’s right. The condition is always that the child must be receiving a suitable education. That phrase, “a suitable education”, has never been defined in law, and on occasion that creates some tensions. School should be right for the vast majority of children. A school system is designed to apply to the vast majority of children. The Bill is right to introduce a register of children not in school. That was also our policy when in government, but I think the balance is wrong between the detail of information required of parents and the support on offer. Although the number of children in elective home education has been growing, the data collection is relatively new and has been mandatory only since autumn 2024, so some of that growth—as the DFE statisticians themselves say—will be because of that effect. It had been rising even before covid, and then there was a distinct covid effect, which we can see in the numbers. There are multiple reasons why children might be out of school and being educated at home—because of their special needs, perhaps because they have been bullied badly at school, or for various mental health reasons. Some parents make the most enormous sacrifices in their lives to provide a suitable education for their child. I was reminded by someone who came to my surgery the other day that they are not all in terrible circumstances. This mother said to me, “There’s nothing wrong with our life at all. We do this because we think it’s the right thing for our family.” It is her right, too. As a society, we have a moral imperative to know that children are safe. That is where exceptions to rights kick in. There is a really important distinction to be made here. Sometimes, people talk about a growth in elective home education as being a safeguarding concern. It is not. There is nothing about educating a child at home that is intrinsically a safeguarding concern, but it is also the case that if a neglective parent had the opportunity to take a child out of school, they might abuse that. That does in no way besmirch or call into question the overall concept of elective home education or the parents doing it. Like those colleagues who have just spoken, I am worried about condition A in subsection (3)—that a child attending a special school would need the same permission as a family under investigation. From our surgeries, when we meet parents who are educating at home, it quite often concerns a child who was at a special school. It strikes me as very peculiar to say that we should group together a child, because they have special educational needs or a disability, with those families that are a subject of concern. I hope the Minister can help with me this, because I might have just missed it, or might be being thick, but I am a bit confused about the terminology in the Bill, which refers in multiple places to education “otherwise than at school”. Ordinarily, that has a different meaning from elective home education. Education otherwise than at school, commonly known by its acronym of EOTAS, is different. Elective home education is parent-led; it is a voluntary choice that can be made by any parent for their child, and then it is left to them. They will then have, at least today, minimal support from the local authority. EOTAS is different. It is something legally mandated but available for children with special educational needs or disabilities. It is agreed with the local authority. The local authority is then responsible for providing support. One often talks about an EOTAS package that is put around the child, which may involve some tutoring, some online stuff and various other things. Often, the child has an education, health and care plan in place. Again, I ask forgiveness if I have just misread this, but when we talk about applying to take a child into education otherwise than at school, I just do not understand how that works. Perhaps the Minister can help me. For further clarification, subsection (8)(b) talks about notifying “any other parent of the child…unless exceptional circumstances apply”. I wonder if it might be helpful to define a little more what those exceptional circumstances are, because one can imagine difficulties where there is an abusive relationship, and the nature of that abusive relationship may not be known to the authorities at the time. There may be an incarcerated parent or various other conditions. Finally, for clarification, subsection (10)(b) says that, by way of an appeal mechanism, “the parent may refer the question to the Secretary of State” That is quite a thing for a regular parent to take on. No doubt the intent is some sort of mechanism to appeal, not personally to the Secretary of State, but to a representative of the Department for Education. Will the Minister say a word about what that mechanism is and how it will be accessed?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I join colleagues in finding troubling the level of detail to be required of home-educating parents. The amendment tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston would make sensible adjustments to that, for example by deleting the requirement to show the split between how many hours are done by parent 1 and how many by parent 2. The Government could also amend the frequency of reporting to something more reasonable—or, handily, there is a piece of text ready and waiting, because a private Member’s Bill last year from my then hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley contained the text for a proposed new section 436C. Proposed new section 436E concerns providers. Did Ministers consider approaching this measure in a completely different way? They could have said that the onus should be on the provider to say who they are and to demonstrate their bona fides, with Disclosure and Barring Service checks and so on, as part of a light-touch registration regime. I am not necessarily advocating such a scheme, but what other models were thought about? On proposed new section 436G, Ministers will know that a gripe of home-educating parents is that a lot is asked of them but little is offered back. Might it be sensible to change the wording? Instead of the support being “whatever the local authority considers fit”, it could be something like “whatever the local authority considers fit, having regard to guidance that it may receive from the Department for Education,” or from Ofsted or whoever it might be.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Eighth sitting) · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend’s intervention brings me to my final point. Apart from the cost issue, there is the simple question of access and of children being able to sit the GCSE. As there is a vast amount of detail involved, it would be helpful to say that local authorities should ensure that entry to examination centres is possible for those children.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  As ever, my hon. Friend makes an important point. My worry is that, in a couple of years’ time, when Members sitting on both sides of this Committee Room get emails about the funding pressures on schools—because, spoiler alert, there will still be funding pressures on schools—breakfast clubs will be one of the factors contributing to those pressures, if this programme is not fully funded or almost fully funded. I wonder whether the Minister will say on the record that it is his expectation that this programme will, like the national school breakfast club programme, cover at least 75% of the actual cost of provision.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  We all share the objective of trying to keep costs down and reduce costs where possible. That is why we have guidance to schools on school uniform costs and why that guidance became statutory guidance. It is utterly extraordinary to talk about writing this level of detail about uniform policy into primary legislation. In our previous days’ discussions on the Bill, we have said we will come back to all manner of really important things in delegated legislation, which can be more easily updated. For some reason, this measure needs to be written into an Act of Parliament.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  What the guidance is saying to a headteacher is, “We trust you to be able to make judgements.” By the way, the Department gives guidance to schools on all manner of things, within which schools then make judgements on what is right, but it is statutory guidance, which means they have to have regard to every element in it. I think it sounds like pretty good guidance. It is comprehensive. Unlike the clause that will become part of an Act of Parliament, it does not just focus on one aspect of cost. It talks about all the aspects.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  I welcome what the Minister said about protecting the existing programme in secondary schools for a further year. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston is quite right that schools and families will want to know about much more than just next year, but I appreciate that the expectation is that the certainty will come in the spending review. I hope the same will also be true for the holiday activities and food programme. Of course, breakfast clubs in school is not a new idea. There are, as the Minister said, 2,694 schools in the national school breakfast club programme, serving about 350,000 pupils. That programme is targeted according to the deprivation of an area, with eligibility at the whole-school level in those areas, and provides a 75% subsidy for the food and delivery costs. There are many more breakfast clubs than that, however; it is estimated that the great majority of schools have some form of breakfast club. Many clubs, of course, have a modest charge, but if a child attending that breakfast club is helping a parent on a low income to be able to work, typically, that breakfast club provision, like wraparound care provision, would be eligible for reimbursement at up to 85% as a legitimate childcare cost under universal credit. That 85% is a higher rate than was ever available under the previous tax credits system. Some schools also use pupil premium to support breakfast clubs, and there are also other voluntary-sector and sponsored programmes. From a policy perspective, overall, there are two big objectives to a breakfast club. The first is, of course, to help families with the cost of living, and the other is about attendance. Attendance is an issue in primary and secondary school, but we must remember that it is more of an issue in secondary school, and it is more of an issue the lower people are on the income scale. That is why the national school breakfast club programme runs in secondary as well as primary schools, and why it is targeted in the way that it is. I also want to ask a couple of questions, as the hon. Member for Twickenham and my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston just did, about how the timings work and about the minimum of 30 minutes. The many schools—perhaps 85% of them—that already have a breakfast club quite often have it for longer than 30 minutes. What should they do? Should they charge for the bit that is not the 30 minutes but have 30 minutes that are free? That is perhaps not in the spirit of what we mean by a universally free service. If they have a paid 45-minute breakfast, would they also have to offer an option to just come for the 30 minutes and have that for free?

• 30 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Press release!

• 30 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  If the Chair will indulge me, I will just read a brief extract of the statutory guidance: “Parents should not have to think about the cost of a school uniform when choosing which school(s) to apply for. Therefore, schools need to ensure that their uniform is affordable. In considering cost, schools will need to think about the total cost of school uniforms, taking into account all items of uniform or clothing parents will need to provide… Schools should keep the use of branded items to a minimum. Single supplier contracts should be avoided unless regular tendering competitions are run…This contract should be retendered at least every 5 years. Schools should ensure that second-hand uniforms are available for parents to acquire”— and that information needs to be readily available, and schools should “engage with parents and pupils when they are developing their school uniform policy.”

• 30 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  Of course, especially if the hon. Lady has the answer.

• 30 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  With deep respect, and I absolutely acknowledge the experience that the hon. Lady brings to the subject, there is nothing in the Bill to stop someone being charged £100 for a blazer. That is my point. It homes in on one aspect of the cost of kitting out a child to go to school and ignores the others. I think the advice is good, and I wonder what makes the Government think that they can come up with a better formulation than trusting individual schools to make that decision—why they think they can come up with something that is going to work for 22,000 schools. The hon. Lady says it obviously is not working. In the most recent school uniform survey done by the DFE in 2023, parents and carers were significantly more likely—twice as likely—to report that their school facilitated purchase of second-hand uniform. It had been 32% of parents, but now it is up to 65%. My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston covered how the text as laid out in the Bill uses the word “branded”, but that includes not only where there is a school name or logo but if “as a result of its colour, design, fabric or other distinctive characteristic, it is only available from particular suppliers.” It covers rather more items than the lay reader might expect when talking about branded items. There will be a maximum of three branded items in primary school, and four in secondary school if the fourth is a tie. What have the Government got against ties in primary schools? I put down a written parliamentary question on that, and I got an answer back that explained that the vast majority of primary schools do not have a tie. That is true—but some do. Why is it that Ministers sitting in Sanctuary Buildings think that because most do not have a tie, no one should be allowed to have a tie in year 6? My hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston already asked, and it is also in the amendment in his name, why the Bill specifies one cannot have more than three branded items, rather than require the purchase of more than three. The hon. Member for Portsmouth North outlined a case where the school might decide that a good use of its funds is to provide an item. It might not be sports gear—it might be a book bag—but as currently drafted, the school would not be allowed to do that. The clause includes the phrase “during a school year”. That is peculiar wording. I do not know of any school that requires the use of uniform outside of the school year, so what is the purpose of that —what is it getting at? I presume that it means that there cannot be a summer uniform and a winter uniform, and not that it means one cannot replace an item part way through the year. First, it would be helpful to know that for sure, and secondly, it highlights again the craziness of writing that level of detail into an Act of Parliament. Schools are already obliged in the statutory guidance to ensure that uniform cost should not be a factor in school choice. Why not trust them to work out how best to do that, rather than have that level of prescription? The hon. Member for Twickenham also made the point that the cost of uniform is not only about the number of items, but a mix of what the uniform is, the supplier price, the negotiation with suppliers, and the availability of second-hand uniform. Some schools will provide free uniform through a uniform exchange in certain cases. If I had to pick, I would contend that the bigger factor is the availability of second-hand uniform, rather than having one extra item. As I said earlier, many schools now provide that. I also ask for clarity about optional items. For example, with a woolly hat, a school may say, “You do not have to have a woolly hat, but if you do, it should be a school woolly hat.” I am not clear whether that would be captured by the regulations. On the question of grandfathering, are we saying that from the moment that the Bill becomes an Act, the rules take effect whatever year in school someone is currently in, or are we saying that it applies to new entrants to key stage 1, key stage 2, year 7 or a middle school? If not, does that mean that a pupil already in school could say, “You can’t enforce your existing uniform policy on me”? Ordered , That the debate be now adjourned.—( Vicky Foxcroft .)

• 30 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting) · Hansard source

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  It has, and it has also been very controversial in many cases for pre-school provision, as the hon. Lady will know. I also want to ask about the costs and reimbursements, which amendments 26 and 27 speak to. The Government, before they were in government and probably since, talked a lot about saving families £400 a year. In my rough maths, if we take £400 and divide it by 190 school days—[ Interruption. ] Oh, it is £450. Well, I am not able to adjust my maths live, so the answer will be slightly more than the number I give now. My maths gave me £2.10 a day. That seems to be somewhat different from the figures that schools are actually being reimbursed in the pilot programme, so I hope for some clarity on this point. The details of the early-adopter programme talk about an initial set-up cost of £500, a lump sum of £1,099 to cover April to July and then a basic rate being provided per pupil. There is a different rate depending on whether the child is what is called FSM6—eligible for free school meals previously—if I have read the details correctly. I am not clear why the unit cost of a breakfast would be different between those two groups of children, but perhaps the Minister could fill me in. Even at the higher rates—the FSM6 rates—there seems to be quite a gap between that and £2.10, or the Minister’s slightly higher figure, when it is £450 divided by 190 days. Obviously, part of that may be made up of savings from bulk purchasing and so on, but it still seems quite a gap, if I have understood the numbers correctly. I hope the Minister can help me to understand.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Rural Housing Targets · Hansard source

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  I know the schools there.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Rural Housing Targets · Hansard source

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  I agree with my right hon. Friend, who has done an outstanding job of highlighting such points, including on the Floor of the House, to the benefit of his constituents. It is also important to pay attention to maintaining the character of areas. We talked in the past about urban sprawl, but increasingly we face the risk of rural sprawl, with ribbon developments that lose the distinction between settlements. In addition to a beautiful landscape, my constituency has an important cultural heritage, as the home of Jane Austen. That is important not only to people who live in East Hampshire but to many who visit from elsewhere in the country and from abroad. On the new formula, the Government need an overall 50% uplift in housing numbers, but in many areas they will increase by a lot more. East Hampshire is one: our target will increase from 575 to 1,142, or 98%—let us just call that doubling. That is not unusual. Colleagues will have seen that the Library paper looked at 58 mainly or largely rural local authorities and found that all had had an increase, two thirds had had one above 50%, and the average increase was 71%. Meanwhile, in urban areas, increases are much lower—more like 16% or 17% on average. Quite a few places will see a reduction, including large parts of London and Birmingham. The Library analysis found that 37 out of 41 local authorities with a decrease were urban. I want to stress that this is not about a north-south divide; it is specifically an urban-rural divide. The County Councils Network has helpfully provided figures showing the difference in county areas. Compared with the south-east, the north-east, north-west, and Yorkshire and the Humber have much higher average increases, albeit from a lower base. It is also important to note that this is not about correcting an historic mistake. People might think that not much building has happened in the countryside in the past, but looking back over 20 years, the rate of building—the number of additional dwellings relative to the existing dwellings per thousand households—has been higher in predominantly rural areas than in urban areas. That shift from urban to rural is a problem for multiple reasons. One of them is a big theme today: economic growth. I am sure the Minister has a lot of time for the think-tank the Resolution Foundation. Its analysis is that tilting development towards cities, because of the agglomeration effect and other factors, makes a material improvement to growth prospects. It is also important for another theme of the day. We talk about airport expansion and the tension between economic growth and decarbonisation. When housing moves towards the countryside, that is bad for decarbonisation, because the numbers are so high that houses have to be put everywhere and it is not possible to focus on the relatively small number of places that have good strategic transport links. That hardwires reliance on the motor car, which in constituencies such as mine means two cars per couple in a household. Why does the formula do that? We do not have the time to explain. We would need whiteboards, Excel and possibly PhDs to go through this subject—you might already have a PhD in this subject, Ms Jardine; I do not want to suppose otherwise. Various changes have been made to the formula, in particular the multiplier that gets applied to the affordability calculation, which has risen from 0.6 to 0.95. That means that the affordability calculation does a lot more work, and is more important than it was before. No calculation of affordability of housing is close to perfect. There are all manner of problems with trying to make such a calculation. In particular, with the formula that we use today, there is a proper debate to be had about the balance between workplace earnings and residency-based earnings. Sometimes we talk about a choice between the two, but I think they are both relevant to the affordability of housing. It is also about the distinction between earnings and income, and whether we are really comparing types of housing like for like. As I say, this is not the place to discuss those issues in detail; it is not possible in a debate format. However, I will say to the Minister that I am sure the formula looked logical when it was done on paper or a computer screen, and I am sure it was done for the right reasons, but in practice it has delivered perverse outcomes, which will reduce housing development in urban areas and harm growth, and it will be extremely difficult to deliver—certainly, it will be impossible to deliver sustainably in the countryside. The formula is an errant, rogue algorithm. We know what that feels like because it happened when we were in government, too; it can happen to anyone. The important thing is to address it as quickly as possible once it is spotted. Whatever their intent was, given the outcome, I ask the Government to look at the formula again. The second issue is that the formula does not encourage enough of a change in the mix towards homes that are actually affordable. I will say what I mean by “actually” in a moment, but first I want to note the good work of my constituent, Nick Stenning, who has helped me in this area. We want more affordable homes, but when constituents come to my surgery and say that they want housing to be more affordable, they do not mean it in the sense the public sector means it, which is what I call Affordable with a capital A—the very strict definition of housing association rent, council rent and part ownership. They just want a home they can afford. Of course that includes those types of tenure and rent, but young couples overwhelmingly aspire to own their home, and we should be in the business of helping them to do that. All other things being equal, for a developer, the best economic returns come from larger, costlier houses. When we consider that there is a premium on new build homes anyway, that means that, paradoxically, in spite of the economic theory, when we add more homes, the median price increases because we are adding them in the top half of the distribution. We then get a cycle that ends up calling for more of the same. We say, “Well, this area is now even less affordable than it was before, so we need more houses,” and we get more of the same homes. That is not entirely true, of course—there is a mix, but it is disproportionately weighted towards four or five-bed executive homes. I ask Ministers to look again at that; I am sure we have the same objective in this regard. The third and final area I want to cover is specific to my constituency. It applies to a lesser extent in other areas with so-called national landscapes, but there are literally only one or two areas in the country where it applies to quite the extent it does in mine. The South Downs national park is an unusual national park: it is England’s newest, but it is by far the most populous. Its population density is about 3.5 times that of the Lake District national park, which has the next most dense population. It has huge swathes of open countryside but also significantly sized settlements, one of which is Petersfield in my constituency. Alton, which is outside the national park, is a similar size to Petersfield. They are both historic market towns and many of the people living there have the same needs and objectives, but they are treated completely differently from a housing development point of view. There would be no point in having national parks if they did not have special protection, but the problem I have is that so much of my district—57% of the land area—is inside the national park. We have to calculate the housing need on the basis of the entire area, but that need has to be accommodated overwhelmingly in the area outside the national park. When there is a change—for instance, the number has just gone up—but the numbers that can be accommodated inside the national park do not change, we get a magnified, leveraged effect in the parts of the district outside the national park. We would not expect development to be in proportion to landmass; otherwise, there would be an awful lot more building in, for example, the constituencies of the hon. Members for Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross (Jamie Stone) or for Hexham (Joe Morris). Other things being equal, we would expect it to be broadly in proportion to the existing development and existing population. In the district of East Hampshire, the South Downs national park accounts for 27% of the population and, since the national park came into existence, it has accounted for 15% of the housing development. However, with the change in targets, and without that much changing in what the national park is planning to do, it will account for 8% of the housing development, as against 27% of the existing population. That fact creates particular pressures just outside the boundary of the national park, in places such as Alton, Holybourne, Four Marks and Medstead—all the way along the A31—and in the south of the district around Horndean, Clanfield and Rowlands Castle. There is already an imbalance between housing affordability inside the national park and housing affordability outside it, as was demonstrated by the bespoke analysis that the Office for National Statistics kindly produced. That imbalance will widen over time, and that has implications for the age mix of people living inside the national park, and therefore for the viability of schools, churches, shops, pubs and so on.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Rural Housing Targets · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered housing targets in rural areas. It is a huge pleasure to see you presiding over us today, Ms Jardine. I want to talk about housing targets for rural England in general and for my constituency of East Hampshire in particular, and I want to talk about three dimensions. The first is the balance of development between urban areas and rural areas. There is a general point about the balance in the whole country, but it has particular significance in my area. With the new formula, there is too much emphasis on building in the countryside, which will be bad for economic growth and our decarbonisation agenda, and injurious to the countryside. I will ask the Government to look again at the formula. The second dimension is the mix of housing types that we are incentivising to be built, which is not weighted enough towards the more affordable housing that we so badly need, and the third dimension is the balance of development in my constituency specifically. We have a national park boundary cutting through the constituency, and whatever the overall numbers, there is a question of balance within the specific area. We all know that we need more homes, so let us not have a discussion about which party is more serious about that. Figures published yesterday project a big population increase of 4.9 million over the next 10 years, which will be driven by net immigration. Those numbers are too high and we need to bring them down, but, in any case, there is already pressure from the growth in population and housing demand that we have had, which is partly to do with net immigration but also to do with factors such as people living longer and the tendency towards smaller households. We all care about housing. Of the four highest completion numbers since 1997, three have been since 2019, under Conservative Governments. The Government want to increase the housing target to 370,000 homes a year, and they changed the formula to do that last month. By some margin, that would be the highest number of completions in a very long time—I think the highest in a single calendar year since 1997 is about 180,000. There are doubts about how realistic the target is, especially given labour and materials constraints on the supply side. If this building is going to be done, it is exceptionally important for public confidence—as MPs, we hear this the whole time—that it is accompanied by not just the promise, but the delivery of the right services and infrastructure. It is true that most of those services are statutory requirements—sewerage will come, because it is a requirement. Hampshire county council does a good job of place planning and predicting where places will be needed, we know that funding for GPs follows the population, and so on, but, as I think all MPs have heard, there are still worries and doubts about the timeliness of that. In particular, there is a worry about whether, if we have a sudden massive increase in building but there is a shortage of builders, the schools or GP surgeries that are needed will be prioritised over the houses.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Rural Housing Targets · Hansard source

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  We have had a good debate; it has been constructive and thoughtful. I sincerely thank the Minister, who is a thoughtful Minister; he does listen, and he engages very positively. I also thank the Opposition spokesman, my hon. Friend the Member for Hamble Valley (Paul Holmes), and all colleagues who have taken part in the debate. We all recognise that we need more housing— and we need more housing everywhere. Every part of the country has to play its part. We need a shift to the sorts of homes, of all tenures but including in the open market, that allow first-time buyers and young families to get on the housing ladder. The targets need to be realistic, given the availability of materials and people to build them, and they need to be accompanied by the critical infrastructure and services that people mention all the time at our surgeries. We also need to make sure that the balance is right between urban and rural areas. I hope the Minister will reflect further on some of what has been discussed today, which is not made as a nimby-type argument, but is about making sure we can maintain our countryside—that is important for town dwellers as well as for rural dwellers—and helping the Government to deliver on their correct objectives on economic growth and decarbonisation. Thank you, Ms Jardine, for presiding over the debate. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered housing targets in rural areas.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Rural Housing Targets · Hansard source

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  My right hon. Friend makes an interesting point. In fact, there is a good example of that in my constituency, on a much smaller scale. Those schemes can materially improve amenity: we can make a better-looking housing estate and add facilities, such as a shop, even a pub, a better children’s playground and so on, that can benefit everyone. Hon. Members will be pleased to hear that I am coming to the end of my speech. I do not want to overstate matters: the South Downs national park authority does build houses. In fact, it builds more houses, or plans for more houses, than other national park authorities. It co-operates and communicates with East Hampshire district council. However, we still end up with this imbalance, which is bad for both the part inside and the part outside the national park. Quite apart from the question of balance, there is also the question of public confidence, democratic accountability and responsiveness —people knowing how the numbers have been derived, rather than the council effectively having to be a number-taker, as it were, because of the decisions of another group. My primary ask of the Minister is that he look again at how numbers are distributed between urban areas and the countryside overall. However, I also ask him to look again at how the calculations work in areas such as mine, so that we do not have demand calculated for the entire district with supply going mostly, although not entirely, to one part of it. That could be rectified in different ways. One would be to give district councils total clarity on how they can adjust their method for calculating need without running an excessive risk of the plan being found to be unsound. There is guidance—the Minister may have this in his notes—but here is what it says: “The standard method should be used to assess housing needs. However in the specific circumstances where an alternative approach could be justified, such as those explained at paragraph 014”, on national parks, “consideration will be given to whether it provides the basis for a plan that is positively prepared, taking into account the information available on existing levels of housing stock and housing affordability.” I do not know about you, Ms Jardine, but I am not sure I could explain to somebody else what that means. If we are going to have guidance, fine, but it has to be clear and it has to give confidence to councils and councillors, who, at the end of the day, are managing public money, that they are not running a serious risk of ending up in court proceedings when trying to do the right thing. This could be done in other ways. It could be done by having the national park explicitly and transparently set a housing target for the entirety of its area, leaving the individual districts to work it out for themselves. That could be done either individually for each district, or just for the park as a whole.

• 29 Jan 2025 · Rural Housing Targets · Hansard source

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  Does the Minister accept the point that local councils do not want to end up in legal proceedings? They can cost an awful lot of money, and there is an awful lot of weight placed on knowing that the plan is sound. A council takes a risk by deviating from the standard method. Yes, the guidance says that it can deviate as long as it can prove—well, I am genuinely not sure what the guidance says, but whatever it says is not totally clear to people. It leaves a great deal of nervousness that deviation would leave councils exposed to potentially very high costs, which are ultimately borne by local people. Could the Minister look at clarifying the advice on how one can deviate from the method?

• 29 Jan 2025 · Rural Housing Targets · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. In both his incarnations, he has long been a campaigner on these issues. There are many housing and development issues that I would love to talk about, but I am running out of time talking about just these three, so I hope he will forgive me if I stick to them. However, I agree about the potential of the exceptions policy. I have one further question to the Minister. With devolution and local government reorganisation, how and when will some of the issues change because we are looking at things on different boundaries? I am grateful to him for agreeing to meet me and my district councillors to talk about the national parks issue, but I hope he will fully consider all the points I have raised today.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  Forgive me, Mr Stringer; I know that the Minister has finished, but may I speak again, with leave?