Damian Hinds MP: speeches

Speeches

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  The Government talk a lot about growth, and we often debate economic growth both here and in the main Chamber, but when we talk about farming, we talk instead about food production, sufficiency and security. We talk about land stewardship, we talk about fairness, and we talk about rural communities and the countryside way of life. All those things are true and relevant, but this is also a debate about economic growth. Economic growth requires productivity gains and productivity gains require investment, and this policy is clearly going to hit investment in the vital rural sector badly. That is intuitively obvious, because there is now a new liability that agricultural businesses have to plan for. It also chimes entirely with what I hear in and around Hampshire from agricultural suppliers and machinery dealers about redundancies, depot closures and projects being cancelled. My question to the Minister is: what monitoring are the Government doing of investment in the agricultural sector and the harm that this policy may do to productivity? It is often said, and it has been said again today, that farming is not a normal business. My East Hampshire farmers are very quick to remind us that it is a business, and they have to be able to make a living, but it is abnormal in one key sense: economists talk about normal profit and supernormal profit, but there is no such thing as sub-normal profit. If a business is not making enough to be economic, the idea is that it is not in business, and many of these farming businesses are not. These are farmers who accept a sub-economic return on capital employed, and they do that because while their farm is a business, it is more than just a business, a job or an investment. Ministers should not expect the same approach to be taken if family farms are broken up and replaced by something else. The Government have repeatedly said, “Don’t worry. The effect of this will be reduced because couples can pass on assets between them.” However, we know from a written question tabled by my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), that only half of farmers are in couples. Almost half are individuals, and this policy will affect far more farms than I think, to be fair to them, the Treasury or officials even realised to begin with, and certainly far more than the numbers we have discussed in this House. There are reasons why agricultural relief was first brought in. It was not a loophole or an accident; it was brought in to achieve a purpose, and there are reasons why it has been retained all these years. It is not unheard of for a Government to discover that when they bring in a tax, its effect in practice is not quite as they expected when they did the spreadsheet and when the Minister signed off the sub. It is not too late for this Minister and this Government to change their minds and to make significant changes. There is no shame in it, and I urge them to do so.

• 10 Feb 2025 · Inheritance Tax Relief: Farms · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way?

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

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  I seek some clarity. The Minister seems to be saying, “Leave it up to the independent adjudicator. They will decide.” Is she saying that the Government will not issue guidance on the criteria on which an independent adjudicator should decide?

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

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  Just before she does, will the Minister give way?

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

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  Who said that?

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

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  So it is not the local authority; it is the adjudicator. I am wondering, as we are talking about serving communities, where the line of democratic accountability is.

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

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  It is a different but related question. There are falling rolls, initially in primary over the next few years, and then it will happen in secondary. There will be some difficult choices that someone will need to make. Sometimes that will mean varying the numbers in every school, but I am afraid that the scale of the change in some local authorities, particularly in urban areas and this city, is such that some schools may convert and become special schools, for which there is demand and need. Some may become early years settings. It might be the case—I hope it will not be, as it is always a difficult thing to do—that total education capacity has to reduce. Will it be the schools adjudicator who decides the school that closes?

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

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  Does the adjudicator also have a say in allowing a school to open?

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

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  No, I am asking directly: could the adjudicator stop a new school opening on the grounds that we have tasked the adjudicator with making sure that there is not excess capacity in an area, which might make one or more schools unviable? Logically, surely the adjudicator ought to be able to stop the problem getting even worse—in the eyes of Ministers—by refusing a new school opening.

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

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  I am grateful to the Minister for giving way. I do mean these questions genuinely, in the spirit of line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill and trying to ascertain unintended consequences, intent and so on. If the adjudicator now has responsibility for ensuring that the number of school places in an area is what is needed and is fair, does the adjudicator also have a say in allowing a school to open?

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

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  It may help if I say why I asked the question. The adjudicator will be worrying, “I need to make sure that a school over here isn’t creating unfairness or making another school unviable because there are too many school places in this area.” If someone else comes along and says, “I’m going to open a new one,” that will make the school even more unviable. Logically, if I am the adjudicator and the Government are tasking me with making sure that we are not making schools unviable, surely I should be able to veto a new school coming into the community.

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

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  Will the Minister give way?

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

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  I know! [ Laughter. ]

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

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  I have never been so warmly welcomed. [ Laughter .] We talked a few sittings ago about the NHS number and the database of children, and there are a lot of wide-open questions about the scope of that. Is that all children? How will it be used? In turn, that could potentially affect a lot of other pieces of legislation. Bearing in mind the massive controversies we have had in this country in the past over ID cards, privacy and so on, will the Minister write to the Committee setting out specifically what some of the issues in relation to that might be? We do not want find ourselves having agreed to do something that we did not realise we were agreeing to do.

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

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  I rise to speak to amendment 48, which stands in the name of the hon. Member for Twickenham. There are two main reasons people seek to limit school admissions on the basis of faith. The first is that some people do not like religion, organised religion, or the involvement of the state with organised religion. That is a matter of belief for some people. The second is that it is sometimes said that faith-based admission policies shut out others from good schools. There is sometimes a sense that it is academic or social selection by the back door. The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale alluded to that. Some people—I am not saying this is the case with the hon. Lady—talk about the second issue when really they have in mind the first. One can be a proxy for the other.

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

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  I suppose, having said that the hon. Lady can correct me, I cannot really stop her.

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

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  They are different but related issues. For the avoidance of any confusion, when we talk about schools being “run” by a Church, there was a time when clerics ran schools, but things are not really done in that way today. Some of the top-performing schools in the country are denominational schools with faith-based admissions. There are some very poor-performing faith schools and some brilliantly performing non-faith schools, and obviously it varies from year to year, but on average, faith schools tend to slightly outperform the average. The hon. Lady can correct me if I am wrong, but there is a feeling that this is where she and others get the idea that that is possible only if there was some unfairness in the intake of children the schools accept.

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

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  Before the hon. Lady corrects me, I did not say she was doing that.

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

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  I want to ask the Minister about two things. First, he talks about the disadvantage gap widening at the present time. Entirely coincidentally, I happen to have the numbers on key stage 2 and key stage 4. Of course, there are different ways that we can measure these things. I am looking at what is known as the “disadvantage gap index” for key stage 2 and key stage 4. I would be interested to know what definition he is using, from which he concludes that the Government inherited a widening disadvantage gap. The second thing I want to ask him about is free school meal eligibility. We all absolutely recognise the value of free school meals. The Minister mentioned some of the extensions of eligibility that happened under the previous Government. The one that he did not mention was universal credit transitional protection. Even though unemployment came down from 8% to 4.5%, and the proportion of people in work but on low pay halved as a result of the increase to the national living wage, eligibility for free school meals went up, so the incoming Government have inherited one in three children being able to get a free school meal, as opposed to one in six when Labour were last in government. Notwithstanding this new clause, which the Government will not accept, what will they do to make sure that the same number of children as now can continue to get a free school meal?

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

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  Will the Minister confirm that the new clause will also apply to the small group of young people who are leaving the young justice system and returning to their home area?

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

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  That is a view. It is a perfectly legitimate view that some people hold, but it is not a view that I hold, nor is it a view that we have held historically in this country. Going back to 1944, to 1870 and even further, we have said that we believe in diversity of provision. That includes the Church of England and the Catholic Church, but it also includes other faiths. Some of the top-performing schools in the country are Jewish schools or Muslim schools.

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

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  I understand, acknowledge and respect what the hon. Lady says but, believe me, I do not need to see any more evidence on this subject, on which I have in my time perused large volumes. It is one of those issues—we talked the other day about another one—where the answer one wants can be found in the data. Let us step back a moment. All liberal democracies permit freedom of religious belief, but the way it manifests is different in different countries. There can be an approach such as that in the United States or in France, where secularism in education is written into law or the constitution. We in this country have taken a different approach. We have always allowed denominational schools. In fact, we have not just “allowed” it; denominational schools and faith schools have always been a key part of the system. The biggest name in primary education in Britain is the Church of the England; the biggest name in secondary education in England is the Catholic Church. It is not just in education that our country has this tradition. In international development, for example, the Government work closely with organisations such as Christian Aid, World Vision and the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development. In children’s services, the Children’s Society used to be called the Church of England Children’s Society, and Action for Children, formerly National Children’s Home, has its roots in Methodism. Before there were state schools, there were faith schools, often attached to monasteries or cathedrals. The Education Act 1944 formalised this position, sometimes known as the dual system, whereby faith schools could be a full part of the state school system while retaining their religious character. There is a distinction between what are known as voluntary aided schools and voluntary controlled schools, and different degrees therefore of independence for those two. VA tends to be mostly associated with the Catholic Church, but there are lots of Anglican VA schools, and VA schools of five or six other religious denominations as well. It is understood traditionally and generally, but not entirely correctly that with a VA school, the Church provides the land and the state provides the building, and that there is a sort of co-ownership—it is obviously minority ownership on the part of the religious organisation. In reality, over time that system was eroded and changed to a cash contribution in which, typically, 10% would come from the Church, which then became 5%. I think there were some cases in which it was 0%, but broadly that tended to be the situation. Sometimes Churches complain about that, saying, “Why should we have to contribute to this school, when any other school being created is fully funded by the state?” I think that is a good rule for two reasons. First, it is a privilege to be able to have a school that is fully state funded for pupils within a faith, but it is also a guarantee of independence. It means that no future Government can come along and say, “We are going to change all these schools into fully secular schools,” because they are part-owned—albeit a small part—by that religious faith.

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

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  As I said earlier, there are all manner of datasets. I do not have my full Excel complement with me today, but I can trade with the hon. Lady and counter what she said with other statistics. In particular, anybody who suggests that the intake of a Catholic school is higher up the socioeconomic scale than the average does not know a whole lot about the demographics of the Catholic population in this country. We have a remarkable amount of ethnic diversity because of immigration patterns. By the way, there is no such thing as 100% faith selection; that happens only if a school is oversubscribed. If a state-funded school has spare places, at the end of the day, it is obliged to let anybody come along. However, if a school is oversubscribed and we lose the faith admissions criterion, the nature of the school will change. That goes to the heart of the hon. Lady’s question. There is something intrinsic to having a faith designation and a faith ethos in a school. Some people—I accept that the hon. Lady is not one of them—believe that such things contribute to what happens to those children, their education and their wellbeing, and they are reflected even in that small average premium in terms of results. Back in the days of the free schools and before them, as the hon. Lady mentioned, a 50% cap was put in place, known commonly as the 50% faith cap. That reflected the fact that with free schools there was a different situation, because now any group could come along and say, “We want to open a school.” It seemed a sensible safeguard to have a cap. However, all the way through it has remained legally possible—not a lot of people know this—to open a voluntary aided school. That proposition was tested in law in 2012, after the coalition Government came into office, with the St Richard Reynolds Catholic college in the constituency of the hon. Member for Twickenham. Once a VA school is opened, it can convert to an academy.

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

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  I assure the hon. Lady that on this occasion I am not holding her Liberal Democrat party membership card against her. That is not the basis on which I am making these points. The hon. Lady said that whatever type of school opens, it should have a 50% cap. By definition, there is no such thing as a VA school with a 50% cap, because being a voluntary aided school means having control over admissions in that way. It is not true that we have necessarily had the 50% cap all the way through; I point to the VA school that opened in her very constituency, and there have been others since then. The reason why only a small handful of VA schools have opened over the past couple of decades is that there was no money for it. To get money to open a school, it had to be a free school. In 2018-19, the then Secretary of State, fine fellow that he was, created a small capital fund for the voluntary aided schools capital scheme. The reason related to patterns of immigration, particularly Polish and eastern European immigration. In the old days, it was Irish immigration—that is where I come from—but there have been many other waves from different places. As a result of eastern European immigration, there was a demand for Catholic schools in certain parts of the country. Those people, who had come to this country and made their lives here, and of whom there were now generations, were not able to access such schools in the way they could have in other parts of the country. Under that scheme, there were applications from five different faiths; at the time, one was approved and one put on hold. I contend that it is a good system that we have the cap for that tranche of schools—they are not going to be free schools—to retain those safeguards, but it is still possible to open a denominational school, of whichever faith, in circumstances in which there is great need in a particular area. We talked earlier about local authority areas and their difference in size. Birmingham, which is one massive local authority area, is very different from an individual London borough. For the consideration of faith school applications, it ought to be possible to look over a wider area, because travel-to-school distances are much longer on average. I want to check with the Minister, the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North, that the Government’s proposals will not preclude the opening of new voluntary aided schools. I am afraid I must conclude by saying that, for reasons that the hon. Member for Twickenham will understand and that have nothing to do with her party affiliation, I cannot support amendment 48.

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

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  Will the Minister allow me?