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Tag: Speeches

  • Anthony Eden – 1955 Speech on Re-Election of William Morrison as Speaker

    anthonyeden

    Below is the text of the speech made by Anthony Eden, the then Prime Minister, in the House of Commons on 7 June 1955.

    Mr. Speaker-Elect, in accordance with time-honoured custom in the House, it is my privilege to be the first to voice our congratulations to you on the signal honour, the greatest honour that the House corporately can bestow on any man, which has this afternoon been repeated in acknowledgment of your services. I do so with great pleasure, not only on my own behalf but on behalf of all my right hon. and hon. Friends on this side of the House. Perhaps I may also say that I do it with all the greater fervour as the first Englishman who has ventured to intrude at all in this afternoon’s ceremony.
    As the House does this act of congratulations to you, in truth we all feel that we are congratulating ourselves. As the last Parliament developed, we all felt to an increasing degree how much we owed to your guidance. Your ease of dignity, the clarity of your decision, the width of your experience, and certainly not least the native wit of Scotland placed us many times under an obligation to you. I am sure that the whole House feels fortunate indeed that you should be here and willing to preside once more over our proceedings.

    I think it was said that Mr. Speaker’s principal duties were to guard minority parties and even guard the rights of individual Members. About that I have no doubt that you will be zealous, even against the wishes of the Executive. That is as it should be. But there is something even wider than the rights of individual Members which you guard and cherish for us, and that is the character of the House. Each new Parliament develops its own personality. As we do that, as most certainly we shall, I believe that we shall have in mind that this new Parliament, like so many that have gone before it, in what it achieves and how it achieves it is showing leadership to all the free institutions throughout the world.

    It is perhaps at this time that special responsibility which we all value most and which I know, Mr. Speaker-Elect, you have so well understood in the past and will so cheerfully guard in the future. I feel every confidence that under your tolerant, wise and experienced guidance the House will receive all the help which it is in the power of the Chair to give. In all sincerity, we wish you good fortune and good health in the discharge of your duties.

  • Anthony Eden – 1955 Statement on Becoming Prime Minister

    anthonyeden

    Below is the text of the speech made by Anthony Eden in the House of Commons on 6 April 1955.

    I must, first, try to acknowledge the very generous words which have been used by the right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition and all those who have spoken in the House this afternoon—in well-deserved terms—about my right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill). The right hon. Gentleman the Member for Walthamstow, West (Mr. Attlee) rightly said that this is not the time for us to appraise my right hon. Friend’s work. For one thing, he is, fortunately, still among us; and we all know quite well that whenever he returns to us from his holiday he will still be the dominating figure among us.

    But while we admit that this is not the time for such an appraisal, perhaps the House would permit me a very few words on this subject, because for more than sixteen years we have been so intimately associated in political work, and, as it so happens, I have never spoken about this before. As I reflect over those years, and think of them in the terms of what we yet have to do, certain lessons seem to me to stand out for us in the message of what we have done.

    First, I think, in work, was my right hon. Friend’s absolute refusal, as his War Cabinet colleagues knew so well, to allow any obstacles, however formidable, to daunt his determination to engage upon some task. With that, courage; and the courage which expresses itself not only in the first enthusiastic burst of fervour but which is also enduring, perhaps the rarer gift of the two.

    Although my right hon. Friend has perhaps the widest and most varied interests in life of any man we are likely to know—and that is true—I still think that his great passion was the political life and that he brought to the service of it a most complete vision. No man I have ever known could so make one understand the range of a problem and, at the same time, go straight to its core. I believe that in statesmanship that will be the attribute which many who knew him would place first among his many gifts.

    Apart from these things, in spirit there was the magnanimity, most agreeable of virtues; and, let us be frank about it, not one which we politicians find it always easy to practise, although we should all like to do so. In part, perhaps, this was easier with him, because I think he always thought of problems not in abstract terms but in human values; and that was one of the things which endeared him to all this House.

    Finally, as has been so well said, there was the humour—the humour based on the incomparable command of the English language, which was so often our delight, not least at Question Time. I am sure that my right hon. Friend will be deeply moved by the things which right hon. and hon. Gentlemen have said of him this afternoon, for he loves this House—loves it in companionship and in conflict.

    The right hon. Gentleman the Leader of the Opposition and others have been kind in their welcome to me. I enjoyed very much the Melbourne reflections. The right hon. Gentleman, with his deep knowledge of history, will not, however, have forgotten that Melbourne, although always talking of leaving office, contrived to stay there for a very long time indeed. But I have no desire, I beg him to believe, to emulate that in its entirety. For the rest, I can only say to the right hon. Gentleman and to the Father of the House, too, that I have been deeply touched by what has been said this afternoon and that, for my part, I will do all I can to serve our country.

  • Anthony Eden – 1961 Maiden Speech in the House of Lords

    anthonyeden

    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Anthony Eden in the House of Lords on 18 October 1961.

    My Lords, I hope that it will not be thought presumptuous in a newcomer if I say with what interest and pleasure I have listened to a number of the speeches in the debate in the last two days. My noble friend the Foreign Secretary, whose speech has just been referred to by the noble Lord opposite, gave us yesterday a survey of the international scene which I thought remarkable for its clarity and candour, two qualities eminently desirable in a Foreign Secretary. Also, I thought that, in the record he gave us of his stewardship, there was little that we could question. In fact, with his account I found myself almost always in close agreement.
    I also enjoyed yesterday, not for the first time in my political experience, a speech by the noble Lord, Lord Morrison of Lambeth, who seemed, as I recall, to be in characteristic form, and in a vein with which I am bound to admit I have not always been in agreement. Then to-day we have had the noble Marquess, Lord Lansdowne, who has given us a lucid report on the hazardous and useful journey which he made, and on the tragic circumstances which surrounded the last hours of Mr. Hammarskjoeld’s life and his lamentable death, as we all felt it to be.

    For the few moments during which I shall venture to detain your Lordships, I should like to come back to the European scene. It is about thirteen years ago that I stood where I am standing now, or a few paces to the left, to endorse, on behalf of the Opposition, the proposal made by the Labour Government of the day to take action on behalf of the Berlin Air-lift, a decision which I then thought, and still think, was both courageous and wise and, I agree with the noble Viscount the Leader of the Opposition, one for which the Labour Government were entitled to full credit.

    To-day, we once again discuss Berlin, as perhaps we could not have done, had the Labour Government not acted as they did then. But, of course, it is not only the fate of this great city with which we are concerned, any more than it was only the fate of that city with which we were concerned thirteen years ago, or only the fate of Danzig with which we were concerned in 1939. The Soviet purpose is to gain possession of West Berlin, either directly or through their satellite Government in East Germany; and to do this they will employ threats, cajoleries and blandishments, hoping to prise the Western Allies out of the city, or to scare them into making concessions which will further weaken their position.

    The Russians do not want war, as Hitler wanted war; but they want Berlin, or at any rate so large a measure of control in Berlin that it cannot live the kind of life which, by agreement, when the war was settled, it should live—its own life. Of course the Soviets have a great confidence in themselves, which could be dangerous to the world, and dangerous to them. It is based on a belief in their superior strength, and this may be exaggerated. The offer, already referred to, which was made in a speech yesterday at the Communist Congress in Moscow, of a respite in the settlement of the differences about Berlin and at the same time the announcement that they were to explode a 50-megaton bomb, is characteristic of a sense of overweening power. But for us, for the West, it remains an inescapable truth that if the Soviets, or their satellites were allowed to take over West Berlin, however much appearances might be saved, they would then be free to pass on to other demands, which would follow thick and fast and strong. And where should we then stop them?

    We must not burden our policy with make-believe. What is at issue is not the future of Berlin, but the unity of the will and purpose of the Western Alliance and its ability quietly but firmly to say “No” to unreasonable demands. We have done so before on occasions, and it has not always been without effect. We did so about Austria; we did so when the Western Powers created N.A.T.O.—also an achievement, so far as this country is concerned, of a previous Labour Government. To hold to the essentials of our positions in Berlin does not mean that we must refuse to talk—certainly not. But for discussion to be possible there must be something to negotiate, and so far all the Soviets have done is to grab and then show a willingness to talk about the next stage in their plan. That is not negotiation. It is to ask the West to ignore violent deeds and to enter into discussion as though they had not been done. I do not think that is possible. To accept such a course would be to connive at a progressive deterioration of international relations. At each backward step the West would be so much the weaker. That way lies disaster.

    This country, as my noble friend Lord Strang said last night, is not entirely a free agent in these matters. We have obligations. We played our part in the creation of N.A.T.O.; we played our part in bringing Western Germany into N.A.T.O., for which I accept, and do not regret, a personal responsibility. The N.A.T.O. partnership is the strongest political deterrent which exists to Communist world domination. But we must not think for a moment that the outcome of events in Berlin will be without its influence upon N.A.T.O. Germany’s N.A.T.O. partners have expressed opinions, as have Governments of all Parties in this country, about the future unity of Germany. They cannot go back on those decisions except by agreement.

    The hope in the minds of many in West Germany is that their country will one day have reunity. It is a perfectly legitimate hope and one that successive Governments in this country have many times endorsed. It would not be loyal to extinguish it; nor would it be wise. We must guard against a tendency to speak as though British Ministers were uncommitted in these matters; as though they could in some way arbitrate. That is not their position. If we did not stand by our N.A.T.O. partners we should commit an injustice and a blunder, because we could not then complain if West Germany were to seek other means to gain German unity. Another Rapallo is not an impossibility, and it had better not be our fault.

    For these reasons, my Lords, I submit that if there is to be a negotiated settlement, as I should like to see it. about the future of Berlin, it will have to contain some contribution from the Soviet side, of which hitherto, so far as I know, there has been no sign. The Soviets and their East German satellites have, in fact, already achieved a part of their purpose and have been scarcely challenged doing it. They have closed the mercy gate, which is a harsh deed. It is a deed contrary to the spirit, and I think the letter, of the Four-Power Agreement which we made at the end of the war. They are building a wall, a cruel wall, which in truth condemns them, because it is a prison wall, forbidding those behind it to reach physically to freedom. If I am right in my assumption that to build this wall is contrary to the international engagements we four Powers entered into, then this topic, I suggest, should be on the agenda when a Conference is held which includes the Soviet Power.

    The most important contribution the Soviets could make to-day, if they would, to a discussion would be to show a willingness to take decisions to allow East Germany a freer opportunity to lead her own life, and to put an end to that callous rampart they have just built. In other words, what we ask for is self-determination, which the Russians so often preach but forbid ruthlessly in the territories they control.

    The fact that such a settlement is so difficult for us to believe possible shows how far Moscow was challenged in taking forward positions to suit her policy. To stand firm over this issue of Berlin is not to invite war; it is the surest way to avert it. If we are firm, as I can see the Government have every intention of being firm, then we shall get negotiation. But we cannot accept a series of diktats, one after the other, nor the taint of being hostages, as I understand we have recently been described. The resumption of these atomic tests by Soviet Russia was intended to intimidate. There is no argument about that; they have told us so themselves. It was to shock the Western Powers into negotiation on Germany and on disarmament, presumably on Russian terms; and in this context Berlin and nuclear testing are closely linked. That is the reason why, though we will negotiate, and should, in certain conditions, the free world cannot yield to atomic blackmail and survive.

    Soviet Russia really ought not to object if we maintain the position that negotiations can take place only on the basis of existing engagements and mutual respect. Their literature is for ever complaining of the weakness which they allege the Government’s of France and Britain showed towards Hitler’s Germany in the years immediately before the war. They roundly condemn appeasement; they indict Munich in all their propaganda. It is surely rather illogical that they should now invite us to be appeasers in our turn, and bitterly revile the Governments of the West if, having learned their lesson, they are not prepared to negotiate a Munich over Berlin.

    When Her Majesty’s Government are considering whether or not there is a basis of negotiation, I should like to suggest to my noble friend a test which they might apply: it is whether the agreement for which they are working will serve only to relax tension for a while, or whether it is in the true interests of lasting peace. We must not perpetrate an injustice in order to get a little present ease; and the Government have to consider whether their decision gives peace, not just for an hour or a day or two, but in their children’s time. That is the difference between appeasement and peace. A long trail of concessions can only lead to war. I suggest to the Government four signposts as guides in these uncertain times though I admit how difficult they can be to follow: to stand by our Allies; to fulfil our obligations; to repudiate threats; and to probe for negotiation, while being beware of appeasement as I have tried to define it.

    My Lords, even as it is to-day the pressure upon Communist Powers is world-wide and continuous. Berlin is, at the moment, the focal point, but there are others. In Iran every method of intimidation and subversion, as it seems, is being unscrupulously employed. There the purpose is strategic and economic; the approach to the Persian Gulf, and the control of oil, to disrupt the economies of the other nations. In South-East Asia, particularly in South Vietnam, the area that strategically matters the most, fresh efforts are now apparently being made by extensive guerrilla activities to undermine the Government of the day; while in Tibet the conquerors are established, merciless and unchallenged.

    There is no reason to suppose that these pressures will subside. On the contrary, we must expect them to gather force as the Kremlin glories in the new power to intimidate, which its breach of the agreement to suspend nuclear testing is gaining for it. It may seem surprising that this action, which must to some extent imperil the future of the human race, has been so little condemned by what is usually called neutral opinion. I think the explanation is that its brutality—because it is brutal—was deliberate at that particular time in order to create fear, and in that it largely succeeded. The threat of nuclear war is for Moscow an instrument of policy.

    These events seem to me to show that the Free World is in a position of the utmost danger. I said a year ago that our peril was greater than at any time since 1939. Some thought that alarmist, though I do not think anybody would think so now. Yet we are still not realising the nature of the effort which is called for from us if we are to survive against a challenge of so much ruthlessness and power. Here I am not criticising any particular Government of any country, but posing the problem as it besets the Free World. Our methods do not yet match our needs. Admittedly, machinery is no substitute for will; but unless you have the machinery even the most purposeful will cannot achieve results.

    Many of your Lordships had experience during the war of the work of the Joint Chiefs-of-Staff. Without that organisation there would have been, as many noble Lords know, confusion and disarray; Allies playing their own hands in different parts of the world, often without understanding of the interests of others, sometimes regardless of them. That is exactly what has been happening often—only too often—between the politically free nations in the post-war world. We need a closer and more effective unity if we are sometimes to mould events and not only to pursue them.

    We have had two examples in the last few months of the consequence of not being prepared and agreed in advance for eventualities which were not very difficult to foresee. One was the building of the wall in Berlin, which I have just mentioned. The second has been recent events in the Congo, where opinion among the Western Powers seems to have been at odds and their actions uncoordinated, even within the United Nations. I do not want to argue about what the policy of the United Nations in the Congo should be, only to say this. While it seems to me a course of wisdom to encourage confederation in the Congo. I do not believe that it is defensible to try to impose federation by force.

    But however that may be, would not our policy in the Congo have been more influential if, even in the last few months, we and the United States and our other N.A.T.O. allies could have acted in unity? And should we not have had a better chance to do so if an international political General Staff had been at work to prepare joint plans in advance, as was done in war time, against a contingency which could be foreseen? I admit that to create such a political General Staff involves an act of will, overriding old jealousies and old prejudices which still exist between allies in the Free World, in what are nominally peace conditions. I therefore find it encouraging that this intention has received most support so far in the United States of America.

    In conclusion, my Lords, there is just one aspect of our affairs which, since I am now out of the stream of active politics, I think I can mention without being either patronising or partisan. There is another way in which this country can influence the international scene: by the image of its purpose which it creates in the minds of other people. I do not think we can, any of us, be altogether happy about that portrait just now. That is partly because of the theme of recurrent economic crises which have been endemic since the war and which, when they are temporarily surmounted, are so easily forgotten. Immediately after the war they seemed more readily acceptable. After the prodigous national effort that our country had made, and the unstinted expenditure of our resources, they seemed excusable. But now nothing would so much increase the authority of my noble friend the Foreign Secretary as the conviction in the world that we have put these recurrent spells of economic weakness behind us for good.

    I have no doubt that we can realise this, but only by a national effort in which every member of the community plays his part with a will to see the business through. This is something more important than the politics of any Party; it is our national survival as a great Power. If we can approach our economic problems in a spirit such as we have so often evoked in the past in the face of our country’s danger, selflessly, but with determination, we can solve them. We have to succeed, if our deliberations are to count for anything and if our country’s influence is to hold sway for justice and for peace.

  • Herbert Asquith – 1908 Statement on a Monument to Henry Campbell-Bannerman

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    Below is the text of the speech made by Herbert Asquith, the then Prime Minister, in the House of Commons on 18 May 1908.

    Three weeks ago this House paid to the memory of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman the special tribute of affection and reverence which was due from us to one who was not only the head of His Majesty’s Government, but the Leader and father of the House of Commons.

    To-day I am confident that, by adopting with unanimity the Resolution which has just been read from the Chair, the House, on behalf of the whole nation, will express its desire that the eminent services to the State of our late Prime Minister should be commemorated by a monument to be set up at the public expense in Westminster Abbey.

    This form of recognition, which, I need not say, goes a long way back in our history, though for a time it fell into abeyance, has now been followed for many years past in the case of men who have held the highest office under the Crown. It was adopted in regard to Sir Robert Peel, Lord Palmerston, Lord Beaconsfield, Mr. Gladstone, and Lord Salisbury.

    We propose to-day, with, I believe, the heartfelt concurrence of the whole people, to add the name of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman to that illustrious roll. The mere mention of the names I have just enumerated, calling up, as each of them does, to our minds the personality and the achievements of the great man by whom it was borne, can hardly fail to cause us to reflect from what an amplitude of resources and with what an infinite diversity of gifts this country of ours is served.

    We are under no temptation upon occasions like this to enter into comparisons or contrasts between this man and that. We do not attempt, we ought not to attempt, to anticipate the judgment of posterity, and to weigh, in any nicely-adjusted balance, the relative quota of their several contributions to the common stock of counsel and policy. We forget for the moment even the controversies in which they took part, the strife and the tumult in which so much of their days and nights were spent, the ebb and flow of their party and political fortunes.

    We remember only, in gratitude and with honour, that each of them in his turn gave all that ho had to the public service, and did what in him lay, in his day and generation, to leave his country greater and happier than he found it. That is their title, the best and the only title, to perpetual commemoration within the walls of the Abbey which is consecrated to our immortal dead, and it is a title which was worthily won for himself by the leader whom we have lost.

  • Herbert Asquith – 1908 Statement on the Death of Henry Campbell-Bannerman

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    Below is the text of the speech made by Herbert Asquith, the then Prime Minister, in the House of Commons on 27 April 1908.

    Mr. Speaker, many of us, Sir, have come here fresh from the service in Westminster Abbey, where, amidst the monuments and memories of great men, the nation took its last farewell of all that was mortal in our late Prime Minister.

    Sir, there is not a man whom I am addressing now who does not feel that our tribute to the dead would be incomplete if this House, of which, by seniority, he was the father, and which for more that two years he has led, were not to offer to his memory to-day its own special mark of reverence and affection. I shall therefore, Sir, propose before I sit down that we should lay aside for to-day the urgent business which has brought us together, and that the House do at once adjourn until to-morrow.

    It is within a few months of forty years since Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman took his seat in this Chamber. Mr. Gladstone had just entered upon his first Premiership in the plenitude of his powers and of his authority. A new House, elected upon an extended suffrage, had brought to Westminster new men, new ideas—as some thought—a new era. Among the new-comers there were probably few, judged by the superficial tests which are commonly applied, who seemed less obviously destined than Mr. Campbell, as he then was, for ultimate leadership. There have been men who, in the cruel phrase of the ancient historian, were universally judged to be fit for the highest place only until they attained and held it. Our late Prime Minister belonged to that rarer class whose fitness for such a place, until they attain and held it, is never adequately understood.

    It is true that he reached office much earlier in his Parliamentary career than is the case with most politicians. In successive Governments, at the War Office, at the Admiralty, at the Irish Office, and at the War Office again, he rendered devoted and admirable, if little advertised, service to the State.

    It is no secret, and it is sufficient proof that he himself had no ambition for leadership, that when he was for the second time a Cabinet Minister, he aspired, Sir, to be seated in your chair. But though he had too modest an estimate of himself to desire, and still less to seek, the first place in the State, it fell to him, after years of much storm and stress by a title which no one disputed; and he filled it with an ever-growing recognition in all quarters of his unique qualifications.

    What was the secret of the hold which in these later days he unquestionably had on the admiration and affection of men of all parties and all creeds? If, as I think was the case, he was one of those men who require to be fully known to be justly measured, may I not say that the more we knew him, both followers and opponents, the more we became aware that on the moral as on the intellectual side he had endowments, rare in themselves, still rarer in their combination? For example, he was singularly sensitive to human suffering and wrong doing, delicate and even tender in his sympathies, always disposed to despise victories won in any sphere by mere brute force, an almost passionate lover of peace. And yet we have not seen in our time a man of greater courage—courage not of the defiant or aggressive type, but calm, patient, persistent, indomitable.

    Let me, Sir, recall another apparent contrast in his nature. In politics I think he may be fairly described as an idealist in aim, and an optimist by temperament. Great causes appealed to him. He was not ashamed, even on the verge of old age, to see visions and to dream dreams. He had no misgivings as to the future of democracy. He had a single-minded and unquenchable faith in the unceasing progress and the growing unity of mankind. None the less, in the selection of means, in the daily work of tilling the political field, in the choice of this man or that for some particular task, he showed not only that practical shrewdness which came to him from his Scottish ancestors, but the outlook, the detachment, the insight of a cultured citizen of the world.

    In truth, Mr. Speaker, that which gave him the authority and affection, which, taken together, no one among his contemporaries enjoyed in an equal measure, was not one quality more than another or any union of qualities; it was the man himself. He never put himself forward, yet no one had greater tenacity of purpose. He was the least cynical of mankind, but no one had a keener eye for the humours and ironies of the political situation.

    He was a strenuous and uncompromising fighter, a strong Party man, but he harboured no resentments, and was generous to a fault in appreciation of the work of others, whether friends or foes. He met both good and evil fortune with the same unclouded brow, the same unruffled temper, the same unshakable confidence in the justice and righteousness of his cause.

    Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman had hardly attained the highest place, and made himself fully known, when a domestic trial, the saddest that can come to any of us, darkened his days, and dealt what proved to be a fatal blow to his heart. But he never for a moment shirked his duty to the State. He laboured on—we here have seen it at close quarters—he laboured on under the strain of anxiety, and later, under the maiming sense of a loss that was ever fresh, always ready to respond to every public demand. And, Sir, as we knew him here, so after he was stricken down in the midst of his work, a martyr, if ever there was one, to conscience and duty, so he continued to the end.

    I can never forget the last time that I was privileged to see him, almost on the eve of his resignation. His mind was clear, his interest in the affairs of the country and of this House was undimmed; his talk was still lighted up by flashes of that homely and mellow wisdom which was peculiarly his own. Still more memorable, and not less characteristic, were the serene patience, the untroubled equanimity, the quiet trust, with which during those long and weary days, he awaited the call he knew was soon to come.

    He has gone to his rest, and to-day in this House, of which he was the senior and the most honoured Member, we may call a truce in the strife of parties, while we remember together our common loss, and pay our united homage to a gracious and cherished memory— How happy is ho born and taught That serveth not another’s will; Whose armour is his honest thought, And simple truth his utmost skill; This man is freed from servile bands Of hope to rise or fear to fall; Lord of himself, though not of lands, And, having nothing, yet hath all.

  • Herbert Asquith – 1887 Maiden Speech in the House of Commons

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    Below is the text of the maiden speech made by Herbert Asquith in the House of Commons on 24 March 1887.

    MR. ASQUITH (East Fife) said, he would ask the indulgence of the House while he stated the reasons that induced him as an Englishman who represented a Scottish constituency, in the interests of Great Britain no less than in the interests of Ireland, to support the Amendment. It appeared to him that the Government were inviting them to a display of trustfulness, not to say of credulity, which might well tax the faith of the most docile and the best-disciplined majority. the Chief Secretary for Ireland had darkly hinted that when the time came for him to introduce his Bill, he would be able to unfold a terrible tale of anarchy and disorder. But up to this moment, after three nights’ hot debate, not a single responsible Minister had condescended to a single specific statement in support of the proposal of the Government. the right hon. Gentleman had contented himself first with general declamation as to the condition of Ireland, and next by appealing to the precedent of 1881. Now that appeal to precedent rested on two assumptions—first, that the state of things now was similar to the state of things existing then—a hypothesis which had been effectually-demolished by the right hon. Member for Mid Lothian (Mr. W. E. Gladstone); and, secondly, that the experiment of 1881, repeated in 1882, was so well justified by experience, so brilliantly fruitful of good results, that at this distance of time—1887—they were bound to follow it as a precedent, blindly, implicitly, without question and almost without argument. He would direct the attention of the House to that assumption. A great deal had been said about the duty of the Executive Government to enforce the law. He entirely agreed with that proposition. In his judgment it was the duty of the Executive not to inquire whether the law was good or bad, just or unjust, but to enforce it in all places, and at all times, without distinction of persons, without discrimination of cases, with undeviating uniformity, and with irresistible strength. [Ministerial cheers.] Hon. Gentleman opposite cheered that statement, but he would ask them, when, in our time, had that view of the duty of the Executive been recognized and acted upon in Ireland? Once certainly, and once only, and that was during Lord Spencer’s administration. Lord Spencer’s hand was heavy, but its pressure was even. Wherever he encountered lawlessness—among Catholics or Protestants, the Moonlighters of the South or the turbulent Orange rabble of the North—who dealt with it in one fashion, firmly, impartially, and effectively. But there was not a right hon. Gentleman now sitting on the Front Bench opposite, with two exceptions—namely, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who, whatever might be the case now, was then a Member of the Liberal Party, and the Home Secretary, who had not then come to the close of that period of hibernation which separated the two stages of his remarkable political career—with those two exceptions there was not a right hon. Gentleman of Cabinet rank who was not a party, either as principal or accessory, to the most envenomed and bitter attacks upon Lord Spencer’s administration. He would quote for that statement the authority of Lord Salisbury himself, who said that under Lord Spencer’s administration the Nationalist League had grown into power and spread its branches throughout the whole of the country. Next he said that the practice of Boycotting, which up to that time had been comparatively rare, had established itself throughout the country, and, as Lord Salisbury pointed out, that was a practice with which no law, however stringent, could deal and which no Administration, however zealous, could put down. He, for one, did not believe in the plenary infallibility of Liberal Governments, and he did not think the proudest period in the history of the Liberal Party had been that in which it had frittered away in Office pledges which had been given when in Opposition; and, therefore. loyal though he was to his Party and his Leader, he did not think the fact that in 1881 the Liberal Government committed what he considered a colossal and disastrous mistake was any reason whatever why, in 1887, they should, in obedience to a Conservative Ministry, repeat that blunder. It was admitted that, looking at Ireland as a whole, there had been during the last six months less serious crime, whether open or secret, than in almost any corresponding period of her troubled history. What crime there had been was confined to a comparatively limited area in a few counties in the South and West. In those counties they found another phenomenon. It was in those counties that abatements of rent had been most generally refused. It was in those counties that evictions had been most exceptionally frequent in number, and most grave and cruel in their character. It was in those counties that the standard of rents, judged by the reductions made by the Land Commissioners in the course of the last few months, had been abnormally high. As to the prevalence of crime, having regard to these admitted facts, he said deliberately that this was a manufactured crisis. They knew by experience how a case for coercion was made out. the panic-mongers of the Press—gentlemen to whom every political combination was a conspiracy, and to whom every patriot was a rebel—were the first in the field. They had been most effectively assisted on the present occasion on the other side of the Channel by the purveyors of loyal fictions and patriotic hysterics wholesale, retail, and for exportation. The truth, whatever truth there was in the stories, was deliberately distorted and exaggerated. Atrocities were fabricated to meet the requirements of the market with punctuality and despatch; and when the home supply failed, the imagination of the inventive journalist winged its flight across the Atlantic, and he set to work to piece together the stale gossip of the drinking saloons of Now York and Chicago, and eked it out with cuttings from the obscure organs of the dynamic Press. And thus it was that, after six months of comparatively little crime, we found ourselves in the presence of this artificial crisis, and confronted once again with proposals for coercion. They were told—and it was true—that there were certain grave symptoms in the existing condition of Ireland. The National League was assorting its authority throughout the country. In many quarters the practice. of Boycotting was carried on to an extent that was inconsistent with the maintenance of law and good order. There was a disposition on the part of juries not to convict persons who ought to be punished. He made. these admissions; but he asked hon. Members to consider what was the meaning of the facts. His hon. Friend the Member for the Inverness Burghs (Mr. Finlay) declared the other night that he was going to support the measures of the Government because they were measures, not of coercion, but of emancipation—measures to enfranchise the suffering Irish tenant from the tyranny of secret societies. What secret societies? His hon. Friend did not attempt to answer that question; but it appeared that he was referring to the National League. Well, that was no more a secret society than was the Prim-rose League. It was an open association, and reports of the proceedings of all its branches appeared every week in United Ireland. There had been in Ireland and elsewhere secret societies such as the Fenian Brotherhood, the Carbonari in Italy, the Ku-Klux-Klan in the Southern States of America, and the Nihilists in Russia; but these secret societies had been called into existence by measures such as that to be submitted to the House. They had drawn the vitality which enabled them to tyrranize over and terrorize the people by such a policy as the Government were now asking the House to adopt, and in favour of which the Government were asking the House to devote the whole of its time, to the postponement of all the real Business of the nation. Once suspend the guarantees of the Constitution, and take away from the people the privilege of free criticism and of legitimate political agitation, and the consequence was to drive them to those sinister and subterranean methods, which wore destructive of peace and prosperity in every country in which they should exist. The really grave symptoms in Ireland were the existence of Boycotting and the indisposition of juries to convict prisoners. No coercive legislation could have the least effect in diminishing or removing either of those evils. With regard to Boycotting, he was content with the testimony of Lord Salisbury’. It was one of those impalpable things which legislation could not reach, and the only remedy for it was altering the conditions out of which it sprang. The indisposition of juries to convict depended, firstly, on the rooted antipathy and hostility of the class from which the jurors were drawn to the system of law that they were called upon to administer. In the next place, it depended on the unwillingness of men to give evidence against those whom they believed to be in sympathy with the aspirations of the masses of the community. He would illustrate this by the case of the Curtin family. He did not hesitate to say that the treatment to which that family had been exposed was a disgrace to Ireland and a scandal to humanity. But while they should lose no opportunity of denouncing the cruelty of which the Curtin family had been the victims, yet, when they came to practical legislation, they must consider the real meaning of what had occurred. What was the crime in the eyes of the people which the Curtin family were expiating by this terrible social ostracism? It was not that the head of the family shot and killed the leader of the band of marauders who invaded his house by night. It was because the sons and daughters went to Cork Assizes and gave evidence against the persons concerned in that crime. He was not defending or palliating that course of conduct, but they were sitting there as legislators, and not as moral censors. They had to consider what would he the result of their legislation. From actual violence and outrage, and even from open insult, the Curtin family had long since been protected. [“No, no!”] He was speaking of facts which he had personally investigated. Did hon. Members imagine that by the legislation which Her Majesty’s Government were going to propose, they would be able to transmute the social atmosphere in which those people lived and which rendered such treatment of them possible? Suppose they enlarged the powers of the magistrates; suppose they deprived the jurors of their share in the administration of the law; suppose they made punishments more severe; did they imagine that in that way they would increase the disposition of the peasantry of Ireland to come forward and give evidence? Not oven a drum-head court-martial could convict without testimony proving the guilt of the accused. The difficulty which they had to provide for was the difficulty which arose from the fact that the great mass of the population in Ireland were alienated from the law, and had no sympathy with its administration. We were not unfamiliar in this country with the very state of things which existed in Ireland. There was nothing novel in the symptoms. They had been witnessed in every country whenever the state of the law had not been in harmony with the wishes of the people. In the early part of the present century, in the days when it was the custom for the Attorney General to file, as a matter of course, information for seditious libel against political opponents, in vain did the Judges direct that juries had no alternative but to convict. In the teeth of the evidence, and in the face of the direction of the Judge, the jury acquitted the prisoner. It was truly an extraordinary thing that at this time of day the Government, dealing with a well-known form of social and political disease, should come to the House and repeat the catch-words of the Metternichs and Castlereaghs as if they were the latest discoveries of political science. They wore told that, after passing this Coercion Bill, the Government were going to give the Irish people a dose of remedial legislation. The procedure of the Government reminded him greatly of that enterprising speculator in the days of the South Sea Bubble who invited the public to subscribe their money in support of a scheme, the particulars of which were to be disclosed subsequently. History did not record that any dividends were ever paid on the capital so subscribed. He did not wish to impugn the good faith of the Government, and he dared say that they believed in the efficacy of the Land Bill which they were to introduce. At present, however, very little was known about that Bill. They knew that it was to provide for the extension to leaseholders of the benefits of the Land Act. That was a provision borrowed from the hon. Member for Cork (Mr. Parnell). It was further believed that the Bill would provide for the application of some of the equitable provisions of the Bankruptcy Act to the cases of a certain class of tenants. The road to prosperity for these tenants was in some way or other to He through the portals of the Bankruptcy Court—in truth a very encouraging prospect. Then they know that this remedial legislation was in the first instance to make its appearance in “another place.” That was a very significant fact. He was far from being disposed to intrust the Government with exceptional powers for the enforcement of the law on the chance, the very remote chance, that some day or other, this year or next, or on the advent of the Greek kalends, that august Assembly, which in the last 50 years had mangled and mutilated every proposal for the remedy of the grievances of Ireland, might be coerced or persuaded into acquiescing in an equitable solution of the Irish agrarian question. The Chancellor of the Exchequer not long ago, with what was then his habitual caution, declined to give a blank cheque to Lord Salisbury. He thought that they might profit by the right hon. Gentleman’s example; and the liberties of a nation being at stake, reasonably decline to honour this very serious draft upon their political credulity. He quite understood that there were hon. Members near him who took a very different view of the matter. Those hon. Members were compelled by the circumstances of their position to an exercise of faith which a very short time ago they would have been the first to ridicule and condemn. It was, perhaps, excusable in them, that under the stress of compromising memories—memories of the day when they were wont to declare “that force was no remedy,”—memories of the days still more recent when they denounced the wickedness of Irish landlords, and the more than Polish abominations of Castle rule—it was, perhaps, excusable in them that they should clutch at any pretext, however desperate, which might seem to reconcile their present with their past, He did not know who was the casuist of the Liberal Unionist Party. In that compact and complete organization he felt sure that a place must have been found for a director of consciences. “Whoever he was, his time must just now  be pretty well occupied. But as for the poor Separatists “the intellectual scum of what was once the Liberal Party,” they might be thankful that they had not to exercise their humble faculties in the attempt to explain how they could vote for a Coercion Bill in the hope that some day or other, in some way or other, remedial measures might be introduced. In the course which the Party opposite were about to take, were they not either going too far or not going nearly far enough? Let them consider what would be the position of Ireland, the condition of government in that country under the system which they were about to introduce—representative institutions upon the terms that the voice of the great majority of the Representatives of the people should be systematically ignored and overridden; the right of public meeting tempered by Viceregal proclamation; trial by jury with a doctored and manipulated panel; a free Press subject to be muzzled at the caprice of an official censorship; Judges and magistrates in theory independent of the Crown, but, in fact, by the tradition and practice of their office inextricably mixed up with the daily action of the Executive. What conceivable advantage could there be either to Ireland or Great Britain from the continuance of this grotesque caricature of the British Constitution? There was much virtue in government of the people, by the people, for the people. There was much also to be said for a powerful and well-equipped autocracy. But, between the two there was no logical or statesmanlike halting-place. For the hybrid system which the Government were about to set up—a system which pretended to be that which it was not, and was not that which it pretended to be—a system which could not he either resolutely repressive or frankly popular—for this half-hearted compromise there was reserved the inexorable sentence which history had in store for every form of political imposture.

  • Patrick McLoughlin – 2016 Speech to Parliament on HS2

    Patrick McLoughlin

    Below is the text of the speech made by Patrick McLoughlin, the Secretary of State for Transport, to the House of Commons on 23 March 2016.

    Madame Deputy Speaker, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a third time.

    Our railways and roads power our economy.

    It is almost 2 centuries since this House gave its backing to a pioneering railway from London to Birmingham.

    A line which changed our country.

    And on which many of our great cities still rely today.

    Of course we could leave it as it is for another 2 centuries.

    Congested and unreliable.

    And suffer the consequences in lost growth, lost jobs, and lost opportunities.

    Particularly in the midlands and the north.

    But this House has already shown that it can do much better than that.

    By backing a new high speed route alongside other transport investment in road and rail access across the country.

    In 2013 Parliament passed the High Speed Rail (Preparation) Act, paving the way for HS2.

    Backed by welcome support and cooperation from all parts of the House.

    For which I wish to thank all parties.

    We have made outstanding progress since then.

    British contractors are bidding to build the line.

    British apprentices are waiting to work on the line.

    British cities are waiting to benefit from it.

    Which is why today’s vote is so important.

    On what will be a great British railway.

    Phase One will be the bedrock of this new network.

    Phase 2a will take it further to Crewe.

    And Phase 2b onwards to Manchester and Leeds.

    Our trains are more than twice as busy as they were 20 years ago.

    And growth will continue.

    HS2 will help us cope.

    It will work, it will be quick, it will be reliable, it will be safe, and it will be clean.

    And when it is finished we will wonder why we took so long to getting around to building it.

    I know many Hon Members will want to speak so I will keep my remarks short.

    I will touch on the detail of the Bill.

    I will also set out the work that has been done on the environment.

    And then I want to describe what will come next including what we are doing to build skills and manage costs.

    First, the Bill before the House today authorises the first stage of HS2 from London to Birmingham.

    This Bill has undergone more than 2 years of intense parliamentary scrutiny since 2013.

    Even before Phase One of the Bill was introduced, the principle of HS2 was extensively debated on the floor of this House.

    In April 2014 we had the second reading of Phase One of the Bill.

    Then there was a special Select Committee.

    I want to thank all members of the Committee, particularly my hon Friend the Member for Poole, who chaired it so ably.

    I also want to pay special tribute to my hon Friends the Member for North West Norfolk and the Member for Worthing West – who, along with the Member for Poole, sat for the whole of the Committee Stage.

    The committee heard over 1,500 petitions during 160 sittings.

    It sat for over 700 hours and over 15,000 pieces of evidence were provided to it.

    It published its second special report on 22 February 2016.

    The government published its response, accepting the committee’s recommendations.

    Many of the changes made to the scheme in select committee were related to the environmental impacts.

    Building any road or rail link has impacts.

    But we will build it carefully and we will build it right.

    For example, HS2 Ltd have today started work to procure up to 7 million trees to be planted alongside the line and help blend it in with the landscape.

    Changes at select committee will mean less land take, more noise barriers, and longer tunnels.

    We have done a huge amount of work to assess environmental impacts.

    More than 50,000 pages of environmental assessment have been provided to the House.

    We have produced a Statement of reasons’ setting out why we believe it is correct to proceed with HS2.

    This information is important to ensure that the House makes its decision – to support this vital project – in light of the environmental effects.

    I expect construction of HS2 Phase One between London and Birmingham to begin next year (2017).

    To enable this HS2 Ltd have this morning announced that 9 firms have now been short-listed for the civil engineering contracts for the line.

    Those contracts alone will create over 14,000 jobs.

    And we want those jobs to be British jobs.

    This is why the HS2 skills college, with sites in Birmingham and Doncaster, will open its doors next year to train our young people to take up these opportunities.

    But it’s not just about jobs. It is also about materials too.

    HS2 will need approximately 2 million tonnes of steel over the next 10 years.

    We are already holding discussions with UK suppliers to make sure they are in the best possible position to win those contracts.

    Later this year I will set out my decisions on HS2 Phase Two.

    As this happens we must have a firm grip on costs.

    The November 2015 Spending Review confirmed a budget for the whole of HS2 of £55.7 billion at 2015 prices.

    HS2 is a major commitment of public money, but it is an investment which Britain must make. And can afford to make.

    The cost of HS2 equates to around 0.14% of UK GDP in the Spending Review period.

    Now, I respect the fact that there are those in this House who take a different view of this project.

    But this is about the future of our nation.

    A bold new piece of infrastructure that will open to passengers in just 10 years’ time.

    This is about giving strength not just to the north, but also to the Midlands.

    Today I can get a high speed train to Paris and other parts of Europe, but not to Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds or Scotland.

    This is about boosting the links to the Midlands manufacturing heartland.

    The connections to Leeds, York, the north-east and Edinburgh. To the north-west, Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow.

    It is about making HS2 part of our national railway network – such as at Euston.

    Here we are not only building a world class high speed rail station, but we are also funding work by Network Rail to prepare a masterplan for Euston station.

    An important step forward in our vision of an integrated hub that will enhance the area.

    At Old Oak Common I have agreed to the transfer of land to the Development Corporation, paving the way for in excess of 25,000 new homes and 65,000 jobs.

    High Speed 2 is a measure of our ambition as a country.

    A measure of our willingness to look beyond the immediate to the future and to a hard-headed view of what we need to succeed as a nation.

    This is a railway which will unlock that future.

    I urge colleagues to support the Bill at third reading as they have done to date and for the carry over motion so that the Bill can continue its passage in the next session.

    I commend the Bill to the House.

  • Anne Swift – 2016 Presidential Address at NUT Conference

    nut

    Below is the text of the speech made by Anne Swift, the President of the NUT, at the party’s annual conference in Brighton on 26 March 2016.

    Conference.

    I am enormously proud to be your president and I am looking forward to meeting many of you in your associations and divisions during the coming year.

    I come from a family of trade unionists. My father was a shop steward at the Massey Ferguson tractor factory in Coventry and my mum, who is here today, was a branch secretary for the Civil and Public Services Association when she worked for British Telecom.

    My parents taught me the value of hard work and the power of collective action. A power which is seriously eroded under the present government’s anti Trade Union Bill

    My parents worked through the period in the 1970s when three-day-weeks and short time working was the norm. They both held down a number of jobs to make ends meet and ensure their family of five children didn’t go without.

    Ironically, one of the jobs my dad had was delivering fresh meat from butchers to school kitchens in rural Warwickshire. Jamie Oliver would have been delighted. How times have changed.

    I was supported by my family to go to college without the cost of crippling tuition fees and I left with no student debt. Only children of the rich can say that today, not working class families like mine.

    At this conference we will discuss a wide variety of issues and much will be said by many erudite speakers urging the Executive to take forward important campaigns. Announcements in the last two weeks have galvanised many of those campaigns and I congratulate all those who have demonstrated this week and signed the petitions calling for the government to have a referendum on academisation and to scrap the plans altogether. Well over 100,000 signatures, for each, means the issues must be considered for Parliamentary Debate – Let’s have that debate.

    With so much going on in education you will be pleased to know I am not going to try to cover everything in this speech. I will stick to what I know and leave our expert delegates to speak on other important matters. When I was teaching I worked on the calculation that you should only keep your audience sitting still for double their age in minutes; 4 year olds – 8 minutes; 5 year olds 10 and so on. So I think I should have enough time today!

    I have recently left my job as head teacher at Gladstone Road Primary School, a local authority community school in Scarborough. 820 pupils and a staff of 130 made it the largest in North Yorkshire with many challenges. I miss my colleagues, the wonderful children and the day-to-day problem solving. But what a sense of relief, as I felt the weight of the job lifted from my shoulders on the last day of the autumn term.

    But I know that you, and thousands of teachers, are still bowed down by the weight of workload, mainly generated to provide evidence for others. The accountability regime has all but sucked the joy out of teaching, in many ways, and the constant meddling by politicians has led to chaos and confusion. This has been exemplified by the recent announcements on testing for primary pupils.

    But teaching is still the best job in the world and the most worthwhile. I am constantly amazed at the spirit of teachers who take their pupils on exciting visits, put on amazing productions and bring out the best in their pupils, with a real joy and devotion to the young people.

    I have been fortunate enough to attend the Schools Prom at the Royal Albert Hall. I am proud that this magnificent showcase of young musical talent is sponsored by the NUT.

    The Government seems to forget that the music industry along with other creative arts, theatre, dance and drama, are major earners for this country and we lead the world in our cultural heritage and talent. If we focus so heavily on Maths and English to the exclusion of the arts, we will be doing our young people a great disservice, and cutting off a source of enjoyment and potential careers for the next generation.

    Our job in primary schools is to sow the seeds so that young people can be inspired to find out what they are good at and be given the means to learn all they can without being tested to destruction.

    I have a vivid memory of one of my teachers when I was a fourth year junior, a Year 6 today. My teacher, Mr Carr, had displayed on the working wall a model of a volcano, from which, when you pulled various levers and tabs, “lava erupted and fumaroles appeared.”

    This gave me a love of Geography, coupled with the opportunities given by my parents to go camping every weekend around the Midlands and the many family holidays all over England and Wales – countries not known for active volcanoes, I know; but still, these experiences and a creative teacher encouraged me to find out why places and landscapes are like they are.

    The new curriculum, despite being content-heavy, is without instructions on how to teach; at least in the foundation subjects. This makes spaces for teachers to be creative in the way the body of knowledge is taught to children, to develop the skills of the geographer, historian, scientist, etc.

    And technology can help – you only have to search for a topic on the internet and there are many generous teachers willing to share their ideas. I am very proud to belong to a community of professionals who refuse to be dogged and dispirited by the cold hand of government and the accountability regime.

    Our Union also has useful resources for curriculum design and assessment through the Year of the Curriculum and Year of Assessment, both available on the website. And I would like to thank our Education and Equalities Department for the wonderful work they do in holding a torch for education.

    When I was packing up my office to leave, I came across topic plans from the 1990s. I obviously had more time then, as I created covers using a drawing program on the BBC Acorn computer.

    They look primitive nowadays but show just how much technology has changed in the last 30 years. However, the topic plans with their interlinking of subjects could be used today.

    I firmly believe we must hold true to our principles of creativity to make what could be uninspiring bodies of knowledge come alive for our pupils. For teachers too, this chance to be creative meets a need in them and makes the job exciting and fulfilling.

    Who knows what will inspire our young people to engage with learning. We don’t even know what jobs they will be doing when they leave school – the rate of change is exponentially greater than it was when I was at school.

    I asked my eight-year-old grandson when he thought the iPad was invented. “Before I was born,” he said. It was actually released in 2010. Look how many of you are on your mobile devices, and this year we have a conference app and next year, maybe, digi-voting. One day, maybe, we will attend a virtual Annual Conference. I hope not.

    When today’s reception class children leave school they will be engaged in jobs that haven’t yet been invented. If they have jobs at all, as it is predicted that 50% of jobs will be carried out by robots by 2028. I hope that’s not true either!

    One job that is not attracting young people is teaching. Even bursaries are not doing the trick and there is evidence that where bursaries are taken up for training, the trainee does not necessarily go on to get a job in school – what a waste of up to £30,000 in bursary payments.

    With the numbers of teachers who leave in the first five years of teaching and the rising school age population, we have the perfect conditions for a shortage of teachers.

    In the NUT we have been warning of this for over two years. As late as last July, Nick Gibb, the Schools Minister was saying: “I don’t believe there is a crisis. We’re managing the challenge.”

    But the Commons Education Select Committee announced in October that it was going to investigate whether there is a crisis in recruitment. The Committee should listen to us and the evidence given by the NUT.

    The National Audit Office also severely criticised the Department for Education in a report this February, showing the Government has no real idea of the impact of its policies on teacher recruitment and retention.

    So how is the DfE responding? Are they cutting workload, reshaping accountability, paying teachers more, listening to the voice of the profession? No.

    Instead it has produced a prime-time TV advert suggesting that ‘great’ teachers can earn £65,000 a year! Complaints have been made to the Advertising Standards Authority about the misleading nature of this ad.

    Perversely, the DfE have also announced the closure of recruitment to school-based training schemes and instead decided to focus on Teach First and the National Teaching Service.

    What they fail to understand is that you can’t keep denigrating the education service, dismantling the known and trusted routes into teaching via universities and colleges, imposing unjust accountability regimes, and still expect teaching to be an attractive profession.

    I have grave doubts about the School Direct route through Teaching Alliances, which has shifted the responsibility for training students away from universities to schools. I call this the apprenticeship model of training, more usually associated with craft industries, where student teachers spend most of their time in the classroom and go to college for day release to learn about pedagogy.

    This has had a devastating impact on education departments in universities, leading to a much reduced role, the redundancy of staff and loss of expert knowledge.

    It follows a view by Government that learning on the job is preferable to time spent learning the theory which underpins practice. It has had an impact on schools who are expected to do the work formerly carried out by the university for very little funding. I am sure many of the teachers who enter the profession via this route are very able, but they have been short-changed.

    The teaching alliances have also had to fill the gap left by the demise or reduction in the role of local authorities to provide Continuing Professional Development for staff, and again this leads to increased workload as expertise is sourced from within the alliance or purchased from commercial suppliers who have designed teaching programmes or assessment packages. This has created a very lucrative ‘edu-business.’

    When I wrote this speech in February I thought that the teacher shortage, the diminution of the training available both to students and in-service teachers, along with the changes which took place prior to this Government to remove the requirement for children to be taught by a Qualified Teacher all of the time meant that schools will eventually be staffed by a few “qualified, expert teachers,” supported by other para-professionals. Well, now Nicky Morgan has come clean. In the latest white paper “Educational Excellence Everywhere” (I’m sure there is a joke to be made about the number of Es here) schools will be free to employ anyone to teach and it will be up to the head to accredit them.

    We have seen this happen in Early Years where some schools have a qualified teacher in the reception class but “practioners” in the nursery or pre-reception class. These people are skilled and can support teachers well, but, where settings are led by qualified teachers, outcomes for children are better.

    This was one of the conclusions from the Effective Provision of Pre-school Education (EPPE) research, one of the biggest longitudinal surveys from 1997 to 2004, and updated again in 2014.

    Having qualified teachers who engaged with the children in shared sustained thinking was one of the key findings. This principle is one of the aspects of the Early Years Foundation Stage and forms a characteristic of effective learning.

    Early Years settings, and all schools, need to be properly staffed by qualified teachers who can plan a play-based curriculum, centred around enquiry and fit for the age and developmental stage of the children.

    We must be alert to any reduction in this caused by funding cuts and political demands for the formalisation of early education. This battle is not yet won. The legislation allowing anyone to teach and the baseline assessment tests put play at risk.

    Save the Children has recently launched a campaign: Read on. Get on. They have asked the Government to invest in nurseries so that every nursery is led by a qualified teacher. In Scotland, Nicola Sturgeon has also announced a commitment to put qualified teachers in every nursery by 2018. They recognise that young children who are disadvantaged, particularly, need the most qualified people to work with them to enhance their life chances. Our government is going in the wrong direction.

    I attended one of our “Reading for Pleasure” conferences where it was stated that “children from a home with few or no books arrive at school with a vocabulary of approximately 3,500 words.” Contrast this with a child who owns 50 books; they have a spoken vocabulary of over 7,000 words and a great deal of knowledge about how books and reading work.

    It has been one of my greatest professional pleasures to teach children to read. The delight on a child’s face when they recognise words in different contexts and realise they can read them, and make meaning from what they read, are “golden moments”. They have achieved a difficult cognitive challenge. We must do all we can to make reading an irresistible pleasure, not a chore.

    I find it incredibly sad that in the children’s section of a well-known bookshop a whole wall is dedicated to practise work books for the English and Maths curriculum.

    Sad, too, that some schools are sending home nonsense or pseudo words for Year 1 children to learn to read. This is not reading but barking at print. And children who can read are penalised in the phonic test for trying to make a pseudo word a real word.

    I hope I live long enough to look back on this time and laugh at the absurdity, in much the same way as people of my generation recall the Initial Teaching Alphabet.

    I do not blame the schools for doing all they can. They are under pressure and accountable for every child passing the phonics test, even though an increasing number of children arrive in school with severe speech and language difficulties.

    My recommendation to Nicky Morgan is to put a speech and language therapist in every school if she seriously wants disadvantaged children to read well. That, along with increasing the number of educational psychologists and access to mental health services would go a long way to meeting the needs of our pupils and really supporting them to access education.

    However, without tackling the root causes of poverty, many children will be disadvantaged. I have witnessed the impact of austerity measures on children and families. The stress of poverty translates to anxiety in children.

    We are urged to close the gap in terms of educational outcomes, but the gap between the rich and poor has grown larger and now 3.7 million children are living in poverty, despite Government’s redefining of poverty to exclude income! And in the recent budget we were promised more years of austerity and the disgraceful targeting of the most vulnerable people in our society to suffer more cuts.

    In my school we appointed a family support advisor to help parents deal with housing issues, money management, behaviour issues and the benefit system.

    Like many schools we had a pupil support advisor – a trusted adult children could tell their fears and worries too. With funding cuts those roles will be in jeopardy

    It breaks my heart when I think of the children arriving at school hungry, without warm clothing, and some so angry at the hand life has dealt them they hit out at all around them.

    Schools cannot fix the greater societal ills – Government must play its part and yet they seem even more determined to divide society into the deserving and undeserving poor with tax breaks for the rich and cuts for the vulnerable .

    With the removal of levels from the national curriculum, the Government is relying even more heavily on test results to measure the success of schools. Campaigns such as You can’t test this highlight the absurdity of trying to capture the worth or merit of learning in a numeric test score.

    The Government is wilfully disregarding the evidence which has been collected over a number of years. During my teaching career we have had the well respected Assessment Reform Group reporting on effective assessment, and academics such as Paul Black, Dylan Wiliam and Shirley Clark have written and spoken with knowledge and authority about the place of assessment in moving learning on and providing evidence of learning.

    Measuring human endeavour – especially learning – is complex and depends on a number of variables, but the Government wants even our youngest children reduced to a score. Of all the tests, baseline must be the worst. There are so many variables, the most obvious being the age of the child. It is not good to have an August birthday!

    I also learned recently that the baseline tests have been designed so that only 2.5% of pupils can achieve top marks. So it is already a test, not of what children might be capable of, but a deficit model illustrating what they can’t do.

    The research from the NUT and ATL by Alice Bradbury and Guy Roberts Holmes – with quotes from teachers – illustrates the ridiculousness of the baseline test. It has nothing to do with assessing children to inform provision and planning, but everything to do with school and teacher accountability. The research also points out the temptation to err on the side of caution and give children a low score in the test in order to demonstrate good progress as the child moves through the system. This will affect how children are judged by subsequent teachers and Wendy Ellyatt from the Save Childhood Movement has coined the phrase “Scored for Life.”

    My niece is the mother of a 4 year old with an August birthday. She went to parents evening recently and was distraught to hear that her little girl is behind in her phonics and has to stay in at playtime to catch up. I tried to reassure her that my great niece is doing really well and is doing exactly as she should for her age and stage of development.

    This obsession with teaching children the “basics” at an ever earlier age is damaging. Very few countries start formal learning before the age of seven, as they know a child’s brain is still not sufficiently developed to make the neural pathways needed for abstract thinking.

    Why are we being directed to teach in ways that are so harmful, rather than going with the natural grain of human development? We must resist this and campaign with our allies in the Early Years field, and parents, to show there is a better way.

    The Early Years and, I would argue for this to continue beyond the age of seven, should be centred around the development of oral language, playfulness and self-regulation – factors known to achieve better outcomes for pupils.

    We also have to bust the myth of linear progression. Anyone who has taught children knows that progress is not made in a simple upward trajectory from a given starting point. Children plateau whilst they consolidate prior learning; make leaps forward as new learning makes sense and becomes internalised; and at times regress due to various circumstances, such as prolonged absence or traumatic events. There is no evidence to show a correlation between baseline scores and later academic achievement. But the myth persists – this graph shows the standard expected linear progression and has been used as the basis of target setting and to measure the performance of schools and individual teachers. But only 1 in 10 children actually follow this path. This graph shows the variety of pathways to achieve the expected attainment at age 16. How this is going to translate to assessment without levels is anybody’s guess.

    The mass of data collected about individual pupils, aggregated together and then sliced every which way, is phenomenal. I wonder if parents know just how much information is held by Government on their children. Who knows for what purposes it might be used in the future? Did they give permission for this information to be collected and stored? Do they realise, as they did in Wales, that baseline is really a measure of their parenting?

    So, the measures used are spurious, the way information is used to hold the service to account is partial and the data is not statistically sound.

    This simplistic approach to assessing achievement is built on the sandiest of foundations. At some point the whole assessment edifice must come tumbling down.

    Let’s give it a good shake now and protect our children and profession from this dangerous and damaging nonsense.

    The impact of the new curriculum and testing arrangements is also having a detrimental effect on pupils with SEN. They are dispirited, as the tests constantly show what they can’t do and as they get older they become more aware of this. The tests will create even more children who will be designated as having additional needs because they don’t reach the bar raised arbitrarily by government.

    We have always promoted inclusion – that is, a system which includes every child whatever their strengths or disabilities. In our mainstream schools children are not included in every lesson, as they are constantly subjected to booster groups, additional support and intervention programmes.

    With an already narrowed curriculum, particularly for Year 6 children, those with SEN or a perceived SEN are taken from their art, music, P.E. lessons, and so on – all to accelerate them, to close the gap, and to try and make sure the data looks good.

    Of course children need help, support and differentiated programmes to help them achieve their best. But it should not be at the expense of a broad and balanced curriculum which engages all children, assesses them to help teachers plan the next steps and ensure they are motivated and prepared to be responsible citizens.

    Having schools which resemble exam factories are not just an anathema to us – “the blob,” as we were once referred to – but even the CBI recognises that employers want young people who are resilient, motivated, able to show initiative, work in teams and be creative.

    My school took part in the Exam Factories? research. For a long time teachers have been saying the testing culture and accountability regime is detrimental to our children. In this study, the children themselves have their say.

    In the interviews with pupils, one of my Year 5 girls, in response to the question “What is education for?” answered “To make your dreams come true.” Unfortunately, Year 6 pupils saw education as much more about getting good test and exam results.

    One of my mum’s favourite sayings, and she has many, is “All things will pass.” And this period will come to an end, eventually. We may well look back on it as an era:

    • when education was “measured by statistics and governed by numbers”;
    • when only that which is easily measured by pencil and paper tests was considered worthwhile;
    • with a focus on performativity at the expense of deep learning.
    • when education was seen as a commodity, ripe for private profit, rather than a public good;

    And a time when data was used to misinform by politicians and schools were held to account using very narrow measures.

    Our job is to hasten the demise of this period in order to protect the public education service for our pupils and teachers. We do not underestimate the scale of the task, as we recognise only too well that the Government reforms are driven by the Global Education Reform Movement.

    Learning is packaged and sold via multinational companies and educational charitable foundations. They use education to offset their tax liabilities. Education is reduced to a single indicator – e.g. an Ofsted judgement or SAT results, etc. – and presented in oversimplified form.

    But we should use data, or information as it is being called by Ofsted, to challenge the Government.

    Ask your MP –

    • What evidence is there that academies raise standards?
    • How much will it cost to convert all schools?
    • How can they guarantee a school place for every child?
    • Do they want children taught by unqualified staff?
    • How much has Baseline Assessment and other tests cost?
    • Are they happy that the market can respond to the needs of the service, rather than planning based on proper analysis of teacher supply and future pupil populations?

    The original arguments for becoming an academy – more money, freedom from local authority control, and the autonomy to provide whatever curriculum the school wanted – have largely disappeared.

    The multi-academy trusts hold more power over a school and they are much more tightly controlled than ever they were by a local authority. And the tests ensure every school has to devote large amounts of curriculum time to the content of the English and Maths programmes of study

    The Government still spins a narrative of failure in the state school system to justify ‘academisation’ as the means to raise standards in schools. But there is no compelling evidence that becoming an academy leads to a better education for children. Nicky Morgan can say it but she cannot produce any evidence.

    Indeed, research has shown that a school is six times more likely to remain ‘inadequate’ if it has become a sponsored academy than if it remains a local authority community school – with access to support, collaboration with other schools, and the sharing of good practice.

    As a number of scandals in academies have emerged, the Education Select Committee, last year, stated that oversight arrangements were not robust enough!

    Hence the arrival of the Regional Schools Commissioners, who are vying with Ofsted to pronounce on the quality of schools in their area. As if schools need another layer of accountability. Does this mean an end to Ofsted?

    One of the other weights that has been lifted from my shoulders is the dreaded Ofsted inspection. As a head teacher, I have found that there are two responses to the word Ofsted – sheer terror, or a blasé “they must take us as they find us” attitude.

    I was in the former camp. The anxiety which shrouds many schools from Monday to Wednesday is palpable. I know the feeling of glancing at the clock at lunchtime every day, waiting for the call and the relief at about one o’clock on a Wednesday knowing we weren’t going to get a visit that week.

    Maybe this says more about me and my insecurities. I know my school was and is a good school with outstanding teachers, but even so the anxiety was huge.

    I have seen good people driven out of the profession or made ill by the strain of the inspection system, based for the most part on data which is so variable and built on sand.

    Being put in an Ofsted category continues the pressure and intolerable demands which drives even more workload for the staff. No wonder so many young and early-career teachers leave, and so many staff are demoralised. But we should be careful what we wish for. The alternative may be worse.

    It is clear now that the Government are going all-out to privatise schools though the academy programme. Many ideas have been imported from the charter-school movement in America.

    And now the Secretary of State is suggesting the next Chief of Ofsted should be recruited from the USA. If the American system is so good, why don’t they top the international league tables?

    I am sure there are brilliant teachers in the US battling to provide a worthwhile education, whilst implementing systems designed by people with little knowledge of how humans learn, nor a willingness to tackle the causes of poverty which have such an impact on educational outcomes.

    As we think about the future and four more years of this administration, I am reminded of a quote from a pupil which I kept on my office wall (I am not sure where it is from).

    I’ve been sitting and wondering what the future will be like.
    It took me quite a long while. When I finished, I realised a lot of the future was gone. So a lot of the future is in the past.

    We must not sit and wonder – we must not procrastinate but activate.

    We can fight back. There are examples around the world – for instance, the Chicago teachers’ strike in 2012, and if you get a chance to see the Banner Theatre depiction of the strike you will be inspired.

    The Government has sought to break the unions, and the opportunity for ordinary people working in public services to withdraw their labour, with their anti-trade-unions Bill.

    We must remember these rights were hard won by the chain-makers, the match girls, the Tolpuddle Martyrs, and our predecessors in the NUT since we were formed in 1870.

    Many campaigns led by women, who as a group are still treated badly by governments and large corporations. It is still the case that women make up 50% of the world population and yet own less than 1% of property. The development of our women’s networks, attendance at women’s TUC and the work of our advisory groups continues to bring the issues to the fore. We know from casework that many women teachers have their careers cut short as they find themselves in capability procedures. Thank goodness for our lay officers and paid officials who represent them so ably.

    Our union recognises the dangers, understands the issues and focuses on the campaigns that will make a difference. It is essential that we stand together with our fellow professionals. We are a union that stands up for education and protects our members in their workplaces.

    We should say No to Nicky; No to forced academies, No to privatisation and No to ludicrous testing and accountability systems.

    I am delighted that we are working closely with the Association of Teachers and Lecturers. We have carried out a number of joint events and together we will have more success in our campaigns.

    In Finland, one union – the OAJ – represents educators from pre-school to university level. The Finnish government sees consultation, discussions and negotiations with the OAJ as essential to securing the education service it wants.

    It is an example of a great partnership between the profession, business and government to achieve their combined aim of an education service which produces responsible citizens. If our Government wants to model our education service on a system from overseas, it would do well to look at Finland. Closer to home, the education service in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland is looking very different to that in England.

    We should also be proud of the fact that the trade union movement is the largest volunteer group committed to looking after one another.

    Not just in our country, but the worldwide solidarity with other teachers. I have always found some of the most moving parts of our conference are when we are addressed by our brothers and sisters who are our union guests.

    It is sobering to hear stories of teacher trade unionists imprisoned for defending members, or even killed in the pursuit of their profession. Governments the world over know the power of education to free people and it is not insignificant that the denial of education to women and girls is used as a means of disempowering them.

    The bravery and courage of those who stand up for education in dangerous places is tremendously inspiring and we are right to stand in solidarity with them. So many children are denied an education and are living in terrible circumstances in warzones and as refugees. Our hearts go out to them. Lets educate the next generation to be peacemakers, respectful of others and welcoming to all.

    I truly believe that I would not have stayed in teaching and progressed in my career if it were not for the NUT.

    The opportunity to attend wonderful CPD events like the National Education Conference, meet with colleagues who give so freely of their time to support others, and the great information from headquarters based on evidence and research, make it the only union for me.

    When I began teaching 34 years ago this was a popular print on T-shirts.

    Administrator, social worker, coat finder, arbitrator, government directive reader, curriculum implementer, artistic director, form filler, language specialist, pencil sharpener, accountant, musician, fundraiser, report writer, nose wiper, public relations officer, petty cash clerk, examiner, surrogate parent, walking encyclopaedia, scapegoat… But you can just call me a teacher!

    Today we would have to add “data collector, evidence provider, e-safety enforcer…” and I am sure you could add more titles.

    We have as our strapline for this conference “creative spaces – not exam factories”. And I am pleased and delighted that a dedicated profession of teachers and support staff do their very best every day to make this the case.

    We should say “Yes to a broad, balanced and creative curriculum, Yes to assessment to plan next steps for children, Yes to qualified teachers and yes to democratic oversight of schools which focuses on support and collaboration. Are you listening Nicky?”

    All to give every child the inspiration to have dreams and the means to make them come true.

    On my office wall I had pictures of people who inspired me to go beyond my comfort zone – my heroes.

    I believe that you are heroes: not for just one day, but every day – standing up for what is right, in the cause of education in its broadest sense. Who knows who you might inspire! And what they might achieve!

    Delegates and visitors, I wish you a great conference.

    Thank you.

  • Sam Gyimah – 2016 Speech on the Importance of School Funding

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    Below is the text of the speech made by Sam Gyimah, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Childcare and Education, at the FASNA Spring Conference held in the Grand Connaught Rooms, London on 10 March 2016.

    Thank you for that kind introduction.

    It is a pleasure to be speaking to FASNA today. An organisation established by educationalists who wanted to take charge of their schools’ own destinies.

    An organisation that recognises that autonomy drives innovation and pushes for ever higher standards for students.

    And this government is committed to the very principles upon which you are founded.

    Today, there are over 5,000 academies, free from local authority control, across England. And we are committed to moving toward full academisation during this Parliament – ensuring that every child has access to a school with the autonomy and freedoms, that you tirelessly champion, and that will allow pupils to flourish.

    Europe

    But, before I discuss the importance of our reforms to the role of the LA and schools funding, I would like to set out my position on something everyone is talking about right now and that’s Britain’s membership of the European Union.

    It is better for Britain that we stay as part of the EU.

    It will be better for British businesses to have full participation in the free trade single market – bringing jobs, investment, lower prices and financial security.

    It will be safer because we can work closely with other countries to fight cross-border crime and terrorism.

    We will be stronger because we can play a leading role in one of world’s largest organisations from within.

    Helping to make the big decisions that affect us.

    The task of reforming Europe does not end with the agreement secured by the Prime Minister.

    But our special status gives us the best of both worlds – securing the benefits of being in the EU for families across the UK, but staying out of the parts of Europe that don’t work for us. So we will never join the Euro, be part of Eurozone bailouts or an EU super-state.

    I believe that Britain is stronger, safer and better off in a reformed European Union. And I will continue to campaign for us to vote to remain.

    Levels of spending in schools and consultation launch
    But moving on, because – as we know – education is not an EU competence!

    Realising potential and transforming education is central to this government’s mission of extending opportunity and delivering social justice.

    The Spending Review was evidence of that: protecting core schools funding in real terms for the duration of this Parliament.

    And this is a strong commitment because funding to schools is over £40 billion – the largest education budget given to primary and secondary schools in this country’s history.

    That record level of funding has been driven by the additional funding we added to schools budgets through the pupil premium over the last Parliament. We are now delivering more than £2.5 billion a year to meet the Conservative manifesto commitment to target additional funding at the most disadvantaged students.

    Larger budgets also mean an even greater imperative for us to ensure parents know that funding is being used in the best way possible to further their child’s life chances.

    And I want to take this opportunity to thank sector groups for their constructive engagement with government to push this important topic further up the education agenda.

    On Monday, the government announced the first stage of its consultation on fair funding. This is the first stage of our consultation as we seek views on the principles we use to design the formula, the building blocks we use to construct the formula, and the factors we include in the formula.

    We want to develop a system of funding that is fair and transparent, with resources matched to pupils’ and schools’ needs consistently across the country.

    This is a foundational element of the education system. It will be more important than ever to see the responses from across the education sector – helping us to make the right decisions on funding reform.

    I look forward to seeing FASNA’s response to the consultation, alongside other interested parties from across the entire education sector.

    Linking government objective to funding reform

    The government’s objective for education is straightforward: to deliver educational excellence everywhere. It is through this objective that we will deliver a highly educated society in which every child can reach their potential.

    As the minister with responsibility for education funding, the word that focuses my attention the most is ‘everywhere’.

    Everywhere means we must approach education with the aim to deliver a level playing field for all pupils. It must be an approach in which all our schools, teachers and, most importantly, pupils can reach their full potential.

    And what do I mean by a level playing field everywhere?

    It means:

    – high-quality teachers everywhere

    – high aspirations everywhere across the system

    – a funding system that is blind to irrelevant factors

    It means a funding system that is wide-eyed to factors that impact educational success – be that special educational needs, disability or economic disadvantage.

    The development of existing system

    I don’t think anyone really disagrees with those principles.

    But despite this, the current arrangements for funding our pupils could not be more different. In the current system, the difference between the highest average rate of funding and the lowest rate of funding is nearly £3,000.

    In the current system, the difference in a school’s annual budget – the same school, with the same pupils – can vary by up to £2.5 million depending on the school’s location within England.

    That cannot be the right system of funding if we are serious about educational equity and teachers having the right resources to support pupils with the same educational needs. My question – and I’m sure your question also – is how have we possibly ended up with a funding system like this?

    The wide variations are driven by local authorities who determine their own local formula. Formulae that are complex, opaque, but crucially very different from one another.

    And as well as widely differing local formulae, local authorities are making decisions to transfer money between their budgets for schools, for special needs and for early years. Meaning that money allocated for schools may not reach frontline teachers.

    This kind of decision-making is out of date, as more schools become academies, independent of local authority management and often operating in groups that cut across local authority boundaries and indeed regions.

    And all of this is compounded by a system for allocating funding to each local authority area that is based, not on a calculation of local need, but by reference to local authority spending decisions that were made more than a decade ago, with no proper account of how circumstances have changed in that time. To say it another way: a year 7 pupil’s funding allocation is determined on educational needs in their area before they were even born.

    But what do these points mean practically? It means the same child, in the same circumstances, can be funded vastly differently from one location to the next.

    Right now, a parent that moved just a few miles from Haringey to Hackney would increase funding for their child by £1,000. Or choosing to educate your child in Darlington rather than Middlesbrough would be a difference of nearly £700.

    And these are just 2 of the countless examples of the excessive funding variations, for the exact same child, that is evident across the whole of England.

    Let me make my position clear:

    – this system is not fair to schools and teachers

    – this system is not fair to parents

    – most importantly, this system is not fair to young people

    We’ve ended up with so much inequity of funding because in many cases locally, the distribution of funding has been decided primarily to protect past funding levels, irrespective of changes in the needs of pupils from year to year.

    Let me give you one more example: in Reading, students receive on average £4,000 per pupil. In Wakefield, a local authority with a lower proportion of students on free school meals and a lower proportion with additional language needs, each pupil receives £4,500.

    Simply put: areas in which educational needs are lower are receiving more funding. As the IFS have acknowledged, the current system is one in which local authorities are not good at targeting funding towards the factors that influence educational needs such as disadvantage. Local authorities prefer, when designing their formula, to spread funding in the basic per pupil rate rather than targeting it at the pupils who deserve this additional funding – spreading the impact rather than targeting it at those with the highest needs in order to level the playing field.

    It is a credit to your organisation that you continue to promote school autonomy across a system that is blatantly unfair to some of your schools.

    Schools that work against the odds of the funding system and deliver outstanding outcomes for their students.

    That is why it is this government’s intention to move toward a formula where we fund schools directly.

    Removing the local authority middle man.

    Placing funding directly in the hands of your outstanding school leaders who know how to use it best.

    Principles of funding reform

    The principles of our funding reform are simple:

    – fair

    – based on pupil needs and characteristics

    – transparent

    We need to rebalance funding so that historically under-funded pupils receive what they deserve. To help schools in those areas drive forward ever-improving student outcomes. Because we know that some schools have been resolute in their push for excellence in the absence of fair funding. In York, over 80% of schools are considered ‘good’ or ‘outstanding’ despite it being one of the most poorly funded areas within the country.

    This is proof enough that excellence can be achieved everywhere in a fairly funded system. But let me make one thing clear: fair doesn’t just mean equal. We know that funding must take account of differences in local area costs and local challenges. But fairness does mean that funding, everywhere in the country, should be dependent on need.

    Let me stress this point again: when I think of funding reform, it is the pupil who is the front and centre. Our most important role is to ensure the right level of funding supports each and every pupil. Of course, schools and areas must be funded adequately, but our most important principle is to get the right level of funding to each pupil. We will achieve this by aligning our funding principles to educational needs.

    And these points are recognised by the OECD who show that a well-designed funding formula can be the most efficient, stable and transparent method of funding schools. But, more importantly, one of its central recommendations is that funding must be responsive to students’ needs.

    Funding equality achieved by funding those schools with similar characteristics at the same rate, and directing more funding to schools where pupils have higher educational needs. How can we believe in a level playing field with equality of opportunity when these disparities are common across the whole education funding system?

    A national fair funding formula will realign our funding policy with the underlying objective of an educationally equal playing field.

    Aligning funding to need – delivering educational excellence everywhere.

    Sector bodies

    I am also pleased that sector bodies and unions across the whole of education have engaged constructively on these issues and offered their support. A campaign driven by the F40 to address the clear inequity in the system, and a campaign that is supported organisations such as the ASCL, the NAHT and FASNA.

    High needs

    But, I know that funding reform is about more than just the schools budget – because the same arguments apply to our funding for high needs.

    However, this is – bluntly – a more difficult area than the schools budget. We know that students with special educational needs and/or disabilities need additional funding to help them achieve their potential.

    But, it is more difficult to put into a formula because high needs are less predictable.

    That is why we must design a system that recognises this and allocates money to local authorities transparently and fairly without perverse incentives.

    But, this isn’t just about fairness for pupils. This is about fairness for parents – who tirelessly look after their children with additional needs to give them best education possible.

    It isn’t fair to the pupils or the parents that funding, as of right now, is not strongly enough related to need.

    ISOS research for the department identified large inequities in the system: in one local authority the average funding for a student with a statement or on school action plus was £15,000 but in another local authority it was less than £4,500. How can this be the right system of funding?

    A child’s type of care and support should not be determined on geography alone. The pupil who requires a speech therapist in Surrey is no different to the pupil who needs that support in Liverpool.

    In the system as it stands today, we have now has seen some local authorities who are underfunded struggling to implement the SEND reforms of the Children and Families Act introduced in 2014.

    I want a system of high-needs funding that means parents know their child will have funding that properly reflects their needs and not a system of funding linked to what was spent by that local authority in the past.

    Parents and their children with high needs deserve to know that the funding they need will be there irrespective of where they choose to live.

    They deserve that security. They deserve that equality.

    Synthesis and finish

    I think the case for change is very clear.

    Local variation in funding has become so wide – that pupils are funded on the basis of geographic accident.

    Funded as a result of history; not funded as a product of pupils needs.

    We all agree that we cannot build opportunity that is equal for all children and young people in that kind of funding system.

    That is why our national funding formula will be about fairness.

    Individual pupils will be front and centre – ensuring that funding, in every school across the country, is best matched to pupils’ educational needs.

    And through that, funding reform will be the foundation in ensuring educational excellence is achieved everywhere.

    Thank you.

  • Robert Goodwill – 2016 Speech on the Importance of the Maritime Industry

    robertgoodwill

    Below is the text of the speech made by Robert Goodwill, the Minister of State at the Department for Transport, at the Mersey Maritime Industry Awards in Liverpool on 10 March 2016.

    Thank you for inviting me to speak here tonight at the Mersey Maritime Industry Awards, celebrating the fantastic achievements across the maritime industry in the Liverpool City region.

    I’ve had a very informative visit here in the Liverpool City region today. It was here 300 years ago that the world’s first enclosed commercial wet dock opened in Liverpool. Its design meant that for the first time in history, ships could load and unload whatever the state of the tide. So where better for me to start my day today than at the Port of Liverpool to visit Liverpool 2….

    A place well known for its history of innovation.

    Liverpool has long been established as the country’s primary centre for transatlantic movement of goods. The opportunities there continue to develop as US ports and the Panamá Canal itself increase their own capacity for larger box ships.

    And I know the ambition is strong also to attract ships from Asia and elsewhere, taking advantage of proximity to north-west markets and distribution centres.

    We’re seeing some last minute delays, but this will be a facility well worth the wait and complementing other post-Panamax developments, meaning the UK is superbly placed to facilitate growth in trade with all our international partners.

    That in turn feeds into the Northern Powerhouse, and work is well underway on a freight and logistics strategy for the north. We have worked with Transport for the North to make sure that freight through ports such as Liverpool has the prominent billing it needs, despite the understandably strong focus on passenger transport.

    I was most excited to see the progress being made at the Maritime Knowledge Hub today. It creates great potential for the growth of the UK’s maritime skills base.

    With sea trade expected to grow significantly, the need for a highly skilled workforce has never been greater.

    The Hub is a new addition to the UK’s maritime training institutions providing world-class research and respected qualifications.

    Next week is National Apprenticeships Week and the maritime sector is leading the way in shaping the future of apprenticeships through the maritime trailblazer.

    It is critically important that the maritime industry continues to attract and train the next generation of seafarers and mariners in order to sustain its future. That is why government continues to play its part by investing in the training of UK officers and ratings through our £15 million Support for Maritime Training (SMarT) fund.

    Our commitment to maritime is shown through our acceptance of all the recommendations made to government coming out of the Maritime growth study last year.

    They won’t necessarily be easy to implement. But of course this a partnership. We have to work closely together – government and industry. And together we will see results.

    We have already set up a Ministerial Working Group and have taken action so that the Maritime and Coastguard Agency have appointed a commercial director to lead the shipping register and deliver improvements in service.

    Things are already moving in the right direction.

    The growth study highlighted the size and diversity of the UK’s maritime sector – ports, shipping, business services, training, research, engineering and manufacturing.

    The UK has a cluster of maritime industries of global significance and we must consider this interconnected network of businesses as whole.

    By ensuring that we, in government, take a strategic approach to all parts of the maritime sector.

    And by encouraging greater communication, coordination and cooperative between the many elements of our maritime cluster.

    We all understand the importance of trade. Free trade creates jobs; protectionism (although billed as protecting jobs) ultimately destroys them. Free trade operates best with effective and efficient logistics – this is where you guys come in.

    I believe the objective of free trade are best served with the UK being part of a reformed EU.

    Only, for example, as part of the EU can we land the TTIP deal with the US that would boost transatlantic trade volumes.

    We can build on the UK’s strengths, generate sustained growth and compete internationally.

    Thank you.