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The new UCAS single portal for all initial teacher education applications was due to open on 1 November. All School Direct lead schools as well as all accredited providers will be listed—hundreds of organisations. North Lincolnshire has been trying to secure its registration since July. The NCTL appears to have been the problem in that it has not passed on the new school-centred initial teacher training details to UCAS. Last Friday, it was announced that the UCAS site will not open until 21 November, due to the backlog in registering organisations, thus further delaying the recruitment cycle for 2014-15. The announcement caused understandable consternation for providers, who made plans based on the 1 November date. That illustrates the chaos in the system.
In addition, the retrospective application of the new skills test, based on “three strikes and you’re out”, has made potential applicants more wary of enrolling for teacher training. The stakes for them are much higher than before. Although the rhetoric around standards is attractive, it may well have the opposite effect, because the detailed questions that should have been thought through have not been. Kim Francis comments:
“Everybody I speak with in ITE is frustrated and dismayed about the chaos that has been created—a common reaction being ‘you couldn’t make it up!’”.
That is the world of this Government at this time. A colleague working elsewhere in teacher education noted that the NCTL
“has neither the staff levels nor I would guess expertise, given the lack of background knowledge, to get out of this mess in any kind of hurry.”
Why on earth are the Government dismantling effective teacher education? If they are looking at international comparators, as my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) pointed out, they might consider Finland, where it is universally recognised that children do well. Its teacher education has universities at its heart, is pitched at master’s level and involves longer periods of study and shorter classes. Instead, the Government chose to focus only on the idea of teaching schools, adapting it so as to be unrecognisable when compared with the Finnish model. They should go back to the start.
We could look at Canada, which is sixth for literacy in the programme for international student assessment tables—PISA. Universities are right at the heart of its teacher education. Students spend two years training and cover a wide range of educational theory, which they value. They spend much less time in the classroom, even over two years, than ours do. Teacher education is more than learning on the job. It is more than “Sitting next to Nellie”. Professor Christine Jarvis, dean of education at Huddersfield university, explains it well:
“Firstly, the obvious—teachers need to learn properly (not in the form of a few handy hints) about the psychology of learning, about the implications of social deprivation and context and not just about the specific government strategies and practices in force at any one time. They must have some in-depth knowledge. Second, they need time to reflect, critically, and with support away from the school in which they are working—the school whose practices they may wish to question. Third, teachers need to think about themselves as researchers, developing the ability to create knowledge about teaching—they need to learn research skills and methodologies. Finally, I think teachers are more than classroom practitioners. They are education professionals and should have a right to understand the job they are doing in a
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wider context, to take a place in wider society as people who can contribute to debate about what education should be, what schools should be.”
How profound and insightful that observation is.
The partnership between schools and higher education has been crucial to the success of teacher education. Universities are reporting requests for support from schools, but an unwillingness by schools to pay for such support. That is leading university vice-chancellors to question whether they can afford to be involved in this work. Schools are told by the NCTL that they must lead. They keep most of the income, design the curriculum and do most of the training, but because the university is the accredited provider, the university gets inspected by Ofsted. The university has little control and no power over the quality, but it will get the poor rating, while the school’s Ofsted grade will remain unaffected even if it messes up. It is not surprising, given the comparatively poor record of school-led teacher training in the past according to Ofsted judgments, that universities are worried about their reputations under the new arrangements. It is not surprising, therefore, that they are already beginning to cut their losses and pull out of teacher education.
The Government are presiding over a crisis in teacher education and supply that will get worse unless they act quickly. The limited opportunity to transfer allocations between different routes, which my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central has highlighted, has exacerbated the problem, impacting significantly on key subjects such as physics, mathematics and modern foreign languages. Overall, recruitment is 43% down in physics and 22% down in mathematics. Absurdly, the NCTL would not transfer unfilled School Direct places to universities, which consequently had to turn away good physics, maths and modern foreign languages candidates.
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws): I do not want to abuse my position, but surely the hon. Gentleman is aware that because of the allocations that we gave to higher education institutes and to School Direct, higher education institutes were not turning away physics and maths graduates; they had unused space.
Nic Dakin: That is not what higher education establishments are saying. Only last week, I met Universities UK, which made it very clear that according to surveys of the universities that are part of its ambit, many universities had to turn people down. Universities had asked for School Direct places to be reallocated to them, but that did not happen. That demonstrates some of the confusion in the system. The Minister may be right, or Universities UK may be right; I am not sure. I am just listening to the noise.
Universities UK is calling for the Government to ensure that sufficient core allocation is granted to universities to enable them to sustain provision, including the support that they can offer School Direct partnerships. My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West drew on the experience and testimony of Baroness Morris to illustrate how necessary that is for the stability of the system. Any rapid movement away from the current ratio of HE-led training and School Direct-led training will imperil that.
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Confidence about future allocations is equally necessary for all proven initial teacher training partnerships, such as that in north Lincolnshire. As one school-centred initial teacher training programme manager recently said in exasperation,
“we still await confirmation of final allocations for both Core and School Direct places. Details of bursaries and scholarships were announced after the requests for places were submitted! Securing timely responses to our many and frequent enquiries to UCAS, Student Loans Company and NCTL is proving very difficult and making life extremely challenging and stressful for colleagues.”
Here are some questions for the Minister to focus on if he wants to turn the tide against this self-created crisis. In the light of current difficulties, will he resist the ideological temptation to increase School Direct allocations, and instead allow the system to stabilise? Will the Government provide greater certainty about the core allocation over the next few years to enable providers to plan and invest? Will the Government make it easier to transfer unfilled allocation between different routes to ensure that good candidates are not turned away? I note from the Minister’s intervention that he is, properly, concerned that that should be happening, and I hope that he is right about that. Will the Government take positive action to make HE equal partners in teaching schools by making it clear that HE partners should be invited to NCTL meetings and included in any correspondence about the teaching schools where they are partners? Will the Government look at getting Ofsted to inspect the lead organisation, whichever that may be, thereby better assuring future quality and putting accountability in the right place?
It is not too late to put the situation right, but teacher education is hurtling towards a shipwreck. If the Minister agrees with his party leader, the Deputy Prime Minister, that every child in a publicly funded school should have the right to be taught by a qualified teacher, he needs to say so today. He needs to take the necessary action to guarantee the quality of teacher education and secure future teacher supply. I am more optimistic—I am naturally optimistic—than the head teacher I bumped into at the weekend, but I do not have to run a school any more. I do not have to recruit the staff and secure the students’ future. I look to the Minister to act on those students’ behalf and take the actions that are clearly needed to avoid the rocks.
3.17 pm
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab): It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. I congratulate my colleague and fellow member of the Select Committee on Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), on securing the debate. It is a pleasure to follow my colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who, like me, spent several decades of his career before coming into this place teaching and working in the education sector.
Until recently, the system of initial teacher training in this country was relatively simple and worked relatively well. I am the first to accept that schools have complained to me for decades that students coming out of university have to be taught how to teach, but when I have pressed them on the matter, they will accept—reluctantly, sometimes—that things have improved, that HE providers work well with schools, and that student teachers spend most of their final training year in classrooms teaching.
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Until 2010, it was the job of the Department for Education, through the various reincarnations of the Teacher Training Agency, to decide each year how many teachers were needed and in what subjects. It was the job of the university-led teacher training institutions and schools, working together, to make sure that teachers in training had the right skills, knowledge and professionalism to work in our classrooms. Newly qualified teachers’ satisfaction with their courses was at an all-time high in 2010-11, which is the last year for which data are available. They rated their university courses as good or very good in 90% of cases. The proportion of graduate entrants holding a 2:1 or a first-class degree had been increasing steadily for years, prior to 2010. That is not perfect, and nor is there room for complacency, but it is a reasonably good picture, overall. There is recognition across the profession and, I think, throughout the House that we have a better, more qualified, knowledgeable and skilled teaching work force than at any time in our history. That is down to many things, not least of which is the quality of our ITT, which was recognised nationally and internationally as outstanding.
The Education Committee, on which I serve, looked into and reported on the issue of teacher training in some depth in the spring of 2012 as part of its “Great teachers” inquiry and report. I am sure that the Minister has studied it. We recognised the various and diverse routes into teaching and the role of the higher education institutions as well as school-based providers. It was clear to us that a sharp move from higher education and school-led partnerships to largely school-led provision was highly contentious and fraught with difficulties, not least because the school-led sector was not yet robust enough and did not have the capacity to replace the higher education sector. The Minister will no doubt say that he does not intend to replace the higher education ITT sector with school-led ITT, but that will be the outcome if the higher education-led ITT sector is not sufficiently funded and supported. Universities will simply reduce or withdraw from the market, closing their schools of education. As the Minister knows, that is beginning to happen.
As part of the inquiry the Select Committee visited Finland and Singapore, countries that are recognised as among the best in the world for ITT, and which the Secretary of State regularly cites as jurisdictions from which he wants to learn. They both have university-led teacher training and recognise that a knowledge base in education and child development, with a research-based dissertation through a university, are required to produce the best teaching force. In 2012 the Select Committee cautiously welcomed the extension of School Direct, but it had serious reservations that it wanted the Government to consider.
University-led ITT in England is recognised internationally as outstanding. Ofsted has confirmed that through its own inspection. If we truly believe that we need to learn from what is internationally outstanding, why would we not hesitate before putting the quality of that provision at risk? The Committee welcomed more school involvement in ITT, but we had reservations about whether schools are equipped to deliver the programme on their own and, in many cases, to lead it.
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We were particularly concerned about the time scale. Change is a fact of life, but to change too swiftly the balance from higher education-led to school-led ITT is to run the risk of damaging what is already a good—even outstanding—system. In the long run it will create a teacher shortage, which is exactly what appears to be happening.
Nic Dakin: My hon. Friend is making a sound contribution to the debate. Does she feel that the Select Committee’s prescient alertness to what was happening, and its warnings, should have been heeded? We would not then be in the position that we are in now.
Pat Glass: I entirely agree. If the Government had attended to the warnings of the Select Committee in spring 2012 we would not be facing the crisis that my hon. Friend’s colleague and friend spoke about at the weekend. Since the Committee considered the issues it has been apparent that there is a worrying future for ITT in England, and for the future sufficiency of the teacher work force. The historical context is that every recent Tory Government has left office with a teacher shortage.
Some but not all School Direct places will offer an academic qualification such as the postgraduate certificate in education alongside qualified teacher status. However, accredited providers are accountable and responsible for the conferring of any academic qualification and QTS. In view of that, it is not surprising that students prefer to have an academic qualification including QTS from a university, rather than from a school, albeit one that is linked to a higher education provider. That is, if nothing else, an issue of status. All things being equal, what good maths graduate is going to choose school-based QTS over that awarded by a prestigious university? In that matter, I have some experience.
The problem is that Government policy is shifting funding from universities to school-led provision so quickly that, while universities may not be short of students applying for their teaching courses, they no longer have the funding to deliver courses of the quality and in the numbers that they have in the past. Universities are particularly concerned about the impact of the next round of ITT allocations on their ability to sustain teacher training. That includes the ability to sustain support for school-led routes such as the School Direct programme.
In 2013-14, as we have heard, ITT allocations and acceptances by Government have shifted by 25% to School Direct. More than 90% of postgraduate and undergraduate courses through universities were filled across the country and, in some cases, across subject areas, but only 66% of places allocated to School Direct have been met—well below the target allocation. In addition there has been over-recruitment in subjects including chemistry, history and PE, and that has masked much larger shortfalls in subjects such as maths and physics. Overall recruitment is 43% below target in physics and 22% below target in maths. The shortfall has been made worse because the Government have chosen to reduce allocations to HE institutions and universities, the bit in the system that we know works well and that has already been judged outstanding, while significantly shifting allocations to the School Direct programme, the bit in the system that is new, in
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many cases experimental and, as we now know, falling well short of targets. I understand that they have refused to shift the under-filled ITT places in School Direct to universities.
Duncan Hames: The hon. Lady mentioned the core allocation provided to higher education institutions. Bath Spa university, which provides ITT for many in my constituency, has outstanding status and therefore still enjoys some core allocation. Does she share its concern that, with changes in the Ofsted regime, the number of higher education institutions with a guaranteed core allocation will decline?
Pat Glass: I agree entirely. I and others in the profession are extremely worried that the next round of ITT allocations will result in some universities cutting back further, or closing their education departments as they become financially unsustainable. If that happens, an even greater burden will fall on school-led provision without the support of the higher education element that everyone recognises as vital to the provision of good teaching.
Like other hon. Members who have spoken, I cannot understand the Government’s insistence on employing unqualified teachers in schools. I have an MSc and I think that, certainly in the past, I was qualified to teach mathematics, but a working knowledge of maths and statistics does not make a teacher. Without the benefit of a Bachelor of Education degree, I would not have had the necessary skills and knowledge of child development. I would not have known how children learn, or about differentiation and delivering a syllabus to a range of abilities. I would not have known about assessment, or understood what each child could or could not do, and what they needed to do next. I would not have been able to manage behaviour in a classroom, or to identify and meet the needs of children with special needs. Probably just as importantly, I would not have had credibility, or the trust of my colleagues, the parents, and the pupils. Pupils know who is or is not experienced, and they can quickly tell who is qualified. Often that will determine not only their willingness to listen and learn, but their classroom behaviour.
The Government need to step back and consider their future allocation for ITT carefully. They run the risk of irreversibly damaging a system that has worked well and served us well, that has provided us with the best teaching force that the country has ever had, and that is internationally recognised as outstanding. To plough ahead regardless is to risk destabilising the whole system, damaging it irreversibly and leaving the country with yet another Tory-made teacher shortage.
3.28 pm
Kevin Brennan (Cardiff West) (Lab): This must remind you, Mr Caton, of your election to the House of Commons in 1997, for a Welsh constituency, because we seem to be in a Tory-free zone in the Chamber. Is that a Tory on the Bench behind the Minister? [Interruption.] No, he is a Liberal as well—so it is a Tory-free zone.
I congratulate those who have come to take part: my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), who secured this important debate; my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson); and my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe (Nic Dakin), who once again drew on his experience. I visited his college when he was a head
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teacher and I was a Minister, and a fine and well-led college it was. I congratulate him on delivering his speech to the accompaniment of the Household Cavalry outside; it was impressive how he kept going despite the drumbeat. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass) also contributed, along with the occasional chipping in from the hon. Member for Chippenham (Duncan Hames), which was welcome. I found very little to disagree with in his interventions.
At the root of this debate is the fact that the Secretary of State for Education does not believe that teaching is a profession at all. He has made it clear that he thinks it is a craft to be picked up on the job, which is why he does not really care whether teachers in taxpayer-funded schools are qualified. That is his policy: teachers in academies and free schools need not be qualified. Bearing in mind that more than half of secondary schools are now academies, that represents the majority of schools in the country for children over the age of 11.
As far as the Secretary of State is concerned, as long as teachers have good subject knowledge, that is sufficient. Knowledge is important, but as the great Peter Kay said, knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit; wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad. Let me make it clear that Labour believes, just as we now know the Deputy Prime Minister believes, that it is wisdom to ensure that teachers in our taxpayer-funded schools have or are en route to gaining a teaching qualification, and that they enhance those qualifications throughout their career through continuing professional development. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Scunthorpe, I did a postgraduate certificate in education many years ago. They were not always of the highest quality. We must always be trying to improve the quality of teacher training. During my teaching career, I went on to do an MSc in education management. It was an important part of the structure of a career.
I will not dwell on the disastrous recent news about the Al-Madinah free school, or from Pimlico, but the Government should reflect on some of those lessons during the next few weeks and months. In this debate, I will talk a little about current problems.
Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op): Will my hon. Friend give way?
Kevin Brennan: Of course I will give way to the former Chair of the Select Committee on Education.
Mr Sheerman: I apologise for not being here earlier; I had soldiers returning today, and I had to greet them downstairs. I am sorry that they made a bit of noise.
The Education Committee of which I was Chair did a thorough investigation into the quality of teacher training. It can be improved, but there is a whole culture out there. I am a visiting professor at the Institute of Education. This is the week of the professions, when 15 professions have come together to say how important the professions are in setting standards and creating the culture of a profession. Does my hon. Friend agree that is more important in teaching than in almost any other profession?
Kevin Brennan:
I certainly do. The distinguished former Chair of the Education Committee makes a powerful point. The mood music from Government is important too in whether teaching is regarded as a profession, and
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it is highly important that teaching, of all professions, should be. We have worked hard in recent years, including through the efforts of my hon. Friend and his former Committee, to raise the status of teachers to the point where we could say with confidence and Ofsted’s support that we had the best ever generation of teachers in this country. That is in danger of being undermined by the current Government’s approach to the issue.
On the current problems, we support and have supported the trend for student teachers to spend more time in schools. We started the support of Teach First when we were in government—to listen to the Secretary of State, one would think that he invented it—and we supported its expansion. However, the trend should be managed properly. The problem is that in their eagerness to propagandise and oversell the School Direct policy, the Government have abdicated their role in securing enough teacher training places, they are not ensuring an even geographical subject spread and they are destabilising university teacher training. We heard about the example of Bath, an institution rated outstanding in teacher training, is considering giving up its teacher training programme next year due to the uncertainty created.
Duncan Hames: I know that the hon. Gentleman did not find much to disagree with in my earlier remarks, but I certainly did not suggest that they were considering abandoning initial teacher training, although it is fair to remark that in its partnerships with schools, they rely on the talent that they can bring to its institutions with the certainty that their core numbers allow.
Kevin Brennan: I agree that the hon. Gentleman may not have said so, but they have said it themselves, in evidence to the Education Committee. It is on the record if he wants to check it.
We say yes to a diversity of routes into teacher training and a greater role in teacher training for good schools, but no to leaving the supply of teachers to the vagueness of an imperfect market, generating greater uncertainty and possibly leading outstanding higher education providers to close down courses. Will the Minister listen to the concerns, ensure that core allocation to good universities is sufficient, bearing in mind that they also supply support to School Direct partnerships, and give enough certainty to allow them to commit to future investment in teacher training? I am sure that, as an economist, he will understand the importance for future investment of having some certainty within the market. Will the Minister also make it easier, as my hon. Friends have asked, to transfer or vire allocations between different routes, so that good candidates are not turned away from teacher training unnecessarily?
Mr Sheerman: Will my hon. Friend bear in mind that when my former Committee investigated the training of teachers, we also considered the training of social workers? Social worker training is an interesting warning sign. When we destabilised the training of social workers, many of the finest centres, such as the London School of Economics, said, “This is too much bother,” and withdrew from training social workers. We are in danger of doing that to the teaching professions. Good institutions will leave the market, as will some of the leading research institutions that also train teachers.
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Kevin Brennan: Once again, Ministers would do well to heed my hon. Friend’s words.
Should properly trained and qualified teachers be required at all? The Secretary of State says no, in academies and free schools. The Deputy Prime Minister says yes, as we learned this weekend, along with the Liberal Democrat Business Secretary and Environment Secretary. We all want to know what the Schools Minister says. I know that he has a first-class degree from Cambridge—
Kevin Brennan: A double first-class degree! I hope that he will not choose to engage in sophistry in his answer. Heaven forfend that he would.
I want to wipe the slate clean after the Minister’s remarks in the House last week. I am sorry to disappoint my hon. Friends, but I think that the current situation is beyond satire. I have thought about it, and I cannot quite do it. They can look at Nick Robinson’s blog on the BBC website tomorrow if they want to see an attempt at satirising the position in which the Schools Minister finds himself, but I will not check it.
Will the Minister give us a clear answer today? Does he agree with the Deputy Prime Minister, his party leader, that teachers in academies—which are now the majority of secondary schools—and free schools should have a teaching qualification or be on a path to acquire one? I will give way now. Does he want to take this opportunity to say that he agrees with his leader?
Kevin Brennan: There was a deafening silence in response to that invitation, as the record will show.
Kevin Brennan: I have six. It will only take a second to say yes.
I want to help the Schools Minister out of his painful position. I have here the coalition agreement. It is a much spoken-about but rarely read document. I have performed a careful textual exegesis of the document, which says many things about teaching and schools. I accept that the Minister’s party is pledged to support what the agreement says about teaching; it signed up to the agreement, after all. I know, having been involved a little bit many years ago in helping to set up a coalition with the Liberal Democrats in the National Assembly for Wales, that they will want to try to stick to what they have agreed in the agreement. However, unless the Minister intervenes on me to tell me that I am wrong, I cannot find any mention at all of a commitment to allow free schools and academies to employ teachers without a teaching qualification or a pathway to one.
The Minister is not twitching to intervene to tell me that I am wrong. I am sure that he will refer to the coalition agreement in his speech on whether the commitment is in there, but as far as I can see, it is not.
Nic Dakin:
My hon. Friend is, as always, very effective on the Front Bench. Does the coalition agreement not say that no education system can be better than the
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quality of its teachers? The evidence provided by members of the Select Committee shows that that is in peril at the moment.
Kevin Brennan: Indeed. The agreement says:
“We will support Teach First, create Teach Now to build on the Graduate Teacher Programme, and seek other ways to improve the quality of the teaching profession”
et al., but I cannot see the policy anywhere in there. I am sure that the Minister will tell me I am wrong, because I cannot believe that he would support the policy unless it was in the agreement, because it seems to go against all previous Lib Dem pronouncements and is something with which the Deputy Prime Minister does not agree.
The Minister and his colleagues could have joined us when we tabled an amendment against the policy. Clearly, from what the Deputy Prime Minister has said, when the Lib Dems supported the Tories on the policy in the vote, it was not because they believed in the policy; it must have been because they believed that it was in the coalition agreement, and therefore they had to support it. However, the policy is not in the agreement, so they do not have to support it.
Mrs Hodgson: Will my hon. Friend give way?
If the Minister supports his leader, he should say so now to the House. This is his opportunity. Let us pass a motion in the House to show that the will of Parliament is against allowing unqualified teachers to teach in taxpayer-funded schools. Let us get it on, shall we? Let us get it done now. There is no need to wait until the next election. It is not in breach of the coalition agreement. It is a chance to show that the Deputy Prime Minister’s words were real, that they were meant, and that they were not just a political stunt, because that would be to betray parents, pupils and the electorate, and to take the electorate for fools.
I challenge the Minister: stand up, show some spine and give us a straight answer. Does he agree with his leader—yes or no?
Mrs Hodgson: Before my hon. Friend sits down—
Kevin Brennan: I have sat down.
3.43 pm
The Minister for Schools (Mr David Laws): It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Caton. May I say how delighted I am to have a debate today on teacher training and supply? I congratulate the hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on securing this debate on an important and topical issue, and on putting his case and concerns in a measured and informed way. I also pay tribute to other hon. Members who have contributed and commented on the important issues.
I will focus my comments primarily on School Direct, which is what the hon. Member for Sefton Central talked about. However, I will not disappoint the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan), and I promise him that, before the end of my comments, I will have answered directly his questions on qualified teacher status.
Before I begin the main part of my speech, I ask hon. Members to put in a little context the important changes that we have been talking about today, particularly
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those on School Direct. If I understood the hon. Gentleman rightly, the Labour party supports School Direct and would not end it—he was challenging the method of allocation, not the policy direction.
One would get the impression from some of the debate that there has been a vast lurch away from a university-led or university-involved system, but the reality is that higher education institutions deliver 86% of all teacher training places. In absolute terms, HEIs will deliver more places in 2013-14 than in 2012-13. Obviously, many School Direct places are in partnership with HEIs; they are not stand-alone organisations. One good thing about School Direct is that schools often have a more constructive dialogue with HEIs, rather than getting whatever they are given.
Nic Dakin: Will the Minister give way?
Mr Laws: I am going to make a bit more progress before I give way to the hon. Gentleman, because I do not want to fall behind and miss the opportunity to respond to the shadow Minister.
Mrs Hodgson: Before the Minister moves on to the main part of his speech, will he give way?
Mrs Hodgson: I was saddened to hear that my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West (Kevin Brennan) was going to wipe the slate clean and not mention the comments made by the Minister last week. I am not as generous. Last week, the Minister said that Labour’s criticism of the lack of qualified teachers in the Al-Madinah free school was
“nothing other than total and utter opportunism”—[Official Report, 17 October 2013; Vol. 568, c. 889.].
and that our policy on this area was “complete and utter incoherence”. Does he stand by those comments?
Mr Laws: I certainly stand by the comments about Labour’s policy on free schools. However, I will respond to the points made by the hon. Member for Sefton Central on School Direct, and then—I assure the hon. Lady—I will return to the issue of QTS before we finish the debate.
As the hon. Member for Sefton Central knows, the 2010 White Paper, “The Importance of Teaching”, set out our ambition for a schools system that can compete with the best in the world. Improving teacher quality is at the heart of the plan, as he mentioned, in both attracting good applicants and ensuring a good supply of teachers in all subjects over time.
To improve teacher quality, it is vital that the teaching profession can attract and retain the best people. As the hon. Gentleman and some of his colleagues mentioned, top-performing education systems around the world, such as those in Finland and South Korea, draw their teachers from the most academically able candidates who demonstrate the right mix of personal and intellectual qualities. Candidates then go through high-quality training, often led by schools, focusing on the skills and knowledge that they need to become successful teachers.
By making teaching a highly attractive profession, we are seeing high-quality teachers enter and stay in teaching. More top graduates and career changers than ever
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before are coming into teaching. In spite of the economic upturn that we are now seeing, we expect to hit 96% of our recruitment target this year, after a period of recruiting above the target. There is currently no evidence of teacher vacancy rates rising.
Data published before the Select Committee hearing on 11 September provided an accurate picture of where we were with recruitment at that stage in the cycle. The picture is mixed across subjects, as the hon. Gentleman acknowledged. The data showed that we had exceeded our targets in some subjects: chemistry, where we achieved 110% of the target; English, 114%; and history, 137%. However, they also showed that we were likely to miss targets in subjects such as maths and physics. Final recruitment data will be published at the end of the year.
Importantly, we over-allocated—I will return to that point later—the allocations, particularly in this first year of School Direct, to ensure that we did not lose high-quality people across the board, particularly in physics, maths and computer sciences. The under-recruited areas referred to by a number of hon. Members were those where both higher education institutions themselves and School Direct did not fill up their full quotas; they both had shortages. It would be a far greater concern if HEIs had filled up their quotas but School Direct had come in under target, but they both came in below their allocated numbers.
Pat Glass: Does the Minister not recognise that even though HEIs have fallen short, there is a huge difference between School Direct and HEIs in the missed targets in maths and physics?
Mr Laws: I am happy to write to the hon. Lady with the exact figures, which I do not have to hand, but there were considerable undershoots on both, so we have not been suppressing demand for places in higher education institutions, particularly in those shortage subjects. As she will know, maths and physics are subjects that have traditionally been challenging to recruit for, although we recruited a record number of physics trainees last year. We would need 37% of all physics graduates to come into teacher training to meet our target for physics teachers alone.
We recognise that we need to do more to improve recruitment in shortage subjects, and to increase the number of people taking A-levels, which is likely to increase the pool of people who can be drawn into those subjects. That is why we announced last week that we will make more scholarships available and change bursaries to help recruit the most talented graduates in key subjects. Scholarships awarded by respected subject organisations will be made available to the top maths, physics, chemistry and computing trainees, which will build on the existing scholarships that have proved highly popular. Since the Government introduced scholarships in 2011, 425 high-quality graduates in maths, physics, chemistry and computing have been attracted to teaching through the scheme.
Mr Sheerman: Will the Minister give way on that point about science?
Mr Laws: I will briefly give way, and then I must press on.
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Mr Sheerman: The Minister for Schools is yet again articulating the shortages in maths and physics. Does he subscribe to the view that universities ought to have a much greater specialism in training teachers so that there is a culture in which teaching is attractive to science and maths graduates generally?
Mr Laws: Yes, I strongly agree. We must also do more to get more people to take both A-levels and degrees in those subjects.
A further 680 teacher training scholarships will be available for trainees starting in the 2014-15 academic year, with scholarships increasing to £25,000 in September 2014. Bursaries will continue to be available in maths, physics, chemistry, computing and languages, as well as in a range of other subjects, and we will increase some bursary payments for maths, physics and computing to reflect the challenges faced in recruitment to initial teacher training this year. Hon. Members will be aware of the new bursary figures that we published last week.
Furthermore, A-level results published in August by the Joint Council for Qualifications show that there has been a big rise in the number and proportion of young people taking A-levels in maths and physics. More students—both the number of entries and the percentage of the cohort—now do maths, further maths and physics at A-level than ever before, which means that we expect to have a bigger pool of potential shortage subject candidates.
Shortfalls in recruitment are mitigated by the fact that newly qualified teachers make up only about half—23,500—of the 45,000 new teachers in English state schools in 2010-11; of the rest, a third of the total or 14,700 people had qualified in previous years, and a fifth of the total or 8,200 people were returners. Initial teacher training targets are set in the context of longer-term recruitment patterns and anticipated need over a number of years, so over-recruitment in previous years, including in maths and chemistry, is taken into account in the targets set for future years. Therefore, over-recruitment in previous years gives some protection against under-recruitment in one year. We have over-recruited in some areas over the past few years.
Alongside getting teachers into the key subject areas, we must still maintain our strong focus on teacher quality in all subjects. We know that we have the highest quality of trainee teachers ever. In 2012, more than 70% of graduates starting teacher training had a 2:1 or higher, which is the highest proportion ever recorded. We are increasing teacher quality through a number of reforms. We have provided schools with increased flexibility to decide how much they pay a teacher and how quickly pay progresses, which will enable schools to target school-level recruitment and retention problems. We are reforming initial teacher training so that schools play a greater role in the selection and training of teachers, through the expansion of School Direct and with more schools becoming accredited ITT providers. That will provide schools with greater choice and influence over the quality of both training and trainees.
The introduction of School Direct marks a sea change in how schools are involved in the recruitment and training of teachers. It effectively gives head teachers more influence over training and recruitment issues. Many of them welcome that, which is why schools are so keen to participate in the School Direct programme,
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albeit that they have proved themselves, in the first year, to be highly discriminating about the applicants whom they decide to take on. That is a good thing, although it is a challenge to ensure that we get the allocations right. The director of the leading Arthur Terry teaching school in Birmingham has said:
“It is very much the vision that all future appointments will be from our pool of training teachers and reduce the need to advertise nationally.”
Over time, many teachers and head teachers will want to take more responsibility for managing initial teacher training. The number of schools that are interested in taking part in School Direct shows that there is an appetite for that, and it is right to respond positively to this enthusiasm. Although it is still early days, School Direct is proving a highly popular means of recruiting great candidates into high-quality school-led training. For 2013-14, more than 9,000 places were requested by 850 schools, more than a third of which were from teaching schools, and by May, about 22,500 people had applied for the 9,400 places available. Recruitment shortfalls cannot be attributed to the introduction of School Direct. So far School Direct has recruited 67% of the places it was allocated, and—I made this point earlier—the subjects that have struggled to recruit through School Direct have also struggled to recruit to core places in HEIs, which is why we are introducing more scholarships and increasing bursaries.
Bill Esterson: Will the Minister give way?
Mr Laws: I will take one last intervention, and I will then deliver on my promise.
Bill Esterson: I merely encourage the Minister to answer the question whether he thinks that unqualified teachers are a better answer to our teaching shortage than qualified teachers. Does he agree or disagree with the Deputy Prime Minister? Will he deal with that in his remaining four minutes?
Mr Laws: I will certainly answer that question if the hon. Gentleman gives me the time to do so.
Schools are quite rightly setting the bar high and are looking to recruit the best possible candidates. Where possible, we have over-allocated places to ensure that sufficient candidates of the necessary calibre can be recruited. There has been a healthy interest in School Direct for next year. Requests for places in 2014-15 from schools, school-centred initial teacher training providers and higher education institutions are being processed, and we shortly expect to make announcements on initial allocations. We look forward to building on the enthusiasm of schools that have requested places, and we continue to welcome new schools into the School Direct programme.
School Direct is not about removing the role of universities in initial teacher training. Many teachers will want to go through a traditional university route,
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and many schools are developing healthy partnerships with universities. We are moving to a system of greater choice and diversity, which is welcomed by most schools and potential teachers.
Along with School Direct, we are continuing other programmes that aim to ensure that teaching is attractive to the country’s most able people. We have committed to supporting the expansion of Teach First by giving more top graduates the opportunity to teach in challenging schools by providing 2,000 places by 2015-16. We have developed a Troops to Teachers programme, with the wider aim of attracting and recruiting high-quality service leavers into schools.
I want to turn to the issue of qualified teachers that has so excited the shadow Minister for Schools today. I recall that the late, great Robin Cook once said, “If you want to keep something secret, the best place to say it is the House of Commons.” I now say that the best place to keep secrets from the Labour party is on the floor of the Liberal Democrat conference. Today, we heard all this material from the shadow Minister, who has been beavering away: he has looked in the coalition agreement and searched through the press cuttings. It is all very impressive, but all he had to do was to listen to what went on at the Lib Dem conference in March, when we passed a motion, which I think I proposed, that was voted for by the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister—[Hon. Members: “The Prime Minister!”] The Deputy Prime Minister, certainly. The motion set out our position on qualified teacher training, making it clear that we want it for every school. [Interruption.] It is not a secret, so what has happened to the research capabilities of the Labour party? Why is this such great news? [Interruption.]
Martin Caton (in the Chair): Order. We need to hear the Minister.
Kevin Brennan: On a point of order, Mr Caton. Is it in order for the Minister to engage in sophistry rather than answering the question?
Martin Caton (in the Chair): The Minister is not out of order.
Mr Laws: Thank you, Mr Caton. The shadow Minister for Schools is just grumpy because he missed the public news about the debate that took place at the Liberal Democrat conference. He has not been reading his press cuttings and keeping up with the news. I make him a genuine offer of free tickets to attend the Liberal Democrat conference each year so that he can follow our debates, see the motions we pass and keep up with the news to enable him to understand the differences—we see them across the board, and I thought that he would understand them—between the responsibilities exercised by any Minister in a coalition Government at the Dispatch Box and each individual party’s policies. I extend that free offer to the next conference.
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Coventry City Football Club
4 pm
Mr Bob Ainsworth (Coventry North East) (Lab): I thank you, Mr Caton, for presiding over our debate, and I welcome the Minister to her role. I was greatly helped by her predecessor, the right hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson), and I can only hope that she is as capable and willing as he was. I pay tribute to him for the job that he did as Minister with responsibility for sport.
Over the past 18 months, the most vicious and destructive battle has been waged at Coventry City football club. Sadly, it has not been about football; it is a fight for land and property. The Ricoh arena was built and paid for by local and national taxpayers and a highly thought of local charity, the Alan Edward Higgs Charity. It was built to create jobs and economic activity in a deprived part of the city, and because the football club was not financially capable of building it itself. The club’s hedge-fund owners and its boss, Joy Seppala, want the stadium, the freehold and the surrounding land, but they do not want to pay more than a pittance for it, and have moved the club out of the city and nearly destroyed it in order to achieve that.
Part of the club was put into administration seven months ago. The owners have repeatedly claimed, through solicitors and direct statements, that the company owed rent to the stadium but had no assets. Documentation has now come to light that shows that to be untrue. Since 1 June 1995, this company, now in liquidation, has owned the club’s rights, title, and assets, all its playing staff, its good will, and the right to play in the league. Why did the administrator, Mr Paul Appleton of David Rubin & Partners, fail to discover that? He claims that he spent thousands of hours conducting his investigation. He possesses the full powers of an officer of the court. He is supposed to have ability. He charges more than £300 an hour. Despite protests from bidders, creditors and me, as MP for the local area, he sold the company that was in his charge without finding out what he was selling, thereby ensuring that the owners were the successful bidders. I ask the Minister why those who put companies into administration are able to avoid scrutiny and loss, at the expense of creditors, by choosing their own administrator. Now the appalling error has come to light—let us call it an error—can we ensure that an independent liquidator is appointed to look at the situation in Coventry?
Let me ask about the role of the Football League in this sorry tale. It told me that it acted to prevent another Milton Keynes Dons by changing its rules. I asked representatives to put that in writing, and they e-mailed me saying that the Football League board would not allow the club to move away from Coventry without demonstrating a clear plan to return within a prescribed time frame. The Football League then allowed the club to move to Northampton. Did the club show the league a plan, as it said it would require it to do, before it agreed to the move?
The Minister’s predecessor asked the league that question for me. My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South (Mr Cunningham) and I went to see him in July, and he agreed to write to the Football League on this and other issues. Has the current Minister received a reply to that question?
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The Football League has admitted administrative errors in the registration of players, but it has refused to say for how long that error continued, or to give any details of the error. With the new evidence about the structure of the club coming to light, will it look again at that decision? Will it give us the detail of those errors that it admits it made? That would show a little good will to the Sky Blues fans who feel that the league has let them down badly on this issue. Will the league uphold the conditions that it said that it had placed on the club when it returned the golden share to it?
Finally, and most importantly, I want to talk about whether we can get the club back to Coventry. This lunchtime, there was a small demonstration outside Council house. Fans are understandably desperate to see the club back in Coventry. Joy Seppala admits, however, that she is not interested in football and is not a fan. She is interested in her investors and describes herself as the shepherd of other people’s money. She says that she is £60 million down. She claims she was not involved in the catastrophic decision to buy the club in 2007. If I were a Sisu or a Sconset investor, one of her sheep, I would ask questions about that, but she says that she wants a return for her investors.
It is repeatedly claimed that a new stadium will be built near Coventry. It is said that it would cost around £25 million—nothing like the Ricoh arena. As Joy Seppala cannot get the fans to go to Northampton, it is estimated that she and her organisation are losing at least £3 million a year for at least the next three years as a result of playing their home matches in Northampton. If we add the £25 million to the £9 million probable losses from the club’s current course of action, that is £34 million. If she wants, as she has said, the stadium, the surrounding land and the freehold of that land, why does she not make a bid? Why is she incapable of making a bid of around £34 million? If she made a bid of that magnitude, she would be getting a casino and a conference centre thrown in for nothing, but she has not made that bid, and she will not do so. The question is why.
Mr Marcus Jones (Nuneaton) (Con) I thank the right hon. Gentleman for giving way and commend him for securing this debate. Many of my constituents and I are long-term supporters of the Sky Blues and are absolutely devastated at what has gone on. Does he not agree that, in regard to having a successful football club in Coventry, the club must own a greater stake in the Ricoh arena if it is to make the business viable, wash its face, and give us the sort of success that we are looking for, bearing in mind the council tax payers in Coventry and the money that they have put in? Does he agree that all parties need to get round the table, and that it is imperative that Sisu look to open negotiations with Coventry city council?
Martin Caton (in the Chair): Order. This is a short debate.
Mr Ainsworth:
I broadly agree with the hon. Member for Nuneaton (Mr Jones); I have never disagreed with him. In the past, under previous leadership, perhaps members of Coventry city council have not agreed with that line. However, if the club needs to own its stadium, it needs to pay for it, does it not? Does it expect the stadium to be given to it for nothing? That is what I am asking, because I believe that what we are looking at is
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an attempted land grab. Figures such as £7 million are being floated by Sisu’s fans for a stadium that cost more than £100 million to provide. Property markets have gone the way that they have, and the economy is not in the same condition as it was, so people will make a loss, but to float derisory figures such as that is an indication that there is an attempt at making a killing at the taxpayer’s expense.
Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab): I am glad to hear my right hon. Friend speaking with such passion on an area that we have not seen him taking an interest in at all for many, many years. Where he and I would utterly agree is that we want to get the club back to Coventry. That means that we have to create a new sense of good will between the various parties that, at the moment, are locked in the most antagonistic struggle that I have seen in many years, and that I have certainly never seen in Coventry before. It cannot be just one-sided—there are always two sides. I ask him this: does he really think it helps to get the atmosphere that we want, and to get the club back, when he launches these bitter personal attacks on Joy Seppala on one side, as opposed to seeing—
Martin Caton (in the Chair): Order. That was another very long intervention; I think that we have got the picture.
Mr Ainsworth: My hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Mr Robinson), by saying that I have paid no attention to this area in the past, provokes me into letting people know that he was the steward of the club. His stewardship may have been part of the reason why I was silent in the past, but I am relieved of that responsibility now that he is no longer connected with the club, and I am free to speak on a matter that concerns a major business in my constituency.
I am not “bitter” about Joy Seppala. Most of the things that I have said, she has said herself on the record. I am bitter about the Football League, which has allowed this to happen. I think it is outrageous and unforgivable that it has done so, and its governance of our national game needs to be looked at because of what it has allowed these owners to get away with.
Mr Lee Scott (Ilford North) (Con): Will the right hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr Ainsworth: I will not give way, because I have agreed to give my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry South some time to speak, and I need to try to finish up, if I can.
I was asking why, if this is not a land grab, the owners are not prepared to make a reasonable offer. If they did, nobody would be happier than me, the fans and those who were outside Council house today. However, I fear that that will not be the case—that the owners will not make that reasonable offer, and that we will not get our club back until Joy Seppala tires of her losses and sells up. I sincerely hope that I am wrong.
I ask the Minister, what is it that attracts this kind of owner to our national game? Is it time to look at the special insolvency regulations that football enjoys, and to legislate for good governance, as the Football League is proving in this case to be incapable of taking decisions in a consistent way? Or maybe even more radically, but even more productively, we should, in the
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end, look at the Bundesliga model of fan ownership, instead of the ownership model that applies in this country.
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab) rose—
Martin Caton (in the Chair): I will call you to speak now, Mr Cunningham, because I understand that both Mr Ainsworth and the Minister have agreed to your making a contribution. Obviously, we want to hear the Minister’s response to the debate, so if you could be as brief as possible, it would be very helpful.
4.14 pm
Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab): Thank you very much for calling me to speak, Mr Caton. I will try to be as brief as possible, because I understand that this is a short debate. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) for allowing me to speak in it, and more importantly I congratulate him on securing it.
There have been a number of debates on this issue—what has happened to Coventry City football club? I will not go back over those; I think that my right hon. Friend has made adequate representation and adequate queries over a number of debates. However, I would like to pick up on one or two points.
The first thing that people have got to understand, and the people of Coventry certainly understand it, is that the site of the stadium was derelict for more than 40 years because there was an old gasworks on it, and at the time the conventional wisdom was that there would be a long period before the site could be cleaned of fumes and that sort of stuff. So, it took a long time and if I remember correctly—I am sure my right hon. Friend will put me right if I do not—to clean that site up before it was even built on probably cost about £16 million. I may have got that figure wrong, but I cannot be too far wrong. So the site lay derelict for many, many years.
We had representations over the years from Coventry City football club, because originally there was talk of siting it where Coventry airport is now, at the Baginton site. That never got off the ground, but eventually the present location—the Ricoh arena—was looked at and decisions were made about the location of the arena, but more importantly it was part of a regeneration scheme for the whole area, if I remember correctly. So we have to put these things in context.
I accept that a lot of sharp practices have gone on; there is no doubt in my mind about that and I will not repeat them here again today. However, I have always taken the view that we can deal with those sharp practices separately. The most important thing is to get the club back to Coventry. That is my view, and I have always taken the view that the best way to do that is through conciliation. In fact, I have said on one or two occasions that the only way to deal with the situation is probably to get an independent arbiter.
I am not necessarily impressed by the present liquidator, if people want to call him that, and by the way he has handled things, but that is for another time. It is more important that we get some sort of consultation going. It can be led by an arbiter or anybody, but somebody who can try to resolve the situation.
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The second point is that my right hon. Friend and I certainly met the Minister. The Minister certainly wrote to the Football League, but I do not know the outcome. I hope that this Minister will tell us today.
This situation goes a lot broader, because to deal with the situation at Coventry we have to look at the Football League and consider some sort of regulation or some legal framework. It has had a free hand for many years now. We have seen what has happened to other clubs up and down the country. That is not satisfactory. The fans have been taken for a ride by some of these football clubs and some of these football owners, and it is about time that the Government stepped in.
The problem is not just with Coventry. I am aware that almost every football club in the country has its own problems. I believe that what has happened in Coventry has been exceptionally inadequate, but there are a huge number of cases of poor football governance. It is clear that what has happened in Coventry is not an anomaly. The institutions of our domestic football governance are inadequate and out of date, and they need to be seriously reformed.
The Culture, Media and Sport Committee launched its report on domestic football governance in December 2010, publishing it in July 2011. It was very clear that the Football Association was in need of urgent reform; that the leagues, particularly the Premier League, have too great an influence over the decision-making processes of the FA; that the game has seen increasing commercialisation; and that there is a distinct lack of financial regulation, which has led to significant financial risks being taken by football clubs. Indeed, billionaires seem to treat football clubs as investment accounts or assets; they are not, and they should not be treated this way. The Select Committee urged the industry to take the opportunity to reform itself and said that if it did not, there should be legislation. Football authorities made proposals for reform but their proposals simply did not address the key problems.
What needs to be addressed is the fact that the structure of the FA leads to too much responsibility being delegated away from the main board and towards committees, which are dominated by the Premier League and Football League. We need proposals that are far-reaching; we need improved financial stability and reform of the licensing model. We need to ensure that membership of the main board, council and influential committees is fully representative, and balances different interests; and we need to improve the way supporter engagement operates at club level. When will the Government accept that the time has passed for the industry to make its own reforms?
Something must be done now. We have a situation where, in a way, we have practically a civil war in Coventry, between the fans and the owners. That cannot be allowed to continue. We need to get somebody independent to look at that, but more importantly to deal with the situation in Coventry and to prevent it from happening in the future we need to look at the Football League and do something about it.
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4.19 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport (Mrs Helen Grant): It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Caton. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Coventry North East (Mr Ainsworth) on securing this important debate. The contributions that he and others made have been valuable, powerful and emotional.
There is no doubt at all that the preservation of football clubs up and down the country remains a matter of great importance. I assure all hon. Members present and the right hon. Gentleman that football governance and the collective determination to improve the way that our beautiful game is run continue to be extremely important to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
Mr Scott: Will the Minister ask the Football League, because it has been complicit in the problem, whether it can mediate in the dispute around getting Coventry City back to where it belongs, which is in the city of Coventry? I say that as a Leyton Orient fan, against which Coventry City will be playing in three hours’ time.
Mrs Grant: I will deal with my hon. Friend’s latter point first. At the end of my speech, I was going to wish luck to Coventry City against Leyton Orient, but that sentiment still holds and I am aware that the teams are playing tonight.
The Football League is involved. I know that the right hon. Member for Coventry North East has been in touch, that it wrote to him today and that it is keen to chat with him. I also know that the organisation had a fruitful and positive discussion with supporters on Friday 18 October. I hope that important dialogue continues.
It is sad that the famous name of Coventry City football club—the Sky Blues—can be added to the list of football clubs, including Leeds United, Portsmouth and Crystal Palace to name but a few, that have suffered serious financial difficulties. It is worrying that more than half the Football League’s 72 clubs have been insolvent at one time or another over the past 10 years. At the same time, however, match attendances and TV revenues are higher than ever. If football today is that popular with supporters, advertisers and broadcasters, we must ask why so many of our clubs are faced with the prospect of not owning their grounds, why they are carrying such high levels of debt and why there are so many sporadic changes in ownership. Coventry City, unfortunately, is the case in point.
When the Football League chairman, Greg Clarke, gave evidence to the Select Committee on Culture, Media and Sport, he stated that debt is
“the single biggest problem for football”.
He believes that if football clubs can ensure that any debt is genuinely sustainable, transparency of ownership, supporter buy-in and co-operative ownership will also fall more easily into place.
I have probably had only 10 to 12 working days in this new job, which is not an awful lot, but I have already had considerable dialogue with football authorities. I am looking forward to getting stuck in, to dealing with the issue and to helping and working with them to drive through much more quickly the much-needed reforms to the game.
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Mr Dave Watts (St Helens North) (Lab): Will the Minister give way?
Mrs Grant: I need to make several points and I am running out of time, so I will not.
The three key areas where we need real progress are the licensing system for clubs, the introduction of empowered—that word is important—and balanced boards and improved supporter engagement at club level. My Department continues to urge the football authorities to introduce full transparency around club ownership. The licensing system should set out stricter criteria both around owners being fit and proper and around the requirement to have clearly defined business plans for how they will safeguard clubs’ futures. Taken together, those would provide greater clarity for clubs’ supporters.
Having said all that, the football authorities deserve some credit for the rules introduced in recent years, including an early-warning system with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs around tax returns, transfer embargoes that help to curb club spending, a new means-and-abilities test and a strengthened owners and directors test. I also welcome the fact that the football authorities and all 92 professional clubs have now adopted the financial fair play principles, the implementation of which should lead to reduced spending by clubs and, I hope, fewer incidents of club insolvency. We hope the licensing model being developed will strengthen the relationship with fans, who should be better informed about a club’s activities, such as its financial standing and owners’ identities. Supporters should be consulted as part of a club’s decision-making process.
I am also pleased to hear that the Football Association is setting up a new separate implementation body, the football regulatory authority or FRA, to oversee the implementation of on and off-field regulatory policy. The new club licensing system and the financial rules that underpin it will be key to ensuring the long-term sustainability of clubs, but further detail is required from the football authorities on the content of the licence and the new FRA’s role in monitoring and enforcing FA rules and regulations.
I want to attempt to respond to several of the issues raised by the right hon. Member for Coventry North East. Regarding the activities of the administrator and the liquidator, I genuinely suggest that he discuss such matters with the Football League, hopefully in the not-too-distant future. If he is not satisfied with what he hears, he may have to take independent advice.
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The right hon. Gentleman also asked, as he had done outside this Chamber, whether my predecessor, my right hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Hugh Robertson), received a response to a communication that he apparently sent to the Football League in July this year. I have spoken with officials and I understand that no letter was sent, but a conversation may have taken place. I will certainly look into whether that conversation happened and what the outcome was and get back to the right hon. Gentleman.
Regarding supporter ownership, owning football clubs is a challenging and risky business, but fan ownership has seen several successes abroad. It is for the football authorities to agree what works best for this country, but there is a place for all types of ownership. Supporters will always have the best interests of the club at heart and I am delighted that AFC Wimbledon, Brentford and Exeter City are now owned or part-owned by their fans.
Finally, the right hon. Gentleman mentioned the club returning to Coventry, a topic which is important to him and others. The Football League wants Coventry to return to its home city and will do what it can to assist in that process, but the matter is also one for the owners and administrators.
I genuinely hope that Coventry City’s issues are resolved very quickly. I want to see the club return to the city as soon as possible and be given the chance to regain its position in the league. Notwithstanding the points penalty imposed at the start of the season, the team is playing like a top-six side and doing well. Coventry City is a great club—no disrespect to Leyton Orient—that does not deserve to be in its current position and I wish it well.
The stark reality is that many clubs and companies will experience periods of financial difficulty, with some enduring the pain of administration. The focus for the football authorities, however, must be on doing all that is possible to avoid clubs ending up in this dreadful position. The Government’s hope and expectation is that, following the Culture, Media and Sport Committee’s inquiry, recommendations are pursued and the football authorities will be able to make such changes themselves.
My Department will continue its dialogue with the football authorities in the coming months to ensure that the necessary action is taken to deliver these important governance reforms, but if they do not, the Government have made it very clear that we will look to introduce legislation.
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National Security (The Guardian)
4.30 pm
Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con): In the wake of the stolen Snowden files on America’s National Security Agency, it is right and proper that Parliament—both the House in general, and Select Committees in particular—debate the balance between national security and freedom of the press, and limits to and oversight of the power of our intelligence services.
This debate, however, focuses on a narrower and darker issue: the responsibility of the editors of The Guardian for stepping beyond any reasonable definition of journalism into copying, trafficking and distributing files on British intelligence and GCHQ. That information not only endangers our national security but may identify personnel working in our intelligence services, risking their lives and those of their families.
In August 2013, the Brazilian citizen David Miranda was stopped at Heathrow airport under schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000. Initially, The Guardian claimed that he was targeted merely because he is the partner of Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian reporter writing about the leaks. Mr Miranda had been held for hours, The Guardian said, and denied a lawyer, but within hours that story had unravelled. When challenged, the paper first added to its story that it had paid for Mr Miranda’s flights, but did not note in its story that that correction had been made. Later that night, after all the print deadlines had passed, The Guardian admitted that Mr Miranda had been offered a lawyer and had refused one, and that The Guardian had known that all along yet had allowed its false account to stand.
Following the Heathrow stop, a judge ruled that police were entitled to copy and analyse the documents and files carried by Mr Miranda that were in the national security interest. There is to be a court case later this month on the detention and whether the Act was used appropriately. That issue, of course, will be for the court to determine.
Oliver Robbins, deputy National Security Adviser in the Cabinet Office and security adviser to the Prime Minister, has described in a witness statement to the court case on Miranda the direct threat to the life of Government employees posed by the documents held and communicated by The Guardian, together with the grave threat to UK national security should they be released. In his statement, he lays out the careful, proportionate steps that Her Majesty’s Government have taken to engage with the newspaper and to agree protocols for future reporting, be it direct communication or the defence advisory notice system.
Mr David Davis (Haltemprice and Howden) (Con): If my hon. Friend really is concerned about risks to British security, is he not concerned that UK Government secrets are accessible to hundreds of thousands of US Government employees? Perhaps that is why Mr Edward Snowden, a 29-year-old contract employee of three months’ standing, was able to access GCHQ files from Hawaii.
Julian Smith: I agree that the NSA placed itself in a very odd situation.
The next step was to secure the documents and data, as there was a real fear that terrorists would seek to access that information by targeting The Guardian, and the Government had no confidence in the paper being
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able to protect the information it held. Unfortunately, the Government were not the only people making that assessment. The WikiLeaks hacker Jacob Appelbaum, who has worked with Glenn Greenwald, has tweeted repeatedly about the non-existent security under which
Guardian
editors held those files. Last week, he pointed out that laser microphones are routinely used as listening devices through windows and that
The Guardian
’s so-called secure room has floor-to-ceiling windows ideal for such remote listening by any interested foreign power or terror cell.
On 3 October, Mr Appelbaum tweeted:
“I’ve seen the horrible operational security at the Guardian over the last three years—it makes the New York Times look solid.”
“They shipped Top Secret documents by FedEX.”
Hackers have heavily implied on social media that they can access The Guardian’s US files.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con): I understand my hon. Friend’s points. He is thoughtful on such issues, so I carefully heed what he says. One issue I have never understood is that, for all the scaremongering about national security, if either Mr Miranda or The Guardian has impaired national security in any tangible way, why has nobody been charged?
Julian Smith: If my hon. Friend looks at the witness documents for the court case, he will see that charge may be likely, but I do not think it is appropriate to comment on that in this place.
The Guardian agreed to the Government’s request to destroy the data it held in its London office, but soon after it not only revealed the confidential discussions that took place with Her Majesty’s Government but advertised to the world that it had sent copies of the files, including information on GCHQ, to The New York Times in an article titled “Guardian partners with New York Times over Snowden GCHQ files.” In its various discussions with the Government during August, The Guardian did not reveal that it had made copies of the files and sent them overseas.
Today’s debate is not an argument to muzzle the press. As Oliver Robbins is at pains to point out in his witness statement, there has been significant sensitivity to the fact that The Guardian is a newspaper. Like the Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, my hon. Friend the Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles), I am deeply uncomfortable that a left-of-centre axis is driving us toward press regulation. Newspapers should be free to report, and they should be punished under existing laws if they commit crimes.
The Guardian was right, having received the NSA files, to report on them in some way. If journalism—receiving and reporting on leaks—were all that The Guardian had done, Parliament and MI5 would not now be involved. Indeed, when the full tale of the damage done to British security is revealed, our Government might be criticised not for how much it interfered with a newspaper but for how much it trusted one.
Paul Farrelly (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab):
Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, circuitously, he is attacking not The Guardian’s journalism but the paper itself? By
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mentioning press regulation in the same breath, he is potentially in danger of being misinterpreted as joining the war of the
Daily Mail
and others against
The Guardian
, all because of its pursuit of phone hacking.
Julian Smith: I hope that by the end of my speech I will not be misinterpreted at all.
This debate is also not an argument against whistleblowing. Mr Snowden revealed NSA spying that may have been outwith the reach of Congress. It might be argued that that was whistleblowing, but as we know, he did not selectively take files on the matter; rather, he stole tens of thousands of files on legitimate and necessary spying, including by allies such as Britain.
Mr David Winnick (Walsall North) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Julian Smith: I will not for the moment.
The Guardian has done no whistleblowing on GCHQ, and it has exposed no illegality. Story after story in the paper has been forced to concede that The Guardian has found no evidence whatever that our intelligence forces have broken the law.
Nor is this debate an attack on the politics of The Guardian. I enjoy the paper. I am a regular reader of certain sections, and I would be making exactly the same argument today if the paper in question was The Daily Telegraph or The Times.
Mr Winnick: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Julian Smith: Finally, this debate is not an attack on the campaign to reconsider the extent of intelligence gathering and the concerns raised by the NSA, WikiLeaks and other intelligence revelations. The role of Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee has only recently been strengthened.
Dr Julian Lewis (New Forest East) (Con): As a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee, I leave the Chamber in no doubt whatever that if I had done what The Guardian has done in relation to the classified material that we see, I have no hesitation in saying that I would expect to be charged. My hon. Friend mentioned the D notice system. Does he know whether The Guardian used or was approached under the terms of the D notices?
Julian Smith: I will address that point shortly.
I believe we have some of the best oversight in the world of our intelligence services—judicial, ministerial and parliamentary—but we are right to keep testing, keep questioning and keep challenging.
My intention today is to highlight where The Guardian has crossed the line between responsible journalism and seriously risking our national security and the lives of those who seek to protect us. If action is not taken, there will be direct results for our national security, now and in the future.
I pay tribute to our ex-colleague, Louise Mensch, who through her blog, social media and columns has ensured that this major national security issue has been kept alive throughout.
Paul Flynn (Newport West) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
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Julian Smith: I will not, sorry. No one has applied to make an intervention, which is usual in this sort of debate.
Martin Caton (in the Chair): Order. If someone wished to make a speech in a half-hour debate, they would have to seek your permission and that of the Minister, but whether you allow an intervention is completely up to you.
Julian Smith: I am not taking any more interventions.
We are in unique times since 9/11, and the intelligence game has changed. Thousands of people—
Mr Winnick: On a point of order, Mr Caton. An orchestrated campaign is being launched against The Guardian, to undermine that newspaper and to give the totally false impression that it is giving ammunition to terrorists. I also ask that the hon. Gentleman gives way in the usual manner—
Martin Caton (in the Chair): Order. As the hon. Gentleman knows, that was not a point of order—but a point was made.
Julian Smith: Thousands of people working for British intelligence, GCHQ and other Government bodies have worked tirelessly over the years to repress attacks, in particular after 7/7 in London. With technology changing apace, they have kept track of and repelled many potential terrorist attacks. Think of where we were after 9/11 and where we are now: still vulnerable, but with much stronger awareness of the threats and much damage done to those who seek to hurt us. I want to pay tribute to all in our intelligence community, who work so hard and who have done so under pressure and bearing a great burden of responsibility. The fact that those women and men are unable to speak out is one of the reasons that I have initiated this debate.
It seems highly likely that The Guardian has risked our nation’s security several times over: first, in the detail that it has gone into in many of its reports, revealing the minutiae of programmes, showing PowerPoint images and laying out to those who seek to harm us in great detail the techniques that we use to counter them. Reports in The Guardian earlier this summer went way beyond responsible journalism, giving away key details of UK intelligence strategy and operations. Take a look at the detail in those reports in June—parading as public interest, it was in fact commercial interest.
Moreover, The Guardian often seemed to publish not only for commercial gain, but out of fear. Jacob Appelbaum, angered that The Guardian’s story on the Tor network was being held up, threatened to publish compromising e-mails between him and Guardian reporter James Ball. Days later, The Guardian published details of the GCHQ attempt to decrypt parts of the Tor network, which is used to trade child abuse images, hardcore drugs and arms—
“an intelligence technique which should have remained secret”,
according to David Omand, ex-head of GCHQ.
In an online question-and-answer section, The Guardian claimed that it checked with US authorities before each of its reports was published. That did not happen in the UK before the Government’s intervention.
Secondly, and more chillingly, The Guardian has taken detailed security files and information and sent them all over the world. US editor Janine Gibson
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boasted that by far “the hardest challenge” has been the “Secure…movement of materials” and that
“we’ve had to do a great deal of flying people around the world”.
Where now is the earlier pretence to other British papers that David Miranda was merely a journalist’s husband?
In spite of the actions taken by Her Majesty’s Government in August to destroy the files held in The Guardian’s London office, those files are out there, highly vulnerable to terrorist infiltration. Not only that, those detailed files on GCHQ operations are now being handed to an infinite number of extra eyes via American journalists and even bloggers. Each person multiplies the risk to this country. It is unclear whether the information contained names, but it seems a strong possibility. From the reports on GCHQ, we know that The Guardian had detailed information about staff there, including the clubs and organisations that they were part of, and even reported on the sexuality of GCHQ gay and lesbian staff and on internal network chats.
Over the summer, The Independent also saw the Snowden files and wrote a highly damaging report on a middle eastern UK base. Similar to The Guardian, The Independent did not adequately balance journalism and the national interest. Unlike their Guardian colleagues, however, the Independent journalists soon stopped, stating:
“In August, we too were given information from the Snowden files. It pertained to the operation of the security services, was highly detailed, and had the capacity to compromise Britain’s security.”
Glenn Greenwald explained on Twitter on 10 September: “As for” The New York Times,
“I had no role at all in that—those were 1 set of docs only about UK that G”—
“had. They made that choice without me.”
I must underline that point. The Guardian focused on sending abroad revelations not about the American National Security Agency, or whistleblowing; it chose to distribute information on our own intelligence agents at GCHQ, on programmes and people that it had admitted over and over again were legal—programmes that protect Guardian employees and their families.
To the Daily Mail last week, The Guardian denied only that it had revealed the names of spies, not of any GCHQ personnel. To communicate—not only to publish—any identifying information about GCHQ personnel is a terrorist offence under the Terrorism Act 2000. Mr Rusbridger has boasted that he is above the law, and said of co-operation with the Government:
“But once there was an explicit threat to go to law something changed”,
adding that he would not allow reporting to be limited “by judges”.
Finally, as if all that was not enough, The Guardian continues to threaten national security months after the Government intervened. It boasted online about how it has taken protections to avoid penetration by intelligence services and, as far as I know, has been far from helpful in assisting the intelligence services in their quest to work out what the damage potential is. That is not press freedom; that is The Guardian’s devastating impact on national security. The Guardian wrote its initial stories
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without any consultation with Government;
The Guardian
trafficked files on GCHQ around the world; and
The Guardian
has dragged its feet as the Government, police and intelligence services seek to limit the damage.
The 2000 Act is clear about the illegality of communicating information about our intelligence staff and, specifically, GCHQ. The Official Secrets Act is equally clear about the illegality of communicating classified information that the recipient knows, or has reasonable cause to believe, to be to the detriment of national security. Last week, I wrote to the Metropolitan Police Commissioner to ask him to investigate whether The Guardian has breached those two Acts. I urge the Minister to do everything possible to ensure that the police expedite their investigation. In particular, I ask him to ensure that The Guardian has been asked for a decrypted copy of all files to which it has access, so that we may protect our agents and operations.
For the sake of Britain’s national security and for those who protect it, we must pursue the issue that we have discussed today. If we do not, we risk grave consequences, major risks for those who seek to protect us and the setting of a terrible precedent—that hiding behind the cloak of journalism gives carte blanche to risk the state’s most important secrets, free of consequence and outside the law. In an age of the internet, blogging and self-publishing, that is a serious precedent to set.
4.48 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (James Brokenshire): I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith) on securing the debate. I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to the discussion and to respond to a number of the points made, albeit I shall struggle to take interventions, given the time available. I also want to respond to allegations that the Government’s response to Edward Snowden’s leaking of stolen classified material represents an attempt to stifle the press, that GCHQ misled Ministers to strengthen the case for the draft Communications Data Bill, and that oversight of the intelligence agencies needs to improve. Those allegations are, respectively, misleading, wrong and unfounded.
I will start by highlighting the huge damage to national security caused by reporting attributed to the highly classified material stolen by Edward Snowden. My hon. Friend will understand why I will not comment on specific allegations in the press, or provide a full assessment of the damage; that would exacerbate the harm already inflicted. There is no doubt that Snowden’s actions and the publication of material stolen by him have damaged UK national security. As the Prime Minister noted last week, in many ways, The Guardian admitted that when it agreed to destroy files when asked to by the Cabinet Secretary, Jeremy Heywood.
The Prime Minister endorsed the excellent speech given by the new head of MI5, Andrew Parker, on 8 October, in which he explained the risk associated with revealing intelligence capabilities. It is worth repeating what he said:
“What we know about the terrorists, and the detail of the capabilities we use against them together represent our margin of advantage. That margin gives us the prospect of being able to detect their plots and stop them. But that margin is under attack.”
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Publishing details of intelligence capabilities not only damages the Government’s ability to protect national security, but
“hands the advantage to the terrorists. It is the gift they need to evade us and strike at will...that is why we must keep secrets secret, and why not doing so causes such harm.”
Media reporting is compromising essential work done by the intelligence services and the police.
Mr Winnick: On a point of order, Mr Caton. I seek your guidance. I know that in half-hour debates there is often not a lot of interest other than from the hon. Member whose debate it is and the Minister. However, on such a controversial issue, whatever the rights and wrongs of the speech we have just heard from the hon. Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), would it not be appropriate for the Minister to give way from time to time?
Martin Caton(in the Chair): Order. That is not a subject for me to rule on. As a very experienced Member, Mr Winnick, you know that it is entirely in the gift of the person speaking to give way. The Minister has said that he has limited time and wants to make progress.
James Brokenshire: In his witness statement to the High Court during the judicial review of the police’s decision—
Paul Flynn: On a point of order, Mr Caton. You are the guardian of the reputation of this debate, and so far it has demeaned Parliament’s reputation, because we have had two speeches that were written and read with no attempt to engage us in debate. This is McCarthyite scaremongering that disgraces Parliament.
Martin Caton(in the Chair): Order. My response is exactly the same as the one I gave to Mr Winnick.
James Brokenshire: In his witness statement to the High Court during the judicial review of the police’s decision to stop David Miranda at Heathrow airport in August, deputy National Security Adviser Oliver Robbins also spoke of the damage caused by the disclosures. He noted that the material seized from Mr Miranda is highly likely to describe techniques that have been crucial in life-saving counter-terrorist operations and other intelligence activities vital to UK national security. If those techniques were compromised, it would do serious damage to national security and ultimately risk lives. Those releasing this material would do well to understand that the types of capability they are writing about are those we have relied on in recent years to stop terrorist plots, disrupt organised crime and put cyber-criminals, including those exploiting children or illegally proliferating arms, behind bars. Once an adversary knows if and how we can read their communications, they will change their behaviour. When it was revealed that the US could read Osama Bin Laden’s communications in the late 1990s, we did not hear from him again until September 2001.
I cannot go into more detail of the damage done and the future damage, but we expect to lose coverage of some very dangerous individuals and groups. The threat remains very real, and only through the tireless efforts of the police and intelligence agencies do we keep at bay those who wish us harm. If we are to protect the British public, we need to be a step ahead of the terrorists
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and the criminals. Secret intelligence gives us that edge and, regardless of whether Snowden is thought to be a whistleblower or a traitor, revealing our capabilities destroys it.
Mr Davis: If there has been a serious assault on Britain’s security and integrity, that would be a criminal offence, so why has no one been charged?
James Brokenshire: I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s intervention. It is right to say that it is obviously not for Ministers to direct the police to arrest or investigate anyone. He will understand that that would be inappropriate. It is for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to determine whether a crime has been committed and what action to take. Given the ongoing police investigation after Mr Miranda was stopped at Heathrow, it would be inappropriate to comment further. Ultimately, it is for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to assess the evidence.
I want to comment briefly on the Government’s approach to The Guardian, which claimed to hold highly classified Government material and made clear its intention of reporting it. Of course, we were concerned about such material being held insecurely without any of the controls that would usually protect it. We were also concerned about the consequences of more of this material becoming public, and the grave risks that that would pose to operations, individuals and capabilities. That is why we asked the newspaper to return or destroy its files.
I appreciate and respect the fact that journalists may spend significant time weighing up whether an issue is damaging to national security, and genuinely believe that they are doing the right thing. However, I respectfully suggest that they are simply not in a position to make national security assessments. The Government strongly support a free press. We have never denied the possibility of a debate on privacy and security or the work of the intelligence agencies, but we cannot condone the way in which others sought to bring this debate about and the damage it caused. Any leak of security material is serious. It can put the lives of our agents at risk and give valuable information to terrorists and others who wish us harm. As we have heard, there have been calls to prosecute, but that is not a matter for me; it is a matter for the police and the Crown Prosecution Service to assess.
Paul Farrelly: Will the Minister give way?
James Brokenshire: I need to move on, as I have only three minutes left. I want to respond to suggestions that there is no need to improve the police and intelligence agencies’ ability to acquire communications data. That is wrong. There is a pressing need to ensure that the capabilities of our law enforcement and intelligence agencies keep pace with ever-changing technology if they are to maintain their ability to tackle terrorism and serious crime.
We remain absolutely committed to ensuring that law enforcement and intelligence agencies have the powers they need to protect the public and to ensure national security. Nothing that has been alleged about GCHQ’s capabilities changes that. Communications technologies continue to change, and we need to move with the times.
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Two parliamentary Committees have considered the matter and said there is a need for legislation. It was recently alleged that the Government wilfully withheld information from those Committees. I reject that. I hope that hon. Members saw the letter from my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Kensington (Sir Malcolm Rifkind) in The Guardian last week, in which he explained that the Intelligence and Security Committee took full, detailed evidence from the intelligence agencies during its inquiry on the draft Communications Data Bill, as well as its recent inquiry on GCHQ’s activities. The Committee’s report on the draft Bill concluded that a need remains for legislation in this area.
I hope that hon. Members agree that there are essential advantages to be gained from intelligence-gathering and staying one step ahead. Some have suggested that the UK’s intelligence agencies are somehow listening in to all our phone calls and storing details of all our private conversations. That is simply not true. They have neither the interest nor the capability.
As the European Court of Human Rights has confirmed, the legal framework governing intelligence agencies’ work is fully compatible with the European convention on human rights. My right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary rightly stated earlier this year that the UK’s system of political, parliamentary, independent and judicial oversight of the intelligence agencies represents one of the most robust and comprehensive systems of oversight anywhere in the world. The system works well, and we should be proud of it.
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Hon. Members will recall the Justice and Security Act 2013, which we were debating only nine months ago. The Act extended the remit of the ISC, strengthened its ability to provide robust oversight of the agencies, including of operational matters, made even clearer the ISC’s independence from Government, and almost doubled its resources.
Paul Farrelly: On a point of order, Mr Caton. I seek guidance from you, as the Chair of such an important debate, on how parliamentarians may put on the record words spoken by none other than President Obama today about the disclosures. A White House statement said that some of them
“raise legitimate questions for our friends and allies about how these capabilities are employed”.
Martin Caton (in the Chair): Order. The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do the various ways of putting things on the record in this House.
Mr Winnick: Further to that point of order, Mr Caton. How can we make the point that much of what appeared in The Guardian, which has been the subject of this debate, has led, certainly in the United States, to a wide-ranging inquiry into intelligence-gathering? What The Guardian published was certainly in the national interest.
Martin Caton(in the Chair): That is not a point of order, and time is up.
5 pm
Sitting adjourned without Question put (Standing Order No. 10(13)).