My Lords, we have a new Parliament, and the most exciting part of election night 2019 for me was Blyth Valley becoming famous. I have fond memories of Blyth Valley and the neighbouring constituency, Wansbeck, where my grandma and grandad lived in Ashington—and where Labour held on, by the way. There is so much in the gracious Speech that should allow those who may have loaned the Government their votes some cause for optimism.
This time, when I sat listening to the Speech, I genuinely felt as though I heard an echo from the doorsteps, from those we met when we travelled with the seaside towns Select Committee, or those I spend time with when I take my family up north. From business rates to railways, to secure funding for education, I am optimistic that this Government “gets it”.
I want to focus a bit more on the north-east. As this will include education, I refer to my registered interest as a non-exec member of the Ofsted board. First, I return just for a moment to my grandparents. They are no longer with us, but they were loyal Labour voters all their lives. I confess to having felt a tinge of sadness when I texted my mum on election night. This was obviously not at the numerous Conservative victories in the north-east, which I found exciting—we were allowed dissent in my family and I hope we still are
—but you cannot grow up in a Labour family without developing respect and even a degree of affection for the Labour Party that they supported.
I have no idea whether my grandparents would have voted Labour this time—some of my family felt they could not—but I know that those decent, hardworking, aspirational people of a former mining community would have been heartbroken by Jeremy Corbyn and the behaviour of Momentum and that they would have called out anti-Semitism just as many brave people within Labour did. So, although it may not be my place, I say this to Opposition Members in this House, who have always treated me with great kindness and in many cases have been generous with their time, their advice and their excellent expertise: I hope they get their party back, for the sake of a healthy democracy, and I genuinely wish them well in the coming leadership elections.
There is much in the gracious Speech where the cross-party expertise within your Lordships’ House will be invaluable, not least the Government’s commitment to finding consensus on social care. As the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, rightly said, let us just get on with it. I very much look forward to a more productive Parliament than the previous one.
Turning to education, I am relieved that the Government have committed to increasing education funding and to a whole raft of measures to support communities that are sometimes described as “left-behind”. Can we now start to change our language about them? I am glad that this Government are looking to the future. For example, Blyth and its surrounding areas are already a hub of innovation for clean energy and are creating jobs of the future. The Government’s industrial strategy already rightly recognises this, with investment flowing into the renewable energy catapult in Blyth and a whole host of other north-east led initiatives.
We must ensure that we equip people with the skills to flourish in green jobs or on any other route they choose. The general point I want to make is that if we want to rebalance the UK economy, we have to create a sort of virtuous cycle of training and employment for all kinds of skilled, technical and graduate jobs. While we talk endlessly about raising aspiration and achievement, this is any good only if people know that it is actually going to get them somewhere.
Going back to schools, I am sure that the Government appreciate how urgently we need to close the gap between educational outcomes in parts of the north and south. In the north-east there are many outstanding schools from which others around the country could and should learn, but the big picture cannot be avoided on many indicators, in particular the fact that the performance of primary schools is often better on the whole than that of secondaries. One of the things that I worry about almost more than anything in Britain today is that we have proof in our hands that these kids are super-bright—we can see this in all the stats from key stage 1 and 2 results—but then that potential gets lost, and all too often we hear about everything going wrong at secondary level. However, there are a lot of examples to show that this does not have to be the case. It is a solvable problem, and this has to be one of the Government’s top priorities.
I would like to see the Government going beyond legislation and using their convening power. I would like to see Ministers doing more to encourage businesses and start-ups to think more creatively about how to bring work experience to more areas and how to engage with young people through educational institutions and then share best practice. The change of pace in the workplace is so fast now that we cannot think in terms of old-fashioned careers services. I will return to this in future debates because I am running out of time.
In short, I think we have a brilliant chance to bring our country together and, in the Prime Minister’s words, unleash its potential. It has been a really frustrating and difficult time for everyone, but every single one of us now has the opportunity to change that.
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