Kemi Badenoch had her best Prime Minister’s Questions yet today. She alighted on a topic that Keir Starmer really struggled to answer questions on and which should blow up as a row further in the coming weeks. The Tory leader devoted her six questions to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, and specifically the reforms that legislation contains on academy freedoms, standards and teacher pay. She called it an ‘act of vandalism that is wrecking a cross party consensus’ by reversing the improvements that led to English school children topping the league tables.
What was interesting was that while the Prime Minister repeatedly insisted throughout the session that his party had set up academies and that they were here to stay, he did not specifically defend the measures Badenoch was attacking. Instead, he diverted attention to other reforms in the Bill, saying it had ‘important provisions for protecting children’, and complained that Badenoch had instructed her party to vote against them.
Sitting on the Conservative frontbench, shadow education secretary Chris Philp shouted ‘you didn’t bother voting’, which Badenoch then repeated in her next question. She compared the Conservative education reforms in England to the situation in Wales, which must have been refreshing for the Welsh given they are normally waved aloft at Prime Minister’s Questions due to the state of their NHS rather than education system. The bill ‘denies children the guarantee that their failing schools will be turned into a better academy’, said Badenoch, adding that it was an ‘attack on higher standards, an attack on aspiration’. It is ‘the worst of socialism’, she said, asking Starmer to agree that it would be ‘deprived children in England who will pay the price’.
Starmer reverted to saying Labour was ‘committed to academies’, and then listing the breakfast clubs, limits on school uniform costs and child protection measures in the legislation. It is an advantage of wide-ranging legislation like this: alongside a lot of policy dross, there is always something unquestionably good that any critics can be accused of opposing. Badenoch was quick to point out this sleight of hand, saying he was trying to distract people from what was really in the bill, and that her questions were ‘not about breakfast clubs’. Parents and teachers, she said, would be horrified at just how bad this bill was. It would cut teachers’ pay, she said. She then did something weirdly unusual for PMQs, which was to refer to a specific clause within the legislation. ‘Clause 45 means teachers’ pay will be capped’, Badenoch said. ‘Did the Prime Minister know that the Bill as it stands will cut teachers’ pay?’
Starmer used one of his weekly attack lines at this point, which was to accuse Badenoch of spending all her time on Twitter. ‘If she had hopped off social media for a whole then she would see the amendment that we put down this morning,’ he said, claiming that this would give schools flexibility. He then switched back to talking about the importance of the other measures in the Bill, something he kept doing in the remaining answers even though the mere presence of good policy in a package of legislation does not automatically make the entire bill well-drafted.
Badenoch had a better line in her final question, which was that it ‘is the same old Labour: bad outcomes for all children, excellence for none’, while Starmer was still burbling about being committed to standards in his. While he deliberately avoided being straightforward in his answers, it was pretty clear that the Prime Minister did not feel fully comfortable defending the legislation – or perhaps that he didn’t know quite what was in it.
There were other instances where Starmer was deliberately unclear. He did not, for instance, give a direct answer to Green MP Adrian Ramsay about his position on a third runway at Heathrow, having previously voted against it.
On other issues, Starmer came under fire for refusing to give a full answer to a question for three years. In what is also now a weekly ritual, Ed Davey used his first question to complain about the length of time the government is taking to even come up with proposals on long term reform of social care. The Liberal Democrat leader pointed out that Baroness Casey is now running a rapid audit of grooming gangs before she even starts her social care work, and said he would keep returning to this issue. Badenoch should do the same as the Schools Bill progresses through the Commons.
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