Barry Sheerman MP

We have also been focusing on another town centre issue and that’s the attempt to move Harold Wilson’s statute to what I thought was a rather inauspicious place. I am totally in favour of the re-development of St. George’s square, bringing it back to life. It is one of the greatest Victorian town square’s in the country. But we must be sensitive to any change we bring about to the centre of our town. I quite like the idea of predestining, I sort of like the idea to have fountains that jump out of the earth, similar to those we see elsewhere. But we also have to remember that Harold’s statute was chosen to be there by a very famous sculptor, Ian Walters, who also sculpted the new Nelson Mandela statute here in Parliament Square.

He and Lady Wilson chose that spot because you saw Harold striding out from the station. And when large numbers of people come out of the station in the morning or on a big match day it looks as if Harold is walking along with the crowd. To move it to one side, on a kind of island that was circled by the taxi cabs and buses, seemed very inappropriate. The suggestions Mary Wilson has made and the Prime Minister, who also sent me a personal letter on this, has led to a compromise which is a good one. Moving it slightly back but in the same prominent position will work well. 

One of the things we have been very much involved in the constituency has been really trying to evaluate the needs of Huddersfield town centre and the future of retailing. My interest in this goes back a long way. Back in 2000 we developed a plan were we found, along with consultants and many other people, that what Huddersfield must be about is quality. What I have always believed is that we don’t want to be competing with the average and the ordinary. We have to make Huddersfield first class, absolutely extraordinary – to have the wow factor. I believe that when we opened the new centre, the Kings Gate centre, I believe that was a break through in terms of quality. I still think of all the schemes now planned for Huddersfield that the emphasis must be on sheer quality and I would like to see a whole range of high quality people and services. Waitrose possibly coming to Huddersfield, Betty’s Tea Rooms opening an outlet; going for something that makes Huddersfield different. I have always wanted Marks and Spencer’s to punch above their weight with a decent more modern shop than the one we have at the moment. So I have been keeping my eye on that, discussing it with the local authority and with the people involved in a number of bids to develop Huddersfield. This is part of my job, putting them on the spot – trying to make sure they are properly accountable. I am following a new development on the other side of the ring road by Tesco and the expansion of town centre retailing. Whether it is Queensgate on Kingsgate they must be based on proper thought and consultation. And again the quality watch word. 

Surprise, surprise a week later I totally didn’t anticipate having another question at PMQs. Then as I sat down and picked up the order of business I suddenly see I am number 13 and then I relaxed as number 13 is never reached in PMQs, but then of course, as time went by, number 13 began to become a possibility. In the last seconds I got my chance to ask my question. I came back to a campaign, which like all good campaign’s starts locally. I am really worried locally that while we have pretty good facilities and much improved facilities - like the new special school in Huddersfield - not enough is being done for young people with special educational needs. There have been some really good things in special educational needs up until the age of 16. But post 16 there is much less provision, I am really worried some of the facilities provided by the mental health trust and the vocational enterprise centre are due to close. Some young people with strong educational needs have been prevented from continuing with courses at Huddersfield Technical College. And I do not see Kirkless Social Services picking up where there is need. We need positive things for people up until 18 who suffer from mentally illness or other types of disabilities. I just don’t think it is joined up enough and there is enough provision. This would be prove beneficial for the young person themselves and for their families and carers. So I asked the Prime Minister would he re-double his efforts and will he bring those different departments together to make sure we have a joined up set of proposals, and I got a good response from the PM on that too.
It’s been a busy two weeks, in-between all this there are the other high profile things. My new committee, I chair the Children, Schools and Families Committee which replaces Education and Skills. We have had seminars to decide what we are going to look at first, and we have taken our first evidence session and interviewed the OFSTED inspector. So a very interesting and challenging path ahead.      

It is not often you get called up for Prime Minister Questions (PMQs) twice in such a short period of time. PMQs is always done by ballot, you put your name in and if you are lucky you come out top - if not you disappear without trace. Two weeks ago I came number two in the ballot, so it is absolutely certain that I am going to be called. And I asked the Prime Minister, I pushed him very hard, to confront the critiques of what I think is a fantastic idea - raising the age at which young people leave education and training to the age of eighteen. This is different from the school leaving age; this is not about keeping youngsters in school until the age of eighteen. This is making sure if they go into a job that it includes training, an apprenticeship or even if they go into community or voluntary work that it involves some training. So lots of options, and of course if they want we can encourage them to stay on in school or college. Children are children until eighteen in our country and if every child does matter then the real outcomes for children should be positive ones. We should keep young people in some form of education and training as long as possible. All the reports now show there are a shrinking number of unskilled jobs. There are very few jobs for unskilled workers in our country. There are up to 2.3 million now there will be only 600, 000 by 2020 we have to act fast. So we need to get on with it, we need to make sure everyone in our country uses all the skills and potential they have. So I pointed that out to the Prime Minister and asked him to confront the opposition. Some of them, David Cameron in particular, have tried to dismiss these proposals as a stunt and have attempted to argue that it was keeping young people trapped in school until eighteen. In reality it is none of those things. We have to say it loud and clear that this is one of the best things to happen in education and training in my lifetime. 

MP’s often pick up on a local issue or tragedy which then becomes the focus for a national campaign. This is what happened when Stacey Rodgers’ son, Dominic, tragically died from carbon monoxide poisoning 3 years ago. Stacey’s campaigning so impressed me that I promised her that I would back her as long as she continued to campaign. This has become a very vigorous local and national campaign that I am involved in for which Kirklees has won an award. This is largely down to Stacey Rodgers and she should be acknowledged for all the work she has done on this. I would like to see her able to independently campaign full time in the near future.   Carbon Monoxide poisoning is a dreadful problem, a silent killer, which at least 50 people die from every year. This is a very good campaign which is coming to fruition, locally with the Kirklees campaign and nationally, in part through the work of the All Party Gas Safety Group which I co-Chair. Let’s keep at it! Another local campaign which I have been involved with is to help those who I regard as amongst the most vulnerable in our community; people with Special Educational Needs (SEN) and those with mental health problems. Increasingly I’m finding that a lack of joined-up government across different departments – whether that be health, education or social services -  means that once a young person with particular mental health problems or special educational needs gets to age of 18 there is very little provision for them or their families or carers. I see this locally in Huddersfield with the closure of the Vocational Enterprise Centre, the parallel cut-backs from Learning and Skills Council in terms of the courses available to people with SEN, and the inability of Social Services to really address how to maintain a viable range of interests and activities for people in this category, from post 16 to 18 in particular. It does seem that Government departments, locally and nationally, are not talking to each other. I have had meetings with local colleges and the West Yorkshire Mental Trust and I have now offered to chair a meeting of all parties to see if we can do something about it.  Another local campaign which worries me is that we’ve seen a recent report of the Competition Commission on supermarkets. I believe it’s a rather weak report and I’m saddened by this. I don’t think it delivers enough sharpness to confront the fact that we are far too dependent for food and other supplies from large monoliths in the supermarket world, particularly Tesco’s which occupies roughly 30% of the market. I believe a lot of communities are far too dependent on these large supermarkets and this means local retailers are driven out of business and as a result diversity suffers. I don’t want that to happen in Huddersfield and I would like to see full local and public consultation before any real decision is made by the local council.   

An ongoing area of interest I have is the perennial problem with NEETS. (That is those Not in Education, Employment or Training). When people aged between 16 and 25 do not fall into any of these categories, it presents a real challenge as a lot of these people will move into long-term unemployment. The new government proposals offer a number of measures to tackle this problem, they will make mentoring more available to school-leavers as well as extending Educational Maintenance Allowance (EMA’s), which provide up to £30 a week, through to all forms of educational training. 

This reminds me of a Private Members Bill I introduced earlier this year which aimed to give this kind of help to young people upon leaving school. I said that I wanted to give them what wealthier people have- a personal trainer and a life coach! I believe that all young people post-16 should have a mentor who keeps an eye on their educational training and how they are getting themselves ready for their future. What we can see from the Leitch report earlier this year is that the number of unskilled jobs in our economy is rapidly diminishing. This number is estimated to fall as low as 500 000 or 600 000 in the by 2020 and this will have major implications. We need to think about the number of unskilled people coming out of our educational system. This is the big challenge that the Government is trying to address with today’s announcement.  Another issue that I have been involved with over the past few weeks is the campaign on runaway children that Helen Southworth, the MP for Warrington South, has been very involved with. There are a large number of runaway children in most constituencies, many of whom are not documented as there is no central register, and it is therefore very unclear what happens to these children. Helen and I have recently been to see the Prime Minister about this and a two day quasi-Select Committee enquiry into it has been held, the report of which is coming out soon. This is a good campaign and I think we are eventually going to get there. I led a campaign on the subject of young people being drawn into underage prostitution around five years ago and in that case we had to push very hard to get the law changed but we eventually managed it and I believe we can achieve something similar with this campaign.               

I thought Gordon Brown’s speech was very different to the sort of performances we’d got used to with Tony Blair. It was different but I think just as good and I liked the much simpler, down to earth approach.