Transcript of Stephen Twigg Interview

PLEASE NOTE "THE ANDREW MARR SHOW" MUST BE CREDITED IF ANY PART OF THIS TRANSCRIPT IS USED

THE ANDREW MARR SHOW

INTERVIEW:

STEPHEN TWIGG, MP

SHADOW EDUCATION SECRETARY

FEBRUARY 5th 2012

ANDREW MARR:

Now then, we've already talked about that big blast against school heads in today's papers, but the coalition is forging ahead with all sorts of educational reforms - hundreds of schools becoming academies and of course the first wave of new free schools. Other changes as well. The Education Secretary Michael Gove announced during the week that he wants vocational courses to be made more rigorous, more emphasis on traditional academic subjects - literacy, numeracy and all that. So what's Labour's attitude to all of this? Mr Gove's shadow, Stephen Twigg, is with me now. Of course Labour started a few academy schools and now that has been pushed much further forward. I think there's been a little bit of confusion about Labour's attitude to free schools because it may very well be that if you won the next General Election, quite a lot of these schools would be up and running and, no doubt, some of them pretty successfully.

STEPHEN TWIGG:

Well good morning, Andrew.

ANDREW MARR:

Good morning.

STEPHEN TWIGG:

The purpose behind our policy is to have good schools in all neighbourhoods, and the reason the Labour Government started academies was to make sure that some of our most deprived neighbourhoods would have such schools. We didn't support the free schools policy; we didn't think it was necessary. Some of the free schools that are being established could have been established under our academy programme, and my worry is that Michael Gove's approach is to focus on certain pet projects at the expense of the majority of schools.

ANDREW MARR:

But if there are free schools up and running, are you saying that Labour would come in and close them down again?

STEPHEN TWIGG:

Of course not, of course not. And I've been to visit one of the free schools, I've spoken to some of the others that are setting free schools up. Free schools is the only way in which new schools can really be established now under this government, so some very good people are setting free schools up. We'll have a set of tests. We will want to see whether the schools are successful, are they serving the local community, are they meeting local need. No Labour education secretary is going to be in the business of closing good schools.

ANDREW MARR:

And if there were free schools that wanted to start under a future Labour Government that were serving the local community and you felt met those criteria, would you let them go ahead?

STEPHEN TWIGG:

What we're doing is we're having a review of our policy and we will have a detailed approach to these issues come the next election. We will have a very different schools landscape in 2015: there'll probably be several thousand academies, several hundred free schools. What we will want to ensure is fair funding, fair admissions, and also schools collaborating with each other. I worry about schools becoming very isolated from each other. Schools work best if they actually support one another, challenge one another.

ANDREW MARR:

But you know the old full-on hostility to free schools has gone?

STEPHEN TWIGG:

Well I don't think there was an old full-on hostility. What we said was the government's spending a lot less on building new schools and yet where there is money it's just for these free schools, and it's not necessarily they're meeting the local need.

ANDREW MARR:

There are clearly still lots of problems about the quality of education in schools all over Britain, but particularly in England and Wales which is what we're talking about just now. A lot of surprise that you know vocational qualifications in hair care and looking after horses and that kind of thing were being treated as the equivalent of a couple of GCSEs.

STEPHEN TWIGG:

Well what we've seen this week is an announcement from the government - some of which makes complete sense. Some of the equivalences were not right and I support the government in making those changes. However, I am very worried that they're throwing the baby out with the bath water. For example, the engineering diploma, which is a hugely respected qualification that's equivalent to five GCSEs, will now be only equivalent to one. I think that sends a very damaging message out when we actually need more engineers educated in our country, not fewer.

ANDREW MARR:

Do you think, looking back, that Labour's emphasis on evermore people going for sort of white collar degrees in universities around the country (up to 50 per cent you wanted) and all these diplomas rather than old-fashioned vocational training, so that we could have an industrially effective economy again, do you think that was a mistake?

STEPHEN TWIGG:

I think the mistake was that we didn't put enough emphasis on the 50 per cent who weren't going to go to higher education. I think we were right to expand higher education, but I think we didn't think enough about what the quality routes would be for the other 50 per cent. That's actually why we developed the diplomas - I gave the example of the engineering diploma - and my concern is that in the name of academic rigor, the government's actually going to close down pathways that were rigorous for young people who want to go into things like engineering.

ANDREW MARR:

But you accept that the world has changed, the money is not going to be available for building lots of schools, and indeed in the past some of that money was not well spent?

STEPHEN TWIGG:

I do accept that and we had a very ambitious programme, Building Schools for the Future, that built a lot of secondary schools, refurbished others and did fantastic work, but it didn't always deliver value for money. There will be a lot less money if we're elected in 2015, so we'll have to spend a lot more carefully. Now at the moment there is a serious shortage of primary school places in many parts of the country and I'm concerned that the government's focus on building lots of new free schools in some areas won't meet the local need for extra primary places.

ANDREW MARR:

Can I ask more generally. Clearly, as I said, economically the world has changed. We may be looking at a long period of austerity. Do you think that Labour has yet got a sort of single, clear message about what it's for in this new political climate?

STEPHEN TWIGG:

Yes, I think what Ed Miliband has been doing is to set out a very clear message, which is about addressing the needs of the vast bulk of the population - seeking responsibility, as he said, both at the top and at the bottom of society. When Ed made his speech at the party conference last year a lot of people criticised him for his critique of capitalism. Now actually it's become something that is aped by David Cameron and Nick Clegg. I think we can be ready to rise to the challenge, if you like, of how we create a fairer society without significant amounts of extra money.

ANDREW MARR:

Yes. David Miliband said in an article last week that there was a great danger of what he called "Reassurance Labour", by which he seemed to mean going back to the idea that Labour was in favour of the big state, delivering welfare and so on in the old way. Would you agree with that?

STEPHEN TWIGG:

I do agree with that and I think that David's input to this debate is a very important one. Ed I think has been striking out a very different approach. I don't think Ed's approach is in any sense Reassurance Labour. He's been prepared to challenge vested interests both in the private sector and the public sector. We're not going to be able to do things in the same way. We need to encourage, for example, cooperatives, civic action, a local renaissance. We can't direct everything from the centre. That was one of our weaknesses in government.

ANDREW MARR:

And so when it comes to the sort of overall message, the notion that in the old days Labour was able to enjoy the fruit of a long boom, take all that money from the City and taxes and so on and spend it on welfare and public services, that world you'd accept is gone?

STEPHEN TWIGG:

It's going to be a different world. We're going to have to deliver value for money. But the key thing is that we will have priorities based on our values, which is about fairness and creating a more equal society.

ANDREW MARR:

And although he's had a very tough time recently, you think Ed Miliband is staying the course?

STEPHEN TWIGG:

Ed Miliband is certainly staying the course. It's challenging being Leader of the Opposition, but he was ahead of the curve on responsible capitalism; he's now leading the campaign on the NHS where we have a real opportunity to say to the government think again and drop this bill.

ANDREW MARR:

But he has to … you know he has to go into a new gear this year, do you think?

STEPHEN TWIGG:

I think he's in top gear now and I think all of us in his team have to pull behind him and show that we have not just a leader ready to take over as Prime Minister, but a team behind him.

ANDREW MARR:

Top gear. The Stig. Alright, thank you very much indeed Stephen Twigg.

INTERVIEW ENDS

E-mail this to a friend

Printable version