Like Byers before her, Morris is charged with running a
Government department with incompetence and bad judgement, creating chaos around
her, and having possibly lied to Parliament.Faced with problem after problem, some of which have been of Morris's own
making, repeated calls have been made for her resignation.
Morris has said she has no intention of resigning, but pressure is being applied
that she keeps to her word; a promise to resign should education targets not be
met. Failing to do so would mean that she was lying at the time she made her
pledge, so it is suggested; if she knew she had no intention of doing what
she said she would.
Saying now that she wants, "To be judged on a range of achievements", it is a
remarkable echo of the words used by Byers shortly before he tendered his own
resignation. In Byers' case, to justify the good he and his department had
done, he extolled the virtues of railway improvements; the day before the
Potters Bar rail crash consumed seven lives. Who knows
what may now befall Morris ?
Morris's alleged offer to resign was made in March, 1999, when she was part of
the team working as Schools Standards Minister under, the then Secretary of
State for Education, David Blunkett. The words she used, like all uttered
within the House of Commons, are recorded and are a public record of what was
said to Parliament. These are the most authoritative records one is going to
find about Members' statements.
Mr Willetts : Will the Minister commit herself to the Secretary of State's
pledge to resign if the Government do not reach their literacy and numeracy
targets by 2002 ?
Ms Morris : Of course I will; I have already done so. Indeed, I generously
commit the Under-Secretary, my Honourable Friend the Member for Norwich,
South ( Mr Clarke ), too. We speak with one voice ... [unlike] under teams
of Conservative Ministers, when a Secretary of State would promise to resign
but the rest of the team would not go too.
I will tell the Honourable Gentleman another thing: there will be a team
celebration when we achieve those targets -- because achieve those targets we
certainly will.
Hansard, 2nd of March, 1999 ( Column 948 )
It has proved hard to find any publicly reported statement by the Secretary of
State at the time which indicates he made any specific offer
to resign in the future over the issue, with the only attributable statement
being that, were improvements not made, his, "head would be on the block".
It is obvious though that Morris believed the Secretary of State had meant it
to mean he would resign under such adverse circumstances, and even if she
didn't, in her own words she committed herself to such a pledge, whether it
existed before or not.
Those words have come back to haunt her, but Morris is now claiming that
she offered no such promise to bail out under the circumstance which have
arisen.
When asked again in October, 2001, during a Commons Education Select Committee
meeting, if she would resign if targets were not met, she replied, "No, and I
never said I would".
Whether she said she would resign or not, is a matter of public record, and the
words she used can be clearly seen. Saying that she never offered to resign does
not mean that she didn't. At best, it proves what many people think; you can
never trust a politician to say what they mean.
Rather than team celebrations, her cohorts must be wondering what will become
of the department, and its head. They, like everyone else who can read her
words, must be waiting with anticipation to see how she wriggles herself out
of the hole she dug for herself, over three years earlier.
Morris has presided over her department's most embarrassing period in recent
years; a failure in the Advanced Level examination system.
In the eyes of many, the examination system collapsed totally under her command.
Examinations already taken had to be re-marked and some students lost places
they were entitled to at university and colleges because of wrongly marked
papers and delays.
Some students are threatening to sue the government over the matter, most
of the public have viewed the events as a complete fiasco, and many believe it
has doomed the current examination system to extinction. Not the most wonderful
accolade to fall upon a Secretary for Education.
Even while the debate and verbal battling over A-Level examinations was
under way, Morris managed to put her foot firmly in it, by interfering in a
sensitive problem at a school which was trying to come to a decision on how to
deal with pupils who had been suspended for issuing death threats to a member
of staff.
Morris's comments, in a matter which was not under her remit to handle,
infuriated the local council responsible for the school, pupils and staff, who
wrote an indignant letter to her, and made it public that her statements on the
matter were not conducive to resolving the matter, which had nothing to do
with her or her department.
A-Level results and unwanted interference are not the only problems Morris and
her department have become embroiled in; there is still the issue of Individual
Learning Accounts ( ILA's ) which is outstanding.
Initiated by the Education Department, the scheme had to be abandoned due to
widespread fraud, and it has turned into a scandal which has cost the country
a fortune, and gained very few rewards. No one is entirely sure yet as to how
much money was lost, but the figure is estimated in terms of millions of GBP.
The Education Select Committee has accused the Education Department of, "Serious
failings". Morris as its head must take responsibility for her department, which
is accused of failing to act swiftly to warnings of fraud, and there are still
questions which need to be answered about the way in which the scheme was
closed down.
The final report into ILA's from the National Audit Office is due to be
presented soon and, if Morris is still in her post, she is almost certainly
guaranteed to see increasing hostility from the opposition, and further calls
to resign.
This is all on top of the simmering disquiet between herself, her department
and those who they have control over; the teaching profession.
Many teachers have lost confidence in Morris and her department, and see the
creation of Classroom Assistants and Advanced Assistants, plus re-grading to
Super-Teachers, Super-Human Teachers, and Double-Plus-Good Teachers as
nothing more than tinkering which does nothing to solve fundamental problems
within the education system.
As education falls into crisis, reforms made by Morris are seen to be doing
little to actually relieve teachers from an increasing workload or longer
working hours, nor improving their pay and working conditions generally, let
alone education standards.
This is, of course, the final nail in the coffin for Morris; the targets
set for students to reach by her department have not been met. Three years
after confidently predicting the targets would be met, they have not been. An
indictment, if ever there was one, that the Government and her department has
roundly failed in its task.
The Prime Minister's spokesman has rushed to the defence of Morris, praising her
"excellent" record. A judgement on her recent career which is completely at
odds with the way the public seem to see it. And one which makes it difficult
to say that the Government has any grip on reality at all.
Nothing has been heard from Charles Clarke, now Labour Chairman, who
Morris also committed to resigning in her 1999 speech. There has no doubt been
private phone calls made on the matter, and I am sure that the conversations
used some un-parliamentary language.
Clarke is likely to be just one of the members of the Labour Party who is
hoping that the matter will die down quickly. It is not many months since he
had to come to the aid of Tony Blair in the midst of the debate over the
Prime Ministers insistence on being given a significant role during the burial
of the Queen Mother. As Chairman, Clarke must despair at the mess the party
manages to get itself into.
After the Byers saga resolved itself with his resignation, Clarke was forced
to admit that the affair had, "raised questions about the credibility of
politics and politicians generally". Adding that, "politics in general,
possibly the government in particular, has been damaged", he noted that ,
"if there was an impression that misleading was going on then that's damaging".
Morris's current stance can hardly be said to be doing anything to minimise
possible damage on her own government.
Morris said that she and her team would be celebrating the meeting of education
targets in 2002. Government figures show that those targets have not been met,
and Morris is being asked to stand by her words, when she promised to resign if
they weren't.
Her credibility has been badly damaged over the years, and has been left in
shreds after the problems during the recent months. The only thing she now has
left is her dignity, and there is a widespread feeling that she should take
the only honourable course left; f--k off, and let someone competent have a
go at running the department.
Faster than a Speeding Bullet ...
It's said that, "A week's a long time in politics", but Estelle Morris
appears to have delivered the swiftest response to recent criticism ever seen.
On the day that her pledge to resign was brought to the public's attention, she
spoke with the Prime Minister, and resigned the day after.
Some would say that her resignation was far from swift, and long overdue, but
it must be accepted that she had the grace not to turn this into a lingering
death cough as Byers did before her.
Morris has not resigned to fulfil the pledge which she is said to have made,
that she would go if education targets were not met, but because she didn't
think she was running the Education Department as well as it should be.
Indicating that she found it tough to run such a huge department, she opened her
heart to tell us that, "If I'm honest I haven't enjoyed it as much as Minister
for Schools Standards". Adding that, "One of the reasons I have not enjoyed it
is it that it needs a different set of skills. It is a lot about strategic
management, you have to balance not only schools - which I love - but other
parts of the portfolio as well", she openly admits that she was not the ideal
person to do the job; "I just don't think I am as good at it as I was at my
other job".
Full respects to her there, and it is unprecedented for a Minister to admit that
they are useless at doing the job with which they've been tasked, but it does
raise questions about the Prime Minister's assessment of her abilities when he
put her into the post in the first place.
Morris told us that she found the media attention difficult to handle, but
accepted that it was all part and parcel of the job. Having realised that media
scrutiny was going to increase, due to recent publicity around her resignation
pledge, she realised that the old adage, "If you can't stand the heat, get out
of the kitchen", had some basis in truth, and decided to act in an appropriate
manner.
Shadow Education Secretary Damian Green commented that, "Her resignation is
welcome but overdue". He added that, "She has lost the confidence of parents
and pupils in her ability to run our schools".
Many would agree, but not all. Despite continuing difficulties between her
department and the teaching profession, a number of teacher's unions jumped
to her defence, and lamented her departure.
General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, Doug McAvoy, said, "She was
a minister who cared about education and understood the problems teachers
faced", but added that, "She hasn't always done everything that we would wish",
although accepting, "no government minister ever will".
His verdict was that, "It's a great pity that she has decided to go".
General Secretary of the National Association of Head Teachers, David Hart,
saw it as, "A tragedy for her and a tragedy for the education service. She
made mistakes but it would be difficult to find somebody as committed as
her to the education service".
There is no doubt that Morris, who comes from a teaching background, does have
some degree of understanding with the problems faced by the profession, and
she may well be committed to her beliefs, but that is inconsequential if the
empire around her crumbles and her department's policies are ineffective, or
unwanted.
Her resignation obituaries read as, "She was a great person, but rubbish at her
job".
The Liberal Democrat Leader, Charles Kennedy, summed up how most people felt
when he said, he was "personally sorry" for Morris, but she had lost the trust
of parents, pupils and members of the teaching profession.
Charles Clarke steps into the shoes of Morris, leaving the position of Labour
Party Chairman open for Dr John Reid.
How Clarke will fare in the post of Education Secretary remains to be seen, but
it has already been noted that Morris committed him to resigning should
education targets not be met. The media scrutiny, which Morris disliked so much,
will be upon Clarke in his first few days of office, but we will all have to
wait to see how his appointment changes policies in the future, and how his
relationship with teachers, pupils and parents shapes up.
There will be universal hope that the Education Department improves under his
leadership. Many believe it can't get any worse.
