Matt Warman

By Matt Warman Boston & Skegness MP

“Lincolnshire,” a constituent recently informed me, “is the forgotten county.” I was keen to set him straight, and started reeling off all the things the Boston and Skegness constituency is getting from central government – the £100m flood barrier, the investment in roads, the renewed focus on community integration and economic growth, the extended tourist season in Skegness, to name but a few.

His response was to say simply, “But we’re never first for anything”.

There’s not always great merit in rushing to try new things first, and it isn’t quite true anyway – to take just one example we’re first to adopt a new kind of nursing that is focused on elderly care.

But historically, from a government point of view it was a fair point. And it’s exactly why I’m a passionate advocate for devolution.

The government’s first tranche of devolution deals resulted in huge changes in London and then in Manchester, and above all restored a vital link between accountable local government and people who used public services.

In short, it was a government of the right size for the issues people faced in their everyday lives.

London, however, is a long way from Lincolnshire. What does the right devolution deal look like for an area that would run from Grimsby to Spalding, and Skegness to Gainsborough and beyond?

After extensive public consultation on a deal secured with the previous government, the admittedly small number of people who replied said very clearly that they were in favour of more decisions about Lincolnshire being taken in Lincolnshire, and that they wanted Lincolnshire to have more say about what policies are adopted and how money is spent.

Currently, it is a minister in Westminster who takes those decisions about Lincolnshire; under the proposed scheme a mayor, locally elected and locally accountable, will be that person.

So it’s not an extra layer of government; it is simply moving an existing layer from relatively unaccountable London to more accountable Lincolnshire.

He or she would be sackable not by the Prime Minister, but by the voters of Greater Lincolnshire.

Nonetheless, in the consultation a narrow margin of people said that while they wanted devolution they didn’t want the mayor.

New Secretary of State Sajid Javid noted this, and the deal on offer has been enhanced to now include additional funds for housing development, on top of the existing new funds that were already on offer and, more importantly, the local decision-making powers.

For me, this all adds up to a compelling deal, but also a deal that is only possible because Lincolnshire is in this instance at the very front of the devolution queue.

No other rural area has made the kind of progress with the Treasury and the other Westminster departments that we have.

No surprise, then, that both councils in my constituency – Boston Borough Council and East Lindsey District Council – voted strongly in favour of the deal.

The others across Greater Lincolnshire will now also do the same, I hope, and deliver a deal that means Lincolnshire can lead the way, and put an end to the nonsensical suggestions that we are now, or ever have been, forgotten.

Matt Warman is the Conservative MP for the Boston and Skegness constituency.

By Matt Warman Boston & Skegness MP

Amid all the sound and fury about new grammar school proposals from Westminster, the temptation from counties already blessed with them is to keep our heads down, and let other people have the arguments.

That, however, would be to do our county’s pupils and the country a disservice: I’ve seen first-hand at Skegness Grammar, Boston Grammar and Boston High School that these selective schools can be real engines for social mobility, and that they can take pupils from a host of backgrounds all the way to our very best universities.

But I’ve also seen that schools such as Haven High, Skegness Academy, The Giles Academy and others can provide the right education for pupils where university might not be the right destination.

In the past, some of our local schools were accused of being the worst kind of the old secondary moderns – one constituent told me, with great affection, that they came from an era where every girl knew she would grow up to be a housewife and every boy knew he would work on the land.

Bringing up children and agriculture are great choices for people to make, but I do not want anyone to go to a school where these, de facto, are the only options.

Today, secondary moderns have evolved to provide a 21st-century solution to the challenges a selective system presents: how do we make sure aspiration is not capped, and how do we make sure wealthier parents do not buy houses in the immediate vicinity of the best schools and coach their children so they get the best results?

How, in short, do we make sure we don’t embed privilege and disadvantage respectively.

The government’s proposals could, in fact, have been made in Lincolnshire.

They give selective schools freedom for flourish, and the evidence is that parents from all backgrounds want them to. But above all they provide for a diverse set of circumstances that should, if implemented correctly, make it easier to provide the bespoke education that acknowledges that every child is different.

There are a couple of other points, too: they ensure that private schools and universities play a greater role in our wider education system.

That means the world’s greatest universities acknowledging that their existing government funding can also be used for wider benefit, and it means private schools acknowledging that their charitable status demands that they play a wide role across communities.

In Lincolnshire, both these things provide significant opportunities that I hope will mean the existing, excellent system is supercharged.

Challenges, however, remain: my own father-in-law was a long-serving teacher at Boston Grammar. He tried to retire three times before finally managing it, because recruiting great teachers is hard enough anywhere, and persuading them of the delights of our rural, sparsely populated county is hard for those who have not visited.

But once people are here, we know they want to stay.

And who wouldn’t?

This, after all, is a county that already has the education system that the government wants for our whole country.

Matt Warman is the Conservative MP for the Boston and Skegness constituency.