The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lord Dundee for calling a debate on this important subject and congratulate him on an excellent speech. I also thank other noble Lords who have contributed. My noble friend had a number of suggestions about how the overall system could be improved. Our provisions for flexible working and for parental and shared parental leave are now substantial. We have one of the longest periods of paid maternity leave in the EU and our rate of maternity pay exceeds the requirements of the EU directive. I am tempted to agree with the noble Lord, Lord Watson, about the point my noble friend made about financial incentives, but it is rather beyond my pay grade. On the tax incentive to which he and the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester referred, I will write to him and refer the matter to Her Majesty’s Treasury.
I think we all agree on the importance of maternal care and attachment in early childhood and its implications for longer term social and emotional development. International and UK studies have shown that the foundations for virtually every aspect of human development—physical, intellectual and emotional—are laid in early childhood. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to the importance of this. What happens to a child from the womb to the age of five has lifelong effects on many aspects of health and well-being from obesity, heart disease and mental health to educational achievement and economic status.
The noble Baroness, Lady Barker, referred to the importance of health visitors, and I am pleased to report that there are now 4,000 health visitors, which is nearly double the number there were in May 2010. This expansion supports effective, sustainable services that help families to give all children the best start and promote local communities’ health and well-being.
The evidence-based healthy child programme is the key universal public health service for improving the health and well-being of children. It aims to prevent problems in child health and development and to contribute to a reduction in health inequalities. The healthy child programme is the overarching service for the provision of interventions to strengthen parent-child relationships. Health visitors’ support can identify families who will benefit from extra help, including support for parents and children early in life. This can include referring families to specialist services, arranging access to support groups and practical support. I should mention here our extremely successful troubled families programme.
The noble Baroness asked about the introduction of personal budgets and the impact on midwives and on access to training for student midwives. The Department of Health and NHS England are considering all the recommendations of the maternity review and more detail on implementation will follow shortly. She also asked how the healthy child programme will be implemented and monitored post its transfer to local authorities and when we will get the initial results and figures, especially in relation to child poverty. The Department of Health has commissioned Public Health England to review mandation arrangements for the healthy child programme. Post transfer to local authorities, Public Health England is expected to report its findings later this year. The life chances strategy is expected to be published in July and will set out the Government’s plans for improving the life chances of all children. The strategy will introduce new indicators for measuring children’s life chances. The noble Baroness referred to childcare and I am delighted to report, as I have in the House, that 96% of three and four year-olds are accessing it and, of course, we have had a massive increase in childcare places over the past six years, an increase of nearly 250,000 places. I assure the noble Baroness that we will continue to push for more quality, available and flexible childcare.
The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, made a number of points in relation to this Government’s policies ranging from sugar tax to academies. I am extremely grateful for his support, and I share his great concern about absent fathers, a problem I see constantly in our schools. He also referred to obesity, and I was pleased that the Chancellor yesterday doubled the pupil sports premium for primary schools and created an extra fund for all schools to extend their day for activities, particularly sport.
There are also opportunities through schools for parents to learn more themselves and to work with their children. Good schools have been particularly good at involving parents in school life and bringing them in for assessment, and an effective use of IT can be helpful in this regard. The noble Earl referred to family learning, which is obviously integral to strengthening paternal relationships and widening horizons. I am delighted that following the spending review, the Government are protecting funding for the core adult skills participation budgets—in cash terms, £1.5 billion. This will support families that are socially disadvantaged and will build confidence and resilience.
I am grateful to the noble Earl for his comments on family and child homelessness, and I share his concern in this regard. The Government believe that the most important thing for a family who have become homeless is to resolve their housing crisis and get them into settled accommodation as soon as possible. To do this, the Government have invested more than half a billion pounds in the past five years, enabling local authorities to help nearly a million households in becoming homeless. I also remind the noble Earl that the number of children in temporary accommodation is just over 100,000, which I agree is far too many, but it remains well below the peak achieved in 2006, when it was more than 130,000.
The Autumn Statement announced real-terms protection for central funding for homelessness, demonstrating our commitment to this area. Further support was available in the Budget, which included £100 million to deliver low-cost, second-stage accommodation for rough sleepers, £10 million over two years to support and scale up innovative ways to prevent and reduce rough sleeping, doubling the funding for the rough sleeping social impact bond announced in the Autumn Statement from £5 million to £10 million, and other action to decrease the number of rough sleepers. I pay tribute to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Worcester. He referred to the work of the church in improving parenting skills and, of course, I pay tribute to the church’s work in the whole area of schools.
The noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred in detail to children’s centres. The Government are considering their policy in this area as part of the development of the cross-government life chances strategy and plan to publish details in the summer. At that point we will make clear how stakeholders and members of the public can contribute. We want a strong network of children’s centres, and we believe the debate should be about the effectiveness of those services. Quite a few centres have merged, and some have closed. The debate should be about the effectiveness of the services, not purely about counting buildings.
We have also substantially increased the money available for childcare. The 4Children’s survey of children’s centres suggested that more than a million families frequently accessed children’s centres in 2015. This estimate is unchanged since these statistics were first published in 2013. As the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, the latest Early Years Foundation Stage profile data reveal that an increasing proportion of children are achieving a good level of achievement at the age of five, 66% in 2015 compared with 52% in 2013, which is a substantial and impressive increase. I thank all noble Lords for contributing to today’s very stimulating debate.