Westminster Hall

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Westminster Hall

Wednesday 22 March 2023

[Mr Virendra Sharma in the Chair]

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities: Specialist Workforce

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Relevant documents: e-petition 607849, Make SEND training mandatory for all teaching staff; e-petition 591092, Require School SENCOs to be fully qualified for the role; e-petition 587365, Require all school staff receive training on SEN children.]

09:30

[Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered a specialist workforce for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

It is a great pleasure and privilege to serve under your chairpersonship, Mr Sharma. I am the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on speech and language difficulties, which is supported by the Royal College of Speech and Language. I first pay tribute to Lord Ramsbotham, who did so much for the group over so many years, after an illustrious career in the Army and then the Prison Service. He certainly added great value.

Something like 50% of poorer children arrive at school with a speech delay, and in an average-sized class, which is 30 across Britain, something like two or three children have a speech delay of two to four years. Obviously, we are here to talk about the wider totality of special educational needs, not just speech and language, but it is worth mentioning that early intervention on speech and language would massively improve school performance, and thereby increase future tax revenues and reduce social costs, prison costs, justice costs and so on, so we really should think about that. In the wider totality, early intervention is a very good idea.

This debate, which I commissioned, comes partly on the back of a letter that I wrote to the Minister on behalf of 16 all-party groups, calling for the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care to work in collaboration on special educational needs. We have now had the special educational needs review, and I was very pleased that in January the Minister agreed to speak to me. I am looking forward to confirming that date for a meeting with her and representatives from the all-party groups on autism, on cerebral palsy, on childcare and early education, on children who need palliative care, on disability, on dyslexia and other specific learning difficulties, on eye health and visual impairment, on muscular dystrophy, on oracy, on penal affairs, for the prevention of childhood trauma, on psychology, on social mobility, for special educational needs and disabilities, on speech and language difficulties, and on stroke. A very wide range of MPs is interested in this issue in one way or another.

On top of that, the SEND in The Specialists coalition, with which the Minister will be familiar, sent a letter in parallel to ours with the support of 114 organisations— I will not read them out—which has now grown to 128. The debate also comes on the back of a number of written questions I have tabled on specialist workforce, and another letter from 22 all-party groups about funding for speech and language therapy.

The Government have announced the plan for special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision for England, and I hope the Minister will set out a bit more detail on that in this debate. I know there is a steering group planned for 2023, which aims to complete by 2025. As far as parents and people engaged with this issue are concerned, the sooner, the better.

The Minister will be aware that there have also been three petitions. One is about mandatory training for all teaching staff engaged with special educational needs, again to ensure identification and early intervention.

As for parliamentary activity, I am very pleased that the Chamber Engagement Team got in touch with me about this debate and asked people to send in their experiences. I was more than pleased that 1,800 responses were received from parents, practitioners, and other adults who have engaged with the system, wherever they live, and faced similar challenges across the piece. Those challenges generally included huge waiting lists for support for their children. Obviously, the longer the delay, the more it costs to get people back on track and the greater the struggles in adulthood and the impact on life chances.

There is a second issue about the threshold for getting support: how ill is someone, or are they ill enough, as it were? “Ill” is probably the wrong word here, but is someone’s condition sufficient to satisfy the criteria for early intervention? A lot of parents feel neglected, unsupported and not understood. They probably think there is some sort of differential diagnosis; I do not know.

There is also an issue about fighting for diagnosis itself to start with, and often when there is a plan ready to go, the support is not in place to deliver it. Clearly, many people have to resort to going private, which sometimes means worse provision, but obviously at a cost, as they have to pay for it.

There is a special issue, which the Minister will be aware of, for girls and young women, who might be misdiagnosed as having mental health problems. Good plans are put in place, but are not followed through, or people are deprived of their plan owing to changes being made, perhaps to resources, so the vital education to give them the platform they need to succeed in later life is not provided.

People can also be ping-ponged between different services, which causes confusion, delay and uncertainty, and sometimes there are issues over sharing information from specialists with the school. The information has to go through the parents, rather than the school, and if a second language is involved, effective delivery can be impeded.

There is also an issue about coming up with feasible plans, which are not optimal plans owing to lack of resources, where people say, “We would like to do this, but we can’t, so we will do that. It’s not quite what is needed, but it’s all we can afford.”

Obviously, there were also a lot of positive replies, because there is a galaxy of excellent people out there doing their best to provide an excellent service to meet these needs. However, they are finding it difficult to cope. I do not want in any way to criticise the people in the special educational needs service who are doing such a fine job and need our support, but there is postcode lottery, because where someone lives determines how good a service they receive, according to resources and the availability of skilled staff. In some places, there are good networks where people have a good experience of different specialisms working together optimally to deliver excellent outputs for those in need; in other places, the experience is not so good.

I will not go through a list of specific examples, but the people who wrote to me were clearly saying, “We need funding, early intervention, a joined-up system, training for teachers and an evidence-based approach, particularly in relation to behaviours that appear in girls and young women.” Early intervention is of primary concern for the economy, but also with respect to releasing parents who often cannot work because they are looking after their children owing to the fact that the service is not there to deliver for the child. That means parents staying at home who could be at work. We are thinking about growth and how we manage the economy, so that is another consideration.

Let me turn to the reaction to the special educational needs and alternative provision plan. Various sectors have criticised the plan’s lack of urgency and ambition. Nobody is saying that what is in the plan is not commendable, but a crisis has been building for many years and we need to get on with addressing it. Therefore, this is another opportunity for the Government to listen to our concerns and to build the support to drive forward with greater speed.

Many people have commented that they have been waiting years for the Government to act to fix the broken special educational needs system. They are now saying, “Well is this all it is? We need more sooner.” That includes the SEND in The Specialists coalition of 128 organisations that I have mentioned. They are talking about the number of specialists, rising demand, and the new demands after covid. Certainly, the Royal College of Speech and Language and the surveys that we have commissioned have found that, interestingly, middle-class parents who had children with speech and language difficulties often saw an improvement in their child’s performance. That is because the parents would be at home, working from laptops, and spending quality time with the children. There is an issue there about having more flexible working more generally in the economy, as it would help productivity, and perhaps reduce costs and encourage better targeting.

In contrast, of course, the poorer children did not fare so well. Perhaps they had a single parent who was on a zero-hours contract, who did not have much time to spend with the child, and who did not have proper internet access that they could afford—there is an issue there about universal wi-fi clouds that the Government might want to think about. During covid, poorer children fared a lot worse in general; and specifically, those with speech and language difficulties deteriorated quite quickly. It is certainly worth considering that differential output. Perhaps I will send this research to the Minister.

This debate is about just one aspect of the plan, which is the specialist workforce. We welcome the Government’s commitment to work in a collegiate way alongside children, young people, families and other providers in the SEND system. The Departments for Education and of Health and Social Care set out a clear timetable for SEND workforce planning. We have a steering group that will move forward by 2023.

Wearing my speech and language hat, let me welcome the Early Language and Support for Every Child pathfinders, and the early identification and support for children with speech and language difficulties. The royal college is pleased that it was involved with the NHS and the Department for Education in that scoping, and I hope that it will continue to be involved in the Department in the future through the alternative provision specialist taskforce.

Let me lay out the main commitments that I am looking for from the Minister. First, we want a commitment to have the meeting with the signatories of the 16 all-party groups that has been promised and also a commitment by the Government to speak to the all-party group on speech and language difficulties in a separate meeting about what is happening, so that they can be quizzed by those in the industry. Secondly, we want a commitment to give the SEND in The Specialists coalition a place on the SEND workforce steering group, as it is important that the industry is engaged with the civil service and the Departments to get the best, most practicable plan possible.

Thirdly, we want the Government to commit to come up with a plan on how they will improve access to the specialist workforce for children, young people and families right now. We have talked about the 2023 and 2025 milestones, but, obviously, children grow up very quickly and they need that support now. Perhaps the Minister can elaborate on precisely what is happening in the meantime to bring forward tailored support. We want to see a broad approach—a holistic approach—to the definition of the SEND specialist workforce, because there are quite variety of people involved. Then there is the issue of recruitment and retention, on which the Minister may wish to touch. There is an issue about people leaving the service from the NHS and from the profession generally. We need not only to recruit and train enough people to build a force, but to stop people leaving by providing them with acceptable and enjoyable working conditions.

Finally, on behalf of the 1,800 people who have written in, I wish to question the Minister about funding and the Government response to our funding letter of 2021, which I mentioned earlier. The Government then said that the right funding was fundamental to accessing speech and language therapy. Will the Minister elaborate on what she thinks will be sufficient funding for a SEND workforce plan, to ensure that the speech and language therapy workforce is trained, developed, retained, supervised and supported to develop the necessary clinical specialisms and leadership roles? Will she mention something about student numbers coming into the workforce, and also address some of the reasons why people are leaving the workforce?

Perhaps the Minister could also say what her expectations are for accountability and local systems coming together on joint provision. How do we ensure accountability and make sure the resources are there to enable all children and young people with special educational needs and speech, language and communication needs and/or swallowing needs get timely access to the speech and language therapy they require? That would include provision for children and young people who need special educational needs support, as well as those with education, health and care plans.

I am glad to see a large number of Members here who want to get involved in the debate, so I will end my comments there. I look forward to a response from the Minister.

09:46

[Sally-Ann Hart (Hastings and Rye) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairship, Mr Sharma. Many young children have faced an array of social and developmental challenges as a result of covid-19, and children with special educational needs and disabilities have been deeply affected due to the lack of services accessible for their needs during this time.

Every week, I have at least one constituent come to see me, pleading for support for their child with special educational needs, which are often undiagnosed because they cannot get an education, health and care plan or an appointment with child and adolescent mental health services. The formative years of a child’s life are essential for their development, and without changes and improved support for these specialist services, children with SEND will be exposed to bullying, mental health issues, isolation and disadvantages later in life and in the workforce.

SEND in The Specialists highlighted how we need to incentivise employment into the special needs workforce, as well as retain those already in it. Improving recruitment and retention is vital to provide the specialist teachers and staff that we need for our children and young people. Many schools need more assistance for these children. For schools to remain inclusive, it is essential to have specialist and supportive frameworks in place to keep more children in mainstream education.

I enjoy visiting the primary and secondary schools across Hastings and Rye. It is the best part of this job. I speak to the pupils and staff. One young primary school teacher was telling me recently that she has four young children with challenging SEND needs in her class. Without the support of teaching assistants and named teaching assistants, it would be impossible to control the class and provide for the needs of these children, let alone the rest of the class, especially if the TAs and NTAs are off sick or leave because they, too, find it extremely challenging.

Inclusion is not always the best thing for the child with special needs, nor the rest of the children in the class. Both miss out on education. We have to face the fact that while mainstream inclusion is important, some children need a high level of specialist support, which can only be provided in special needs schools or in alternative provision.

We need more SEND and alternative provision across Hastings and Rye, especially AP for secondary-aged children. We have a significant number of primary and secondary-aged children with high-level needs. It is very difficult to access EHC plans, and the waiting list for CAMHS locally is now two years. It is just not good enough. Early intervention is vital in ensuring that the right support is given at the right time, so that each child with SEND can fulfil their potential and become full, active and productive members of our communities.

I welcome the Government SEND and alternative provision improvement plan published earlier this month, which will help to deliver new standards to improve identification of the needs and expectations of the level of support that would be available in local areas. The plan creates additional funding of more than £10 billion by 2023-24, which is an increase of more than 50%, to support and help young people with SEND. It is also encouraging that the improvement plan will create a new leadership special educational needs national professional qualification—a SENCO NPQ—which will ensure that teachers have the training that they need to provide the right support for children. That is in addition to expanded training for staff, but we need those staff.

To address the demand levels, it is necessary to deal with the backlog, which is a consequence of the pandemic. Ofsted highlights that speech and language therapy has one of the longer waiting lists and that there are reductions in the service provided. The impact of covid-19 has only exacerbated those problems: demand for speech and language therapists increased after the pandemic because of the additional 94,000 children with speech, language and communication needs in 2021-22. Young children and teens rely on that therapy as an essential way to develop social and articulative skills; if their needs are not dealt with effectively, that section of society could be isolated.

[Matthew Pennycook (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for allowing me an intervention. I intervene purely because the issue that I hear most about from parents of SEN children is the lengthy waiting time for speech and language therapists, which is in part due to workforce shortages. The improvement plan is welcome in the sense that it talks about improving access, but does she agree that we need more therapists now, precisely because of the impact that delays have on children in the system, as my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) pointed out?

[Sally-Ann Hart]

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. I was going to say that all primary schools that I visited in Hastings and Rye have highlighted the need for speech and language provision for younger children coming to school following covid. It is essential. They are behind with oracy and communication skills, and that impacts on their ability to access learning. Our local primary schools have provided that provision themselves, and they work to help and support our local children.

A number of charities are already working to provide help and support for certain children with special needs. For example, Auditory Verbal UK is making great progress in helping to implement specialist early interventions to support deaf babies and children in learning to talk and listen. Roughly 80% of children who attend at least two years of the charity’s pre-school programme achieve the same level of spoken language as their hearing peers. Through Government investment, the charity would be able to aid considerably more deaf children to reach the same level. It is a great charity that supports not only deaf children but the whole support system. A number of charities, third-sector groups and volunteers work with children who have important issues that need to be addressed.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that investment to support organisations such as Auditory Verbal UK and the therapies that it can provide is excellent value for money? If children are reached with the right support early on, they can engage in mainstream education and benefit from it much more than if they are left with those needs on entry into primary school.

[Sally-Ann Hart]

I completely agree. We could not function as a country without our voluntary sector—it is one of the wheels that keeps the country going—but we need to invest in it, so that it can save lots of money in the long term. That is absolutely right.

A specialist SEND workforce will make positive changes to our country. We must ensure that we allow a space for those children with special educational needs and disabilities to reach their full potential in society.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

I intend to call the Front-Bench spokespeople at about 10.40 am, and we have about nine speakers. I will not set a time limit now; I leave it to hon. Members to discipline themselves.

09:54

[John McDonnell (Hayes and Harlington) (Lab)]

I declare an interest, Mr Sharma—my wife is Dr Cynthia Pinto, chair of the committee on the Division of Educational and Child Psychology, and she is active in the Association of Educational Psychologists, so you can imagine what our breakfast conversations are like. I welcome the Minister, who has had responsibility for disabilities in the past, which gives her an understanding of some of the issues we face. She has also been a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Treasury, so she knows where the money is buried, which is extremely helpful. I thank Professor Vivian Hill from the Institute of Education at University College London, who has provided a number of us with briefings on educational psychology.

I want to draw attention to the issues facing educational psychologists. The chief inspector of education identified that the demand and need for educational psychology services from schools and families, to support early intervention and preventive work, has significantly increased. The inspector’s report also identified that there is a huge geographical variation—to which my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) referred—in access to EPs, and noted that 60% of local authority EHCP assessments are not being completed within the 20-week timeframe as required.

Alternative provision has been mentioned. The Ofsted report last November identified that more children are being referred to alternative provision, but often because of the lack of access to specialist services in mainstream schools. Let us look at the stats on the increased numbers of education, health and care plans being issued. During 2021, 93,000 initial requests were made for assessment for EHCP—up from 76,000 in 2020. It is the highest number since data was first collected in 2016. His Majesty’s chief inspector of education reported that 1.5 million pupils were identified with SEND in 2022—an increase of 71% on the previous year; I found that staggering. The number of EHCPs has also grown by 51% since 2014-15. I think we are all experiencing that in our constituencies, as we receive representations from parents struggling to gain access to the planning processes.

Also interesting—I wonder whether others have experienced this—is the significant increase in the number of SEND tribunals, which becomes incredibly expensive for the local authorities. This is worrying. It is interesting that Professor Hill has identified this from the various statistics that have been brought out, and it was raised in a debate in the main Chamber a couple of months ago about the unmet mental health needs of children and young people. A record number of children and young people are being referred to NHS services for mental health difficulties. In the previous debate on this issue, MP after MP reported the issues and demand on CAMHS that are overwhelming it; that is increasingly worrying.

An increased number of children and young people are being permanently suspended or excluded from school. Some Members might have listened to the reports this morning about the number of “ghost” children, who are no longer in school. The figure of 20% was absolutely staggering. Covid has obviously had an impact, and there is a continuing impact on mental health, but local authorities struggle to maintain levels of support services for families in particular.

I also found interesting the evidence that local authorities struggle to recruit educational psychologists. The recent local government ombudsman report shows that 70% of local authorities are now struggling to recruit EPs. The Government have recognised that; it is one issue that is being addressed in the future of our workforce plan for skilled workers and the recruitment of staff. It has also been recognised that the recruitment of staff from overseas can assist us during this period while we struggle to recruit.

Many local authorities are now relying on locum cover from private providers but, as hon. Members will appreciate, that can be extremely expensive compared with direct investment. Educational psychologists have raised with the Government the issue of adequate funding of the services overall, which my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West mentioned. Specifically for EPs, the Government responded in December with £21 million in additional funding, which was welcome. That will be for intakes from 2024, but the problem is that the core funding is inadequate—it has not been increased since 2020.

Let us look at the figures put out by the British Psychological Society, of which the Division of Educational and Child Psychology is a part. The announcement of £21 million for 400 additional educational psychologists is definitely a step in the right direction, but the BPS says that it really does not go far enough to close the workforce gap. The figure that I find shocking is that we are now at the stage where in 2017 there were about 3,000 educational psychologists working in England; on average, that is the equivalent of one educational psychologist for every 3,500 children and young people between the ages of five and 19. Again, there was one for every 5,000 for those between the ages of nought and 25 —the plan period. Therefore, the demand is for a greater increase of investment in educational psychologists to increase the numbers because of the increasing demands.

I will raise one issue that is specific to my own patch, but which may be reflected in other constituencies. I have 2,400 refugees—asylum seekers—in hotels in my constituency, including many children, who go into local schools. I have toured the hotels and done advice surgeries in them, and what has been reported back from the schools and from the discussions I am having with families is that a number of those children, who are largely from war zones, are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. That is placing an increased burden on individual schools. The teachers welcome rising to that challenge, but they need additional resources.

I would welcome a discussion with the Government—maybe all MPs have this situation in their constituencies—about what additional resources could be targeted at particular areas so that they can overcome this period, which I am sure will be temporary, but requires resources at the moment. The message is clear from the DECP and others: additional resources need to be specifically targeted at the recruitment and training of educational psychologists to meet this growing demand and, exactly as the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) said, to give children the life chances that they desperately need.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

Looking at the time and the Front Bench, I would appreciate it if Members would stick to four minutes.

10:03

[James Wild (North West Norfolk) (Con)]

I will keep to your timeframe, Mr Sharma. I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) on introducing it and on his work chairing the APPG.

One of my first visits as the MP for North West Norfolk was to Greenpark Academy in King’s Lynn. The first issue that the headteacher raised with me was access to special needs provision and speech and language therapy for pupils who, at that school, often come from disadvantaged backgrounds. On a more recent visit to Whitefriars School, which has just been given a good Ofsted rating—it would have been outstanding if it had been a graded inspection—the school’s special needs unit was making a real difference in helping children to improve communication skills, often from a very low base, as a number arrived at the school non-verbal.

From visiting those and many other schools across my constituency, particularly in rural parts of North West Norfolk, the need to provide improved support is clear. The ability to communicate is fundamental for children to make friends, learn and realise their potential. The evidence is also strong that without the right support to help people with speech and language needs, children are at increased risk of poor educational attainment, mental health issues and poor employment outcomes.

Today’s debate is taking place because the current access to speech and language therapy needs to improve dramatically. Figures from the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists that were shared ahead of the debate show that over 67,000 children were on a waiting list for speech and language therapy, with more than a third waiting over 18 weeks. As we have heard, many more are waiting over a year or, indeed, two years. That situation is not acceptable; covid has made it worse and we need to address it. Given those real challenges, I welcome the SEND and AP improvement plan that was published earlier this month, with its focus on speech and communication issues. There is a welcome new commitment for a joint DFE and DHSC approach to SEND workforce planning, although I hope the timetable set out in that paper can be accelerated.

That join-up, which is the holy grail in Government, across health, education and social care at national level is vital. As the royal college points out, that has to be accompanied by sufficient funding to train, retain and develop the workforce. DFE—again in partnership with NHS England, which I welcome—is pioneering pathfinders for early language and support as part of the £70 million change programme. I previously raised with the Minister the potential for Norfolk and Waveney to be one of the nine pilot areas. I look forward to meeting my integrated care board shortly to discuss what we might be able to bring there. I would welcome further opportunity to discuss that with the Minister, and more information about the process for selecting those areas.

[Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) (Ind)]

I agree with everything my hon. Friend has said, and would add Suffolk to the list of places that would like to be a pathfinder area. Does he agree that early intervention is vital, even though there are now more EHCPs than there were? The earlier that support for children starts, the more likely a positive outcome; getting that support is vital.

[James Wild]

Indeed, I do. My right hon. Friend has done a lot of work in this area, not least with his private Member’s Bill.

The plan has a welcome focus on expanded training, including: 5,000 early years staff gaining accredited qualifications; an increase in the capacity of specialists, with two more training cohorts of educational psychologists; and the new leadership level SENDCO qualification. I am glad to see that it also commits to publishing the first of three best practice guides, including for Nuffield early language intervention, which has made a real difference in a number of my schools in Norfolk.

Finally, I welcome the new deal that provides £70 million in additional funding from the Department, in conjunction with Norfolk County Council, which will help to increase funding for special educational needs places. It will develop more specialist resource bases and AP in mainstream schools, which I hope will include schools in North West Norfolk, as well as building two more special schools.

In conclusion, getting this right is vital because children have only one opportunity when it comes to their education. We need to do all we can to help them realise their potential. The focus now must be on implementing those plans.

10:07

[Richard Foord (Tiverton and Honiton) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Sharma. SEND services in Devon have been in serious crisis for a long time, probably three or four years, with the situation deteriorating lately. Last year, Devon County Council apologised for failing to improve SEND services, and promised that things would improve and that it would redouble its efforts. We are continuing to see a problem around a lack of political leadership and of oversight at the council. My postbag is heavy with correspondence from constituents who are at their wits’ end trying to get the support and educational placements that children need.

The wait times for assessments are far beyond the statutory 20 weeks. The lack of educational psychologists is leaving families uncertain, having to juggle work commitments and looking after their child at the same time. It is definitely leading to people being outside of the workforce who would otherwise be fulfilling an important role in it. The looming threat in Devon of these services being placed in special measures, or removed from the council’s remit, shows that things must change. The promise of more money in the forthcoming council budget is welcome. The Government’s recent announcement of a new SEND school at Cranbrook is again welcome, but we need to ensure that taxpayers’ money is being spent effectively to deliver the SEND placements that our children deserve.

I have had constituents contact me to highlight situations where a child is allocated a placement that is wholly unsuitable for them, and the child cannot take it up but remains on the school roll, with the funding also remaining assigned to that school. We need to ensure that money follows the child and that appropriate frontline services are delivered regardless of where the child then moves. I have seen for myself in East Devon that SEND pupils are being taught in cupboards and storage rooms, and I know that that is not unique to my part of Devon, because I have also seen it reported on the BBC. We should not allow that to continue. I cannot help but admire the parents who are pushing Devon County Council and the Government on this. Devon SEND Parents and Carers for Change staged a protest at county hall in Exeter last month, and they are trying to shine a spotlight on some of these failings.

It is not all gloom; there are some examples of best practice. My constituent, Danielle Punter, has written books and a blog—autability.co.uk—with tips on education and support in understanding neurodivergence. Danielle pointed out last month that when partial school closures happen as a result of lockdown or strikes, it is often special needs school pupils who are most affected, because those schools need to be fully staffed in order for children with a high level of SEND requirements to get the best possible care, otherwise they need to stay at home. In short, we need to get to grips with some of these repeated failures, particularly in Devon, and that will require political leadership and political oversight.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

I am now formally introducing a four-minute time limit.

10:11

[Peter Gibson (Darlington) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) on securing this important debate. This issue is of concern to many of my constituents in Darlington. Indeed, 77 people from my constituency signed the e-petitions relating to the debate. I welcome the announcement last week of a new school in Darlington and thank Councillors Jonathan Dulston and Jon Clarke for their work on that. This additional provision of 48 places for SEN children in Darlington is much needed.

However, Darlington faces serious problems with CAMHS. The delays in getting people assessed are significant. It impacts my case load and delays access to services for young people in my constituency. It is hugely important for Darlington parents and children that we speed up the woefully inadequate waiting times for CAMHS assessments by Tees, Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust. As Ministers are aware, we cannot overestimate the challenging circumstances that TEWV service users and their families face. More than 300 under-18s in Darlington are awaiting an autism assessment, and more than 20% of them have been waiting almost three years. That is just not good enough. In the absence of a diagnosis, these families’ lives are on hold, and these children’s lives are not progressing as they should.

I continue to engage regularly with TEWV and the families of special educational needs children in Darlington, including through my autism forum on Facebook, to ensure that their voices are heard and to push for us to take more action to reduce these backlogs, which are so damaging. I do, however, welcome the recent announcement that Darlington has secured additional funding of £6.19 million for special educational needs provision in the town, to address the growing needs in our community and tackle the high cost of out-of-town provision. I also warmly welcome the recent SEND and alternative provision improvement plan, which commits to increase spending on children and young people with such needs by more than 50% to over £10 billion by 2023-24.

I have tabled several written questions to the Department for Education in the past about its records for SEN training among teaching staff, and I was disappointed to learn that it does not keep records of the extent of such training. However, the recent news of expanded training for staff in early years provision, with special educational needs co-ordinators and educational psychologists, will, I hope, go some way to addressing that gap.

This is a personal issue for me. Like many people across the country, I have family members with special educational needs, and I have seen directly the work that parents must put in to secure the necessary support. It cannot be right that the most vocal parents or those who know the system are the ones who secure the right provision for their child. I have seen parents in my constituency surgery who have been pinging from local authority to CAMHS to schools to healthcare providers, which makes them frustrated, angry and bewildered. We really need to do so much better.

In conclusion, the SEND and additional provision improvement plans are good steps on the way, but we must ensure that the actions that are set out in them are delivered, and we must make the systems absolutely centred on the child—not just paying lip service to that idea, but really breaking down the silos in health, education and Government to truly deliver, end the excessive waits, and give the kids a chance.

10:15

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

It is a real pleasure to speak in this debate. I thank the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) for securing this debate and leading it, and for setting the scene so well, as he often does. It is nice to see him down here with us in the Chamber, instead of up there in the Chair; that has been a pleasure today.

There have been ongoing issues relating to provision for special educational needs. Children with SEN rely heavily on routine, consistency and specialised support. Many people in my constituency contact me in relation to these issues; most notably, I am contacted about staffing issues. So I will focus on staffing issues today, including serving staff not receiving the adequate support and training to assist pupils with SEN.

I believe that we must do all we can to ensure that children are given an equal and fair start in life, so it is great to be here today to discuss that. I welcome the Minister to her place. She does not have to answer any of my questions about this issue, because we have a Minister in Northern Ireland with responsibility for this issue. However, I wanted to come here today to support the hon. Member for Swansea West and others who have spoken, because the things that have been spoken about here today are the very same for us in Northern Ireland. There is no difference; each other’s problems are replicated.

I will speak briefly on Northern Ireland, because I always like to give a taste of the situation there. In Northern Ireland, 67,000 children have some form of SEN, which is a fifth of the school population, and 19,000 children have received a statement about their need for additional support, which is a 20.3% increase on what it once was.

This issue is about the staff we have, including those who have received the basic SEN training for already qualified teachers to act in the event of sickness. Unfortunately, staffing numbers are down in Northern Ireland. I say this with all the provisos that I have as a Unionist, but we need a functioning Assembly that can take such things on. We must ensure that our Governments are allocating sufficient funding to train SEN-specialised teachers, so that the pressure is taken off teaching staff who are not specialised in SEN teaching and communication with children who have SEN.

The Education Authority in Northern Ireland also disclosed that the number of educational psychologists has decreased by 24% in less than five years—what a massive drop for us back home—from 140 to 106. The Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People also made 40 recommendations for improvement. The petition was signed by 29,000 people who called for SEN training to be made mandatory for all teaching staff, which is also recommended by the commissioner.

Some of the things that we are asking for are the things that others are asking for, and I know that the Minister will respond. And whatever the Minister responds to about the situation here will probably also give us an indication of where we need to be in Northern Ireland. Although the petition was centred around the English education system, it is crucial that any decision taken in relation to SEN training for teachers follows through to the devolved nations. My request to the Minister specifically is to ensure that the recommendations and answers that she gives in this debate are conveyed directly to the Education Authority and the Northern Ireland Assembly, because what we can learn from this debate can be a lesson for us all.

We are also living in a world where assessments for SEN are unfortunately taking considerable time, as we must ensure that children are assessed accurately, so that they can receive the right amount of support and specialist care. I ask for that to be done as well.

Once this debate has been completed, where do we go next? We must take the relevant steps to ensure that a sufficient workforce is there. We must encourage our young people to take degrees in this area and make such degrees accessible to them. It is about making sure that teachers are trained, in place and can do the job. This is the effort that we go to and that they go to. Such teachers deserve to be under the least amount of pressure possible. So I call upon the Minister to engage with all regional Governments within the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland in order to come to a joint decision on how the issue of a specialised workforce can be tackled.

10:19

[David Johnston (Wantage) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. Whenever we receive petition data, I do what I am sure we all do: I look at where my constituency ranks for number of signatures. For the first time in my three years as an MP—unless I have missed one—my Wantage and Didcot constituency was No. 1 for this petition. I think that reflects the problems going on at Oxfordshire County Council at the moment, as I receive almost daily complaints from parents and schools about emails not being answered, the phone not being picked up and EHCPs returned with the wrong child described on the plan.

While the county council would suggest that that is all about funding, some of those issues are not about that. Putting the wrong child on an EHCP when it is returned to a parent is not about funding. Actually, if the amount of money that is spent on tribunals by the county council was spent on the service, we would have a better service overall. As it happens, there is more money going into the system—an extra £2.6 billion—which will mean 50% higher spending in 2023-24 than in 2019-20. However, the issues are not just about funding.

In any organisation, there is always a debate about specialist versus generalist: whether we should have one person who is responsible for everything, the advantage of which is expert knowledge, or whether everybody should be responsible, so that they do not shirk that responsibility. That is true in this area too. It is right that the Government are reviewing the mandatory requirement for the national award for SENCOs, because parents clearly do not feel it is working in quite the way it should. I also warmly welcome the forthcoming apprenticeship pathway for those with sensory impairments.

However, it is also right to look at initial teacher training. Of course, there is initial teacher training and an expectation that all teachers should have some understanding and be able to handle children with special educational needs. But, again, it is absolutely clear that many parents do not feel that that is the case. While there are children who need specialist schools and other specialist provision, we know that children staying in mainstream education leads to better outcomes: they have better social skills; they have more independence; they have fewer behavioural problems. Having children with special educational needs in the classroom also improves other children’s tolerance and understanding.

The Government are absolutely right to pursue both those tracks. We are fortunate to have in the Minister a great advocate for children with SEND and their parents. She is working with the Department of Health to try to grip these specialist workforce issues, but also to help all teachers to feel more confident about dealing with children who have special educational needs, so that the first resort is not to try to push them somewhere else. I look forward to working with the Minister to achieve the Government’s aim of getting the right support in the right place at the right time.

10:23

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Sharma. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) on leading today’s debate and concur with all comments made by colleagues across the room.

It is a fight, and it is always a fight, to get the right support in the right place at the right time—that is what parents have consistently told me. That is why we are here today. We have serious concerns about the timing of the Government’s proposals. Already, we are hearing about a specialist workforce group being set up, but it will be two years before we see that workforce plan delivered. On top of that, we have the training time to get those specialists in place to provide the support for young people, and timing is of the essence.

Time is of the essence for parents in my constituency, too. I think about the parents who came to see me because their child goes to specialist provision in the morning, but in the afternoon, is left to play with Lego; or the child who was confronted in their school environment because they did not make eye contact, and was told off and given detention for not doing so; or the parents whose child, who has autism and is non-verbal, despite meeting all the thresholds for an EHCP assessment, has been denied that assessment by their local authority. Children miss out time and again.

Let me speak about one child whose needs were not recognised in primary school. We raised our concerns frequently, but the teachers did not identify his dyslexia and memory and processing issues until the last term of year 6. He did not get the right support and fell further and further behind. His experience of school was horrendous: he had self-esteem issues by year 2 and signs of anxiety in year 3, and he told us that he would rather die than go to school in year 4. In years 5 and 6, the impact of his school experience was huge. Thankfully, he has now had the opportunity that he should have had when he started school, or even pre-school. It is always a fight for parents.

I am also here to fight for the workforce. It needs to be recognised, organised and supported. We are creating family hubs, but we had Sure Start. We brought people together across the professions to work together and wrap the services around the child. We need to reinstitute that. Labour did it, and we will do it again, because we know the importance of that inter-working.

I particularly want to speak up for teaching assistants, who are at the forefront of providing day-by-day support to young people. They know their children and are attuned to their needs. However, in a school in York, their contracts have been reduced to just term-time working, rather than full-time. They are therefore not able to afford to go to work any more. Teaching assistants should be recognised as the professionals that they are for the skills that they bring, and they should be rewarded with the pay they deserve. They work incredibly hard, giving children confidence on a day-to-day basis. Many children with special educational needs identify with their teaching assistant more than anyone else, and yet they are on minimum wage, term-time contracts. It is frankly disgraceful. When the Minister puts a workforce plan together, I ask her to put teaching assistants at the forefront and to recognise the professional skills they bring in supporting children at their time of need.

[Mr Virendra Sharma (in the Chair)]

I call Robin Walker. As he is the Chair of the Education Committee, I will relax the four-minute time limit.

10:27

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

I am honoured, Mr Sharma. That is most kind and unexpected.

I thank the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for what she just said about teaching assistants. The right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) declared an interest in relation to his wife’s role. My sister is a teaching assistant in a special educational needs setting, and I think the work they do is absolutely heroic. She has faced all sorts of challenges in her work, including assault by pupils. Teaching assistants turn up day in, day out to do that work, not because it is well paid—it is not—but because they are absolutely passionate about supporting the children. As we heard from so many hon. Members, this is all about children’s life chances.

I warmly congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies). We have had many lively exchanges over many issues over the years, but on this issue we are absolutely as one. He presented his case extremely well.

I am Chairman of the Education Committee, and this issue touches on so many of our inquiries, so I am very grateful to you, Mr Sharma, for slightly relaxing the time limit so that I can speak about all of them. As my hon. Friend the Minister knows extremely well, we are in the midst of conducting an inquiry into early years and childcare. Yesterday, we heard from SEND specialists in that space of the enormous benefit of providing the right specialist workforce at the right time—that early intervention in the early years, which Members from both sides of the House have talked about.

It is important that we remember that this can start in the early years. There is huge benefit in getting speech and language therapy in front of the right children in the early years. I was grateful that the hon. Member for Swansea West started his speech by talking about the importance of that. In my constituency, when I started as an MP, there was a real problem with the availability of speech and language therapy. I am told now by the royal college and by experts that we are one of the best areas in the country for that provision, and that is extremely welcome, but there is still more need.

We heard from Speech and Language UK yesterday that, with the right support and training, teaching assistants can deliver interventions that can help to reduce the demand on specialist speech and language therapists and allow them to focus on the children with genuine complex special needs. It is really important that we get our support right in that respect.

In my constituency I have a wonderful primary special school called Fort Royal, which serves the community extremely well. Tragically, and I think wrongly, that school has lost its specialist assessment centre—its nursery. That is not for any planning reason, but simply because the primary school is so overwhelmed by demand and has a constrained site, that they have had to create space for statutory provision of primary places at the expense of early years and nursery provision. That is not a good situation. I am hearing from nurseries and early years settings across my constituency that they are facing pupils whose needs they cannot easily meet as a result of that.

I am glad that Worcestershire Children First has listened to the concerns that I and others have raised about provision, and has agreed to commission a new specialist assessment centre. In the meantime, there is real pressure in that space, and there are children who are missing out on some of the support that they should be getting. I want to make sure that the local improvement and inclusion plans, which the improvement plan rightly talks about, include the right provision for early years and nurseries.

The improvement plan, which the Minister has been instrumental in delivering, has some very welcome initiatives. Those include the local inclusion plan, national standards, new specialist places—I warmly welcome the decision to approve an all-through autism school in south Worcestershire, which will benefit my constituents—and better support in mainstream education. We have heard some interesting exchanges about the importance of mainstream versus specialist education. The reality is that we need both—and we need more of both. We need support for pupils with special educational needs throughout the mainstream system, and we need more specialist places.

I join the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington in recognising the Minister’s expertise in this space. She is the first Minister I have heard at the Dispatch Box recognising the rising tide of need that we see in the system. That recognition is important as we address the need for specialists.

The improvement plan also talks about the transition to adulthood. Another inquiry that the Education Committee is in the process of concluding is on careers education, information, advice and guidance. In the course of that inquiry we have heard that SEND pupils, and pupils in alternative provision, are not always getting the high-quality careers advice and guidance they need to improve their life chances and get good outcomes. I have seen some excellent examples of this being done well. I recently visited the special Westminster School in Rowley Regis, and saw the work that they are doing there with the Black Country careers hub to support and mentor SEND pupils into careers with employers such as DPD. There was some interesting partnership work going on.

I have a fantastic primary pupil referral unit in my constituency, Perryfields Primary PRU, which I recommend the Minister visits. It was one of the best visits I did as a Minister—it just happens to be in my constituency. The school does a fantastic job of meeting the needs of primary pupils. Regency High School, also in my constituency, does some really good work with children with complex needs, trying to prepare them and support them into work. The Government rightly want to ensure that people with disabilities have the opportunity to work. In order to do that, we need to get the right support and careers advice and guidance to people early.

As we have already heard, life chances for young people with SEND can be hugely improved with the right support. Getting speech and language therapists and teachers of the deaf in early, as well as auditory verbal therapy, is really important. Getting the right teacher training for dealing with children with autism and other conditions for teachers and teaching assistants is vital.

As the hon. Member for Swansea West and the hon. Member for Tiverton and Honiton (Richard Foord) mentioned, there has been a huge impact from the pandemic on children with special educational needs. It is right that we invest in the sector to ensure that that is made up. When I was at the Department, we spent a lot of time, money and effort focused on catching up. If we can spend money on early intervention and supporting children earlier on, it will do more than catching up belatedly. We should continue to look at how we make the case for that.

We have heard about the delays to diagnosis; I spoke in a recent debate on that. I will meet Worcestershire Children First shortly to talk about some of our problems with the umbrella pathway in Worcester. One issue that we came across was that the health system was subjected to a cyber-attack, which has further delayed some of the desperately needed diagnoses for children. Any support that the Department can provide to protect systems’ cyber-security and ensure that those issues do not arise would be extremely welcome.

I have four quick asks of the Minister before I sit down. The first is the meeting that the SEND in The Specialists campaign requested. It sounds as though that is likely to be granted, but I would certainly welcome it. Secondly, I would like a commitment to keep on investing in continuing professional development for mainstream teachers and to see what more can be done through the initial teacher training and early career framework processes to make sure that we recognise that every teacher is a teacher of SEND children. Thirdly, I would like a commitment to working with the Department of Health and Social Care to improve access to the specialist workforce and to make sure that the NHS workforce plan takes into account the rising demand in this space, which the Minister has recognised. Finally, I would like a commitment to looking carefully at early years and ensuring that local inclusion plans include the right specialist support, which can make such a huge difference to children’s life chances.

10:36

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) for securing this important debate on the specialist workforce for children with special educational needs and disabilities. I pay tribute to all the all-party parliamentary groups that work in that area for their important contribution in gathering evidence and raising concerns. I am grateful to every hon. Member who has spoken today.

We have heard a remarkable consensus this morning on the dire situation that faces many families with a child with SEND, on the rapid growth in need, and on the urgency of the need for more support. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) highlighted the link between unmet need and mental health referrals, school exclusions and school non-attendance. He rightly highlighted concerns about the significant unmet need and the trauma experienced by children and their families who live in initial accommodation for asylum seekers across the country.

The hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Sally-Ann Hart) pointed to the impact of the pandemic in worsening speech and language delay. I recognise that issue from my constituency, but it is being raised by primary schools across the country. She also highlighted the important innovative technique of auditory verbal, which, as other hon. Members said, can be delivered at low cost and used by parents and non-specialists, as well as specialist support staff in schools.

The hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), the Chair of the Education Committee, spoke about the importance of intervention in the early years. My hon. Friend the Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) emphasised the significant impact of long delay on families’ ability to access support, and the vital work of teaching assistants, who often go unrecognised and under-rewarded. We also heard from many other colleagues, and there is wide consensus on the subject.

There are 1.5 million children with SEND in the UK. The number of children on an education, health and care plan is up by 50% since 2016. Those with SEND are overrepresented among pupils eligible for free school meals, black pupils and looked-after children. The support for many children with SEND is insufficient. Parents often have to battle for a diagnosis, then they battle again for support, often multiple times at each stage of their child’s education.

I pay tribute to everyone who works with children with SEND: speech and language therapists, SENDCOs, specialist teaching assistants, educational psychologists, specialist teachers of the deaf and of visually impaired people, and many others. It takes dedication and commitment to train as a specialist, who often act as the gateway to the whole of a child’s education. The work of SEND specialists is vital, but it often goes unseen and unrecognised.

Research from the Disabled Children’s Partnership is damning. In response to a recent survey, seven out of 10 parents said that their disabled child’s health had deteriorated because of lack of support. Only one in three disabled children have the correct level of support from their education setting. Only one in seven families have the correct level of support from social care, only one in five have the correct level of support from health services, and only one in five felt that they received the support needed for their child to fulfil their potential.

That overall context disguises a huge diversity of need. SEND needs include autism, ADHD, speech and language delay, vision impairment, hearing loss, foetal alcohol syndrome, cerebral palsy and Down’s syndrome. That means that detailed workforce planning is required. There must be staff working in mainstream education and health settings who can identify and diagnose additional needs as soon as they are evident, available support in every school for children with needs that occur commonly, and specialist support available to draw down for low-prevalence conditions when they occur.

Securing a specialist workforce matters. For mainstream settings to be truly inclusive, teachers must have knowledge of and access to a broad range of specialist skills. Recently, I visited a secondary school and met the brilliant team who support children with special educational needs. Their care and commitment to every single child was inspiring, but they spoke about how hard it is to obtain a diagnosis for children whose needs had not been fully identified earlier in their education because of a shortage of educational psychologists.

Specialist support is vital to keep children in school. Children with additional needs are over-represented in the data on school exclusions and in alternative provision. Ensuring the right support is available can help to avoid exclusions, but for 13 years the Government have failed to plan for the SEND workforce. The number of specialist teachers of the deaf has declined by 19% since 2011, and there are more than 67,000 children on the waiting list for speech and language therapy. There are simply not enough therapists to meet the need. There is a national shortage of educational psychologists, with 70% of local authorities having to rely on agency staff.

Behind those sobering figures are children—children whose needs are not being met, who are unable to access education, whose mental health is declining because they are not properly understood at school, and who are simply disengaging from education. Alongside each child are parents and families—parents who spend hours each week fighting for support, who are being called at work to pick up their child from school, who are suffering the distress of knowing their child is unhappy and not fulfilling their potential, and who, like the parents I met in my constituency recently, feel that they need to give up work so as to educate their children at home.

The shortage of professionals and the lack of support result in unacceptably poor outcomes for children with SEND. The Government recently published their response to the SEND and alternative provision Green Paper. The Opposition welcome the fact that the Minister has listened to Labour’s call for a focus on the early years. Identifying children’s needs early is vital, and the evidence is clear, but the Government have not said how they will build SEND diagnosis and support into an early-years sector that is fragmented and diverse, and within which nurseries in particular take widely varying approaches to inclusivity.

Families who have a child with SEND find it hardest of all to find suitable childcare, but allocating more money to a broken childcare system without reform, as the Government have announced this week, will not deliver a step change in the availability of SEND support, particularly as 5,000 childcare providers have closed since 2021.

The SEND and alternative provision improvement plan has the aim of reducing the number of EHCPs through improving support in mainstream schools, but the Government have not set out a clear plan to achieve it. There is no overall workforce plan. Meanwhile, the Government are expanding the number of special schools, which are needed, but there is weak data on which types of school are needed, and where, and no detailed plan to improve the inclusivity of mainstream schools.

A fundamental weakness of the Government’s approach is that it is characterised by pilots, rather than a national roll-out, and progress is set to be far too slow. Much of the plan will not come into effect until 2025 or 2026, leaving families to continue to struggle in the meantime, and more children going through the whole of their education journey without the support they need.

Children with SEND and their families need a workforce plan to deliver the support they need, wherever they live in the country. A Labour Government would work with professionals and families to deliver a SEND system that works for every child.

10:44

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Sharma. First, I congratulate the hon. Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) on securing a debate on this incredibly important subject. It is wonderful to see so many people in agreement about what is needed, and to have seen the expertise on show today. I hope people can see from our SEND and alternative provision improvement plan the seriousness of the Government in trying to respond to the needs of children with special educational needs and disabilities across the country.

The hon. Member rightly talked about the importance of early language, which we know feeds into children’s overall learning and literacy. He talked about the importance of education and health working together, and I am pleased to say that we jointly published that report, and that the Department of Health is very much working hand in glove with us on the plans. He also spoke about the importance of all-teacher training, which is crucial, early identification and getting a diagnosis, and recruitment and retention. I confirm that I would be delighted to meet with him, and we will talk about dates. I shall touch on some of those subjects in my speech.

I have had the privilege to meet some of the galaxy of professionals, as the hon. Gentleman said, who support children and young people with SEND. Whether they are in early years, schools, colleges, health and care settings, or specialist and alternative provision, those are some of the best visits that I do; it is a joy to meet a group of people who are so dedicated, skilled and passionate about meeting the needs of their children and young people. Hon. Members mentioned investment in the specialist workforce a number of times, and I am keen to engage with all the charities and organisations that have expertise in this issue as we take our plans forward to the next stage.

The SEND and alternative provision improvement plan is meant to support the entitlement set out in 2014 through a much clearer local and national focus on the strategy for how we can plan to meet those needs, whether that is through best practice guides for teachers or local inclusion plans, which mean that each area will have to assess and work out how to meet those needs. The funding has increased by more than 50% over the last few years. The idea is that all those parts of the system will be looked at and will hopefully work better together to meet rising need, improve access and build confidence in the system. A number of Members talked about the fact that there is not enough alternative provision, that there is not enough early years support or that there is something specific in their area such that needs are not being met. I hope that the whole system change that we have set out will go a long way to addressing those issues.

Through our consultation process, we heard too many stories from families who are frustrated by the system and battling to access specialist support. We also heard that reform is not possible without a strong, capable workforce with a specialist skillset. I want to assure everyone that we have taken those comments on board and are working hard to make the reforms a reality.

I want first to talk about the specialists who work so hard to provide extra support. They will be key to ensuring that we can do what we need to do for these young people. The right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell) rightly mentioned the importance of educational psychologists and children getting through the EHCP process. He mentioned that educational psychologists can provide professional advice to children and young people and drive better life outcomes. I completely agree with his emphasis on them. He is also right that I used to be a Treasury PPS; I had fewer opportunities to agree with him then, so it is nice to be able to do so today. We have announced an additional £21 million to train more educational psychologists. We increased the number of people coming through the system in 2020 and, because of the training time, some of those people are coming through now. He is right that this issue will be crucial in ensuring that we can meet needs.

It is also important—I will touch on this later—to improve broader teacher confidence. In the case of something such as speech and language support, if we had better confidence and evidence-based interventions in mainstream settings, we would have a reduced need for educational psychologists and EHCPs.

[John McDonnell]

All of us will assist the Minister through representations to the Treasury about the required early investment that eventually saves money further downstream. I am happy to engage in any lobbying of Treasury Ministers to get that message across, as some of them have not yet fully grasped it.

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank the right hon. Gentleman, but I would slightly disagree with him. When I was in the Treasury in 2019, I worked on the increase, which we are starting to see, in the high needs funding block, which has gone up by 50%. There is also the £2.6 billion that we are spending on specialist places and the £20 million, which I have mentioned, that we have set out for educational psychologists. We have backed a lot of reforms with funding over the past few years, but I will gladly work with him on anything in this area.

We have also committed to working with the Department of Health on a joint approach. The hon. Member for Swansea West talked about engaging with the specialist sector in health, and we are definitely planning to do that. We do not want to reinvent the wheel; we want to work with people who have expertise in this area.

Access to speech and language therapy has rightly been mentioned. I know the hon. Member for Swansea West has a deep expertise in that, and I am particularly passionate about it. In the improvement plan, we announced that we will partner with NHS England to include early language and support for every child pathfinders within our £70 million change programme. My hon. Friend the Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild) mentioned meeting to discuss that, and I would be delighted to do so. The plan for those pathfinders is that they will trial new ways of working to better identify and support children with speech and language communication needs. We are also looking at family hubs. We have support for Nuffield early language intervention in primary schools, and we are putting support in place with home learning environments. In 2020, there were 620 acceptances to speech and language therapy programmes in England. That was an increase of 28% from 2019. We are working with the NHS on a long-term plan, which will look at therapists, and we are also working on the steering group that we will set up this year.

On the mainstream workforce, my hon. Friend the Member for Wantage (David Johnston), whom I am meeting later today to discuss this issue, rightly said that inclusive schools make for an inclusive society. We will be looking at the initial teacher training framework and early career framework, but, importantly, we are setting out best practice guides, starting with autism, mental health and wellbeing and early language, to ensure that the wider workforce all have that specialist ability as well. It is really important to understand different conditions and what can be done.

Members have mentioned that we are introducing the new SENDCO NPQ, which will replace the existing qualification That will be Ofsted and Education Endowment Foundation assured. Members, including the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell), have mentioned teaching assistants. The Chair of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), mentioned his sister. Teaching assistants are vital. We are starting a research project to develop our evidence base on current school approaches, demand and best practice.

[Mr Robin Walker]

Our specialist schools face a challenge because they must have very large numbers of teaching assistants to provide individual support for pupils, so when funding increases to reflect pay awards in the teaching space, it does not keep pace with the increases for teaching assistants. In her conversations with the Treasury, will the Minister ensure that it understands that specific challenge and ensure that, as we see the welcome rise in the living wage, our specialist education sector is supported with the cost of that? They are very real costs and are needed.

[Claire Coutinho]

I will happily go away and look at that, but I would also make a point on the additional funding we have put into the mainstream sector so that it can cope with all sorts of rises in demands and costs.

As well as setting out best practice guides, we are training 5,000 early years special educational needs co-ordinators to help with early identification. One thing I have found from early-years settings is that there is a real desire to know more about this area. That is very welcome.

A couple of Members mentioned the transition stage into adulthood. I have visited some excellent places recently, including Weston College, which is a centre for excellence, and the Orpheus Centre in my own constituency, which is trying to build that sense of independence in our young people as they reach adulthood. We have also heard mention of teachers of the deaf, and I am really delighted that we have been working with the National Deaf Children’s Society to deliver that apprenticeship, which will be very helpful, particularly because it attracts levy funding.

I would like to turn briefly to mental health, which has been a real challenge. We have been working very closely with the NHS on this. It is investing a lot of money for hundreds of thousands of extra children. We know this is a difficult area, which is why one of our first best-practice guides will be on this topic. We will also roll out mental health support teams in schools.

[Geraint Davies]

In mental health diagnosis, it is often thought that someone has a mental health problem when, in fact, they have a speech and language problem. Will the Minister think about ensuring that, when these assessments are made, particularly when people are actually incarcerated, speech and language therapists are on hand to ensure that there is no misdiagnosis?

[Claire Coutinho]

I will happily look at that, and raise it in my conversations with Health. That is quite right. There are lots of other issues as well, particularly autism in girls. A mental health challenge is often diagnosed when, actually, if the underlying autism were addressed, outcomes for young people would be improved.

I will close on this, so that the hon. Member for Swansea West has enough time. I am sure he will want to say quite a lot. Improving access to the right professionals, whether they are teachers, teaching assistants or the specialists we have talked a lot about today is a key part of our plans for reform. I thank everyone who has brought this matter forward for their detailed stories.

[Jim Shannon]

I was hoping the Minister might deal with this—I requested that she share conclusions in relation to the mainland with the relevant Department and with the Minister back home.

[Claire Coutinho]

I would be delighted to talk to the relevant Department and the hon. Gentleman’s Minister about how we can share best practice. I know people rightly care about this area. Everyone here is grateful for the work of all the professionals across the education, health and care systems who work tirelessly to support our children and young people.

10:55

[Geraint Davies]

I have a surprising amount of time, but I will not take all of it. First, I would like to thank everybody who took part in the debate, with consensus about this massively important issue, which affects 1.5 million people across Britain. We welcome the Minister’s sentiments. The point has been made that we need to speed up and deliver for the people who are seeing their children’s life chances ebbing away in many cases, as we speak.

[John McDonnell]

Since my hon. Friend has a couple of minutes, one issue raised by the Minister was the role of the voluntary sector. I know he was speaking on behalf of a coalition of groups, but one issue we have not examined is the funding of those individual organisations. Many of us have concerns about the drying-up of funding from local government to the voluntary sector. We might now need to put that back on the agenda in discussions with the Minister.

[Geraint Davies]

We all know money is tight. As has been said, core funding to local authorities has been cut. It may be that many members of that coalition could do a lot more with additional funding, so that it would go further than it would by giving to it to other organisations. Clearly, that is not a perfect situation. We also heard about the importance of teaching assistants. It is a failure of budget management to reduce the amount of support for teaching assistants, who are on the frontline.

Coming back to the point about timing, voluntary organisations, teaching assistants and existing provision need to be supported now, as we support a strategy to move forward on training a specialist workforce. We are looking at designing what we hope will be a very good system as we move forward in the next couple of years. In the meantime, we need to deliver on the ground. I pay tribute to the 1,800 people who contributed to this debate. There would have been thousands more, if they had known about it. They want to tell us about their child. Everybody looking at their child’s needs is frustrated, saying that Jane, John or whoever, has needs that are not being addressed, and the deterioration is clear.

We have heard examples of cases where the lack of early intervention meant greater intervention at higher cost later. As we have discussed, downstream we end up with lower life chances, lower tax revenues and higher social costs, a lot of which is avoidable. We need to work together to speed up the system. The people in this room and beyond would be happy to lobby Government about priorities and timing, to support the Minister to bring forward more ambitious and quicker action. That would support so many people and make such a difference to their lives. Thank you all.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered a specialist workforce for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

Solar Rooftop Installations

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Westminster Hall

11:00

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of solar rooftop installations.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Sharma. I am glad to have secured this debate about solar rooftop installations. Monday’s report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change left us in no doubt about the urgency of tackling the accelerating climate emergency, and one of the fastest, most effective ways of doing so here in the UK is to step up plans to decarbonise our housing stock. In this short debate, I want to focus on rooftop solar in particular.

There is no doubt that the number of solar rooftop installations has soared in the last decade or so, and I applaud that achievement. I am also happy to applaud this Government’s ambition to increase solar from its current capacity of around 15 GW all the way up to 50 GW by 2030 and then 70 GW by 2035. I am sure we are all united in recognising that achieving and, indeed, surpassing that target is vital.

Solar Energy UK estimates that, of the 15 GW of solar power capacity currently in place, around two thirds is on the ground, and the remainder is on residential and commercial roofs. This morning, I want to make the case for the installation of solar panels on all suitable new-build homes to be made mandatory and to explore how to overcome some of the obstacles to domestic solar.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Lady for raising this issue. In my constituency, we are very keen to endorse this. Does she agree that solar roof panels can enhance the value of a property and that, for large families who use lots of hot water, the savings generated and the benefit to the environment can make the up-front cost worth while?

[Caroline Lucas]

The hon. Member makes my point beautifully. This is a win-win policy: it is good for householders and good for the environment, and it is good to get people’s bills down too. I thank him for that intervention, with which I entirely agree.

Some 80% of the buildings that we will have in 2050 have already been built, and we must work hard to retrofit them with renewables, but the remaining 20% have still to be built, and maximising the deployment of on-site solar generation in new-build homes could be a real game changer. If we are serious about continuing and accelerating what has been achieved to date and generating a successful rooftop revolution, we should be mandating that all suitable new homes come with solar panels as standard. The Government have an opportunity to do that with the new future homes standard.

I echo the recommendation made by the right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore) in his net zero review that things be put in train to ensure that there are no delays to delivery by 2025. However, I would go further and argue that we do not need another consultation on whether to introduce a requirement for new homes to be built with solar, because we know that the British public are already behind the idea. A YouGov poll just a few months ago found that 80% of people across the UK would support the Government in making regulations to ensure that solar panels are the default on appropriate new-build houses. Only 9% were against that idea.

[John Stevenson (Carlisle) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this interesting debate. It feels a bit like groundhog day, because in September 2017 I had a Westminster Hall debate on this very subject. Had the Government followed her suggestion, we would have 1 million new homes with solar panels today. Does she agree that making this compulsory would not only lead to 150,000-plus houses per year getting solar panels but would, in time, lead to price reduction, making it cheaper, and innovation?

[Caroline Lucas]

I pay tribute to the hon. Member for his leadership in this area. I am continuing, I hope, the great work that he did, and I agree with him entirely that there are so many wins. It makes economic sense for people, and it also makes sense for supply chains, because if they had the certainty of knowing that this was going to be a mandatory requirement, they would be able to gear up for it.

As I say, the British public are behind this idea—no wonder when, as the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) has said, such a policy would save homeowners money. The figures that I have are that they would save between £974 and £1,151 a year on average on their energy bills. Solar Energy UK has found that installing a residential solar system on a new build property is 10% cheaper than retrofitting one.

There are a host of MPs from different parties behind this idea, including the hon. Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson), who tabled an amendment to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill that would make it a requirement for every home built after 1 April 2025. I agree with his analysis of the multiple benefits of such a policy, including for the economy, jobs, consumer bills and energy security.

For the avoidance of any misunderstanding, I completely understand—obviously—that not every individual site is suitable for solar panels. In their response to a recent petition on this issue that attracted over 15,000 signatures, the Government cited the importance of being able to tailor requirements to individual sites as one of the main reasons why they did not back the proposal that all new builds should be required to have solar panels as a condition of planning permission. However, clearly nobody is suggesting that solar panels should be put on roofs that are not suitable; it is simply being suggested that they are put on roofs that are suitable.

During an Environmental Audit Committee hearing last week, the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero put forward some other objections to this proposal. I think that they can all be countered successfully and I will take a little time today to try to do just that.

First, the Secretary of State said:

“We know that there are many different ways to skin a cat; decarbonisation, heat pumps, whether ground-source or air, could be a solution. If you start to say this is the only technology you can use and the only solution you use, you are in danger of losing out on a potentially better solution in that particular location.”

That is what he said. However, insisting on solar panels is not akin to saying that they are the only renewables allowed, as the Secretary of State seems to think; in fact, nothing could be further from the truth. On a practical level, having solar panels to generate electricity for a home does not preclude, for example, having an air or ground-source heat pump as a renewable source of heat. Of course, solar panels are often used to help run heat pumps, because they are much cheaper and greener from an energy consumption perspective than using electricity generated by fossil fuel. From a legislative perspective, mandating solar panels on new homes is a bit like insisting that car manufacturers install seatbelts. It does not mean that they cannot also install a whole range of other safety measures.

Secondly, the Secretary of State expressed the concern that insisting on solar panels would push up the cost of a new home. However, under the Government’s changes to part L of the building regulations and, indeed, the future homes standard, house builders already have to incorporate energy-saving and low-carbon heating technologies when they are constructing new homes, which will have a cost attached.

The average price for solar panels is around £5,000; if someone wants batteries on top, the cost is between £1,200 and £6,000, according to the Energy Saving Trust. However, that is a relatively small fraction of the cost of a new home and it would quickly be more than offset by the many benefits and cost savings across the economy, including lower bills for the householder, as the hon. Member for Strangford has indicated. There is evidence that solar panels add value to a house—an average of £1,800. In addition, there are ways for the Government to mitigate any increases for house buyers, which I will say a little bit more about shortly.

Moving on, the next obstacle that the Secretary of State came up with was that mandatory solar panels would apparently cause an additional housing crisis, because of the problems with global supply chains for things such as critical minerals. Again, that argument does not really bear scrutiny. Evidence given to the Environmental Audit Committee earlier this year made it clear that if there was the right political will it was perfectly possible to source materials outside China, where the current problems lie, and that alternatives to silicon exist, such as perovskite, which can be sourced and supplied outside regions of conflict, and at low cost, to the capacity of 30 TW. Our expert witness, Dr Case, the chief technology officer of Oxford PV, said to the Committee:

“It is not a material that would be a problem if we pushed forward with deploying this technology in the future.”

Finally, another reason that the Secretary of State came up was that this proposal would stifle innovation. He said:

“To answer your question as to why we should not just simply mandate solar as the solution in, for example, the future homes standard, my answer would be that as soon as you do that, you take away innovation.”

Again, that argument simply does not stand up to scrutiny. The Government have relied heavily on the smart export guarantee to drive growth and innovation, but Solar Energy UK has made it clear that we will need something more than that to reach 70 GW. Self-consumption makes much more sense, particularly with the economics of solar being where they are now, than selling the electricity that is generated back to the grid.

In its REPowerEU plan, the European Commission explains how the policies that it advocates, including the solar rooftop initiative, will make technologies such as solar more sustainable, as well as focused on innovation right across the value chains. There is also potential for mandatory solar on homes to generate the conditions for a regulatory sandbox, with the industry working alongside house builders to trial new innovations—something that the European Commission is, again, encouraging.

With the UK seeking to build 300,000 homes a year by the mid-2020s, the industry would have a steady market, creating the conditions for innovation, greater efficiency and therefore lower costs. That would be in marked contrast to the stop-start approach that the right hon. Member for Kingswood identified in his net zero review as a significant barrier to the investment needed to meet our renewables target.

At the risk of pre-empting the Minister’s response, I want to say a few words about mandating versus the presumption that future homes will come with renewables baked in. Actually, I just want to say one word: predictability. From successive Governments since 2010 we have had the zero-carbon homes standard, the code for sustainable homes, feed-in tariffs, smart export tariffs, the energy company obligation and green homes grant. It is no wonder the net zero review found that lack of confidence in “inconsistent” Government is a huge barrier to renewables investment. That needs to change. As we know, house builders will build to the regulations.

The Government need to get fully behind solar and to help create the conditions for the industry to grow, for houses to be built with solar roofs by default, and for all that renewable capacity to be fully realised. As the Aldersgate Group highlights, providing regulatory clarity to business is also how to accelerate innovation. Governments should not just rely on markets. They need to continue to play a leadership role.

Rooftop solar installations are a British success story; when it comes to research and development, we are world leaders. Although there have been some ups and downs because of the stop-start policy framework, the rate of installation has rapidly improved in recent years. The Minister knows that last year saw more than 130,000 rooftop solar arrays installed in the UK—more than double the number installed in 2021. The industry estimates that we need a further doubling of the current pace of installation for consumer-scale systems to meet the solar power target set out in the Government’s energy security strategy. To put it another way: we need an average of 4.3 GW per year of solar to be installed, compared with the 3.2 GW installed last year. That is clearly achievable if we step up the pace. In fact, it would be less than in 2011 and 2012, at the height of the feed-in tariff era. As I hope I have successfully argued, equipping every new home with the capacity to harvest the sun’s abundant energy will drive the next stage of solar’s growth.

In the meantime, I recognise that there are still some obstacles, most notably the restricted availability of equipment and an acute skills shortage. I want to say a little about each of those and propose potential solutions.

When the Secretary of State appeared before the Environmental Audit Committee last week he referenced capacity issues in supply chains. I understand those concerns and agree that steps must be taken to diversify and develop regional supply chains, including transparency standards, but that needs to happen anyway, whether or not new homes are automatically fitted with solar. That kind of requirement would spur things on.

Overcoming the skills shortage is equally important. It demands a skills and training revolution—a solar army. The industry estimates that the 70 GW target could take us to 60,000 jobs in the UK. The previous peak was in 2014, when solar had 20,000 employees. But those new jobs need people to fill them. At present, from manufacturing to construction and engineering, from maintenance to data analysis, there is a growing gap between what is required to deliver on solar and the skills base that is coming through our training and education pathways. Solar builders are also competing against the wind and automotive industries for workers.

Requiring solar on all new homes could create an extra incentive to address the bottlenecks and, for example, unleash the huge potential there is to retrain workers from the energy sources of the past, so that they can transition to the renewable sectors of the future. Around 70% of oil and gas jobs have some skill overlap with low-carbon roles, and across Europe there are examples of good practice in using the closure of coal-fired power stations as an opportunity to draw on a new potential talent pool. For example, more than 120 people from a coal-fired power plant near Rome are being given solar panel installation training right now. Others in the industry are setting up their own training centres; Svea Solar opened three in Sweden, Spain and Germany in 2022, for example, training around 600 people.

Here in the UK, London-based Solar Skills is an example of how industry is aiming its efforts at career switchers and secondary school leavers, with bootcamp-style introductory training workshops and online training, as well as interview opportunities with existing solar companies and the potential to progress on to apprenticeship schemes in London-based solar businesses. The Trafford-based Green Skills Academy is doing exactly as its name implies, offering a number of training courses in green technologies, including solar, to support Manchester becoming a zero-carbon city by 2038. From the global accounting firm PwC to the think-tank Green Alliance, there is consensus that more people must be attracted into green energy in order to deliver on the UK’s targets.

I acknowledge that the Government are aware of the problem, but their response to date has been piecemeal. The Minister will know that the apprenticeship levy, for example, is still underspent. I hope he can say something today about an approach that is more joined-up, strategic and comprehensive.

I would also welcome the Minister’s comments on how the Government will be tackling the traditional under-representation of women and ethnic minorities in the energy industry so that, as the sector expands, that does not become more pronounced and exacerbate the skills gap challenge. Working with the sector to ensure that the workforce receives regular training to keep up with rapid technical and legislative changes must go hand in hand with addressing the skills shortage. Will the Minister tell us whether that forms part of his discussions with the solar industry? All those issues need addressing if the pace of rooftop solar installation is to keep up with the demands of consumers and the climate crisis.

My last point is about finance. The organisation 100% Renewable UK has calculated that mandatory solar panels and heat pumps in new homes would add around £8,000 to the cost of a new home, with that amount decreasing as installations gather speed. That is no more than a 4% increase on average new house prices of, as I said earlier, around £180,000. Of course, if they wanted, the Government could offer interest-free loans for this technology. They have already said that they are looking at

“options to facilitate low-cost finance”

to make it easier for retail lenders to drive rooftop deployment. What progress has there been with solutions such as property-linked finance or green mortgages, which have been identified as tools to help consumers with the capital cost of installation, or with regulation, for example, to incentivise low interest rates for green mortgages?

When I asked the Minister about solar at the last Department for Energy Security and Net Zero oral questions, he said he wanted to “go further and faster”. During last week’s Budget statement, the Chancellor proudly proclaimed that he was fixing the roof while the sun was shining. Both of those signs are encouraging, so I hope the Government will back solar in an even bigger way, starting by making it mandatory on all suitable new homes. It is a win-win policy, lowering bills and those all-important carbon emissions, while massively boosting our thriving renewables sector, improving energy security, creating hundreds of thousands of good-quality jobs and helping to level up, all at no cost to the taxpayer. That is what a rooftop revolution looks like, and that is how to ensure targets get delivered.

11:18

[The Minister for Energy Security and Net Zero (Graham Stuart)]

Let me begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on securing this important debate and giving such an impassioned, well-informed, moderate and fair speech. I say that all the more so because I think I chided her the last time we were in this Chamber. She has continued to be a champion for rooftop solar, alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (John Stevenson), and that is a passion that I think we all share.

Deploying commercial and domestic rooftop solar is a key priority for the Government, and it is one of the most popular and easily deployed renewable energy sources, with 1 million homes now having solar panels installed. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion graciously referred to the progress that has been made, and I was delighted to see that. There were 138,000 installations last year—nearly as many as in the previous three years combined. In addition, we have around the same level of solar capacity as they do in the sunshine-radiated country of Spain, and more than that of France, so, on a comparative basis, I think we have been doing pretty well. I have rehearsed this fact many times, but it is always worth sharing that just 7% of our electricity came from renewables in 2010, before we had a Conservative-led Government, and it is now heading towards half. I am proud of that.

However, I agree with the hon. Lady that that is not enough. If we are to fulfil our net zero pledges and Government aspirations in this area, we need to go further. Solar can benefit households and businesses by allowing them to reduce electricity bills significantly and receive payment for excess electricity generated. Warehouses, distribution centres and industrial buildings with high electricity demand can also offer significant potential for solar deployment, which can rapidly pay for itself through energy bill savings. Projects can be installed quickly and relatively cheaply, and that creates new local jobs and contributes to a green recovery.

The British energy security strategy affirms that the Government will aggressively explore renewable technologies, including rooftop solar, to contribute to a net zero-compliant future. As the hon. Lady said, the report out this week, which gives us the latest update on the science, shows even more starkly how important it is that we and others move in a net zero direction. We expect a fivefold increase in solar deployment to 70 GW by 2035. That builds on the 14.5 GW capacity already deployed across large-scale ground-mounted solar and rooftop installations in this country.

The Government already support rooftop solar through the smart export guarantee introduced in 2020, which the hon. Lady referred to. It enables households to receive payment for excess electricity generated, which is then sold back to the grid. In December 2021, the Government introduced an uplift in energy efficiency standards, which came into force in June 2022, and we expect that, to comply with the uplift, most developers will choose to install solar panels on new homes or use other low-carbon technologies such as heat pumps.

On the SEG, I was pleased to see just yesterday that an energy supplier, Good Energy—it is worth naming it for doing a good job—has launched a new market-leading smart export tariff for households with solar panels. It is “Power for Good”, and it will pay 10p per kWh—significantly more than rivals. That is worth highlighting, because it is exactly the kind of competition we want to see for green consumers, and I believe it will also transfer into higher deployment.

In 2022, the Government removed VAT on solar panels and on solar panel and storage packages installed in residential accommodation in Great Britain. We are also providing fiscal incentives to encourage businesses to install rooftop solar—for example, through tax relief and business rate exemptions for installing and generating solar power. We also have the Government’s energy efficiency schemes, such as the social housing decarbonisation fund, the home upgrade grant and the energy company obligation, all of which include solar panels as an eligible measure, subject to certain requirements. That all makes rooftop solar even more accessible.

As I said, whatever our record to date, we want and need to go faster. That is why, just last month, the Government published a consultation on changes to permitted development rights, seeking to simplify planning processes for larger commercial rooftop installations, and introduced a new permitted development right for solar canopies, enabling more solar installations to benefit from the flexibilities and planning freedoms that permitted development rights offer.

We have not stopped there. As part of the consultation on the future homes and buildings standards, which will be published later this year, the Government will explore how we can continue to drive on-site renewable electricity generation, such as rooftop solar, where appropriate, in new homes and other buildings.

Notwithstanding the hon. Lady’s understandable impatience—she says that we should just get on with it—in that consultation and that process this year, we have the opportunity to take forward the arguments that she and my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle have deployed.

[Caroline Lucas]

Unsurprisingly, the Minister sings the praises of what the Government have done so far, but he does acknowledge that it will not be enough. I wish to come back to the industry estimate that we need a further doubling of the current pace of installation for consumer-scale systems to meet the Government’s own target. Why are the Government setting their face against all the arguments that have been amassed about making solar mandatory? He has not said why he is against doing that. As well as having this debate just now, I wonder whether he would be prepared to meet me in the coming weeks so that we can get to the bottom of why the Government do not want to go down that road.

[Graham Stuart]

The hon. Lady anticipates what I was going to say, because I was about to suggest that I would be happy to meet her and discuss these matters. As she said, the Secretary of State gave a number of reasons at the Environmental Audit Committee as to why mandating might not be the right thing. The hon. Lady has addressed some of those by saying that no one is suggesting that solar should be imposed on buildings where it is not suitable. It is about defining that, making sure that it is right and talking to all the various stakeholders. That is why, if we were to choose to go down that route, we would need to go and talk to people and get their inputs as well. I am all ears, because, as the hon. Lady says, we want to drive this forward and to do so in the most appropriate way.

As I said, our record to date is pretty good comparably, but we must consider what we need to do. It is not enough to be in the lead. Looking at various assessments of policy, we may be just about the only economy that is aligned with net zero by 2050 at the moment, but to stay on track we have to move ever more ambitiously forward.

[John Stevenson]

I commend what the Government have done. They have done a huge amount over the past 10 or 12 years, which is entirely to their credit. Interestingly, genuine cross-party consensus is emerging and Members do support what is being suggested. I tabled an amendment to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which did not go to a vote, but if were to come back from the House of Lords as an amendment to the Bill, would the Minister, given that there is quite a lot of support across the House from all parties, look seriously at reconsidering the Government’s position?

[Graham Stuart]

As I said, we are under a legal obligation to meet our net zero obligations, and we have set a target of that fivefold increase by 2035. We are open to argument, but we want to get the policy right. It is not our position that mandating solar on all appropriate roofs is the right policy now, but we are very open, and I am happy to meet the hon. Lady and others to discuss this further. I look forward to developing arguments to get this right, and I am sure that that is what we all want. It is not about an obsession with mandating; we want to do that which will most increase the take-up of solar in an appropriate way.

There is more to be done to meet the opportunities that rooftop solar provides. As an example, we and Ofgem recognise that connection costs and timescales can be a barrier to the deployment of rooftop solar. Currently, rooftop solar projects are required to contribute to any distribution network reinforcement needed to accommodate the connections but Ofgem has decided that, in future, for connection applications received from 1 April, rooftop solar projects will no longer be liable for such costs where the solar capacity is less than the demand on a site. Where the solar generation exceeds site demand, projects would still contribute less than they have previously. As well as reducing connection costs, this should accelerate connection times for rooftop solar.

I understand that up-front costs of solar might prevent households from installing, which is why the Government are working to facilitate low-cost finance from retail lenders for homes and small business premises, aligning with the recommendations in the Skidmore review on net zero. I meet regularly with financial institutions that have signed up to net zero and that are looking to work with us to come up with the right methods to provide the answer to the finance question, which was one of the hon. Lady’s points.

I have very little time left, but let me look down at the questions that the hon. Lady gave me to see whether there is anything to which I can usefully respond. On skills, I entirely agree with her. I am the co-chairman of the Green Jobs Delivery Group. We have refined that, and we have met a number of times. We have reduced the membership to make sure that we are focused on action—action this day, as Churchill would put it—and that we get the data from industry so that we can carry that to the Department for Education and other colleagues to make sure we have the bootcamps, the apprenticeships, the T-levels and the rest of it to prepare people for what will be a significant pipeline of future jobs—good jobs, I hope. I liked the seatbelt analogy that the hon. Lady used, with one thing not necessarily being a barrier to another, but, of course, there is always a limited amount of capital available.

In conclusion, the Government have already taken decisive action to encourage the deployment of rooftop solar. We will strive to push even further over the coming year to make sure that rooftop solar plays an even more active part in meeting our decarbonisation targets. It helps to alleviate energy costs at this time, when energy security is at the top of the public mind, and it reduces reliance on imported energy.

I thank the hon. Lady for securing the debate, for the way that she has conducted it and for the arguments she has put forward. Working in conjunction with my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle, I am sure we can meet and take this matter further.

Question put and agreed to.

11:30

Sitting suspended.

International Child Abduction

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Judith Cummins in the Chair]

14:33

[Judith Cummins (in the Chair)]

Before we start, I welcome members of the public to our proceedings. I remind Members here to err on the side of caution so as not to prejudice any live cases in this country.

14:34

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of support for parents affected by international child abduction.

Once again, it is a pleasure to serve under you this afternoon, Mrs Cummins. The subject matter of this afternoon’s debate encompasses some enormously difficult issues for our constituents affected, many of whom are with us today, arising, as it does, from matters of family breakdown and often a history of drawn-out and sometimes painful litigation.

I think I need to be clear that it is not for us, here in Parliament, to rehash the arguments on either side of individual cases, nor to seek to make any kind of judgment about the merits of the family and sometimes criminal proceedings that have played a part in the situation that our constituents now face. Having served as a magistrate myself, I have confidence in the due process of law in all of our courts, and in the soundness of their judgments in respect of my constituent and others. The purpose of the debate is to seek action to bring about the enforcement of the decisions of our courts in international law where due process has been followed but not consistently respected.

This starts as a matter drawn to the attention of the House in the Justice Select Committee’s third special report of Session 2017-19, which covers the legal implications of Brexit for our justice system. The report highlights the risks of not having effective means to put into effect legal judgments where children have been abducted. As ample evidence and research demonstrate, the longer the duration of the abduction, the greater the negative impact on all concerned, so time is clearly of the essence.

I want to place on record my thanks to other Members —some are here to contribute to today’s debate—in particular my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who has similarly affected constituents and who has taken an active interest in the issue and helped me to understand how we might support our constituents more effectively. I appreciate that, due to a prior commitment relating to the Westminster bridge terror attack, she is unable to be here today, but she has made points that I have incorporated into my remarks. I am also grateful to my hon. Friends the Members for Wealden (Ms Ghani) and for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), and the hon. Members for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) and for Putney (Fleur Anderson), who have approached me to express an interest in the matter because they have constituents affected by it.

In respect of the cases that have been brought to the attention of Members by constituents, it is important to state, without going into the detail of any of them, that due process in the UK has resulted in a parent having custody, sole or shared, of their child, and the children have then subsequently been removed without the consent of the parent—in the case of my constituent to Poland. As Members might be aware, one objective of the convention on the civil aspects of international child abduction, which was concluded at The Hague on 25 October 1980 and is known as The Hague convention, is to protect children in international law from the harmful effects of wrongful removal, or retention away from the parent with whom they should live, and to ensure that procedures are in place to ensure their prompt return to the state of their habitual residence. That convention, which entered into force on 1 December 1983, was ratified by all European Union member states.

Article 1(a) sets out

“to secure the prompt return of children wrongfully removed…or retained in any Contracting State”.

Article 2 states:

“Contracting States shall take all appropriate measures”—

appropriate measures is an important phrase—

“to secure within their territories the implementation of the objects of the Convention.”

It goes on:

“For this purpose they shall use the most expeditious procedures available.”

It is important to note that The Hague convention is not the only legal basis that parents of abducted children may use. We hear Brussels II and IIa often mentioned as legal avenues that can be pursued, which are subject to the proceedings having taken place when the UK was an EU member state. Following the same principle as The Hague convention, it is essentially mutual recognition of the orders of each other’s courts being embodied in the treaties that underpinned membership.

Mutual recognition requires each country to respect the integrity of due process in another’s territory. Given the time-critical nature of child abduction cases, the so-called non-appealability, or finality, of such decisions is an important feature. As a matter of course, the UK respects such judgments, as do almost all the countries that are signatories to The Hague convention.

The Justice Committee’s report states that child abduction is among the issues to which the Brussels II provisions apply. It refers to the very complex relationship with The Hague convention, but also sets out that the provisions take precedence in setting out a legal means to bring about a swift resolution of problems when they arise. The report goes on to set out what type of arrangements there might be and what expectations there would be of member states to ensure that those expectations were swiftly met.

Disappointingly, what is very clear is that many Members present have been contacted by their constituents once it is clear that what should be a transparent, straightforward and extremely swift process has not been followed by the authorities in another country—in my constituent’s case, that was Poland—and they are seeking the assistance of the UK Government to enforce the law. This is not a request to go beyond anything that is already enshrined in law; it is simply a matter of enforcing the law that our international agreements recognise.

While there has been considerable ongoing engagement with the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and Ministers, including meetings with, among others, the Minister for Europe, my hon. Friend the Member for Aldershot (Leo Docherty), and the British ambassador to Poland, the response and assistance from the Polish authorities in particular has been very disappointing. That is particularly true at the local level, where the enforcement of court orders by the police and court-appointed curators is critical to ensuring the successful return of children. Unfortunately, the experience of my constituent is not unique. We can see from the number of Members present and those who have expressed an interest that there appears to be a common theme, particularly where the children have been taken to Poland.

On 26 January, the European Commission launched an infringement procedure against Poland by sending a letter of formal notice to it for its failure to fulfil its obligations under the Brussels IIa regulation. That infringement case concerns the non-conformity of Polish law with the Brussels IIa regulation, specifically to the provisions relating to the enforcement of judgments or orders that require the return of abducted children to their country of habitual residence. So, at EU level, the situation has reached a point where the Commission considers there to have been a systematic and persistent failure of the Polish authorities to speedily and effectively enforce the judgments to which they have committed under international law and order the return of abducted children to EU member states. This is not simply a problem affecting our constituents here in the UK; it is a matter of some moment across Europe.

Separately to this case, a matter has been heard in the European Court of Justice, where a Polish court of appeal asked the ECJ whether, in accordance with the Brussels II provisions and The Hague convention, it could provide an additional stage of appeal, which would in effect result in an automatic delaying tactic in Poland. It would mean that the enforcement of a final return order, which under international law should be expedited, would be at best delayed, on a simple request by one of the various authorities lodging such an appeal.

In January, the response of the advocate general of the European Union argued that, by adopting such a provision, the Polish legislature had exceeded the limits of its competence and had rendered the return proceedings ineffective. That is the source of the enormous frustration that so many of us are facing with our constituents. Due process of law in the United Kingdom and other countries has resulted in an outcome—an outcome where we are not required to judge the merits, but where we can have confidence in the due process of law—and yet that outcome is simply not being respected.

Given these cases before the European Union and matters that have been dealt with in the UK, it is perhaps not surprising that constituents are approaching their Members of Parliament. They have little faith that the due process of law will result in the relevant authorities delivering on the required court orders to return their children to the United Kingdom.

As well as the legal issues that I have set out, we need to recognise that the extensive delays and the enormous cost of engaging this process have placed a huge and sometimes nearly intolerable burden on many constituents. International law, and law in general, is there to ensure that justice is done and wrongs are put right. It is very clear to date that we are not seeing these significant wrongs put right.

The question then becomes: what recourse do our constituents have when they face such a situation? The legalities are very clearcut. It is highly likely that a case that was taken to the European Court of Human Rights would result in a finding against the Polish authorities, but that is of no comfort when the situation of the abducted children remains exactly as it was before, and a compensation payment and note of wrongdoing simply do not bring about anything like the resolution required by the affected families.

The proceedings brought by the European Union are likely to take a long time to reach a conclusion, and they will certainly test the limits of what power the European Union has when a member state simply refuses to abide by a treaty that it has freely signed. In the circumstances, we must pay tribute to the determination of all these parents—mums and dads—who are continuing to fight for the return of their children in a truly remarkable way. Yet we simply cannot treat each as an isolated case when there are so many consistent themes emerging.

I will move to my conclusion. While my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham set out to welcome the support that the Government have provided thus far, the fact is that in the case of her constituent, as well as a number of similar cases linked to other Members, the children are still overseas, despite court orders for their return, and there is still much work to be done to reunite them with their families here.

Poland is an old and important ally of the UK. Our friendship dates back many years, and my constituency and local area is home to many of Polish heritage. The nearby Polish war memorial in the Uxbridge and South Ruislip constituency celebrates our shared military endeavours in world war two. We should not face a situation where a trusted and valued ally refuses to reciprocate the respect that we show to the judgment of their courts, as required under international law. My ask of the Minister is this. We need to take seriously the plight of our constituents and their abducted children and, in the spirit of what is and will remain a strong and friendly relationship with an important ally, place the evidence before their Government and seek swift and just compliance, with the decisions arising from the due process of law, as our international legal framework requires.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Judith Cummins (in the Chair)]

Order. Before I call our first Member, I remind Members to err on the side of caution in order not to prejudice cases that are live in this country.

14:47

[Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you as Chair, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) on securing the debate and setting out, in his usual clear and methodical manner, the issues that we will deal with.

I know that other hon. Members, without crossing any sub judice rules, will want to talk about individual constituents’ cases, and to use them, as I intend to, to illustrate this serious matter. I could not agree more with what the hon. Gentleman said; this is about where proceedings have taken place and due process has been followed, often at great expense, and where, almost invariably, one party is unhappy with the outcome—normally litigation—but resolves that simply by not following the rules and by taking children out of the jurisdiction. The question is: what happens then? Does the system work? If it does not work, how can we make it work?

I wish to focus on a rather specific area of the issue, with its own particular problems. I have given notice to the Minister and the shadow Minister that I will raise issues that specifically relate to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, where there are all the usual problems and more—that is, children being taken out of this jurisdiction to that jurisdiction without the consent of the responsible parent. Perhaps we should call it an unintended loophole as, because the children are taken to the TRNC—if I may call it that—against the direction of the courts, and because northern Cyprus is not a signatory to The Hague convention on child abduction, the systems break down almost immediately. Our Government rightly do not recognise the TRNC, but there is therefore no co-operation, even from stage one, in organising the return of the children, even though, as I say, due process has been followed. I appreciate that there are particular problems with other countries; Poland has been mentioned already. There are always problems in child abduction cases and I think that all Members present today will have dealt with quite a number of them, but with northern Cyprus we do not even get to first base.

The constituency case that has been brought to my attention, which I think illustrates the issue well, is that of a father whose children were taken to northern Cyprus in 2018. The two parents separated in 2011. Residence proceedings began for two brothers who were then aged four and two years old. There were seven years of litigation, which again is not uncommon, because one parent made it as difficult as possible for the court to do its work over that period. There were many court hearings and appeals, and much turmoil, and a final appeal decision in 2018 unambiguously granted custody to the father.

The children, who were four and two at the beginning of the process, were 10 and eight at the end of the proceedings in this country. They were then taken out of this jurisdiction and are now aged 15 and 13. They have spent most of their lives embroiled in litigation or its consequences, because on the day before the final appeal decision was handed down, and in knowledge of what that decision was likely to be, the mother fled to the TRNC with the two children, following a convoluted route that went from Scotland to Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland to Turkey and then finally to northern Cyprus. One can infer from those facts that she knew exactly what was happening and that there was a disregard for the law in this country. The father has not seen his children since and has had no contact with them. He continues to instruct counsel in northern Cyprus, again at further significant personal cost, to try to arrange some visitation rights. However, any attempts to have his children returned to him have encountered immovable barriers.

All the proceedings through all the UK courts are not taken into consideration. I think they will be read for reference, but clearly they do not apply in northern Cyprus. There is likely to be some bias towards resident rather than non-resident parents; clearly, neither the father nor the children is at fault for that. There is also no role for child welfare—that is, it is a pure consideration of rights of visitation. The whole process is starting again, with the time and the costs and everything else that that involves.

A return order is in place. The UK authorities, like the father, are aware of the children’s location in northern Cyprus, but there has been no action. The courts in England and Wales recognise the father as the legal guardian of the children, but they are powerless to bring them home unless the mother co-operates with the return order, which all her conduct so far has shown that she will not, or unless—this is the point of my taking part in the debate—the UK authorities are able in any way to intervene. This is not an isolated case. As I am sure the Minister has been made aware, other parents face a similar ordeal to be reunited with their children with little or no support or guidance on how they to do that.

It is easy to find out, simply by internet research, that some organisations give advice and assistance to help those who wish to leave this jurisdiction to do so, and a number of parents have specifically gone to northern Cyprus because they know of the jurisdictional problems —or fracture—and that it is therefore a place where they can more easily escape the enforcement of judgments by UK courts. The Government should be particularly concerned about that, if there is an organised flouting of court orders that brings the whole process into disrepute. I am told that this has been going on for more than 10 years.

As I have said, there are now a growing number of cases—word gets round, people find out. In my experience, this is quite an unusual form of child abduction. It is going to a location with which the errant parent may have no connection. It is not, as is often the case, somebody taking a child back to their own country of birth, or where they have existing contact links or other family. This is about purely using a jurisdiction that is unlawful in the eyes of many countries, including the UK, in order to escape attention.

To be honest, it is not good enough for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office to say that there is nothing that it can do about this, and, effectively, that is what it says. If we look up the TRNC on the FCDO website, we will see that there is a specific footnote to say that there is nothing that it can do in child abduction cases. That is not satisfactory. It may be that the Minister cannot give a full response today on what legislation or other steps would be needed, but I hope that this is at least the start of a dialogue that will look at that. I would like to hear from the Government what their thoughts are on this matter. I would also like the Minister’s agreement that we can go away and look at the cases of children taken to the TNRC specifically against the rulings of the courts in this country.

Perhaps I should add that there is some below-the-radar contact between the two jurisdictions. There have been examples in serious criminal cases of co-operation between the law enforcement agencies of both countries. I am told that we recognise the qualifications gained through the education system in northern Cyprus. I know that in this country property is advertised for sale in that area and, indeed, that many holiday companies in the UK will offer holidays there as well.

I understand the Government’s dilemma that they do not want to give plausibility or credibility to a country that has been illegally occupied for a number of decades, but the fact remains that it is in people’s humanitarian interests—and, it appears, in commercial interests, as well as, in some cases, law enforcement interests—for business to be done in that way. I would say that child abduction cases are certainly as serious a matter as commercial dealings and recognition of qualifications. It is clear that there are practical means, as well as some legal means, that can deal with this situation.

Before I conclude, let me suggest one or two other things that could be done. The first is that there is no legal aid available for non-Hague convention cases, which seems a double unfairness. Many parents fighting to bring their children home face huge pressures on their finances and, no doubt, some simply cannot afford to continue. Such proceedings can be ruinously expensive and can run on for years—often through deliberate delay in the courts. Unless there is some financial assistance—this should not be a matter of how deep people’s pockets are—it may be that some families will never be reunited and children will remain separated from their parents.

I would also like the FCDO to look at how we engage specifically with individual countries and jurisdictions on the issue. Clearly, there is not a one-size-fits-all answer. It would be useful to have a clear procedure that applies to the TNRC as well as to other countries where there are particular problems. It would also help if there were a more proactive role for Government to work with parents in that position to identify pathways for the return of their children. To prevent what happened in this case, the Government could consider the suspension of children’s passports during residence proceedings to limit the chance of children being taken abroad to avoid complying with court orders.

I will leave my remarks there. I am interested to hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) says. What I am looking for from the Minister is an acknowledgment that there are particular problems with the TRNC and such countries, and that they are not being addressed now. I would like some idea of what the Government think can be done. If there are other matters that can be raised in correspondence after this debate, then so be it, but I would like to see a willingness to engage with myself and my constituent, as well as other people who have been affected in the same way, to address the issue.

The problem has been going on for far too long now. It has been put into the “too difficult” column because of political and jurisdictional issues. However, as a consequence, court orders made in this country are being flouted, and, more importantly, children are growing up without seeing parents because one parent does not like the judgment they have been dealt. I hope we can make some progress today, although I realise it is the beginning, rather than the end, of the matter.

[Judith Cummins (in the Chair)]

Order. I ask Members to keep their remarks to around seven or eight minutes, then we can get everybody in.

15:01

[Mark Fletcher (Bolsover) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins, and to follow the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter). I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), who gave an outstanding introductory speech. He and I have spoken about the issue on a number of occasions, as we are two Members with constituents who are affected. It is an incredibly difficult and complex area. As he alluded to in his opening remarks, my right hon. Friend the Member for Witham (Priti Patel), who unfortunately cannot be in the Chamber, has been incredibly helpful, and has covered a lot of ground on this. We have followed in her slipstream to try and make progress in this incredibly complicated area.

Parental child abduction is a dreadful act that is unfortunately more common than we anticipate in our society. In such complicated and emotive cases, it is crucial that the welfare of children is at the centre of all our discussions. Too often, the legal and moral questions become a battle of wills between parents, and leave a vulnerable son or daughter displaced, manipulated and stranded from the life they were due.

I want to raise the case of my constituent John Fletcher, and his daughter Maya who was abducted by her mother to Poland in 2018. Maya was born in November 2014 and is now eight years old. Despite court orders in both the UK and Poland, Maya’s mother took her to Poland in 2018. An appeal at The Hague found in favour of Mr Fletcher, yet the Polish authorities have not assisted in locating and returning Maya to the UK. He has tried his best to have the court’s decision enforced multiple times since 2019, at great personal and financial cost, but to no avail.

The Polish authorities have not been co-operative and have given spurious reasons for their lack of assistance. Mr Fletcher believes that the Polish authorities are siding with the mother. As a result, Maya is currently residing with her mother in Poland, despite a court order saying she should be returned to the UK to live with her father. That is legally and diplomatically incredibly difficult.

I do not wish to return to the remarks of my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner, and the way in which he outlined the legal situation, but I will touch on two areas. First, I am from Polish stock; my mother’s father was very proud of being Polish and I have always had a great affinity with that country. As has been alluded to in more than one speech, Poland is a great ally of this nation on many fronts. I appreciate that we recently left the European Union—there was a bit of news about that—which has changed the relationship in some ways. Nevertheless, diplomatically, I feel that parental child abduction is one of the great sore points in our relationship with that great nation.

I appeal to the Polish authorities and indeed the Polish Government to take stock and think. If the shoe were on the other foot, would a similar reaction be acceptable? Various legal procedures have been followed by many of our constituents, yet they still are not getting anywhere. I am great friends with the Minister. I know that she is always assiduous in researching every debate that she responds to, but I ask her directly whether the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office is giving enough resources and priority to these cases. It feels to me as though we are finding officials at a very junior level, but the engagement that is necessary at a more senior level is perhaps being denied to our constituents.

I would also like to touch on what it is like emotionally for the parents involved. I mentioned the great financial and personal cost; Mr Fletcher sold his house, moved back in with his parents, moved jobs so that he can work more shifts and has gone out to Poland almost once every six weeks to try to retrieve his daughter. He spends every pound that he can gain on trying to return his daughter. It is really important to say that he loves his daughter very much. She is his world. He has lost not just his marriage, but the thing that came from his marriage that he is so fond of. When we have these debates, we must cover the technical, legal and diplomatic aspects, but we must also remember the individuals behind the stories.

I am not prone to hugging the constituents who come to my surgeries. I think I would have even fewer attendees if it was well known that I did. But I have to be honest; I spent half an hour with Mr Fletcher, who I had met previously, and I had nothing helpful to say to him beyond, “I will try and I will work with other hon. Members who are dealing with similar situations.” In those circumstances, we need to remember those individuals. A hug is meaningless in a surgery unless I can stand here and tell the Minister that this is what we are facing and unless she can go back to her Department and all those officials who speak to the Polish Government and others on a regular basis and make it a priority, because Mr Fletcher really needs our help.

15:08

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins. Thank you for allowing me to speak. I warmly congratulate my London colleague, the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), on securing this hugely important debate. It will not be top of the headlines today, but this issue is of high importance to many families across the country. When we talk about crimes, we describe some crimes as being high in number but low in impact and others as low in number but very high impact, and that is what we are talking about today.

It has been a pleasure to work with the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner on this issue. I hope this debate is a watershed moment for those parents suffering because of this injustice. I hope that it acts as a wake-up call to Government to right a wrong that was done—inadvertently, I believe—over the time of Brexit and can be put right.

We are talking about children who are settled in school, settled in their communities and with their families, including their wider family. I am here on behalf of a constituent who is a wider family member, not a parent. That shows the impact that child abduction has; it impacts not just the parents and the close family, but the wider family.

These children are seeing their mother and father on a regular basis in accordance with what the UK courts agreed and stipulated, but then, without the consent of one of the parents, the other parent suddenly, and illegally, takes the children, or the child, from that stable home and community, and relocates them in another country. Twenty-eight days pass and the children are still not home. At this point, under UK law, such actions become a criminal offence called parental child abduction. The parent knows where their children are and who they are with, and they know that a criminal offence has taken place and that their children have been taken illegally. They try all the legal procedures and remedies one by one, but they have been failed and let down by them, and then they are left without their children, without justice and without help and hope. I cannot imagine the despair felt by those families.

The sad reality is that, in 2021, over 1,200 cases involving child abduction were considered by the UK courts. That is not just a handful of children. But the core problem, and the reason why we are here today, is that Brexit left a gaping hole in the legal framework that is supposed to protect children and parents from this crime and ensure that children return to their settled homes. There is a human right to a family life—a human right to live with your family and, where this is not possible, the right to regular contact, which is being contravened by the situation at the moment.

Up until the withdrawal agreement, families could rely on the Brussels II regulation. That piece of EU law provided greater protection for victims of child abduction by ensuring the reciprocal enforcement of family court orders. In matters of child abduction, if the child is not returned under the 1980 Hague convention, the court in the country from which the child was abducted can make its own finding as to whether return is necessary, which is automatically enforceable in the other country. The process is generally quick and completed within a matter of weeks, and it enables that human right to be upheld, but this vital protection was stripped from the statute book after Brexit and has not been replaced.

The most frustrating thing is that, in the intervening years, the Government seem to have been tone deaf to the problem and have not yet worked out a solution, so I have been reading the views of the current Secretary of State in various pieces of correspondence. What he has said so far suggests that he has not really turned his full attention to the issue or worked hard to get a solution. For instance, he said that:

“The Government is satisfied that the 1980 Hague convention provides an appropriate mechanism to seek the return of children wrongfully removed from the country of habitual residence.”

However, I do not agree with that and neither do victims. It is not what we are seeing from families coming to us. It may be true of certain countries, but there is huge variation in how rigorously the convention is applied. The UK and Australia may be held up as examples of good practice in returning children swiftly, but some countries rarely return children promptly, if at all.

We have focused on Poland today, and I agree that Poland is a strong ally and a friend of our country. I have many Polish constituents who are a valuable part of our community, but Poland seems to be one of the problem countries in this regard. Estimates from Polish family lawyers suggest that less than 5% of all abducted children are returned, and a look at the latest publicly available data shows that the number of returns from Poland is consistently below the global average. Last year, legislation was passed in Poland that allows the return of a child to be suspended if the prosecutor general, the commissioner for children’s rights or the commissioner for human rights issues an extraordinary appeal to the Supreme Court. For whatever reason, there seems to be growing resistance in the Polish courts to return children under The Hague convention, which is why it is important to hold this debate now and to solve the problem before it becomes embedded.

It was very concerning to read the Secretary of State’s view that the UK must respect the jurisdiction and laws of Poland. I agree that we must respect those laws, but the Polish courts need to respect the decisions of our courts and the rights and welfare of British children who have been taken from their home. The Government may well argue that additional protections exist in the form of the 1996 Hague convention, which reinforces the 1980 convention by underlining the primary role played by the authorities of the child’s habitual residence in deciding on matters that affect the child in the long term. In short, it helps with enforcement, but there are big problems with this option too.

First, it is far slower, usually taking around a year to be processed. A year of young children’s lives is a year far too long. Secondly, the 1996 Hague convention allows the country to which children have been abducted to exercise discretion. The destination country may choose to ignore this on domestic policy grounds. Therefore, in certain countries, where there is resistance to returns, the return of abducted children may be near impossible, and that cannot be justice.

The main takeaway from this is clear: ending our participation in the Brussels regulations has left victims of child abductions and our own courts worse off. I end with some questions to the Minister. Why are the Government dragging their heels on reinstating the Brussels regulations? Can she provide any good reasons for their doing so? Will she recognise the serious pitfalls and inadequacies in The Hague conventions? What discussions has she had with countries with a low return rate, such as Poland, and will she recognise the fact that that is the situation? How can we ensure that their courts respect decisions made in our courts? Will she meet hon. Members who are here today, in this debate, to look at the particular cases that we are raising? I implore the Minister to show common sense and justice, and restore Britain’s participation in the reciprocal enforcement of court-ordered child arrangements under—

[Judith Cummins (in the Chair)]

Order. This sitting will be suspended for 15 minutes for a Division in the House, or 25 minutes if two Divisions are expected.

15:16

Sitting suspended for a Division in the House.

15:27

On resuming—

[Judith Cummins (in the Chair)]

Order. The debate may now continue until 4.17 pm. I call Fleur Anderson to conclude her remarks.

[Fleur Anderson]

Thank you, Mrs Cummins.

To conclude, the main takeaway is clear: ending our participation in the Brussels regulation has left victims of child protections and our own courts worse off. There was a legal regulation in place, but that legal regulation now needs to be put into our own UK law. There were supposed to be Brexit benefits, not exactly the opposite. Back in 2017, the Justice Committee said:

“We recommend that the Government should seek to maintain the closest possible cooperation with the EU on family justice matters, and in particular to retain a system for mutual recognition and enforcement of judgments.”

That is exactly we are talking about now.

Surely no one intended the UK’s withdrawal from the EU to remove our country’s ability to protect British children from abduction. The absence of this protection from the withdrawal agreement is yet another oversight in a deal that was far from “oven-ready” and that has exposed families such as that of my constituent, and of the constituents of other Members, to the pain and trauma of abduction. That cannot be left to diplomatic fixes and to the whim of which ambassador will work with us in another country; instead, there must be a legal fix for justice to be seen. It can and must be fixed.

15:28

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) on securing the debate.

During my time as the Member of Parliament for Hendon, I have supported several parents in my constituency in cases of international child abduction. I have raised cases with the Foreign Office, Interpol and even the ambassadors of the countries involved. In every instance, apart from one, eventually we have been successful in getting the abducted children returned to the UK and reunited with their illegally deprived parent.

One case, however, remains outstanding—that of my constituent, Beth Alexander, and her estranged twin sons in Austria. Beth has been fighting for custody of her sons for the past 10 years. More recently, she has been fighting simply for contact, which she has been deprived of by Austria’s courts. I do not suggest that the UK should dictate to the courts of another country how they should run their legal system, any more than I would accept another country dictating to us how to run ours, but I am shocked and indeed disappointed that the Austrian system has permitted this case to perpetuate to the point where my constituent has had little or no contact with her sons for a number of years.

Beth continues to seek access to her children, as all of us here would expect, but the Austrian judge overseeing the case has not only rejected Beth’s legal efforts, but barred all contact between her and her children, saying that that would not be in the interests of those same children. That that should be happening in a fair, civilised country, which has signed The Hague convention on child abduction seems extraordinary.

The purpose of the convention is to secure the prompt return of children who have been wrongfully removed to, or retained in, a contracted state, back to their place of habitual residence. That is in order to protect them from the potentially harmful effects of international abduction by a parent, and to organise or secure the effective rights of access to the child. Regrettably, there seems to be an imbalance in the way in which contracting states apply the convention, and the deprived parent can find themselves confused by the process, sometimes in a country where they do not speak the language, are uncertain what actions they should take, and are at the mercy of foreign systems.

This afternoon, we have heard about different countries, including places occupied by foreign aggressors, in the case of Cyprus. In particular, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) for raising the case of his constituent, Mr Fletcher, and his trials and tribulations. We need to be aware that parents will do anything for their children, and it must be an almost Kafkaesque nightmare to be unable to access their child, because of another state’s legal system.

Contracting states should be required to be transparent in all their actions, but a real risk—as stated by other Members—is that the convention is used by some to protect the abducting parent’s actions. If parents are to have confidence in the fairness of the convention, it is time to consider whether it is meeting its aims and purpose effectively. From the stories we have heard this afternoon, I do not believe that that is happening. The case of my constituent is a tragedy, and it is time that it is brought to an end.

15:32

[Mr Jonathan Lord (Woking) (Con)]

Thank you, Mrs Cummins, for the opportunity to speak in the debate. Like my colleagues, I believe that this is an important topic, and I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) for securing the debate.

First, I welcome the supporters of the group Hague Mothers, who are attending the debate. As we know, the 1980 Hague convention was intended to ensure the quick and safe return of children removed from their primary carers and taken abroad by their non-custodial parents. In that regard, the convention is highly effective. Hague Mothers, however, points out that about 75% of the parents brought before the courts are mothers with the primary care of their children, most of whom are fleeing domestic abuse or trying to protect their children from abuse.

There are limited options under the convention for mothers to oppose orders for the return of their children, and in most cases the courts decide that the child must return. The only defence available under the convention that could apply to domestic abuse is the article 13(b) defence that provides that the court may not order return of a child if the person opposing return establishes that

“there is a grave risk that his or her return would expose the child to physical or psychological harm or otherwise place the child in an intolerable situation.”

The courts of most contracting states interpret what constitutes a “grave risk” very strictly. Most cases of domestic abuse are not considered to give rise to a “grave risk” or “intolerable situation” for a child. In particular, it is almost impossible for mothers to prove that coercive and controlling behaviour, which has rightly been a criminal offence in England and Wales since 2015, constitutes the basis for an article 13(b) defence. Despite the Domestic Abuse Act 2021 stipulating that children who see or experience the effects of domestic abuse are victims in their own right, those same children can be and are returned to the country and often the care of the abusive parent.

Mothers escaping domestic abuse across borders are therefore left in the terrible position of having to choose whether to return with their children or to send their children back on their own. Most mothers decide to return and face continued, or worse, post-separation abuse; sometimes, they face destitution, homelessness, isolation or even criminal proceedings. They frequently have little or no family, social, financial or legal support, which provides a perfect context for continued abuse.

I want to bring the attention of the House and the Foreign Office to the case of my constituent Nataly Anderson, who is appealing for assistance from the UK Government in bringing her twin boys safely to the UK from Croatia.

[Judith Cummins (in the Chair)]

Order. I take it that the hon. Member is not referring to a live case in UK courts.

[Mr Lord]

It is not a live case.

Nataly Anderson says that her British-Croatian twin boys, who are now nine years old, were taken back to Croatia on the pretext of a holiday by their father in 2016, just as the family had been establishing their life in England, including schooling for the children. She requests that the British Government escalate her complaint about Croatia with the bodies of the European Union, and warns that parental alienation claims can be used to cover up child abuse, including child abduction, to award custody to abducting or abusive parents, and to stop mothers and children moving to locations where they would have more favourable living conditions. She believes that is what has happened to her and her children in Croatia. She believes, further, that mothers and children who are not protected properly from domestic abuse have a human and legal right to asylum in another country, and that those rights should be upheld and enforced. She asks that the phenomenon of mothers and children fleeing across borders to escape from abuse be considered a humanitarian crisis and advocates for the approach advanced by the Hague Mothers project, as one that could be easily implemented and would do much to support the safety and welfare of mothers and children in this situation.

In her own words, Nataly Anderson says:

“This is now a child welfare matter. These are vulnerable children and it is unconscionable that the Croatian authorities have been violating their rights, wishes and welfare needs for so long. I am appealing for the urgent assistance of the UK Government in bringing my children safely home.”

She requests that the British Government raise the question of her case with all the relevant bodies of the European Union.

I have been trying to help and assist my constituent. I am grateful to the Foreign Office and the Passport Office for correspondence I have received. I know how assiduous our Foreign Office, embassy and consular officials are and often can be, but I appeal to the Foreign Office Ministers to have one further look at this case. I will not take up any more time today, but this is an important debate and I have been interested to hear about the other cases that hon. Members have brought forward today.

15:39

[Ms Anum Qaisar (Airdrie and Shotts) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairwomanship again, Mrs Cummins. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) on securing this important debate. His contribution was incredibly reasoned and he set a very measured tone for the debate, which appears to have cross-party support. He referred to his constituent and the disappointing engagement from the Polish authorities. My thoughts are with the family and the child; I sincerely hope they are reunited.

I have been taken aback and moved by the stories raised by hon. Members from across the House about the cases that their constituents have faced. The Public Gallery is pretty full as well. We must do whatever we can to ensure that we prevent these horrific crimes. Although I do not have children, I can imagine that child abduction is every parent’s worst nightmare, and that nightmare is worsened when there is an international dimension.

As the hon. Members for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), for Hendon (Dr Offord) and for Woking (Mr Lord) highlighted, the horror of an abduction is only intensified by the serious logistical and legal difficulties that parents face in being reunited with their children—be it the need to seek consular support or reliance on the legal system of a different country. The hon. Member for Bolsover was completely correct when he said that we cannot lose sight of the fact that children and individuals are at the heart of this issue. I genuinely hope that John Fletcher is reunited with Maya soon enough.

This is a global issue, impacting families across the world. Each abduction, regardless of where it occurs, is one too many, and causes untold levels of suffering and misery. The charity Missing People estimates that the approximate number of children who go missing in the UK each year is 215,000. However, that is only a snapshot of a global problem. Many countries, particularly those in the global south, do not have readily available statistics. This is an under-recognised issue, which is difficult for Governments across the globe to monitor.

The transnational nature of these crimes means that they are challenging to deal with effectively. Save the Children produced some incredibly alarming and distressing—but at the same time, vital to know—statistics about the scale of global child trafficking. That is not necessarily what we are talking about today, but it is important to highlight. The charity estimates that at any given time, as many as 1.2 million children are being trafficked, of which two thirds are girls. Many of those children are trafficked for use in forced labour or sexual exploitation. One missing or abducted child is one too many. This international crisis warrants a co-ordinated and international response.

Although we are here to discuss support for parents on international child abduction, we cannot ignore the fact that the problem is exacerbated by Putin’s illegal war in Ukraine. Just last week, we reached an extraordinary milestone, whereby the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for war crimes in Ukraine, including the unlawful deportation of children from Ukraine to Russia.

The anguish that is caused when a child is abducted is unimaginable. We must therefore use any available mechanisms to put an end to these abhorrent practices. Although we have conventions designed to tackle them, particularly The Hague convention on international child abduction, we still do not have universal adoption and ratification. Currently, only 101 countries have signed The Hague convention. As an international approach is needed, it is vital to ensure that countries that have not signed the convention, such as China, Kenya and Nigeria, do so.

If countries fail to sign up, families living in the United Kingdom lose the legal mechanisms to secure the prompt return of their child. As the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) stated, that has a significant impact on young children who are in the middle of custody battles between parents. We have recently seen that in Scotland, where a father has been unable to secure the return of his children. They are believed to be in north Cyprus, which, as non-signatory nation, has no obligation to co-operate with international authorities.

As the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) stated, there is a wider impact. These are children who have lives here: they go to school here; they have friends and family here. The hon. Lady said that she was raising a case not necessarily involving an immediate family member, but where there had been ramifications on the wider family.

I urge the UK Government to use their position in the international community to push for the universal ratification of the convention. It is not a fix-all solution; some argue its biggest shortcoming is its failure to anticipate that many abductors will be victims of domestic violence fleeing their abuser. However, any shortfalls merely emphasise the need for Governments to implement robust legislative measures that would ensure that victims of domestic abuse are not punished for fleeing an abusive relationship, and not accused of child abduction or abandonment because they decide to remove themselves and their child from an abusive environment.

The hon. Member for Woking also raised the issue of abusive relationships and domestic abuse, and I hope the Minister will acknowledge that in her response. He spoke about Nataly, and her children, who were taken to Croatia under the pretence of a holiday. As I have said to other Members, I sincerely hope that they are reunited.

England and Wales have specific legislation designed to tackle international parental child abduction. In Scotland, it is covered by its own Act—an Act to which the Scottish Government are currently considering amendments. The SNP remains committed to the need for reform in this area to ensure that parents of abducted children have the support they so desperately need, which is so important. It was distressing to hear the hon. Member for Hendon raise the case of Beth Alexander, who is not allowed contact with her children in Austria. This is clearly an issue that is impacting people from all across these four nations.

We must do all we can to eradicate child abduction, especially when there is that international impact. I am glad that we are here today as cross-party colleagues pressing for action in this area. This debate has been incredibly important in raising an often under-recognised issue that has devastating consequences for families.

15:47

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Mrs Cummins. I start by thanking the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) for securing this important debate and bringing his constituent’s distressing case to light. I welcome the productive contributions that have been made throughout the debate, and am reassured by their positive tone.

The parental abduction of a child is one of the most painful experiences any parent can endure. It is a hugely distressing matter for the family members affected. On behalf of the Labour party today, I send my heartfelt condolences to anyone who has suffered this ordeal, particularly the constituents whose cases were raised by the hon. Members for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher) and for Woking (Mr Lord).

As the leading charity in this area, Reunite International, sets out so eloquently,

“The modern world is increasingly interconnected.”

With the development of affordable international travel and new methods of instant communication with people across the world, it is only natural that relationships are becoming more and more international. Many children are born to parents who hold different nationalities, and some children are born in a country that is not the country of birth of either of their parents. Whole families relocate to new countries to explore new opportunities, and some parents end up living in different countries from their children for a variety of reasons.

Unfortunately, while this greater global interconnectivity can have its benefits, it also has its challenges and risks. For many parents, the increasingly international nature of their lives greatly adds to the unusual relationship tests and strains we all recognise and know—for example, when parents cannot agree on where they should live, when moving involves one parent giving up a promising career to support another, or when one parent does not want to move abroad at all. Naturally, for some, these trials and tribulations will eventually become too much, and relationships will break down and come to an end.

These situations are undoubtedly incredibly difficult, but in the majority of circumstances, the partners will come to a mutual understanding—a compromise—on who should accept the day-to-day responsibility of the child and what role the other parent will play in the child’s life. If there is an irreconcilable dispute, it might in some cases be necessary for the courts to decide what arrangements should be put in place, bearing in mind the age of the child and what would be in their best interests. In thankfully very few cases where no compromise can be reached, one parent may resort to taking unilateral action to forcibly move their child to a different country, without the consent or knowledge of the other parent. That is what we consider as international parental child abduction.

It is quite difficult to gauge just how prevalent this problem is in the UK today, although some data does exist from the last few years. For instance, using freedom of information requests, the British charity Action Against Abduction found that 227 children were abducted by their parents in 2016-17 in England and Wales alone. As for international child abductions, the most recent statistic I could find from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office comes from 2013-14—almost a decade ago—when 553 unique international child abduction cases were logged in the course of the year. However, it is difficult to get numbers on the scope of the problem today, which is disquieting for an issue of this importance.

To get a better sense of the problem, I spoke to the British charity Reunite, which informed me that it had logged 515 new abduction cases in 2022. Although that charity emphasises that that was not a perfect measure of the scope of the problem, it makes it clear that parental child abduction is a serious problem that requires a serious response, not only by us as a country but with our international allies.

Because there is no such thing as a “typical” family, there is also no such thing as a “typical” child abduction case. Yet in the broadest terms, an international parental child abduction occurs when a parent or other connected adult takes a child into another country against the wishes of another person who has a parental relationship with the child. That presents a unique enforcement problem, because the child is now in a country with different laws from those in the country that the parent who is making a claim to have them returned lives in. The hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner emphasised this situation in relation to Poland, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson). These cases are serious and unique and require great care.

Luckily, the international community came together and, in an inspiring example of the international rule of law, created The Hague abduction convention in 1980. The convention standardises across countries rules for dealing with cases of child abduction and streamlines the procedure to reunite children with the parent who should have parental responsibility. Of course, as we have heard throughout today’s debate, there are problems with that framework. Those were set out by my hon. Friend the Member for Putney and also mentioned by the hon. Member for Hendon (Dr Offord). Hon. Members have today presented the most serious problem: that too few countries have fully ratified The Hague abduction convention as we have done in the United Kingdom. Moreover, the specific rules regarding when a child becomes “habitually resident” for the purposes of the convention are not easy to understand and not always clearly applied. In some places, they are not able to be applied at all.

We heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) about his constituent whose partner took their child to occupied north Cyprus, which is rightly not recognised as a state in international law and seems to have become a haven for those wishing to avoid law enforcement. My colleague suggested a number of measures, which I would ask the Minister to consider, but perhaps there needs to be a strategy for dealing with territories, such as north Cyprus, that are not internationally recognised as states.

Another problem, of course, lies with the support networks available to mothers and fathers who find themselves at the heart of child abduction cases. The FCDO can provide much-needed support to British nationals affected by international child abduction. Consular officers can advise left-behind parents of the most effective ways to contact the legal authorities of the country in question and make them aware of their parental responsibilities. Should that fail, the FCDO can liaise with local authorities and, with the permission of the UK courts, present authorities with court orders served in the UK. Consular officers can also recommend lawyers who may be able to support the parent, should the case require specialist legal advice. Finally, consular officers can put families in touch with trusted organisations that have become expert in this area and can offer specialised support and mediation services. Yet we must remember the limitations of what support FCDO consular officers can offer.

Although the FCDO can offer support and advice, we must remember that it is not a law enforcement body and nor can it offer its own legal advice. Similarly, although the FCDO can draw the attention of foreign courts to legal orders issued in the UK, it is unable to enforce these orders in foreign courts. Likewise, it is unable to compel foreign jurisdictions to accept or comply with legal obligations, whether in national or international law. This leaves a gaping hole in our national response mechanism to these types of events, particularly when children are taken unlawfully to a country outside The Hague convention.

With that in mind, I look forward to hearing what the Minister feels the Government can do to improve the support that we can offer parents and families who have a child that has been abducted. What more can we do as a country domestically to support parents in this situation? Might the provision of additional funding to wonderful charities such as Reunite and Action Against Abduction, who are so brilliant in this area, be part of the solution? Should the Government be doing more with our international allies to revisit The Hague convention and update it, in order to close its loopholes and better reflect the realities of modern family life? Could the Government put more effort into increasing the ratification of The Hague convention to ensure greater global coverage of its provisions? Finally, will the Government follow Labour’s lead in calling for a legal right to consular advice for British nationals in distress that would replace the current discretionary consular advice?

I thank colleagues from all parties for their thoughtful and measured contributions to this serious debate. As we have heard many times today, for a parent there is nothing more important than knowing that they will have continued and safe access to their child, whatever country they or their child find themselves in. The current international efforts to achieve this are laudable, but we all agree that more can and must be done to prevent more families from suffering the enormous pain of child abduction.

15:56

[The Minister of State, Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) for securing this debate on an important and difficult subject. I thank him for the work he does with the important and effective all-party parliamentary group for children.

I am grateful to other hon. Members for their contributions; they have represented their constituents with impassioned speeches. I fear that too many colleagues have felt as frustrated as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher). Indeed, I have had a number of such cases in my time as an MP.

I will try to respond to all the points that have been raised, but to protect the interests of individual children I will limit my comments to Government actions so as not to share any personal information about specific cases. Hon. Members should continue to contact Ministers if they wish to discuss their individual cases in more detail, and my officials are always available to discuss details privately, or in writing if that is more appropriate.

International parental child abduction is heartbreaking and highly distressing for all those affected, and the UK Government take it extremely seriously. We are a party to The Hague convention of 1980 on the civil aspects of international child abduction, and we operate the convention with over 75 countries in order to facilitate prompt returns. Ultimately, of course, decisions about returns are a matter for the courts in the country to which the child has been taken. Such decisions will depend on a number of factors, including habitual residence, as colleagues have set out, and whether the child objects to the return. Decisions about the long-term future of the child are to be made where the child is habitually resident.

The UK has clear measures in place to seek to prevent international parental child abduction in the first place. Concerned parents can get a specific issue order or prohibited steps order to prevent a child from being taken out of the country. Our courts can order the Passport Office to temporarily not issue a British passport to a child at risk of abduction, and our police can issue a port alert if a parent is concerned that their child is likely to be taken abroad without their consent within the next 48 hours, and that will remain active for 28 days.

Our charity partner, Reunite International, which we part-fund, has published prevention guides to help parents to navigate the options and support available to them, and those have been translated into several different languages to assist families across the UK.

When a child with British links has been abducted and taken abroad, our consular staff across the world are trained to provide ongoing support to those involved—work that is incredibly challenging for them. I have met many on my travels and they are, to a man and woman, exceptional in their commitment to try to support and find solutions. They are able to provide families with practical advice about travel, local customs, services and procedures. Of course, they can put families in touch with partner organisations, such as Reunite International, with which we work closely, to offer such specialised support. Our staff can also facilitate in-country contact with relevant authorities and courts to ensure, for example, that those courts are aware of any UK court orders. Where appropriate, the FCDO can officially “express an interest”—that is a formal term—in a case with the relevant authorities in-country.

As colleagues have mentioned, where a child has been abducted to or retained in a country with which the UK operates the 1980 Hague convention, and an application for the child’s return is made, the relevant UK central authority will liaise closely with foreign counterpart central authorities and the applicant until the final decision on return has been made.

As the hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) has highlighted, the FCDO is not a law enforcement body, so there are limits to the steps that we can take. We cannot interfere in court proceedings in another country and we are unable to compel foreign jurisdictions to enforce UK court orders. Indeed, as my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon (Dr Offord) outlined, it would not be appropriate to be seen to be trying to influence foreign courts by expressing a preference for a particular outcome. We cannot physically rescue a child from abroad, or get involved in any illegal attempts to bring a child back to the UK.

We recognise that not all countries with which we operate the 1980 Hague convention operate it effectively. There can be lengthy delays in the return of abducted children to the UK, and in those cases we lobby Governments at the most senior levels, and make it clear that the UK expects both the spirit and the letter of the convention to be enforced.

The hon. Members for Enfield, Southgate and for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter) raised the issue of north Cyprus in particular. I am afraid that the UK does not operate The Hague convention with north Cyprus, with which we have no formal relationship, and it does not share any information with our high commission on minors subject to UK court orders. Our high commissioner is therefore unable to ensure that those minors are safeguarded.

If the UK does not operate the 1980 Hague convention with a country to which a child has been abducted, the FCDO is still able to provide some assistance. We can, of course, provide a list of English-speaking lawyers in-country and can give basic practical information about the customs and procedures of the country to which the child has been taken. If necessary, we can support and offer guidance on finding accommodation locally as parents try to find solutions. As I have said, where appropriate, the FCDO can express an interest in the swift resolution of court cases, but we cannot interfere with court proceedings.

The FCDO can also help with contacting the relevant in-country authorities and organisations when the left-behind parent is overseas. If that parent would like the FCDO so to do, it can contact the relevant UK police force to ask about progress in tracing an abducted child and find out whether they have contacted the police overseas to assist in finding that child or children.

I will try to tackle some of the specific issues about certain countries that have been raised by hon. Members, but only in a general sense, without highlighting particular cases.

[Andy Slaughter]

I listened carefully to what the Minister said about TRNC, and I am not sure whether she said that the police would talk to the law enforcement authorities there. As I have said, there clearly has been co-operation in a number of respects. Can she say any more about those contacts? I understand that we are not going to establish diplomatic relations, and I am not advocating that, but at the moment the prospects are bleak because there is literally no redress. Can she shed any more light on what can be done?

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

In answer to the hon. Gentleman’s specific question, the reality, I am afraid, is that we do not have a relationship because that country is not formally recognised. We do not have any formal mechanisms with which to work.

In response to questions about specific countries, and without referring to specific cases, Poland is a close partner in many ways, as my hon. Friend for Bolsover set out, and especially in recent months as it has supported Ukraine following Russia’s illegal invasion. We are working very closely together in lots of matters relating to that. It is one of the countries with whom we have the largest number of Hague return orders, and we recognise that Poland has not enforced the 1980 Hague convention return order on several occasions. As affected hon. Members will know, we have raised that with Ministers in the Polish Ministry of Justice at every available opportunity, and we will continue to do so. Indeed, the Minister for Security raised those cases with the Polish Ministry of Justice just a few weeks ago. We are also planning exchanges between our experts to share knowledge of the management of Hague return orders, and we are co-ordinating with other countries that share our concerns about Poland’s enforcement of return orders.

A number of Members have raised the question of Brussels II. I am afraid the reality is that Brussels II does not provide a cure-all for these troubling cases, and current EU member states are still not able to solve similar cases through that mechanism. The reality is that we have non-return situations, which are difficult to manage.

We support countries that are struggling to enforce the convention owing to capacity constraints. For example, today in Brazil, our consular staff, along with a representative of our judiciary and staff from the Central Authority, which represents England and Wales, are participating in a knowledge-building conference on parental child abduction, which we are part funding. Delegates from the US, Canada, Australia and the UK will share knowledge that will help Brazilian judges to navigate parental child abduction cases and bring them to a swift conclusion. That builds on work we have undertaken over the past six months with our charity partner, Reunite International, which has provided training in mediation between parents as an alternative remedy to formal court processes for judges in Brazil.

In Japan, UK officials recently met legal representatives in a successful Hague convention return case, as part of our ongoing commitment to learn lessons on how different countries undertake Hague 1980 proceedings, in order to improve the support we provide to left-behind parents and to try to resolve more cases as needed.

Supporting British nationals overseas remains the primary public service of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. We continually seek to improve the professionalism, scope and nature of our assistance, in accordance with the Vienna convention on consular relations, and we compare our consular services with those provided by comparable countries.

The hon. Member for Hammersmith asked whether there is legislation we should consider, and I will ask my ministerial colleague, my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (David Rutley), within whose portfolio the matter formally sits, to invite Members with concerns to perhaps discuss it with him at a policy level in due course.

Our expert consular staff at home and abroad work extremely hard to support victims of parental child abduction, and we take every case very seriously. We recognise absolutely that the situation is very distressing for those involved, and our staff work with empathy and do their very best to offer the help needed to resolve these cases as quickly as possible.

Consular staff are sadly not lawyers, medics, police detectives or social workers, but they try to do all they can to ensure that British citizens have the information and support they need to help them to deal with the incredibly difficult situation that they face. They use their expert knowledge of the countries in which they operate to try to help parents to navigate new legal systems, signpost them towards support services and ensure that ongoing support is provided to left-behind parents.

I know that, for every parent still waiting for the safe return of their child, this is an impossibly difficult situation. The FCDO, with all the resources we have, will continue to do what it can, in-country and with other countries equally frustrated by non-compliance with The Hague convention, to try to reduce the number of cases still on the books and bring those children home.

16:08

[David Simmonds]

May I start by sharing an apology and a thank you for the patience shown by the many who have come to listen to today’s debate? We have had to break off a number of times to vote, but it is great that Members have returned to the Chamber and continued to engage fully in proceedings.

I also say thank you to the hon. Member for Hammersmith (Andy Slaughter), my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mark Fletcher), the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson), my hon. Friends the Members for Hendon (Dr Offord) and for Woking (Mr Lord), and the hon. Members for Airdrie and Shotts (Ms Qaisar) and for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) for their contributions to the debate. I was heartened to hear from my hon. Friend the Member for Hendon that he had enjoyed some success in supporting constituents with returning abducted children to the UK. Particularly when dealing with such a difficult topic, it is really positive to hear examples of that.

The hon. Member for Enfield, Southgate referred to the challenges for parents where children have been removed to countries that have different laws from those that apply where the parent is habitually resident. In many of those cases, and certainly in my constituent’s case, the country does not have different laws; it is part of an international legal framework, intended to mutually recognise each other’s orders. However, the challenge is that there are examples of countries—some of which are part of that framework, such as Croatia, Austria and Poland, and some of which, such as the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus, are not—that are simply not fulfilling their obligations.

Due process is totally clear: a court has found in a particular way, and the challenge now is ensuring that the outcome of that legal process is respected. As the hon. Member for Putney referenced, some countries, such as the UK and Australia, are seen as exemplars for respecting their international obligations and ensuring that children are returned, usually within a six-week period of the order needing to be enforced. In Poland, the rate is around 5%, which demonstrates that there is a significant challenge, which is a consistent theme running through the cases of many in the Public Gallery today.

I will conclude by addressing a point that a number of Members have highlighted: the enormous burden that this situation places on family members. We have heard lots of examples of people, including my constituent, who had to sell their homes to finance the legal battle simply to enforce a legal judgment that should be respected under international law. We have heard examples of the effect of that on people’s health and wellbeing, and on the wider family, grandparents and extended family members.

What is clear is that, while my constituent has my absolute deepest sympathy—as a father of young children, I feel for him—he does not need my sympathy. What he needs is for us to ensure that the political and diplomatic challenge of persuading countries that are our allies to carry out their obligations under international law happens. We must not allow a situation to persist for a moment longer where too many parents, who may be part of shared custody arrangements, have their children unjustly deprived of their loving care.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the matter of support for parents affected by international child abduction.

16:11

Sitting suspended.

Family Court Reform and CAFCASS

Wednesday 22nd March 2023 Westminster Hall

16:30

[Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service and family court reform.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Cummins.

Family breakdown is never easy. Disputes are inevitable and often bitter. Children are caught in the middle of a tug of war between parents. In those conflicts, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, or CAFCASS, plays a key role. Child arrangements orders, prohibited steps orders and a host of other key rulings in the family courts often hinge on the reports provided by CAFCASS and the assessments carried out by its workforce. CAFCASS is in desperate need of reform, and it requires funding to protect children subject to care proceedings.

The Criminal Justice and Courts Services Act 2000 stated clearly the role of CAFCASS. First and foremost, it has a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children affected by family courts proceedings, yet it is falling far short of the standards required. In 2020, the Ministry of Justice published a damning report on the performance of CAFCASS. The findings were shocking, including failures running deep into every area of the organisation’s work, poor handling of domestic abuse allegations, wilful disregard of children’s voices and an obsessive pro-contact culture that puts unfit parents’ demands ahead of children’s best interests. That was the Government’s own verdict.

The reality is that that is simply an exacerbation of a problem that has engulfed the family courts since 2010. The Government’s cruel decision to remove legal aid from the majority of such cases has led to ugly and disordered scenes in courtrooms nationwide, as parents are forced to represent themselves without sufficient support or understanding of how the system is supposed to function.

Diminishing access to legal aid has only caused further delays in the courts, and denies victims justice. To address the backlog, the Government should properly fund civil legal aid and restore legal aid for early advice for family cases, so cases can be resolved more efficiently.

[Bambos Charalambous (Enfield, Southgate) (Lab)]

There is often a financial disparity between parties. Sometimes, parties use the issue of parental alienation to drag things out longer and to add more expense to the disadvantaged party in those proceedings. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is time that CAFCASS, the courts and judges were better trained in the issue of parental alienation and how it is used as a tactic to prevent court cases dragging on longer than they need to?

[Taiwo Owatemi]

I absolutely agree, and parental alienation is an issue I will come to later in my speech. Reform is desperately needed.

Will the Minister outline what steps the Ministry of Justice is taking to increase the funding of legal aid? Will he update us on when we can expect the civil legal aid review?

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

The hon. Lady is right to bring this debate forward and to highlight the disadvantages of legal aid. Does she agree that when it comes to ensuring that every person in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland has the same opportunity of representation, the Government must step in to support those people who do not have money and cannot pay for the legal representation to which they are entitled? That should happen not only in England and Wales; the Minister should endeavour to have discussions with the devolved Administrations in Northern Ireland and Scotland so that people there have the same legal aid opportunities.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

Absolutely. Proper legal representation needs to be available to everyone in the United Kingdom.

The large backlogs in the family court are creating delays and uncertainty for families and, most alarmingly of all, for vulnerable children. No child should have to witness this sort of conflict, anger and grief played out before a judge. The children caught up in these cases are now suffering as a result of constant failings in leadership from Ministers in this Government.

The most damning aspect of our family court system is false accusations of parental alienation. Too often, as my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous) says, a wealthy parent can, in effect, purchase custody of a child through certain legal loopholes. Denounced by the United Nations as a “regressive pseudo-theory”, parental alienation is an argument whereby one parent claims that another is making false abuse claims or is otherwise manipulating the child’s view out of hostility towards their ex-partner. The concept has little to no evidence to support it, but is none the less often accepted, resulting in children being placed with an abusive parent.

I pay tribute to the team at the University of Manchester, whose recent research has revealed the dark and rotten roots of that commonly employed tactic. It was invented 40 years ago as a means of aiding perpetrators to cover up the physical and sexual violence to which they had subjected their spouses and children, yet in Britain the strategy is being given free rein in our family courts. Not only are utterly unqualified individuals being allowed to testify as supposed experts in such cases, but CAFCASS has overseen the rise in such false allegations.

I have spoken with many constituents about their treatment by the family courts. One case summarises everything that is wrong with CAFCASS: the dangers of parental alienation and the risks posed by a blind insistence on contact even when a parent is evidently unfit to have any responsibility over a child. My constituent married a foreign national a decade ago. They had one son, who is now eight years old. Until recently, he was being brought up by his mother in the comfort of a loving, caring home alongside his extended family. Having had the courage to escape the sexual and physical domestic abuse inflicted by her ex-husband, my constituent was granted sole custody of her son. Occasional contact with the father was enforced by the court and complied with by my constituent, despite the clear distress that those sessions caused to the child, yet, when the arrangements broke down, the father was able to launch false alienation proceedings against his ex-wife to remove the boy from her custody. That was supported every step of the way by CAFCASS. He has now succeeded in depriving my constituent of her only child, despite the rigorous investigations by social services at Coventry City Council that concluded that she was an exemplary mother.

Thanks to the deeply imbedded pro-contact culture of CAFCASS, long since identified but allowed to run unreformed for years, an eight-year-old boy is now in the clutches of a man who beat and sexually assaulted my constituent throughout their marriage. Despite mountains of evidence proving his unfitness to have custody of the child, everything was pushed and CAFCASS took his side, placing the blame on the boy’s mother.

What is perhaps most concerning is that despite the child’s distress, a litany of domestic abuse and the detailed reports compiled by Coventry City Council in support of my constituent’s parenting were all cast aside in the family courts. Deploying parental alienation allegations as his chief legal tactic, the boy’s father has now won sole custody, leaving my constituent utterly bereft.

[Bambos Charalambous]

The interests of the child should be paramount—that was written into the Children Act 1989, many years ago—but there seems to have been a clear failure of that policy. Allegations of parental alienation often cause great distress not just for the parent, but for the child at the centre of the case. Does my hon. Friend agree that in cases such as the one she describes, CAFCASS needs to return to focusing on the paramount interests of the child?

[Taiwo Owatemi]

Absolutely. The role of CAFCASS is to protect the child during family proceedings, but it seems to be failing in that role.

The tragedy is being multiplied in the thousands nationwide. A self-reported survey suggests that allegations of parental alienation are made in up to 70% of family court cases in England and Wales. The scandal has been allowed to go on for far too long. It is time for CAFCASS and the family courts to be held accountable. When will the Government legislate to bar unqualified so-called experts from the family courts? When will guidance be published for judges on the admissibility of family alienation allegations as evidence in these cases?

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

I cannot thank the hon. Member enough for securing the debate and I am only sorry that I cannot stay to give a speech myself. I had a long career in family law. I have acted for mums and dads, husbands and wives, and families where domestic abuse has ripped them apart, and I have seen courts used not only to help people, but to continue the abuse and control of some. What the hon. Member’s constituents would have experienced, no doubt, is that a lot of the delay plays into the hands of parents who want to use the courts, in particular if they have the child living with them at the time. One thing I have been campaigning for is to get the Ministry of Justice and the Government to focus on keeping cases out of court, especially where litigants are in person, where it is safe to do so. That will free up court time to deal with the more complex cases that she is talking about more quickly and urgently, so that we have the resource and proper space for CAFCASS and people such as that. Does she agree that that is important, and will she join me for a coffee to discuss it? I would love to get her on board.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

The hon. Member speaks from her varied experience. Absolutely, I am more than happy to support her in her campaign and to have a cup of coffee to talk about it in further detail—[Interruption.] I am sure everyone in the Chamber would love to have a cup of coffee to talk about it as well.

I ask the Minister, why has CAFCASS remained largely unreformed almost three year after its shameful shortcomings were exposed for all to see? I wrote to the Ministry of Justice about my constituent’s case on 2 September 2020. It is a damning indictment that CAFCASS has failed to make any progress in the matter. Will the Minister therefore meet me to discuss the case further?

Until the promised reforms of CAFCASS are completed, until parents can be sure of proper representation and support in the courtroom, and until the family courts start to put the needs of children ahead of the vanity of wealthy individuals who can rely on expensive solicitors to exploit a broken and underfunded system, the tragedies will only multiply. Inaction is no longer an option—frankly, it never was.

16:42

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

I stand here to give a general primal scream on behalf of what I will say are thousands of cases that I have seen over the past seven years of victims of domestic abuse being, not to put too fine a point on it, abused by the family courts. We allow the system to go on largely in secret, shrouded in total secrecy, but it is opening up slightly now thanks to the efforts of some incredibly good investigative journalism and some incredibly brave victims of rape who allowed their cases to be the test cases to enable that transparency.

I cannot sit in front of another mother who has been beaten, raped, abused, coerced, and has had a court in our country take her children from her and given them to the man who raped, beat and abused her. It must be about five or six years ago that Women’s Aid produced a report called, “Nineteen Child Homicides”, which cites cases from the previous 10 years of 19 children murdered following the decision of a family court to place them with a violent and abusive father. I pay huge tribute to the families who were involved.

We are two years on from the harm review—it might be longer, but the covid years make it hard to remember how many years it has been; I am really only 39, because I do not count the covid years. Everyone working in this building was pleased to see the harm review, which came out of a very extensive piece of work by the Government. I take my hat off to them for doing it. However, it dodged one vital issue, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), to whom I am grateful for securing the debate: the issue of a pro-contact culture. We need fundamentally to undermine the idea that it is better for a child to have contact with both parents when one of them is abusive and violent. Often people will say to me, “These people aren’t necessarily abusive and violent towards the children”, but I think you are a bad father if you are abusive and violent towards the mother of your child. That is fundamental for me.

In the vast majority of cases that I have handled in my lifetime, which are into the tens of thousands, mothers want fathers to have some form of contact with, or access to, their child. It is not until we come to the family courts that that becomes completely and utterly distorted, and women are cited for being insane. If I had been raped, beaten and abused for decades, I might take medication for anxiety. That has not happened to me, but I do take medication for anxiety, which could be used to remove a child from a mother. She will be called mad, hysterical or bad in a family court, even though social services might consider her to be an exemplary mother. In the family courts, fancy lawyers—as suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), it is unfortunately still the case in the world we live in that men have more money than women—argue that women are mad.

We have allowed the situation to get to the point that any woman who tries to protect her child from a violent and abusive partner will be accused of parent alienation, which will work against her, so what we are now asking women to do is not safeguard their children in order to have access to them. There is a perverse incentive in the system that says, “If you and your children are being abused by this man, don’t mention it, because if you do, you will have parent alienation thrown at you.” There is absolutely no efficacy in what is being described as parent alienation.

On efficacy, I wish to point out that the people on whom we rely to make the judgment of parent alienation might as well be my milkman. That is literally how qualified they are. My milkman is a lovely fella who has six kids, and I would trust him more. We have specialists being paid huge amounts of taxpayers’ money, and operating in courts across our country—with a specific focus, it seems, on the south, which I presume is because people have more money to spend on such things down here—who are not psychologists. It might as well be my milkman, but they are saying, “Yes, we’re seeing signs of parent alienation”, and there is no regulation of this. The head of the family courts division has made it incredibly clear that it is up to the Government to deal with this issue. It is up to the Government to ensure that there is regulation of expert milkmen—I feel like I am taking milkmen down now, but they are perfectly good people—and expert witnesses in our family courts.

[Siobhan Baillie]

It is always important to listen to the hon. Member. One of the things that the president of the family division, Sir Andrew McFarlane, has done recently is open up the family courts for reporting pilots. That is an incredibly good step, because it will shine a light not only on what is going on with people having representation or not having representation, but on the experts who are being put forward. Even though there is work to be done, there is active effort from the top of the family division to make changes, and I hope she can see that.

[Jess Phillips]

I absolutely agree. Sir James Munby, in his final year as head of the family division, seemed to do a sort of swansong in which he said, “I am going to do something about this, recognising that the many brilliant legal minds who work in the family court know where the problems are.” In fact, it is not just victims I am representing and speaking for in this primal scream, but the hundreds of solicitors and judges who get in touch with me all the time to tell me about the terrible, broken problems in our family court system.

As McFarlane has laid out, the Government have to undertake a piece of work. The family court’s hands are tied, and it is for the Government—the ball is in their court—to say what they are going to do about unregulated experts. Members should bear in mind that I am a genuine expert on domestic abuse, with years and years of training, and I have been refused entry to family courts when I have sought to attend with victims—maybe I would get in if I did a milk round.

I am fairly certain that, in my time in this building, I will, alongside others, advance changes around domestic abuse. I feel confident about that, but I am starting to lose confidence that we will ever do enough to change the family courts. The hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) mentioned the pilots, which I am sure the Minister will address. They are just pilots at the moment, and they seem to be working well, but I think that they need to go further. There needs to be a change into the gladiatorial; there needs to be much more sense of ongoing inquiry throughout such cases.

Practice direction 12J, which states that there is no presumption of contact in cases of domestic abuse, is not worth the paper that it is written on because it is hardly ever used. If it is not being used in cases involving convicted rapists, we have to ask ourselves serious questions about whether the situation that we have at the moment is working.

I just want to know from the Government when we can expect the outcome of the review into a pro-contact culture, and what the hold-up is. Why has a single point, on pro-contact culture, taken two years in the harms review? I have written to the Justice Secretary about this, and I have not yet heard back—I will cut him some slack, because it was only about two weeks ago, when McFarlane said it—but I also want to know when we will stop the use of unregulated experts in our family courts.

My point, which my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West began with, was about legal aid. Although the Government have—through an amendment that I moved initially—stopped the cross-examination of victims by perpetrators in the family court, I am afraid that the roll-out of advocates who are meant to be doing that work seems to be underfunded, and the work is an unattractive prospect, meaning that, from what I can tell—from the cases that I have seen and reviewed, and from the members of the Family Law Bar Association I speak to—the system is faltering at the moment.

I want to know and feel that there is some progress, and that I will not get another email— inevitably I will tomorrow, but maybe not next week or next year—about a mother who has been beaten and abused, has just had her child removed, and is allowed only supervised contact because some man has managed manipulate the systems in our country to make them feel as if she is mad and bad, and that he is an absolute angel. If I had a penny for every such case that I have seen, I could rebuild the family courts.

16:54

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

It is an extra special pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Ms Cummins. I apologise to you and the House for arriving a few minutes late for this debate. Similarly, I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), but I congratulate her on securing this important debate.

We have had a couple of powerful and persuasive speeches today that demonstrate the urgent need for further reform to the family justice system so that victims of abuse and the children at the centre of proceedings are given the protection from harm and risk of harm that they both need and deserve. My hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) spoke in her usual strong and blunt fashion in defence of the victims and the pleas for change. I do not know if my speech will add any additional value to what we have heard this afternoon, but I say to her that she should not lose confidence in the work she has championed in this place, because she needs to be doing it. I never thought I would manage to make my hon. Friend blush, but today I have succeeded.

It has been more than two years since the Ministry of Justice published the harm report, “Assessing risk of harm to children and parents in private law children cases”. The panel that wrote the report said that the extensive evidence submitted to it

“unveiled deep-seated and systemic problems with how the family courts identify, assess and manage risk to children and adults.”

While we of course welcome the changes brought in by the Domestic Abuse Act 2021, including the ban on cross-examination of victims of abuse by their perpetrators in the family and civil courts, it is clear that much more needs to be done.

Women’s Aid conducted research with specialist support services and survivors of abuse who have been involved in private child proceedings since the Government’s implementation plan for the harm report recommendations was published in 2020. It found that the optimism and hope that the publication of the report had brought have been destroyed by Government inaction and that lack of progress on the report’s findings has left them disillusioned and disappointed.

Women’s Aid also found that for many family court practitioners and professionals, their understanding of coercive and controlling behaviour and how perpetrators can and do use family court proceedings as another form of post-separation abuse is still insufficient. Survivors of domestic abuse are left feeling as if their experiences are ignored. The report from Women’s Aid notes that they feel that

“as mothers they are trapped within a continuum of blame, facing contradictory accusations both of failing to protect their children from the perpetrator, and failing to facilitate contact between child and perpetrator.”

The report also identifies serious concerns with parental alienation, and my hon. Friends the Members for Coventry North West and for Birmingham, Yardley have addressed that this afternoon. Indeed, several of the survivors Women’s Aid spoke to in its research have had their children removed from them as a result of accusations of so-called parental alienation or alienating behaviours when they raise concern about unsafe contact arrangements for their child.

As we have heard today, this apparent belief system has come under increased international scrutiny. Indeed, several countries now refuse to recognise it as a result of the risk it poses of placing a child with an abusive parent. Following a recent survey of more than 4,000 court users in England and Wales, it is estimated that allegations of parental alienation are made in nearly 70% of family court cases in England and Wales. That astonishing number underlines the necessity for immediate Government action. In these cases, unregulated, self-declared experts, such as milkmen, are invited to give evidence, even though they have little to nothing in the way of formal qualifications to do so. In fact, they may have a vested financial interest in diagnosing so-called alienation, which they may then be paid to treat. Only last month, Sir Andrew McFarlane, the president of the family division, commented in the case of Re C that there was a “need for rigour” and “clarity” when instructing psychologists to give expert evidence in family cases, but claimed that stricter regulation was ultimately for Parliament to take action on.

I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry North West on bringing this matter before the House, and I am aware that she has made other representations to the Ministry of Justice on the matter, to which the Minister has responded, claiming:

“It is a matter for the judiciary to determine which experts may be instructed to provide evidence in family law proceedings.”

This impasse is totally unacceptable. There is a potentially high risk to already vulnerable children in this area. Loud alarm bells are being sounded, and the Government should be taking action now to investigate. Instead, they are once again demonstrating the dangerous inaction and lack of forward planning that have become their hallmark.

On the other hand, Labour wholeheartedly supports the calls for an urgent inquiry into the use of unregulated psychological experts in the family courts made by the Victims’ Commissioner for London, Claire Waxman, alongside lawyers, academics and charity leaders. My colleagues, the shadow Minister for victims and youth justice, my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff North (Anna McMorrin), and the shadow Minister for domestic violence and safeguarding, my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley, have co-signed those representations to the Ministry of Justice.

In government, Labour will put Jade’s law on the statute book, ensuring that men who kill their partners will automatically have parental responsibility removed so they are not able to have a say in their children’s lives. That will prevent them from continuing to perpetuate controlling and coercive behaviour on their children and the victim’s family, who are likely to be caring for those children. Will the Minister introduce that law?

The Minister’s Department has been active in addressing concerns regarding post-separation abuse through the family courts in recent years, as evidenced by the publication of the harm report in 2020 and the Domestic Abuse Act, which received Royal Assent in 2021. Why is the Department stopping there when it was beginning to take some really positive steps forward? Will the Minister commit today to action that will help to begin to resolve the ongoing crisis in this area?

I now turn to the wider challenges faced by our family courts. As across the rest of the courts system, the backlog in family courts is unacceptably high and, as a result, vulnerable children are left in precarious situations for months on end. The most recent data shows that private children’s law cases are taking on average 45 weeks —nearly a year—to reach a final order. Cuts to legal aid, which others have raised today, in family cases have led to a huge increase in the number of litigants in person, who have been forced to represent themselves and end up costing the Government a significant amount because they take up much more of a judge’s sitting time than a represented individual normally would.

Back in November 2021, I was pleased to hear the Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice, when he appeared before the Justice Committee say that he was

“in the market for something quite drastic and bold”,

particularly in private law family cases, but I am sad to say that ambition appears to have disappeared. Instead, the backlog in the family court continues to rise, creating substantial anxiety and stress for families and, most importantly, for vulnerable children, at what is already an extremely difficult time in their lives.

I have spent a lot of time recently reflecting on how we can reduce the pain and suffering of going through the family court process. The debate we are having feels particularly timely, as I have met a number of family court practitioners, including at the north-east family drug and alcohol court, which I visited on Monday. I was hugely impressed by the work it is doing. I saw at first hand the value and benefit of a greater use of non-adversarial and problem-solving approaches in the family court.

I also had positive feedback regarding the pathfinder pilots in Dorset and north Wales, which are exploring a more inquisitorial approach in private family proceedings. An additional strength of the pathfinder model is that CAFCASS does substantially more up-front work in the process, which the court benefits from as it moves through the proceedings, but we have heard today about the resource challenges for CAFCASS that would currently prevent this positive work from being rolled out nationally.

Finally, many experts I speak to stress the importance of access to early legal advice in these cases, to ensure they end up in the most appropriate part of the system. One arm of that is ensuring that cases that do not need to go to court are kept out of it by early referral to mediation services and alternative dispute resolution. The other arm is ensuring that those cases that do need to go through the legal process are referred to it at as early a stage as possible.

These cases deal with challenging and highly emotive circumstances. Even the most straightforward family separation causes pain and anxiety. The impact these cases have, especially for the children involved in them, can last a lifetime. I hope the Minister will provide reassurances that the urgent issues raised today are being worked on by his Department, but also I hope that campaigners can take confidence in the fact that Labour takes these issues extremely seriously and fully supports the call for an urgent inquiry into the regulation of experts in the family courts.

17:03

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Justice (Mike Freer)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Cummins. I thank the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) for securing a debate on this important subject.

The family court must always act in the best interests of children. CAFCASS plays an integral role in England, both representing children in the family court and advising the court on what is safe and in children’s best interests. It is CAFCASS that ensures that children’s voices are at the heart of the family justice system. CAFCASS is the largest employer of qualified social workers in England and supports over 140,000 children each year, speaking up for those children at what can be an extremely difficult time.

I appreciate that Members wish to raise cases where things do not go right, but it is also important to pay tribute to the work that CAFCASS does, as well as the hard-working social workers who support 140,000 children. It is wrong to suggest that the whole of CAFCASS is failing children in this country. That is simply not fair on the organisation, and the social workers who have a very difficult job to do. That is not to say that mistakes are not made or that things do not go wrong, but to paint the whole service as a failure is simply not correct.

[Taiwo Owatemi]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mike Freer]

I will make some progress. I point Members to the recent Ofsted inspection in January this year. Ofsted said that CAFCASS was “highly effective”. The service has meant that the children at greatest risk continue to be promptly allocated a children’s guardian or family court adviser. I do not take issue with the problems that hon. Members have raised, but I wanted to put on record that the description of CAFCASS as a dystopian organisation getting everything wrong is simply unfair. There are many people there working in very difficult situations, doing a lot of good work for children.

I will move on to some of the things that we are doing to ensure that CAFCASS has capacity and funding. On additional funding and coping with the pandemic backlogs, we have ensured that the CAFCASS budget was increased by over £8.4 million, to a baseline of £140 million. We are also ensuring that the sitting days for both elements of the family court are increased.

I do not want to dwell on the particularly dry bits of what the family courts have to do. I appreciate that Members have raised specific questions, which I will do my best to answer. Where I cannot answer them, I will see that my colleague, Lord Bellamy, who covers this portfolio, provides more detailed answers. If hon. Members wish to meet Lord Bellamy to go through the issues in more depth, I am happy to facilitate that. I appreciate that I do not have the depth of knowledge that other Members or Lord Bellamy have.

We spend £813 million on civil legal aid. In the last couple of months, we have increased the amount by £30 million, just to support those people who need legal aid in a situation of domestic violence. It is not true to say that we are leaving victims of domestic violence without legal aid.

I recognise that long-term reform of the family court is needed, and that many of the issues are wide-ranging. Ensuring that vulnerable court users, such as those who have experienced domestic abuse, continue to be supported is complex. We want to continue to build on the response to the 2020 report on the risk of harm in private law proceedings. We have delivered on all the short-term commitments in the harm panel report. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 prohibits the cross-examination of victims by perpetrators, and gives victims of domestic abuse automatic eligibility for special measures in the family courts.

In December 2022, the Family Procedure Rule Committee agreed rule and practice direction changes to ensure that independent domestic violence advisers and other specialist support services can accompany a party into court. Those changes are expected to come into force on 6 April. The Government continue to work closely with the domestic abuse sector to ensure that survivors’ voices remain central to family court reform. I look forward to the upcoming launch of the Domestic Abuse Commissioner’s monitoring and reporting pilot, which will ensure that we continue to understand the impact of family court proceedings on children and families.

I will touch on a couple of issues raised.

[Alex Cunningham]

Before the Minister continues, could we go back to the issue of legal aid? Not everybody in family court proceedings can qualify for legal aid, but will he conduct an assessment of the time that has been wasted in courts because litigants in person take up so much more of judges’ time? It would save time, and the Government money, if those people had access to legal aid.

[Mike Freer]

As always, I will give very careful consideration to any request from the hon. Gentleman, and I will report back to him on what we can do on that issue. He mentioned family mediation. Obviously, a big driver of the reform is the desire to keep families out of a court process that is not helpful, and away from an adversarial process. The investment of about £7.3 million in providing mediation vouchers has been a success; it is working.

[Jess Phillips]

Would the Minister enter, or want anyone in his family to enter, into mediation with their rapist?

[Mike Freer]

I will tread very carefully here. I grew up in a home with domestic violence, so I understand the issue quite closely. I am very careful to ensure that victims of domestic abuse are able to get justice, but I also accept—[Interruption.] No, hang on a moment; the hon. Lady should let me finish, before she judges what I am going to say. I personally would not want that to happen. That is not my decision. Unfortunately, as the hon. Lady knows, the justice system is never fair. It is often too “processy”. The point she makes has been well landed, and they are points that we will continue to discuss with the judiciary. The process, as she knows, is not always balanced, and it is our job to try to remove imbalances. The point has been well made, and I will ensure that it is conveyed to the judiciary.

I turn to the other issues that the hon. Lady and other Members have raised. On the use of experts, we clearly have a difference of opinion. First of all, the regulation of experts is a matter for the Department of Health and Social Care, and I am more than happy to take the matter up with the relevant Minister.

The ability, or inability, to refuse a so-called expert is a matter for judicial discretion. If the judiciary does not believe that a person is an expert, it is up to them to say, “We do not accept them as an expert.” Regulation is a separate issue; as I say, I am more than happy to take that up with colleagues in DHSC. However, the judiciary can reject what we would call, in common parlance, so-called experts.

I turn to the presumption of parental involvement. This is an important and complex issue, and we want to ensure that any recommendations resulting from the review are based on a solid understanding of the way that the presumption is applied, and how it affects both parents and children. The review will be concluded later this year, and a publication date will be announced in due course.

Parental responsibilities can already be limited by the courts. On Jade’s law, my understanding is that the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar), and Lord Bellamy have already met the right hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami) to discuss the case and how these issues can be pursued. If hon. Members want to know more, then I am very happy to write, or to ask Lord Bellamy to write. However, that issue is being explored with the right hon. Member, who has raised it in the House several times.

I do not want to diminish the complexity of the issues raised today, but I did want to put on record that all the issues raised are being dealt with. I appreciate that Members will raise individual cases where they feel that the system is failing, and I cannot diminish individuals’ experience of that, but we need some balance; 140,000 children are supported by CAFCASS in difficult circumstances, and to suggest that it gets it wrong all the time is not fair. However, the points raised by Opposition Members have landed well, and I will ensure that Lord Bellamy and I sit down to review the issues that have been raised. If hon. Members wish to have a meeting with Lord Bellamy, I am more than happy to facilitate that.

17:15

[Taiwo Owatemi]

I would like to start by acknowledging the point made by the Minister. I do not think that anybody in this debate was saying that those working for CAFCASS are not trying their best, or that they get it wrong all the time; we are acknowledging that there are issues that need to be urgently addressed and are causing severe harm to women and the children CAFCASS is meant to protect. Those failures are due to Government inaction. Reforms need to happen, and there needs to be proper funding of the judicial system.

I thank everybody who participated in this debate, beginning with my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips), who has detailed the problems with parental alienation and unqualified experts. She has long campaigned on that important subject, and rightly calls for reform. I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Bambos Charalambous), who is no longer in his seat, for highlighting the importance of protecting vulnerable children. A lot of Members spoke or intervened, and I thank the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie), who raised concerns about the lack of access to legal aid in the court system, parental alienation and unqualified experts, and the courtroom backlog. No mother should be penalised for safeguarding their children, so the Government desperately need to address the failures of CAFCASS and reform the family courts system.

I end by noting two key points. First, I notice that the Minister did not answer all my questions; I look forward to receiving a written response from him on those that he did not answer. Secondly, I look forward to meeting the Minister—hopefully very soon—to discuss some of the issues that I raised today. I look forward to reviewing the review that he spoke about, once it is published. Finally, I stress that after 13 years of failure, the criminal justice system is on its knees and in desperate need of funding and reform. Only then can victims such as my constituents get justice.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service and family court reform.

17:17

Sitting adjourned.