Westminster Hall

Thursday 30th October 2025 Westminster Hall

Thursday 30 October 2025

[Christine Jardine in the Chair]

Land Value Capture

Thursday 30th October 2025 Westminster Hall

Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee

Select Committee statement

13:30

[Christine Jardine (in the Chair)]

We begin with a Select Committee statement. Florence Eshalomi will speak on the publication of the third report of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, “Delivering 1.5 million new homes: Land Value Capture”, HC 672, for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of the statement, I will call Members to put questions on the subject of the statement. I will then call Florence Eshalomi to respond to them in turn. Questions should be brief, and Members may ask only one question each.

[Florence Eshalomi (Vauxhall and Camberwell Green) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. This week, the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee published our third report, following our inquiry into land value capture. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this statement, and I thank the HCLG Committee staff for their help in preparing the report. I also thank our specialist adviser, Professor Richard Dunning from the University of Liverpool, for his guidance throughout the process.

In many ways, the cost of land is one of the biggest root causes of the housing crisis. Land is usually the single biggest expense of any new housing development. When farmland is granted planning permission for housing, its value can soar. The value of private land also rises when we build new infrastructure nearby, such as road schemes or train links. Those increases in land values are not caused by investment from landowners; they are the result of decisions by local authorities. It is therefore right that land value capture policies seek to recover a fair percentage of those profits for public benefit.

Currently, England’s land value capture system has two key parts. The first is planning obligations through section 106 agreements, which require developers to build affordable homes and public infrastructure alongside homes. The second is the community infrastructure levy—a cash payment to local authorities to fund roads, GPs, schools and other critical investment.

If the Government are serious about delivering new towns, new communities and the infrastructure they require, they must look at reforming land value capture. Our inquiry considered how pragmatic reforms can help to support a rapid increase in house building, which would contribute to the Government’s target of delivering 1.5 million new homes during this Parliament. Our report also takes stock of the Government’s first-year progress towards that target.

Stakeholders told our inquiry that there are several easy wins for reform of section 106. Modest changes could streamline the process for local authorities and small and medium-sized enterprise developers, while delivering more affordable housing, including much-needed homes for social rent.

Currently, the section 106 negotiation process can be unpredictable, complex and drawn out. We heard that local authorities are often tasked with formulating complex legal wording when they should be focusing on site- specific factors such as the community benefits from the development. We therefore recommend that the Government should introduce template clauses for section 106 agreements, and that local authorities should be encouraged to adopt them.

Local planning authorities must be supported with the resources they need to negotiate section 106 agreements on behalf of communities, but the reality is that planning departments have been long stretched. The Government’s pledge to fund 300 new planning officers demonstrates that they recognise the problem, but that is equivalent to less than one planning officer in each local authority in England.

What is more, the Government are restricting access to level 7 planning apprenticeships, despite the skills White Paper’s ambition for more young people to pursue degree-level apprenticeships. We recommend that the Government look at that again and extend access to degree- level planning apprenticeships to students of all ages.

We heard that only 52% of local authorities are currently charging the community infrastructure levy, perhaps in no small part because planning departments are so stretched. Local authorities often want their staff to prioritise affordable housing delivery rather than administering CIL, which cannot be used to fund affordable housing. However, where CIL is charged, we have heard that it is a vital tool to fund infrastructure, which residents expect alongside new housing. Therefore, the Government must push for greater coverage of CIL where it is financially viable. To support that, we recommend that the Government publish a map of CIL coverage. That would make the whole system easier for developers to navigate and bring an end to the complex patchwork of different local rates.

The evidence we heard from across the sector, including from developers, was clear: the Government must extend CIL coverage where possible to support new communities and unlock more housing. That is why we were surprised to hear last week that the Government are planning to cut CIL for some developments in London and effectively cut London’s affordable housing target from 35% to 20%. The Secretary of State has said that cutting London’s target will increase the number of social and affordable homes built overall. My Committee has asked to see what impact assessment the Department has done on that, but the modelling has not been published yet.

We are concerned that, in evidence to our inquiry, the Greater London Authority said that reducing affordable housing targets can inflate land values, inflate developer returns and slow down housing delivery. The Department must therefore publish its modelling in the coming weeks. The Committee has recommended that if there is a decline in the number of affordable homes built in London, the Government should reinstate the 35% target. That is an area that my Committee wants to scrutinise further in coming weeks, including when the detailed consultation is launched in November.

Our report also finds that there is a vital opportunity for land value capture in new towns to fund the roads, GPs and schools that they will need. However, we are concerned that some of the opportunity may have already been missed. The Government have published maps of possible site locations, yet without policy to protect their land value from speculative development. The new towns taskforce specifically recommended that the Government protect the locations or risk

“jeopardising the new town plans.”

We are concerned that land values in those areas may already be rising, long before the Government have set up the development corporations to purchase the land. Therefore, we recommend that the Government bring forward the funding development corporations at the Budget so that the land agreements are in place before the final locations are confirmed in the spring.

Finally, our report takes a step back from land value to consider the progress towards the target of 1.5 million new homes. It is fair to say that the Department has had a busy first year, with a range of planning reform and legislation. However, our Committee has heard a lot of doubt and uncertainty from the sector. Even the Government told us that the target is “stretching” and “hugely ambitious”. The Government were quick to update the housing targets in the national planning policy framework last year, but on average local plans are still taking seven years to produce. We recommend that the Government implement a new 30-month local plan timeline as a priority so that the national reforms lead to change on the ground.

The truth is that while planning reform might be able to deliver more planning permissions, that is not the same as building 1.5 million new homes. The Government must look at the wider issues in the housing market such as mortgages, build-out rates and the workforce capacity. They have started consultation on some of those issues, but there is no overarching long-term housing strategy. The Government promised that the strategy would be published in spring of this year, but we are still waiting. We hope that the strategy will include an impact assessment to show how the policy changes will add up to the 1.5 million new homes and finally give the sector some certainty about what is planned for the rest of this Parliament.

Our most urgent request of the Government is to bring forward the long-term housing strategy within weeks, not months. The sector needs to have confidence in the road map ahead. We think that some of the pragmatic, uncontroversial reforms to land value capture would help to unlock new homes and should be part of that road map. We look forward to a timely response from the Government. I thank all the witnesses and organisations who supported our inquiry, and I commend the report to the House.

[Maya Ellis (Ribble Valley) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend has mentioned, land value increases exponentially if planning permission is granted or new public infrastructure such as transport links are developed. In my constituency of Ribble Valley, we have had lots of house building, which is largely welcomed as an affordable way for people to stay in the area and not be priced out, but what is not welcomed is when promises to build infra- structure such as schools, social housing and roads are reneged on. The existing mechanisms for land value capture—section 106 agreements and the community infrastructure levy—are failing to deliver the maximum funding level for our communities for a variety of reasons, often because of drawn-out negotiation processes. Does my hon. Friend agree that land value capture reforms must be explored so that developers begin to make fair contributions to the areas that our constituents call home?

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank my fellow Committee member for her useful points. I know this is an issue close to her heart. She represents a rural constituency where additional infrastructure is needed with the new housing, because people need to get to work as well as having somewhere to live, and community facilities are vital. For far too long, many developers have been promising the earth to get over the hurdle of the planning application. Good developers fulfil their obligations, but some renege on them. We hope the Government will look at our recommendations to make the process a lot easier so that there is transparency and, most importantly, so that communities get the infrastructure that they were promised as part of the new developments.

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

The cut to London’s affordable housing target has a direct knock-on effect on constituencies like mine in Huntingdon, where we are being forced to deliver thousands of new homes, creating an urban sprawl that could destroy the individual character and charm of many of our villages. In a Sky News interview last week, Sadiq Khan was challenged on how he has been reporting the figures for years by counting housing starts that have had no building work done and no spades in the ground, with no increases to London’s affordable housing stock. At least 2,000 houses that he counted as started in 2023 before his re-election have still not been started today. In Ealing alone, almost 1,000 homes that he claimed have been started simply have not. Will the Committee investigate and scrutinise the manipulation of housing stock figures by the Mayor of London?

[Florence Eshalomi]

I thank the hon. Member for his question. I know that there are constituencies on the outskirts of London that are feeling the impact of a lack of affordable housing, and there are issues with temporary accommodation. A number of London boroughs simply do not have enough homes to house people, so they look to neighbouring boroughs. The Government are working with the Mayor of London to investigate the issue. They are challenging the mayor on his commitments in the London plan, and we continue to work with him to look at that as well. The Government hope to commit to ensuring that our Committee has monthly updates on the new affordable housing targets that they have agreed with the mayor. That will be open for public scrutiny once the Committee has looked at that.

[Andrew Lewin (Welwyn Hatfield) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve on the Select Committee with my hon. Friend. As she knows, I am biased when it comes to the importance of new towns. I represent two fantastic new towns: Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City. What she said this afternoon about the new towns of the future and how we get the balance right was really important. Hatfield and Welwyn Garden City are communities that have stood the test of time because land value was captured and a good amount of social housing was built right at the start of those developments. It is imperative that we do the same this time around for the new generation of new towns that the Government seek to build. Does my hon. Friend agree that when we get spades in the ground in our new towns, it is crucial not only that we invest in infrastructure, but that the homes for social rent that we so desperately need are built in the first phase of development and are a core part of those communities from day one?

[Florence Eshalomi]

It is really good to have my hon. Friend’s knowledge and expertise on the Committee; he is always citing reasons why new towns are successful and something that this Government should support wholeheartedly. The key thing that we want to ensure is that funding is attached to deliver on those recommendations, including by ensuring a mixture of homes in new towns. The new towns taskforce has recommended a 40% target for affordable homes, including a minimum target of 20% for social rent. We hope the Government will look favourably on that recommendation, and we can see how building those homes will help to make a dent in the housing crisis that exists across all constituencies in the UK.

13:44

Sitting suspended.

Backbench Business

Thursday 30th October 2025 Westminster Hall

Moles: Histological Testing

Thursday 30th October 2025 Westminster Hall

13:50

[Mr Richard Quigley (Isle of Wight West) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered histological testing of excised moles.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine.

Many of those present may not yet be familiar with the name Zoe Panayi. If they are, it is likely to be because of my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough), who spoke about Zoe at Prime Minister’s questions two weeks ago. For Zoe’s family, the five years since her tragic death have meant that their daughter, sister, mother and friend has come to represent something far greater—a legacy that continues to grow and touch lives beyond their own. I welcome Charlie, Zoe’s brother, to Westminster Hall today.

Zoe was like so many other 26-year-olds. She was a devoted mother to her two boys, a loyal friend to many across the island and a young woman full of promise. Despite her age, Zoe made a remarkable impact on our community. She volunteered as a carer, and later trained to become a radiologist at St Mary’s hospital. That is what makes Zoe’s story so heartbreaking. While she was dedicating herself to caring for others, her own health concerns were repeatedly dismissed.

On the morning of Zoe’s eventual diagnosis, she woke up in pain, but brushed off her concerns, telling her mum that she had been teaching her boys how to do roly-polies—which many Members will know is, as an adult, no mean feat—and must have hurt herself that way. But that evening Zoe was in such excruciating pain that she was taken to hospital where, upon being tested by her boss at St Mary’s, she was told that her liver was full of cancer.

Doctors asked Zoe whether any moles on her body had been causing her concern. She then realised that the small mole on her back was the root of her cancer. Zoe died just 55 days after that diagnosis, and in those 55 days she had to try to explain to a five-year-old and a seven-year-old that mummy would soon not be coming home, and would instead become an angel. I do not bring that up purely to cause upset, but to emphasise Zoe’s outstanding bravery at such a young age in ensuring her boys were prepared for the unthinkable.

Zoe had not ignored her symptoms; she did everything right. She visited her GP on three separate occasions asking that her mole be tested, yet she was told that her pain was caused by the mole rubbing against her jeans, and that she was too young for it to be clinically concerning. On her third visit, Zoe was told that if it bothered her that much, she should get her mole removed cosmetically. Zoe even paid for her mole to be tested after removal at the beauticians, yet it never was.

There is no doubt that Zoe was failed by her GP, who sent her a letter of apology after learning of her diagnosis, and that Zoe was failed deeply by her beautician, who failed to recognise her cancer or even to send her mole for testing. Zoe’s concerns should never have been dismissed, she should never have been referred out of the NHS, and the mole, which was actually a melanoma, should never have been removed. I welcome the fact that the Minister has enacted Jess’s rule, meaning that on the third time of asking, Zoe’s concerns may have brought about a different outcome.

We are not here today because Zoe’s family want to cast blame; we are here because Zoe’s family want to make sure that what happened to their daughter, their sister and their mother will never have to happen to anyone else again. The safeguard we are asking for is simple: that all healthcare providers must test the lesions they remove. This extra check—a “Zoe check”—would prevent tragedies like Zoe’s from occurring.

Over the past months I have spoken with a range of doctors across the NHS and in the private sector, and reassuringly—although it is not mandated—what we are asking for is already standard practice in the NHS for GPs and dermatologists. To avoid that one in a 1,000 case, removed skintags, moles or blemishes, however harmless they look, are almost always sent for testing. NHS doctors order these tests as a matter of routine, and many good private dermatologists insist on including a biopsy before agreeing to treatment in the first place. The tests are relatively cheap, with lab fees around £100. To put that into perspective, the cost of Zoe’s cancer treatment could have funded over 650 biopsies.

Using state-of-the-art technology, we could go further. Trials are under way for handheld equipment that can test for melanoma by using artificial intelligence systems to analyse high-definition photographs of skin lesions. If those trials prove successful, the cost of Zoe’s treatment could have funded thousands of pre-treatment checks. The checks are cheap, immediate and, with proper training, could easily be deployed in beauty clinics and other non-medical environments. If we combine them with specific melanoma training for all professionals who encounter skin lesions, and encourage GPs and others to take up that training, that approach could significantly improve early detection and reduce the need for costly and often unsuccessful late-stage cancer interventions.

Cancer is not a place to cut corners. Although they are not mandatory, histology tests are already routine practice for benign moles and other lesions in both NHS and private dermatology alike. Zoe’s law would ensure that a similar safeguard is applied across the board, from NHS hospitals to private dermatologists and beauty clinics. That would demand more from the clinics that are currently the least regulated. But we should demand more, because this is about protecting the NHS, which will ultimately pick up the bill when those clinics fail, and it is about protecting families like Zoe’s from the grief of a tragic and unnecessary death.

I thank the Minister for her engagement, and I am genuinely encouraged by the seriousness with which her Department has adopted the issue. Zoe’s family has said that they feel they have got further than ever before over the past weeks, and that they feel listened to. I thank the Minister very much for that, but this can only be the start, and whatever form Zoe’s law eventually takes, we must not stop until we get there.

13:55

[Carolyn Harris (Neath and Swansea East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate my hon. Friends the Members for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) and for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) on securing this vital debate on the histological testing of excised moles. I am chair of the all-party parliamentary group for beauty and wellbeing, and this issue aligns closely with our current inquiry into ultraviolet safety. It sits right at the heart of the concerns that led to the launch of the inquiry earlier this year.

Unprotected UV exposure poses huge risks and is creating a greater volume of potentially malignant lesions. We know that it is the main driver of the formation of new moles and the malignant transformation of existing ones. As the number of cases escalates, so does the need for accurate and timely histological testing. The success of the entire melanoma pathway hinges on that final, non-negotiable diagnostic step. We must ensure that the NHS’s resources, training and standardisation for histological analysis are robust enough to manage the growing volume.

Figures from Cancer Research UK paint a worrying picture: nearly 18,000 new cases of melanoma are diagnosed each year in the UK, and that is projected to rise to nearly 27,000 by 2040. The pressure on pathology services to diagnose excised lesions correctly and rapidly is immense, and it is only going to rise. What is perhaps more tragic is that 86% of these cancers are preventable. If people were better able to protect themselves against UV radiation, we could slash the number of cases and ease the burden on our health services.

Our APPG inquiry into UV safety launched in May, and aims to take evidence from clinicians, academics, industry experts, media influencers and those with lived experience. Although we will not report until spring next year, we are already seeing patterns in the evidence we have received in oral sessions and through written submissions: calls for public awareness campaigns so that people are better educated on how to check their moles and seek medical intervention when needed; questions around the labelling of the sun protection factor and affordability of sun cream; and a widespread concern over the regulation and marketing of products that have known melanoma risk factors. I am sure the Minister will listen today and that she is acutely aware of the critical importance of this issue.

We must resource diagnostic services appropriately to meet the rising demand, and at the same time give adequate attention to changes that will help to prevent the predicted rise in cases. By addressing in tandem prevention and detection—from SPF affordability, which will encourage sun cream use, to rapid histology, which will produce timely diagnoses—we will deliver the most significant savings of all. We will save families money, we will save patients long and anxious waits for test results, and we will save the NHS money by reducing costs and easing its burden. Most importantly, we will save lives.

13:59

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the hon. Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) on securing this important debate—I call him a friend, because we are working on quite a lot of issues together. He told the courageous story of Zoe, her family and their courageous campaign so beautifully, and made the case that if we detect cancers like this early, we save money across the board, because expensive hospital treatment will be avoided. The cost of detection and testing is a fraction of the cost of treatment.

Stories like Zoe’s are truly heartbreaking. We cannot change what happened to her, but we must learn from it to make sure it is never allowed to happen again. I entirely welcome the call to make it mandatory for all excised moles to be tested, even if they are removed for cosmetic reasons. Performing histological testing on removed moles will help us to diagnose more cancers and, of course, save lives. We will also probably find out more about the extent of cancers that we would not have linked to other severe cancers if we did not do that testing.

Currently, the British Association of Dermatologists recommends that all removed skin lesions be tested, even if they are taken off for purely cosmetic reasons, but there is currently no specific requirement for those tests, despite that advice. The tests are often carried out when moles are removed in a medical setting by the NHS, but we must ensure that private cosmetic clinics also follow the requirement for testing. The introduction of Zoe’s check will ensure that every mole is tested, thereby making sure that early signs of skin cancer are never missed or overlooked and that heartbreaking stories like Zoe’s are never repeated.

Early detection is paramount. Too many people are slipping through the cracks in the system and not being diagnosed until it is too late. Catching cancer early allows it to be tested faster, thereby giving treatments a greater chance of being done quickly and succeeding. We have campaigned across the House for the earlier detection of cancers. I also have a campaign to detect breast cancer early through a better screening programme for younger women, because cancer is on the rise throughout all ages—it is not just an illness of older people.

Cancer is a terrible disease that tears families apart. We Liberal Democrats have long called for more to be done to improve the early detection and treatment of cancer, because we recognise that detecting cancer early and treating it faster is our most powerful weapon against it. It is not only about early detection; what follows it is crucial. Early detection is meaningless unless it is followed by direct treatment very quickly. Early detection and fast treatment go hand in hand.

The Government’s current target is for a patient to have received their first treatment for cancer within 62 days of an urgent cancer referral, but that target has not been met since 2015, leaving many patients waiting with the knowledge of their cancer diagnosis looming over them. The toll on their mental health is enormous. Once we have a diagnosis, treatment must follow fast on its heels. That is why we Liberal Democrats are calling for the target to be made law, so that patients can be confident that they will receive the treatment they urgently need.

Detecting cancer early saves lives, reduces treatment costs and spares families unimaginable pain. Every check, every screening and every test can make the difference by diagnosing a cancer before it spreads. Zoe’s check will help us to do this, and I support it every step of the way.

14:04

[Ben Goldsborough (South Norfolk) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. My speech today will come from a personal perspective, as well as my talking about Zoe Panayi’s life experience. I start with thanks, because this is a huge part of my own journey, as well as the journeys of everyone in this room. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting this debate.

I want to give my thanks to Zoe’s family for letting me meet them a couple of weeks ago. It was an honour, and I cannot say that strongly enough. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley); I would never have known about Zoe’s journey, tragedy and her family’s loss without him reaching out to me and asking me to support and be involved in this vital campaign.

I need to thank those who are currently treating me for stage 2C malignant melanoma. A lot of people might be wondering—including those watching at home—“Is he getting his treatment at the Norfolk and Norwich?” Unfortunately not—so that I can carry on doing my job, which I am really determined to do—my treatment is currently being done at Charing Cross hospital in London. To lift the mask off, yesterday was my treatment day, and I went in for pembrolizumab immunotherapy. I thank those on the sixth floor in the oncology department —I will not name names, because sadly there are too many of them who have to shove a canula into me every three weeks, and I would be here forever listing their names.

I thank everyone in clinic 8 in the phlebotomy team who look after me. I thank my oncologist, who has gone above and beyond to hold my hand and make sure that I have the mental support and wellbeing that I need as well as the physical support. Those people have made a difference to my life. It reminds me of, “There but for the grace of God go I”, when we talk about Zoe’s life. The reason why I will keep referring to Zoe is because Zoe Panayi is a name that needs to be in Hansard as much as humanly possible. We lost her in tragic circumstances.

Jess’s law, which the Government are now passing, will make a difference to close the loopholes in the NHS when failures occur, but there are other issues that we need to look at. There is the private sector and the beautician sector as well. Through the great loss of Zoe’s life, at least, I hope that in the fullness of time we will be able to turn around and say Zoe Panayi’s life gave us something that actually protects others, and that it drives forward the change that we need in this country to ensure that more lives are not destroyed by melanomas and other skin cancers.

The other thanks I want to give is to Skcin—which, for Hansard, because their name is a bit funnily spelled, is S-K-C-I-N—a fantastic charity that has advised me over time on what action we can take. As pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), we need to have more investigations into the use of sunbeds. We know that they make a huge difference in our more deprived communities, and I praise the work that my hon. Friend is doing in her APPG.

I also thank Melanoma Focus and the dermatologists from Leeds teaching hospitals for their engagement with me and my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West last week, talking about the solutions. All too often in this place we can talk about the negatives and we say, “Oh, this is too difficult. We can’t fix this problem”, but we truly can. With a Zoe check and Zoe’s law, we can make the advancements that we need.

The best way to think about this in this House is to talk back to the silos. In the NHS, Jess’s law will make a difference. With the private sector, we need to look at how we work with the British Medical Association and the Royal College of Surgeons to make sure that they have the training and skills they need to deliver the detection that is needed on different forms of dermatology, skin cancers and melanomas.

There is also the beautician sector. There are lots of different solutions for that, ranging from completely banning all removal of lesions, skin tags and moles to enforced checking of everything through a biopsy, which is where I land on this, and is why I think a Zoe check is so important. We should say, “Yes, this is not something the NHS will pay for; it will be part of the private sector’s charge”. That private sector money will help us fund more pathologists and drive forward the checks that we need so that more lives are saved.

As I think was said perfectly by my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West—this debate is not the end: it is very much the start. Zoe’s family have been working on this tirelessly for years, and that shows. It takes a huge amount of strength not just to deal with the loss of a loved one, but to find an inner strength to look after those they have never met—and never will meet—and know that they are doing something good and something that will last. I think that is extremely noble. I thank Charlie and his mum for doing that. It is a time of thanks and a time of optimism. By pulling together on a cross-party basis, which we know we can do on cancers, we can save more lives.

14:09

[Dr Danny Chambers (Winchester) (LD)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairpersonship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the hon. Members for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) and for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) on securing this debate. I wish the hon. Member for South Norfolk all the best in his treatment. I have to say, it was hugely brave of him and emotive to hear him talk about the journey he is going through at the moment, and to hear him paying such tributes to all the staff involved in his care. I also thank Zoe’s family for coming here today, because it cannot be easy to hear people talk about this disease after everything they have been through.

Many of us will know, some from personal experience, how frightening it can be to face a possible or actual cancer diagnosis. When words such as “biopsy” or “diagnostic tests” enter the conversation, that provokes deep concern, and yet those tests, as everyone has been reiterating, are absolutely vital. Early diagnosis is the single most important factor in improving survival rates. The sooner any type of cancer is identified, the sooner treatment can begin, and the more likely the outcome will be favourable. The tests are very important for people’s mental health, because sometimes the test is clear: a person knows that, and knows there is no need to worry unnecessarily.

In an ideal world, someone who notices a suspicious mole or mark would call their GP; be seen within two weeks, as set out in the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines; if necessary, a biopsy would be taken; and, if cancer was confirmed, treatment would begin within 62 days. In an ideal world, that treatment would be available to everyone, regardless of their postcode.

We know that is not the reality for everyone, either in Winchester or the rest of the country. We know GP access is a growing concern. In Winchester, I regularly hear from my constituents that they are waiting weeks for appointments, which means we are falling at the first hurdle. The second hurdle—treatment within 62 days—is just as worrying. In Winchester, in July 2025, only 73.6% of cancer treatments began within 62 days, well below the operational standard of 85%.

The truth is that, at almost every stage of the process—from initial concern to diagnosis and treatment—we are letting too many people down. It is one of the reasons that the Liberal Democrats have been calling for a two-month cancer treatment guarantee for a long time now: a new target so that 100% of patients will start treatment within 62 days. We must also replace ageing radiotherapy machines and expand provision so no communities are left in what have rightly been called radiotherapy deserts. We do not want anyone to have to travel hours and miles when they are feeling ill for lifesaving care.

The last Government’s decision to close the National Cancer Research Institute, which had co-ordinated cancer research since 2001, was a grave mistake. One oncology professor compared this to

“turning off air traffic control and hoping the planes will be fine”.

We owe it to patients and their families to build confidence in the system, and that means faster access to GPs, earlier diagnosis, better treatment, proper investment in research and a comprehensive long-term plan to boost survival rates. I really welcome all the comments about regulating the private medical sector to ensure they are taking biopsies, as well as the regulation of sunbeds.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I wanted to be here at the beginning, but unfortunately I could not because I had other things to do in the Chamber. I declare an interest—like the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough), I am going to get one of mine done very shortly, but in Northern Ireland the wait list is 56 weeks. If it is red-flagged, it is five weeks. There is anxiety and stress for everyone—not for me, but for all the others—because it is not about me but everyone else. Does he agree that the NHS, wherever it may be in this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, needs to ensure that those who have melanoma and a biopsy get the urgency that is absolutely critical? The Minister is in her place—there is no better person to answer these questions than her—and I look forward very much to what she says. Does the hon. Member for Winchester (Dr Chambers) agree that a concerted campaign across this great United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to address those issues might be a way forward?

[Dr Chambers]

I totally agree with those comments.

I will finish by paying tribute to one of my friends from vet school, Polly Birch. She was diagnosed with a melanoma in 2016 and had it removed, but in 2017, a few months after giving birth to her baby girl, Ada, she discovered it was metastatic, and she passed away. Her final post on social media was beautiful and moving. A couple of days before she passed away, she said:

“Appreciate the people around you, adventure with them, buy less stuff and go out and experience the world…and look after the bees.”

Finally, and perhaps most poignantly, I will quote Mary Schmich:

“If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.”

14:16

[Dr Caroline Johnson (Sleaford and North Hykeham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Jardine. I congratulate the hon. Members for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) and for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) on securing this debate and on their very emotional speeches. I thank the hon. Member for South Norfolk for his bravery in talking about his own care. I commend Zoe’s family for their bravery and for their work to turn a family tragedy into something positive for other people, which is fantastic.

Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer and, frighteningly, the fifth most common cancer in the United Kingdom: almost 20,000 people are diagnosed each year. It usually starts in skin or a mole that is over-exposed to ultraviolet radiation, and then it spreads to vital organs such as the lungs or the liver.

One of the challenges is that melanomas can be difficult to identify. I am a paediatrician, not a dermatologist, but I remember looking at pictures of melanomas and moles in medical school, and in lots of cases I struggled to see the difference that the lecturer was pointing out. They can be brown, red or pink; small or large; flat or raised. Unlike other cancers, which tend to progress as they grow larger, melanomas can be lethal even when they are very small, which means that there is no time to lose in having the diagnosis.

All suspicious moles removed by the NHS should be tested, but those judged benign or removed in cosmetic or beauty settings are not necessarily tested, as has been said. There is therefore the risk that, if that judgment was wrong, the cancer can go undetected and it can have tragic consequences. I want to ask the Minister what steps she is taking to strengthen the regulations in the aesthetics and beauty sector, in particular, and in the private medical sector. What will be done about lasering moles in a way that prevents identification of a melanocytic lesion?

We know that AI can help. There are now computer systems that look at moles in photographs and are reasonably reliable at discerning whether something is malignant. That can be done in conjunction with doctors and histology as an additional layer to ensure there are no mistakes. Will the Minister update the House on what she is doing with AI? One of the big shifts that the Government have talked about is digital, and that is one of the options available to them.

The Government have said that improving diagnosis is a key part of their national cancer plan. Will the Minister give us some highlights from the plan? We were expecting it to be published this year, but it is apparently now delayed until next year. There are rumours that that is to have a presentational effect on 4 February. Given that more than 1,000 people are diagnosed every day across the UK, I really hope that there are not presentational reasons for the delay. It would be helpful to know when she intends to publish the plan.

What assessment has the Minister made of the impact that the plan will have on the progress of speeding up cancer diagnosis for patients? How does she plan to expand access to genomic testing, which can also help to identify the most at-risk patients?

The Government have talked a lot about the shift to prevention, which is always better than cure. In about nine out of 10 cases, melanoma can be prevented. Avoiding over-exposure to the intensity of the sun, applying sunscreen and wearing suitable clothing can help to defend our bodies from the risk of developing melanoma. What assessment has the Minister made of the impact of the VAT charged on sun cream to the incidence of skin cancer? Sun cream can be quite expensive and young people may find that a barrier to applying it. With the Budget coming up just next month, the Minister is in a prime position to make that case.

It takes only one blistering sunburn to more than double someone’s chances of developing melanoma later in life. What steps is the Minister taking to ensure that young people are aware of the risks of sunburn? What discussions has she had with the Department for Education about making sure that young people are aware of the risk? Figures show that 65% of 18 to 32-year-olds report annual sunburn. Alarmingly, in May 2024, researchers predicted a record high of 20,800 skin cancer cases for the year. I worry that sunburn is increasingly regarded as one of those things—a sort of hallmark of a foreign holiday. What steps is the Minister taking to raise awareness of the link between sunburn and skin cancer?

It is not always sunny in the UK. That is why over one in four people, and 43% of 18 to 25-year-olds, use sunbeds to top up their tan. However, that comes with significant health risks. Researchers estimate that sunbeds cause 440 cases of melanoma and around 100 deaths every year in the UK alone. I was surprised to discover that only 62% of people know that sunbed use increases the risk of skin cancer. Worryingly, researchers found that 23% of 18 to 25-year-olds thought that using sunbeds instead of the sun would reduce their risk of skin cancer. What steps is the Minister taking to bust those myths? Will she consider using her women’s health strategy to raise awareness of these issues, which put mostly young women at risk?

Banning under-18s from using tanning beds was undoubtedly sensible, but insufficient enforcement mechanisms have been set up. Unfortunately, a 2025 survey by Melanoma Focus of 100 16 and 17-year-olds in the UK found that 34% were still using sunbeds despite the ban. Exposure to indoor tanning before 35 is associated with a 59% increase in the risk of developing skin cancer. Does the Minister have any plans to strengthen the enforcement of regulations that restrict the use of sunbeds by young people?

Frustratingly, not only do the regulations not stop vulnerable people using sunbeds, but they fail to restrict irradiation levels. A report suggested that over half of Tyneside sunbed salons exceeded the irradiation limits, putting users at even greater risk of cancer and melanoma. What steps will the Minister take to put safety first and ensure that sunbed irradiation levels are enforced?

The key measures against a cancer as deadly as melanoma, and our best defences against fatalities, are prevention, early testing, catching it early and good treatment. Given that such a high proportion of cases are preventable, I am interested to hear more about the Minister’s plans for further prevention and to know how the cancer plan will help. What are her thoughts on the plan for Zoe’s law to ensure that a histology test is always done so that no one slips through the net?

14:23

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Ashley Dalton)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Jardine. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West (Mr Quigley) for this important debate and all hon. Members who have contributed. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) for raising the report by the APPG for beauty and wellbeing; I look forward to considering it in the new year. I thank the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Sleaford and North Hykeham (Dr Johnson), for raising the issues of sun damage and sunbeds. I am exploring options with respect to those issues and will report to Parliament as necessary.

Let me say how sorry I was to hear about the heartbreaking circumstances of Zoe’s story. My sympathies are with her family. I was honoured to meet them and hear their story at first hand earlier this month, and I am glad to see some of them in the Public Gallery today. I commend their campaigning in Zoe’s name.

I would also like to take a moment to acknowledge the personal experience of my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough) with stage 2C malignant melanoma. I commend his courageous efforts to share Zoe’s story alongside his own. From awareness-raising, better regulation and improved diagnostics, all the way through to fundamentally reforming the NHS, we will seize every opportunity to learn from preventable and unnecessary tragedies like Zoe’s, to help to save the lives of others.

The last time that I checked, the petition for Zoe’s law had received almost 40,000 signatures and many more people will have seen Zoe’s story in the news. Just a couple of weeks ago, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister paid tribute to Zoe’s family for their work. I commend all those who have raised awareness of skin cancers through Zoe’s story, because the faster and earlier that people are diagnosed with skin cancer, the faster they can begin treatment and the more effective that treatment can be.

The Government are taking steps to promote awareness of signs and symptoms through the NHS’s “Help Us Help You” campaigns, which aim to increase knowledge of cancer symptoms and encourage body awareness, helping people to spot symptoms earlier. Let me also take this opportunity to further promote the NHS’s clear and accessible information about how to check moles. That guidance is available to everyone on the NHS website and makes it easier for people to recognise when they should seek medical advice.

Most importantly, however, Zoe’s story demonstrates that even when someone does the right thing and raises concerns with their GP, accurate referrals to cancer services need to be in place. Let me stress that every patient should receive the thorough, compassionate and safe care that they deserve. Our GPs also need support to catch potentially deadly illnesses, including skin cancer, sooner. That is why, as a number of hon. Members mentioned, we recently introduced Jess’s rule, a new patient safety initiative designed to support GPs in making timely diagnoses. In practice, it means that if a patient returns to their GP three times with symptoms that are either worsening or still undiagnosed satisfactorily, GPs are asked to reflect, review and rethink. The aim is to make sure that no warning sign is missed and that every patient receives the attention they deserve.

I want to reassure hon. Members and others that the Government are committed to ensuring the highest standard of patient care by equipping healthcare professionals with the latest best practice clinical guidance. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence provides evidence-based guidance for the NHS on best practice. NICE has published several guidelines that include recommendations related to the diagnosis, assessment and treatment of skin cancer, including a guideline on referrals for suspected cancer, which was updated in May.

Our commitment to best practice means that histological testing on excised moles is already routine practice in the NHS. There is not NICE guidance for the cosmetic industry, because it is not NHS-funded, but I know that the safety of the cosmetic sector is of significant interest to colleagues. Many Members will no doubt be all too aware of the devastating consequences of a wide range of unsafe cosmetic practices. Since I met Zoe’s family, my office has written to colleagues at the Department for Business and Trade to get a better sense of practice and to explore what it is possible for us to do in this space.

My Department will also consider whether Zoe’s story can be incorporated into action that we are taking to improve the safety of the cosmetic sector as a whole. We are prioritising developing legal restrictions on high-risk cosmetic procedures, to ensure that they can be performed only by suitably qualified and regulated healthcare professionals who are working for providers registered with the Care Quality Commission. Additionally, we will introduce a local authority licensing scheme in England for lower-risk cosmetic procedures. Licensing will enable us to embed rigorous safety training and insurance standards in the sector, and enable action to be taken against practitioners who fail to comply with the requirements. These measures will allow people to be confident that the practitioner they choose to perform their procedure has the skills to do so safely.

It is important to note that for the majority of skin cancer patients, diagnosis and treatment occur in a timely manner. To ensure that we continue to improve our strong performance and survival rates, we are spending £600 million of capital funding this year on diagnostics. That sum includes, for the first time, funding for the automation of histopathology laboratories to improve productivity. Thanks to the hard work of NHS staff, we exceeded the faster diagnosis standard for skin cancer in August, when more than 80% of patients received an all-clear or a cancer diagnosis within 28 days. The 62-day cancer waiting time for skin cancer was 84.9%—the standard is 85%, so it was just shy—and the five-year survival rate for melanoma is now around 92%.

However, we know there is more to be done. In the longer term, as part of our 10-year health plan, we are ensuring that the NHS is able to harness the power of technological innovation to improve the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of all cancers, including skin cancer. By using innovative technologies such as teledermatology, in which a high-resolution photograph is taken of the skin and sent directly to a dermatologist, we are increasing diagnostic productivity and reducing waiting times for skin cancer patients. We will ensure that no one waits longer than they should.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I called for teledermatology on another occasion because it absolutely works. Does the Minister have any figures on how many GPs are using that as the basis of their diagnosis? My husband recently went to our GP and he was still referred to the hospital, so I am not confident that a lot of GPs are making use of it.

[Ashley Dalton]

The majority of those services are provided through community diagnostic centres. I do not have any figures to hand but I am more than happy to write to the hon. Member with whatever figures we have available.

Within those services, we have recently begun testing AI-based platforms to triage patients following referral from primary care. I have seen at first hand how useful AI can be in flagging potentially risky images so that the consultant can prioritise and explore them. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk takes a keen interest in those developments. Further roll-out of AI in the NHS for this purpose will be subject to assessments of clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, which are ongoing, but I can say from first-hand experience that it offers a very exciting opportunity and falls distinctly within our ambition for the shift from analogue to digital.

Although immediate action is essential, we recognise that bold reform is needed if we are to rise to the growing challenge that cancers of all types present. We will publish the national cancer plan in the new year to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer over the next 10 years. We have received over 11,000 responses to our call for evidence from individuals, professionals and organisations, and we are reviewing the submissions from skin cancer partners. Publication has been delayed by about six weeks to ensure that all the responses are properly considered in the plan. Our expansive engagement will allow the national cancer plan to have patients at its heart. The plan will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and ongoing care.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Isle of Wight West again for bringing this important matter to the House, and I thank all Members who have contributed. I am pleased to assure them that we are undertaking immediate actions to learn from Zoe’s story. Combined with our bold reforms to create a health service that is fit for the future, we will reduce the number of lives lost to the biggest killers, including skin cancer.

14:34

[Mr Quigley]

I thank the Minister for her remarks. I do not think anyone would question her passion and commitment to this cause. I thank her for previously sharing her own diagnosis. It is important that people understand that cancer can affect anybody. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Neath and Swansea East (Carolyn Harris) and the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse)—and it would not be a debate without the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) making some contribution.

Zoe Panayi did everything right. She sought help and she trusted the system, and yet the safeguards that should have protected her did not. That is why this debate matters. Zoe’s law is not about blame; it is about prevention. It is about making sure that every mole removed is tested. That is a small step with a profound impact—one that could save lives, reduce the burden on the NHS and spare families unimaginable grief. The cost is not preventable: the technology exists and the reason is clear —cancer is not a place to cut corners.

I know that all the contributions we have heard today mean such a lot to Zoe’s family, her brother Charlie, and mum Eileen watching at home. We must not forget the human tragedy behind this story: the children who have lost a mother, the family who have lost a sister and a daughter, and the community who have lost a friend. That is why Zoe’s law is so important. I urge the Department to continue working with Zoe’s family, with me and with my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Ben Goldsborough), who has shared so much of his own journey, making such a difference. I thank him for his commitment to this cause, and for the support and extremely generous amount of time that he has given me. We need to make this safeguard a reality so that what happened to Zoe is never repeated.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered histological testing of excised moles.

14:35

Sitting suspended.

Children’s Social Care

Thursday 30th October 2025 Westminster Hall

[Dr Rupa Huq in the Chair]

15:10

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Fourth Report of the Education Committee, Children’s social care, HC 430, and the Government response, HC 1350.

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I am grateful to the Liaison Committee for granting time for this debate on the Education Committee’s report on children’s social care and the Government’s response. I am particularly pleased that the debate is taking place on the eve of Care Leavers Month, a time of more intensive focus on children’s social care and the support provided to care leavers.

The inquiry was launched by our predecessor Committee in December 2023 to take a comprehensive look at the children’s social care system as a whole. It was interrupted by the general election, but the new Committee decided that the work was too important to drop, and agreed to progress the inquiry to a conclusion. In total, the Committee held eight oral evidence sessions. We heard from a range of experts across the sector, and I am particularly pleased that we held an oral evidence session with four care-experienced young people, who spoke powerfully of their experiences of children’s social care and their hopes for reform.

Children’s social care comprises a set of vital services that support some of our most vulnerable children. Those services include early help and support for families, safeguarding, the care of looked-after children, support for disabled children, and a range of other services. They encompass some of the gravest responsibilities of the state, yet we know that they are under intense pressure.

The erosion of funding, combined with increasing need, has resulted in a situation in which many services are struggling to deliver in a way that is genuinely child-centred. All too often, looked-after children are placed far from home. The outcomes for care-experienced young people are shockingly poor. In 2022, the current Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister), who was responsible at the time for the independent review of children’s social care commissioned by the previous Government, said that the system was in need of a total reset.

Although the situation is very serious, that is in no way to deny the extraordinarily hard work and commitment we see among those who work to support children in the care system, and I pay tribute to them at the start of the debate. Social workers, support workers, advocates, foster carers, kinship carers and many others step in to support the most vulnerable children and to try to deliver a secure and solid foundation for their childhood.

However, our inquiry found that many of the problems highlighted by the independent review of children’s social care persist and, in a significant number of cases, have worsened since the review. Witnesses criticised the piecemeal approach to reform, which has focused on new short-term initiatives in a small number of areas, rather than comprehensive change.

There has been a rising need for children’s social care over the past decade. The number of looked-after children has risen by over 20% in the past 10 years, standing at 83,630 in 2024. Over the same period, the rate of looked- after children has increased from 60 to 70 per 10,000 children in the population. The number of section 47 inquiries per year in response to child protection concerns has risen by 57% over the past decade.

That rising need has been in direct correlation to the erosion of funding for early help and support services, such as Sure Start, which played such a critical role in preventing families from reaching crisis point. That is leading to a severe shortage of placements for children in care. In 2024, 45% of looked-after children were placed outside their local authority, and 22% were placed over 20 miles from home. The inquiry heard distressing accounts from care-experienced young people who had been placed far from home. One young person had experienced racism for the first time when she was placed in an area with a very different demographic from her home area. Another had had to get up at 4 am and take long-distance trains to school while on a respite placement because her foster family were on holiday. Another had chosen not to pursue higher education, having experienced such frequent moves during her time in care.

There is an acute shortage of foster care placements. The need for 6,500 new foster carers in England has left local authorities over-reliant on expensive private children’s home providers, despite evidence of disgraceful profiteering in parts of the sector. We found that some local authorities do much better than others at keeping their looked-after children close to home and avoiding the spot purchasing of expensive and often poor-quality private residential places. Our report recommended that the Department publish a national sufficiency strategy for children’s social care and require all local authorities to develop and publish strategies for reducing the number of out-of-area placements.

The Department’s response states:

“While we do not believe a national sufficiency strategy would be responsive enough to children’s needs at a local level, we are working closely with the two RCC”

—regional care co-operative—

“pathfinder areas and supporting improved placement commissioning and forecasting”.

I would like to press the Minister on that. The purpose of a national sufficiency strategy would be to give the Government additional leverage in ironing out the significant variation in practice between local authorities. Local authorities should be adopting best practice on the provision of care placements. We know that some do that really well and therefore have very few children who are not in the borough. Without a national strategy, however, it is hard to see how the Government can grip the extent of the variation.

In response to the severe shortage of foster carers, we recommended that the Department put in place a national fostering strategy and consult on introducing a national register of foster carers. The Department’s response states that it is

“considering the potential costs and benefits of a national register of foster carers”,

but it does not commit to a national strategy.

For many years now, the only method of foster carer recruitment has been advertising, but that is simply not delivering. The conversion rate is shocking: only 6% of people who express an interest in fostering put in an application to do so, and only 32% of applications are eventually approved. That tells us that we need a more comprehensive approach that seeks not only to drum up interest but to seek proactively to address some of the barriers to fostering, particularly those in relation to housing, and to deliver better support and respite arrangements for foster carers.

The inquiry heard about the crucial role played by kinship carers, who step in to look after a child within their network of family or friends when the child’s biological parents are unable to do so. We heard from a young person who described kinship care as

“a loving, caring, beautiful environment where I felt nurtured and valued”.

Kinship care is often the best arrangement for children whose parents cannot look after them, as it helps them to maintain secure attachments within their family. However, the Committee also heard about the financial struggles faced by kinship carers, including the fact that 67% of children in kinship care live in a deprived household. Kinship carers act out of love, but they should not be forced into poverty for doing so. Our report recommended that the new allowance for kinship carers should be on a par with the allowance for foster carers, and that entitlements to kinship leave should be included in the Government’s review of the parental leave system.

The Department’s response states that the parental leave review will look at support for kinship carers, but it does not commit to setting the kinship allowance at the same level as support for foster carers. I press the Minister to look carefully at that. There are much higher costs, both to children and to the public purse, when a kinship arrangement breaks down and a local authority has to fund a foster placement or a children’s home placement for a child. Kinship carers are the unsung heroes of children’s social care, and they need to be properly supported.

Our report concluded:

“It is unacceptable that the continuation of the Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund was not announced until 1 April 2025, leaving families and children uncertain about the future of their support.”

We recommended that the Department end the annual cliff edge of uncertainty faced by adoptive families and make funding for the adoption and special guardianship support fund permanent. We also expressed our concern about the decision to limit the funding per child within the ASGSF and recommended that the Government keep a very close watch on the impact of that decision and reinstate the previous level of funding rapidly if there are significant adverse effects. The Department’s response confirmed that funding for the adoption and special guardianship support fund has been committed for 2026-27, but it did not commit to making the fund permanent.

Our inquiry heard that outcomes for care-experienced young people are far worse on many measures than for their non-care-experienced peers. That is a shocking indication of the failures of the children’s social care system. Some 39% of care leavers aged 19 to 21 are not in education, employment or training, compared with 13% of all young people aged 19 to 21. Only 15% of care leavers go to university by the age of 19, compared with 46% of children who have not been in care. Approximately one in four—perhaps more—of the adult prison population has been in care, and between 30% and 50% of homeless people are estimated to have spent time in care.

Our inquiry heard about the financial difficulties faced by young people on leaving care. One young person, Jake Hartley, had to use food banks and borrow money to pay bills after turning 18. Louise Fitt told us that she had to drop A-levels after turning 18 due to the need to work and support herself financially. She said:

“I always wanted an education, but I had to sacrifice that because I have to eat, I have to have a roof over my head; that is so important. We should not have to choose between that. We should be allowed to study if we want to… It is not nice being left on your own at 18 to go into the adult world and to figure it out.”

The report recommended that the Department for Education develop a national care offer to harmonise support for care leavers across the country. In response, the Department stated that it had launched a new website

“which brings together all relevant information in an easily accessible format.”

I want to press the Minister on that point. Care leavers should not face a postcode lottery for support. There is simply no justification for that. A website with information about the inconsistent support available in different areas is not the same as a national care offer. My Committee is clear that the Government should commit to a national offer to ensure that no care-experienced young person falls through the cracks and that care-experienced young people can feel confident to move, go to university or take up employment without feeling that their aspirations are constrained by worries about whether they will be supported.

Our report also expressed concerns about the Government’s proposal to reduce support through universal credit for those aged under 22 who are care experienced, and recommended that care leavers be exempted. In its response, the Department said that

“no decisions have been made yet”

and that it would

“consider consultation feedback before implementing any changes.”

As the Government prepare to consider welfare reforms, I urge the Minister to make the strongest representations to his colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury on this issue. It would make a huge difference.

We are concerned by the Government’s refusal to commit to a number of our recommendations. We recommended that the Department implement the recommendation of the independent review of children’s social care to develop universal standards of care that apply to all children’s homes, including supported accommodation, ensuring that children in all settings receive care where they live. In its response, the Department stated:

“Rather than prioritising development of a single universal set of standards, we are focusing on options for updating some of the most out-dated National Minimum Standards to ensure they reflect the latest ambitious goals we have for children and to bring them into better alignment with more recently developed standards.”

I urge the Minister to look again at that recommendation, which would represent greater ambition for the quality of accommodation and support that children receive.

The Committee recommended that the Department introduce national eligibility criteria for disabled children’s social care. The Department responded that it was waiting for the Law Commission’s recommendations on disabled children’s social care and would “set out any plans for reform in due course.”

Whatever the outcome of the Law Commission’s work, it is vital that the postcode lottery currently experienced by families with a disabled child is addressed.

We recommended that the Department take forward the recommendation of the independent review of children’s social care to introduce an opt-out model of independent advocacy for all children in care. In its response, the Department said that it would

“introduce new National Standards for Advocacy for Children and Young People and revised statutory guidance on Providing Effective Advocacy for Children and Young People Making a Complaint under the Children Act 1989 in 2025.”

I know that this topic is very close to the Minister’s heart. I urge him to go further than the response indicates and look at how access to independent advocacy can be maximised for all children in care.

We welcome the Government’s commitment to family group decision making in relation to children on the edge of the care system, but we recommended that the Department clarify the specific model of family group decision making in statutory guidance to ensure that best practice is followed in all local authorities. In response, the Department said:

“It is a local authority’s decision on which model of FGDM will best serve the families they support after considering the evidence.”

I urge the Minister to look again at producing guidance for local authorities. Family group decision making is a very effective tool for driving better outcomes for children, but only if it is properly understood and rigorously implemented. There are risks in an approach that does not guarantee the quality of this work.

Finally, the Committee recommended that the Department put in place a strategy for supporting children and young people at risk of extra-familial harm. The Department emphasised that it had strengthened the multi-agency response to extra-familial harm through updated statutory guidance. I encourage the Minister to pay further attention to this work. Extra-familial harm is a growing cause of children entering the care system, particularly as teenagers, and our evidence points to systems that are not joined up and are often ill-equipped to protect children from threats outside the home. Indeed, our evidence says that removing a child from their home can harm them further, rather than protecting them from the threats they are experiencing that do not come from within their family network.

By intervening in the lives of children and families through children’s social care, the state exercises some of its gravest responsibilities. The stakes are very high and the consequences of failure can be catastrophic, but there are also huge rewards if we get things right. More families would be able to thrive together, and more children would be able to overcome adverse childhood experiences and thrive in education. Disabled children would be able to access education and opportunities on an equal footing with their peers.

Even more importantly, the effectiveness of this work is fundamental if the Government are to meet some of their other challenges. If the Government are serious about tackling homelessness, or about tackling the intense crisis in the criminal justice system, they must also be serious about the outcomes for children in the care system. This work is of the utmost importance and my Committee supports the Government in their mission to break down the barriers to opportunity and to create a country in which every child can thrive.

15:24

[Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq.

With National Care Leavers Month starting next Saturday, it is apt that we are discussing this issue here in Westminster Hall today. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), the Chair of the Education Committee, for the Committee’s excellent report and its urgency in getting this matter before the House. I thank her also for her powerful recounting of the Committee’s inquiry.

On a recent visit to Falkirk & Clackmannanshire Young Carers, which I had more opportunity to do when I was Falkirk council’s young persons’ elected member champion, I was reminded of the social awareness of young people with care experience, but also of the burden on them in advocating for themselves and the distinct challenges they face, which my hon. Friend so powerfully recounted. Falkirk & Clackmannanshire Young Carers is a fantastic organisation in my constituency, which advocates for the interests of care-experienced young people.

I will focus in on recommendation 78, which is that the Department for Education should commission:

“an independent evaluation of the impact of designating care experience a protected characteristic”.

In June 2023, after hearing overwhelmingly powerful testimony from the Falkirk Champs board, which is a group of care-experienced young people who dedicate their time to advocating for young people with similar backgrounds, Falkirk Council, which I was a member of at the time, unanimously agreed to treat care experience as a protected characteristic. We were the first Scottish council to do so. That was achieved through the advocacy and campaigning of the young people in my constituency, and a motion led by my tirelessly hard-working colleague and defender of the interests of young people and women, Councillor Siobhan Paterson.

Recommendation 78 also urges monitoring the impact where action similar to Falkirk council’s has been taken by English local authorities, so let me put the Minister on the spot: will the Department, given its apt proximity to the Minister for Women and Equalities, the right hon. Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson), consider legislating if the impact of local councils’ designating care experience as a protected characteristic is found to be beneficial, but could be enhanced by putting that designation on a statutory footing? What are the Department’s thoughts on that issue? For the Minister’s information, if Councillor Paterson makes it to the Scottish Parliament next year as a Scottish Labour MSP for Falkirk East and Linlithgow, the Department would have a very powerful colleague to support and assist such a measure being implemented in Holyrood.

When the Minister responds to the debate, will he also thank all the organisations throughout the country involved in this work, especially Falkirk & Clackmannanshire Carers Centre and Young Carers, all of their staff and all of the young people on the Falkirk Champs board for their continued advocacy?

15:28

[Darren Paffey (Southampton Itchen) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq.

I thank and commend my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), the chair of the Education Committee, for leading the inquiry, securing the debate and making an incredibly powerful case as to why, particularly as we begin National Care Leavers Month, we must see action on children’s social care.

I welcome the Minister to his role, commend his work on the independent review of children’s social care, and congratulate him on being in the most powerful position possible to deliver on something that, tragically, was shelved for several years, until the new Government picked it up.

I am not only a proud member of the Committee that carried out this work, but as some know, I have a particular interest in this issue. For a number of years before being elected to this place, I was the cabinet member for children’s services and education in Southampton City Council. With help from many others, I tried to transform services that literally had life or death consequences for many children. It was a pleasure to do that, because I was once there myself: I grew up in foster care, and happily I was adopted. I am a big advocate of the life-transforming difference that the right care at the right time in the right circumstances can make, because had that not been the case for me, thanks to my parents, social workers and others along the way who made decisions on my behalf, I would not be standing here today.

In my maiden speech, I said that, of the many things we get involved with in Parliament, the one thing I want to do is be able to say to those to whom this report speaks, whose lives and circumstances it seeks to make better—those who are going through some of the most challenging times in life, who suffer the stigma of still being more likely to end up in prison than in university or in this place—that we will ensure they have the right support. I want that experience to forge in them a steely determination to achieve their full potential. Many of these recommendations are in that vein.

I was proud to bring a group of care leavers to Parliament earlier this week. I thank the Minister again for making time at the last moment, with no notice, to meet them, so that they could share their aspirations. Their voices were not only heard in this place; they went to the very heart of decision making—the Department for Education.

I want to talk about three key issues: the importance of getting early intervention right, foster carers, and care leavers themselves. The Government have committed to early intervention and help. In Southampton, I saw the power of shifting from reactive services to preventive services, with early help and intervention. That can reduce the number of children entering care, the amount of time they spend in care, and the damaging impact that being in care for too long can have. For many, it turns them around. Unfortunately, the damage can be compounded by the experience of care, so there is a great need for support. I think I am preaching to the choir when I say that early intervention is absolutely key.

The Government’s response points to the existing grants and the local government finance settlement, which deals with some early interventions, particularly around things such as housing support. Will the Minister please say a bit more about the conversations he is having with MHCLG ministerial colleagues? Will he ensure we seize the opportunity to make a difference? When council funding is announced later in the year, it will be welcomed not only by cabinet members like I was, leaders in this area and people who work in it, but most importantly by young people themselves, who will see that we are taking this issue seriously.

On the recruitment and retention of foster carers, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood made a powerful case setting out why what we are doing is not working. We need to do more. I believe that a national fostering strategy is needed to bring together the good will and the good practice. We know that there are pockets of excellence across the country, and there moments when a particular campaign works well. In Southampton, we were delighted to have one of our former Saints players engage with us on this issue—we could at least win at something, even if it was not football in that season. That joint working to promote the benefits not just to children, but to families who welcome young people into their homes for however long is needed, was a real success. None the less, recruitment numbers go up and down, and I am sure that is replicated across the country.

I hope the Minister will take on board the need to consider again a national fostering strategy that is properly resourced and brings together the comprehensive measures needed for progress. That would help to bring clarity and far greater awareness of the current crisis, and crucially, it would bring hope. As I believe the Minister said the other day, we want there to be choice. We cannot simply say, “Well, we have a foster carer, but they happen to be 20 or 30 miles away and that is the best fit we can get for an individual.” I think we know that we can and should be doing better than that.

On care leavers, our report concluded that it is rightly absolutely unacceptable that young people are left to support themselves financially when they turn 18, particularly if they are in full-time education and have to face either reducing time spent in education or dropping out completely to support themselves. I do not know if anyone has read the book by Ashley John-Baptise about the decision he faced almost 20 years ago either to accept a property that a council had finally been able to offer him as a care leaver, or to take up his place at university. That is not a position we want anyone to be in. Thankfully, the intervention of an MP at that point made a difference. The system should be making the difference, not forcing young people to choose between opportunities that, in most cases, those who are not care-experienced would not even have to consider.

There are things that no responsible parent would allow, and the state—councils—are in loco parentis. Therefore, as this Government are committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity, we must keep the most life-changing opportunity, education, open to all care-experienced young people. Where finance is the barrier, we need to remove that, and where the risk of a placement breakdown is a barrier, we must get extra support for stability. As has been recommended, we need to look at extending corporate parenting to all public bodies that are required to support our children in care. A national care leaver offer, as in recommendation 75, should still be on the table; it would go hand in hand with the local care leaver offer that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is bringing in.

As argued strongly by my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank), designating care experience a protected characteristic is another tool in our box that we could use to make a difference for children and young people. That is recommendation 78, and I would be grateful if the Minister elaborated on what the Government are doing there. Work is ongoing in Parliament, and the hon. Member for Dundee Central (Chris Law), Baroness Longfield and activists such as Terry Galloway and Chris Wild are working on it. We would be pleased to meet with the Minister on an ongoing basis to ensure that we are working towards it.

Finally, I will list a few of the things that Atlas, Mac, Ethan and George told us when they visited this week about what would make a difference to their experience of being in social care, and in particular leaving social care. They are asking for more funding and focus on mental health and wellbeing. That is in recommendation 49. We know that child and adolescent mental health services are in a poor state, whether someone has been in care or not, and urgently need to be fixed. The Government said in their response that they will take a multidisciplinary approach and that they will review statutory guidance. Can the Minister say when we can expect that? The crisis is ongoing. We cannot continue to wait much longer.

Children want more placements closer to home. They want that stability. They want more affordable housing. As has already been outlined, that speaks to the wider challenges in society that the Government have to tackle: child poverty, relieving financial pressures on families, and having better support for parents, which we know will be given through the new Best Start family hubs.

I am glad that parental pay and parental leave are under review so that in the earliest, most crucial days we might see stronger bonds in children. For some, that may remove the likelihood that they have to go into care. There are risks outside the home that we need to fix, and there are risks in the home such as social media and smartphones. Many things impact the stability of our young people’s experience, particularly when they go on to leave care. We need training and experience for the young people themselves, but young people told us that they also want their social workers to be as well trained as possible. Some of them want someone, as they put it, a bit older. They probably mean someone with the deep experience to be able to coach them through the upheaval that many of them face, particularly as they become independent. They want to feel like they are part of a normal family, as much as possible.

I again commend the Chair of the Education Committee for leading this inquiry. It was the first priority of the new Committee. I ask the Minister to make it clear to us and, more importantly, to foster families, to children who are care-experienced, and to those who are leaving care that it is the first priority of this Government. I welcome the many responses that have reassured us of that commitment to make change happen where it is desperately needed, but the Government must not allow this to be a wait and see moment. The Minister must assure us that decisive action will be taken on those recommendations because, as the Chair of the Committee has said, he will be able to count on the Committee’s full support if he does.

15:42

[Josh Newbury (Cannock Chase) (Lab)]

It is a real pleasure to speak in this debate. As this is the first debate in which I have spoken with the Minister in his place, I warmly welcome him to his new role. I know that he brings an immense amount of professional and personal experience to this role. It is always wonderful to see somebody on the Front Bench who can bring that experience to bear, and who understands where many of us are coming from in what we say. I am honoured to follow excellent speeches from the Chair of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), and from my other hon. Friends. I echo the thanks to the Select Committee for all its work, and for the long list of fantastic recommendations, which show it has its finger on the pulse of what is being raised and requested in the whole children’s social care sector.

I speak not just as a Member of Parliament with a keen interest in children’s social care but as somebody who is personally invested in this topic as an adoptive parent and a former foster carer. The Committee’s report made very clear what many of us see in our constituencies and from our families and friendship circles: a widening gap between those who are willing to adopt and foster and those who are able to complete the process. My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood outlined some statistics around that, which are really concerning, particularly as somebody who has been through this process. Those like me have seen the difficulties that are faced throughout the process, but also how it is at the end of the tunnel, as it were. It is worrying that so many people do not reach that point, and we need to drill down into what is putting off so many people.

Recruitment of foster carers and adopters cannot be limited to local campaigns. We need a national drive on this, and to make it a national mission. We need central Government to commit resources and efforts to this issue. We are seeing a worrying downward trend in the number of foster carers and adopters. We know the cost of that, which is not only the financial cost—with, as the Chair of the Committee said, hugely increasing numbers of private children’s homes opening—but the social cost to children: many of them feel that there is nowhere for them to go and they are not wanted by anybody. We know that a foster placement, in particular, can offer so much healing and restore a young person’s sense of self and their confidence in the whole system.

When my partner and I applied, we got a lot of our initial information from charities, before we even inquired about an information evening at our local authority. Particularly with ongoing funding challenges, councils are quite limited in what they can do. Staffordshire county council does fantastic work; it has been to many local fairs—when we had a Pride in Cannock Chase it came there with its fostering van, and proactively spoke to people. But obviously it can only do so much, and many of the staff are volunteering their own time to be able to do that.

We also need to look at some of the practical barriers, particularly around things like people in social housing, as was highlighted by the Committee. We clearly do not have a lack of altruistic people in this country who want to put themselves forward to foster, adopt or both. But the dropping numbers suggest that there are many barriers in place that we need to knock down. Fostering and adoption are not luxuries; they are absolute lifelines. Children need stable and loving homes, so we need accessible routes for families to come forward.

I will briefly pick up on the point about priority school admission for kinship carers. I have personal experience of the benefit that having priority admission as an adoptive parent gave us. Unlike most adopted children, whose parents are applying for a school nearby, many children who are going into kinship care are moving further away from home, and I have seen cases where they struggle to get a school place. I appreciate that in its response the Department said that there is limited evidence around that. However, we know that there is limited evidence around a lot of the challenges that are facing kinship carers, because we are only recently waking up to their importance, value and support needs. I hope the Department will do everything it can to gather that evidence and look to see if this is something we can do.

Thirdly, as other colleagues have, I will touch on the adoption and special guardianship support fund. Again, I declare an interest in that as a family we are actively accessing this fund for my daughter. I welcome the Department’s acknowledgment that stability and transparency are critical. As has been said in debates in this Chamber and on the Floor of the House, any support that we can provide through the fund will pay for itself many times over. But we also need to look at the capacity in local authorities to provide support.

As a family we have sometimes found that finding a therapist—often a former social worker who has particular expertise in different areas—can be a challenge. Clearly, local authorities are not going to be able to provide the full gambit of support that might be needed, but for issues such as attachment disorder, which is very common among children in care, it would be wonderful to see more of that support available within local authorities, so that we do not have to use the ASGSF or go out to private providers or charities to access that support.

I will touch on the recruitment and retention of social workers, as my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood did. We hear continually from social workers about how there is immense instability in the workforce, and that is undermining everything that they are trying to do, from early intervention to post-adoption support and preparing care leavers. We know that this is a challenge for almost every local authority in the country. A national workforce strategy is critical. We need to offer meaningful career progression and improved pay in many areas—pay disparities even between neighbouring local authorities can be huge.

I have heard about the difference between Birmingham and Worcestershire, for example, and many social workers being sucked out of the counties that ring the west midlands conurbation into those urban authorities because they can pay much better. They therefore often have better staff teams, whereas those in the surrounding shires are struggling. Many newly qualified social workers do not have the mentorship and support from more experienced colleagues, so they are leaving not long into their career, which is tragic. Stress and workforce pressures will always be there for social workers as it is an incredibly demanding job, but anything we can do to foster a culture that values and uplifts social work, and that means that people have some of the trickier tasks taken away—for example, so they do not have to fill out as much paperwork—would help.

Finally, I will touch on care leavers and the need for a universal support offer. We have repeatedly heard heartbreaking stories of care leavers aged 18, or even 16, moving out of their local authority and often losing support. That is why a national care offer would be a catch-all across the country. Staying Close provisions are really welcome, but they need to be fully rolled out so that we can smoothly transition young adults to independence with emotional and practical support intact. It cannot be a postcode lottery. I have heard from many care leavers that they want to move out of their home authority—they may have done so when they were a young child—but they often remain reliant on the original local authority in which they were taken into care for support. Those local authorities are often far less likely to offer support to someone living far outside their area.

There was also a recent announcement on care leavers and student loans. It would be great if the Minister could provide more information around that, because my understanding is that care leavers already have independent student status and can therefore already get maximum loans in all but a small number of cases. I have been asked to seek a bit more clarity on that so we can see who that announcement will benefit and whether there is any data on that.

I echo my thanks to the Education Committee and the Department for all their work on this, but highlight the need for a national recruitment campaign for foster carers and adopters; as much support as possible for adoptive parents and kinship carers to do their absolute best for their loved ones; a well supported, sustainable social-work workforce; and a care leaver offer that transcends geography, so that young people can access what they need, wherever they are.

15:51

[Anna Sabine (Frome and East Somerset) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Huq— I hope my voice is going to survive this. I thank the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) for everything that she and the Committee have done on this fantastic report. It is a really important piece of work, and it has been wonderful to hear all the personal stories from people in this debate about this issue.

Children in care, and those at risk of being taken into care, deserve the very best start in life. They deserve the love, stability and support that every child should be able to take for granted, yet for far too long this country has failed them. The previous Conservative Government did not grasp the scale of the crisis in children’s social care. Their response to the independent review of children’s social care, which called for more than £2 billion to deliver whole system reform, amounted to less than a tenth of that figure.

That failure to invest is a failure to protect vulnerable children. It is also a false economy, because when we do not provide children with stability, we pay the price later in lost potential, poor health and lives that never had the chance that they should have had. The Liberal Democrats believe that every child deserves the opportunity to reach their full potential, no matter their circumstances. That is why we would make care experience a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010—so that young people who have been in care are not left behind or discriminated against, but recognised and supported.

We have also called for proper support for the 150,000 children in England being raised by grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings and friends—our kinship carers who step up when families fall apart. These carers deserve the same respect and resources as foster carers. We are calling for a weekly allowance equivalent to that for foster carers; paid leave for kinship carers when a child comes to live with them, just as adoptive parents have; and priority access to schools and pupil premium plus funding for the children in their care. Love alone is not enough; it must be matched with practical, financial and emotional support.

The points today on foster care have been particularly well made. My constituency is Frome and East Somerset, and we are desperately short in Frome, particularly of foster care places, which means many children have to go into residential settings, often very far from their home and hard for local people to access, as we have tricky rural bus routes and a lack of trains. It is also much more expensive for a struggling local authority.

Support for families has been undermined by the Government’s handling of the adoption and special guardianship support fund. That fund has been a lifeline, enabling traumatised children to access specialist therapy, healing and hope, yet earlier this year families were left in the dark for months about whether the fund would continue. It was only after Liberal Democrat pressure, led by my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) with an urgent question, that the Government confirmed the funding for ’25-26. The truth is that the details of severe cuts were quietly slipped out once Parliament had gone into recess. The therapy limit has been slashed from £5,000 to £3,000, and a separate £2,500 allowance for specialist assessments has been scrapped. Support can also no longer be carried across financial years, robbing families of the flexibility they need.

For some, these consequences are especially devastating. Children with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which I have campaigned on, are among those most affected. FASD is a lifelong condition caused by exposure to alcohol before birth. It can lead to developmental delays, learning and emotional regulation difficulties and a range of physical and cognitive challenges. Many children with FASD are adopted or in special guardianship arrangements. They often require specialist assessments, ongoing therapy and expert support to manage complex needs.

The withdrawal of funding for those diagnostic assessments is catastrophic for those children. Without a proper diagnosis, they cannot access tailored support at school or appropriate interventions at home. The cuts to the adoption and special guardianship fund are therefore not just administrative tinkering; they are an act of neglect towards some of the most vulnerable in our society, including those living with FASD, whose future prospects depend on early and sustained support. We call on the Government to reverse these harmful cuts immediately and to reaffirm their commitment to adopted children, special guardians and kinship carers. Every child, whether in care, adopted or living with extended family, deserves the same chance to thrive.

15:54

[Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) (Con)]

I hope my voice manages to survive this speech. I am pleased to respond to this important debate on behalf of the Opposition. I welcome the Minister to his new role. I know how knowledgeable and committed he is to the welfare of the children we are discussing today.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) on an important Select Committee report. She gave an excellent speech. The hon. Members for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) and for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) spoke with experience of their roles in local authorities. The personal experiences of the hon. Members for Southampton Itchen and for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) make them especially important voices on these matters, and I thank both of them.

The report sets out a sobering context. The need for children’s social care has risen significantly over the past decade, with the number of looked-after children reaching 83,630 in 2024—an increase of over 20% compared with 10 years earlier. This increase has caused pressures on the provision of care for the children involved, and growing numbers of children are now placed far from where they live. We heard a bit about this in the debate, but last year 45% of looked-after children were placed outside their local authority area and 22% were placed more than 20 miles away from home.

The report found that there are serious shortages of foster carers, with an additional 6,500 foster parents needed to fill the gaps. I am pleased by the report’s emphasis on the importance of kinship care. A bugbear of mine, and not a proper criticism of the Committee, is that the report refers to kinship carers being

“an essential part of the care system”.

I always find the language of “systems” quite dehumanising, when kinship carers are vital, loving family members. A responsible member of the family is always a better option than the inhumanity of a bureaucratic system. As the report says, it is vital that kinship carers have the support they need and deserve.

If we can get children’s social care right, the rewards could not be greater: difficult starts giving way to new beginnings; great potential given the promise of a fair chance; and, as the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood said, a reduction in some of the social problems that we contend with in other parts of Government.

The report makes clear the consequences when we do not get it right. Children in care often experience trauma, abuse and neglect. They are more than four times more likely to suffer emotional or mental health problems than other children of their age. The Committee reported on the poor outcomes for too many care leavers—the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood mentioned this in her speech. Some 39% of care leavers between the ages of 19 and 21 are not in education, employment or training; one third of care leavers become homeless within two years of leaving care; and almost a quarter of the prison population has spent time in care.

Many fantastic organisations, such as Cangle Foyer in Haverhill in my constituency, do so much for vulnerable young people who find themselves with no place to live and little hope of getting the skills they need or a job they would like without professional help to get themselves established. Demand for such help would obviously be less necessary and less urgent if we were successful in improving the social care system for children. I know, after a recent Ofsted report into children’s services in Suffolk, how much work there is still to be done.

The Conservative party agrees with the Committee’s recommendations for a national sufficiency strategy for children’s social care and a reduction in the number of out-of-area placements; the development of a national care offer to harmonise support for care leavers; a new national fostering strategy and a register of foster carers; better financial support for kinship carers in line with support for foster carers; and permanent funding for the adoption and special guardianship support fund.

We broadly welcomed the measures relating to children’s social care in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill and the policy paper, “Keeping Children Safe, Helping Families Thrive”. Much of that is a welcome continuation of some of the policies that we pursued in office, including powers to regulate the children’s social care provider market, to cap profits, if necessary, and to regulate the use of agency workers in children’s social care.

The Conservative party has argued that there are some ways in which the Government might be able to go further. For example, we proposed amendments to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to require the Education Secretary to report annually on the work and impact of multi-agency child protection teams, which would have included their effectiveness in improving information sharing, risk identification and service co-ordination.

There are also important questions about the relationship between social care and special educational needs. I know from our experiences in Suffolk that demand for special educational needs and disabilities places outstrips supply. Parents are waiting and waiting for education, health and care plans, and the system is buckling under the pressure. I look forward to hearing very soon what the Government intend to do in relation to SEND.

Vulnerable children are often not getting the care they need. They are falling out of the education system, sometimes altogether, or travelling great distances—often more than 75 minutes—at great expense, and sometimes leaving them more exposed to harm, to get to schools that can meet their needs. I know that the plan for the White Paper has been delayed into next year, but I would be grateful if the Minister told us more about the Government’s broad intentions and how he sees the interaction between special educational needs and the social care system.

We also have to raise some questions to which the Government have to date been reluctant to give answers. The Casey report into the rape gangs did not focus specifically on the systemic failings in social care, but it showed how children’s services departments repeatedly failed to protect and support victims—vulnerable children who were in the care of the state.

In Rochdale, for example, Baroness Casey said that health services

“repeatedly shared their significant concerns with the police and children’s social care about the organised sexual exploitation of children in the area”,

but nothing happened.

Anwar Meah, who was a social worker in Bradford, notoriously attended the so-called wedding of an under-age girl in his care to her abuser. I find that absolutely extraordinary and am surprised there was no prosecution in that case. Will the Minister tell us what the Government will do to earn the trust of the victims involved with the inquiry? Finally, when will the national inquiry into the rape gangs get under way?

Every child deserves the best possible start in life. That is why this Select Committee report is a welcome contribution. This debate has been so important. Members across the House, regardless of party politics, have an important duty to be constructive, to work together and to do everything we can for every young person in our country. It is a duty, and we cannot let them down.

16:03

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Josh MacAlister)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I thank all Members for their contributions to this important debate. Particular thanks go to my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). I acknowledge the Select Committee’s inquiry and important work, on which I will say more in a moment.

The report highlights a system under pressure, with rising demand, rising costs and inconsistent experiences, which requires urgent reform. Too many children are experiencing childhood without the essential components of connection and love, which should be the central obsession of the care system, but too often are not. As chair of the independent review of children’s social care in 2022, I called for a radical reset. Today, as Minister for Children and Families, I am determined to deliver it.

I will respond to Members’ contributions before I respond to aspects of the Committee’s report. I join my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) in congratulating the young people and organisations that have championed additional rights for care-experienced young people. I encourage people to get behind the Labour candidate in the Scottish parliamentary elections, who has so successfully championed those causes. I also acknowledge Terry Galloway’s work across the UK to champion and secure additional rights for care-experienced young people. I will continue to engage with Terry. I do not really have a choice, as Terry makes sure I engage with him—as does Chris Wild. I will follow with keen interest the development of local authorities adopting care experience as a protected characteristic.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) has direct experience of the care system. Indeed, one of the strengths of this Parliament is that we have so many parliamentarians who have a foot in some aspect of the care system as well as in the nation’s Parliament.

Ahead of National Care Leavers Month in November, we are focused on ensuring that the Government celebrate role models for care-experienced young people. My hon. Friend is one of those role models. I am sure many care-experienced young people will look at what he does here in the UK Parliament and consider what they can go on to achieve themselves.

I was struck by the clarity of Atlas, Mac, George and Ethan when I met them earlier this week. I thank my hon. Friend for bringing them into my office. They cut through a lot of the noise I hear as a Minister. Having had hundreds of conversations with care-experienced people over the years, I was again reminded of just what it is that we need to get on and deliver.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) for sharing his own experience, and I strongly associate myself with his remarks, particularly on the need for changes in the fostering and adoption system. I will come back to that later.

I welcome the cross-party nature of this debate. I thank the Liberal Democrat spokesperson, the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine), and I will return to aspects of adoption support and the ASGSF, as she raised some important points. I also thank the Conservative spokesperson, the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), for the spirit in which he approaches this issue. I recognise the importance of the connection between the overall children’s social care system and how essential it is that we strengthen the country’s child protection arrangements. A major part of that is tackling harms outside of the home, child abuse, child sexual abuse, group-based violence and the rape gangs he mentioned.

We need to recognise much more than we have in our debates in this Parliament that some of the underlying vulnerabilities of young girls stem from failings in our care system. I see far too many instances of young people who, when something has gone wrong, are sent to live in an institutional setting far away from people who know them and what their face looks like. Because of the vulnerable position that the care system puts them in, they are far too often left prey to violent and appalling criminals. We need to root that out at source.

The Government’s overall response is the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is landmark legislation that we tabled within weeks of coming into government. There will be £2 billion of investment over this spending review period, with hundreds of millions being put into the Families First Partnership programme, which is all about building a multidisciplinary family help system.

We are now shifting gear—and this responds directly to a point made by the Chair of the Select Committee—away from pathfinders and tests to whole-system programmes of change that take in the entire country. I am grateful to the Committee for its work, carefully considered recommendations and the in-depth evidence it took, particularly from those with direct experience.

I will move briefly through the areas covered by the Committee’s recommendations. First, regarding the need for early intervention and intensive support, I reassure hon. Members that, at their centre, our reforms are about creating multidisciplinary family help teams in every corner of England. These will be staffed not simply by social workers working in a high-assessment, high-referral, paper-based, bureaucratic administration, which is the description that many social workers have of the current orthodoxy. This is about moving towards multidisciplinary, locally based, low-stigma and well-evidenced support for families when they need it, with a focus not only on child protection but on the vast majority of families who are not posing significant harm to their children but simply need support and help.

To reassure Members, I should say that that is not being taken forward solely by the Department for Education, but is a cross-Government endeavour. In a couple of weeks, I will be taking other Ministers and senior officials from the Home Office and the Department of Health and Social Care to see one of the most successful examples of multidisciplinary family help teams and multi-agency child protection teams. I am meeting ministerial colleagues at the Ministry for Communities, Housing and Local Government next week to have explicit conversations about how we grip the money we are putting into family help reforms, so that we can get effective change through the system. This is not simply about handing money out to local authorities and expecting change to happen; it is about managing a nationwide programme of reform, with investment alongside it, and holding each other to account to deliver the change that families urgently need.

Secondly, on foster care, I made the point—not as a Member of Parliament, but as someone who chaired the review, giving evidence to Select Committees in this place—that, within a year, we were able as a country to do a remarkable thing in creating 100,000 homes for Ukrainian families from a standing start. If we could do that, why was it not possible for us to do better than approving only 1,800 foster carers last year? That number is not even large enough to replace those who are retiring and leaving the vocation of fostering.

I reassure members of the Committee and Members of this House that we will invest tens of millions of pounds very soon in major changes to the fostering system. Regional care co-operatives and fostering hubs will sit at the heart of those changes. I will come forward soon with a comprehensive set of measures to ensure that we boost the numbers of foster carers and the types of foster care that children need. It is a personal priority for me as the Children and Families Minister.

On multi-agency child protection, the Government are taking forward bold structural changes to create multi-agency child protection teams in every local authority across the country, by fusing together different professionals from across the safeguarding partnerships so that, within one team, they can share the information they need and take joint expert action. The Government will put in place more guidance and extra support for the practitioners in those teams, because identifying significant harm, doing that with accuracy, taking action with pace once harm has been identified, and then holding other agencies to account for results is often what is missing in serious incidents where things go wrong.

Included in that will be a sharp focus on harms outside the home—I make that point because the Chair of the Select Committee emphasised it. During the review, I saw too many times that agencies were coming together in lots of meetings and describing the same concerns, but were not taking action. Parents themselves were sometimes the ones crying out for help when their children were at risk outside the home. Our child protection framework has to work in keeping children safe from harms where those harms are not based on the family network. I will also be setting out details of a consultation on the child protection authority very soon, which will support some of these efforts.

[Helen Hayes]

On the work on extra-familial harms, what engagement is the Minister having with colleagues in the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government? That very much reflects my perspective as a constituency MP and the heartbreaking cases I have seen in my constituency, where a family needed to move due to an extra-familial harm to a child. The social housing system is unable at the moment to protect the family’s tenancy rights. What happens is that families then move into temporary accommodation, and the whole stability of their life unravels as a consequence. In the previous Parliament, I put forward a proposal under the name Georgia’s law, which was named for one of my constituents who experienced exactly that, with utterly tragic consequences for her family. I wonder whether the Minister might pick that up with colleagues cross-departmentally.

[Josh MacAlister]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising what sounds like the very important idea for Georgia’s law. I would be really delighted to hear more from her about that. If there are aspects that I can take forward with Ministers in other Departments, I will do so.

Regarding information sharing, we are making big changes to set the expectations in different systems, so that they can confidently share information. We have a single unique identifier that enables that to happen. Those pilots are under way at the moment, and the Bill will allow for that.

We want to see support for care leavers that is consistent and strong. The Bill includes national Staying Close support, and we will set out soon more details about what that support should include and the expectations across the country for it. It will help care leavers to live independently, but I stress that one of the changes that I would like us to see as a Government is a shift away from always talking about getting care leavers to the point of independence, because what they actually need from the care system is not independence, but inter- dependence, connection, a sense of belonging and love. That should be the driving purpose of both care and the leaving care system. Many of the things we are trying to provide through a state function are much more naturally provided through organic family networks.

Specifically on the question about the Government’s recent announcement of support for higher education, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase, we will guarantee the maximum maintenance support for care leavers going to university, without a means test. That change, announced by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education at the Dispatch Box last week, has been widely welcomed.

Ofsted inspections will, and have already started to, provide a dedicated grade looking at the experience of care leavers, which means that there will be a focus on that.

On the question of the adoption and special guardianship support fund, which was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase and the Front-Bench spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset, I am attracted to my hon. Friend’s idea about wider support. There are options for wider support. I met adopters and adoption support staff myself in recent weeks, and especially during National Adoption Week, and there are a number of options. I want to bring forward a longer-term plan for the ASGSF, to provide confidence and certainty, and I want to continue speaking to Members of this House, but also to members of the adoption community and to special guardians, who are part of that community. We will come back with more detail on that issue, but I recognise the importance of what it provides.

[Anna Sabine]

Is there any chance that when the Minister is looking at the point about children with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder, he could look at the fact that certain groups of children, with certain conditions, may require much higher levels of financial support than others to get the diagnoses they need?

[Josh MacAlister]

I certainly will. The recognition is there that we need to provide a children’s social care system that is able to intuitively wrap itself around all sorts of shapes and sizes of families, who may have very different needs. Too often, the system is not able to do that, and when it fails to, problems often escalate, costs go up and the state ends up picking up the bill anyway, but it is much greater, provision is much less effective and the outcomes are worse. So I do recognise the description that the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset has given of that.

On kinship care, we will be bringing forward a pilot for kinship allowances soon. It will benefit up to 5,000 children, and I can confirm that, as part of the pilot, payments will be equivalent to foster rates. I am looking at whether we can widen out some of the support that comes with that as well, and information on that will be shared soon, with a launch. Carers with special guardianship or child arrangements orders will receive payments equivalent to foster rates. I want to be clear about that. There will be an independent evaluation that goes alongside this, to inform the roll-out, and that should give us very strong data and hopefully a strong case in the course of this spending review period.

In terms of regulation and profit, I am concerned about the level of profiteering in the children’s social care system about the level of profiteering in the children’s social care system and the rising reliance on private providers, particularly of residential children’s homes. The Bill will strengthen Ofsted’s powers, improve oversight and make more data publicly available. I strongly believe that regional care co-operatives can be a powerful vehicle for getting back control of the broken care market. The Government will use the profit cap if necessary; that is why we have taken those powers in the Bill.

I understand the case made for a fresh, universal set of care standards that are more intuitive and that allow us to regulate and set packages of care around children, regardless of where they live, while they are in the care of the state. The Government’s focus at the moment has been on the Bill, but I will continue to look at opportunities to improve care standards. In the meantime, I want to make sure that the options for 16 and 17-year-olds meet their needs. During the review, I met young people who felt abandoned at 16 and 17 because of the type of accommodation they were in. But I have also met 16 and 17-year-olds who do not want the same type of children’s home care they may expect to get at the age of 11 or 12. We must design care standards that work for the whole population.

In terms of the children’s social care workforce, we are introducing changes to support those in the residential care system. Specifically on social workers, the Government have a sharp focus on improving post-qualifying support, so that we can build expertise through training, both to support the roll-out of multidisciplinary family help teams and to strengthen the expertise we need in multi-agency child protection.

Regarding disabled children, we will consider the Law Commission’s 40 recommendations, which have recently been published, and provide a full response. Regarding advocacy, changes will be made, but I am keen to look at what more can be done even once those have been shared. Advocacy can be an important and protective factor for many children who are in institutions where they do not feel as though their voices are heard.

To respond to the Chair of the Select Committee regarding family group decision making, the reason not to push for a specific model of family group decision making in primary legislation is that there is always the possibility in the next few years—I would love it if this did happen—that more impact evaluations come out that show a slightly different model of FGDM, which local authorities should have the choice to use.

As a Government, we are trying to build an infrastructure that sets the national framework with the outcomes that we want children’s social care to achieve; practice guides that lay out the best available evidence, and I hope to have practice guidance for FGDMs as part of the roll-out; and then an expectation, through inspection and accountability, that service designers and practitioners are following the best available evidence in order to achieve the outcomes set out by the Government. I hope that reassures the Chair of the Select Committee.

In closing, I give deep thanks to the Committee for its interest in this issue. Children’s social care is an area of Government policy that is often overlooked. On the eve of Care Leavers Month—this is the first time we are celebrating it as a month, with an Adjournment debate I am looking forward to taking part in—I thank everyone for their contributions, and I welcome their interest and challenge on this important set of changes. I reassure Members—as my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen asked me to—that this issue is my top priority, and I encourage them to get behind it, as part of a cross-party endeavour that can truly transform children’s lives.

16:24

[Helen Hayes]

I thank all hon. Members for contributing to this debate on a Thursday afternoon. For the benefit of anybody watching these proceedings externally, I should say that Thursday afternoons are a challenging time for hon. Members, when many of them have constituency commitments. The debate has therefore been characterised by the quality of the contributions, but not necessarily their quantity. It has been consensual and constructive, and it is important that we have brought the issues affecting some of the most vulnerable children in our country to the attention of the House.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Falkirk (Euan Stainbank) for sharing his experience of pursuing, at a local level, making care experience a protected characteristic. Important work is going on in many local authorities on that theme, and I look forward to undertaking further work in the Education Committee to look at the evidence coming from local authorities that have implemented that approach of the benefits that it brings. I too pay tribute to Terry Galloway for all of his campaigning work in that area.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey), and pay tribute to him for the contribution he makes to the Education Committee. We are lucky to benefit from his experience of senior leadership in his local authority and his lived experience—they are valuable for the work of the Committee. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), who also spoke powerfully based on his lived experience, and we have benefited from him bringing it to the debate.

Finally, I thank the Minister for his response. The Select Committee is pleased to see him in his place, with the depth of experience and commitment that he brings to this area of policy. We look forward to continuing to scrutinise work on it and to seeing some of the announcements he made bear fruit in the lives of children and young people across the country.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Fourth Report of the Education Committee, Children’s social care, HC 430, and the Government response, HC 1350.

16:26

Sitting adjourned.