Freedom of Speech in Universities

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Thursday 10th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

Okay. Does the Minister accept that the urgency of this is rather overstated at present, given the one report in the Telegraph this morning? Does she agree that it is absolutely right to reconsider a badly drafted Act, and that the autonomy of universities has to be respected?

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, I remind the House that this is a repeat of an Urgent Question and is therefore time limited to 10 minutes.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I thank the noble Lord for his appreciation of our considered approach. I absolutely reiterate that I and the Government believe that there is an issue about freedom of speech and academic freedom on our campuses. It is of fundamental importance, which is why we need to get it right.

Childcare Entitlements

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

On building capacity, the department has awarded £100 million to local authorities to help expand capacity. On the quality of space, as the noble Baroness knows, early years settings are regulated by Ofsted. It has very clear standards that they have to meet, and we expect them to meet them.

[Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent (Lab)]

My Lords, the NAO report suggests that many of the issues and challenges that we have heard about this evening would have been mitigated if the Government had not cancelled the £35 million pilot. I wonder whether the Minister can tell us why we cancelled the pilot and what assessment has been made for phases 2 and 3 of the scheme, having not done it.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness hits on perhaps the one thing on which we do not accept the recommendation from the National Audit Office. We made a decision not to run the pilot because we did not think that it would contribute meaningfully to readiness or provide value for money. The key decision we took was that this would be a phased rollout, so that local authorities, providers and parents all had time to adapt. We are continuing to test and review delivery on an ongoing basis; we are piloting different interventions to support workforce expansion through financial incentives in 20 local authorities. What we found from the evaluation of the 2017 rollout was that providers were willing to offer more hours, and were able to offer sufficient hours, and that there were no adverse impacts on other provision. We also found that providers were really flexible. We are very fortunate to have providers that are so focused on outcomes for parents and, of course, for their children.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Badenoch]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for raising this case in her constituency. Yes, that is something that we should be able to do for her.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

The Minister has just referred to a report which is currently under way, and which relates to children’s social services rather than the high-needs budget. The cuts proposed by Stoke-on-Trent City Council will cost every secondary school £100,000 and every primary school £50,000. That is money we cannot afford to spend. Will the Minister undertake to accept the request from my neighbour and hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), and convene a meeting of headteachers before the Secretary of State signs off a deal?

[Mrs Badenoch]

We are aware that local authorities are facing significant pressures. That is why we are making an additional investment of more than £700 million, which will help them to manage those pressures next year. The Department has been looking at this matter, and we will be in touch with Stoke-on-Trent in due course to decide on the best possible actions to be taken in the future.

Children’s Future Food Report

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce). Although we may not agree about the cause, we do share the fundamental concern that some children in all our communities are hungry, day in, day out.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) has been an inspiration in tackling these issues and raising their profile in this place. He has not just used this unique platform; he has also ensured that he has put his time, effort and resources where his words are—both in the community through his role at the academy chain he participates in, and in the charity he set up to address this issue.

We are here because of what we see and hear, too often, in our own constituencies, at our surgeries and from children when we go and visit. I applaud the work, as ever, of my hon. Friend—my friend—the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who has been a guiding light on this issue. She was an extraordinary advocate for the report. She led the charge when we had children come to this place to give us their experiences of what they had at home, what they did not have at home, and what happened to them at school. We talk a great deal in this place. We talk for far too long, on many occasions, as I am sure that many of us will today. But we talk about our views on what is happening in our constituencies and in the world; we rarely get to talk about what other people have said to us. That is why this was so heartbreaking.

The first question I ever asked in this place was on the issue of holiday hunger: what happens to children who qualify for free school meals during school holidays. It is 100 years since we as a Parliament agreed that our children should be fed at school. We never thought about the holidays, because at that point communities took care of children. In my constituency, school kitchens were opened during school holidays. The kitchen was positioned at the front of every school, so children never had to go inside: they would queue there to get a hot meal. Their mothers were working in our potbanks and their fathers were working down the pit, so their grandparents and wider family were looking after them. Because of that, we never had to come up with a Government solution—or at least we felt no need to. It has only been in the past decade that this has become such a heartbreaking issue that we now need to tackle it.

One of the challenges for all of us is that as soon as we touch on one of these issues, we receive stories from up and down the country about other people’s experiences. I truly believe that every one of us in this place should campaign on something that makes them want to cry—something that is so devastating to us as individuals that we cannot ignore it. For me, that is child food poverty, as it is for many others on the Labour Benches, and across the House.

When I first got selected to run to be the Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove, I started talking to some of my local families. Someone who worked as a school catering assistant told me the story of a child who collapsed—fainted—one Monday morning when he walked into school. It took a while to understand what had happened. It was 11 o’clock in the morning. He had not eaten since his free school meal on Friday. He was given a sandwich and an apple due to how close it was to lunchtime. He ate the sandwich but did not eat the apple—he put it in his rucksack. People said, “It’s okay—you are going to have lunch in a minute. It’s absolutely fine—eat the food.” He said, “My sister is down the hall and she hasn’t eaten either.” In the 21st century, in the 13th-largest city in the country, we have children who are starving. It does not matter if their parents are not good enough. It does not matter how much money is or is not going into the household. The reality on the ground is that our children are not being fed. With all the will in the world, we can put in every kind of initiative, but we have failed in everything if this is happening in our schools.

We heard about a child in Scotland who was going to one of the holiday clubs that were set up two years ago. They were stealing the ketchup packets that were on the table every lunchtime. Our friend Lindsay Graham tells this story and cannot help but cry when she does. When the child was asked why they were stealing ketchup packets, they said they hoped they could make tomato soup out of them when they got home, because there was literally nothing else to eat. That is the reality of child food poverty in the 21st century. It is Victorian. It is heartbreaking, it is devastating, and it is why we so desperately need direct intervention.

Since the introduction of universal credit in my constituency, demand at the food bank has gone up 46%. My food bank considered cancelling its Christmas service because it was 1 tonne short of food. We have poverty at every level, but as soon as it becomes about food, it is devastating for communities. That is why I am so grateful that the Government launched the holiday hunger pilots. They did not give any money to Stoke-on-Trent, but I am sure that will be rectified next year, Minister.

Instead, work has been done through the opportunity area board, and the wonderful, extraordinary, fantastically brilliant Carol Shanahan has launched a charity in order to provide such a service in my constituency. Last summer, 16,500 meals were provided by volunteers during the summer holidays. It is important that we look at child food poverty in the round, and I want to tell one story from last year’s projects.

In Kidsgrove in my constituency, the holiday club was going to open at 11:30 am—we cannot call it “holiday hunger in the community”, because people will not come. By half-past 10, there was a queue of 30 people, who knew that it was not going to open for another hour. There was only enough food for 40 people, and 30 were already queuing. Thank God for Tesco, which delivered food and staff to help cook and serve the food, because there were not enough volunteers, never mind enough food. On that day, having expected 40 people, 191 came through the door. There is a need. There is a desire. We have a responsibility to help.

One of the most shocking things to come out of the children’s future food inquiry was access to water, which I know the Minister has been contacted about. There is a limited amount of money available—I listened in horror to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead explain how much of it is sent back to companies—to children for their free school meal. In some schools around the country, children were having to pay for a bottle of water out of their free school meal allowance. That meant they could not afford a full meal, so they were having a bottle of water and chips, or a bottle of water and a sandwich. These are children who qualify for free school meals. How are we feeding them? How are they getting access to a good, healthy meal that may well be their only hot meal all week? We have some work to do.

The recommendations in the report are made by children, and another disconcerting issue they told us about was the short period of time they are being given to eat. It could be as little as 20 minutes. If hundreds of people are going through a catering establishment, it will take longer than 20 minutes to ensure that everyone is served a meal and can eat it. As a result, children are getting food to grab and go. That is not in the spirit of free school meals, and it definitely does not encourage healthy eating.

The five recommendations that the children who participated in the report made were: a healthy lunch guarantee, a healthy food minimum, a children’s food watchdog, for health to be put before profits and to stop the stigma. That really should not be too much to ask, and it is not us asking for it; it is the children.

My final point is about the national school breakfast programme. I know that it is not strictly the subject of the debate, but if a child qualifies for free school meals, they are probably also receiving a free breakfast—or at least I hope they are. That is two meals a day, 10 meals a week, that their parents do not have to pay for. Fifteen schools currently receive the national school breakfast programme in my constituency, and for that I am grateful, but the funding stops in March 2020. Given that that is in the middle of the school year—or towards the end of it, but with another term still to go—my schools and schools across the country need assurances about what they have to put in their budgets, or do they tell children, “You’ve only got breakfast till Easter”? I ask the Minister if he could be so kind as to ensure that there is more food for our schools.

Children’s Social Care Services: Stoke-on-Trent

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered children’s social care services in Stoke-on-Trent.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. It is not a pleasure to be having this debate. Children’s services, and the role that councils play in protecting the most vulnerable children in our societies and communities, should be taken away from the party political arena. The Ofsted report that was received by Stoke-on-Trent City Council, showing the failures across the local authority area to help the most vulnerable people, is worthy of discussion with the Minister in order to work out how we can put that system back together. The report is one of the saddest things that I have had the displeasure of reading in my short time as a Member of Parliament.

We know that when it comes to engaging and working with young people, Stoke-on-Trent is now a city of two tales. The Minister will be acutely aware of the excellent work being done by Professor Liz Barnes and Carol Shanahan under the opportunity area, and I am sure he will agree that they are exemplars of good practice across the country, and of how people can achieve very impressive things when they get their act together. The flipside of that—the other side of the coin—is a children’s services department that has now been rated “inadequate” in all four areas of the Ofsted report, which has highlighted some shocking outcomes that prompt the question whether the local authority is fit to continue running that service, and whether the individuals who are responsible for running it at cabinet level are fit to continue in public office.

I do not wish to draw too much on the politics of it, but I want to read out a few of the findings from the Ofsted report, which will set the context for what we are discussing this morning. It starts by saying:

“Children are not being protected…Vulnerable children are not safeguarded in Stoke-on-Trent…There are insufficient fostering placements to meet local need and many children are placed in unregulated placements. The local authority knows that some of these placements are unsafe.”

It states:

“Too many children come into care in a crisis or wait too long to be reunited with their families.”

It also says:

“As a result of poor leadership, management oversight and an absence of clearly evaluated performance information, services for children have seriously declined since the last full Ofsted inspection in 2015.”

That is a damning indictment of a children’s services department, regardless of who is running the council. As a result of those shortcomings, young people are suffering in my constituency and across Stoke-on-Trent.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this important debate. The reality is that very few Ofsted reports—thankfully—are as bad as the one that has been written about Stoke-on-Trent City Council. However, I want to praise the individual social workers. It has been made clear that they are working extraordinarily hard and achieving good things, but are not being well managed and are not being supported to deliver. Their casework involves over 25 cases. Does my hon. Friend agree that this shows that there has not been the appropriate management or political leadership focus on this area, and that they have abandoned the professionals, who are trying to do their best?

[Gareth Snell]

I could not have put it better myself. My hon. Friend has rightly pointed out that, as a local authority, Stoke-on-Trent has a level of casework that is higher than the national average. Each individual within that team is managing more cases than the British Association of Social Workers would deem acceptable for any authority, let alone one such as Stoke-on-Trent, where demand is higher than the national average.

The part of the report that I found most shocking stated:

“Support for vulnerable children, including those at risk from child sexual exploitation, going missing…private fostering and extremist ideologies”

was failing. The report basically says that young children in our city are at risk of being groomed for child sexploitation and criminal exploitation. I do a lot of work in this place on modern slavery, and I am appalled to know that not only is it happening in my city, but it is happening in my city because the one authority that is ultimately responsible for dealing with that has failed. I hope the Minister will pick up on that later, not because I want to kick about the council—we will do that in the forthcoming local elections—but because, fundamentally, something must change in Stoke-on-Trent so that we are no longer rated “inadequate” across the four areas when the Ofsted inspectors next come in, and so that I can look into the eyes of my constituents and say, “Yes, your children—if they ever end up in the care system—will be safe and looked after.” That is something that I cannot do currently.

[Ruth Smeeth]

Although my hon. Friend may not want to bash our councillors, it is important to make it clear that we did not have that rating when we were last inspected in 2015. In fact, we were rated “good”. As Ofsted has made clear, these services have seriously declined since the last full Ofsted inspection in 2015. The majority of recommendations made at that inspection, and at a focused visit in 2018, have not been actioned. It seems that the council has actively disengaged from the process and not followed the Government guidance in this area.

[Gareth Snell]

Again, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point; I agree wholeheartedly. The report makes it quite clear that there has been a marked decline in the provision of children’s protective services in Stoke-on-Trent since 2015. That coincided with the last round of local elections, in which the City Independent group took control of the local authority. If we are being honest, its record of attendance at the corporate parenting panel demonstrates its disinterest in this area. Of the 16 meetings that one councillor could attend, she attended zero, and she is responsible for the funding of children’s services across the council—eight apologies, and eight non-attendances.

We should make it clear—I will ask the Minister later on—whether there is anything that the Government think they can do to ensure that councillors that have responsibility for these very important areas, including both adults’ and children’s social care, are compelled to attend those meetings, to further their understanding of what is going on. From councillors who have been on the corporate parenting panel, where they have heard from caseworkers who feel under pressure and stretched, I know that information was available at that time to the local authority members who make these decisions, had those members chosen to attend. The fact that they chose to attend none of those meetings shows the interest they have in that service. As a Parliament, we should talk collectively about how we can reinforce to people in decision-making roles their responsibilities.

I want to touch briefly on another comment in the report, which said:

“The response to children and young people who may be at increased risk due to contact with extremist ideology is not robust”.

Stoke-on-Trent is a city in which we have had our problems with both the far right and organised Islamist terrorism, and we need to ensure that we protect our young people from both extremes. The report clearly states that young people are not being protected from extremism activity in a place where we know it is taking place. I do not understand how any local authority or councillor can stand up and defend the report in the way that Councillor Janine Bridges did by saying that things are much better under her watch than they have ever been.

The report sets out in black and white one of the starkest arrangements for protecting young people anywhere—not only in the west midlands, but in the country. I wonder whether the Minister could help me better understand at what point Government step in to start to resolve some of this directly. Frankly, I have no faith that the City Independent group that currently runs the council with Conservatives has either the political ability or the determination to resolve this, other than saying that everything is all right. That has been made quite clear in the leaflets that are being delivered around the city ahead of local elections, which say how wonderful children’s services are. It beggars belief that there is this lack of connection between what is written in black and white by the authorities that are responsible for this, and what is written by the people who have taken decisions that led to this chronic failure in the first place.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Snell]

There is an improvement board, but unfortunately, given the timing of the report and the purdah period for the local election cycle, no one will tell us what is going on with it, what actions it is taking and whether it is looking to Staffordshire County Council, which I hold up as an example—it is run by a good Conservative administration, which has taken responsibility for these issues and is dealing with them. This is not about Labour and Conservative party politics. There are perfect examples around the country of good Tory councils doing this well, and examples of Labour councils doing it well. This is an example of a council doing it badly, and the leadership refuse to accept that.

[Ruth Smeeth]

Does my hon. Friend agree not only that the council is doing it badly and has dismissed the report, but that it has failed to acknowledge the impact on families in our city and has not said sorry? Councillor Janine Bridges and Councillor Ann James have acted as if this has nothing to do with them, despite the fact that both of them have been responsible for delivery for the past four years. During that time our children, including homeless children, have not received the support that they are due under statutory provision. Homeless 16 and 17-year-olds do not always receive a timely or thorough response to meet their needs. We have young people on the streets and a political leadership that will not even say sorry.

[Gareth Snell]

That sums up why there is so much frustration with this process. Our city has problems. None of the MPs who represent it, including me, my hon. Friend and the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Jack Brereton), who would have been here if he was not restricted by his Parliamentary Private Secretary role, would hide that fact. We saw the same when the Care Quality Commission did a system-wide review and found that older people were being left in their beds covered in urine for days because of a social care failing in Stoke-on-Trent City Council. Our frustration stems from the fact that, unless the problem is so stark and is written in black and white in a report that is so damaging that it requires a political intervention at this level, or is splashed in the headlines of our newspapers, nothing gets done and nothing gets changed. There is no remorse, no apology, and no sense that anything that the council was responsible for was its fault. It is always the fault of the Government, of everybody around them, and of the agencies not doing their bit. It is about time that people such as Councillor Bridges, Councillor James and their partners in the coalition took responsibility for the decisions that they have taken over the past four years, which have led us to this place.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North is right. We are highlighting some of the starkest parts of our society. It is a constant badge of shame for me that, when we highlight the awful parts of our society, they always manifest themselves in Stoke-on-Trent in a way that is even worse than they had to be. If we got the basics right—if we got the bread-and-butter politics right and had given a damn about the people we are there to serve—some of this would not have happened.

I am sure the Minister will say that every child service department is now stretched because there is increasing demand. He will say that it is a demand-led service, and the local authority has no immediate control over the demand. I accept that, but if we know the demand is there—if there is a constant reporting system that says, “There is a problem with this system”—and people choose not to act on it, choose not to attend corporate parenting panels, choose to divert funding to other departments, choose not to engage with the Local Government Association, choose not to participate in county-wide programmes, choose to defer the decisions that they should be making to officers, choose not to turn up to reports, and choose not to say sorry, that is a pattern of behaviour of failure. That is not a coincidence or a coalescing of misfortune; it is a pattern of behaviour that has led to systematic failure.

I sincerely hope that the work being done by officers, the social work team and the people who are coming into the local authority is effective. A commissioner has been appointed to establish whether this should stay with the local authority or whether it should become a trust. For what it is worth, even though it is an appallingly run service, I hope the Minister will take heed of what we suggest: we think it should stay with the local authority. We genuinely believe that, once the election is out of the way—whatever the outcome—there will be a renewed appetite to fix this. I have always been a believer that local authorities should clear up their own messes. I appreciate that that is his decision, not mine, and the commissioner’s report will guide him. We have some responsibility for this. We will hold whichever political party is running the council responsible for fixing this, and we know that the Government will do so, too.

I ask the Minister to address these points. Where there are clear examples of councillors not engaging in their executive-level functions, what can we and the Government do to ensure that they take those responsibilities seriously? This is not just a matter of funding; there is clearly a cultural issue. What can the Government do to help change the culture in Stoke-on-Trent? If there is a plan, I will happily work with them to deliver it. Importantly, what does the Minister believe we can do to ensure that when Ofsted comes in next time, it does not give us a catalogue of failures that shows that young people in Stoke-on-Trent have been let down?

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

I commend my right hon. Friend for his ongoing work with the Cobham Free School and the upcoming project at Heathside Walton-on-Thames. He has met my noble friend Lord Agnew to discuss vacant possession and, as he knows, there have been delays in trying to get it, but I would be happy to meet him to discuss the matter further.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

Whether free schools or not—a policy I disagree with—Stoke-on-Trent now has a huge gap in the number of places available at secondary schools to the point where 11 of my 14 secondary schools are oversubscribed, with some constituents having to get three buses to get to their allocated school in September. What is the Secretary of State planning to do about that?

[Damian Hinds]

This decade we are on course to create 1 million new places in schools across the country. It will be the largest expansion in school capacity in at least two generations, following the net loss of 100,000 places during the last six years of the Labour Government. Although there will always be individual situations that we need to address—we have a capital programme to do that, and I will be happy to meet the hon. Lady to discuss it—there are now tens of thousands fewer pupils in schools that are over capacity.

Holiday Hunger Schemes

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Tuesday 6th November 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered holiday hunger schemes.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and a privilege to have the chance to discuss such an important and timely issue.

Last week, children in the Potteries and across the country were home for half term. It would be nice to be able to use the phrase “enjoying their half term”, and I am sure that for many that was true, but not for all, because among their number there were children who returned to school yesterday hungry. For them the half term was a week not of theme parks and family outings, but of empty days and empty stomachs. That might sound shocking—indeed, it is—in a country as wealthy and as prosperous as ours, but it is all too common, and it is the awful reality of holiday hunger. I raised the issue in the House in my first question as a new Member in 2015, but neither time nor repetition have lessened the impact of the heartbreaking statistics that drove me to act.

Some 31% of children in my constituency are born into poverty. A third of parents across the country skip meals so that their children can eat during the school holidays. More than 1.3 million children on free school meals during term time find that that genuine lifeline is snatched away from them for 14 weeks of every year, with the summer holidays a potential nightmare. Behind each of those statistics lie the stories of those children: of wasted summers and wanting bodies; of children returning to school malnourished; of weeks spent in hunger and isolation because mum and dad cannot afford time off work or the extra meals that come from six weeks without the security of the classroom. There is no adjustment to the welfare system to compensate for the additional cost of 10 meals per week per child. With the cost of childcare during the school holidays, not to mention new school uniforms and other essentials, too many families are tipped into crisis.

It would be easy to dismiss the need for the schemes, but I have seen and heard the reality, not only from the examples that have been talked about nationally, including by the wonderful Lindsay Graham, but from seeing families who walk for miles to access the schemes in the summer months because they cannot afford the bus fare. I have seen mums queuing for more than an hour before the scheme was due to open so that they would be first in line; children who thought they needed to steal food from the holiday club so that they had something to eat that night; and grandparents at the end of their tether because childcare has fallen on them and they do not know how to stretch their pension to feed their grandchildren, and they do not want to tell their own children that they are struggling financially.

In my constituency, a wonderful scheme was provided by the Salvation Army this summer. We expected 30 children to turn up. The scheme opened at half past eleven. At 10 o’clock there were more than 30 people outside, but there was not enough food. The wonderful Tesco delivered food and its staff came to volunteer. During that one session more than 100 people turned up, which shows the level of demand that we have.

It is not just the heartbreaking stories that should us drive us to act. The impact on the long-term attainment of my wonderful children should be front and centre for the Education Minister. Not only does youth malnutrition impact on long-term health outcomes; it also has a direct impact on young people’s attainment, not least the fact that if young people stop using cutlery or writing implements for weeks at a time, they lose dexterity and muscle memory, which affects them on their return to school. Some of them, especially younger children, will not know how to hold a pen. Research suggests that the children who do not receive appropriate nutrition during the school holidays could return in September more than four weeks behind academically than they were in July, making it much harder for them and their families and for the teachers who have to help them catch up.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is a very good debate. I do not want to stray from the main issue. In my constituency, there are teachers in schools who step up to the plate in the holidays. They put on special subjects, which they are not paid for, in order to arrange for food, meals and exercise for children who are not taken on holiday.

[Ruth Smeeth]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. We are, at the moment, in the hands of those people who volunteer their time, and who give children access to their buildings and schools. If they did not volunteer those facilities, school provision could cost families up to £15 or £20 a day. My constituents cannot afford that, and I am sure that my hon. Friend’s cannot either.

Against the backdrop that I have described, in the summer of 2017, my local heroines, and the odd hero, set out to pull together people and organisations from across Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove to launch the first comprehensive pilot programme to tackle holiday hunger and deal with school holiday provision in north Staffordshire. At this point, I should make it clear that we all hate the phrase “holiday hunger”. It is misery-inducing and heartbreaking, but it can also be counterproductive, as no parents want to admit, or even accept, that they are struggling to feed their children, so they opt out of programmes. In 2017, therefore, we launched Fit and Fed, our pilot for the extended summer break of 2017, to help to reach low-income families and their children, and provide safe activities, as well as a proper meal, Monday to Friday, for six weeks.

The initiative was driven by the brilliant and formidable Carol Shanahan, whom the Minister has had the pleasure of meeting. My heroine, the managing director of Synectic Solutions, has ensured that we bring together as many people as possible, and she has enlisted the support of charities, volunteers and organisations across my constituency, to turn the pilot into a real project. I am indebted to each and every one of them: Synectic Solutions, the Port Vale Foundation Trust, StreetGames, Swan Bank church, North Staffordshire Allotment Network, Root’n’Fruit, the Salvation Army, City catering public health, Stoke-on-Trent City Council, YMCA North Staffordshire, Engage Communities, the Stoke City Community Trust, Netbiz, Purple Cow—interesting name—and Stoke-on-Trent Foodbank, which all supported the project. If anything shows the importance of all the voluntary groups coming together, it is the list I just read.

I am also thankful for the financial support of the Greggs Foundation, which donated £5,000, and I am grateful to Warburton, Makro, Freshview Foods, JB Oatcakes and High Lane Oatcakes—I am talking about Stoke-on-Trent, after all—all of which supplied food, as well as, of course, to FareShare. As I said, Tesco has been extraordinary. Special thanks must go to it and its team, led locally by the inspirational Rich Evans. They volunteered their time as well as huge quantities of food at very short notice, to ensure that people were well fed. Most of all, I am grateful to the dozens of volunteers who contributed more than 600 hours of their time so that within the pilot, 4,323 meals were dished up to local children and their families. That was in addition to the thousands of meals provided by other amazing voluntary groups, including the Chell Heath mums and the Big Local. The goal of the pilots was not just to make holiday provision for those that really needed it. It was to pull together hard data to work out what delivery systems are most effective, and to begin to develop best practice that can guide similar projects nationwide.

[Mr Sheerman]

As soon as my hon. Friend mentioned the word “data” I was reminded of the encouraging statement to the House yesterday by the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care about public health. The one thing he seemed to back away from was the link between poverty and poor health. Does not what my hon. Friend is talking about today exemplify the link between poverty and poor diet, which the Government seem reluctant to make?

[Ruth Smeeth]

In fact, the Government of Canada have done research to demonstrate the cost of poor nutrition to the public purse over a lifetime, in lack of attainment and job prospects. Also, it ends up costing the NHS a lot; if someone starts from a low base and does not get the right nutrition, it costs the public purse even more in the end. To me, the individual families are the most important part of the issue, but there is also a question of how much it ends up costing the general public if we do not get things right. My hon. Friend is right, and I hope that the Department of Health and Social Care will view what I am talking about as part of the prevention agenda within public health.

As for data collection, six different methods of tackling child food poverty and holiday provision were tested in my constituency. Some of the methods involved the direct provision of food alongside sport and craft activities in both primary and secondary school settings. Elsewhere, the direct provision of food and activities were maintained, but the programme was taken out of an educational setting. Instead, Wesley Hall, a modern church in the heart of Sneyd Green, was used. The YMCA facilitated community meals. The whole family could turn up at lunchtime and enjoy a hot meal as part of the scheme. That was an extension of its wonderful monthly community lunch programme—once a month, on a Friday; I highly recommend it. There was even a meals-on-wheels-style scheme, where food was delivered directly and discreetly to the doors of families who could not access any of the schemes easily. Each of the approaches was found to have pros and cons, and it is clear that a broad mix of delivery approaches is necessary to reach as many of the most vulnerable families as possible.

The pilots were to my knowledge the most structured and rigorous attempts to address the challenge of holiday hunger conducted in Staffordshire, certainly—and I suggest, as I am very proud of us, nationwide. However, they were not the only activities taking place in Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove. Across the constituency, local people who had heard what we were trying to achieve got involved and organised their own projects to make sure that the kids in their community were not left behind. My favourite, and the most chaotic, was in Chell Heath in my constituency. Thirteen mums from the local children’s centre came together expecting to look after 25 to 30 children a day. They ended up with more than 100, which was not quite what they were prepared for. When you walked in, it was complete and utter chaos—organised chaos—and a delight to visit. It shows the demand out there for proper holiday provision.

All in all, last summer, more than 10,000 meals were dished up across the constituency. I am so proud of the way local people pulled together to deliver such an enormous project. Together, they touched the lives of hundreds of children who without the projects would have faced a summer of hunger and isolation.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has been doing brilliant work. We had a pilot scheme in Bristol, and what I found particularly interesting about it, and about the national results, was that children really wanted the fresh fruit. They regarded it as something of a luxury. Also, taking the leftover food home at the end of the day was very important. It shows the level of food poverty in which those children exist.

[Ruth Smeeth]

I could not agree more. One thing that we must look at is how people cook—there could be cooking classes in some of the activity programmes—and also ensuring that there is enough food at the end of the day for the whole family to have a meal that night, if necessary; it is not just about the children participating in the schemes as a secondary consequence of making sure they get wonderful holiday provision.

[Mr Sheerman]

Many Members have just come back from the church service to commemorate 100 years since the cessation of the first world war. Does my hon. Friend recall, from learning history, that it was only when we started recruiting soldiers for the first world war that the extent of malnutrition in this country’s children as they reached 18 was realised? Nutrition was below the standard of any other country in the Commonwealth. Has my hon. Friend, with her community groups, looked at how good the data is on the effect of poor diet in the holidays on children’s overall health? Are GPs and clinical commissioning groups monitoring that?

[Ruth Smeeth]

That is a fascinating point. There have been more than 100 years of free school meals. One of the things that I find extraordinary about free school meal provision is that we did not think about school holidays. That is because there used to be community provision. Historically, schools were built with the kitchen at the front, so that when they were closed the kitchens were still open. As for the long-term health benefits, one of the great partnerships we had was with the public health team at Stoke-on-Trent City Council. This year and next year, we are working with Keele University, which will help us to assess the long-term impact.

The very best part of the fact that the schemes happened last year is the point that they did not end there. The pilot was not a one-off. Local efforts to tackle holiday provision have grown and grown. This summer, we had 12 holiday clubs operating in my constituency, with many more across the whole of Stoke-on-Trent, under the flag—for those who know Stoke-on-Trent—of Ay Up Duck. I cannot really do the proper accent. The organisation was set up to continue the work of the previous year, to move it on from the stigma that might have been associated with holiday hunger schemes. More than 5,926 meals were dished up by the Ay Up Duck scheme, and 460 parents accessed the food too, which was a significant development on last year. The scheme continued last week with a full programme of activities in half term, and will continue at Christmas, next half term and Easter before we get to next summer. Although Ay Up Duck did not receive direct funding as part of the national pilot, it got support from our local opportunity area. I welcome all support, as the funding provided by the Department for such projects has made a positive impact in supporting civil society to tackle child food poverty in local communities, but I fear it is insufficient, given the scale of the problem.

I have some questions for the Minister—this is his bit. What plans does he have to roll out the funding to every local authority? Our experience suggests that to ensure that schemes are co-ordinated and safe, a central point of contact and support is vital. Can the Minister inform us of his conversations with colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government about establishing a point of contact with each council? One of the challenges for holiday provision schemes is ensuring that they prioritise the right people for support. What conversations has he had to encourage family support workers to engage in such programmes outside term time? Many schools are struggling to find the additional funding to encourage them to work during the holidays.

We all have a responsibility to ensure that we are sharing best practice and not reinventing the wheel. Can the Minister update the Chamber on what he is doing to disseminate best practice? Specifically, what is he doing to ensure that appropriate support is in place to ensure that safeguarding requirements are met where all the schemes are being run?

The people who have made these projects happen have demonstrated our potential to effect real change in communities. They provided a lifeline to families in desperate financial situations and to others who just needed a little help, and they delivered a summer of fun, food and learning to children who may otherwise have gone without. Their example deserves to be celebrated and I am delighted that we are doing that here, but as we celebrate the work that is taking place in the Potteries and across the country, we must remain focused on the scale of the challenge. Although programmes to tackle holiday hunger are increasing, so are the number of families struggling to get by.

On 15 August, The Times Educational Supplement reported a 150% increase in the number of children receiving support from FareShare, the UK’s largest redistribution charity, compared with last year. The poverty that stands between our children and their full potential is still with us. The gaping hole in provision during the school holidays too often remains unfilled. For far too many families, the simple dream of a summer holiday of fun and comfort remains just that. These projects have made a real difference to people’s lives. It is my privilege to share their stories, and my duty to say that there is much more to be done.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mike Kane]

I did not realise that we had any Liberal Democrats in the room. That is the old cry of, “This is the problem and they are to blame for it,” without the Scottish National party’s taking any responsibility, despite its control over lots of levers of power, which is important.

As has been pointed out, more than 3 million children were at risk of hunger during the school holidays this summer because they were not getting their term-time free school meals. That is shameful. At the heart of the debate is the impact of the Government’s eight years of unrelenting and indiscriminate austerity. Universal credit is failing in many of our constituencies, and the urgent question on it the other day was really interesting. There should be preferential options for the poor when we make public policy in our country, and universal credit should have a preferential option for those who are in the poverty of having mental health problems. Its impact on those people causes much stress and tips them over the edge.

More than 4 million children are growing up in poverty. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North made an absolutely fantastic point on inequality, which I see in my constituency and other Members see in theirs. In some schools, 40% of children are not school-ready—they do not know about reciprocity or play or how to hold cutlery or pens, which my hon. Friend mentioned—but in others in my constituency, that figure is up to 80%, and growing, because of the austerity of the last few years.

More than 1 million people now go to food banks, and the situation is predicted to get worse. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the number of children living in poverty is likely to soar to a record 5.2 million over the next five years. Government Members should hang their heads in shame that families in that situation cannot afford to feed their children in the school holidays.

It is interesting how, in our city, Mr Stringer, schools compete over which of our two great teams runs their holiday club. Schools generally choose the team that provides the most free school meals, because that is what some of our schools desperately need. The football clubs are having to look at this in their summer holiday provision in our cities.

[Ruth Smeeth]

My hon. Friend is making an incredibly powerful speech. There are opportunities in places with Football League clubs. It is wonderful that, in my city, Port Vale and Stoke City came together to deliver something. My hon. Friend may even get Manchester United and Manchester City to do the same.

[Mike Kane]

We will certainly look at that. I think that Mr Stringer and I would say that we are excellently served by the community schemes of both great football clubs in our city, as my hon. Friend is in hers.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead and my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields set up Feeding Britain, a charity focused on demonstrating how hunger and its underlying causes can be addressed. The United Nations estimates that more than 8 million people in the UK are food-insecure. At the moment, the Government have no way of measuring that and understanding the scale of the problem. The Food Insecurity Bill, promoted by my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields, is awaiting its Second Reading. It has a simple ask of the Government, calling on them to provide for official statistics on food insecurity. That is supported by more than 20 national organisations and, so far, more than 150 MPs from across the House. The APPG on hunger, and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee have also advocated the measurement of hunger. Will the Minister commit today to supporting the Bill on Second Reading?

The Bill makes a cost-neutral proposal to bring the living costs and food Survey into the 21st century and to enable the Government to fully understand the challenge of food insecurity, which puts more than 3 million children at risk of going hungry in the school holidays. A Bill promoted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead that sought to enact the recommendations of the APPG’s report on countering hunger among children during school holidays sadly did not progress on Second Reading earlier this year.

However, the Minister stated that the Government would provide funding for research and pilots on holiday provision over the summer. Feeding Britain and the APPG provided information to the Department to help inform that research and pilots. Have we had the promised announcement on the outcomes of that research and the national roll-out?

[Ruth Smeeth]

About four hours ago.

[Mike Kane]

We had it about four hours in advance of the debate. That is not good enough by any stretch of the imagination, Minister. I am sorry to sound like a schoolteacher, but that is how it is.

When all is said and done, we can launch as many pilots as we want, but the fact is that we live in a society where parents cannot feed their children in the school holidays. Will the Minister commit to ending the sticking-plaster approach and talking to his Cabinet colleagues about a genuine end to austerity and the introduction of a real living wage of £10 an hour, to ensure that every family has enough to make ends meet and that no child will have to go hungry?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Smeeth]

I thank everyone for their participation today. I am in awe, as ever, of my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), who is obviously “the sandwich lady from Swansea East”; I usually call her the queen, but now I will have to rename her.

We have seen from the varied contributions quite how important this issue is and I thank all my colleagues for their contributions, with a special “honourable mention” to my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), without whom we would not have got as far as we have.

I am delighted that the Government are now looking at a more strategic approach for delivery. The one caveat, however, which I raise with the Minister, is that of those families that have an income of £15,000 a year, 30% of them go without a meal in the school holidays to ensure that their children can have one. This is a working poor issue as much as it is an issue for those people who live on benefits, and I hope that will be reflected in future schemes.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered holiday hunger schemes.

Speech, Language and Communication Support for Children

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Rebecca Pow]

I know that the hon. Gentleman is particularly interested in this area. He makes a valid point, which I will move on to, because it all links up.

Everything I have mentioned so far affects children’s life chances. As the hon. Gentleman just said, that is borne out by the fact that 60% of young offenders have unidentified speech, language and communication problems, so the link between the two is stark. Children with poor vocabulary skills are twice as likely to be unemployed in later life. Young offenders are often put on courses, such as anger management and drug rehabilitation, to try to help them, but if they do not have good reading, writing and communication skills, it is difficult for them to take advantage of those courses. I am sure that you will agree, Ms Dorries, that none of those things is desirable in a 21st-century society.

There is even more to these findings, because many of these children come from areas of social disadvantage. There is a very high prevalence of SLCN among vulnerable children, particularly looked-after children. Again, looked-after children are highly represented in the criminal justice system—the 60% figure emerges again. Unsurprisingly, many excluded children are also found to have SLCN, particularly boys—one study found that 100% of excluded boys had some sort of communication or behavioural disorder.

Unsurprisingly, the children of mothers who sadly have mental health issues, that develop just before or after birth, are often found to display SLCN, probably because as babies they did not receive the crucial stimulation they needed, which is so important from the absolute outset. Such children do not develop the essential language skills. Again, that highlights how important it is to pick up mental health issues in mums as early as possible, because they can have a knock-on effect on the babies.

Parenting is really important, so I will talk about that for a moment—it is not a digression, because it is all directly related. This issue affects not only people from disadvantaged areas, but all of us, wherever we come from. It was motherhood that prompted my interest in the importance of early communication. My sister is a speech, language and communication therapist specialising in early years children—I may have to register an interest. She made me aware of how I ought to engage with my babies from the word go. I do not think I had even held a baby before I had my own children, so I was pretty ignorant about children. I am not saying that my children are model success stories, but I have to say that the tips I was given really helped.

They were just simple things. For example, from birth to three months, parents should get very close to their baby, so that it has eye contact and starts to recognise the mouth, and learns that that is where sounds come from. If children are just sat down in front of a television or a laptop, they will not start to realise that. At six months, a baby starts to become very aware of its environment, so parents should start to talk about the things they are looking at. Obviously, they are not speaking at that point, but they are looking, so parents should start naming the object they think their baby is looking at, whether it is a dog, a cat, a mug or a cup. Then, from nine to 12 months, parents can start to expand on that. Their baby might be in a high chair and pointing at a cup, so the parent should say the word, and they should say it many times, because repetition is how our children learn. Many people think that children do not really communicate until they start talking, but of course they are; they are picking up all those vital signals that will help them to start forming words. It is an utterly fascinating subject.

I am told that dummies really are a no-no. Nursery staff I have spoken to have borne that out. If a dummy is put in a child’s mouth too often, it can affect the way the mouth develops. I discussed that only recently with a specialist facial consultant at Musgrove Park Hospital, and she agreed that we do not want to influence what happens in a baby’s mouth, because that has to grow and develop as well.

I will turn now to an area that I know is close to your heart, Ms Dorries: reading stories, poems and even songs. We can never do enough of that with our children, starting from the word go. I recently read an article by the author Philip Pullman, in which he bemoaned the fact that, sadly, not enough children are read to anymore and that the bedtime story is disappearing. Indeed, staff at a nursery in Taunton that I visited recently told me that many parents are ditching the bedtime story. The bedtime story is a crucial way for children to learn how to communicate, and again it is not to do with how wealthy someone is, or how smart they are. It is a cheap activity—almost free—that can help our children so much.

Some very interesting research on teaching effective vocabulary produced by A. Biemiller has shown that at age seven relatively high-performing children have an average of 7,100 words in their repertoire and that they can learn, on average, three words a day. However, relatively poor-performing children have an average of 3,000 words in their repertoire and learn, on average, one word a day. That is an enormous gap to fill if those relatively poor-performing children are to catch up when they get to school—I am told on good authority that it is almost impossible for them to catch up. Vocabulary at age five is the best predictor of a child’s outcomes at GCSE level.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing such an important debate. Stoke Speaks Out is one of the national exemplars of how to engage with this issue. Does she agree that we need sustained funding for such programmes? We have seen engagement in this work. In my constituency, 84% of children were 12 months behind in oral skills at the age of two. There was heavy investment and they eventually did well in their GCSEs, but funding was pulled for the children in the next years and we saw an exact inverse relationship in their long-term attainment. Does she agree that, in order to break the cycle, we need sustained funding for every year?

[Rebecca Pow]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention; she makes a good point. I have heard about that extremely good project, and there are others. I know that the matter is on the Minister’s agenda. I think that this is a process of joining up the dots, so that we can make good progress, because it is really coming to light how important this issue is for society as a whole. We cannot expect teachers to do it all. They must be able to pick up where they have to, and rightly so, but there is a lot that parents can do, and we could give them many more pointers when they have children. We must engage society on the whole issue

To pick up on the hon. Lady’s point, many nurseries and primary schools in Taunton Deane have joined me in supporting the idea that we ought to engage with parents to encourage them to do a little more. For example, staff at Topps Nursery at Musgrove Park Hospital, which I visited last week, are really concerned about the number of children arriving at their door who simply do not have the expected communication skills, whatever their age. Many of those children are not potty-trained, which is a problem, but many also lack basic communication skills. It was the staff at that nursery who mentioned dummies and said, “Please don’t use them.” They also expressed concern about too many children being dumped in front of gadgets, so that they are not stimulated and do not have normal levels of human contact.

I also met a couple of headteachers from two of my really excellent primary schools, St George’s Catholic School and Trull Church of England VA Primary School. When I mentioned that I had secured this debate, both of them said that they had experienced a marked rise in the number of children who do not talk when they start school, who cannot hold a conversation, who do not listen, who have speech problems and who therefore have poor social interaction skills. I was quite taken aback when they so quickly came up with this list of issues that our teachers are clearly facing. Of course, those issues put an added burden on our already hard-working and professional nursery and teaching staff and practitioners.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries, and thank you for letting me indicate my wish to speak at such a late stage. I congratulate the hon. Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) on securing this important debate, and on the tenacity with which she has pursued this issue pretty much every time I have been in the Chamber for questions and she has been able to raise it. The perspicacity of her speech demonstrates that she clearly has this issue in her heart; it is not something that she is doing simply because she can.

I want to touch on the Stoke Speaks Out scheme, which my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) mentioned. It is a wonderful scheme, which Janet Cooper and her team have run for a number of years. The purpose of the scheme is to identify at a very early age young people in Stoke-on-Trent for whom speech and language could be a barrier to their overall development, aspiration and further opportunity.

The team at Stoke Speaks Out do wonderful work, but they have the never-ending problem of constantly having to reinvent the service that they are trying to deliver in order to qualify for new rounds of funding from various different funding agencies and bodies. The reality is that they have a model that works. It has been statistically proven to work, and they have a quantified dataset that shows that their interventions cause improvements. In fact, the baseline for readiness in Stoke-on-Trent schools in 2016 showed that only 35% of our young people were ahead or on track for speech standards, but after intervention by the Stoke Speaks Out team that figure had risen to 54% by July 2017. I think we would all agree that that is a remarkable achievement in such a short period of time for an organisation that was operating on a shoestring.

This is not an issue with our schools. The schools in our city are rated good or outstanding overall. This is a community issue and a societal issue, and it is a problem that is often missed. The most pertinent point that the hon. Member for Taunton Deane made was about early intervention outside school years. We have a disproportionate number of young people in Stoke-on-Trent for whom the 30 hours of nursery provision or pre-school arrangements simply are not available, because of work arrangements or the hours threshold. That means that a lot of young people go directly from a home situation into a reception class. Headteachers around the constituency consistently tell me that young people benefit from provision in a nursery school setting, and that there is a marked and quantifiable difference in readiness for speech and language skills between children who come into school aged four and those who have been through nursery provision aged three.

The simple fact is that early intervention teams within the community health team cannot pick up every case where somebody may have an issue with speech and learning development. Stark statistics suggest that around half the young people in the constituencies of Stoke-on-Trent North, Stoke-on-Trent South and Stoke-on-Trent Central have up to a 12-month delay in their language skills by the age of three. As the hon. Member for Taunton Deane pointed out, that is a huge impediment to their future success.

Schools also talk to me quite readily about the fact that they struggle to get some parents to engage with at-home reading. That is sometimes down to parents not making the effort—we must be honest about that—but it is also because adult literacy rates in some parts of my constituency mean that parents do not have the confidence to sit down and read with their children from a very young age. Again, that can cause issues around how people parent. The hon. Member for Taunton Deane rightly pointed out that the “digital corner parent”, as we call it in our house, sometimes has a much greater presence in the young person’s life than it should, to the extent that a headteacher in one of my schools said that one of their problems was children coming in with American accents, because they watch American cartoons and TV, and that has become dominant. In some of my local schools, the words “soda” and “elevator” are now more commonly used than “pop” and “lift”, because that is the way that some parents arrange things.

[Ruth Smeeth]

I hate to interrupt a narrative about American television, but one of the most important things that Stoke Speaks Out has done is to deliver 3,000 free books to children across our city as part of the Stoke Reads project. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is as vital for parents as it is for children, as those parents start reading to their children?

[Gareth Snell]

I thank my hon. Friend for her inevitable intervention. She is right: the more we can get parents reading, the better. My predecessor, Tristram Hunt, did a piece of work with every primary school child in Stoke-on-Trent Central. He arranged for them to receive a copy of H. E. Marshall’s “Our Island Story: A Child’s History of England” as they transitioned from primary to secondary school, so he could be certain that they would have something to read over the summer period. Those small things can go on to develop language skills.

There is also a wonderful organisation in Stoke-on-Trent called Beanstalk, which arranges for volunteers to go into school and read with children. I believe that the mother of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North is a volunteer with that programme. Whenever I go round schools I see teachers and headteachers who have used their pupil premium money in very innovative ways to get young people reading and understanding where language comes from. I must admit that I was somewhat confused when my seven-year-old daughter came home, having done phonics in her year 1 class, with “oohs” and “aahs” and lots of new language sounds that I certainly did not learn when I was at school.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am short of time and I have a lot to say about this subject, so the hon. Lady will forgive me if I do not.

Supporting schools to respond to the needs of all their pupils is crucial to achieving our ultimate goal of culture change. We know that spoken language underpins the development of reading and writing, and that the quality and variety of language that pupils hear and speak is vital for developing their vocabulary, grammar, reading and writing. The national curriculum for English, which colleagues mentioned in their comments, reflects the importance of spoken language in pupils’ development across the whole curriculum. At primary level, children should be taught to ask relevant questions, to articulate and justify answers, arguments and opinions, to participate in collaborative conversation, to use spoken language to develop understanding and to speak audibly and fluently, with an increasing command of English. Teachers should ensure the continual development of pupils’ confidence and competence in spoken language and listening skills.

Having developed those resources and many others relating to other specific impairments, we are now taking a more strategic approach to better supporting the educational workforce and equipping them to deliver high-quality teaching across all types of SEN. We have recently contracted with the Whole School SEND Consortium to enable schools to identify and meet their SEND training needs, and I am delighted that the Communication Trust is part of that consortium.

Through that work, the Whole School SEND Consortium will create regional hubs across the country to bring together local SEND practitioners. The hubs will work to encourage schools to prioritise SEND within their continuous professional development and school improvement plans. The resources provide leaders, teachers and practitioners with access to information about evidence-based practice that can be effective for SEN support, including for those with SLCN.

In terms of joint work and joint commissioning at local authority level, the duty to commission services jointly is vital to the success of the SEND reforms. We recognise that unless education, health and social care partners work together, we will not see that holistic approach to a child’s progression or the positive outcomes that the system aims to achieve. Joint working is one of the best ways of managing pressures on local authority and NHS budgets. Looking for more efficient ways to work together, to share information and to avoid duplication will work in favour of professionals and families.

Some areas are demonstrating excellent joint working. Wiltshire is an example, with positive feedback on the effectiveness of its local joint commissioning arrangements. It was reported that senior officers across education, health and care worked together effectively, adopting a well-integrated and multi-agency approach to plan and deliver services to children and young people with SEND. We want to learn from those examples. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central mentioned the evidence gathered through Stoke Speaks Out. It troubles me that that particular group of people have to keep reinventing and going back for different pots of money, rather than our looking at that evidence and beginning to scale it for the rest of the country.

[Ruth Smeeth]

One of the challenges with Stoke Speaks Out is that when it started in 2006 it had 30 staff, but in 2015 it went down to half a member of staff. Now it has gone back up to nearly 10, but its funding is being cut again. That inconsistency is not delivering for the children of Stoke-on-Trent.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I hear the hon. Lady’s point; I know she is a great champion of the project, and I pledge to her that I will look at this evidence and see what more we can do to ensure that there are consistent outcomes.

The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central talked about early years education. It is fundamental that we identify SLCN as early as possible, as we know that can have a profound impact later in life. Children who struggle with language at age five are six times less likely to reach the expected level in English at age 11 than children who have good language skills at age five, and 11 times less likely to achieve the expected level in maths. By age three, disadvantaged children are, on average, already almost a full year and a half behind their more affluent peers in their early language development. That is also why, from a social mobility perspective, the case for addressing SLCN in the early years is so important.

In our social mobility action plan, “Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential”, we announced our ambition to close the word gap in the early years between disadvantaged children and their peers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

Monday 14th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend will know that the national funding formula contains a sparsity allocation of more than £20 million for schools in rural areas, particularly small schools, to help to deal with the problem he has rightly highlighted.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

On Friday, the University of Chester Academies Trust wrote to its staff at two schools in my constituency, University Academy Kidsgrove and University Primary Academy, to announce savage cuts. Will the Minister meet me and other colleagues with UCAT schools in their constituencies immediately to talk about an urgent solution?

[Damian Hinds]

The schools Minister and I will be delighted to meet the hon. Lady.

School Holidays (Meals and Activities) Bill

Baroness Anderson of Stoke-on-Trent Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 19th January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I want to make a little more headway.

It is important for any provision to take account of local need, so we will seek to ensure that our approach can respond to a variety of circumstances and contexts. For example, we will aim to cover rural as well as urban areas, to work with different types of schools and across educational phases, and to ensure that provision can be accessed by children with special educational needs and disabilities. We will build links with and between local partners by, for instance, assisting voluntary and community sector organisations to work collaboratively with schools to achieve those aims.

[Ruth Smeeth (Stoke-on-Trent North) (Lab)]

Will the Government also use research from pilots that the voluntary sector led last year, when 10,500 meals were served in my constituency?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I would very much like to see that research. We will both collate research already done and commission new research. We want to get this right.

The research programme will begin immediately and will include some initial work in the 2018 summer holidays followed by further piloting in the 2019 Easter and summer holidays. The Government work will investigate how to provide a balanced, enriched programme for the most disadvantaged school-age pupils.

The debate stood adjourned (Standing Order No. 11(2)).

Ordered, That the debate be resumed on Friday 27 April.