Ethnicity Pay Gap

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Bird

Thursday 25th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend is right: there are particular groups that have not only a larger ethnicity pay gap but a larger employment gap than other communities. The Government have worked with specific communities. My noble friend raised the Afro-Caribbean communities but there are also, for example, significant barriers to employment and pay differentials for Bangladeshi women. The Government have a number of programmes to address those.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

While we are at it, can we congratulate PwC for taking people from prison? I think that is a great sign. We must remember that people from ethnic minorities are overrepresented in the prison population.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Of course. I welcome all employers, including PwC, working with those who have been in the criminal justice system and in prison.

Schools: Food Standards

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Bird

Wednesday 15th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As I think I have tried to say in response to earlier questions, the school food standards are part of a much wider picture of what impacts on childhood obesity, which I agree is at very worrying levels. This Government have introduced universal infant free school meals, we have robust school food standards that are set in legislation, and we have made a number of other moves to make sure that children get a healthy diet and are educated in a way to understand what that is.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Are we aware that one of the reasons why children eat a lot of sugar is that their parents do? There is inherited bad performance when it comes to food and your social position. When will the Government get behind my Bill, which would create a ministry of poverty prevention so that these things can be dealt with? We cannot just keep expecting people suddenly to wake up to the fact that sugar is not good for them. Until we hit poverty, we are not going anywhere.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government have a strong record in this area, with changes to the eligibility for free school meals for families in receipt of universal credit. I hear the strength of the noble Lord’s feelings, but, as he will have just heard in the King’s Speech, I am afraid the direct answer to his question about when the Government will support his proposal is that it will not be in the near term.

Cultural Education Plan

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Bird

Tuesday 17th October 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Do the Government agree with me that one of the best ways of emptying our prisons is by investing in our youngsters who go wrong and using art and culture to bring about social transformation in their lives? I am a living embodiment of that: if it was not for culture in my early years, I would not be here.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord speaks with great authority on this. I absolutely agree with him that art and culture, as well as other extracurricular activities such as sport and other opportunities, are critical for young people at risk of offending or in prison.

Prison: Support for Dependent Children

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Bird

Tuesday 18th July 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

As the noble Baroness understands very well, on one level we know the impact of separation, which is a very traumatic event, particularly for the child. We also know that separation is likely to be associated with a number of other very serious traumas for a child, including maternal mental health issues and substance misuse. We look at addressing those in the round, which is why we are working on a fundamental reform of children’s social care, to make sure that these children get the support they deserve.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Can we also look at the fact that 68% of children whose parents go to prison end up in prison themselves later on? Where is the prevention? We really need to prevent it happening again in 10 or 20 years.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Of course, we need to focus on supporting those children and trying to mitigate some of the terrible scarring effects of the trauma that they will have suffered. That is why there is an increasing focus on early help and making sure that we get consistency in that help. That is what we will be testing in the pathfinder projects, which we will launch shortly, following our review of children’s social care.

Child Hunger in Schools

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Bird

Tuesday 22nd November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Since day 1, the Government have been clear that our absolute priority is levelling up opportunity across the country, including, of course and importantly, in the north-east. I understand the noble Baroness’s concerns, which are shared by my ministerial colleagues. But I point her to the £12 billion in direct support that we are targeting to the most vulnerable families in 2023-24.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

The point that more people now have school dinners is actually wrong because, when I was a young boy in the 1950s and 1960s, we had free school dinners, olive oil capsules and milk—all the things that children need now. So could the Minister consider going back to those old days?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord reminds a number of us of our schooldays, although I cannot remember the olive oil capsules—anyway, they sound very healthy. More seriously, the Government are thinking about this, not only in term time but in the holidays with our holiday activities and food programme, making sure that the children who need it most get the support that they need.

Family: Protective Effect

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Bird

Monday 7th November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

More than 150,000 children live in kinship care, so the noble Baroness raises an incredibly important point. The Government recognise the need to support kinship carers more, and we have made early progress. We have invested £2 million to develop 100 kinship peer support groups for kinship carers; this summer, we set up the first dedicated policy team in the department focused on kinship care; and obviously, we will be responding to Josh MacAlister’s recommendations on that point.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Will the Government be looking at the full costs of knocking £50 billion out of the social economy when we move into this period of austerity? Removing £50 billion could well cause hundreds of billions of pounds-worth of damage, especially to our families.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord raises a much broader point. Bringing it back to the review, the Government are very excited about and look forward to the second stage of the Children’s Commissioner’s review on the protective effect that families can offer.

Education: Philosophy

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Bird

Tuesday 1st November 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Baroness is right that philosophy is not on the national curriculum, but citizenship is. It equips pupils with exactly the skills she sets out—namely, to research and interrogate evidence, to debate and evaluate viewpoints, to present reasoned arguments and to take informed action.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Does the Minister agree with the work of the Philosophy Foundation, which is already working in our prisons and schools to sharpen people’s thinking? We are lost if our children do not know how to think correctly.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am not familiar with the work of the Philosophy Foundation, but I absolutely welcome all those charities working in our prisons and our schools to support our children.

Schools: Creative Subjects and the English Baccalaureate

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Bird

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We very much welcome the partnerships from the independent sector in music and many other areas, and my noble friend is right to highlight them. However, we also have a responsibility and an ambition to make sure that our children have a strong music education, which is why we will be publishing our updated national plan shortly.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Does the Minister agree that, if we are to create a world of resilient workers in the next generation, we need to look at how we create these people through a resilient education system? We are in a bigger crisis than we believe. We need to reinvent a holistic form of education, because that is how the world’s businesses are going.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord raises a large, broad and important issue. Of course we need a resilient education system and resilient children, and in the announcements in our schools White Paper and the special educational needs and disability Green Paper published this morning, we have set out exactly how we plan to do that.

Children and Young People in Care: Accommodation

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Bird

Thursday 16th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

With respect to the noble Baroness and to the House, these children were originally let down within their own homes, sadly. That is the tragedy, which I know she knows very well. She will also be aware that the Government have announced a really ambitious plan, in terms of family hubs, with a great focus on the first 1,000 days of a child’s life—she and I have discussed the importance of that in previous conversations. It is not an either/or choice: there will be children who need support and intervention earlier on, and we are committed to doing both well.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Is this the place to talk about a very big issue—pardon the pun—which is the fact that the flow of children out of care into homelessness and on into the prison system is still carrying on to such an extent that probably 25% of the people I work with in and around homelessness and 25% of people in prison have come from a care background?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for the unique perspective and experience that he brings to this question. He is right, and that is why, together with the Department for Levelling Up, the Department for Education published guidance last year to make sure there are common standards for supported accommodation for young people aged 18 and over. That is an important basis, as the noble Lord understands well, but we are committed to providing additional support also.

Alternative Education

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Bird

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord will be aware that we consulted on the register, and he will no doubt be delighted to know that we have responded to that consultation. From the local authority perspective, the consultation showed a clear call for a register, which we support. There was concern expressed by parent groups who educate their children at home. We absolutely understand that many parents go above and beyond to do that, but the safety of children and the fact that we know where they are is all-important.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Is it possible to accept the fact that a lot of people like myself have had to put their children through alternative education largely because things such as dyslexia are not really accounted for? We have had to follow the Steiner school system, which is about helping people with those problems. That is one of the major reasons why there are so many children going through alternative education.

Education: Music and the Arts

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Bird

Monday 25th October 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government do not accept that the EBacc has contributed to a decline in the adoption of creative subjects. The percentage of children doing an arts subject to GCSE has remained broadly stable over the last 10 years. The EBacc mandatory curriculum is intentionally focused to give space for other subjects.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Does the Minister agree that the creative minds of the future will need a synthesis of the arts and the sciences because that is the way the world is going? This division between arts and science will disappear in 50 or 100 years. That is where we need to go. We need to take the example of, for instance, the Bauhaus 100 years ago or even Professor JD Bernal, who was talking about this in the 1930s.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The creative industries are a great example, as a number of noble Lords have recognised today, of that fusion of artistic and other technical and scientific disciplines. That is why the Government are committed to having a range of arts subjects as a core part of the curriculum from early years to GCSEs.

Social Capital

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Bird

Monday 25th January 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I absolutely agree with my noble friend about the impact the pandemic has had on young people. That is one of the reasons that the Chancellor announced a review of youth provision outside schools, which will be reporting in May this year. I thank my noble friend and his colleagues at Onward for providing excellent analysis and research on the year to serve, and I am happy to continue a further conversation with him about that proposal.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Is the Minister aware of small organisations such as Social Echo, which works in Cambridgeshire and Huntingdonshire? I declare an interest, because I am part of the team that put it together. It has been building on the enormous social kindness that broke out last year and is trying to stitch organisations and businesses together—the estate agent with the homeless organisation, et cetera. They are the backbone on which we have to rebuild the social capital that we are talking about.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I agree with the noble Lord and thank him for his tireless work in this area. I share his recognition of the outpouring of social kindness. Our efforts, in the funding that we have provided the voluntary sector in particular, have predominantly focused on small local organisations, for exactly the reasons that the noble Lord sets out.

National Trust Acts

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Bird

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am sorry to disappoint my noble friend, but we have no plans currently to do such a review. The National Trust conducts its own governance review every 10 years and any external review of its activities should be left to the Charity Commission.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I shall take a different angle on the National Trust. I have been approached by people who live in National Trust properties and I know that there are all sorts of plans to modernise the relationships between staff and the tied cottages. In places, these relationships are medieval—very much like the buildings —Victorian or Edwardian. I would like to see a change to the Acts so that we can make sure that the trust is carrying out its social duty for social justice and we do not allow a situation where the tenants are living in the past while the big landlord, the National Trust, is riding high on the hog.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Lord makes an interesting point. I hope that the trustees of the National Trust will read Hansard and pick up on his remarks.

Public Libraries

Debate between Baroness Barran and Lord Bird

Monday 3rd February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question in my name on the Order Paper, and I bring to the attention of the House my interest in this product.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (Baroness Barran) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to supporting a sustainable, long-term future for libraries in England. We want libraries to be resilient and equipped to meet local challenges—to thrive, not just to survive. The Government announced proposals in December 2019 to increase local government resources by £2.9 billion, meaning spending power will rise by 4.4% in real terms in the year 2020-21. The Government are also investing £125 million, through the cultural investment fund, in regional museums and libraries over five years, starting in 2021.

[Lord Bird]

I thank the Minister for that reply. Might there be a cross-government problem whereby the Minister for the creative industries is in charge of promoting libraries while the local government Minister actually spends the money? In recent times, 6,000usb people have lost their jobs in libraries and we have had 10% shrinkage in libraries, and there has been no intervention by the ministry of culture.

[Baroness Barran]

I start by thanking the noble Lord for the work he does in this area and for his beautiful blue report, which I have a copy of with me and which makes good reading. He makes a good point about the need for close working between government departments and I would like to think that we have made real progress on that, with the establishment of the Libraries Taskforce, together with the Local Government Association, and the establishment of a clear five-year strategy up to 2021, the Libraries Deliver strategy, which the noble Lord will know. For the first time, we have some clear data about libraries; not so long ago, we did not even know how many libraries we had. We are now building a dataset that will allow both departments to make good decisions.