Children: Safeguarding

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Wednesday 11th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

Some people think that they should be allowed to educate their children at home with minimum interference; others feel that society has moved on somewhat in recent years and it is something that we should look at again. As I say, we are looking at this carefully.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

How are Her Majesty’s Government taking forward the recommendations in the Wood review?

[Lord Nash]

On this aspect, as I say, we have received 18,000 responses to our call for evidence and we are considering them carefully. We want a system that regulates out-of-school settings and works effectively but is not overly burdensome, because we know that many of these settings are small and staffed by volunteers.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Pinnock (LD)]

I, too, rise to speak to this group of amendments, and in particular to Amendment 57, in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and those who have just spoken.

We on this side totally support the principle of innovation, and I think all other speakers have agreed that that is a positive thing to do. However, there is a need to retain the hard-won safeguards for very vulnerable children that are currently enshrined in primary legislation. In Grand Committee I said that this led to a dilemma: innovation, which may well improve the lot of these vulnerable children, or retaining the safeguards. I asked the Minister for assurances on that process, and about what was off-limits. His response was that there were “no limits” to what could be required from this innovation procedure. That is the very heart of my concern. Despite the additional safeguards which the Minister has attached to the Bill, there is at its heart an opportunity to throw away hard-won safeguards for the sake of the so-called principle of innovation, which may or may not help these vulnerable children.

I am pleased to see that through Amendment 54, the Minister inserts a new paragraph to prevent profit-making from children’s services. That is welcome and I support it, but other explicit safeguards he has added go no way towards giving us the assurances we have all sought throughout the Bill’s passage. Nor has it reassured the children’s charities which have written to many noble Lords with their concerns. I will quote from part of their briefing, because it sums up the nature of the concerns we are all expressing:

“Clause 29 seeks to introduce a wide ranging power. It leaves all children’s social care legislation, regulation and guidance open to exemption or modification. This will include safeguarding legislation, support for vulnerable children, and oversight and monitoring of children at risk and in care. Children’s entitlement to support or protection should not be removed without rigorous evidence and oversight … We welcome the Government’s decision to bring forward amendments to improve safeguards to the ‘power to test new ways of working’. Despite this progress, oversight and review mechanisms are not yet sufficiently robust”.

That perfectly sums up what many of us have been saying. We are not convinced that what the Government have brought forward will provide reassurance that children, including the most vulnerable children in our society, will not be put at risk by Clause 29.

For those reasons, I, too, and other Members on this Bench, will support the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, if he seeks the opinion of the House.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, in response to Amendments 57, 58 and 64, in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham, Lord Watson and Lord Warner, I wish to speak in support of Clauses 29 to 31. These clauses introduce a new power allowing local authorities to apply for exemptions or modifications to children’s social care legislation, to enable them to test new ways of working. They also limit the duration of the period over which an exemption or modification will allow an innovation to be tested, and specify the consultation requirements that must be met.

I draw noble Lords’ attention to my entry in the register of interests, which shows that I am currently serving as a vice-president of the Local Government Association. I would also ask you to note the LGA’s support for these powers, particularly in light of the additional safeguards introduced by the Government through their Amendments 59 and 61. The LGA has concerns about Clause 32, however.

I do not believe Clauses 29 to 31 are signs of a Government recklessly putting our most vulnerable children out on a limb. Rather, they reveal a reforming courage, a willingness to address long-standing inflexibilities that substitute true safeguarding with bureaucratic formality. These clauses and the Government’s amendments—which further tighten them in response to noble Lords’ concerns—are very welcome.

Indeed, SOLACE, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, has argued for some time that the inflexible regulation and inspection regimes applied to children’s social care provide little opportunity for innovation. My own 30 years of experience in local government—many of which were spent at the coalface of the issues at the heart of the Bill—have convinced me, too, that this power is needed.

I was chairman of the Local Government Association at the time of the tragic death of baby Peter. Most of our practices surrounding child protection have been based on times when things have gone wrong. The clauses before us today enable us to build on when things are done right. Every day, children’s services departments across the country face a barrage of complex challenges: rising demand, reduced funding, greater awareness of child sexual exploitation, gang activity and radicalisation, as well as a significant increase in the number of unaccompanied child refugees.

Freedom to test new ways of working in such a context is not only welcome but desperately needed. The paramountcy principle enshrined in the Children Act 1989 still stands. Indeed, the best interests of the child are far more likely to be served if overregulation is not allowed to get in the way of good social work practice. Professor Eileen Munro says that the power to innovate is a critical part of the journey set out in her independent review of child protection, towards a welfare system that reflects the complexity and diversity of children’s needs. The culture change she called for in her groundbreaking report, commissioned by the coalition Government, will simply never come to pass without testing innovation in a controlled way to establish the consequences of change before any national rollout. She describes it as,

“a sensible and proportionate way forward”.

Anthony Douglas CBE, who is the chief executive of Cafcass, agrees that the proposed new power will help,

“strip back bureaucracy to a safe minimum level”,

preserving the professional time of social workers and social care staff for the delivery of,

“services and programmes that make a positive difference to children and families”.

Steve Crocker, Director of Children’s Services for Hampshire County Council, one of the Department for Education’s partner in practice authorities, is keen to apply the power by deploying the independent reviewing officer’s role in a much more targeted way. Currently, IROs’ highly skilled professionals are legally obliged to attend some reviews where, frankly, they are neither wanted nor needed by the young people they are there to serve. Children and young people who are in happy and stable arrangements would rather their review was attended wholly by people they are familiar with. At the same time, there are cases when IROs’ time would be far better spent providing more scrutiny and oversight.

Schools: Funding

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Lords Chamber

Tabled by

[Baroness Eaton]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how much funding per pupil with the same needs can vary by school; and what they intend to do to achieve fairness in funding.

Education and Adoption Bill

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, it is a great honour and a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, in this debate. Following such an expert, a previous Secretary of State for Education, in a debate on education legislation, is indeed a daunting task. The whole House joins me in congratulating him on an exceptional maiden speech. We all look forward to his many future contributions to the business of this House. The noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, and I share northern roots and a keen commitment to and interest in the urban areas of the north. After all his past work in the city of Sheffield, he can indeed be described in his own right as a northern powerhouse.

I start my contribution to this debate by declaring, as usual, my interests as a former chairman of the Local Government Association and a current LGA vice-president. Furthermore, as a former teacher, I am particularly pleased to have the opportunity to speak in today’s important debate. Reform of education has been a common priority both for this Government and their immediate Labour predecessors. During the Blair Governments, for example, we saw struggling schools being relaunched under the Fresh Start programme and city academies introduced, resulting in the creation of autonomous state schools with private sector involvement. We also saw the demise of, to use Alastair Campbell’s phrase, the “bog-standard comprehensive” and its replacement with specialist schools and academies.

As a former leader of Bradford Metropolitan District Council and a serving member of that authority, I am aware that the role of schools in our communities has broadened in a way that makes many inner-city schools unrecognisable from a generation ago. Indeed, extended schools with breakfast and after-school clubs have begun to blur the boundaries between education, childcare and social services, while secondary schools have parallel staffs of mentors and behaviour advisers.

Under the coalition Government we saw the establishment of more than 250 free schools, set up and run by local people, delivering exciting new educational opportunities for communities around the country. In addition, more than 1,000 schools that were ranked “inadequate” became academies, bringing in new leadership to promote discipline, rigour and high educational standards. Currently, more than 4,600 schools benefit from academy status, enjoying more power over discipline, finance and the curriculum. However, too many children still do not receive the excellent education that they deserve.

Based on their manifesto commitments, the Government received a clear mandate in May to continue improving the education offered to our children by further increasing the number of academies, free schools and university technical colleges. Here I declare my interest as a trustee of the Sir Simon Milton Foundation, which is currently building a university technical college in Pimlico.

Fulfilling one of the key pledges made in our manifesto, the Bill contains provisions to turn every failing school into an academy and to tackle inadequate progress elsewhere by introducing new measures to target schools that are considered “coasting”. It is quite correct that, when a school is not consistently ensuring that all its pupils reach their full potential, it is held accountable for these failures and required to agree an action plan for improvement. The Bill also removes the bureaucratic legal hurdles that have so often been exploited by those with ideological objections to school freedoms, which have meant that pupils typically have to spend more than a year in a failing school before academy conversations take place.

Let us be clear: it is not simply being called an academy that helps failing or coasting schools to improve. What is important is what being an academy stands for: giving schools freedom over what they teach, when they teach it, and deciding who is best to teach it.

While most of my speech has concentrated on the aspects of this legislation that affect schools, we must certainly not forget that it is the Education and Adoption Bill. As the Secretary of State for Education emphasised when speaking to this legislation last month, the Bill is also concerned with improving the adoption system so that most of our most vulnerable children find loving homes as quickly as possible.

The current adoption system is highly fragmented, with around 180 agencies recruiting and matching adopters for only 5,000 children a year. It currently takes an average of eight months between placement order and match, which is far too long for any child to wait. I therefore strongly welcome the measures included in the Bill to speed up this process, including the introduction of regional adoption agencies and the provision of £4.5 million in financial support this year for those councils that lead the way in delivering this.

I believe that these proposals will create a larger pool of approved adopters to match from, improve the recruitment of adopters and ensure that vital support services are more widely available. Ultimately, it should significantly increase the choice of potential matches available, giving children a far better chance of finding a permanent family. While I strongly welcome these measures on adoption, I also hope that they will not detract from the importance of other types of long and short-term care for vulnerable children. Local and national government must continue to strive to improve the experience of all children in care.

In conclusion, a good education is not a luxury; it should be a right for everyone. As such, I strongly welcome the Bill and its provisions, which I believe will ensure that all children, whatever circumstances they are born into, receive the very best possible start in life, thus allowing them to fulfil their potential.

Childcare Bill [HL]

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for this announcement. Having worked with him on the children Bill, which he led through Parliament, I know how very hard he works to listen to Peers’ concerns and to respond to them, so I am very grateful to him for this response. I also know that his first ambition is to make a difference to children in this country. I am sure he will agree that, by delaying the Report stage and allowing us to gain more information, we will be in a better position to challenge him and work with him to get the best Bill and one which will make the most difference to children. Therefore, I warmly welcome the Minister’s announcement.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I find it very surprising that today the Opposition have decided that the Statement on child poverty made in the other place by the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions should not be repeated and discussed here. The Statement details the Government’s approach to tackling the root causes of child poverty and improving the future life chances of young people. Instead of debating child poverty as a matter of public importance, the Opposition have chosen to have a debate about procedural matters, when the Government have already made it quite clear that they have responded to their request to defer the Report stage of the Childcare Bill to October.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

Would the noble Baroness like to explain to the House the relevance of the point she has just made to the topic under discussion here today?

[Baroness Eaton]

My Lords, the Minister has already made it clear that the concerns of the House were to be brought back at Report in October. However, the issue of child poverty is of great importance to the whole nation. I do not think that the electorate are particularly interested in the finer points of how we reach conclusions.

[Lord Harris of Haringey (Lab)]

Perhaps the noble Baroness can explain why it is in the interests of either this House or the nation for the Government to bring forward legislation without telling the country the detail of what is contained in it. It is a constitutional issue that is being raised now, not a party-political point.

[Baroness Eaton]

My Lords, I feel that I have made my point firmly.

[Lord Tyler (LD)]

My Lords, I served as a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee and want to return for a moment, if I may, to the recommendations in our second report. I very much welcome the response from the Minister this afternoon because I think that it was very helpful, but there are wider issues here. I particularly appreciate the presence of the government Chief Whip, because I am sure he will wish to make sure, through the usual channels, that there is discussion of some wider issues.

I am also delighted to see that the chair of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee is here—the noble Baroness, Lady Fookes. It is probably her drafting that has produced what is, I think, the most critical paragraph in the second report—critical in both senses—which I will put before your Lordships’ House:

“We note that the Minister said that ‘the introduction of the Bill, with a strong duty on the Secretary of State, sends a clear message to parents and providers about the Government's commitment’. That is not, in our judgment, a proper use of legislation: the purpose of an Act is to change the law, not to ‘send a message’”.

I think that that is critical to the role and responsibility of your Lordships’ House. I therefore think it entirely appropriate—and I welcome the fact that they have given these indications—that the Government are prepared to respond positively to the report as a whole. However, it applies not just to this Bill. As the noble Baroness and my noble friend said, there are echoes here of the committee’s first report, which relates to the Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill, where again there were powers in statute, potentially, that are akin to Henry VIII powers, which this House has always been very sensitive to and I hope will always be.

As my noble friend said, in the immediate aftermath of a general election and change of Administration, there is always an absurd rush to legislation, with Ministers desperate to get something done. But it is an affront to the role of your Lordships’ House to put before us obviously inadequate legislation. That is true in both these cases. I hope that there will be an understanding, not just in relation to this Bill but in relation more widely to the legislative programme of the new Administration, that there are important implications for the role and responsibility of your Lordships’ House. I hope that there will be very careful reading of the first and second reports of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.

Childcare Bill [HL]

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as a former chairman and current vice-president of the Local Government Association. The introduction of the Childcare Bill is a welcome move by the Government to make childcare more affordable for parents and help them to work.

Alongside the Bill, I warmly welcome the announcement by the Government of a review of the funding rates paid to providers and the commitment to increase the average rate paid. The sector has long argued that the current 15 hours of free childcare is underfunded, which has a consequent impact on both the quality of the care that children are getting and the fees for paying parents. It is enormously positive that the Government have listened to the concerns of the sector and are making progress on funding, and I am sure that most of us here will agree.

At four pages long, this is a short Bill, leaving much to regulations. I hope that we will have early sight of these so that they can be thoroughly considered alongside the Bill, as clearly they will set out much of the detail. As such, I have a number of questions about the mechanics of how the additional free childcare will be provided. From the local government perspective, I am keen to understand how the Government intend the 30 hours of free childcare to be delivered. Under existing legislation, councils are required to secure 15 hours of free childcare. The Bill, however, places a duty on the Secretary of State to secure 30 hours, including the existing 15 hours that councils are obliged to secure. This would appear to create a dual system where both local authorities and the department will be involved in delivery.

The childcare system is already incredibly complex for parents to navigate, and I would be concerned if the Bill were to exacerbate this and unwittingly create inefficiencies. Alternatively, is it the Government’s intention that councils should no longer be involved in the delivery of childcare? I would also be concerned if this were the case. Local government plays a key role in helping to achieve a childcare system that supports both parents and children. I note further that the Bill includes regulation-making powers to allow the Secretary of State to establish and impose functions on a corporate body to deliver the free childcare. While there is clearly a need for the Government to have access to a range of ways in which to deliver childcare, I would be grateful for clarification from the Minister about his intentions here.

As I have said, a review of funding rates for providers is much needed and therefore warmly welcomed. The hourly rate has been frozen in cash terms for the last three years, and, as the funding received is based on historic spend and levels of disadvantage, not all councils receive the same amount. Councils receiving a lower level of funding have reported to the Local Government Association that providers are telling them that it is insufficient to cover their costs.

Councils do all they can to ensure that good-quality, affordable childcare is available. However, the level of funding is closely linked to quality and, therefore, to children’s progress and outcomes. I have no doubt that the review will examine the rate needed to ensure high-quality provision. Nevertheless, I emphasise that the funding rate should be set at a level needed to ensure that standards are likely to improve children’s outcomes. I am also keen to know whether the Government have considered whether capital funding might be needed by providers to expand provision to meet the commitment to 30 hours of childcare.

The question of eligibility has been raised and expanded on by many noble Lords today, but I, too, would like to touch briefly on this. I would welcome more detail from the Government on which parents are eligible for free childcare and the criteria by which eligibility will be determined. If councils are required to assess eligibility with new eligibility criteria, any additional costs incurred must surely be fully funded.

The policy aims behind childcare have changed over time, moving from an emphasis in the 1990s on increasing maternal employment in low-income families to, more recently, its benefits for both parental employment and child development. The coalition Government’s report, More Great Childcare, cited findings that high-quality preschool childcare is especially beneficial for the most disadvantaged children, thus introducing a third policy aim: closing the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers.

There is a real emphasis in the Bill and the Explanatory Notes on childcare being for working parents. While this is commendable and much needed, childcare should aim to meet both the needs of working parents and the developmental needs of children, and be funded commensurately with this.

I look forward to the Minister’s response to the points raised in the House today. I will of course continue to champion local government’s role, with its statutory duty to secure, as far as is reasonably practical, sufficient childcare. To this end, the Bill has real potential to create a childcare system which is affordable and of high quality, and which supports parents getting back to work and, early on, sets children on the path to achieve their full potential.

Ofsted: Academy Chains

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

Yes, I was merely referring to the fact that the letter that the Secretary of State refers to talks about a new framework and that we have not got a new framework for the inspection of chains.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

Does my noble friend agree that the overwhelming success of the majority of free schools and academies is the strongest evidence yet that allowing autonomy and freedom to schools and heads is the best way in which to raise standards?

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree with my noble friend: free schools are our most successful group of non-selective state schools, with 24% rated outstanding. We are told by Ofsted that we have the highest-performing school system that we have ever had. The performance of the first batch of primary academies is much higher than that of local authority maintained schools, and secondary academies open for any length of time are clearly also doing better.

Education: Citizenship

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Wednesday 14th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I entirely agree that the noble Lord will have participated in more elections than young people.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

What are Her Majesty’s Government doing to improve the quality of financial education in schools?

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, for the first time, the national curriculum is making financial literacy a statutory part of citizenship education. Pupils learn the importance of budgeting, the sound management of money, credit and debt, and gain an understanding of different financial services and products. The curriculum in maths has been strengthened to enable pupils to make financial decisions and understand percentages. Moreover, we are promoting materials produced by the financial education charity PFEG, and by HMRC.

Child Poverty

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Monday 8th December 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

Can my noble friend outline what measures the Government have enacted to improve the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children?

[Lord Nash]

It is true that this Government have done a huge amount for disadvantaged children: the pupil premium, reforms to the curriculum, reforms to the exams and making sure that particularly disadvantaged pupils have that core cultural knowledge that is so essential, as has been acknowledged by many, including the Labour MP Diane Abbott. As we know, the number of pupils who got that core cultural knowledge under the previous Government fell from 50% to 22%. Thanks to our reforms, it is now up to 40%. Some 800,000 more children are being educated in good and outstanding schools than in 2010, and Ofsted tells us that our school system is in the best shape ever.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Eaton Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Knight of Collingtree (Con)]

My Lords, there is just a small question that worries me very much. I was unable to listen to as much of this debate as I wanted, but what concerns me is that there seems to be no understanding that there is a time in a child’s life when it is not a very good idea to talk about sex. I was appalled on finding out, when I was dealing with other matters in the other place, that children as young as four were being told in sex education how to perform the sex act—in fact, how to perform all kinds of sex acts. That shocked me very much, because I believe that it is very important indeed to guard a child’s innocence. While I have no objection to older children being taught about this, the only reference to that that I could find in the amendment is the requirement that,

“SRE is taught in a way that is appropriate to the ages of the pupils concerned”.

We do not know, in the minds of those who put forward this amendment, what that is. What is appropriate to one person is often not appropriate to others.

It worries me very much that we do not have any protection for very young children. Is that an intentional omission, or do people think it is a good idea if very young children, long before they are at a stage where they understand what it is like to be grown up or are even a little bit grown up, are taught such matters? I want to be clear in my mind as to what is in the minds of those who seek to make these changes before I am at all happy about this.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, we have heard a number of very powerful contributions this evening and the subject matter is of deep concern to all of us. Having been a teacher myself and having brought up a family, I share the concerns that we all agree on, but I do not feel that legislation is always the answer to life’s ills.

The noble Baronesses, Lady Kennedy and Lady Walmsley, both talked about high-quality teaching. In the past I have met a number of parents whose children were taught PSHE in school and who found it totally inappropriate and very badly taught. I would be very concerned about how we would guarantee the quality of that kind of teaching. We all hear that in some schools—although not all—things like career advice are given as an aside and, because they are not considered mainstream, they are felt to be not terribly important and are not terribly well taught. This issue is incredibly important and, if it is going to be taught at all, it should be taught appropriately.

As a parent, I also feel very strongly that parental involvement should exist. I find it disconcerting to hear, “Well, parents shouldn’t be included at all. It’s really none of their business. The state knows better than they do”. If we are to go down this route, there needs to be some way in which parents are brought into those discussions about what is taught and how it is taught.

School is not the only place that young people meet; they see relationships not only in videos and in pornography but through television soaps and in books and magazines. We have a huge task in front of us. I do not think that, merely by supporting these two amendments, we are going to have a panacea and the world’s ills will be cured overnight.

This is a serious subject, but I worry that by legislating we will think we have solved the problem and we can leave it alone. We need to think very carefully about what happens in schools and about school rules. There are many things apart from PSHE that can influence the relationships between young people. I do not feel that I can support the amendments, but I have strong concerns about the way that society and young people are being influenced by some very evil things.