Covid-19: Care System
Baroness Fall Excerpts(3 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, the Government have announced that the use of unregulated accommodation for under-16s will be banned as of September this year. However, there are examples of those aged 16 and over for whom a semi-supported or independent living arrangement is the best placement. Local authorities make individual decisions but, for instance, many unaccompanied asylum-seeking children who come to this country at age 16 may state a preference—which is taken into account—to be in semi-supported or independent accommodation.
Baroness Fall (Con) [V]
My Lords, years ago the Government published a Green Paper in response to the worrying surge of mental health issues in children and young people and those in care. Today, a year after lockdown, that surge shows no sign of abating: quite the opposite. On this International Women’s Day, I draw attention to the very worrying rise of anorexia nervosa. Those who need help are often languishing on waiting lists. Has progress been made on establishing a new national waiting time and, if so, what is it?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, the Government are indeed concerned about the reported rise in eating disorders during the lockdown period. Only last Friday, we announced a further £79 million of funding to expand mental health support for children and young people. We have announced an early intervention service in 18 sites for those aged 16 to 25, meaning that people coming forward should be contacted within 48 hours and treated within two weeks.
Schools: Online Teaching
Baroness Fall Excerpts(3 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, all the large structural issues, such as extending the school day, extending the school year and repeating a year, are matters that need to be considered. As I have outlined, if those four children are all eligible for free school meals—as 1.3 million are—a school is able to allocate four devices. It is a matter for schools and FE colleges, and we trust them to be able to identify the right students who need access to devices.
Baroness Fall (Con) [V]
My Lords, the impact of school closures has hit a generation of children and has hit those who cannot access online resources hardest of all. We should have identified this problem right back in the first lockdown. But, looking ahead, are Ministers doing all they can to make sure that the surge of support from charities and businesses to offer laptops is going forward to children and not being hindered by red tape? Secondly, in recognising that digital poverty is unfortunately likely to stay with us for some time, can I ask that they consider that those children without access to online teaching should be eligible for face-to-face learning in case of a future lockdown?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, the students the noble Baroness outlines would be eligible to be classified as vulnerable children. We applaud the local and national campaigns, particularly those around refurbishing laptops. Obviously, the Government wanted to purchase new devices and did so in a very disrupted supply chain last year, and we are a huge customer for that sector. We applaud the Daily Mail campaign whereby businesses are giving refurbished laptops. Indeed, they are using the same distribution portal as our scheme so that schools can get access to those as well, which I hope deals with the red tape outlined by the noble Baroness.
Covid-19: Catch-up Premium
Baroness Fall Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, the laptops are being delivered to young people either via the local authority, if they are in a maintained school, or via the academy trust. The change is that we have responded to the data to make sure that disadvantaged students without a laptop, who are currently self-isolating or at home, can get access to a laptop. If there are any other exceptional cases, where schools have that situation, then I urge them to contact the department, but we are trying to ensure that laptops get to those students who are already outside of school face-to-face tuition and need remote education.
Baroness Fall (Con) [V]
My Lords, I welcome the money available from the Covid catch-up premium, which acknowledges what we all know to be so true: that a generation of children have been hugely damaged by Covid, especially the most disadvantaged. Will the Minister consider whether we should be encouraging a generation of new graduates, who are having difficulty finding jobs in such a difficult time, to support these kids who have such a lot of catching up to do by funding a programme of Saturday schools across the country for our most disadvantaged pupils?
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, the Government already give £9 million to fund holiday activities. In relation to the catch-up fund, Teach First is one of the delivery partners which are recruiting the mentors who will go to schools in our most disadvantaged areas to provide a mentor, or maybe more than one, per school. I anticipate that Teach First will be recruiting just the type of person my noble friend outlines.
Covid-19: Social Mobility
Baroness Fall Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Berridge
My Lords, the right reverend Prelate has stolen my thunder. We have indeed announced a £96 million package to support the FE sector, and we recognise that more than 200,000 16 year-olds are educated in that sector. The Social Mobility Commission commended the discretionary bursary funding that is available for disadvantaged students attending FE colleges, which should go some way to helping those students.
Baroness Fall (Con) [V]
My Lords, there is nothing more important to social mobility than education, and now Covid has caused a generation of children to miss months of school, affecting their life chances. That is especially true for those who have exams next year. Does the Minister not agree that we should be mobilising an army of volunteers to help teach in summer schools?
Baroness Berridge
My Lords, along with the catch-up package, it was announced that schools will be equipped with Teach First summer school resources and that £7 million will go towards holiday activities and clubs. However, my noble friend is correct in what she said about students taking exams next year. That is why disadvantaged year 10 students are among those who will be provided with one of the 200,000 laptops we have had delivered.
International Women’s Day
Baroness Fall Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Fall (Con)
My Lords, I want to take noble Lords back to 3 May 1997. For better or worse, I, like most of us in this Chamber, woke to the advent of the Blair dawn—with a soundtrack of Oasis. I was in my 20s and had been working as the desk officer for Europe at Conservative Central Office—a straightforward job, as noble Lords can imagine. This was my first general election and my first taste of political defeat, but certainly not my last. The memory of that election night haunted me, with its images of well-known politicians such as Michael Portillo losing their seats, but another image made a great impression just a few days later: a picture of Prime Minister Blair surrounded by a group of 101 women, all of them Labour MPs, who quickly became known as the Blair babes.
Whatever we think of that label—and we probably do not think much of it—the impact of that image was huge. Here was change personified in those women. On our side, we had just 13 female Tory MPs. I am not lambasting my own party. We boast not just the first but the second female Prime Minister of this great country; that is a straightforward 100% success rate. This is no fluke. It shows the deeply ingrained respect and admiration for women in public life in our party and their treatment as equals.
It is also true, however, that all our pride in our premiers cannot make up for the lack of stronger representation on our Benches. We had a battle to change things in our party. Slowly, we began to make progress. A lot of things are responsible for this: the leadership of Prime Minister David Cameron; the determination of two Jenkins, Anne and Bernard—especially Anne, my noble friend Lady Jenkin, with her pioneering and painstaking work at Women2Win; the determination of many women who bravely toured the country trying and trying again to get selected, which some did; and the countless others who helped them. By 2015, we had 68 women MPs, around 20% of the party, and we are now on 24%. When I see many talented women on those green Benches—many of them new to Parliament—I feel a huge sense of pride, but we should be honest: we still have a very long way to go. Getting women into Parliament is only the tip of the iceberg. Keeping them here, and making sure that their voices are heard and carry equal weight, is also important.
My son goes to an all-boys’ school. There is a debate there at the moment about whether they should take girls. At a recent gathering of parents, the head responded to one mum, saying, “I’m not so concerned about whether your son can talk to girls, Mrs So-and-so; I’m concerned about whether he is listening to them.” That sums up the situation nicely.
Politics is still, by and large, a male-dominated world. It is not alone in being like this—other professions tend in this direction—but it matters all the more because the centre of power should represent the people it governs. We need to hear a diversity of views and different perspectives from those ultimately responsible for the laws of our land. There is still a latent feeling that a man’s opinion can be worth more. This is about not just MPs being heard in the Chamber but voices being heard in meetings where important decisions are made. One of those meetings is called Cabinet. We still need to push back against the outmoded sense that some topics are for women and others for men. Men make fiscal policy while women do “women’s issues”. This has changed over my political lifetime but I wonder, as did the noble Lord, Lord Bilimoria, when we will see a women Chancellor.
While full of good intent, this debate in honour of International Women’s Day, which I support fully, begs the question: is there an International Men’s Day or is that every day? How often have I heard the narrative, “It should be quality, not quantity”, referring to the advancement of women in Parliament or within government? This always makes me wince. When did we hear this about the many men promoted? Of course, everyone should be promoted on talent, but talent in politics comes in lots of different guises. Would you make a good Minister? Do you listen? Do you, like my noble friend Lady Newlove, stand up for people who do not have a voice? We should not seek just to get the women who are the most like the men into politics.
I am not alone in being disappointed to see so many decent and brave women MPs stand down at the last election. We should ask ourselves what drove that decision. There was the obvious stress of a divisive time and a highly pressurised Parliament, but there is more. The sacrifices of a political life are still real. Parliament still works late at night, creating conflict with family life. The culture of Parliament can still be part club and part bear pit, which seems to suit men more than women. The truth is that women in public life often face more abuse. We need to think about these challenges and try to mitigate them.
When I sat in the Bishop’s Bar having a cup of tea with my noble friend Lady Bertin and baby Edward during a three-line Whip a few weeks ago, I felt pride in being two mums in the mother of all Parliaments. It has already come a long way in welcoming women but has a lot further to go. The truth is that we need to work hard to support women in public life, from creating confident girls to headhunting women into Parliament and supporting them the whole way through their careers. We cannot lecture the world on respecting equality if our own House is not in order. I can think of no better group of people than those sitting with me today in this Chamber to work together to make this happen.