Children’s Rights
Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Baroness Smith of Malvern(4 days, 4 hours ago)
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Baroness Lister of Burtersett
To ask His Majesty’s Government what role children’s rights will play in their plans to improve children’s wellbeing and opportunities.
The Minister of State, Department for Education (Baroness Smith of Malvern) (Lab)
My Lords, children are at the heart of this Government’s ambitions. We will deliver lasting change for all children, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds. From April 2025, we are nearly doubling investment in preventive services, with over £500 million to deliver family help and child protection reforms. Children should remain with their families, and where they cannot, we will support more children to live with kinship carers or in fostering families, helping to ensure their rights to loving families.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, I warmly welcome the renewed commitment to child-centred government, although I am disappointed that my noble friend said nothing about children’s rights as such. In view of UNICEF UK’s statement that children’s rights should be central to plans to improve children’s well-being and opportunities and of the many criticisms made of the previous Government’s record by the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, can my noble friend say what steps are now being taken to implement that committee’s recommendations to better protect and promote children’s rights and, in particular, its call for mandatory child rights impact assessments to improve policy-making and legislation relevant to children?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is right that we must consider children’s rights in all our policy-making, and the Government recognise the importance of considering children’s rights in that way. That is why, in the department, we are continuing to encourage policymakers across government to carry out children’s rights impact assessments when they are making policy changes and, with respect to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, we have conducted child’s rights impact assessments where children are directly impacted by the policies, or where there are particular groups of children and young people more likely to be affected than others, and we will publish those child’s rights impact assessments.
Education: Early Years Attainment Gap
Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Baroness Smith of Malvern(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
We have increased the rates this year, but we will be looking at the implications of national insurance contributions for the early years sector.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, given the importance of childcare to early years education and development, would our child-centred Government consider as part of their early years strategy, referred to by my noble friend, the extension of free childcare to children whose parents are not working at least 16 hours a week? At present, children from the lowest-income families, who are likely to benefit most, are excluded from free childcare.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend makes a very important point. On the entitlements, we are delivering the programme and the plans set out by the previous Government, but there are also provisions for some parents with children with particular needs, or where they are on particular benefits, to receive childcare provision. Notwithstanding the pressures on the public purse, we will want to think in the early years strategy about how we can extend the support of childcare to more families when we are able to.
Government’s Childcare Expansion
Debate between Baroness Lister of Burtersett and Baroness Smith of Malvern(3 months, 1 week ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend eloquently outlines the enormous difference that can be made to a child’s start in life by the security and development that they can get from any early years worker. She is absolutely right that this is a job that men do extremely well and should be encouraged into doing. For some children who have not had the benefit of having those sorts of role models in their family lives, they will probably be fundamentally important for their success later on in life.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)
My Lords, one of the last Labour Government’s great achievements was the introduction of the Sure Start scheme, but, as my noble friend will know, many Sure Start centres have been closed. I am often asked what our Government’s position is on Sure Start. Could my noble friend perhaps say something about it?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
One of the very last contributions that I made in the House of Commons before I came face to face with the electorate in Redditch was to suggest that I feared that a future Conservative Government might dismantle our Sure Start programme. I was jeered at the time, yet sadly I was right. In recent years we have seen, through some of the longitudinal analysis that was done on Sure Start, the impact that it had on children’s lives. I am afraid I cannot at this time undertake to reinstate the scale and significance of the last Labour Government’s Sure Start scheme, but I can say that recognising the way in which all those elements work in a child’s life—childcare, early years, health and family support—will be a very important way that, across this Government, we think about our future plans to support children to have the very best start in life.