A Failure of Implementation (Children and Families Act 2014 Committee Report)

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Grand Committee

Moved by

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

That the Grand Committee takes note of the Report from the Children and Families Act 2014 Committee A Failure of implementation (HL Paper 100).

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure and privilege to open this debate. The purpose of the Select Committee’s special inquiry, which I had the honour to chair, was to conduct post-legislative scrutiny on the Children and Families Act 2014, a seminal and wide-ranging piece of legislation. I declare my interest as co-chair of the All-Party Group for Children and my former interest as chair of Cafcass.

I start by thanking a number of people: my fellow committee members for all their highly insightful contributions; our excellent clerks, Theo Demolder and Christopher Clarke; our policy analyst, Sarah Jennings, who stepped up magnificently when Theo moved on; and our operations officer, Matteo Garelli, for whom no task was ever too much effort. I also thank Louise Shewey, our communications officer who was involved throughout, not just at the end. Finally, I thank our two special advisers, Professor Rob George and Professor Julie Selwyn.

The Act was envisaged as a landmark piece of legislation, giving greater protection to vulnerable children, including those being fostered and adopted; better support for children whose parents were separating; a new system to help children with special educational needs and disabilities; and help for parents to balance work and family life. Given the breadth of the Act, the committee focused on areas that we felt would be most likely to benefit from further scrutiny—principally adoption, family justice and employment rights.

One area we looked at which we felt was missing from the Act was mental health, because when those systems that I just mentioned fail, it is children’s mental health that suffers. I hope that other colleagues will focus on that in the debate today. We also looked briefly at special educational needs but, to ensure that our insights could feed into the SEND Green Paper, we sent a letter to the Government in May setting out our concerns, well before publication of the main report.

So how did we go about our work? We took oral evidence from 44 expert witnesses and received more than 150 written evidence submissions. Above all, however, we wanted to hear directly from members of the public who might not otherwise take part in Select Committee inquiries. We visited a school and a SEND centre. We spent a day at the court in Oxford and an afternoon at the Maudsley Hospital in Camberwell. We held round-table discussions with birth parents, adoptive parents in Yorkshire, young people with experience of the family justice system and people working in mental health, as well as conducting an online survey.

Our reluctant conclusions were that, despite the admirable intentions of those who worked hard to get this Act on the statute book, the sheer breadth of the areas covered by the Act, a lack of any real focus given to implementation and a lack of joined-up action at all levels—compounded, I must say, by incessant churn by government—have contributed to too many children and their families feeling let down by the systems, resulting in poor SEND services, increasing mental health referral waiting lists and ever-growing delays in family courts. In short, we felt that it was a missed opportunity.

We concluded that much of the legislation had, frankly, sat on the shelf and languished as a result of that lack of focus on implementation, poor or non-existent data and inadequate monitoring of the impact of the Act to see how well it was working, hence the title of our report. In my view, it was not until our inquiry was established that the Government gave any thought to a comprehensive post-legislative review of the Act, eight years after it received Royal Assent. After pressing, we finally received a post-legislative memorandum, despite the Government’s public commitment to produce such a memorandum three to five years after an Act receives Royal Assent. Eight years is a long time in the crucial early years of a child. Post-legislative scrutiny, by either the Government or Parliament, is not just a “nice to have”; it is crucial to ensure that legislation is achieving its goals, providing value for money and improving people’s lives.

Why is it that we spend so many hours doing line-by-line scrutiny of legislation but next to no time following through to see whether implementation has happened and has worked? I cannot help feeling that we have the balance badly wrong. This is a wider point about how we govern and the purpose of legislation, which is way above my pay grade, but I hope that those in positions of power will reflect on how post-legislative scrutiny can be taken more seriously and not viewed just as a “nice to have”. There is so much more that government and Parliament could do.

Our report made a number of specific recommendations on how the Government could realise their ambitions contained in the Act across adoption, family justice and employment rights. I shall briefly go through some of the main ones. They included establishing an outcome-focused taskforce, accountable to the Secretary of State and dedicated to addressing the unacceptable ethnic and racial disparities in the adoption system; reinstating the statutory national adoption matching register on its original terms, working with commercial service providers to build a more functional platform which combined the usability of existing services with the matching support and referral requirements of the statutory register; improving post-placement support for adopters and kinship carers, including the expansion of the Adoption Support Fund, allowing it to be used for more than therapy and ensuring that it is focused also on early intervention; and developing a safe and modern digital contact system for post-adoption contact. The committee felt strongly that the failure to modernise contact threatens to undermine the adoption system.

The report also recommended: addressing the ever-growing delays in public family law cases, which began in 2017, long before the pandemic. The latest data shows that the 26-week target now stands at 46 weeks, which is a huge issue of concern. That requires improved data gathering and sharing, and top-level leadership of a fragmented system through the Family Justice Board. Other recommendations were: producing an impartial information website for separating couples, providing clear guidance on the family justice system and reconsidering proposals to make mediation obligatory, replacing the current MIAMs and the mediation voucher with a universal voucher scheme for a general advice appointment; reviewing the current approach to empowering the voice of the child in family law proceedings, including recommending that the Family Justice Council reviews the guidance setting out the approach to judges meeting with children; and creating an ambition to move towards a new, dedicated 12-week parental leave allowance and making flexible working a day-one right to request. On the latter, I am pleased to say that the Government committed to that on the very day our report was published. Finally, we urged the Government to improve their systems for monitoring and assessing the implementation of legislation, particularly by robust data sharing and collection. I very much hope that other committee members today may be able to focus some of their remarks on some of these quite disparate issues.

I will say a quick word on special educational needs, which was not one of our main areas of focus but came up repeatedly in our engagement activities. Part 3 of the Act reformed the law on support for children and young people with special educational needs or who are disabled. It was intended to reduce the fight families faced to get the support their children need and to deliver integrated support across education, health and social care. The legislation received a great deal of detailed scrutiny, and it was widely supported. The consensus is that it remains the right legal framework. Sadly, however, the reality of implementation has not matched the ambitions of the legislation—a key theme of our report. At the time, the Government said that the test of the reforms working would be a reduction in the number of appeals to the tribunal. However, the opposite has happened: tribunal numbers have soared, and in the vast majority of cases, the tribunal finds in favour of the parent. I cannot help reflecting that the fact that there have been seven different Children’s Ministers since the review was launched in 2019 is relevant here. Last year, the Government published a new Green Paper on SEND, and this year followed that up with an improvement plan. Could the Minister give me an update on what has happened since that plan was published?

Finally, we also looked at some critical cross-cutting issues, including mental health, early intervention, data collection and data sharing. On the latter point, the Health and Care Act 2022 introduced significant improvements to information sharing between health and adult social care. I had hoped that the Government’s recent review of children’s multiagency information sharing would achieve parity for the children’s system, but I do not believe it has. The report does not go far enough to address the distinct barriers faced by children’s health, social care and other key partners, nor does it set out a clear policy on a consistent child identifier, which I find very disappointing. It is crucial that government moves forward with pilots of the NHS number as a consistent child identifier as soon as possible. Will the Minister agree to meet with me and other interested Lords on this issue?

The Government’s response was published on 6 February; I thank Ministers for that. The committee’s report contained 24 conclusions and 17 recommendations. Overall, the Government broadly agreed with many of the committee’s findings but rejected many of our specific recommendations. In doing so, they often pointed to existing interventions and policy measures which they deemed sufficient to address the committee’s concerns. I found this really disappointing after all the effort the committee had put in.

Finally, I turn to some specifics. Can the Minister give me an update on a few issues that were left vague in the response? In particular, when will the Government next publish data on the time it takes for ethnic-minority children to be adopted? What are the results of their reflections on what more can be done to ensure that the Family Justice Board is as effective as possible, including the committee’s recommendation that there should be a senior independent chair? When can we expect to see the final report of the Government’s review of the presumption of parental involvement? When will the Family Procedure Rule Committee publish a response to its consultation on early resolution of private family law arrangements?

The Government’s response placed a strong focus on their new children’s social care implementation strategy, entitled Stable Homes, Built on Love, published in February in response to The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care. It stated that the strategy contained ambitious plans to take forward and build on the Children and Families Act, including issues raised by the Select Committee report that required further examination. I hope we will see that in practice.

It is perhaps worth remembering that the independent review called for the immediate investment of £2.6 billion to address the existing crisis in children’s social care and a revolution in family help to prevent children entering care where possible. Yet more than a year later we seem little further forward on this reform and the Government are currently set to spend an additional £1 billion on children’s social care over 10 years.

Finally, the Government’s “test and review” approach to reforms is unlikely to lead to the level of investment and change that the system so desperately needs, so I conclude by urging the Government to reconsider the scope for further investment at the next spending review. We must not allow another eight years to pass before making the improvements that are so desperately needed. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for that response. I personally found it extremely helpful and very informative, and I very much appreciated the warm words, which I know were sincerely meant, about the in-depth work that the committee has undertaken, because it does make it feel that that work was worthwhile, so thank you very much for that. I also acknowledge the presence of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Bellamy, which I very much appreciate. It is a really visible demonstration to me of the joined-up nature of the Government on this issue and I thank him for attending.

It has been a really excellent debate; it has really demonstrated the breadth and complexity of this issue, and its importance, but also the huge expertise, knowledge and commitment that we have in this House. I was hugely lucky to work with the colleagues I did on the Select Committee, bringing not just their knowledge but their passion and commitment to this area. We had excellent contributions, which I am not going to try to summarise, in the key areas of adoption and kinship care, how the family courts work, special educational needs and disabilities and employment law. I will say one point only, if I may, about the family courts. I feel very strongly that the voice of the child must be at the heart of the family courts. I am hoping that is something we can continue to work on.

We heard some excellent contributions about the committee’s decision to highlight some very important cross-cutting themes. We heard about mental health, about the need early intervention and the need for really important information collection and sharing—all incredibly important. We heard about one or two more general issues, which was very interesting: the importance of couple relationships, relationship breakdown and the role of family hubs. This is all the broader context within which this report was operating.

I agree that it is important to put on record that I agree that the intentions of the Act were very good. I think the legislative framework was the right one. I called it a landmark piece of legislation, and I meant that. Of course, it is right to acknowledge the things that have happened as a result of it, but I think it is inevitable that when we have post-legislative scrutiny, we look at the things that have not happened—hence the focus we had.

Someone said a very good thing: where you get both political will and pace, the world can change and things can happen. I just hope from this debate that that is what is going to happen—that we are going to unleash some real momentum and change in this area. I know that all noble Lords in this Room would like to be part of that, and I hope we can have further debates on some of these key issues that I have just mentioned.

My final point is to return to the issue about the process of post-legislative scrutiny and why I think it is so important. I managed to have a quick word with the Senior Deputy Speaker earlier and I intend to write to the powers that be—the Leader of the House, the Lord Speaker, and the Senior Deputy Speaker—saying why I feel it is so important that post-legislative scrutiny is really taken seriously and there is so much more we can do, both in Parliament and in government.

Motion agreed.

Secondary Schools: Autistic Pupils

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I think I have already said that the implementation plan will be published early this year.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

Does the Minister agree that some children diagnosed with autism are also experiencing mental health difficulties, and that that is a complex interaction? What training is being given to mental health professionals working in mental health support teams in schools to understand and support autistic children who also have mental health problems?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I may need to write to the noble Baroness on the specifics of the training, but she is correct that we are supporting those professionals to respond and help identify mental health issues early among children in schools.

Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, this has been an excellent debate and I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Watson, on securing it. I declare an interest as co-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children, and as chair of the Lords Select Committee conducting post-legislative scrutiny of the Children and Families Act 2014, which has already been referenced by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake. The committee published its final report this Tuesday, with important findings on the state of children’s social care in relation to adoption, kinship care and families going through the family courts. I will return to that in a minute.

Back in 2017, the APPG for children published a report on the state of children’s social care in England and concluded that there was a significant lack of resource for and focus on preventive and early intervention services. It would seem that nothing has changed. In 2018, we published a follow-up report which shone a light on the extent to which children, young people and families were subjected to a postcode lottery of services, and to which rising thresholds for support were simply storing up trouble for later on.

Sadly, these predictions have now all come to pass, and we have seen a huge shift towards late and crisis intervention and record numbers of looked-after children, up from around 65,000 a decade ago to over 80,000 now. The average age of children in care has risen, with children entering care with more complex needs. The care system in places is in a parlous state; that is why reform is so badly needed.

I will give a few specifics which we have heard about this afternoon. First, in the last decade, the number and proportion of children in care who are placed miles from home or in unregulated accommodation has risen steadily, which is a huge cause for concern. The CMA report that we have heard about stated that this year, there were significant problems with the functioning of the care market, with some private providers making disproportionate profits from the care of children and young people.

A significant workforce shortage in children’s social care and high levels of churn mean that children and young people face a revolving door of professionals entering and leaving their lives. The number of social workers leaving children’s posts in English councils is at its highest point since comparable data collection began, resulting in unsustainably high caseloads for those remaining.

As we have heard today, the care system is currently costing £10 billion per year. Josh MacAlister’s very welcome review estimates that this will rise to more than £15 billion in the next 10 years without reform. The review’s final report argues that the current children’s social care system is,

“increasingly skewed to crisis intervention, with outcomes for children that continue to be unacceptably poor and costs that continue to rise.”

It concludes:

“For these reasons, a radical reset is now unavoidable.”

I totally agree.

The All-Party Parliamentary Group that I mentioned recently held an excellent event at which Josh MacAlister spoke, as well as the new Children’s Minister, the Children’s Commissioner and others. What was notable to me at that event was that the children’s sector, statutory services and parliamentarians were all calling for the same things: for progress on social care reform that prioritises early intervention and co-production with children and families and sufficient investment to restore the long-term erosion of support.

With the independent review of children’s social care and the other key reviews on child protection that we have heard about, we have momentum behind us, and I like to think that vulnerable children—at very long last—have a political profile that has not been the case for many years. It is vital that the Government’s response to the review, which we have heard this afternoon is now being pushed back until next year, maintains that momentum and that we all continue to press for action and hold the Government to account, a point made so compellingly by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris.

However, before we get there, the overriding concern for families right now is the ability to put food on the table for their children and to heat their homes. The highest rates of inflation for 40 years will undoubtedly push more families into precarious situations and put more children at risk. Soaring inflation and energy prices are also putting huge pressure on local authority children’s services, and we face the very real prospect of further cuts to essential services.

We must act now to protect children and stabilise services. We need urgent government action to shield children from the brunt of the cost of living crisis and to shore up public sector finances after the impact of inflation and rising need. What assurances can the Minister give us on these points?

While we must not ignore the here and now, we must also hold on to the hope of a brighter future where children and families get the help they need. I welcome many of the proposals in the review, particularly those that seek fundamentally to rebalance children’s social care towards helping families earlier and the significant investment that is needed in the system.

There are three things I would like to see feature prominently in the Government’s implementation strategy. The first is working with families rather than doing things to them. Many of the parents who spoke to the independent review expressed distrust of children’s social care and felt they were blamed for circumstances beyond their control. Children’s social care will be sought out by families who need it only when they have been fully involved in the design of the approach and the offers the services can make.

The second is a focus on improving data and information sharing. In response to amendments in this Chamber during the passage of the Health and Care Act 2022, the Government acknowledged the serious challenges with sharing relevant information about children, particularly around safeguarding, and committed to a review of how to improve it. They also recognised the potential benefits of a single consistent identifier to bring together disparate records about an individual child. I expect to see significant reference to this review in the Government’s social care implementation strategy.

Finally, there is workforce, on which all else hangs. We know there are huge challenges in recruiting and retaining children’s social workers, along with other parts of the children’s workforce. We need to kick-start a longer-term project to rebuild the workforce.

I return to the Select Committee report on the Children and Families Act 2014, given its relevance to today’s debate. As well as containing a raft of important recommendations to improve support for adoption, kinship care and the family justice system and to help parents to balance work and family life, it identified some critical cross-cutting themes. One of those was the, frankly, dire state of children’s mental health services, with unacceptably long waits for referrals and treatments, including post-adoption trauma support. Our report highlighted the fact that children in care are four times more likely to experience mental health issues than their peers. Surely there should be some form of priority access for these exceptionally vulnerable children.

A second key theme was the importance of early intervention, which has been so well covered in today’s debate.

The third theme was the lack of coherence, both within government and between services. Indeed, throughout our inquiry we met children and families who said they felt let down by the systems that they had encountered, suffering long delays and needless bureaucracy. Calls for coherence of care extended to social care. Our witnesses raised concern that children and their families often do not receive continuity of care, undergoing numerous changes in their social workers.

Lastly, in the area of kinship care, which has been key to this debate and spoken to compellingly by the noble Baroness, Lady Drake, we recommend greater support for kinship carers, including financial support, and that kinship carers with a special guardianship order be given the same right to paid leave as adopters.

All eyes are now on the Government’s implementation strategy. It was initially expected before Christmas, but we are now told that publication will be in the new year. In line with many other speakers today, I ask the Minister what assurance she can give us that the Government will not let this drift and will publish the strategy as early as possible in the new year.

I ask the Minister to respond on three specific points. First, what assessment has been made of the impact of the cost of living crisis on already stretched children’s social care budgets? Secondly, what plans do the Government have for stabilising the current children’s social care system, as local authorities and other public services grapple with rising inflation and increasing demand? Thirdly, will the Government commit to additional funding for the measures outlined in the forthcoming implementation plan in order to make these reforms a reality?

Child Vulnerability (Public Services Committee Report)

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak briefly in the gap. As others have said, it was a real privilege and pleasure to be a member of the Public Services Committee, under the admirable leadership of the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, when this very important inquiry was undertaken. As we have heard, the report contains a number of very important recommendations, and I have been pleased to be able to pursue some of these issues relating to kinship care, mental health and other things in my new role as chair of the Select Committee conducting post-legislative scrutiny of the Children and Families Act 2014.

As we have heard from the noble Lords, Lord Davies and Lord Hogan-Howe, the report contained some important recommendations on information and data sharing, and I wanted to add a small postscript. In the report, we highlighted the important issue of how legislative and practice barriers meant that vulnerable children were already falling through the gaps between local agencies, being invisible to social services, the NHS and the education system. We highlighted agencies feeling unable to share the data that they needed to determine which children needed their help.

I was pleased to be able to take forward some amendments to the recent Health and Care Act that were very much inspired by the work that we have done in this committee, particularly on highlighting the need for a consistent child identifier, or what is sometimes called a unique identifier. I am really pleased that, as a result of those discussions, the Act now commits the Government to laying a report before Parliament within a year, setting out their policy on information sharing, et cetera. I know that a review in a year might perhaps sound like a modest step forward, but it is important. Many parliamentarians and charities have been campaigning on this for many years, and I am very much looking forward to seeing that report next year. Can the Minister say anything about the progress and timing of it?

The report also set out a very powerful case for early intervention and preventive services for children and families in need, particularly to prevent poor education, health or social outcomes and, critically, as we have heard, to try to prevent more children from going into care. Of course, this whole thrust was strongly reinforced in the recent Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, led by Josh MacAlister. So I strongly support the notion of a national strategy on vulnerability to promote greater collaboration and co-ordination, and indeed multi-year funding allocations for early intervention; I was disappointed by the Government’s response in this area.

As others have said, the report contained some important recommendations on family hubs, which I support. I recognise that the Government committed investment to a further 75 in the Budget, and that is welcome, but we need a commitment to a national network of them as soon as possible to make sure that every community has somewhere that families can go to access universal family and parenting support as well as targeted support for families with the greatest need.

For me, a key test for the Government’s levelling-up agenda will be whether it improves outcomes for families and children, particularly vulnerable children. I hope that an incoming Prime Minister will give this issue the priority that it deserves.

Social Care: Children

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend raises an important issue. Indeed, one of the young women to whom I was speaking just before this Question talked about exactly the point that he raises. I would be delighted to meet the organisation that he mentioned.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I too had the privilege of meeting some of those young people a little earlier, which included hearing a rather harrowing story of two brothers who had been brought up in foster care. The review recommends more support, both practical and financial, for kinship carers, which include grandparents, aunts, uncles and others who care for family members. Is the Minister able to say what is going to happen to that recommendation and whether the Government are planning to take it forward?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The Government recognise the incredible role that kinship carers play in the system. It would be premature for me to judge what the Government will decide, but obviously it is being considered carefully along with the other recommendations.

Equality of Opportunity for Young People

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, as my noble friend Lady Grender said so powerfully in her excellent opening speech, it has long been considered a given that each generation would have a better quality of life than the one before it. According to the Intergenerational Commission, more than half the individuals in every age group believe that each successive generation should have a higher standard of living, but we live at a time where this is no longer the case. Since the recession, young people have overwhelmingly faced worse outcomes than did their parents.

As well as facing mounting inequality between the generations, as we have already heard, young people now face great inequality within their generation. According to the Social Mobility Commission’s recent State of the Nation report, as already referenced, social mobility has been stagnant for the past four years and,

“Inequality is … entrenched in Britain … from birth to work … Those from better off backgrounds are almost 80 per cent more likely to be in a professional job than their working class peers”.

This entirely echoes the findings of the recent report Closing the Regional Attainment Gap produced by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility—of which I have the pleasure to be the co-chair—which showed that, without policy changes, we are more than 40 years away from closing the gap between the educational attainment of disadvantaged children and that of their more affluent peers, with that gap varying wildly across the country.

The failure of successive Governments to tackle the underlying causes of such unequal life chances was laid bare in a hard-hitting report from the IFS, published this week, which exposed the ever-widening inequalities in pay, health and opportunity in the UK which are undermining trust in democracy.

As a member—and the original proposer—of the Lords Select Committee on Intergenerational Fairness and Provision, which published its report just after Easter, I was struck by the evidence that we heard about the number of challenges faced by many of our young people. The picture that our report paints is deeply worrying, with too many young people facing barriers at every turn. The report demonstrates starkly that our post-16 education and training system does not provide those in further education with anything like equal opportunities. Too many young people are being held back by schooling which does not prepare them for a rapidly changing labour market and a considerably longer working life. Once they move into the workforce, young people are disproportionately faced with insecure employment, low pay with few prospects of progression and little prospect of owning their own home.

It is perhaps, therefore, no wonder that young people’s well-being has fallen dramatically. The Intergenerational Foundation’s 2018 index found that young people’s overall well-being fell by a whopping 10% over the last two decades. The message here is clear: we need to improve young people’s opportunities or risk damaging their mental health and well-being—a subject covered comprehensively in the excellent debate in this Chamber this morning.

When it comes to education, the paths that young people take are not equal. Further education and vocational training provide a vast range of opportunities; they are fantastic resources for those who do not wish to pursue other, more academic routes. Yet our report found that further education and vocational training have been chronically underfunded. That means that students taking this route are simply not getting a fair slice of the cake when it comes to educational resources. That is why the report included a recommendation to rebalance public spending to put higher education and further education on a more equal footing. For this to happen, the Government must reverse the cuts to further education. Will these deeply unfair funding mechanisms be looked at in the forthcoming spending review?

We also need to ensure that young people receive an education which equips them for the real world. It is worrying that many young people feel they are leaving school without the life skills they need to function as adults. For example, there is no statutory requirement to teach young people about housing in their PSHE lessons. However, the young apprentices in our contact group who gave evidence to the Select Committee as part of its work told us that their key concerns were housing and homelessness. They told us that they did not know enough about how renting worked or what their options were if they had trouble affording housing. How are young people supposed to navigate the complexities of renting and housing if we are not giving them the knowledge and skills to do so? This is why our report also recommended that the Government should increase housing and financial education in PSHE lessons.

Once young people leave education, the barriers to opportunities do not end. Instead, as the House has already heard in this debate, too many young people are faced with insecure employment. Indeed, the proportion of individuals who are self-employed, on zero-hours contracts or involved in the gig economy has rapidly risen among young people. Many companies propagate a myth of self-employment to avoid providing their workers with the rights and protections they are entitled to. By denying young workers access to vital employee benefits, insecure employment can have a huge impact on their financial stability. As recommended in the Select Committee report, it is vital that the Government act to ensure that there is a default presumption of worker status when people are employed. This will help tackle companies rebranding their young employees as “freelance contractors” to deny them the worker’s rights and employee benefits to which they are entitled.

Not only are many young people in insecure employment, but they are also not getting paid fairly. According to the Financial Conduct Authority, in 2017 real earnings for those in their 20s were 5% lower than they had been in 2008. Poor pay not only has negative consequences for young people’s well-being; it also has serious consequences for their relationships and family life. This is starkly demonstrated by the results of a 2018 YouGov survey of young workers between 21 and 30 years old. It found that over one-fifth of the respondents had put off starting a family because of a shortage of money. Another quarter had put off changing careers and over 40% had had to ask their family or friends for financial help due to a shortage of money.

An exacerbating factor is that young people are spending a rapidly rising proportion of what they do earn on housing. Our report on intergenerational fairness highlighted that young people born between 1981 and 2000 spend one-and-a-half times more on housing at the age of 25 compared to previous generations. That might be acceptable if young people were getting housing which is one and a half times better than previous generations. Instead, we were shown evidence that they get less floor space and longer commutes. As my noble friend Lord Shipley has already said, a recent estimate by the Resolution Foundation suggested that one-third of millennials could still be renting privately at the age of 65. This is a really major shift in how society is living.

Tackling the issues raised in this very good debate this afternoon will take sustained government action and political will. Solutions do exist, we have heard many of them this afternoon and I totally endorse the excellent package of proposals set out by my noble friend Lady Grender. Let us just hope that the Government are listening.

Relationships Education, Relationships and Sex Education and Health Education (England) Regulations 2019

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2019 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as vice-president of the charity Relate and president of the National Children’s Bureau. I also thank the Sex Education Forum for circulating an absolutely excellent briefing.

I warmly welcome these regulations, which are a huge step in the right direction. It is such an important area. We know—all the survey evidence tells us—that the vast majority of parents want schools to teach relationships and sex education but to do it well. Anyone who has been involved in this area will tell you that effective relationship and sex education is a partnership between parents and schools; parental involvement is integral to the new guidance, and I warmly welcome that.

For me, it is hugely significant that this guidance is on RSE: relationships and sex education. For many years, when I was more involved in this area at a more operational level, it was always called SRE: sex and relationships education. You might think that that is a tiny difference and terribly pedantic, but it is not. At that time it was always called sex education, and people would always start to get terribly exercised and worked up about it. The fact that we are now talking about relationships first and then sex within relationships is hugely important, and I want to explain why.

It is absolutely critical that relationship education, when taught well, should be able to promote safe, equal, inclusive, enjoyable, fulfilling relationships, and should be taught in a way that fosters gender and LGBT equality. Sadly, some children are not seeing models and examples of safe, inclusive and healthy relationships at home, so it is absolutely vital, as other noble Lords said, that children understand what is and is not acceptable with regard to how they are treated by other family members, particularly if there is inappropriate touching or abuse, so that they know that they can say, “No, that’s not acceptable”, and know who they can go to for help and support. I also feel that it is extremely important that safe and healthy relationships are explained in terms of adult relationships, because again, sadly, some children witness abusive adult relationships within the home and do not understand that that is not acceptable either, too often themselves entering abusive relationships in their teenage and adult years. That is why this fundamental teaching of the importance of healthy and safe relationships is so very important—and important to much wider aspects of public policy.

I will briefly make two other points. As other noble Lords said, the way that relationship and sex education is taught is absolutely fundamental. Good teaching is important. Indeed, I saw in a recent poll that 80% of parents think that RSE teachers should be properly trained to teach it, and I am sure that we all agree with that. When I used to talk to teachers who delivered what was then called sex education in the classroom they would often say that they felt quite embarrassed teaching it, they did not feel properly supported, and did not have the proper materials. They did not have the confidence to do it, but were almost being told that they had to go out there and do it. The schools I saw and spoke to that did it most successfully, as often acknowledged in Ofsted reports, were schools where the teacher was working in partnership with external, usually voluntary sector organisations that had experts very well taught in relationship education. Can the Minister confirm whether the £6 million fund for supporting relationship and sex education which we have heard about can be used to help teachers to understand how best to work with external experts who can be invited in to deliver aspects of the curriculum? That is an important way in which all this really good guidance can be taken forward and implemented.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, it is my pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, and I fully endorse everything she said about the context of relationships being at the heart of all this. I welcome the discussion and the framework. The Church of England, as the biggest single education provider in the country, has been among the parties engaged in the consultation, for which we are deeply grateful.

As human beings, we are relational. Relationships with others, and indeed with God, matter. They are primarily formed rather than taught. Our parents, siblings, wider family and friends shape our ability to relate from our first breaths. Our love for God shapes how we relate to people. We do well to remember that any relationships education can only ever be rooted in our experience of relationships, both good and bad; yet education is required.

Given the rapid and drastic change to society in what has been almost two decades since the existing legislation was introduced, I am enthusiastic about updating the policy. When that guidance was written, fewer than 10% of households were connected to the internet and connection speeds were snail-like.

The guidelines are to be commended in their placing of RSE and health education in the context of wider personal development of character, virtues and values. Conversations about relationships will be empowered by discussions of honesty, courage and humility. Sex education is crucially paired in this framework with conversations about relationships: an incredibly important shift in how the curriculum is constructed. I understand that much of the response has been against existing resources that may flex the guidance too far. There has been a great misunderstanding of the requirements of the new framework, but many of those misunderstandings and concerns are rooted in at least some truth.

I am pleased that schools must take into account the faith background of pupils and work in collaboration with parents in drawing up their policies, and that they must consult parents on the planning of sex education and the resources used. It is worth noting in this debate that the Church of England has been in close contact with our Muslim friends, who share a number of our concerns.

I am also glad that sex education will be optional in primary school. However, I am deeply concerned that the same cannot be said of relationships education. Psychologists, ethicists and paediatricians often debate at what age and developmental stage it is appropriate to be exploring early concepts of relationality and sexuality. For example, girls continue to hit puberty earlier and earlier, while the average age of boys maturing remains more constant. How are schools to come to a conclusion about how and when they teach on such issues, and how will such decisions and resources then be adequately monitored? This is particularly important in the light of the comments made by other noble Lords about the importance of teachers being well trained, well prepared and able to teach the subject well.

Development is not uniform, and parents should be able to determine what is appropriate for their children, especially during vulnerable ages. Why cannot parents’ decisions regarding what is appropriate for their children be respected?

The relationships curriculum highlights the unique space that families occupy in our society, often acting as a nurturing space for children. It teaches children to respect the diversity of families. Although its motives are honourable, I do not believe it lives up to its own standard in respecting the diversity of parental concern. In other deeply necessary spaces, the framework fails to give sufficient guidance. It is imperative that children are taught from a young age of their bodily autonomy so that they may be able to identify unsafe touch. How will such safeguarding teaching, which is necessary, be widely taught without extending into sex education, which the parents may have opted out of?

I support the emphasis that my noble friend Lady Massey placed on ensuring that the voice of children and young people is listened to carefully in future in reviewing the outworking of the guidance. The voice of children and young people themselves needs to be placed alongside the voice of the parents. The Minister may have seen my right reverend friend the Bishop of Ely’s comment piece in the TES welcoming the new guidance in his role as lead bishop for education. Our concern is that the views of others, especially respecting the beliefs of people of faith—and, indeed, some of no faith—about parental responsibilities and rights, are not simply brushed aside. The lines between relationships and sex education are far more blurred than is recognised, so I ask that great care is taken to monitor that this does not lead to inappropriate sex education being offered at an early age in the name of relationships education.

I conclude by returning to my opening point. Relationships are primarily formed, not taught. The family is the key place where this happens: schools only follow this. Let us together agree that we should not presume that what we debate today will offer all the answers that our children and young people need.

Social Mobility: Regional Attainment Gap

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what plans they have to respond to the report Closing the Regional Attainment Gap published on 21 February by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper, and declare an interest as co-chair of the APPG on Social Mobility.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, the Government welcome the report, and its focus on the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers. The gap has narrowed by around 9.5% since 2011. We continue to prioritise social mobility by investing on average £2.4 billion a year in the pupil premium to support the most disadvantaged pupils. We are targeting extra support on areas facing low educational outcomes, particularly through the opportunity area and Opportunity North East programmes.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

I thank the Minister for his Answer. The APPG report paints a stark picture of the regional attainment gap between pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds and their more affluent counterparts, and shows how areas of low social mobility will worsen unless action is taken. The report recommends redesigning the pupil premium as a social mobility premium, which schools could use to spend on extra pay or other forms of support for teachers in deprived areas. What steps are the Government going to take in these areas?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I first acknowledge the tireless work that the noble Baroness does in this incredibly important area of social mobility. To answer her specific question, the funding provided through the pupil premium means that there is funding available to support local priorities such as recruitment, retention and development of teachers. Further to this, we recently published the teacher recruitment and retention strategy, which reiterates our ambition to shift incentives so that more good teachers work in schools with more disadvantaged intakes.

Children: Welfare, Life Chances and Social Mobility

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for securing this vital debate. Early intervention has the potential to drastically improve the social mobility of disadvantaged children. We are at a time in our country’s history where social inequality is being felt very keenly. The Sutton Trust has found the proportion of people believing that we have truly equal opportunities in this country has decreased very substantially since 2008. We need to be building a society in which opportunities are more equally distributed and all are socially mobile. It is a goal that would improve not only the health and well-being of individuals but the economy as a whole. According to the Sutton Trust, raising the UK’s social mobility to the average level in western Europe would boost the economy by 2%.

As we have already heard, early intervention really does matter for social mobility. It matters because these disparities, between the most disadvantaged children and their more affluent peers, emerge before the first day of primary school. More worryingly, when not addressed, they affect a child’s social mobility throughout their adult life. It was back in 2012, when the All-Party Group on Social Mobility, of which I am co-chair, in its report 7 Key Truths about Social Mobility, noted that the greatest leverage point for social mobility is between the ages of zero and three. During this time, children are developing in all sorts of ways; not only are they learning key verbal and vocabulary skills, but also developing incredibly important emotional well-being and resilience skills which will shape the rest of their life. A child with a poor vocabulary at the age of five is twice as likely to be unemployed aged 34.

I could go on, but I hope I have really emphasised the point that early intervention and social mobility go hand in hand. What happens in the classroom is undeniably very important, but so is what happens before. Parenting and the home environment play a huge role in driving inequalities in a child’s early cognitive development. Parenting has often been viewed by politicians and policymakers as no-go territory. I firmly believe that a successful strategy to early intervention must take into account the home environment. That is why, in 2015, the All-Party Group on Social Mobility held an inquiry into parenting and social mobility, and it recommended both the development and implementation of a national parenting support campaign. That would be designed to help support and empower parents, not preach to them, and fully recognise that the vast majority are trying to do the very best job they can, but need some support.

Given all of this, it is unfortunate that the current policy and fiscal landscape has shifted from a focus on preventive schemes. An obvious example is the closure of children’s centres, which we have already heard about. In 2009, there were over 1,000 centres open nationwide and in previous years they have been vital in providing early intervention and preventing poor childhood outcomes, not only for the children but for the parents themselves. Sometimes that support began even before the child was born. But since 2009, over a third of these centres have closed and those which have not have often broadened their age range and shifted away from early intervention towards high-need families.

This shift in focus has been echoed in other areas of children’s services, particularly children’s social care, where there has been a clear move away from working with families who need some help to being able to work with only very high-risk families who are reaching crisis point. This picture was painted in stark relief in the All-Party Group for Children’s recent report, Storing up Trouble: A Postcode Lottery of Children’s Social Care. When the Minister responds, I would be grateful if he could indicate when the Government will be in a position to reply to the recommendations in that report.

The reasons for this shift are pretty obvious: financial pressures, which are huge, are having a major effect. Cuts to children’s services have come at a time of unprecedented demand, forcing many local authorities to deliver children’s services which can focus only on that smaller number of very high-risk cases. Since 2010, over £2.4 billion has been cut from central government funding for local authority children’s services, and local authorities now face an estimated £3 billion funding gap by 2025. Important as it is, however, funding is not the only issue; quality is incredibly important as well. While I very much welcome the Government’s commitment to early years education and childcare, it is a real concern that one-third of staff involved in group-based childcare lack English or maths GCSEs. We really need to have the staff involved in this important work moving towards qualified teacher status, wherever possible.

What can be done with this rather unhappy picture that I have painted? We need key improvements in the areas of funding, focus and strategy. I am currently much involved in finalising the All-Party Group on Social Mobility’s report which looks at tackling the regional attainment gap. We will shortly publish our report, so watch this space. I can assure your Lordships that we will have a fair amount to say about the importance of early intervention, particularly the need for a reinvigorated national strategy for children’s centres, and much to say about how children’s centres are funded and the need for Ofsted to be involved in inspecting them.

I call on the Government to use the upcoming spending review to address the ever-growing funding gap for children’s services. Any financial settlement must incentivise local authorities to invest in early help. That is why I support calls for a new, cross-government taskforce on intervention to feed into the spending review. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.

Social Workers Regulations 2018

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing these important regulations. As he mentioned, they stem from the Children and Social Work Act, but he may not be aware, because at the time he was not a Member of your Lordships’ House, that there was considerable resistance from Peers on all sides of the House to the concept of introducing a new regulator separate from the Health and Care Professions Council. Ultimately, although the retention of the social work profession within the HCPC could not be achieved, as a result of pressure by Opposition and Cross-Bench Peers, it was agreed that Social Work England would be a non-departmental public body—as the Minister just stated, a separate legal entity operating at arm’s length from government.

The appointments of the chief executive of Social Work England and of the noble Lord, Lord Patel of Bradford, who I am very pleased to see in his place, as chair of Social Work England is a definite plus as both of them have practised as social workers. It will be of some consolation to social workers who often feel rather embattled despite the great work that they do. It is certainly encouraging that the chair is already out and about talking to those whose confidence he will need to build. It is not yet known who will comprise the board of the new body, but hopefully there will be a reasonable presence of social workers and service users to bring practical experience to the shaping of board decisions.

These regulations are generally non-contentious, and we share the view of the British Association of Social Workers, which is committed to the need for statutory regulation of social workers and social work for public protection and accountability, and to ensuring that the value and importance of the profession is recognised and that high standards are maintained.

During the debates on the Children and Social Work Bill, noble Lords on these Benches argued for effective regulation and an independent regulator. As I have said, to some extent that was achieved, although reintroducing the control of the Secretary of State causes us continuing concerns, particularly in respect of Section 3(4), which effectively provides that if the Secretary of State objects to the rules coming into force, the regulator must modify them in light of the objection. We reiterate the need for the regulator to have maximum independence from the Secretary of State, yet here the control of the Secretary of State over the regulator seems to have been reintroduced through the back door. The Minister may well say that that is not the intention, and he may well be accurate in that assertion, but it leaves open that possibility further down the line when all of us have gone on to pursue other interests.

On the new regulator’s sole control of continuous professional development, we also share the concerns of the British Association of Social Workers that there is apparently no requirement to consult or involve the more than 80 universities which deliver social work pre-qualification and post-qualification education and training. Nor will consultation involve employers, service-user groups or the professional association for social workers. Perhaps the Minister can explain why all that expertise should remain untapped.

When these regulations were considered in another place yesterday, my Front-Bench colleague Tracy Brabin MP, standing in for the shadow Minister for Children and Families, Emma Lewell-Buck MP, who was indisposed, asked the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children and Families a total of 16 questions. As far as I can ascertain from reading the Minister’s reply in today’s Hansard, no more than one of her questions received an answer. So I shall reiterate those points and request that the Minister arrange to write to me in respect of any that he is unable to answer today.

The regulations lack detail, which makes it difficult to scrutinise some aspects of them effectively. The new regulator is required to make at least 90 rules and there could be extensive debate on the most appropriate rule in each case. Can the Minister tell noble Lords the proposed timescale for framing those new rules? He said that he expects Social Work England to come fully into being in 2019, but that is a pretty wide timescale. Regulation 3(2)(a) states that the regulator needs to carry out a public consultation before making the rules. That is certainly to be welcomed, but it carries a get-out clause, stating that the regulator does not have to carry out a consultation if it,

“considers that the content of the proposed rules is such that it would be inappropriate or disproportionate to do so”.

That sounds entirely subjective, leaving it open to whim at best, or misuse at worst.

A majority of respondents to the Government’s consultation thought that oversight should apply to all the rules. So can the Minister say which of the 90 rules he anticipates the loophole being applied to, and what reassurances can he offer to support the view I am sure he will take that the loophole will not be misused by the regulator? He talked of regulatory failure a few moments ago. I am certain that would be a very rare occurrence, but it would be helpful to have the Minister’s indication of the situations in which it might arise.

Turning to part 2 of the regulations, we also seek clarification on how the representatives referenced in Regulation 3(2)(b) will be chosen. It states that the regulator will choose,

“any group of persons who the regulator considers are likely to be affected by the proposed rules”.

Although the inclusion of social workers is welcome, together with employers of social workers, users of the services of registered social workers and those involved in social work training, we have concerns as to how those individuals will be chosen. Those rules will affect social workers across the UK, so what is the process by which those individuals will be chosen? Will there, for instance, be representations from all the nations and regions? How will the numbers be distributed among various job roles?

We welcome the fact that the Government bowed to pressure and abandoned the idea of making Social Work England an executive agency of the Department for Education, but questions remain about the Secretary of State’s role because control seems to have been reintroduced. Under Regulation 3(4)(b) the Secretary of State has the power to object to rules. It is disappointing that the Secretary of State will be given the final say on all the rules despite the efforts of many in your Lordships’ House to ensure that the regulator is, as far as possible, independent.

In Part 3 of the regulations, on the content of the register of social workers, Regulation 9(3) states:

“The regulator may record any other information in the register it considers appropriate”.


Given that the basic necessary details about social workers will already have been collected, what other information is likely to be necessary?

We also share the concerns of the British Association of Social Workers that there is provision for deregistration on health conditions, which are undefined. Because the regulations are not specific enough, it is not difficult to envisage that provision being misused. In paragraph 7 of the Explanatory Notes, the Secretary of State states that he believes the regulations are compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights, but will the Minister say if either he or the Secretary of State have considered whether Regulation 9(3) is compliant with the Equality Act 2010? What protections can the Minister point to against possible misuse?

With others in the sector, I am pleased that Regulation 20 makes provision for sector-wide professional development. As the Minister himself conceded, there is a need for the transitional arrangements to be put in place to protect both social workers and the public whom they serve. The trade union Unison has a plan for the transition from the Health and Care Professions Council to Social Work England, outlining how a service-level agreement between the HCPC and Social Work England would ensure a smooth transition period in which the HCPC retained responsibility for fitness-to-practise cases for an interim period of two to five years. That would give Social Work England time to establish its own fitness-to-practise process, while allowing for meaningful consultation with trade unions and staff in both organisations to draw up a structured plan to ensure the smoothest possible transition. Pointing to the apparent lack of any such arrangements is not a criticism of Social Work England, but we believe they would provide a safety net for all—most importantly, for the public. Do Ministers plan to consult Unison and take advantage of its experience regarding the transition period? Crucially, what assurances can the Minister give that social workers, employers and the public will be protected in the interim period?

In general, our initial opposition to it notwithstanding, Labour is now in a position to say that we welcome Social Work England coming into being and want it to be as successful as it possibly can. Apart from the relatively minor issues that I have highlighted, we do not have a problem with the majority of the rules that Social Work England is creating. However, like many in the sector, we have concerns that its timescale is overambitious, given that, although the chair and chief executive are in post, the board and executive team are not. Even allowing for the good will that is behind the creation of Social Work England, what confidence can the Minister offer noble Lords that it can be successfully established within such a short timescale?

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I too thank the Minister for introducing the regulations. I draw noble Lords’ attention to my interests in the register, particularly my role until recently as chair of CAFCASS.

I strongly support the creation of Social Work England as a profession-specific regulator with real in-depth understanding of social work and its potential to transform lives, particularly those of the most vulnerable. I very much hope that Social Work England will be able to work as an effective, modern and collaborative regulator, working closely with social work employers, educators and, yes, service users as well, which is important. Statutory regulation of social workers is very important. It is necessary so that the public feel protected. It helps to enhance the status of the profession, to ensure high standards and to ensure that the work that social workers do is truly valued in a way that, I am afraid, too often it is not at the moment.

The devil, as ever, is in the detail, so I want to make a couple of general points and a couple of specific ones. I am aware from talking to colleagues in the sector that a number of concerns have been raised during the consultation process. It must be said that it was not a particularly long consultation, but I know that there were pre-consultation events as well. I want to highlight something that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, mentioned: the role of the Secretary of State. As I am sure that noble Lords who took part in our debates during the passage of the Children and Social Work Act 2017 will remember, they were heated and important debates about what was an appropriate role for the Secretary of State in social work regulation. As has already been alluded to, the upshot of that was the creation of a body separate from government so that the regulator had an appropriate degree of independence from the Secretary of State.