Children’s Social Care

Baroness Laing of Elderslie Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart]

Yes, that was it. Getting the data we need to prove effectiveness is one of those extraordinarily valuable holy grails. Successive Governments have found it very difficult to prove the efficacy of individual programmes, but there is a way forward. In New Zealand a few years ago, the Government brought together a huge amount of personal data through what was known as the integrated data initiative. They spliced together data from social services, housing, tax and so on, and then anonymised it and established ethical rules in advance, so that the data could never be used to find out whether someone had not paid their car tax, for instance. It could never be used against people and could only be used at a community level.

As a result, the New Zealand Government are capable now of effectively performing randomised control trials on all their social impact programmes. They know which programmes to give added investment to and which to wind down. Admittedly, New Zealand is a slightly smaller jurisdiction than the United Kingdom. The combining of data on that sort of scale in the UK is a bigger project, but one that would be unbelievably valuable. I have no doubt that we have the expertise in the Office for National Statistics to do it, and do it well, and I am sure the moment we have it, it will be one of those things we wish we had had long ago.

To conclude, Mr Deputy Speaker—I mean, Madam Deputy Speaker. How very nice to see you there, Madam Deputy Speaker. I was enjoying the company of the Opposition so much I did not notice that your colleague had left and you had arrived. We must consider not just the children with the most acute needs, important though they are and must remain, but young people on the edge of the system who may come in and out of that hinterland many times during their childhoods but might not qualify for the highest level of support.

Before I conclude my remarks completely, I want to dip into one more policy area that I forgot to mention earlier, and this goes back the issue that I was debating with the hon. Member for West Ham. About half of children in need are not eligible for free school meals, which means that about half of children in need do not receive the pupil premium. That has always seemed like a crazy peculiarity. It is laudable that a child whose parents were briefly unemployed six years ago receives the pupil premium, but I would question whether their need is greater than someone who lives in an abusive home and has been in and out of contact with social services, perhaps over a prolonged period of years. I am a full supporter of the pupil premium programme that this Government introduced in 2011, but as it reaches maturity after eight years it would be worth looking at exactly how that pot is allocated. I would always like it to be a bit bigger, but we also need to consider whether some groups have an eligibility that has not been recognised and could be brought into the system.

We have to think about children who are on the edge, we must consider the needs of their families, and we need to examine the Government programmes and local authority structures that can provide for those families and those children. I have high hopes for the local government financial settlement and for the comprehensive spending review next year, and I am pleased that the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), is here to hear my concerns. I am sure that he will take them forward with the same energy that he has brought to the children in need review in his time in office so far.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I call Karen Lee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I do not stand to speak just so everyone can see that it is me in the Chair, and not the Chairman of Ways and Means. I have been mistaken for many people in my time, but not for the right hon. Gentleman. I suppose we have similarities—well, we both sit in the Chair.

I will try not to set a time limit, especially as the hon. Member for Lincoln (Karen Lee) was admirably brief in her remarks, but in order that there will be time for the Front Benchers to speak, it would be helpful if speeches were around eight minutes. We have four colleagues to accommodate, and around eight minutes would mean that everyone is honourable in their treatment of everyone else.