Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gillian Keegan and Kerry McCarthy

Monday 23rd October 2023 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

13. What assessment she has made of the adequacy of core school funding for the 2023-24 academic year.

[The Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)]

The Government introduced fairness into school funding. Under Labour, we got disproportionately inflated school budgets in places such as London, while constituencies such as mine were underfunded for over a decade. It was the Conservatives who introduced the national funding formula, which funds schools fairly, objectively and, most importantly, based on the needs of pupils, not political ideology. Not only that: this year, school budgets are up by over £3.9 billion, and next year schools will be funded at their highest level in history, at £59.6 billion.

[Gillian Keegan]

I am conscious of the pressures that many local authorities have faced on their high needs budgets. Nationally, high needs funding is set to increase by 60% between 2019-20 and 2024-25. Next year, Worcestershire will receive more than £89 million for its high needs budget. The Department is also supporting individual local authorities to tackle financial sustainability through two programmes: the Safety Valve programme for those with the highest deficits, and Delivering Better Value in SEND, which will help local authorities, including Worcestershire, to develop plans to reform their systems to reach a sustainable footing.

[Kerry McCarthy]

The recent accounting error by the Secretary of State’s Department will mean a cut of more than £2.5 million for schools in Bristol. That money could have been spent on breakfast clubs, SEND provision, mental health support, or even such basics as paying the energy bills. The Prime Minister said in this conference speech that his main funding priority in every spending review from now on will be education, but he is cutting school budgets now. Does the Secretary of State not realise the impact that will have on schools, whose budgets have already been cut to the bone?

Reform of Children’s Social Care

Debate between Gillian Keegan and Kerry McCarthy

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

Absolutely. It is vital that we support care leavers as they journey into adulthood. We are increasing bursaries for care leavers from £2,000 to £3,000 and increasing the apprenticeship bursary that my hon. Friend mentions from £1,000 to £3,000. That comes on top of the existing bursaries for further education and university. It is also very important that we support access to work. We have a care leavers board, and we will be working to ensure that many more businesses take their duties to care leavers as seriously as the excellent businesses that have been mentioned, such as John Lewis.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Bristol City Council, with the help of funding from the Department for Education, is setting up two new care homes: one for children with complex mental health needs, and another for adolescent boys with challenging behaviour who are involved in the criminal justice system and are at risk of exploitation. That will ensure that they do not end up being placed outside the city. It is obviously a very good move, but the number of young people in care in Bristol is predicted to rise by 5% next year alone, so we know that needs will increase. What are the Government doing to support local authorities to expand in-house provision even further and to tackle profiteering by private providers so that we can ensure that children are safe in our hands?

[Gillian Keegan]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. Bristol City Council is obviously doing a good job of using the funding. We have £259 million in funding to build more children’s care homes and make sure that they meet area-specific needs—more complex needs, in some cases—and that they are closer to home. We are also encouraging local authorities: we will be working on a pathfinder for regional co-operative boards, because we recognise that it is sometimes easier to get a number of local authorities to work together on more specialised provision.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gillian Keegan and Kerry McCarthy

Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

We very much have a focus on making sure that our standards are very high in schools and that our children have the very best education to compete globally when they need to get into the workforce. If we look at every other developed economy, we see that in pretty much all of them children do maths in some form up to the age of 18, and we are a bit of an outlier. We are looking to raise the expectations and standards to make sure that our children can compete, and to also give them financial skills for life. Of course, we will work with the sector, and it is a longer-term strategy to make sure that we have enough maths teachers. We have a number of strategies already in place, because it is always tough to recruit maths teachers, and that is why we have introduced a bursary of up to £27,000 for all maths teachers and also for many science teachers.

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

3. What steps she is taking to improve support for (a) children with special educational needs and disabilities and (b) their families.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gillian Keegan and Kerry McCarthy

Tuesday 14th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

Suicide prevention organisations such as the Campaign Against Living Miserably and Papyrus are, sadly, needed more than ever, yet in the current economic climate, because they tend to rely on charitable donations, they are struggling to provide the services to meet demand. What will the Government do to make sure they survive and provide the life-saving services that are so badly needed?

[The Minister for Care and Mental Health (Gillian Keegan)]

Of course every suicide is a tragedy. We must do all we can to help to prevent suicide. In the last financial year, we provided £5.4 million to 113 voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations; we also provided £510,000 for the Samaritans helpline for people experiencing distress. That is in addition to more than £10 million we provided to voluntary and charitable mental health organisations in 2020-21.

Government Action on Suicide Prevention

Debate between Gillian Keegan and Kerry McCarthy

Wednesday 8th June 2022 Westminster Hall

[Gillian Keegan]

The hon. Gentleman has my assurance that I will definitely work cross-Government, with the Under-Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Worcestershire (Nigel Huddleston) who actually sits in the office next door to me—he finds it very difficult to escape. I think that answers the questions from the hon. Member for Bristol East about whether there are ongoing conversations, which will also continue into the future.

I am happy to visit Paul’s Place. As the hon. Member for Liverpool, Walton (Dan Carden) knows, I am often back in Liverpool, visiting my parents and friends. The first visit I made in this role was actually to James’ Place, also in Liverpool, which was set up by a constituent of mine, Clare Milford Haven, who set up the charity after the tragic death of her son, James. We met in Liverpool, but she was a constituent of mine down in Chichester. Every time I go to one of these places, I learn—every time. There are so many families trying to help the next family avoid the tragedy of losing a loved one.

I also met Tim, Mike and Andy—the 3 Dads Walking. They have done a fantastic job, walking round the whole country. They came to tell me the stories of their three daughters, Sophie, Beth and Emily, who all tragically died by suicide. They told me about the number of people who came out to take part as they walked around the country. There is that saying, “Walk a mile in someone’s shoes.” They were walking a mile together, talking about their experiences. They said that many people had never spoken about their experiences before, because they still felt there was some stigma attached to it. One of the fantastic things about having these conversations is the de-stigmatisation of not only suicide, but mental health conditions in general.

One of the things I have learned as Minister for Mental Health is that anybody can have a mental health issue at any point in their lives. One, two or three things happen that they were not expecting, and anybody can be in that situation, but everybody can recover and manage their mental health. If I can achieve one thing in my role it would be for everybody to really understand that and for us to put the services in place to address it—that is what I hope to do.

I recognise that the last two years have been exceptionally difficult. They have impacted on the mental health and wellbeing of many people, and many will have experienced harmful or suicidal thoughts. The shadow Minister for Mental Health, the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), raised the concern that too many people are having to resort to A&E in a crisis. That is why mental health service providers worked across the country at pace during the pandemic to establish a 24/7 urgent mental health helplines for anybody of any age in crisis. Those services are now operational in every area of England, handling 230,000 to 250,000 calls each month. That service was not there before the pandemic; we have tried to respond and to respond quickly.

The long-term plan also committed to increasing the forms of provision for those in crisis, including safe havens and crisis cafés, providing a more suitable alternative to A&E. We know we need to do that. There are some excellent examples throughout the country, including the Evening Sanctuary at the Mosaic club in Lambeth.

[Kerry McCarthy]

In the case of my friend Ric, we learned at the inquest last week that he had phoned a mental health crisis helpline. In that conversation, he revealed that he was in the middle of a psychotic episode. When he later went to A&E at the suggestion of the helpline and spoke to a mental health nurse, he did not reveal that. In the prevention of future deaths report, the inquest recorded that there should have been real-time updating of his medical records, because the people at the hospital would not have let him leave A&E that night if they had realised that part of the problem was psychosis. I talked about taking note of what is said at inquests, and I hope that we can pick up the recommendation on real-time updating.

[Gillian Keegan]

Absolutely. I read all the prevention of future deaths reports, which come to me, and I take them very seriously. There is always so much to learn from them, and I agree with the hon. Lady. Sharing data between services sounds easy and trips off the tongue, but it is actually quite difficult to ensure that data is there in real time. That does not mean that we do not have the desire to achieve that; we absolutely do.

Talking therapies were mentioned by the hon. Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist), and we are improving access to those. I remind people that they can self-refer, rather than going through a GP. I am sure that many people are not aware of that. We are building up mental health support teams in schools. They will really help by providing our young people with first-level support in school, but we realise that we have to invest more in mental health. That is why we have £2.3 billion more to invest in mental health services in 2023-24. We need to build up the workforce, which is a challenge, because it takes a long time to train people for many of these roles. In fact, I had another meeting on this issue earlier this morning.

I want to address the use of risk assessment tools. I am running out of time, but I am happy to respond on the situation; it is important, and I definitely want to take the time to do so, particularly as Mr Pirie is in the Public Gallery. The guidelines published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence in 2011 make it clear that risk assessment tools should not be used to predict future suicide or repetition of self-harm, or to determine who should or should not be offered treatment, as the hon. Member for Bristol East said. We would expect health professionals to have regard to that, but it is clear that further work is needed, and discussions are under way right now to find out what further actions are necessary to achieve this.

I acknowledge the valuable role of the voluntary sector in complementing all the things we do. We have given more money—£5.4 million—to voluntary and community organisations. That money has supported 113 organisations, which do a fantastic job at helping people who are struggling. They are in lots of areas, and have often been set up by families who have lived experience. We have also provided funding to support the Hub of Hope, which was set up by a charity in Liverpool, and which is crucial in signposting people to services locally. For people who are at risk, we now have a fantastic opportunity with the call for evidence on mental health and the updated suicide prevention plan.

We have learned a lot more, and we know that there are a lot of things that we need to fix. We have mentioned debt, drugs and alcohol, and men’s sheds—I have visited those, and they are fantastic. Our LGBT expert advisory group is meeting tomorrow to discuss suicide prevention, and to see what more we need to do. I know that Members present are genuinely committed to working with me on situations that it is difficult to prevent, and we are absolutely convinced that we can do a lot better. We will work with colleagues across the Department for Education—we have mentioned the SEND review—and DCMS. It is vital that we work cross-sector, cross-Department and cross-party, because everybody has a role to play in suicide prevention. It is not just my job—if it was, it would be overwhelming. We all have a role to play.

There have been a lot of significant steps since the national suicide prevention strategy was published in 2012. Professor Louis Appleby is mentioned a lot in these circles and has put a lot of work and effort into this endeavour. Real-time surveillance is on the agenda, and the National Suicide Prevention Strategy Advisory Group will continue to work towards making things better. We have made a lot of progress, but everybody accepts that there is more to come. We have recently launched a call for evidence, and we have had about 2,500 people respond so far, but I would like a lot more to do so—particularly those from marginalised groups, or groups that find it harder to talk about these subjects. We need to hear their perspectives and get hon. Members’ help in making sure that everybody responds to the call for evidence, which is an opportunity. I am serious about this, as is the Secretary of State. I thank everybody for their contributions.