Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)]

I support all great schools in our diverse school system, including strong grammar schools. I continue to encourage grammar schools to increase access for disadvantaged pupils, which can help so much with social mobility.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

T3. Acre Rigg Infant School in Peterlee was given a 25-year life expectancy when it was built in 1950. It has asbestos in every wall and a metal structure made from recycled world war two aircraft. Seaham Trinity Primary School has lifting floors, rising damp, black mould caused by a faulty roof, leaking pipes and poor screeding. It is a £5.3 million school that was built in 2008 by Surgo. Can the Schools Minister explain to parents how their children are supposed to flourish and prosper in such an inadequate educational environment?

[Damian Hinds]

In the 2021 spending review, we committed £19 billion for school capital over the three years. I do not know offhand the specifics of the schools that the hon. Gentleman has mentioned, but I would of course be very happy to meet him to hear further details.

Kinship Care Strategy

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Wednesday 6th March 2024 Westminster Hall

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on securing this important debate, leading it with such energy, providing an excellent introduction and championing the cause of kinship carers.

Kinship carers play an immeasurably important role in our communities. They care for children when the parents no longer can. The complexities associated with full-time care for someone else’s child, even if they are a family member, should not be underestimated. The love, care and stability that the families offer kinship children are nothing short of remarkable. Their actions enable countless young people to remain in their own families and existing support networks. It is for those reasons that we must enhance support for kinship carers.

To their credit, in December last year the Government published the first ever national kinship strategy, which provided welcome recognition of and support for kinship families. However, it falls far short of the support that the families urgently need. There are more than double the number of children in kinship than in foster care, so the Government must support kinship carers in the same way that we support foster carers.

In my region in the north-east, around one in 50 children are growing up in kinship care, with over half being looked after by grandparents. The Kinship charity runs a number of successful support groups across my constituency. As my right hon. Friend the Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) says, the support that Durham County Council offers is outstanding. It helps families to support one another through very challenging times. However, there is only so much that the Kinship charity can do. I support its call for the introduction of a mandatory non-means-tested allowance for all kinship carers that is at least equivalent to the national minimum fostering allowance. That was also recommended by the independent review of social care. Eight in 10 kinship carers are forced out of work or must reduce hours because of a lack of financial support.

I want to mention my old friend and constituent Elaine Duffy, who is a kinship carer. She has three grandchildren, and had to give up her full-time work because she could not sustain the commitment to her caring role while working full time. Her dedication is commendable, and fortunately she is now employed by the brilliant Kinship charity. She works very hard to support its campaigns alongside looking after her three grandchildren.

The Government must consider the successful models in New Zealand and Scotland. I urge the Government to do far more to support our kinship carers.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Pritchard. I cannot possibly do justice to the debate and all the points that were raised, and certainly not to the fantastic role that all kinship carers play. It is great to see some of them in the Gallery today. I had the pleasure of meeting them briefly before this debate, but I know we will have a lot more opportunities to discuss the subject in more detail.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire (Alistair Strathern) on securing this important debate. People who have been in such debates before have heard me talk about the fact that my first experience of the subject came many years ago, when I mentored a nine-year-old boy who had to be removed from his parents and was put with his nan. She totally transformed his life, and, as everybody has said, did so out of love—certainly not for money. It was to prevent him going into care and taking other bad directions in life. That was my first experience of the issue, which is why I was so excited for us to publish the first strategy before the end of the year.

I wholeheartedly share the commitment of the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire to championing the role of kinship carers. I have spoken to many kinship carers through the Department’s reference group and during visits all over the country, and I have huge admiration for the role they play, often unseen. The conversation I always have with them is that there is a lot of attention, rightly, on those who adopt and who foster, but if we went down the street and asked what a kinship carer was, people would not know. They play an incredible role. We also know, although this is not the reason kinship carers do what they do, that children in kinship care will on average end up with better GCSE results, better employment outcomes and better long-term health outcomes. It therefore makes sense for the country as a whole, in addition to making sense for kinship carers and the children they are taking on.

Starting with the financial allowance, we know from the many conversations we have with kinship carers that nobody expects to take on the role when they do. We have announced a pathfinder programme for eight local authorities, which will provide special guardian kinship carers—

[Grahame Morris]

Will the Minister give way?

[David Johnston]

Very briefly, because I do not have much time to get through everybody’s points.

[Grahame Morris]

I am following very carefully what the Minister is saying. Can he tell us the eligibility criteria or the basis on which the eight pilot authorities have been chosen?

[David Johnston]

We have not announced the local authorities, so let us do that bit first. Members asked why we are starting with the particular subset of children who have special guardianship orders; they are one of the easiest groups to define, they often have the highest need and they are the quickest for local authorities to make the payments to. We want to get the programme going as quickly as possible, but subject to its success we want to broaden it to the full range of people in kinship care and to the other local authorities. However, we have not chosen the eight yet.

On virtual school heads, while some children in kinship arrangements have already been able to benefit from education entitlements and support, one of the constant conversations I have with kinship carers is that at times they find it very difficult to get the school to engage with them. Even though they are acting as the parent, they do not get the same conversations and treatment that a parent would get. That is why we announced £3.8 million to expand the role of virtual school heads to children in kinship care. All children in kinship care arrangements will get that, regardless of their status. My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes North (Ben Everitt) raised that point and mentioned making sure everybody is aware that the heads are there. The local authority grant letters are being published imminently, delivery will start in September and we will do all we can to make sure everybody knows that they exist.

My hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) and others mentioned kinship leave, and we recognise the challenge many kinship carers face when continuing to work alongside the pressures of taking in and raising a child at an unexpected moment. We continue to explore what we can do. We have published guidance for employers, as some hon. Members have mentioned, to better support kinship carers in work. Some employers are already doing that. The Department for Education will give kinship leave to its staff who are kinship carers and we expect other Government Departments to do similarly in the coming weeks and months.

On training and support, which was raised by the hon. Members for Putney (Fleur Anderson) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) as well as others, we announced a £1.6 million extension to our peer support funding, which will be delivered from July. It will mean that all kinship carers, regardless of their care order, will be able to network and learn from each other until the end of March 2026. Following the progress and positive impact that the peer-to-peer support contract has already made, we have committed to delivering a package of training and support that all kinship carers across England can access. We were pleased to confirm that the charity Kinship will be the training partner and that training is on track to be delivered from spring 2024.

We know that many kinship carers feel that a clear definition of kinship care will help to reduce barriers to them accessing services and support, creating a common understanding of what kinship care means. We are proud to have published the first Government definition of a kinship carer. This year, we will implement that in statutory guidance to improve understanding and awareness from practitioners about what kinship care is.

On a related matter raised by the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire, we have asked the Law Commission to review and simplify the framework for kinship care status. On the point made by him and the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) about inconsistent support from local authorities, we are publishing an updated version of the family and friends guidance this spring, and we will be monitoring compliance. I had a conversation with the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish at his APPG about the fact that we have found local authorities not paying the minimum fostering allowance, which we give them the money to do. Local authority compliance is very much in my sights.

This year, we will recruit the first-ever national kinship care ambassador to advocate for kinship carers and work directly with local authorities to improve services. That should go live for recruitment this month, and I look forward to working with the appointed candidate. They will help us to ensure that local authorities provide a consistent service that complies with what we require them to do. We are creating a board of sector experts, in addition to our kinship carer reference group, to advise me on priorities for future funding and policy development.

Let me quickly respond to some of the other points that were raised. My hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) asked about family group conferencing and New Zealand. We are exploring using legislation to mandate the use of family group conferencing at pre-proceedings and my predecessor met colleagues from New Zealand to discuss how it works there. The right hon. Member for North Durham (Mr Jones) and the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) described what sounded like good local offers to support kinship carers in their areas, and I will ask officials to follow up with them to ensure that we are aware of the good work they are doing. I need to leave a couple of minutes for the hon. Member for Mid Bedfordshire, so if there are any points I have not addressed, I am happy to write to hon. Members.

Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

The hon. Member puts his finger on it. Industrial action has a massive impact, particularly on vulnerable children, those with special educational needs, and those in exam cohorts. I am always happy to share with my counterparts in the devolved Administrations, and I am very happy to share what we are doing on minimum service levels.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

3. What steps her Department is taking to ensure the adequacy of school funding in County Durham.

[The Minister for Schools (Damian Hinds)]

Nationally, school funding will rise to over £59.6 billion next year, the highest ever in real terms per pupil. This year, the north-east had the largest percentage increase in per pupil funding in the whole of England.

[Grahame Morris]

I welcome the Minister to his place.

Every day is a school day, but I wonder whether the new Schools Minister is familiar with the School Cuts website, which indicates that 214 out of 240 schools in County Durham face spending cuts in 2024-25. The cumulative impact of cuts in County Durham amounts to £113 million, equating to a £175 cut per pupil. Does he believe that restricting school budgets will help or hinder the educational opportunities and life chances for children in my east Durham constituency?

[Damian Hinds]

I have seen the website that the hon. Member mentions. Its calculations are based on some very speculative assumptions, and the conclusions that it reaches should therefore be treated with great caution. Next year, County Durham will receive over £391 million based on current pupil numbers, which is an extra £7.8 million for schools.

Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

I have not seen the hon. Lady’s Bill, but I would be happy to take a look and have a discussion with her.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

10. What steps she is taking to support the recruitment and retention of teachers in the further education sector.

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

22. What recent estimate she has made of the number of teachers leaving the teaching profession.

[Grahame Morris]

The further education sector is facing a teaching crisis, not fully addressed by the pay review body. In my constituency, East Durham College has had two teacher vacancies in engineering and a computer science position unfilled for 18 months. Barriers to recruitment include high workload, qualification reform, excessive assessment and a huge pay disparity compared with comparable work in industry. Could the Secretary of State tell us what steps she is taking to ensure that further education teaching is an attractive and viable career?

[Gillian Keegan]

I very much care about further education and ensuring that it has the funding. That is why, as of last week, we are investing an additional £185 million in the financial year 2023-24 and £285 million in 2024-25 to drive forward skills delivery in further education. The Government do not set pay for the FE sector. However, I have been clear that I expect that funding, which is new funding, to go to the frontline. I hope the investment will support the FE sector to address its recruitment and retention challenges. In addition, we introduced bursaries of £29,000 for STEM—science, technology, engineering and maths—subjects, and the Taking Teaching Further programme is working with industry and paying £6,000 to attract those from industry who want to spend their second career in FE teaching.

Safety of School Buildings

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Mr Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak in this debate. Many colleagues have made eloquent points advocating support for the motion, and I, too, support it. Education is undoubtedly the most vital public service and one of the most important investments our country makes. I tend to agree with one of the earlier contributors that we need to look at cost-benefit analysis. Investment in education extends life opportunities and enables young people to achieve their aspirations. Our schools should be considered educational beacons of opportunity. Our teachers should be valued and held in high esteem. However, the Government are falling short on ensuring adequate funding for our schools.

I want to commend the exceptional teaching staff in my constituency, but I also wish to highlight a problem at the Seaham Trinity Primary School in Princess Road in my constituency. The school is only 15 years old and it was funded by the council’s own capital resources, not through a private finance initiative scheme. I am concerned because this relatively new building shows significant problems: rising damp; black mould in the resource cupboards; dampness in the toilet cubicles, which makes them challenging to clean; lifting floors and carpet tiles; and deterioration in the roof to such an extent that it requires a complete replacement.

I have raised my concerns with Durham County Council, which is, sadly, now led by a Conservative-Lib Dem coalition. Its only response is to highlight the unfortunate reality that the contractors are often reluctant to address latent defects for which they are liable, an issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne). In the case of Trinity Primary, a company called Surgo Construction was involved, and I believe it should be held accountable.

It is in the public interest that crucial infrastructure, including school buildings, is constructed to high or even exceptional standards, not merely a standard deemed “acceptable”. I ask the Minister and the Department: what power and resources does he have to hold powerful interests to account for the public good? Does the DFE, led by the Schools Minister and the Secretary of State, have any powers in that regard? If it does not, should we not be introducing legislation that ensures that companies such as Surgo Construction cannot renege on their responsibilities to taxpayers, staff and students in schools such as Trinity Primary in Seaham?

I would not expect a building that is only 15 years old to be plagued with dampness, mould and a deteriorating roof, and I am sure nobody else would. If I were Surgo, I would be ashamed to have delivered a building that has fallen into such a state of disrepair within such a short period. I urge support for the motion, and I want to ensure that my constituents have the very best standards of school buildings in which to deliver an education.

Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 28th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his welcome. We did commit to address student interest rates and we have delivered on that, which I am sure all hon. Members on both sides of the House will welcome.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

2. What support the Government are providing to help (a) schools and (b) parents with the cost of living.

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

I recognise the current challenges faced by families and public services. We know that things are tough out there, which is why we are acting in the national interest and why we have secured funding to increase the schools budget by £2 billion next year and the year after. All education settings are benefiting from the energy bill relief scheme, which will protect them from excessively high energy bills over the winter. In addition, we are committed to supporting the most vulnerable households through the toughest part of the year with additional direct support, and we are supporting schools and parents to make sure that we can all get through this.

[Grahame Morris]

I, too, welcome the Education Secretary and her team to the Front Bench. I thank her for that response, but I point out that due to runaway costs, schools can barely stay open for five days a week, let alone provide transport. Home-to-school transport is being pared back and public transport, certainly in east Durham, is unreliable and deteriorating. Can she give us some good news and tell us what she is doing to ensure that schools can afford to pay their heating bills and stay open? How will she guarantee access to education during the cost of living crisis?

[Gillian Keegan]

I can give the hon. Gentleman good news, because we heard in the autumn statement that education will be funded by an extra £2 billion next year and the year after. We will be working through how that will affect schools; each school will get its individual allocation. School funding is £4 billion higher this year compared with last year, and the autumn statement has confirmed that increase, which takes the core schools budget to an historic high of £58.8 billion. That will deliver significant additional support to pupils and teachers and will, I am sure, be welcomed by the sector.

Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

5. What steps he is taking to ensure that the SEND review provides adequate support for disabled children and their families.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

21. What steps he is taking to ensure that the SEND review provides adequate support for disabled children and their families.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Will Quince)]

The special educational needs and disabilities and alternative provision Green Paper aims to ensure that the right support is delivered in the right setting at the right time for all children and young people with SEND, including disabled children. To help to achieve that, it proposes nationally consistent SEND standards be set across education, health and care.

--- Later in debate ---

[Will Quince]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question and I encourage everyone to take part in the SEND review consultation, which will expire on 22 July. The specific point she raises, on the tailored list of settings for parents in our proposal, is absolutely not about reducing costs; it is designed to support parents and carers in making an informed choice about which setting they would like their child to go to. I would be very happy to set out the policy in further detail in a meeting with her.

[Grahame Morris]

I commend research carried out by the Disabled Children’s Partnership, whose findings are quite disturbing. It is essential that the SEND Green Paper that the Minister refers to improves accountability in the system. I have also consulted with my constituents in east Durham, who say that not only must disabled young people be able to get the support that they need and have a legal right to, but service providers must be held to account when they miss legal targets. What plans do the Government have to directly intervene when service providers do not meet their legal duties in respect of providing health, care and support to disabled young people in their care?

[Will Quince]

The hon. Gentleman is right that accountability has to be at the heart of our proposals, and everyone who provides support for children and young people with SEND has a responsibility to deliver it effectively. That is why we are creating new national standards, and creating local and national dashboards so that local authorities, organisations and those who provide SEND services can be held to account. He is absolutely right that accountability and redress mechanisms are at the heart of our proposals. This is a consultation, and it is live until 22 July. We are consulting because we genuinely want to hear the views of the sector and all the parents and carers of children with SEND. Of course I would be very happy to meet him.

Catch-up Premium

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

For many children, especially in my constituency of Easington, home learning has been very difficult. I point out that 36.9% of children in my constituency were classed as living in poverty in 2019-20. The effects of the pandemic have not been felt evenly, with disadvantaged children in the poorest areas hit hardest.

Despite the existing inequalities and challenges, and our schools in many areas being at breaking point, Ministers seem to have found new ways to cut school funding, and that is something I take the opportunity to highlight. The north-east could lose up to £7 million due to administrative changes to how pupil premium funding is calculated and allocated, with the Government switching from using the January schools census to using the October census. What that means is that schools with children who became eligible for funding during the pandemic will not receive any additional funding for another year.

Using the October census date rather than the January date is significant, because many children were not at school then, so it was not such a priority for parents to register. In my constituency of Easington, 20 out of 28 primary schools will be affected. The average loss will be about £9,400. When we are talking about the additional sums—I heard the Minister’s opening statement—I believe it is about £6,000 for the average primary school. The average loss will be £9,400 in my constituency, but the worst-affected schools will lose nearly £30,000. The total loss to schools in my constituency is £180,000.

It is absolutely reprehensible to remove resources from schools at any time, but to do so after the biggest public health crisis for a generation, when more funding is urgently required, is unconscionable. Funding education is an investment in our children, and society will reap dividends today and in the future. The Government have had an opportunity to make a statement of intent by implementing the recommendations that Sir Kevan Collins, the Government-appointed education tsar, made. He gave them the evidence. That would have helped every child. I hope parents will reflect on the decision and think about the loss of funding for schools in areas such as mine when they hear Government Members talk about levelling up.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

The reason I did not interrupt you, Grahame, is because we have had a few withdrawals and we are able to put the time limit to four minutes for every contribution at the moment.

[Grahame Morris]

Ah!

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

Well, I didn’t stop you, Grahame. I call Ben Everitt.

Child Food Poverty

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on securing this important debate. I also pay tribute to Marcus Rashford. I have no doubt that if he had not lent his support to the campaign, it would not have moved the Conservative politicians in the way it did. I also want to single out for special praise my good and hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) who has championed the right to food campaign and for its inclusion in the national food strategy.

This debate is particularly timely, as it comes after the publication of shocking new data about child poverty in the north-east. Last Thursday I attended a virtual briefing that was organised by the End Child Poverty coalition and the North East Child Poverty Commission and that revealed that in the three years before the covid-19 pandemic, the north-east had the second highest rate of child poverty in the UK, having an average of 37% compared with the UK average of just over 30%. The north-east saw the biggest increase in child poverty from 2014-15 to 2019-20. It rose by more than one third, from 26% to 37%, meaning that it has risen from just below the UK average to be the second highest rate of any region. More than one third of that increase came between 2018-19 and 2019-20.

Let me say to Conservative Members who have spoken in the debate that this is the defining issue of our time, and it is not happenstance that so many children have been driven into poverty; it is a direct result of Government policies. Closing Sure Start centres and depriving local authorities of the means with which to support children are deliberate policies of this Government, and this is the consequence.

Of the 20 parliamentary constituencies across the United Kingdom with the highest increases in child poverty from 2014-15 to 2019-20, more than four fifths are in the north-east. Child poverty in my constituency of Easington rose 10.7 percentage points, from 26% to 37%.

Like other MPs, I pay tribute to the volunteers and those who have stepped into the gaps, but they are trying to paper over the cracks of Government and their agencies failing to do their job. Urgent action is needed. That means supporting children by boosting child-focused support such as child benefit, which has lost 23% of its value since 2010. We need to reverse the planned £20 cut to universal credit. To help struggling families, we should extend free school meals to all families in receipt of universal-credit-equivalent benefits, legacy benefits, and to those with no recourse to public funds.

Oral Answers to Questions

Grahame Morris Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

All the advice that we have been given has been made public. There are three reasons why we have kept early years settings open and they are all important. Early education gives the child communication and social skills that set them up for life. You cannot teach a small child online, and they cannot get those months back. Our public health advice remains that younger children play a lower role in community transmission, and the evidence at the moment is that the confirmed cases of covid among the very youngest children are the lowest of all age groups.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab)]

If he will increase funding for nursery schools to meet costs resulting from the covid-19 outbreak.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Vicky Ford)]

We have already increased the hourly funding rates for local authorities for the next financial year, and this will pay for a rate increase that is higher than the cost that nurseries may face from the uplift for the national living wage in April. We are also increasing the minimum funding floor. We have provided further advice on how the census will work this year, and we are continuing to monitor the situation closely.

[Grahame Morris [V]]

Maintained nursery schools in my constituency not only provide first-class early education but support many working families with childcare, yet many are facing huge financial pressures because of the pandemic, because they are not able to access the same support as schools and businesses. When will the Government live up to their promise of giving them a long-term future by guaranteeing their funding?

[Vicky Ford]

Maintained nursery schools are a really important part of the early years environment. We give them extra supplemental funding, and we have already announced that we will be giving them the supplemental funding for the next financial year. Obviously, this was a three-year spending review process, so I cannot go further than this financial year, but they will also get the other benefits from the uplift that we are doing for the Government-paid entitlements for two, three and four-year-olds on top of that. I would like to thank all the maintained nursery schools and early years providers in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Williamson]

This is something everyone in this House feels incredibly passionately about. I know through seeing at first hand, coming from a family with parents who fostered for many years, how important it is to get high-quality children’s social care right in this country. I want a real revolution to come out of this report, and I am incredibly pleased that Josh MacAlister has taken on this role to deliver the changes that I think Members on both sides of the House want. I have said quite clearly that I do not want him to hold back in tackling difficult issues. I want to see change, improvement and children’s lives transformed. By working on a cross-party basis, I believe that that is what we can deliver.

[Grahame Morris (Easington) (Lab) [V]]

  The education charity Parentkind revealed that only 9% of parents—[Inaudible.]

[Mr Speaker]

Unfortunately, that brings us to the end of the time for questions, due to a connection failure. I am suspending the House for three minutes to enable the necessary arrangements for the next business to be made.