Children and Families Bill
Lord Beith Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Mr Timpson
I will try to kill two birds with one stone, in that case. That is not a matter for this Bill and I am sorry that the hon. Lady did not take the opportunity to raise any of the substantial issues that are in the Bill. As she has raised the under-occupancy rules, she must remember that it was her party that brought them in for the private sector. It is therefore an extension of something that was brought in by the previous Government.
The Bill makes it absolutely clear that both parents should be involved with their children after separation, unless there is a genuine welfare reason why that is not appropriate. This is about the needs of the child, not parents’ rights.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
My hon. Friend has made it clear on many occasions that the Bill is not intended or likely to lead to different court decisions. Why is he so optimistic that it will lead many parents to take a different view of the need to come to a sensible settlement and not get to court?
Mr Timpson
My right hon. Friend knows from his astute chairmanship of the Justice Committee that the intention of these changes to the law is to remove the adversarial, winner-takes-all nature of many of these proceedings and the perception among many parents that they are entering an arena that is about their personal battles, rather than what is in the best interests of the child. The changes will do that not in isolation, but as part of a wider package of measures including MIAMs and the enforcement of the orders.
Nobody would argue that both parents should not be involved in a child’s life if it is safe and in the child’s best interests. We believe that these measures will make it crystal clear to parents who are thinking about their post-separation arrangements or, further down the field, about taking these matters before the court, that the court will judge not the parents’ dispute, but what is in the best interests of the child. The presumption will be that having both parents involved in the child’s life is the right course where it is safe and in the child’s best interests. That is particularly important given the huge number of children who no longer have any contact with one parent after a separation. We need to try to bring that number down and I believe that these measures will help do that.
The message about focusing on children’s needs is reinforced by the replacement of contact and residence orders with the new child arrangements order. That will set out in one place who a child lives with, spends time with or has any other type of contact with, and when. It will move us away from the perception of a hierarchy that is present in contact and residence orders, where the resident parent is seen as the winner or the more important parent.
I will now turn to the special educational needs reforms. I am conscious of the time and apologise to hon. Members who I know will be desperate to get in on this issue. I will take one or two interventions, but then I must press on. These are the most significant reforms in the area for more than 30 years. At the outset, I want to acknowledge the committed work of my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), who was brave enough to push forward these reforms. I am also grateful to the many parents and young people I have met as children’s Minister in Coventry, Bromley, East Sussex and elsewhere, who have so graciously and generously shared their experiences with me.
When one hears stories of young people with needs and extra challenges that they did not ask for bravely battling a system that can be complex and unwieldy and is often a cause for frustration, it underlines the vital importance of making things better. It continues to be the case that children and young people with special educational needs do less well than their peers at school and college, and are twice as likely to be out of education, training and employment at 18.
The Bill builds on the Green Paper initiated by my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central to put the interests of children and young people first. It will bring up to date a terribly outdated system and keep the rights and protections that families value. It will give children and young people with special educational needs and their families better co-ordinated support, and more choice and control over how that support is provided. It will provide, for the first time, one system from birth to 25, promoting earlier identification of children’s needs and extending comparable rights and protections to all young people over 16, whether they choose to continue their education in school or in further education.
The Bill also sets out a number of measures to tackle some deep-seated problems. It requires local authorities and local health bodies to work together to plan and commission services for children and young people with SEN. That will make the best use of available resources and deliver integrated support, and it will bring a real commitment across agencies to ensuring that the services required to meet local needs are available. Families should no longer find themselves caught between different parts of the system, waiting for a particular service.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
It is a pleasure to follow the former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett), who brings not only working experience in the field but very illuminating personal experience that is relevant to several aspects of the Bill. That gives his comments an authority that we should take note of.
I shall refer briefly to the family justice elements of the Bill. The Justice Committee report on the draft family justice clauses has been cited several times this afternoon. It was published on 14 December 2012, and we had previously reported on the issue in July 2011. We broadly welcomed the draft clauses, which covered a wide range of public and private family law, and largely followed the Norgrove recommendations. However, we had significant concerns about the clause on “parental involvement.” Those words represent a change; the original term was “shared parenting”, which we disapproved of because it implies the carving up of the child’s time in the interests of the parents. That point is fundamental to our arguments about the Bill, and I shall return to it in more detail.
Relationship breakdown and the family justice process are highly emotive topics, producing strongly held views, many based upon personal experience. We bore that in mind during our inquiry, and in addition made sure that we considered the proposed changes in the light of other changes that are taking place in the family justice system. I should place it on record that the Government accepted a number of our detailed recommendations on the drafting of the Bill, and I much appreciate the work of the Committee’s legal adviser and the Government’s ready response.
On the public law clauses, we welcomed the Government’s commitment to reducing delay in the care process, which is absolutely essential. Lost time is lost opportunity in a child’s life, and cannot be returned or repaid. We praised the work being undertaken by some local authorities and courts on a shorter timetable. We were impressed by the changes we heard about in social worker training and management, and by the work being done in Hampshire and the three London boroughs engaged in the tri-borough project. We welcome the Government’s involvement, although we have some concerns about how it will be pursued.
We argued that when it is in the child’s best interests, it is important that the child’s wider family and family friends are not excluded from the care process. We recommended that the Government undertake to review the practical effect of the 26-week time limit to ensure that kinship carers are not excluded from the local authority or court decision-making processes because of the rush to comply with the timetable.
We recommended that the draft clause on judicial scrutiny of care plans be revised to make express reference to contact by the child with the birth family, including the wider family. We are pleased that the Government have committed to considering whether further guidance on the importance of kinship contact is required in advance of the legislation, and to review the general impact of the clause on an ongoing basis. We are also pleased that clause 15 on care plans now makes express reference to section 34(11) of the Children Act 1989, which considers parental contact with children in care. These are often difficult cases, but parental contact can remain important even when a decision has been taken to put a child in care.
We are glad that the Government removed the word “exceptional” from the test for extensions to the 26-week limit. It created the odd and rather unhelpful impression that some children’s cases are more important and more exceptional than others, whereas the test should be whether the extension is necessary for the case to be resolved justly.
On the private law clauses, we heard evidence about the training received by mediators for mediation, information and assessment meetings—occasionally I have to remind myself that is what MIAMs stands for. We were concerned to ensure that the Government gave help and assistance to mediators. As has been pointed out in interventions, there will be a large demand for skilled mediation, so quality standards are important. The Government told us that they have asked the pre-proceedings working group of the Family Justice Council to look at the issue, and the Justice Committee looks forward to seeing the results of that work.
The Government disagreed with the Committee on only a small number of the recommendations, but particularly on whether the 26-week limit should be set out in primary or secondary legislation and how flexible it should be. I welcome the support we heard today from the Opposition Front Bench on that issue. The big disagreement was about how the parental involvement principle is applied. It is not really about the principle, as there should be no disagreement that it is in the interests of the child to remain in contact with both parents, unless the risk of harm seriously outweighs it. We fully support that principle. The adoption of the Committee’s recommendation to change the title of the relevant clause is welcome. It represents a change from sharing out parenting to recognising parental involvement, and we want wider and more careful consideration of those parts of the Bill. The Government have expressly stated that the courts already operate on the basis that both parents should be involved in a child’s life, unless of course it is not safe or not consistent with the child’s welfare. They say that they do not intend to change outcomes, and cases will not be judged differently as a result of the legislation, so why is the provision there? What is it intended to achieve?
The Government say that
“the purpose of the clause is not to promote the equal division of a child’s time between parents…it will encourage the resolution of agreements outside court by making clear the basis on which courts’ decisions are made and by ensuring that parents’ expectations are realistic when deciding whether to bring a claim to court. The Government anticipates that over time, this change will contribute to a societal shift towards greater recognition of the value of both parents in a child’s life, and to a reduction of the perception of bias within the court system.”
As I indicated earlier, that is a pretty optimistic claim. It would be very good if it were the case, but the danger is that false expectations are created by the inclusion of those words, and much harm could result, as we see from some of the press coverage. For example, The Daily Telegraph reported:
“The new legislation states that judges should ensure that fathers are given the legal right to spend time to develop a meaningful relationship with their sons or daughters.”
Actually, the Government expressly excluded the words “meaningful relationship” from the legislation. If an expectation has been created by press reporting, perhaps encouraged by some briefing, we risk disappointing many non-resident parents, most but not all of them fathers, who feel that their case has not been properly considered, and that in future courts will look at the issue in terms of sharing out time.
Tim Loughton
Can we nail that misconception straight away? The provision has nothing to do with giving rights to parents; it is about the responsibilities of parents and the rights that children should have. They have a right to have both their parents as involved as possible—[Hon. Members: “And grandparents.”]—as well as other kinship care. I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that the reason why the addition of this provision to legislation—for the first time—is so important is that it sends a clear and strong message to resident parents who use the court system to freeze the non-resident parent out of their relationship with the children that it will no longer wash. We want to keep more cases out of the courts, to be agreed amicably in the best interests of the children. That is what it is about.
Sir Alan Beith
I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman and former Minister on what we are seeking to achieve, but he should note that the press coverage is already suggesting something rather different, which is the sharing of time—
Sir Alan Beith
As the hon. Gentleman says, it is wrong; perhaps the Government will have to make it rather clearer that it is wrong. On dealing with the perception, even if it is false, that there is a bias in the court system, there is another issue that figures much more largely in the concerns of many non-resident parents, predominantly fathers, and that is enforcement. Court orders are made that appear to give them reasonable involvement in the life of their son or daughter, but they are not observed, and the process of enforcing them is long, time-consuming and ineffective. We urged the Government to produce proposals on enforcement. They concluded that, on balance, it would be premature to legislate now to give courts additional enforcement sanctions. What they hope to do is bring cases quickly back to court—preferably to the same judge. I welcome that; it would be highly desirable.
Higher and Further Education
Lord Beith Excerpts(11 years, 8 months ago)
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Mr Nicholas Brown (Newcastle upon Tyne East) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the Minister. He entertained the House enormously as he distracted attention from the core point of the Government’s policy and did his best to misrepresent the Opposition’s policy, so much so that he chided my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Ladywood (Shabana Mahmood) for trying to draw his attention back to the Government policy he is supposed to be defending. If that is the most terrible charge the Minister can make against my hon. Friend, surely his case is weak.
Before coming to my core concern—the level of student debt—I should congratulate my hon. Friend on how she opened the debate for the parliamentary Labour party. It is a pleasure to follow her, just as it is a pleasure to follow the Minister. He did his best to distract attention from his policy and to misrepresent the Opposition’s policy. At one stage I thought he was praising—almost sincerely—the Secretary of State; next he will be writing “Focus” leaflets to deliver around the House of Commons. I have too much respect for the Minister to encourage him to go down that sad and sordid road.
My key point is this: my objection to the student fee contribution arrangements being introduced in this academic year is that the required student contribution is too high. It is as straightforward as that. I am not quarrelling with the Minister over the repayment mechanism: he is right that there are common themes between the Labour party and Conservative party positions, but whatever the arguments about establishing competition and a marketplace through different student fee contributions might have been in theory, the fact of the matter is that the annual student fee contribution for most courses has remorselessly settled already at the ceiling of £9,000 a year.
To that we must add the cost of student maintenance, including rent, and the cost of necessary books, equipment and visits associated with the course. Annual living costs for students are expected to reach £11,000 this year, which is £910 a month—the cost was £561 a month in 2004. With fees, that amounts to around £20,000 per year. That is too much money for young people to carry as personal debt. Of itself, it is unjust.
Other things in life require debt in early adulthood: a starter home and the accompanying mortgage, or perhaps a loan to set up a small business as a new entrepreneur. Any lender will take the student debt into account when looking at the potential for repayment. The 30-year repayment period means that debt follows the young person well into middle age.
The Government’s new regime has brought about a rather obvious response. Before the introduction of the new regime there was a burst of applications, but this year university applications are down by 8.7%. The situation is particularly pronounced in the north-east, which I have the honour to represent—applications are down by 11.2%—and among the poor.
The Office for Fair Access tells us that despite substantially larger bursaries at Cambridge than at Northumbria university, Northumbria’s proportion of students from poor backgrounds is around four times higher than Cambridge’s proportion. That, too, is unjust. Young people are having the opportunity to be everything they could be priced away from them.
Sir Alan Beith
The right hon. Gentleman and I share an interest in Northumbria university, where there are a large number of part-time students. Under the Government’s scheme, they will be given access to repayment facilities that they did not have before.
Mr Brown
I accept that. I am sympathetic to features of the Government’s scheme, and we would find agreement and consensus on other aspects, including those to which the Minister referred. My objection is to the total debt. My contention is that £20,000 a year is just too much money for a young person to take on. The right hon. Gentleman knows that there will be a similar feeling among his constituents, who are no more affluent than people in the community I represent.
For those trying to get into higher education, the situation is exacerbated by the loss of something like 15,000 student places—that is the only election pledge that the Liberal Democrats have actually kept. Young people from economically poorer backgrounds look instead at going directly into employment and making their way without a degree and the accompanying mandatory debt. Even if they do so, the cards are stacked against them, because graduate entry is now much more of a requirement for careers that used to be open to non-graduates.
The argument for the fee contribution is that graduates, over a lifetime, will earn more than non-graduates, and so should make a contribution to their education costs. I accept that, but the argument is about how much of a contribution they should make. Not all graduates will find well-paid jobs. Graduate recruitment is currently running at 6% below pre-recession levels, if we take the high point of 2007, and for every graduate job advertised there is an average of 52 applications. One in five graduates is unemployed.
The remedy seems clear enough: we should cap the fee contribution. The Labour party has pledged to set a cap at £6,000, and to go further in reducing the cap if the reduction is affordable. I say that we should go further and we should face up to the fact that it must be paid for.
The Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills has very little room for manoeuvre in his departmental budget. To achieve his share of the cuts, he has shifted costs from the state to the students in higher education and abolished the regional development agencies, which were the principal regional economic development arm. His Department has cut university teaching budgets by 47% in real terms, from £7.1 billion to £4.2 billion. Combined with the increased subsidy element of student loans, that results in a real-terms cut in higher education funding, excluding research, of 23%, from £8.8 billion to £7.5 billion by 2015.
Dr Wendy Piatt, the director general of the Russell group, warned today that the UK has fallen behind countries such as Mexico, Russia and India in investment in higher education as a proportion of gross domestic product.
We must look outside the Secretary of State’s Department to find the savings dramatically to reduce the cap on student fees. The renewal of Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent and a new generation of Trident submarines are unaffordable and unnecessary public expenditure, not the higher education of our nation’s young people—[Interruption.] To respond to the Minister, at least I can say how I would pay for it.
The coalition Government have made a different choice. They have diminished the importance of higher education, and in that, they are wrong.
Rural Schools
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Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
In that context, does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that some of the public debate about planning policy has suggested that people in rural areas do not want to see any building or development at all, whereas actually having some houses that local people can afford—usually to rent—so that we have children in the schools is very important to them?
Mr Reed
I share the right hon. Gentleman’s concern. All too often, people—especially those who live in or adjacent to national parks—are treated almost as living museum exhibits. That policy attitude has to change and to change fundamentally.
That viewpoint, to which the right hon. Gentleman alluded, must change. As the economic squeeze worsens, as the public sector and the state retreat further and as areas of market failure become ever more prominent, all of us need to pay urgent attention to the plight of ordinary people in that forgotten England, because they need our help and they have little or no interest in the colour of our rosettes. That is why village schools are so important. They can act as the lynchpin for extended services in a community, through the provision of other public services such as general practice, citizens advice, tourist information or even banking. By doing that, they give us the best possible chance of reaching all the people I have mentioned and more, but particularly those most at risk of social exclusion.
The CRC report states:
“Small village schools are in close contact with families and have a track record of providing good outcomes for children. Based in isolated communities, small schools may hold the key to engaging the most disadvantaged families, but their numbers are decreasing.”
Ultimately, that is the crux of the issue. The closure of small rural schools such as Captain Shaw’s is perhaps not seen as a problem for those with private transport and steady employment, but delivers another significant contradiction with regard to the statutory responsibilities of the local education authorities and others in relation to child poverty.
The Child Poverty Act 2010 creates a duty for local authorities to reduce child poverty. As the CCR report points out:
“If poverty is to be tackled effectively, it must be a priority to identify and consult with those families who don’t know about or are prevented from accessing services.”
Village schools have a critical role to play in supporting individual families in need, or as a hub for activities that will promote learning, economic well-being and social cohesion. More than that, it is clear that the choice is becoming binary. Maintain small village schools such as Captain Shaw’s in rural areas and extend their provision of services, and we can tackle the problems of poverty, aspiration and lack of economic opportunities in those areas. Close the schools, and the evidence would seem to be clear that we cannot do any of that. Closure is effectively a choice to worsen the lives and life chances of the people in any community facing the loss of its school. As the report points out, that loss is “felt to be irreparable.”
I therefore make three specific requests of the Government today. First, to intervene in the process to close Captain Shaw’s school. Allowing the smallest school in the country’s most beautiful national park to close would destroy any credibility of the Government’s presumption against the closure of rural schools—it could scarcely be more symbolic. Secondly, to ensure that local education authorities and other responsible bodies in the case of academies or free schools, nationwide, are acting in a manner consistent with the statutory obligation to reduce child poverty laid out in the Child Poverty Act 2010. Thirdly, to bring forward as a matter of urgency a streamlined process whereby small rural schools can provide extended services, whether public, private or both, so as to secure the viability of those schools and to reach the most excluded people in our communities.
While I have the Minister’s attention, it is only right that I raise the issue of school investment more broadly in west Cumbria. I have written to the Secretary of State, and I hope that he or the Minister will be able to meet me as a matter of urgency. Some of west Cumbria’s secondary schools, which had been allocated more than £60 million by the previous Government as part of the Building Schools for the Future programme, are reaching crisis point with regard to their physical fabric and infrastructure. That affects standards, attainment levels, teaching and the aspirations and ambitions of their pupils. We urgently need major funding for the fabric of our schools, whether from a public or private source, or the consequences for education and my community as a whole will be dire.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I am glad to have the opportunity to take part in the debate that the hon. Member for Copeland (Mr Reed) so helpfully introduced. I must tell him that my constituency is even further from London than his and at least as sparsely populated as that of my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes South (Iain Stewart). It is therefore an area with a lot of very small schools, and I have several with fewer than 12 pupils.
Sir Alan Beith
I commend the east coast train service in that respect.
As I said, quite a number of schools in my area have fewer than 12 pupils. There is a unique school on Holy island that much of the time is combined with a school in Lowick on the mainland, but when the tide is over, the children are educated in a little village school on the island itself. That arrangement must continue or they would not be able to go to school without boarding at the age of five—of course, they board later in their educational career.
When a previous Conservative Government were in power and there was grant-maintained status, the county council threatened one school with closure. It went grant maintained and saved itself, and is still there to this day. It made a rather shrewd move. That was an exception to the pattern, and I will explain how school closures come about.
In my constituency, we have lost 10 rural schools in 10 years. Villages such as Kirknewton, Millfield, Chatton and Eglingham have lost their schools. Two schools are threatened at Cornhill and Brampton, and in both cases there are very small numbers of children at each school—just three or four. In the past, we lost schools in the Cheviot hills that served the communities of shepherds at places such as Windyhaugh and Southern Knowe.
The current policy of the county council is certainly not to bring about school closure, even though, like other authorities mentioned today, it gets much less per pupil than some urban communities, despite the high costs of educating pupils in a much larger number of schools scattered over many communities and the high costs of transport for children in rural areas, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) referred. Closures in rural Northumberland have invariably happened because the governors have concluded that a school is no longer viable. That view is not always shared by the local community, which sometimes disagrees with the governors and would like to see a school retained.
In all cases, closure is to be regretted because of the impact on the community. The school is a meeting place. Some places where schools have closed have managed to retain them as community meeting places, but the loss of children from the village during the day is serious. They no longer put on the events they used to in the villages where the schools were situated—dramatic activities, re-enactments and so on, and music at church and chapel events. Many people prefer to see children in the village, morning and afternoon, going to and from school. The village becomes very quiet when there are no longer children going to and from school or voices from the playing fields at break time. That takes something out of a village.
The problem, in Northumberland at any rate, is not some bureaucratic and draconian policy of getting rid of schools, but a shortage of children and young families. Young families cannot afford to live in many of our villages; with low local wages and the price of houses, property is well beyond their reach. Houses are attractive to people coming to retire and those who want second homes and so are beyond the reach of local people.
Of course, many rural council houses have also been sold over the years. We therefore need to replace housing stock for young families in our villages. I repeat the point that I made in my earlier intervention: we must not let a sudden panic about planning policy lead people to the conclusion that no development can take place in rural areas. We need communities to have a life in the future, and that means having affordable housing for young families in villages, as well as workshops and other places where trades and activities can continue. It also means ensuring that we have other housing in villages, because we want communities to be mixed. Newcomers often bring life to a village and are often among the most active supporters of local institutions. We need to sustain our villages.
There are always a few children left—those of farmers and farm workers—but life becomes that much more difficult for them when there are no other children in the village, and the village is almost devoid of young families.
Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)
I entirely share my right hon. Friend’s analysis that we cannot allow our rural communities to become fossilised and our villages to stop moving forward in time. Does he agree that the Localism Act 2011 and the community right to build represent an avenue that some villages will enjoy exploring as they grow? The register of assets of community value is another important provision that local communities can use in safeguarding some of the services, in addition to schools, that hon. Members have talked about.
Sir Alan Beith
Those measures, which the Government have introduced, are very welcome. People in the villages in my constituency are actively pursuing all those angles to ensure that local services continue to be provided. They have put a lot of effort into improving village halls, turning former schools into village halls and putting together schemes to help remaining schools, to work closely with them and to use community assets jointly with them. An awful can be done, but there need to be people to do it and young families to participate.
Let me give one salutary warning. The school in one village in my constituency closed many years ago. Later, there was some housing development. As a result, a busload of children now go from the village to another one five miles away because there is no school. Circumstances change, and we should think more often, when the situation allows, about reopening schools or even opening new schools in village communities that show real growth. That will be the exception, not the norm, but there are cases where such measures are appropriate. However, we need to try to sustain villages, so that our schools can continue.
Even in an area such as Northumberland, where no policy is being pursued directly to the detriment of village schools—that has been the case for some years—village schools are under serious threat. The threat comes from the decline of villages and the way in which the average age in villages is increasing year by year because of a shortage of young families. Safeguarding our village schools is therefore not just important, but part of a wider policy towards rural communities, and it will require great effort in years to come.
The Minister would be surprised—he can see what is coming—if I did not finish by referring to the high school that serves a large rural area of my constituency. Children go to the Duchess high school, in Alnwick, from villages from many miles around. I simply remind him that we are all waiting with bated breath for the school capital programme announcement. We are determined that the school—it is on a split site and in an appalling physical state, but it is a good school—can benefit from that programme as soon as possible.
Farepak
Lord Beith Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Jessica Morden
My hon. Friend is exactly right. There are a whole range of prepayment schemes. She mentioned prepayment for funerals, which is a huge issue that I shall address later.
Farepak customers were on modest incomes, and in October 2006 their Christmas was destroyed. All their carefully saved money disappeared overnight. These are people who did the right thing. They planned how they were going to pay for Christmas, they worked hard all year round, they made their monthly payments and Christmas was going to be sorted. They are predominantly women managing household finances to provide for their families. They were doing what we ask people to do. When Farepak went bust, Christmas was ruined for many. They were on modest incomes and could not get money out of the bank to cover the loss.
The Government owe it to Farepak victims to do the right thing. Farepak is a special case and the Government should step in and help. We did it for Equitable Life victims; quite rightly, the Government are stepping in to the tune of £500 million for them this year. Farepak victims are owed around £38 million. In the same way as we did with the banks, we should send the right signal to savers on modest incomes that their money is safe in the event of bankruptcy.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I commend the hon. Lady for securing the debate. It is important that people are very careful about putting their money in schemes of this kind after the experience of Farepak. Before putting in their money, they should look for firm guarantees such as the banks must now have. Money is precious when it is from a hard-earned small income.
Jessica Morden
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that intervention. Obviously, that is where the CPA and self-regulation come in. Many of the Farepak victims that I have spoken to saved with friends because they trusted them. We must address the whole issue in the industry.
Despite all that has happened to her and her friends, the priority of my constituent, Mrs Deborah Harvey, is to ensure that the situation never happens again. On behalf of her and many others, I say to the Minister that Farepak victims want justice, adequate compensation, enhanced regulation for all firms engaged in prepayment schemes, and key figures in Farepak to be held accountable for what they did. That is how we shall ensure that decent people doing the right thing never again lose out in that way.
New Schools
Lord Beith Excerpts(12 years, 7 months ago)
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Michael Gove
I am very grateful to the hon. Lady. I know she has returned to the Back Benches, so may I say on a personal note that I thought she was a distinguished member of the shadow Cabinet and that she has fought amazingly hard for her constituency? Her question absolutely gets to the nub of it. I am delighted that we are supporting the new Victoria Park academy and that it is linked with Mossbourne academy. I will continue to work with the Learning Trust in Hackney and will ask the new chief inspector, whoever he or she may be, to keep a special eye on that borough. I am sure that he or she, whoever they may be, will join me and ensure that it is at the top of their agenda.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
Will my right hon. Friend assure me that spending on free schools will not endanger the funding that is needed to replace those schools that were left out of the previous Government’s programme and are in a desperate state, such as the Duchess’s community high school in Alnwick?
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Beith Excerpts(12 years, 12 months ago)
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Michael Gove
I will say two things. First, I recognise that many schools are in a desperately poor condition and need investment. Secondly, any question about investment can only elicit the reply that the Minister of State, Department for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb) gave earlier, which is that when Opposition Members ask for more investment, they should ask themselves one question: who is responsible for the desperate state of the economy that we inherited after 13 years of comprehensive mismanagement?
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
My right hon. Friend made his own personal assessment of the state of the buildings at the Duchess’s community high school in Alnwick, and he pronounced them to be pretty dreadful. When will there be a capital programme to which we can bid for those schools that are most urgently in need of rebuilding?
Michael Gove
My right hon. Friend has made his case consistently and well. I hope to make an announcement about our response to the James review before Parliament rises for the summer recess. That will give explicit details about how we can make available resources for schools whose condition and fabric deserve urgent attention.
Post-16 Education Funding
Lord Beith Excerpts(13 years, 1 month ago)
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Michael Gove
That is fair point. The hon. Gentleman was previously the principal of a very successful further education college. As he will know, many FE colleges simply do not have the facilities to be able to provide free school meals; they do not have the cafeterias or kitchens in place. What we need to do is ensure that students who are attending FE colleges have the money they need so that if they are travelling particular distances and are learning at different times, they receive the support they need—whether it be for subsistence, transport or equipment. We both know that the way in which students learn after the age of 16 is varied and does not follow the same pattern as the normal school day. That is why the provision has to be flexible in order to ensure that the very poorest receive the support they need.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
While I welcome the Secretary of State’s announcement on targeted assistance, may I remind him that he has seen for himself the inadequate conditions in which high school pupils in Alnwick are taught. When is he going to make an announcement about the capital scheme so that a bid can be put in to help provide a new school?
Michael Gove
My right hon. Friend makes a fair point and we shall make an announcement shortly. I am sorry that we have not yet been able to provide additional support for the Duchess’s high school in Alnwick. As he knows, that school was not supported under the old Building Schools for the Future scheme, but we hope that the new method of allocating capital for schools, which we will announce, will allow those whose buildings were neglected by the last Government to receive support.
Building Schools for the Future
Lord Beith Excerpts(13 years, 3 months ago)
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Michael Gove
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for the way in which he responds to the judgment. He refers to an abuse of power, but he will be familiar with the fact that “abuse of power” is a judicial term that has been in use since 1603 and, in particular, has been applied in judicial review cases since 1985. It has been applied to Cabinet Ministers on both sides of the House. It is a matter of open debate that judicial review is there to ensure that decisions taken by Cabinet Ministers can be reviewed in the Court. As I said, I was delighted that in this case, on the substantive points, the judicial review found in the Government’s favour.
The right hon. Gentleman asks whether all relevant submissions will be published. All relevant submissions were disclosed in the proceedings and looked at by Mr Justice Holman. He had an opportunity, unlike the right hon. Gentleman, to read the evidence and concluded that the judgment that we made was entirely rational, and he backed us on the substance.
The right hon. Gentleman asks about legal advice that referred to the fact that councils had a strong case. That legal advice, as I have informed him and other right hon. and hon. Members, referred specifically to the 32 sample schools in the 14 local authorities that we consulted. All of those sample schools went ahead. The consultation was right and proper in that respect. I am afraid that, as is so often the case, he is misinformed, jumped to a conclusion and, as a result of asking a question to which he knows the answer is not the one he anticipated, has sadly made another mistake.
The judge acted in accordance with all the evidence and found that, on the substance, the right decision was taken. An opportunity now exists for me to review the decisions in the six local authority areas. As I have said before, I intend to do so in an open-minded way and to take advantage of the judge’s direction in order to hear their case.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
When the Secretary of State carries out that review, will he keep in mind the claims of those schools that were excluded from the Building Schools for the Future programme and might be in more urgent need of repair than those that were included, such as the Duchess’s community high school in Alnwick?
Michael Gove
My right hon. Friend makes a very good point. One of the weaknesses of the way in which Building Schools for the Future was designed was that it did not prioritise schools on the basis of dilapidation; they were prioritised according to other, political criteria. There are of course schools in Building Schools for the Future areas which are in desperate need of renovation, but there are also schools outside those areas, such as the Duchess’s school in Alnwick, which are in a similarly dilapidated state—a consequence of the failure to invest money efficiently over the past 13 years.
Oral Answers to Questions
Lord Beith Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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Mr Prisk
Let me assure the hon. Gentleman that we are working very closely both with the outgoing RDA teams, to whom I am grateful for their co-operation and collaboration, and with the incoming local enterprise partnerships. There might be stumbles along the way, because this is a complex path, but I am determined to ensure that we do our best to encourage growth and remove the barriers to growth, especially in the north-east.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
I warmly welcome the Government’s announcement today that there will be an LEP for the whole north-east apart from Teesside, which already has one, but will the Minister discuss with the Minister responsible for tourism and heritage the transitional problems facing the tourism industry? Its promotional work, uniquely in the north-east, was directly operated by the RDA, One NorthEast, and the business-led alternative will need some transitional help.
Mr Prisk
Given my right hon. Friend’s expertise in the area, I would be happy to talk not only to the Minister but to my right hon. Friend himself, in order to ensure that we get the balance right. There is a good opportunity before us, and managing the transition needs a little care and patience, so I shall be happy to work with my right hon. Friend.
Public Accounts Committee Report (CAFCASS)
Lord Beith Excerpts(13 years, 6 months ago)
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Margaret Hodge
I am extremely puzzled by the allegation that has been made by the hon. Lady’s constituent about the veracity or otherwise of reports that are considered by the courts. I think that it would be inappropriate for me to comment on that, but I urge her to take it up through the appropriate mechanisms, because it is clearly an area of concern.
The Committee had grave concerns as to whether CAFCASS was fit for purpose. We all accept that it was hugely difficult for CAFCASS when it was faced with a 34% increase in the number of care cases, but in our view it was ill-prepared to respond appropriately and the reasons for that failure go beyond the crisis created by the sudden influx of new cases. The facts established by the NAO, and accepted by the permanent secretary in signing off the NAO report, cause us grave concern. At the height of the crisis, it was taking 40 days on average to allocate fully a care case to a family court adviser. I understand that it currently takes 27 days—nearly a month in a child’s life—just to start the work that will lead to a decision for that child’s future. The goal that CAFCASS has set for itself is to allocate cases within two days, but two years after the end of the baby Peter case in the courts, CAFCASS is still not meeting its own standard.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
The report and what the right hon. Lady is now saying are depressingly similar to what we in the then Select Committee on Constitutional Affairs said in 2003, which led to the removal of the entire board of CAFCASS. Does she think that what she is now describing can be resolved by changes at the top, either at board level or in senior management, or do we also have to look at whether the remit and work of CAFCASS can be refocused as part of the family law review?
Margaret Hodge
As the right hon. Gentleman will know, I was the Children’s Minister when his Committee considered that report. We had hoped that putting in a new chief executive and a new board would enable the organisation to manage the transition to the new arrangements and provide an effective service for children. It is particularly depressing in coming back to this issue a few years later to find that that has not taken place. I agree with the implication of his assertion—the time has probably therefore come to review the arrangements that were put in place and to see whether they are appropriate to ensure the proper care of children. I take that point seriously.
CAFCASS’s ability to respond to private law cases, where demand is still increasing, was also woefully inadequate. One third of the section 7 reports required by the courts are more than 10 days late and CAFCASS also faces the ongoing challenge of an ever-increasing number of open care cases remaining on its books. At the end of September, CAFCASS had nearly 12,000 open care cases—over 2,500 more than a year before.
During 2009-10, CAFCASS reached an agreement with the judiciary which enabled it to prioritise new and delayed cases, to introduce a duty system to support the courts in care cases and to write fewer reports in private law cases. All sides agree that, although those temporary changes were necessary, they were not desirable and the duty system for public law cases did not serve the needs of children well. The guidance underpinning those practices has now been amended to minimise the use of duty guardians, but that simply adds to my Committee’s concerns about the capacity of CAFCASS as an organisation to respond to the demands placed on it.
Margaret Hodge
I urge the Government, as they are considering financial cuts to services across the board, not to place at risk the response we should collectively make to the needs of the most vulnerable young people in our society.
Question put and agreed to.
Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)
On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. We are all grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for enabling the Select Committee report to be presented, but I hope you will encourage the various parties involved, including the Backbench Business Committee, to review the procedure. Perhaps a little longer is required—such as a half-hour slot—in order that the Chairman may present the whole case and then take questions, including from the Minister. I saw that he tried to intervene. On behalf of Committee Chairs in general, I would like to encourage further consideration of the exact procedure to be followed for this excellent innovation.
Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)
I thank the right hon. Gentleman for that point of order. I have been an MP for 18 years and we seem constantly to be modernising the House. This procedure is embryonic—this is the first time we have followed it—and I am sure that the Backbench Business Committee will reconsider it and consider what changes need to be made to make it more effective. I agree with his comments about the first running of the procedure; it was very useful.