Covid-19: Children

Lord Bird Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bird (CB)]

I declare my interests as in the register around homelessness, because I would like to bring us to an unsavoury report that I read this morning from the National Residential Landlords Association which says that about 800,000 families in tenancies are behind in their rent. This figure has increased by 82% since we entered the Covid-19 crisis.

Imagine what is going to happen to hundreds of thousands of children if we allow them to slip into homelessness. What will that do to our schools and the problems that are thrown up? These are the kind of figures that are hidden in homelessness. I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news. At the Big Issue, I worked with 7,000 to 9,000 people and about 12,000 children a year who had gone through homelessness. There are about 120,000 children who live in temporary accommodation and another 90,000 who are living the life of a sofa surfer. Imagine the damage that does to the lives of our children. What are we going to do about that? What are we going to do to stop something happening that has never happened before? Those children were in some ways socially prepared for the laws of unintended consequences because their parents had fallen out of being able to provide for the family. What we have now is hundreds of thousands of families who are not socially prepared. They are not the people who sell the Big Issue; they are the people who read it. We have got this coming down the line.

I am sorry: every time I stand up in this House, I nearly always return to the same problem. When will the Government produce a road map to show that they will make sure that people will not be allowed to slip into homelessness, that children will not be damaged and that the hundreds of thousands will be kept in their homes, looked after in their homes, given social security and have their rent or mortgage paid if they do the right thing? If they slip into homelessness, the costs go up by two or three times. It is much cheaper to keep somebody in their home than to push them into the social treacle of homelessness.

How do we stop hundreds of thousands of children slipping into homelessness, getting depressed, being broken for maybe two generations and taking for ever to get out of it? What we do is convince the Government and the Treasury that it is much cheaper to mend the problem and to put a fence at the top of the hill and not an ambulance at the bottom—because that is what in some ways they are preparing for. They will shift large amounts of money into local authorities so that we can have more and more temporary accommodation. What does temporary accommodation do to a child’s mind? All the questions of education will go out of the window.

I am here once again to remind the Government: please, do this for our children. Stop our children slipping into homelessness and becoming the flotsam and jetsam that whoever is running the Big Issue in 10, 20 or 30 years’ time will have to take on.

Education Recovery

Lord Bird Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, in respect of the premium of £650 million that I mentioned, although it is weighted, the schools can choose how they spend that money. In respect of tutoring provision, which is school-led, schools can choose to spend that, for instance, on one-on-one provision for SEND children who are in mainstream settings. We have weighted a number of these per-pupil pots but, of course, we trust the schools and school leaders, who are obviously closest to the pupils, to know how to spend that money, what tutoring provision to buy, or whether to run a summer school specifically for SEND children.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, to give a slightly different angle to this problem, 400,000 people may fall homeless in the next period according to the Rowntree Foundation, and 1 million people have been warned that they may be evicted. If this hits schools, imagine the damage it will do to the children who are the most dispossessed, as well as those who are living slightly above the level of dispossession but may also be drawn into that. Will the Minister raise these issues with other Ministers? This is becoming a desperate situation.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, when children and their families are at risk of homelessness, there are obviously certain obligations on the school. A child can be removed from a school register only for specified reasons that the school must outline. If schools do not know of such reasons, they have to liaise with local authorities and make inquiries to be satisfied that the child is on a school register elsewhere. If the child is not on another register, they are a child missing from education. So we have processes in place to track children to make sure they are in education, but I will pass on the noble Lord’s comments to colleagues in MHCLG in relation to homelessness.

Covid-19: Women

Lord Bird Excerpts

Wednesday 10th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I outlined in my original Answer two of the round tables that I have held. Additionally, I held a wonderful virtual meeting for National Apprenticeship Week with some women apprentices who were mainly in STEM roles. I have also met with the women’s youth council. We are looking at the impact, and in those sectors that my noble friend outlines, there has been significant economic support.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

The received wisdom increasingly is that you must be nearer to the problem to come up with something that makes it work better. With the SAGE committee being only 22% women, while we know that women will be hit harder and harder because of Covid-19, that women were caring for the children during home-schooling, and that it will hit women in the years to come, is it not possible to move forward the whole argument about women being involved in the decision-making and not leave it almost exclusively to a male world?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the increasing need for women to be represented at all levels of decision-making is taken as read by the Government. It has been pleasing to see that at the forefront of fighting the pandemic it has often been women, when you look at the NHS workforce and the education workforce. I can only pay tribute to those now household names, Sarah Gilbert and Kate Bingham, who have been at the forefront of developing the vaccine that we are so grateful for.

Covid-19: Social Mobility

Lord Bird Excerpts

Monday 7th December 2020 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Bird]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the implications of their policies to address the COVID-19 pandemic for social mobility in England.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education and Department for International Trade (Baroness Berridge) (Con)]

My Lords, social mobility is at the core of the department’s policies. The Government remain dedicated to ensuring that every child and young person will gain the opportunity to succeed and we are committed to providing them with the necessary skills and knowledge. That is why the Government have given unprecedented support, including the £1 billion catch-up fund, to help to tackle the attainment gap, along with an investment of over £195 million on technology to support remote education and access to online social care.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

My Lords, I am glad to hear that we are trying to address the question of what is being called the potential lost generation, who may not get the chance of social mobility through education and work that others have had. But there is another lost generation and I would like the department to look at the possibility of addressing the 35% of children who we are already fail at school. Those are not my figures but those of the noble Baroness’s department. We fail those who leave school having had nothing that you could call an education. They fill our prisons and our A&E departments and join our long-term unemployed and working poor, and they die younger because they do not have any social mobility. May I suggest that this is the time for building back better so that we can address this lost generation that is already with us?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord is correct that we want to make sure to avoid this potential loss for young people, and education is of course a major protective factor in their lives. However, more disadvantaged students are in better schools than they were in 2010, with 86% of our schools being “good” or “outstanding”. During the pandemic, many school leaders have gone above and beyond the call of duty to ensure that disadvantaged students can catch up. Just one of the initiatives is that as of April, any adult who does not have a level 3 qualification can go to an FE college or other college or institution and get their first qualification at that level.

Covid-19: Social Mobility

Lord Bird Excerpts

Tuesday 21st July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, along with the catch-up package, it was announced that schools will be equipped with Teach First summer school resources and that £7 million will go towards holiday activities and clubs. However, my noble friend is correct in what she said about students taking exams next year. That is why disadvantaged year 10 students are among those who will be provided with one of the 200,000 laptops we have had delivered.

[Lord Bird (CB)]

Is the Minister aware that if we do not extend the ban on evictions beyond 23 August, we will have an enormous amount of downward social mobility, with children and their parents moving into poverty, homelessness and fecklessness? I would like to see all the departments working together to stop hundreds and thousands of children falling into homelessness and having their futures destroyed.

[Baroness Berridge]

My Lords, I assure the noble Lord that Covid recovery is of course a cross-government priority. In relation to housing matters, he will be aware that the working families tax credit was increased by an additional £1,000 and that changes were made to local housing allowances during this period.