Lord Campbell-Savours
Main Page: Lord Campbell-Savours (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Campbell-Savours's debates with the Department for Education
(6 years, 11 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy noble friend makes a very good point, as local authorities do remain responsible. In holidays there are some facilities that may be able to keep children and we have initiatives to try to extend such arrangements, but it is certainly the case that local authorities continue to be responsible.
My Lords, is it true that this whole programme is being driven by the need to save money, as against placing children in foster care? In so far as we know that only 100 children nationally are now in such placements, surely we should fully evaluate the effect on those children before we proceed further down this route.
It is not driven by money at all; it is driven by a passionate belief by a number of people, including the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, and others who have been to boarding school that it can help and that we had lurched into a certain prejudice against boarding schools. We are just inviting local authorities to look more widely at the options and making much more information available to allow them to evaluate those options.