Children: Development

Lord Collins of Highbury Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Collins of Highbury (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for initiating this debate. She has a tremendous record in the field of child welfare.

The UN high-level panel report based its analysis on five transformative shifts, including the idea of leaving no one behind. I welcome many of the recommendations in the panel’s report, especially the objective to end extreme poverty by 2030 and the bringing together of the sustainability and poverty reduction agendas. The report is an important contribution to the debate about a new covenant for development, but there is still a lot of work to be done to ensure that the new goals and partnerships drive the radical change which is essential if we are to be the generation that ends poverty and safeguards scarce planetary resources.

Many questions still remain on content, financing and accountability, but the principles set out in the outcome document represent a good starting point. Having said that, my hope is that the more ambitious parts of the report, including its call for a stand-alone goal on gender equality and women’s empowerment, will be built on as the negotiations now move forward.

The five shifts I have described are only part of the equation. They help to build momentum to meet our aspirations. However, goals with effective monitoring will ensure that the international community moves in the same direction. As we have heard in this debate, the benefits of investment in early childhood development are strong, but the cost of inaction is also very clear.

Science has demonstrated that early childhood interventions are important because they help to mitigate the impact of adverse early experiences which, if not addressed, lead to poor health, poor educational attainment, economic dependency, increased violence and crime, all of which add to the costs and burdens on society. UNICEF and Save the Children operational research published in 2003 revealed the significant improvement in primary education grade promotion, repetition and drop-out rates attributable to school readiness and ECD programmes.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said, children are central to sustainable development. Decreased child mortality, relatively improved nutrition and school enrolment may give a picture that the world is on track on its promises for children. However, many of the children who are surviving now are not achieving their full developmental potential. According to an estimate, 200 million children around the world are not achieving their potential because they suffer from the negative consequences of poverty, nutritional deficiencies and inadequate learning opportunities. Moreover, 61 million children around the world are out of school and thus at risk. If one digs deeper, beyond national averages, one sees widening disparities among regions and countries and within countries based on wealth, gender and geographic location. In the face of increasing conflict, early childhood development is also considered an entry point for peacebuilding in communities. Furthermore, as we have heard, good early learning programmes can help to build the resilience of children and families in emergency and fragile situations.

Each year, about 19 million children in developing countries are born underweight because of poor growth in the womb. More than 200 million children below the age of five living in low and middle-income countries fail to reach their developmental potential. This failure to ensure that children have access to early childhood development has significant consequences for eradicating global poverty and achieving sustainable development. These twin objectives cannot be achieved when significant numbers of children start life at a disadvantage, one that continues to widen as they grow and develop, and becomes an intergenerational transfer of poverty. Eradicating poverty and achieving sustainable development therefore require that significant attention is paid to early childhood development and that strategies to ensure adequate health, nutrition, stimulation and early learning are part of all programmes to eradicate poverty and achieve sustainable development.

On 22 October in a supplementary Oral Question to the Minister, I referred to evidence that investing in children’s earliest years makes the biggest difference to their lives and to the country’s social and economic fortune. I asked the noble Baroness then whether she would support calls to put early childhood development at the heart of the new post-2015 development framework. In response, the Minister correctly pointed to the illustrative universal goals in the high-level panel report, which highlight the new emphasis on, for example, good nutrition, which is so important in the first 1,000 days of a child’s life, as well as education—not just primary education but a wider scope of education. The noble Baroness suggested that, as concerns for young children are built into a number of the goals, the early childhood development approach can be assumed to be there.

The goals to provide quality education and to ensure a healthy life, food security and good nutrition are strong component parts of a comprehensive approach to early childhood development. However, as the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said, policies and programmes need to be fully comprehensive if the approach is to be carried through. They must also include parenting support, developmental monitoring with early intervention, and childcare.

It is important that we do not let up on making a strong case for these important points of principle at events and debates in the General Assembly throughout 2014. These will set the scene for member state negotiations, which will culminate in the summit in 2015. Will the noble Baroness give us some indication of how the Government plan to highlight these issues leading up to 2015? I, too, would like to see the good examples being highlighted. Can the noble Baroness highlight some of the programmes that the department is currently engaged in to support the provision of a comprehensive approach to early childhood development?

Children are key stakeholders in the future. The evidence shows clearly that investing in children’s earliest years makes the biggest difference to their lives and to a country’s social and economic fortunes. Straying slightly off my remit, I am only sorry that since 2010 many of the Sure Start centres in this country have been closed.