Lord Dubs
Main Page: Lord Dubs (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Dubs's debates with the Department for Education
(13 years ago)
Lords ChamberMy Lords, local authorities are facing challenging financial circumstances, but we believe that they understand the crucial importance of children’s centres for early intervention. Good authorities are restructuring with care, and many are keeping all their children’s centres open. The Government have retained statutory duties requiring local authorities to provide sufficient children’s centres, and my department is monitoring the situation with local authorities.
My Lords, does the Minister agree that Sure Start centres have been an effective way of tackling child poverty and improving social mobility? Will the Minister agree that the Government have made repeated promises that Sure Start centres will not be cut, and that it is not acceptable to give such undertakings and then blame local authorities when those projects could easily have been ring-fenced by the Government? Was it not an act of dishonesty by the Government to cut Sure Start centres?
First, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, about the important role that children’s centres can play in helping to tackle disadvantage and helping young children to get off to the best possible start. On his second point, we have put money into the early intervention grant to pay for a network of Sure Start children’s centres, but we have a difference of opinion with the party opposite about whether those services are best delivered by local authorities with flexibility about how to spend the money—which is what I think local authorities are keen to have—or whether it is delivered through a ring fence. We took the view that we put the money in and then give local authorities the discretion to make the decisions themselves.