Children: Care Homes

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, it is clear that the local authority has the primary statutory duty to safeguard children. More than 80% of our children’s homes are good or outstanding in Ofsted terms, but the noble Lord is correct. Schools are a vital part of the system and are the second largest reporter to children’s social care, and of course they should be keeping clear attendance figures to know where those children are.

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, can the Minister say a little more about the decision for the new system not to proceed with formal police liaison with local authorities for out-of-area care? There are so many people involved in care, and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, along with the College of Policing, quite clearly recommends that local authorities notify the relevant police force in an out-of-area placement. I just do not understand it. The explanation that the Government give in their document about removing the formal liaison with the police is not very satisfactory. Will she say a little more about that government decision?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, there is guidance for local authorities when they are going to place a child in out-of-area care. A placement should always be governed by what is the most appropriate provision for the young person. Many of the facilities in which children are placed, such as Centrepoint and St Basils, are high-quality provision. I will write to the noble Lord in regard to the more specific question he asked about notifying the police authority to which the young person has been moved.

Covid-19: Children

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend on her brilliant introduction. It was devastatingly analytical and, at the same time, incredibly positive.

All was not well before Covid-19. Since 2010, the Tory Government have been systematically attacking the poor and disadvantaged of all ages. The single fact that, since 2010, life expectancy has stalled for the first time in over 100 years tells it all. Among other issues, this means that the grandparents of today’s children are not living as long as they would have done before 2010.

The brief from the National Literacy Trust makes the telling point that, before the second and third lockdowns, all year groups had experienced around a two-month reading loss, leading to poor language skills, which impacts on achievements and employment prospects. At five, poor language skills are linked to behavioural and mental health problems in later life. The trust also concludes that

“the link between poverty, educational attainment and basic skills is stronger in England than in any other developed country.”

I ask the Minister why this is.

We have not all been in this together during Covid-19—here I am using Build Back Fairer: The Covid-19 Marmot Review. Has the Minister actually read this? If not, has anyone in government read it? It is full of questions and answers at the same time. I can touch on only a part of what it points up in early years and education:

“Many early years settings in more deprived areas are at risk of closure and of having to make staff redundant as a result of containment measures”.


Compared to children from wealthier backgrounds,

“More disadvantaged children were disproportionately harmed by closures in the following ways … Greater loss of learning time … Less access to online learning and educational resources … Less access to private tutoring and additional educational materials … Inequalities in the exam grading systems … Children with special educational needs and their families were particularly disadvantaged through school closures … School funding continues to benefit schools in least disadvantaged areas the most—widening educational outcomes”.


There has also been unequal access to laptops and technology, leaving schools in deprived areas less able to provide online learning, with the more deprived students having less space to study at home. These are all specific to Covid-19.

The Tory attack started in 2010. The Marmot Review 10 Years On report makes points about cuts in Sure Start and children’s centres, the

“low rates of pay and … low level of qualification required in the childcare workforce”,

big increases in exclusions from both primary and secondary schools, and that school student numbers have risen but funding per student has decreased by 8% per student. At the same time, there is evidence that it is quite possible to break the link between deprivation and poor early years development.

The severe cuts to school funding in England meant that this did not provide a sound footing to support early years development and educational attainment through Covid-19 lockdowns in an equitable way. That is clear for all to see and has been a theme of all the speeches today. The base was very low before the pandemic.

I was astonished to find out that the UK ranks only 27th out of 38 countries in child well-being on UNICEF report card 16, which ranks OECD countries using just three measures: mental well-being, physical health, and academic and social skills. So the UK was doing badly before Covid-19. It is not an excuse for the post-2010 Tory attack on the poor and least advantaged, but it has made matters worse.

So what should we do? In Build Back Fairer—and we should be concentrating on building back fairer—Marmot lists some recommendations. I conclude with these long-term, medium-term and short-term actions to give every child the best start in life, such as: prioritising reducing inequalities in early years; increasing spending on early years to the OECD average; increasing the pay and qualification requirements for the childcare workforce; additional government support for early years settings; and better access to parenting support programmes.

It was George Osborne who set the style of 2010 cuts on their way, with his slogan not to build social housing because

“it just creates Labour voters”.

I am still looking for the one-nation Tory Government we can work. I cannot see it yet.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Rooker Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I agree very much with a lot of what the noble Baroness, Lady Stroud, has just said. But I shall be listening to the Minister respond—I hope—to the questions from the noble Lords, Lord Willetts and Lord Puttnam, and to the point that the noble Lord, Lord Layard, made about the cuts.

Of course, I must welcome what was—no doubt about it—an awesome maiden speech from the noble Baroness, Lady Black of Strome. I fully admit that I had read about her in the past and was in awe of what she was doing and what she had achieved. Her speech was absolutely magnificent.

First, I declare my interests—no, let us do the Lords’ interests. At present, there are about a dozen ex or current university vice-chancellors in the Lords and, last time I checked, over 40 university chancellors. I am unaware of any leader or ex-leader of further education being in the Lords. The noble Lord, Lord Layard, made the point about the cuts to FE. If that had happened in higher education, there were 40 chancellors waiting in the Lords to pounce on Ministers.

In 12 years in government, in several departments, I never met a civil servant who had further education experience and, as far as I am aware, no one in the Cabinet has been through further education. It is a bold claim, of course, but I doubt that many Members of the House have had actual FE experience as a student—and as for the Commons, such experience today would be a rarity. This makes the Bill even more important. It is concerned with important aspects of life that policymakers and lawmakers have no hands-on experience of. Those are not quite the criteria to get it right.

I left secondary technical school in 1957. There were two such 13-plus schools in Birmingham, one specialising in engineering at Handsworth and the other in Bournville specialising in construction. It is amazing: these are of course two of the sectors where there are skills gaps existing now that this Bill is supposed to address, but there were only ever two technical schools in Birmingham. I did three years day release in further education while I was doing my indentured apprenticeship for a mechanical engineering Ordinary National Certificate, and two nights a week to get my endorsements in electrical and English—although I suspect I never really made it in the latter.

In the FE college at the time, there was abundant adult education, as there was in some secondary schools. For many years in the period 1972 to 1997, I served on the board of an FE college, so I was aware at first hand of the changes from pure technical skill to a more comprehensive range of courses, and the change from local authority control. I think our first action on the board, post local authority, was to change the name of the college so that people knew where it was. This was far more important than it sounds, by the way, from a marketing point of view.

In some ways, I missed the phase where colleges became more competitive and aggressive, and indeed remote from their communities—although I was shocked, when taking over from my friend the late Lord Corbett of Castle Vale as chair of the local community organisation, by the negative approach of a city centre further education college to a campus at Castle Vale. That was caused purely by remoteness.

I freely admit I am now more out of date, but I want the Government to succeed in this endeavour for the good of the country—as the noble Lord, Lord Puttnam, said, this is not a political Bill. But I fear a further narrowing of the existing provision and curriculum. It appears the educator voice is missing, which cannot be a surprise given my introductory remarks, and there is clearly no accountability to communities. I am not, however, fearful of employer involvement in courses. This was very strongly the case in the 1950s and 1970s, but employers are not the same. Today they are more “here today, gone tomorrow” than in the days before our deindustrialisation. Some strategic stability is required and therefore a partnership with educators is vital—and I have to say that I think this should include professional organisations such as the chartered institutions. I do not think anybody has referred to those today. They were crucial in FE, in awarding certificates, along with the old Ministry of Education.

The range of courses has got utterly out of control due to the market. But we need to be careful about classifying qualifications that have so-called “low economic value” and therefore restricting choice and flexibility. Low economic value to one can be the salvation for another new enterprise or product. We have an unequal nation where levelling up is not I hope intended to make us all the same, but we need to ensure that the Bill works for more diverse, non-traditional cohorts of students.

Further education, unlike higher education—I have a mixed experience of a sandwich course at a college of advanced technology and then, after a 10-year gap, post-graduate work—can be more transformative. It can help build the alert democracy and support the aspirations of all, going well beyond skills preparation for jobs. For some, it may be the only route to any qualifications they ever obtain, but there needs to be LA involvement, maybe through the mayors. We ignore our local capacity at our peril. Indeed, I once read that a nation’s greatest asset was the capacity and willingness of its people to work. This Bill must improve our human asset base.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I welcome both maiden speakers today and I wish the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth a long, happy and busy retirement away from the House.

It looks like another year lost for the reform of social care, and I make no apology for concentrating on that issue. It is another year when people who are self-funding their care pay well over the odds for care —by which, I mean 40%—compared with those funded by local authorities in the same care home with the same services. This means that the family home is likely to be sold earlier than if there was a fairer system. It is surprising that more is not made of this, but I think it remains unchallenged due to the circumstances involved in securing care in the first place.

The situation completely undermines the 2019 Tory manifesto claim that

“one condition we do make is that nobody needing care should be forced to sell their home to pay for it”.

Furthermore, there has been no action on that manifesto commitment to

“build a cross-party consensus to bring forward an answer that solves the problem”.

No work has been done; there has been no reaching out; no one wants to be accused of the death tax allegation which snuffed out earlier attempts. The Government claim that they are talking; the Opposition claim that they are not. We are not being told what is going on in any detail by either the Opposition or the Government. In short, we are not being told the truth.

The Lords Economic Affairs Committee report, Social Care Funding: Time to End a National Scandal, set it all out in mid-2019. The opening words of the debate on that report, on 28 January this year, from the chair, the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, said it all— I shall quote just four sentences:

“We published our report in July 2019, and yet, 18 months later, we still await the Government’s response … ‘With each delay the level of unmet need in the system increases, the pressure on unpaid carers grows stronger, the supply of care providers diminishes and the strain on the care workforce continues.’ Just 20 days after our report was published, the Prime Minister stood on the steps of Downing Street and said ‘we will fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared to give every older person the dignity and security they deserve.’ Now, more than ever, urgent government action is required”.—[Official Report, 28/1/21; cols. GC 235-36.]


In fact, the Prime Minister was more specific than his now famous quote indicates, because he actually said:

“My job is to protect you or your parents or grandparents from the fear of having to sell your home to pay for the costs of care.”


That was a very carefully crafted first speech as Prime Minister, not a one-off, off the cuff ramble. Was he telling the truth?

The Chancellor claims that lack of consensus over funding is a significant barrier to reform—an excuse that the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, translates as,

“I don’t want to spend the money”.—[Official Report, 28/1/21; col. GC 237.]


As with healthcare, we need to share the risk, because no one can be sure or certain whether they will ever need social care. So it is a requirement to help those who can help themselves as well as those who cannot. And, of course, it needs a new stream of funding, such as national insurance payable on all incomes and for all ages—because, like many people, I had many years after the age of 65 still working on PAYE and not paying national insurance—or a small step up in taxes, say 1%, when you reach the age of 40. Without a specific financial cap on self-funding, it is impossible to remove the fear the Prime Minister spoke of.

Social care may have featured in the Queen’s Speech, but not in a positive way: the Peter Brookes cartoon in today’s Times says it all. The reality is that care homes are going to go bust. Some care homes will move to being available only for self-funders. Caring is therefore not a career option. There is no structure and it will always be on low pay. The failure to act is, indeed, in the words of the report of the House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee, “a national scandal”.

International Women’s Day

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Lord Rooker (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I watched the International Women’s Day address to the European Parliament by the New Zealand Prime Minister. She made some very clear points, including that

“Covid makes clear we are interdependent… no country is safe until all are safe…. the team is not five million New Zealanders but 7.8 billion worldwide… the pandemic has exacerbated structural inequalities between men and women”,

and that

“there is a ‘shadow pandemic’ of domestic violence”.

Here in the UK, before Covid, over 4 million children were living in poverty, which is 30%, or nine in a class of 30. The pandemic has caused jobs losses and insecurity. The poorest are suffering the most. Cardiff Women’s Centre reports that there is a clear relationship between gender and poverty, with women overrepresented in the poverty statistics. The Fawcett Society points out that 64% of the low-paid are women, that there are four times more women in part-time work than men, that women are more likely to receive lower rates of pay, that women are more likely to be single parents— that is nine out of 10—and that there are more child responsibilities and less chance of full-time employment. Department of Work and Pensions statistics reveal that 52% of children in single-parent families are poor, and, as the New Zealand Prime Minister stated, there is a shadow pandemic of domestic violence. We know from research by Refuge that an extra 1.6 million women in the UK suffered economic abuse during the pandemic.

During Covid, clearly women are suffering most. Household food insecurity was on the increase before the pandemic, according to the Food Foundation’s report, The Impact of Covid-19 on Household Food Security. Covid has left more struggling to afford or access a nutritious diet. The Food Foundation states:

“Households with children have been hit hard, with many children still falling through the cracks in support.”


The foundation also found evidence that:

“Covid-19 has dramatically widened inequalities in food security”.


The current picture is that 4.7 million adults—9%—experienced food insecurity in the past six months. There are 2.3 million children living in these households, which is 12% of households with children, and 41% of households with children on free school meals have experienced food insecurity in the past six months. From my earlier points it is clear that women are in more than a shadow pandemic of domestic violence; along with their children, they are also in one of food poverty.

The recent report Build Back Fairer: The Covid-19 Marmot Review made the point, in figure 2 on page 13, that the ratio of deaths of those limited due to longstanding health issues compared to those who were not meant that deaths were 2.4 times higher for females and 1.9 times higher for males from 2 March to 15 May 2020. That says an awful lot.

Before I finish, I have two international points regarding women. The Government pulling aid out of Afghanistan will lead to women being denied schooling and careers once the Taliban is back in charge. Is that what the British Armed Forces made sacrifices for? I was also very impressed to see the up-to-date briefing from MAG, the Mines Advisory Group. The effect of landmines on women and girls is catastrophic, be they directly affected or as a result of being widowed or carers. A growing number of MAG staff are women, over 1,000—more than 25%—across 25 countries. Will the Government commit to maintaining their investments in mine action?

Secretary of State for International Trade: Visits

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Monday 30th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Fairhead]

I thank the noble Viscount for his question. We have announced the creation of nine Her Majesty’s trade commissioners. It is a pretty important role. We are trying to coordinate all the opportunities we have from UK companies exporting to overseas markets. They are very high level trade commissioners. Five of them have already been appointed and generally, they have been recognised as people of extreme competence who will have a real impact. Their role is to make sure that other nations are very aware of the capabilities we have in our country. We are very clear that our export strategy needs to be linked to our industrial strategy, so that the world can benefit from what we can provide in the UK and is made aware of the skills and expertise in this nation.

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

Will the Minister remind the Secretary of State before he next visits the United States—which he been to more than once—that food poisoning cases per head of population in the United States are 10 times the figure in the UK? In 2016, 450 people in the United States died from salmonella and in the last five-year period for which figures are available in the UK, no one died of salmonella. We will not want to be importing American eggs.

[Baroness Fairhead]

My Lords, I hope I have been clear at the Dispatch Box before that food standards will remain paramount. We are very clear that the safety and health of people in this country is paramount, so we have been clear that food safety standards, as well as environmental standards, will be maintained at the highest level.

United States Tariffs: Steel and Aluminium

Lord Rooker Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Rooker (Lab)]

I remind the Minister that the Secretary of State, whose Statement she has just repeated, has in the past, when talking about trade deals with the United States, mentioned agricultural products. Last week, President Trump—in one of his tweets; not in an official government statement—also linked agricultural products with the very issue of steel and aluminium. Can the Minister give a categoric assurance that the UK Government will not sell out the UK agricultural industry in order to get a deal over steel and aluminium?

[Baroness Fairhead]

Regarding the idea that this is in the national interest, we have been clear that the EU assessment is a safeguard. We are trying to stop this happening in the first place and trying to get exemptions. We are taking this forward through engagement, and we will need to create a list of measures with the EU that we will take on a proportionate basis if we do not progress. My sense is that the best thing we can do is to work on global steel capacity multilaterally. I think that that was the view of this Government and your Lordships’ House, who believe in that rules-based environment.