Children: Care Homes

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

I appreciate my noble friend’s concern, but I will have to write to her as I believe that might be a matter for the Home Office or the MoJ, if there is any regulatory regime around child contact centres, which I believe will be for separated parents.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, it was deeply disappointing to see that the first report, published last week, of the MacAlister review of children’s social care, did not champion 16 and 17 year-olds in care, instead following the position of Ministers on unregistered homes. With the Government attempting to defend the indefensible by citing the fact that children aged 16 can marry or enter civil partnerships with parental consent, the Ministry of Justice has announced that it is going to raise the legal minimum age for marriage because, as it says, of the need to protect vulnerable children. Will the Minister finally accept the need to ensure that all under 18s receive care where they live, because all children in care are by definition extremely vulnerable?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the Department for Education has liaised closely with the Ministry of Justice on this policy. A number of 16 and 17 year-olds are remanded with very strict bail conditions pending trial. In those circumstances, there can be difficulties in placing those 16 and 17 year-olds in a family environment. So it is very clear that in that small number of cases, for those reasons—and also taking into account the best interests of that alleged offender—they may be placed in that type of accommodation. The Government are not defending the indefensible, but in certain circumstances, particularly with the risks that those young people may, unfortunately, pose to other children if placed in a children’s home or a family, we need to make sure that that type of accommodation meets national standards and is inspected but is available for that type of situation.

Covid-19: Children

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, we are all indebted to my noble friend Lady Morris for sponsoring this debate and for opening it so passionately and powerfully. I think she has inspired many of the subsequent speakers, because there really has been a high standard of contribution today, including from the Benches opposite. But I have to say that fewer than one-quarter of the speakers were from the governing party, and it will not have escaped the Minister’s attention that, with one exception—there always has to be an outlier, I suppose—the speeches were if not outright critical then certainly not very supportive of what the Government have done thus far for children in the time of the pandemic.

The pandemic exposed deep inequalities in our society, but of course it did not create them, as many noble Lords have said. Child poverty was rising before the pandemic and is set to rise further still. The figures on child poverty have been well referenced and I will not repeat them, but my noble friend Lady Sherlock referenced working poverty, which is in itself a shocking term. For the figure of those classified as being in poverty to encompass 31% of all children in one of the richest countries in the world is nothing short of a national disgrace. And yet it seems the Government just do not really get it.

The Child Poverty Commission was founded in 2010; in 2012, it became the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission. In 2016, “Child Poverty” was dropped from the title. I do not like the term “social mobility”, which suggests that the status quo is somehow tolerable providing that a few people manage to clamber up the ladder a level or two. I prefer “social justice”, which is much more meaningful and a much greater prize if it can be achieved. However, it can stem only from ambition, something which the Government certainly do not have enough of. The impact of poverty on children is well documented. Those from low-income families are much more likely to experience poorer physical and mental health, do less well in school and have fewer social and economic opportunities in the future. The charity Action for Children, one of many children’s charities which sent noble Lords excellent briefings in advance of this debate, established a coronavirus emergency fund. The families which it helped revealed that over one-third of households were experiencing financial pressures due to the increased costs of the pandemic, two-fifths were struggling to feed their children and one-third needed resources for children’s learning and play.

Even when forced to reckon with the scale of child poverty in this country, it seems that the Government are not inclined to help. They did everything they could to avoid providing meals for children outside the school term—in the midst of a pandemic. Even now, the Government’s free school meal plans will cover only 16 of 30 weekdays during the summer. More recently, the DfE changed the way that the pupil premium is calculated, clawing back hundreds of millions of pounds of school funding from the children who need it most. As my noble friend Lady Blower said, this is not a one-off hit for schools as the Government claim; it will come back next year and the year after. Labour’s shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, had to fight tooth and nail to stop the Government cancelling the £20 uplift to universal credit. Even now, the Chancellor is still insisting that the uplift must be scrapped in the autumn, despite the evidence that this will plunge hundreds of thousands more into poverty.

We need to look at urgent support to allow our children to process the events of the past year and to bounce back from them, such as quality, accessible mental health provision and longer-term goals, giving them optimism for what they can achieve in the future. That is why Labour is supporting the National Education Union’s No Child Left Behind campaign on child poverty, to which several noble Lords referred. This needs to be a cross-government effort, recognising the challenge that our children are facing, the opportunities they deserve and the huge potential they have.

The pandemic forced the education system to transform overnight. Schools had to close their doors to the vast majority of children and provide remote learning to millions of pupils. It was pleasing—indeed encouraging —to see the extent to which leaders, teachers, parents and children rose to that challenge. I must mention the reference by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds to his 10 year-old grandson. I certainly recognise the difficulties that he had. I have a 10 year-old, but he is a son not a grandson, so I am not able to go home at the end of the day and reflect on what I have had to do, or have not done. It is very much the blind being led by the enlightened. I am reminded of someone who sees a person out with a great big dog and asks who is taking who for a walk. That question could be asked in much the same way when it comes to me giving my son home tuition.

This enormous effort by everybody connected with education took place almost despite the Government, and that should be a source of shame. Over the course of the pandemic, the Conservatives seem to have treated the nation’s children as an afterthought, consistently failing to safeguard their well-being and learning. They caused chaos and additional stress for A-level, GCSE and BTEC pupils last summer and then failed to put a plan in place for this year’s exams until only weeks before they were due to go ahead. As noble Lords have heard, over 1 million children were left without adequate access to an electronic device for months, unable to take part in remote learning. In contrast, Labour’s vision is to make Britain the best place to grow up, by prioritising children’s well-being, education and life chances. On Tuesday, noble Lords discussed the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. If our young people are to have not just the opportunity to develop the skills for the economy of the future but the ability to do so, the building blocks need to be put in place now. As my noble friend Lady McIntosh said, that will not happen under the present narrow national curriculum. I regret having to say to her—I am sure she is aware of it anyway—that the problem will intensify if the Government’s plans to restructure initial teacher training on the basis of political ideology come to fruition. As my noble friend Lord Puttnam said, many of us will meet that threat head-on.

Noble Lords will have received the briefing paper from the Child Poverty Action Group. The package of measures set out by shadow Secretary of State Kate Green two weeks ago very much echoes those plans for extended schools, where services are delivered that go beyond the core function of a classroom education for children within the normal school day. Schools need to be given the resources to provide every child with new opportunities to socialise, learn and develop post-pandemic working to reverse the widening gap in learning. With extra-curricular activities, mental health support in schools and small-group teaching available to all pupils who will benefit, Labour’s plans prioritise children’s well-being and social development as an essential part of supporting learning. As my noble friend Lady Morris said, there is an urgent need for quality mental health support in every school, with every child having access to qualified in-school counselling staff, alongside boosting well-being through extra activities and an education recovery premium which supports children who faced the greatest disruption during the pandemic, from early years through to further education.

Unlike this Government, the Government of Wales yesterday announced plans that appreciate the magnitude of the problem, as mentioned by my noble friend Lady Wilcox. I certainly hope that this Government follow the suggestion of my noble friend Lady Andrews to do what it takes to bring Sir Kevan Collins back. Yes, it would mean providing the resources he called for, but it would be a sign that the Government really were committed to being bold, to use a term the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, mentioned. The Government are showing a lack of ambition for our children’s futures. Lockdown conditions had an undeniable effect on children and young people’s social and emotional well-being, as the charity YoungMinds found out that we have now increased from one in nine children with mental health problems to one in six—and that situation is only going to deteriorate. That is why its advocacy of early support hubs is an interesting idea. These would offer easy-to-access drop-in support on a self-referral basis for young people who do not meet the threshold for children and young people’s mental health services, or with emerging mental health needs, right up to the age of 25.

As I said, too often children seem to have been an afterthought for this Government. Children need to be at the centre of the Government’s levelling-up agenda, supported by a Minister for Children with the right to attend Cabinet and a cross-government strategy which should include early support for the many families who have struggled to access the support they need, especially new parents.

There has been a rise in the number of children entering care due to the increased pressure on families during lockdown and, sadly, a rise in abuse and neglect. Children who have been in local authority care generally have poorer outcomes than their peers, and they are often faced with a cliff edge at the age of 18 as support drops off, but it can be even younger. We have argued against and remain extremely concerned that recent regulations continue to allow the use of unregulated accommodation for looked-after children aged 16 and 17. We would expect far better for our own children, so surely we must demand better for children looked after by the state.

The first report of the government-funded review into children’s social care was published today, as has been referenced by noble Lords. It contains a basic contradiction, however, highlighting the fact that England’s children’s social services are under significant financial pressure” after what the report describes as years of cuts, during which council-run family support services have been reduced by a third. But it then claims that funding has barely kept pace with demand for children’s social care over the past decade. The truth is that it has not kept pace at all, and unless the review eventually recommends significant additional resources, the cuts to services that it correctly identifies will not be reversed.

As my noble friend Lady Andrews said, early years is a crucial time in children’s development, yet earlier this week we had the shocking announcement of a systematic and deliberate underfunding of early years childcare in the education sector by the Government. That was revealed in a report by the Early Years Alliance, which had to use the Freedom of Information Act to receive that information. It is not surprising that the Government fought for two years to block it.

These findings are truly shocking and make the need for an independent review of child care affordability and funding all the more urgent. Research shows that investment in early years education saves the Exchequer money in the long run. The Government’s short-sighted funding decisions affect the life chances not only of children but of their parents.

The Government proclaim their intention to level up but before they can begin to do that, they must arrest the downward direction of travel for children’s services across the board. The pandemic has been a time of loss and sacrifice for the whole country, and indeed across the globe. After such disruption and asking children and young people to give up so much—largely, it should be said, for the protection of others, including the age demographic of this Chamber—we must make support for their health, well-being and education our first priority. We must match the ambition that children have for their own futures and provide the investment and opportunity to back that up.

As my noble friend Lady Morris said in her inspiring opening to this debate, the public are looking for change in how we provide services for children. We need a government department with the ambition to take the lead while working collaboratively with other departments. The DfE announced this week a new education and skills delivery unit. I hope the Minister will tell us that this is the first step towards cross-departmental working, properly resourced and with the needs of children at the heart of every policy. It pains me to say it, but I am afraid that I lack the confidence, based on the Government’s record, that we should expect such a change in direction and priorities any time soon.

Children with Genetic Conditions: Specialist Support

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, a number of family hubs are already in operation but the department has just finished procurement for a national centre for family hubs as part of the £14 million allocated to this. Part of that role will be to ensure that best practice is spread across England. The noble Baroness is correct that these centres should be a hub of voluntary, statutory and other services for families, including those with special educational needs and disabilities.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, the head of Ofsted has highlighted that children with special educational needs and disabilities have incurred some of the biggest learning losses from schools closing, noting:

“Many have genuinely gone backwards in basic skills, language, numbers”.


This is because too many seriously ill children did not receive—and in some cases are still not receiving—adequate support for their disability or medical condition through health services or school, despite having education, health and care plans. What consideration have the Government given to the need for a therapies catch-up plan for children who have regressed or plateaued in their speech, communication, physical development or social skills due to the pandemic, as called for by the Disabled Children’s Partnership?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, it is indeed correct that some of the learning lost has been greatest for those with special educational needs and disabilities. That was one of the reasons why, during both of the lockdowns when schools were closed, places were still available for many of those young people. They should now be accessing all the therapies and additional support that the plan says they should receive. The recovery package has the flexibility that some of the money is per-pupil and, therefore, schools can buy in the additional specialist support that the noble Lord outlines.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, this has been a fascinating and in many ways stimulating debate. Perhaps that was inevitable given that participants included four former Secretaries of State for Education. For more than an hour, we had the company of the current holder of that post, which does him some credit. Four former Education Ministers also spoke.

As my noble friend Lord Rooker pointed out, in his typically forthright style, many noble Lords referenced positions held in higher education institutions. To the best of my recollection, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, was the only Member to declare a position as a board member of an FE college, far less a school. That is another aspect of the divide that we need to bridge if our calls for parity of esteem are to have the ring of authenticity.

I am pleased to wish the noble Baroness, Lady Black of Strome, a warm welcome to your Lordships’ House. I add my congratulations on her remarkable maiden speech. I do not know the noble Baroness, but I certainly know of her. She was a professor at the University of Dundee, my home city, so I was aware that she had created the Centre for Anatomy and Human Identification there. It has now gained an international reputation.

This Bill has been a long time coming, because it is the first piece of government education legislation laid before Parliament for almost five years. That is so far in the past that the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, was then the Education Secretary. We are now on her third successor.

The data shows that 16 to 19 education in England has suffered a huge funding squeeze, as my noble friends Lady Blackstone and Lord Layard stated. Between 2010-11 and 2018-19, real-terms funding per student in sixth forms and colleges fell by 16%. Technical students received 23% less funding than academic students. Recent additional funding of £400 million announced by the Government focused on technical education will, I am afraid, reverse only a quarter of these cuts.

The Bill does not deal with fundamental resourcing issues, but these have to underpin any serious attempt to transform post-16 education and training, which the policy summary notes claim is the main aim of this legislation. The impact assessment identifies the huge decline in adult education, apparently without appreciating the irony, given that the adult education budget has been slashed by half in real terms, which has led to a sharp decline in adult learners and particularly in workplace learning. The Government’s recent pettiness in axing the Union Learning Fund showed that Ministers are more interested in playing politics than supporting workplace learners. None of the Bill’s objectives will be achieved if these issues remain unaddressed.

The Bill covers only FE providers and sixth-form colleges. It makes no reference to schools, yet they play a vital role in equipping young people with the skills they need to thrive in life. The White Paper stressed the importance of good careers education in schools, a point made in today’s debate by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, yet the Bill does not mention that either. A significant number of schools deliver technical qualifications —some have been accepted to pilot T-levels —and it is difficult to understand how a meaningful local skills strategy can exclude post-16 provision in schools.

One of the main planks of the Bill is the introduction of a lifetime skills guarantee, albeit, as many noble Lords have said, with a rather narrow focus within the technical disciplines that it will support. Almost 1 million priority jobs will be excluded from the lifetime skills guarantee in sectors facing a skills shortage. What about Wednesbury Woman who wants to retrain as a computer programmer, or Mansfield Man who wants to go into hospitality? What is in the Bill for them? Inexplicably, hospitality—a sector desperate for new staff and suffering terribly from the effects of lockdown—is excluded.

One significant barrier for adult learners is the cost of study, an issue not included in the Bill despite being highlighted in its impact assessment. Perhaps the Minister can explain that conundrum. While provisions are made for a lifetime loan entitlement, it is unfortunate that its details are yet to be revealed. The effect of this is that they cannot be scrutinised by noble Lords today and must be delayed until Committee.

Lifelong learning must mean just that, as many noble Lords have said. People should have access to training and reskilling throughout their lives, but there remain concerns that the LLE may see participants being saddled with substantial debts, especially if the Government fail to deliver on the recommendation of the Augar review that maintenance grants should be reinstated for people from low-income households, as advocated by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard. We are told this is an issue on which the Government will consult. I have to ask: why? Wales has shown that these grants attract many into training, so why yet more delay?

The question of delay also concerns the LSG, which will not be introduced until 2024, and the LLE a year later. The Minister referred to complexities in this regard involving the modular system, but the many people facing unemployment in the coming weeks and months needs access to courses now to help them to retrain and upskill. What does the Minister say people should do in the interim while this is being developed?

The Government say that their main focus is on helping the country recover from the pandemic’s damage to the economy and spreading opportunity more evenly across the regions—worthy aims. Local skills improvement plans are identified as the means of achieving that, but the employer representative bodies in the legislation seem designed to be creatures of direct ministerial control; several noble Lords have registered their concern about that. While it is right that our skills system should be better at identifying and meeting the skills needs of employers, designating them the exclusive drivers of technical education, as my noble friend Lady Morris said, gives them too much power. Employers certainly have a contribution to make, but to suggest that no other bodies have anything to offer is surely wrongheaded, not least because employers do not have a great track record in training their employees for future patterns of work and developing skills demands. After all, the Government introduced the apprenticeship levy specifically because encouragement had failed.

The noble Earl, Lord Shrewsbury, referenced the West Midlands metro mayor. I wonder what Mr Street’s reaction is to being completely sidelined, along with other metro mayors, combined authorities, local enterprise partnerships and universities. We will bring forward amendments that empower these bodies to co-produce local plans in recognition of their own vital roles.

The Minister has important questions to answer here. Top of the list is to explain the membership, functions and central government control of employer representative bodies. How will they undertake their planning, particularly when starting from scratch? How will ERBs be held to account, and how will the extent to which providers are meeting local needs be measured and assessed? What will happen if a metro mayor disagrees with the ERB? What role is envisaged for local enterprise partnerships, which are not mentioned in the Bill at all? Yesterday’s issue of the Local Government Chronicle carried an article claiming LEPs were to be evolved rather than abolished. Can the Minister confirm that, and whether such evolution will be the subject of consultation?

My noble friend Lady Wilcox made the important point that supported internships, which can play a major role in supporting learners with learning difficulties to prepare for and enter the world of work, must be added to the Bill. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, also spoke passionately of the need for the inclusion of supported internships, which should be an integral part of local skills plans. This is sure to be addressed in Committee.

The Bill’s centralising theme also extends to two aspects of further education. It hands the Secretary of State powers of intervention if he does not like what a particular college is teaching, even if the quality of that teaching has been shown to be good. The Secretary of State can dismiss the local leadership team if the college is deemed not to be following the LSIP. Independent training providers will also be cowering at the thought of being targeted by Ministers for the same reason—a warning we heard issued by the noble Lord, Lord Bichard.

That seems draconian, but the Bill also gives Ministers the ability to regulate initial teacher training for further education. Such a system did exist; it was introduced by the Education Act 2002 but abolished by the Deregulation Act 2015. I ask the Minister what has led to the need for change just six years later. It seems the intention is to introduce standards for ITT in further education and to accredit providers to deliver them. On the face of it, there is nothing wrong with that, but it sounds like the politicisation of initial teacher training—something that, as my noble friend Lord Knight highlighted, is already happening in ITT for schools, as a result of Ministers’ commitment to a particular educational ideology.

In opening the debate, the Minister referenced the Augar review’s call for parity of esteem, and many noble Lords followed her lead. If one theme has dominated the debate, it is the need to end the division between academic and technical routes, which, as the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, rightly said, is a false one. He illustrated that by reminding us that academic courses are offered at FE colleges, while technical subjects can be studied in universities. The divide was characterised by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds as a “crazy distinction”. While my noble friend Lord Puttnam stressed that this is not a zero-sum game, my noble friend Lord Liddle called for “collaboration, not polarisation”. I echo these sentiments and very much hope that the Bill will at least begin to bridge that divide.

While we welcome the Bill’s aims, there remain many areas of detail—some not in the Bill, as drafted—that require extensive scrutiny and testing. We look forward to engaging with both Ministers in Committee, with a view to enabling the Bill to achieve a joined-up system of education, including regulation and funding.

Education Recovery

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Tuesday 8th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I am afraid there is simply no disguising the fact that the resignation of Sir Kevan Collins as Education Recovery Commissioner is a huge blow to the Secretary of State’s hopes of delivering on support for school pupils. I have to say that the Secretary of State’s response to the shadow Secretary of State yesterday was inept. He seems to regard all scrutiny and questioning as opposition, ignoring that all Governments need scrutiny to improve policies and their delivery.

At this time, young people and their families are looking to the Government for urgently needed help; a siege mentality will do very little to meet those needs. The mean-spirited plan outlined in the Statement is the one brought forward after the Prime Minister rejected Sir Kevan Collins’s own proposals to provide pupils with extra time and teaching to catch up on lost education over the next three years. The commissioner used his years of experience to produce plans that were simply cast aside by the Treasury. It is probably stretching things to imagine that the Prime Minister even cast his eye over them. The paltry scheme the Government are willing to fund was described by Sir Kevan as “a half-hearted approach” that

“does not come close to meeting the scale of the challenge”

and

“risks failing hundreds of thousands of pupils.”

It is no wonder he resigned.

Sir Kevan’s proposals were costed at £15 billion over the next three years. Last month, the Education Policy Institute published a full set of proposals for education recovery—a package of £13.5 billion over three years, required to reverse learning loss and support pupil well-being. Last week, Labour published our children’s recovery plan; it was costed in detail and totalled £14.7 billion over the next three years. So, in the past month, there have been three proposals, all within the same ballpark in their costings. Yet the Government reckon they have a monopoly on wisdom and believe that around 10% of that amount will get the job done. I know the Minister will say that some support for the recovery has already been committed and more will follow in the spending review, but the Government are so far short of what the experts—and I am not placing the Labour Party in that category—think is required that they effectively inhabit a different world.

It is not simply academic recovery we should be concerned about. Cases of probable mental health disorders have increased from about one in every nine young people to one in every six because of the pandemic, and we are only now beginning to understand how their well-being has suffered as a result of isolation and anxiety. Yet, there was not a single mention of “well-being” or “children’s mental health” in the Secretary of State’s Statement. Even when asked directly yesterday by the shadow Secretary of State, Kate Green MP, he had nothing to say on those areas, which are vital to children’s recovery.

The Statement does mention the national tutoring programme, and that has failed even to meet the target set by the Secretary of State. He promised that a minimum of 65% of tutoring provision would reach pupil premium children, but the National Audit Office recently found that only 44% of those accessing tutoring could be classified as disadvantaged.

I want to ask the Minister questions that may be familiar to her. They were put to the Secretary of State yesterday by Kate Green, but did not receive answers. I am confident that the Minister can do rather better than her boss. Where is the bold action needed to boost children’s well-being and social development, which parents and teachers say is their top priority and is essential to support learning? Where is the increased expert support to tackle the rise in mental health conditions among young people? Where is the targeted investment for those children who missed most time in class, struggled most to learn at home and were left for months without access to remote learning? Where is the funding needed for the pupil premium to replace the stealth cut to school budgets that the Government imposed when they changed the date of the census recently?

As she left office in February, Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield revealed that she had encountered what she termed “institutional bias against children” in this Government, especially in the Treasury. That was an astonishing claim, yet the parsimony of the education recovery package announced certainly reinforces that view. It is one that the Government will need to work hard—much harder, I suggest, than they have done in the past week—to overcome. In this, their hour of real and urgent need, our young people are being failed by this Government.

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, I agree with so much of what the noble Lord, Lord Watson, just said. I thank the Minister for the Statement, but I do not think there is much we have not heard before. She often tells us with pride about the £1 million here, the £200 million there, even £14.4 billion—how have I forgotten that, when it is so close to Sir Kevan Collins’s ask? This all begins to add up to real money, but where is the overview, the strategy, the cohesion? I suspect we might have found it in Sir Kevan’s review, had we had the chance to study it before the Government trashed it. I am sure he appreciated being thanked before resigning because of the decimation of his proposals, but then, he consulted real experts and, as I pointed out in my question yesterday, which the Minister wisely ignored, this is not a Government who respect experts, to their shame and to the loss of the rest of us.

I do not suppose that even the Education Secretary’s best friends suggest he is an education expert, so how good it would have been for him and the Government to have taken heed of real education specialists. If the Government genuinely thank Sir Kevan for his efforts, his thoughts and his input, why on earth are they not implementing his well-researched proposals? Of course, tutoring is most welcome. The children who will have lost out most are those from families without the time, technology or education to help them with home lessons and learning. The Minister has told us about the thousands of computers and iPads given to the deserving poor but, for many of them, these will have been useless without tuition. We heard of many families having to share a single piece of kit between numerous students, but without any person to talk them through.

On the tutoring scheme, where are these tutors coming from? Will they be the hard-pressed teachers being asked to do yet more? Or will they perhaps be university students, keen to earn some money while close enough in age but, we hope, superior in wisdom, for the youngsters to feel an affinity? What plans are there to make up all the social parts of school that the noble Lord, Lord Watson, referred to—mixing with others, learning teamwork and how to win, how to lose, how to make friends and how to befriend your enemies? Where are the proposals for the softer skills of school, so vital in life? Where is the careers information and guidance? I could find nothing in the Statement about that.

As the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, we know the detrimental impact the pandemic has had on the mental and emotional well-being of children and young people, so will the Government take action to evaluate mental health service provision in schools and allocate enough resources to bolster these services and address shortcomings in provision? Research by the Carers Trust shows there has been a worrying decline in the mental health of young carers during the pandemic. What are the Government planning to do to support the educational and emotional recovery of young carers? We hear that many children return to school having forgotten how to sit in a class for an hour, how to pay attention and even how to hold a knife and fork. How are the Government helping them?

How kind to offer more training for overworked teachers. Most teachers are pretty well trained already, and of course there is always room, if not time, for more training, but would our wonderful teachers, who have gone over and above in lockdown for their pupils, not perhaps appreciate some extra pay as a thank you? I declare an interest as the mother of a primary teacher who is working all the hours God gave to ensure that her little four year-olds continue to learn and, perhaps even more importantly, to enjoy learning. Because school should be fun: learning should be exciting and accessible and the youngest children need to find that that is the case so that they really catch the bug of lifelong learning. If the Government are so intent on investing in teachers, why not pay them more?

So, my verdict on the Government is: “Could do better”. Give us the holistic picture. We can see that vast sums have been spent, but could they not have been spent more cohesively, more helpfully and in a more targeted way? These are the next generations, the young people whose skills, knowledge and enthusiasm will be sorely needed to help us through the aftermath of the pandemic, not to mention Brexit. They will be needed to help revive the economy, take the jobs that are needed, not necessarily the ones they wanted, and to be adaptable. I see little in the Statement to show that the Government appreciate the size and breadth of the job that needs to be done.

Secondary Schools: Arts Subjects

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, it is correct, as the noble Lord outlines, to say that schools need those specialist teachers. Recruitment of trainee teachers is up by 23% and we have no information about a gap in the recruitment of those teachers. Schools are free to use the £650 million universal catch-up and recovery premium as they see fit. If they wish to spend it on the type of provision that the noble Lord outlines, we hope that they will do so.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, as well as lost learning, Covid-19 has had a major effect on the mental health of children. Arts subjects and activities have the potential to reduce stress and anxiety, and are proven to encourage language development in children, particularly the most disadvantaged. Recently, Sir Kevan Collins—I wonder what became of him—said that

“we need to think about the extra hours not only for learning, but for children to be together, to play, to engage in competitive sport, for music, for drama because these are critical areas which have been missed in their development.”

Does the Minister agree and can she explain why the National Tutoring Programme does not apply to creative and practical subjects?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, schools offer a number of co-curricular or extracurricular activities. As the Minister responsible for out-of-school settings, I know that much of that activity takes place in those areas. Indeed, the National Tutoring Programme does not deliver as the noble Lord outlined, at the moment. However, a proportion of the tutoring money from the latest and third tranche of recovery money will go directly to schools. As well as being able to spend the universal catch-up and recovery premiums in the manner that schools choose, the school-led aspect of the National Tutoring Programme will enable them to have small-group or one-on-one tutoring in the subjects that the noble Lord mentioned.

Education Recovery

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Monday 7th June 2021 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, following the resignation of Sir Kevan Collins as Education Recovery Commissioner, what steps they will take to develop a long-term plan to help pupils make up for lost learning during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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

My Lords, the Government are committed to ensuring that children and young people catch up after the disruption of the pandemic. As the next step in these efforts, we have announced an additional £1.4 billion of funding for high-quality tutoring and great teaching. This brings our total recovery package to more than £3 billion. We will consider the next steps ahead of the spending review, and catch-up is for the lifetime of this Parliament.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I cannot really believe that the Minister is comfortable defending the indefensible following the chaotic events surrounding what can only be described as the Government’s bargain basement recovery plan for school pupils. The promise of jam tomorrow is highly unlikely to satisfy many appetites. When Sir Kevan Collins presented his plan, costed at £15 billion, to the Prime Minister, the Prime Minister reacted by moving the decimal point one place to the left. Perhaps he thought that Sir Kevan would not notice, but Sir Kevan is nobody’s fool. He is widely respected throughout education and across the political spectrum, and now he is lost to the vital task of education recovery. As the Minister said, planned spending on school recovery is now around £300 per pupil, but that compares with £1,600 per pupil in the United States and £2,500 in the Netherlands. Can the Minister explain why her Government believe that children in England need so much less support than their American and Dutch contemporaries?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the Government wish to thank Sir Kevan for his work. He supports the tutoring and teaching proposals we have outlined. In relation to the methodology, it is not accurate to make a comparison between different jurisdictions. For instance, the £3 billion I have outlined does not include the £400 million that has been spent on remote learning, including on 1.3 million devices, the Covid costs recovery fund, the workforce fund et cetera, so we are not comparing like with like when comparing different jurisdictions.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness the Minister for setting out the Government’s plans, and I should like to echo her good wishes to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth on the occasion of his valedictory address to your Lordships’ House. I have often enjoyed his enlightened contributions, not least on the economy. He will be missed.

After all the hype over the weekend, what we heard yesterday was, to put it mildly, an anti-climax. Indeed, it is a legislative programme more notable for what is not included than what is. There is nothing on adult social care reform. The Prime Minister said in 2019 that he had a ready-made plan. So where is it? The Government absolutely must deliver plans for social care reform in this Parliament. There is also nothing on protecting the rights of 16 and 17 year-old children in care, a matter on which the Government are facing legal action.

Ministers speak of a so-called “levelling up” agenda. Implicit in that is a trashing of their own record, because the undulating landscape that is life in England today has been carved out largely by 11 years of Tory and coalition misrule. “Levelling up” is a suitably vague term but, if it is necessary, then who is to blame? It is Tory Governments, responsible for politically driven austerity policies—policies which hit the disadvantaged hardest, blamed the poor for their poverty and punished people for their disabilities. Now, apparently oblivious to the inherent hypocrisy, the Government want to level up. Really? I have to say that I doubt it. This programme involves the Tories cleaning up their own mess—I pray in aid the health and care Bill, on which my noble friend Lady Thornton will have much to say later. Noble Lords may have noticed that the noble Lord, Lord Lansley, has ducked today’s debate and will speak in Monday’s. I wonder why that might be?

We welcome the skills and post-16 education Bill and its lifetime skills guarantee because investment in lifelong learning is needed more than ever, given the impact and aftermath of the Covid pandemic. I also welcome the fact that the Bill will begin its journey in your Lordships’ House. But, since 2010, further education and skills have borne the brunt of government funding cuts; access to learning has been restricted and maintenance support for younger learners abolished, resulting in fewer studying in further education and fewer workers able to retrain and upskill. The number of apprentices has also plummeted, with new starts down by over a third compared to five years ago.

Yet, nearly a million “priority” jobs will be excluded from the lifetime skills guarantee, exposing the Government’s empty rhetoric on creating opportunities, as the Loyal Address fails to deliver for young people hardest hit by the pandemic. The country is facing a skills shortage in jobs such as vets, architects and computer programmers, with the Government designating those jobs as a priority for work visas. I hope that the Minister will explain why these sectors are excluded from the lifetime skills guarantee offer to help adults gain a new level 3 qualification. Will the Government’s good intentions be backed by the resources necessary to make them effective? Developing the skills that the economy needs will work only if people can afford to live while studying through a mixture of loans, grants and social security support. Without that, the legislation simply will not be meaningful or far-reaching enough.

There is another education Bill, of course, but it is not one that addresses priorities in the education portfolio. There is a yawning gap where a Bill to rescue the early years sector should be. According to the Government’s own data, more than 2,000 early years providers have been lost since the start of this year alone; yet they offer no plans to address that. It is widely accepted that children’s first years are crucial in shaping so many aspects of their lives. But, to the Government, early years settings seem to be little more than a means of allowing parents to return to work, rather than essential building blocks in the development of a child’s learning and basic life skills. Of course enabling parents to return to the job market is important, but nurseries are first and foremost places of education, not simply childcare facilities.

The Loyal Address is shamefully silent on measures to tackle child poverty. No change, then, from a Government who had to be dragged kicking and screaming to provide free school meals during the holidays, while too many children were left without the resources to learn at home. At least the Conservatives have been consistent—they have treated children as an afterthought throughout this pandemic.

Health inequalities feed into education inequalities, and that includes universities. Uncertainty leads to anxiety, which leads to issues that impact on mental health. One aspect of that is the Secretary of State for Education’s dithering on school exams. He must avoid a repeat and should remove some of the stress now from this year’s year 10 cohort by announcing that they will have centre-assessed grades next year.

We will not be able to “build back better” if the generation who will be the foundation for the future are weakened by poverty and a mental health crisis. This generation have had their childhoods and life chances disrupted and damaged by the pandemic. So, it is a failure on the part of this Government to see so little on greater support for children in their plans. Perhaps that should be placed in the context of a Government led by a Prime Minister whose concern for children does not seem to stretch even to being certain how many he himself has. That underlines the necessity of the Minister for Children being returned to Cabinet status.

The learning gap between children on free school meals and their peers had not narrowed in the five years before the pandemic, and all the evidence suggests that the impact of lockdown is delaying young children’s language and social development. Yet Ministers have announced just a single-year catch-up plan, amounting to a paltry 43 pence a day per child over the next school year, with no specific support for well-being or social development. Despite warnings from experts that the pandemic is leading to an increase in mental health conditions, the Loyal Address went no further than to say that:

“Measures will be brought forward to … improve mental health”.


There was no mention of support for children’s mental health or well-being. In responding to this debate, can the Minister set out what advice he would give to children, students and adults suffering with mental health issues now and who need support now, not at some indeterminate point in the future?

Rather than addressing those urgent matters, the other education Bill announced today deals with a subject that grips the whole country: freedom of speech in universities. To prioritise such legislation is a blatant attempt to continue the culture war that the Government are determined to wage. Their focus on manufacturing an argument over free speech on campus is an attempt to distract from their failure to support students and universities through this pandemic. Students are seriously worried about getting the skills and experience that they need for the workplace. Despite Labour’s calls, Ministers did little to support the graduates of 2020 who entered a shattered jobs market; they simply must do more to secure the futures of the class of 2021.

A glaring omission from the Loyal Address is an employment Bill, first promised in 2019 to

“protect and enhance workers’ rights”.

That commitment has been repeated by Ministers on no fewer than 50 occasions, yet workers’ rights are mentioned only once in the background briefing to the Loyal Address. Worse, there has been a significant change in language from 2019, when the Government said they would “enhance workers’ rights”; now, there is merely a whimsical aim of “upholding workers’ rights”. What rights, I wonder? The Loyal Address of 2019 said that an employment Bill would provide

“better support for working families”

and

“enhance workers’ rights, supporting flexible working, extending unpaid carers’ entitlement to leave”.

Yet there are no such landmark reforms to zero- hour contracts or the gig economy. So much for levelling up; what we are seeing is a levelling down on employment rights. The Prime Minister recently described the iniquitous practice of hire and re-hire as unacceptable —but not, it seems, sufficiently unacceptable for his Government to do anything to prevent it. When he replies, will the Minister explain why the Government have now abandoned working families during a pandemic?

Covid has closed much of our economy, but the Conservatives, in effect, crashed it. Their ineptitude and capriciousness has left Britain with a record: the worst economic crisis of any major economy. Yet they plan a return to the same old policies that left us exposed to the virus, and organisations from the IMF to the OECD have warned the Government about the dangers of slamming the brakes on too soon; I hope that they will be heard. People are desperate for the security that a resilient economy brings: a good job, a reliable wage, a roof over their head and the confidence that comes with all those things. As we recover, Labour would take responsible action to secure jobs, support our high streets and strengthen our communities to deliver that stronger, fairer, regionally balanced economy that Britain so desperately needs.

Over the past decade the Government have wilfully underfunded local authorities, forcing them into a choice between charging people more or slashing services. Now they are allowing family incomes to be hit by rises in council tax which are not the fault of cash-strapped councils. Why have the Government learned nothing from the austerity years dating back to the coalition?

The legislative programme set out in the Loyal Address is not the bold and expansive agenda that might have been expected from a Government with such a majority. Even today’s Times—normally a cheerleader for them—describes it as lacking ambition. That is what has characterised this Government and, in the months ahead, we on these Benches we will use the opportunities presented by the Bills listed in the Loyal Address to set out how we believe they can be improved. There are opportunities that we will exploit in a legislative programme that could and should have been much better equipped to prepare the country for the serious challenges that lie ahead.

Covid-19: Pupil Referral Units

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 22nd April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, our aspirations are the same for all young people, regardless of where they are being educated, but it is true that some young people who end up in alternative provision are, for instance, of secondary school age but with only a primary school reading age. Therefore, the classic traditional measures of educational performance must be looked at in terms of the progress which that young person can make. Many of the AP settings are acutely aware of the safeguarding of their students. Many work closely with the 18 violence reduction units to safeguard their pupils, and I will write to the noble Lord about the first secure school, which is within the Ministry of Justice’s provision.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I add my tribute to my noble friend Lady Lawrence of Clarendon, for the great strength of character that she has shown following the callous murder of her son, and for the work that she has done in establishing the Stephen Lawrence Charitable Trust.

Many pupil referral units have been forced to cut services for vulnerable and disadvantaged pupils because of the severe reduction in funding following the drop in referrals during the pandemic. There is real concern in the sector that the increased level of recovery funding for PRUs announced by the Government is unlikely to be sufficient to meet the anticipated surge in demand. Does the Minister accept that the Government must heed those concerns and review the per-pupil element of the funding formula to ensure consistency and parity of funding with mainstream schools?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, obviously some young people are dual registered, so they are mainstream as well as AP funded. During the two formal lockdowns when schools were closed, the guidance from the department to local authorities was that they should pay the top-up element that they pay to these provisions. If a pupil referral unit that is still an LA-maintained unit is in financial difficulty, obviously it goes to its local authority; in relation to the other alternative provision—the just over 40% of the sector that is academised—I can assure the noble Lord that we are keeping a close watch on the financial situation of that provision.

Family Policy

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Monday 19th April 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, getting the money out the door is very important, but I take the point that the noble Baroness makes. As the Minister responsible for the efficiency and commercial function of the department, we rely on and give grants to local authorities. We then trust them on the ground. For instance, we have given an additional £40 million to the Covid-19 Support Fund. However, when it comes to contracting with providers, there are procurement processes and contract monitoring, which is an increasingly professional function of the department.

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, until January 2018, there was a Minister of State for Children and Families with the right to attend Cabinet. The post was then downgraded to Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, which does not give the current holder the necessary clout either to be heard or to be properly effective. Many parliamentarians have today added their names to a letter from UNICEF UK to the Prime Minister, calling for the reinstatement of the Minister for Children and Families with the right to attend Cabinet, and urging him to deliver a national address directed to children and families to set out his vision of what building back Britain means for them. Does the Minister support these suggestions?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the current Minister for Children and Families, the right honourable Vicky Ford MP, works across government on many issues—for instance, online harms, at the moment, and the issues that have been raised by Everyone’s Invited. The independent Children’s Commissioner today launched her Big Ask to talk to children about their experiences. The group that the noble Lord outlined will get a reply from the Prime Minister, but it is beyond my pay grade to comment further.