Best Start Family Hubs

Lord Watts Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I completely agree with the noble Lord. We recently had a whole Question devoted to the issue of toilet training and preparedness for life in school. Talking to reception teachers, I think that some of the examples they give are really disturbing. We have been through a very difficult time with Covid, but bringing families together and sharing experience is a very good substitute, particularly in areas where the natural community support and support from extended family might not exist anymore. That is one of the reasons why this development is so important.

[Lord Watts (Lab)]

My Lords, has the Minister noticed how much time the Government are spending on dealing with austerity and privatisation? We are having to deal with this problem only because the last Tory Government closed all these centres originally.

[Baroness Blake of Leeds (Lab)]

I believe that the Opposition now recognise that it was an enormous mistake to reduce the funding that went into Sure Start and family support. We are reaping the benefit of that decline in support. As one of the people on the front line in local authorities, I can tell noble Lords that it was one of the most difficult pieces of work that we had to do—reducing services that we knew delivered so well for families. I am delighted that we are now in a position to start rebuilding those services for the best outcomes for our young children coming through the system.