Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 12th June 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to the excellent and compelling amendments in this group. In particular, I support Amendments 96 and 107A, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran.

The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, will remember that I spoke at Second Reading of her commendable Private Member’s Bill on mental health professionals, which I think was about 18 months ago. I raised the particular issue of children with complex needs—specifically children mainly in mainstream schooling who are diagnosed with Tourette’s syndrome. For a number of years in the other place, I supported Tourettes Action in its research, profile-raising and fundraising. For full transparency, my brother is a professor of cognitive neuropsychology, specialising in human movement studies, which includes Tourette’s.

I do not wish to detain your Lordships’ House in discussing Tourette’s, but I want to make the point that one of the key issues that affects children who have Tourette’s is a lack of collaboration and consistency across schooling, primary care and hospital settings. In other words, often children behave badly in school and are excluded because they are not diagnosed with Tourette’s and do not get the clinical care that they need. That work between the two parts of the state is not happening, and there is a similar issue for children with complex needs in the care system.

Again, all these amendments are excellent, but the specific advantage of my noble friend’s amendments is that they would impose an imperative on the education sector, and specifically the health sector—primary care, hospitals and other clinical settings—to focus on those children leaving care with specific and very important pressing needs.

There are a wide variety of issues that affect young people in that situation, including housing—the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham have focused on those issues—but the advantage of these two amendments is that they would put a focus on primary care in the Bill. Yes, young people are worried about education, skills, training and housing, but probably the most important thing is their health.

On that basis, putting this in the Bill would be a positive move that would encourage different social care agencies and the people who write the statements for those children and young people, such as teachers and so on, to start thinking about what their healthcare pathway will be in addition to other pathways, such as housing, education and skills. For that reason, I support these amendments. I hope that the Minister will look kindly upon all the amendments, but those two in particular.

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I will speak briefly to Amendment 100 in my name and that of the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, which would insert a new clause aimed at giving all care leavers up to the age of 25 priority status in homelessness legislation. To that extent, it is a subsection of the much broader debate about how we look after care leavers.

The amendment would end a current anomaly in the law, whereby care leavers up to the age of 21 are entitled to priority under the homelessness legislation, if they present as homeless to their local authority, but not those between the age of 21 and 25. It is supported by a range of charities, not least Barnardo’s.

All young people need a safe and stable home in which to start their adult life—and, if you do not have that, it is difficult to access education, employment and health services. As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, care leavers are more likely to be homeless than non-care leavers. Research by the charity Become shows that they are nine times more likely to become homeless, and that threat does not stop at the age of 21. Again as we heard from the noble Baroness, the numbers of young care leavers presenting as homeless has gone up by 50%.

We heard from the noble Lord, Lord Watson, earlier that non-care leavers are staying at home much longer; the average age at which they leave is now 24, up from 21 a decade ago. Over the years, the legislation has been gradually catching up with that trend, beginning I think with the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000, which recognised that the state or local authorities need to support children beyond the age of 18. Again as we heard earlier, care leavers do not have the same safety net of family to fall back on.

There is a lot in the Bill which I welcome to support care leavers, in particular a recent amendment disapplying intentionality for care leavers, meaning that local authorities, when they have a corporate parenting duty, no longer view care-experienced people under 25 as being intentionally homeless. But the Bill needs to go a little bit further. Under the current legislation, all young care leavers under the age of 21 who present as homeless are deemed to be in priority need, which means that local authorities have an obligation to accommodate them. However, there is no such automatic protection for care leavers between the ages of 21 and 25. Under the current homelessness legislation, they are required to prove that they are vulnerable—something that is not defined in legislation. This means that they have go around getting letters from their GP, for which they may have to pay, and getting other letters from psychiatric services, to prove that they are vulnerable and their corporate parent is under an obligation to support them.

There is also a problem with children who are placed out of area. They are not apparently automatically eligible for the usual care support in the local authority in which they are now living, even if they have been living there for many years, whereas local care leavers have that entitlement. That seems to be an anomaly that the Minister might like to comment on.

Finally, the amendment would bring the homelessness legislation into line with the Children and Social Work Act 2017, which obliges local authorities to continue to provide support up to the age of 25. It will not be a panacea for all the problems facing care leavers, but it will be an important step towards ensuring that, when the worst happens, help is available for a young person who may have few other places they can turn to for help. So I encourage the Government to accept the amendment.

Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th March 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham (Con)]

My Lords, I want to make a brief contribution to this debate, because it goes to the heart of the discussion about whether we believe in decentralisation and about the role of local government in a decentralised country.

The levelling up White Paper says:

“We’ll usher in a revolution in local democracy.”


Later on, it states that local leaders in other countries have

“much greater revenue-raising powers”,

a point that the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has just made. As I said at Second Reading, there is nothing about greater revenue-raising powers in the Bill, and the probing amendment that we have just heard moved puts that right by initiating a broader discussion.

I welcome some of the announcements in the Budget about devolving more powers to mayoral authorities and allowing local authorities to retain more of the business rates, but devolving greater ability to spend central government money and keeping more of their own money is not actually the move towards a more self-sufficient, independent and confident local government that many of us would like to see.

I take this opportunity to briefly restate a suggestion that I made in January. Over the next 10 years, some £25 billion in fuel duty will disappear as we all buy electric vehicles, and the revenue foregone will be met by road pricing, now made possible by in-car technology —a transition that successive Governments have ducked but, I suspect, will not be able to duck much longer. However, that revenue from road pricing should not go to the Treasury or central government; it should complement the existing revenue from parking and congestion charges, where it would logically sit, and go to the larger units of local government which we have been debating today. That would give local government greater autonomy and a sounder basis for local taxation than the increasingly discredited and out-of-date council tax.

There are other ways of raising local revenue, and the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, touched on a few. However, in replying to this debate, I wonder whether my noble friend can show just a little bit of ankle on the Government’s thinking—whether they are really interested in empowering genuine local democracy by giving the sort of powers implied in this amendment.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I wish to speak briefly to this very good and interesting probing amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven, and it is a pleasure to follow my noble friend Lord Young, who I know has great expertise in local government. We represented different parts of the London Borough of Ealing in different capacities over many years.

The noble Lord, Lord Scriven, has not compared apples with apples but apples with pears. We are a unitary state—we are not a federal state like Australia, Canada, Germany, Italy or France, where they have regional government and a culture of accretion of power to the local level. Therefore, we have to have some central sanction and control of the disbursal of funds. So I do not think that the noble Lord is necessarily comparing the situation that we are in wholly accurately.

However, the noble Lord makes a very astute point about the hoarding of power, particularly financial power, by the Treasury. Any Minister will tell you that, over the years, the Treasury has not wanted to give power away and has wanted to bring in power. The noble Lord is absolutely right that far too much of the funding of core local services is in effect subject to the begging-bowl approach, as enunciated by Andy Street, the executive mayor of the West Midlands.

The problem with the situation that we now have—the disparity of local councils being responsible to their electorate for decisions, in effect, taken centrally—is that central government of whatever party is in power gets the income in and can make those judgments based on its manifesto, but it is local councillors and officers who are accountable and often take the brickbats for failures. For instance, many people have argued for many years about residential real estate investment trusts leveraging private sector money to provide new, good-quality housing for young people in particular. The Treasury has never really advanced that properly, and local government could be very much involved in it. Social care is another area. All Governments should look at tax breaks for providing extra care facilities—in terms of nutrition, housing, exercise and so on—for old people from the age of 60 all the way through to death, as many countries have across the world. That is an example of a central government policy that could also help local government.

I have great sympathy for the amendment from the noble Lord, Lord Scriven. I hope there is further debate on it. It cannot be right that we cannot follow other modern liberal democracies such as the United States where local authorities and mayors have the capacity, for instance, to raise funds for the issuance of bonds, local infrastructure and capital projects. We have very restrictive financial and legal rules in this country that prevent us doing the same. On that basis, we have begun a good debate and I look to my noble friends on the Front Bench to run with it and, as my noble friend Lord Young of Cookham said, show some ankle, as it is long overdue.

Business of the House

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 24th May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Gentleman will know that we have asked a commission to look at the whole issue of regional pay, so I think it would be premature to have a debate before that work is completed, which I believe is expected in the autumn. Thereafter it might be worth while to have a debate on the issue. So far as tensions within the Government are concerned, let me remind the hon. Gentleman that he was a member of a Government where the tensions within a one-party Administration were far greater than any tensions in the present two-party Administration.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

May we have a debate on freedom of speech, following on from the news that the Law Society in its conference arm last week banned the session on marriage that was to be addressed by the distinguished judge Sir Paul Coleridge and the Marriage Foundation? Does my right hon. Friend, like me, deprecate this suppression of debate on an area of great public policy importance?

[Sir George Young]

I am not sure that it is the responsibility of a Minister to comment on that, although I understand my hon. Friend’s views. I will share his concern with my right hon. and learned Friend the Lord Chancellor or my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary—just to see whether there is a role for Government to play in this.

Business of the House

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 19th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

I am grateful for the right hon. Lady’s comments. As she knows, the Prime Minister extended to Aung San Suu Kyi an invitation to visit this country and I have seen reports, which I welcome if they are true, that she plans to spend some time in Oxford where she used to live. I suspect that the question of an address in Westminster Hall is above my pay grade, but I will ensure that it goes to the relevant authorities for serious consideration in view of her record on human rights.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It is more than 20 years since the landmark Medical Research Council study that showed that the fortification of foodstuffs with folic acid taken prior to conception would reduce neural tube defects such as spina bifida and hydrocephalus. Many countries have pursued that policy, but there is an impasse in our country between the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, the Food Standards Agency and the Department of Health. May we have a debate in Government time to ensure that we properly debate this matter and follow the lead of other countries to reduce the incidence of these dreadful medical conditions?

[Sir George Young]

I applaud my hon. Friend’s concern on this subject and his campaign and zeal for progress. I cannot promise a debate, but it sounds like an appropriate subject for a debate in Westminster Hall or on the Adjournment of the House. In the meantime, however, I will ask my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health to bring my hon. Friend up to date with the progress he is making on resolving the conflict of interest to which my hon. Friend has referred.

Business of the House

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 2nd February 2012 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

Three of this week’s four days have been on Government business, on Monday we have the Second Reading of the Financial Services Bill, and on Wednesday we will deal with the local government and police grant orders, without which no local authority will get its funding next year. I hope the hon. Lady agrees that that is important legislation. There is an Opposition debate on Tuesday—I hope she is not going to describe that as “thumb-twiddling”, as she said last week. Next Thursday we have an important debate on Somalia, which some Opposition Back Benchers have asked for. I hope she will not be so dismissive about the House of Commons programme.

As for the Queen’s Speech, the date will be announced in due course in the usual way—a response with which the hon. Lady may be becoming familiar. There is legislation still to get on to the statute book. On the one hand, she wonders why things are taking so long, but on the other hand I am constantly being asked for more time for debates. At some point, the shadow Leader of the House will have to work out whether the Government are pushing their programme through the House of Commons too fast or whether they are taking a leisurely time about it.

We have no plans to drop the Health and Social Care Bill. The principles of clinical-based commissioning, of patient choice and of any qualified provider as well as the linking of health and social care are important reforms. There will be an opportunity for further debate when the House returns.

We discussed the issue of fairness at some length yesterday. We are convinced that work must always pay more than benefits, which is at the heart of our welfare reform. We owe it to people who work hard, do the right thing and pay their taxes to make sure that there are some limits on welfare. Some families in Westminster receive £2,000 a week in housing benefit; I think that position is wholly unsustainable.

So far as the Chancellor of the Exchequer is concerned, I have announced a Second Reading on Monday of the Financial Services Bill; the hon. Lady may find that the Chancellor of the Exchequer is in the House for that. On student loans, we have just sat through 40 minutes of an urgent question, and I have nothing to add to what the Chief Secretary to the Treasury said.

As to bankers’ bonuses, the hon. Lady keeps on asking who signed off the contract with Mr Lester, but we know who signed off the contract for the bonus for Mr Hester at the Royal Bank of Scotland. There is no doubt that the Labour Government signed off that contract, which entitled him to the bonus. Since then, we have taken steps, which Labour never took, to cap bankers’ bonuses in cash. Last week, the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills announced new reforms to empower shareholders to control future pay.

Finally, the hon. Lady asked about the EU treaty. Perhaps at some point we could have an answer to the question of whether or not the Leader of the Opposition would have signed the proposed treaty.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

We shall never know the true circumstances behind the murder of Avtar and Carole Kolar by, allegedly, the Lithuanian career criminal Rimvydas Liorancas, but we do know that he entered the United Kingdom without a passport. May we have an urgent debate on the sharing of criminal records data with law enforcement agencies throughout the European economic area, which would prevent such tragedies from ever happening again?

[Sir George Young]

I am sure that the House has sympathy for my hon. Friend’s constituents who were murdered. As for the Lithuanian, who I think has taken his own life, I understand that police inquiries are continuing, so it is difficult for me to comment specifically on the case. I will, however, raise the general issue of the sharing of information about criminals with the Home Secretary, and will ask her to write to my hon. Friend giving the details and specifying the concordats that have been entered into ensuring that relevant information is shared between countries.

Business of the House

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 27th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

May we have a debate on freedom of speech? Mr Peter Tatchell—a gentleman for whom I have some admiration—has today attacked the Trafford Housing Trust for its despicable decision to downgrade the position and cut the salary of Mr Adrian Smith, a Christian, for posting private comments on his own private Facebook account on the subject of gay marriage. Should we be putting public money into an organisation that is, effectively, propagating state-sponsored intolerance?

[Sir George Young]

I am a firm believer in freedom of speech and freedom of worship. Of course people should obey the law of the country. I will draw this incident to the attention of the Minister for Housing and Local Government, to see whether there is any action to be taken either by him or the Housing Corporation.

Business of the House

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

The right hon. Gentleman may have an opportunity to raise that subject in Wednesday’s debate on the revenue support grant for local government. Some 80% of bus services outside London are commercially run, and so do not depend on direct funding from councils. There has been no cut in the financial support that we provide for those services, and we have protected the statutory concessionary travel schemes.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

May we have a debate on record-keeping at the UK Border Agency? Hon. Members will be aware that we recently debated the successor to control orders, but we are also routinely told that it is not possible to provide information on how many individuals are using articles 3 and 8 of the European convention on human rights to avoid deportation when they should be removed from this country. Will the Leader of the House have a word with our colleagues in the Home Office to investigate this unsatisfactory situation?

[Sir George Young]

I understand my hon. Friend’s concern. I wonder whether he would be able to get the information about the numbers that he quite rightly seeks by tabling parliamentary questions, but in any event I shall raise the matter with the Home Secretary.

Business of the House

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 9th December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

We followed the precedent of the previous Government, who, in a similar debate, drew stumps at 5 o’clock.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

May we have a debate in Government time on propriety in the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority? My right hon. Friend will know, because three hon. Members, including me and the very experienced right hon. Member for Cynon Valley (Ann Clwyd), have advised him of the matter, that it is alleged that Anne Power, the communications official at IPSA, is touting so-called juicy stories around the Lobby to friendly journalists. That accusation has been made on several occasions. Will my right hon. Friend take the opportunity to speak to the chief executive of IPSA? At the very least, the individual concerned is breaching the Data Protection Act. If true, the position is completely unacceptable and intolerable.

[Sir George Young]

If that activity took place, it is indeed unacceptable. I think that I am right to say that a question was tabled to my hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr Walker) on the specific issue, and an answer was provided either yesterday or today, stating that IPSA denies that any such contact took place.

Business of the House

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 2nd December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

The hon. Gentleman is right that the No. 10 e-petitions site has been taken down, but we envisage carrying forward the ability to petition on the Directgov site.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

May we have a debate in Government time on equality of opportunity in public expenditure? This week, the Welsh Assembly announced that no Welsh student would pay increased tuition fees. Why is that policy and facility not open to my constituents’ children, given that English taxpayers are largely financing such Welsh largesse?

[Sir George Young]

I understand the aggravation expressed by my hon. Friend’s constituents, but the situation he describes is a logical outcome of the policy of devolution, and of giving the Assembly of Wales and the Parliament in Scotland autonomy over issues that were previously reserved to this House.

Business of the House

Debate between Lord Young of Cookham and Lord Jackson of Peterborough

Thursday 14th October 2010 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Young]

In common with many other Members of the House, I too have constituents who have lost money through Crown Currency Exchange. As the hon. Gentleman knows, the Financial Services Authority does not regulate retail foreign exchange services, so it did not regulate in any way the business of Crown Currency Exchange. The business model was exceptional and involved taking forward risks. I shall certainly draw his remarks to the attention of my colleagues in the Treasury to see whether there is any further legislative action that the Government might take.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

The House will know of the wholly wrong-headed proposals made by the Sentencing Guidelines Council for a reduction in sentences for violent crime. Given that today we are examining the abolition of a number of out-of-touch and superfluous quangos, may I add the Sentencing Guidelines Council to that list?

[Sir George Young]

My hon. Friend is right that the Sentencing Guidelines Council has made some proposals that would impact on short sentences. The Government’s view is that short sentences are appropriate in many cases, particularly those that involve assault, and the Government will respond in due course to the views of the council.