School Openings: January 2022

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Alex Burghart]

Absolutely. We have been very keen to make sure that we invest in the mental health of children and young people, following what has been an extremely difficult 18 months. I am very happy to join my hon. Friend in praising the primary school children of Ipswich and their artistic prowess.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

School closures have been a welfare catastrophe for millions of vulnerable children. During the pandemic, there has been a 77% increase in self-generated sexual images of children online, and referrals have doubled for paediatric eating disorders. Some 2.2 million children in England live in households affected by addiction and abuse, yet in the first lockdown just 6% of vulnerable children attended school. What will my hon. Friend do, and what can we do as parliamentarians to support him, to make sure that this tragedy never again happens to our vulnerable children?

[Alex Burghart]

My hon. Friend is a very powerful advocate for the cause that she raises. Those are shocking statistics.

We kept education settings open throughout the pandemic for the most vulnerable children. Where pupils who are self-isolating are within our definition of “vulnerable”, it is very important that we have systems in place to keep in contact with them, particularly if they have a social worker.

Oral Answers to Questions

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker]

I remember well the hon. Gentleman’s Westminster Hall debate on this issue. We continue to work with Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council. In that debate, he put in a bid for the next round of the priority school building programme, and, as I mentioned earlier, we are consulting on our approach to that.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

T9. Across the country, many local directors of public health are going far beyond the Department’s covid guidance in their recommendations to schools, and the recent reintroduction of masks in communal spaces has turbo-charged this trend. Headteachers, who are not public health professionals, are being put in an impossible position. We are now seeing the cancellation of important events, the isolation of—and denial of education to— healthy children, forced mask wearing in lessons, punitive measures for forgetting to follow arbitrary rules, and children subjected to dangerously cold classrooms. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is an unethical and frankly inhumane way to treat our children? What can he do to ensure that schools do not go beyond the Government’s guidance?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend is a passionate advocate for ensuring that any mitigation is proportionate. The most important thing is that we prioritise face-to-face education. Keeping children in school is my absolute priority, and I have said from the Dispatch Box today that I will do everything in my power to maintain that situation. Of course, directors of public health can advise temporary additional measures, but they should always be proportionate. As long as schools continue to be open, they should be holding nativities, and delivering every other one of their important functions.

Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill

Miriam Cates Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 12th July 2021 Commons Chamber

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I rise to speak in support of the Bill and to set out why it is so important that as a society we continue to hear and engage with minority and controversial opinions.

We all know what it is like to feel challenged or discomforted, even offended, by what others say or write. This experience of offence is a negative feeling of embarrassment, anger and sometimes hurt, but on occasions this uncomfortable experience can also lead to something absolutely essential for human progress: change. I am not talking about personally offensive or targeted abusive attacks on individuals, which are clearly abhorrent. That kind of persecution and intolerance has no place in civilised society. I am talking about the kind of offence or discomfort that is felt when we hear something that is deeply challenging to our deeply held points of view. It causes us a kind of emotional pain that sometimes forces a response, but history is full of great offenders: people who put forward minority beliefs that were not initially popular, but which nevertheless they sought to bring to the attention of the majority.

Some of these great offenders were, of course, completely wrong and their controversial views have died with them, but there are many others who stand out now as heroes: Churchill, with his opposition to appeasement; Fawcett’s views on women’s rights; Darwin’s findings on evolution; Galileo’s heretical views on the solar system; Martin Luther’s challenge to the teachings of the Church. All those great men and women held views that were contentious, even offensive, in their day, but through the force of argument and in time they changed the tide of opinion and brought change—change that I doubt any of us in this House today regrets. That change came because people changed their minds. Listeners, including people of influence, heard those views. Many fought to shut them down, often violently, but enough people responded differently and allowed their attitudes to be altered.

Over recent decades we have enjoyed unprecedented freedom of speech in this country. As a result, new ideas have been thoroughly critiqued, with some being widely adopted while others are rejected. But that freedom is now in danger, particularly in our universities. We have heard Members on both sides of the House speak about alarming incidents of no platforming, particularly of women with gender-critical views.

The understandable but misguided desire to protect students from harmful views is shutting down opportunities for those with different opinions to be heard. That is misguided, because the way to prevent harm to young people who are faced with views they find offensive is not to stop those views being heard—as long as they are within the law—but to prepare our young people and teach them to respond in a mature and open-minded way so that they can criticise, debate and, if appropriate, change their minds. That is why I so strongly support the Bill, which will protect free speech in our universities and secure academic freedoms.

We do our young adults and our whole society a great disservice when we do not allow students to be exposed to the ideas and beliefs that will challenge them and allow them to grow in character and resilience. When we encounter beliefs we find difficult, we have a choice. We can shut our ears, we can react with anger or we can respond thoughtfully and honestly, considering whether our own opinions need to evolve or be strengthened. This is the path to maturity and tolerance, and to individual and societal progress. I am delighted to support the Bill.

Education Route Map: Covid-19

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

There is no more urgent task for Government right now than getting children back into school. I am delighted with the Prime Minister’s announcement that schools can reopen from 8 March, and I welcome the additional £700 million of catch-up funding, setting out a clear framework towards recovery.

Many children have suffered greatly over the last year, prevented from going to school, banned from seeing grandparents and kept indoors, inactive, isolated and spending hundreds of hours in front of a screen. Our children have not only missed out on learning. In many cases, they have lost confidence, motivation and purpose. I know that the Government have gone to great lengths to deliver online learning and support families financially, but I want to reflect for a moment on how society as a whole has allowed this harm to happen to our most vulnerable and most voiceless citizens during a pandemic that poses almost no risk to children’s physical health.

Over recent years, we have prided ourselves on our enlightened attitude to children, critical of the Victorians for their view that children should be seen and not heard. But this year, in 21st-century Britain, our children have been both unseen and unheard, with the harms that many have experienced only now becoming apparent. That is why we must strain every sinew to restore what has been lost to our children. I am heartened by the Government’s commitment to prioritise catch-up over the coming years, but this recommitment to children must extend beyond the academic. This year, we have seen how much more our schools offer than just the three Rs, and many families have all but collapsed without the social, relational and even medical support provided by schools.

Perhaps our brilliant schools have for some time been masking a deep social crisis: a crisis in family life. The charity Mental Health Innovations reports that in its conversations with children under 13, 55% say that they have no one else to talk to. Many families are in crisis, led by a steady, stealthy degrading of the role of families and the value of parenting. The trend towards more and more parents working longer and longer hours has done wonders for our GDP but caused harm to our children. Being a parent is one of the most important roles that any of us can have and has more long-term impact on society and the economy than almost anything else we do. But parenting takes time, effort and a huge amount of emotional resilience—resources that are in short supply when stressed parents are working long hours in a tax system that does not recognise family responsibility, and they have little energy to spare.

I welcome the Government’s dedicated and ambitious approach to academic catch-up in schools, but if we really want to restore to our children what has been lost, we should also look again at how we can empower and support parents to deliver their crucial role in our children’s success.

Remote Education and Free School Meals

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con) [V]]

One of the greatest tragedies of this pandemic is its impact on our children. Millions of young people have lost months of face-to-face schooling, missing out on their education and denied the social interaction that is so crucial to their development and wellbeing. Virtual schooling can never replace face-to-face learning, but while school buildings remain closed to most children, access to online education is vital. For some children, one of the barriers to online learning is a lack of equipment, which is why the Government are providing 1.3 million devices to schools across the country. This drive to purchase such an enormous quantity of laptops and tablets has involved co-ordinating multiple manufacturers, dedicated factory runs, and prioritising shipping. Against a backdrop of soaring global demand, the Department for Education has become one of the largest buyers of IT in the world. We must continue to deliver these devices at pace.

I commend Ministers and officials for their extraordinary efforts, but online learning also depends on schools’ ability to deliver virtual lessons. A year ago, teaching the entire curriculum remotely would have been unthinkable, but now teachers up and down the country are logging on to Zoom or Google Classroom, greeting their classes face to face and using innovative resources to teach lessons.

Having been in contact with local headteachers throughout the pandemic, I know that schools in Penistone, Stocksbridge, Ecclesfield, Chapeltown and Dodworth have made sustained efforts to create and refine their remote learning provision. Last week, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor helped to deliver a virtual maths lesson to year 6 at Oughtibridge Primary School in my constituency. He saw for himself just what is possible with interactive remote learning. I am pleased to report that the Chancellor’s maths is of a very high standard.

Our schools have transformed the way that they work while working to strict new public health guidance, operating test and trace and delivering catch-up schemes. On behalf of children and parents across my constituency, I want to say a huge thank you.

On free school meals, we need to differentiate between lunches provided by schools during term-time and wider welfare support offered to struggling families. The continuation of free school meals has never been in doubt. During lockdowns, the Government have offered the choice of food parcels or supermarket vouchers to support children and learning from home. In terms of wider help, the pandemic has caused real hardship to many families. I welcome the covid winter support grant, providing £170 million to local councils to tackle food poverty this winter, including during school holidays. I support the measures that the Government have taken to help families over the past year, but what our children need now is a rapid return to the classroom, and I wholeheartedly support the Secretary of State in his determination to make that happen.

Covid-19: Educational Settings

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Wednesday 6th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I refer the hon. Gentleman to my statement earlier, which covered most of the points he raises.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con) [V]]

I know that my right hon. Friend did everything he could to keep schools open, and that he shares my concern for the welfare of the hundreds of thousands of young people now isolated at home. Will he look urgently at the reports of harms being caused to children by social isolation?

[Gavin Williamson]

Absolutely. It is incredible how social isolation has a real impact on young people. Children miss out on so much from not being at school— not just their teacher’s input but socialisation with friends. I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss this and what more we can do to support schools, teachers and the education community to support our children.

Free School Meals

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jo Gideon (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Con)]

I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate, not just as the Member of Parliament for Stoke-on-Trent Central or the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on the national food strategy, but as someone who is disappointed and saddened by the divisive nature of the debate. There is no need for today’s point-scoring motion—a sticking plaster, as the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) called it—which will no doubt cause unnecessary concern for our constituents. A consensus exists between hon. Members on both sides of the House that one child hungry is one too many. Any suggestion that an hon. Member would think otherwise is deeply offensive.



The coronavirus restrictions introduced in March this year presented a challenge as the boundaries between our public services and our private lives became blurred. This Government rightly listened to public opinion and acted by extending the provision of free school meals over the summer holidays at a time when we were facing school closures. However, we are now in a very different position. With schools and classrooms now in session, it is only right that the exceptional measures introduced at the height of this pandemic come to an end. Instead, we must have a constructive debate considering the longer-term and most sustainable solutions to tackling this problem.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree with me that the very fact that we have reopened schools—99% of state schools are now open—shows just how committed this Government are to tackling child poverty, because saving our children’s education and catching children up where they have fallen behind is the No. 1 thing we can do to help bring people out of poverty?

[Jo Gideon]

I thank my hon. Friend, and I absolutely agree with what she says.

There is no question about it: there is a problem, but headlines do not help these children and their families, and the sticking plaster this motion calls for would be woefully inadequate. Before the pandemic, the Government commissioned an independent and comprehensive review of our entire food system from field to fork. The national food strategy review now being conducted is a top-to-bottom examination, and it will publish long-term and sustainable recommendations that will inform Government strategy on some of the biggest challenges to improving the health of our nation. As chairman of the APPG on the national food strategy, I am determined to work cross-party to develop support for more comprehensive, more fundamental and more long-term solutions. The work of the group will be integral to developing these proposals and it will help inform the White Paper. Addressing the issues of child obesity, malnutrition and food poverty is central to the levelling-up agenda. As with many aspects of the Government’s levelling-up agenda, outcomes cannot be delivered overnight.

--- Later in debate ---

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I will do my best, Madam Deputy Speaker.

The motion calls on the Government to extend free school meal provision throughout the school holidays until Easter next year. Although on the Order Paper this is a debate about free school meals, even if the motion passes, the result will not be more free school meals. To risk stating the obvious, during the holidays schools are closed, and they do not provide physical meals—free or otherwise—to any child. Let us be clear: what is really being called for here is an extension to the voucher scheme that would start in half-term next week by giving supermarket vouchers to parents of children who are eligible. That is not the same as providing a daily nutritious meal to a child in a school environment to help them get the most out of their education. It is important to recognise the difference between free school meals and what they are for, and supermarket vouchers.

The initial supermarket voucher scheme was set up in March and was not an attempt to solve child poverty, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) rightly pointed out, is a matter for the welfare system, not our schools. No one denies that child, and therefore family, poverty does exist, or that we should be doing everything that we can to bring people out of it—I will talk about that more in a moment—but the initial voucher scheme was a practical, administrative response to the unforeseen necessity of closing schools for an indeterminate period. No one suggested at the time that it was anything other than a temporary measure.

The truth is that far too many families do not have enough. They do not have enough money, enough food or enough help. There are many and complex reasons for that, and, sadly, to suggest that supermarket vouchers will somehow fix it is like putting a sticking plaster on a serious wound. But what will work? When the welfare state was launched, the vision was to provide a safety net for those who found themselves out of work and to help them get back on their feet, but now we find ourselves in a position—pre-covid, anyway—where far more of our welfare budget is spent on those in work than those out of work. In other words, at present, work is not always the route out of poverty that it should be.

How do we help people into better paid and secure work, and away from the addiction, the family breakdown and the social issues that all too often trap people in poverty? Education is part of the answer, and I commend my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary for the catch-up schemes, but research shows that the barriers to good work are not just material or educational poverty; lack of social, relational capital prevents many people from finding a way out.

There is no time for me to say more, but I recommend that hon. Members read the work of Hilary Cottam, whose book “Radical Help” proposes a very radical relational community approach to tackling poverty. These are the kinds of things that we should be debating in this House. Child poverty is a serious and complex issue; we need serious and complex solutions.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Well, there we are. I call Mary Kelly Foy.

Support for Children and Families: Covid-19

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) on having secured such an important debate about support for families. I could fill much more than my allotted three minutes by retelling some of the heartbreaking lockdown stories that parents across Penistone and Stocksbridge have shared with me, but I particularly want to highlight the plight of families who have children with special educational needs, who have really struggled without the support of schools, face-to-face services and even help from extended family.

Early in lockdown, I received this email from a constituent, which I share with her permission:

“Dear Miriam, My daughter is 5, has a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder, is awaiting ADHD assessment and is pre verbal.

She has begun lashing out at all family members including her baby sister, she will only eat three foods, she has started smearing her poo on a daily basis, the meltdowns have intensified a thousand times 1000x, and she is sleeping a maximum of two hours a night. I have spoken to the autism nurses, I have spoken to the Multi Agency Support Team, to school; nobody can help and I don't even have a back-up help as I can't see my family.”

For families of children with additional needs, lockdown has been exhausting, but for other households, the picture has been mixed. For families where one or both parents have been furloughed, the opportunity to spend more quality time together has been welcomed. In other families, where parents have juggled an increased workload with home schooling or where loss of income has increased the strain, lockdown has been tough. For single-parent households, the reduction in physical and emotional support has been hard to bear, so what can we learn from the pandemic about how to support families in future?

We need to recognise that covid has stretched the capacity of families that have already reached their elastic limit. So many families, even in normal times, exist on a knife edge. There is just not enough time, money or effort to be a hard-working employee, an effective parent, a loving partner, a carer for elderly relatives, a homemaker, a fit and healthy individual and a volunteer at the local school, so when there is a bump in the road—bereavement, stress at work or sickness—there is nothing and no one to take the strain.

For decades, as has been mentioned by hon. Friends, we have eaten away at family life, with a series of policies that encourage both parents into full-time work. We offer ever-increasing hours of free childcare, without recognising that, for many families, the issue is a lack of work-life balance. We have taxes and benefits that treat each adult as an isolated individual and penalise couples who live together. Those policies have weakened family life, and we must hit reset.

We need to consider the household as a single economic unit, with policies that reduce pressure on family life. We should stop viewing free or cheap childcare as the only solution to families’ problems, and look at how we can redesign the benefits system to allow parents to spend more time at home when their children are young. We need to better understand the economic, health and social benefits to society of resilient family units, putting family at the heart of our levelling-up agenda and investing in family hubs. We need to appreciate the symbiotic relationship between families and communities, because strong families build strong communities, and strong communities build a strong nation.

Covid has hit families hard, but it will not be the last crisis that families face. We must not return to the status quo, but instead find a new settlement that gives families the breathing space and capacity they need and deserve to truly flourish.

Oral Answers to Questions

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Monday 22nd June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Sir George Howarth (Knowsley) (Lab)]

What plans he has to help schools deliver programmes to enable pupils to catch up on progress lost as a result of the covid-19 lockdown.

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

What support his Department will provide to pupils to make up for time spent out of school as a result of the covid-19 lockdown.

[Lee Anderson (Ashfield) (Con)]

What support his Department will provide to pupils to make up for time spent out of school as a result of the covid-19 lockdown.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gavin Williamson]

I am pleased to report that Knowsley Council has seen good sense and is working with the Department to ensure that all schools in Knowsley are opening up, which is a welcome development. The whole purpose of our very targeted approach is that it is evidence-based—we know that direct tutoring of children from disadvantaged backgrounds has the single biggest impact on driving their attainment. As I am sure the right hon. Gentleman will be aware, the other element of the package—£650 million—gives schools flexibility to look at how they can drive improvement, and I urge him to look at the work done by the Education Endowment Foundation to guide how they spend that money.

[Miriam Cates]

I welcome the Government’s £1 billion support package, which will be essential in helping children catch up on their academic education. However, our children are not just missing out academically; they are suffering emotionally.

Increasingly, I am hearing from parents of children with autism in my constituency, who report that being away from the structure and routine of the school day is having a devastating impact on their children’s behaviour and mental health. Some of those children are not being allowed back into school because of concerns about social distancing. What can my right hon. Friend do to get autistic children back to school as quickly as possible to ensure that this crisis does not have a permanent effect on their wellbeing?

[Gavin Williamson]

The best thing we can do for every child is to welcome them back to school at the earliest possible opportunity, when it is safe. I herald the wonderful work done by the Autism Education Trust, which the Department has decided to give extra funding and resource to this year, so that it can work with more teachers, helping them and training them to create the best environment to welcome all children back into school, where they can develop.

Free School Meals: Summer Holidays

Miriam Cates Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Griffith (Arundel and South Downs) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris) and to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) on his virtuoso maiden speech, proving that his constituents made an extremely wise choice. I am pleased to be able to speak in today’s debate, and congratulate the hon. Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) on securing it. Our children have only one chance at childhood and one chance of getting the education they need. Education, as we Government Members know, is the best way out of poverty. It is the best way of levelling up and sometimes, sadly, it is the best escape from a home that lacks the love and support that we all want for our children but is not always available. That means that teaching is among the most important vocations in society. Teachers are the people we trust to bring up our children, to inspire them, to teach them our shared values of tolerance and respect, and for the environment—

[Miriam Cates (Penistone and Stocksbridge) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Andrew Griffith]

I would love to give way to my hon. Friend.

[Miriam Cates]

As a former teacher, I absolutely agree about the value of teachers. Does my hon. Friend also agree that, while the support for free school meals is extremely welcome, the best thing we can do for the long-term futures of our children is to get them back into school in front of teachers—the professionals who know how to educate our children—and we will close that attainment gap?

[Andrew Griffith]

My hon. Friend makes, characteristically, the apposite point. I want to thank all the teachers and heads across West Sussex for their huge efforts made all year round, but particularly during the pandemic. I am pleased to report that all schools in my constituency of Arundel and South Downs are open to at least some year groups. In particular, I want to pay tribute to the parents, pupils and staff at Clapham and Patching school in my constituency, who only yesterday learned the wonderful news that they have saved their 200-year-old village school from closure. I congratulate the excellent South Downs Education Trust, which put forward the successful proposal to maintain the school.

As other Members have said, a hungry child is not a learning child, and is a tragedy that we should not accept in our society. I welcome the Government’s announcement today adding to their very extensive support in this area. I want to highlight the national school breakfast programme, which gives thousands of children in some of the most deprived areas the opportunity to attend a breakfast club. That programme so far reaches 1,800 schools and serves a free nutritious breakfast every school day to 280,000 children.

It is working. A systematic review of the effects of breakfast carried out by the University of Leeds found a positive correlation between breakfast consumption and children’s cognitive function, including improvements in a child’s attention, memory and executive function. In 2016, the Education Endowment Foundation and the Institute for Fiscal Studies carried out a randomised control trial and found that pupils in schools supported by the school breakfast programme made an amazing two months of additional academic progress over the course of a single year. In supporting today’s motion, I congratulate the Government on that valuable scheme, as well as thanking the charities Family Action and Magic Breakfast for all that they do to deliver it.