Early Years Childcare
Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Taiwo Owatemi(1 year, 2 months ago)
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Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)
I thank the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) for securing this important debate, and I welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Keir Mather) to his place. I commend him for his outstanding maiden speech—he has made his constituents very proud tonight.
Throughout this cost of living crisis, countless nurseries in my constituency of Coventry North West have struggled to keep up with ever-rising prices. At Georgie Porgie’s pre-school, Katie, the director, fought to keep her nursery open after her utility bills tripled. She was lucky and was able to save her business, but countless other nurseries across the country have been forced to close. We need only look in the faces of the nursery workers who have lost their jobs, and their security, to see that our current system is failing. The inadequate levels of state funding offered per child leaves nurseries to struggle with insufficient funds and inadequate support.
The system fails not only our nurseries, but the parents and carers who use them. Closing nurseries means less space for their children, packed waiting lists and longer morning commutes. But a financially struggling nursery almost always means a rise in fees. It is not surprising that Britain now has the third most expensive childcare system in the world, with more than one in five households spending more than half their income on it. For women who wish to return to work soon after the birth of a child, those costs crush their aspirations. Three in four mothers say that childcare fees are so significant financially that their best option is to stop working altogether. I know from speaking to many families on the doorstep that this is an issue that many of them raise with me. Our system hinders the opportunities and, ultimately, the freedom of women who wish to return to work, and we cannot continue to allow that to happen.
I strongly support my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) in her plan for an extensive review of the system. I believe that any reform we implement must move us closer to the examples of countries such as Finland or Estonia, where there is a better-funded, expanded system of care. As the shadow Secretary of State has suggested, that should involve empowering local councils to deliver their own childcare, filling the gaps in provision. But it should also include more substantial grants offered to nurseries, which could stabilise the industry, while also potentially adopting a Finnish-style tiered system, where each family’s fees are far more closely linked to their income.
While I welcome the Government’s plan to expand childcare provision to children as young as nine months old, those changes are simply not enough to tackle the challenges in our system. If we seriously wish to give our businesses and parents a system that works, we have to go for far more substantial reforms. Sticking-plaster solutions just will not work. I urge this House not to turn a blind eye to our childcare system, but to press ahead with the meaningful, long-term changes that this country desperately needs.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
I will call Jim Shannon, but I do need him to sit down at 9.44 pm so that I can bring in the Front-Bench speakers.
Strengthening Standards in Public Life
Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Taiwo Owatemi(3 years, 1 month ago)
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Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)
On the issue of Ministers breaking the code, last weekend The Sunday Times wrote about a Transport Minister who allegedly misused taxpayers’ money?
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
Has the hon. Lady notified the Member concerned that she will be referring to them?
Madam Deputy Speaker
But has she notified the Member that she will be referring to them?
Madam Deputy Speaker
Okay. The hon. Lady needs to be quite careful about how she approaches it then.
Taiwo Owatemi
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last Sunday, The Sunday Times reported that the Transport Secretary misused taxpayers’ money by blocking the redevelopment of airfields. This would affect my local airfield in Coventry, which is meant to be redeveloped as a gigafactory that would bring thousands of jobs to my city of Coventry. Does my hon. Friend agree that senior Conservative Ministers should spend less time abusing their position and more—
Online Anonymity and Anonymous Abuse
Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Taiwo Owatemi(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)
I thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for giving me the opportunity to speak in this debate on what is a growing concern for me, my constituents and Members across the House. I congratulate the hon. Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) on securing this debate.
Social media platforms have connected us in a way that no one would have thought possible. From rapid instant messaging to sharing content on our everyday lives, we are immersed in readily accessible information and news in a way that our parents would have only dreamed of. In the past two decades, this immersion in an always on and always connected world has had another consequence. A study by the Turing Institute on online abuse in 2019 estimates that up to 40% of people in the UK have seen or been exposed to abusive content, and 10% to 20% have been targeted by abusive content. Worse still, that same year, Oxford Internet Surveys found that 27% of respondents had seen contents or imagery that were either cruel or hateful and that 10% had received abusive emails.
The ethnic breakdown makes for even more depressing reading: 41% of black respondents received abusive emails compared with just 7% of white respondents. That should come as no surprise to Members who witness this kind of content on a daily basis. They know all too well the sheer scale and impact that this abuse can have, particularly as this abuse is often anonymous and spread by accounts with peculiar user names with either eggs or silhouettes as profile pictures. While we must protect freedom of expression, there should be the same level of accountability for someone who commits abuse online as there is for someone who verbally abuses a person on the street. I know the strength of feeling across this issue in my own area, which is why I am supporting Coventry Youth Activists’ campaign for a change in Facebook’s policy so that it recognises hate speech and discrimination specifically targeting disabled people. At the moment, that form of discrimination is reported under the “other” category, which makes it seem acceptable and less important than other types of abuse. Tech giants can and must do more to protect the rights of their users to feel safe, both online and in their everyday lives, and their users’ free expression should not mean that they are free from consequences of their action. Social media companies can absolutely do more to make the online environment safer. They have the tools at their disposal, so do this Government. If the tech giants will not take action on it, it is up to the Government to give the regulators the resources and teeth they need to take appropriate actions to safeguard all users, so that social media platforms can be a place for people to truly feel safe.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)
No. 33 has withdrawn, so we are moving to our final speaker from the Back Benches, Christine Jardine.
Awarding of Qualifications: Role of Ministers
Debate between Baroness Winterton of Doncaster and Taiwo Owatemi(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Taiwo Owatemi (Coventry North West) (Lab)
The Sunday following A-level results day, students in my constituency should have been celebrating their achievements with their families after years of hard work. Instead, they were in Coventry city centre protesting the unjust algorithm that levelled them down, in some cases, by three to four grades, denying them their place at university.
I stood with them that Sunday, not just as their MP but as a former student at a school deemed failing by Ofsted. I suspect that if I had been a student this year, my postcode would not have passed the Government’s algorithm test, and my grades would have been downgraded significantly. I would have lost out on my place to study pharmacy, and the NHS would have had one less pharmacist to treat cancer patients in their time of need. I cannot help but fear that this Government’s failure to handle A-level, BTEC and GCSE results has cost the NHS and other sectors future key workers at a time when the country has remembered their necessity.
I also regret the disregard of teachers—a workforce of key workers who are too often forgotten about during the pandemic. This Government chose to implement an algorithm that devalued not only students but the professional expertise of teachers. At the height of the pandemic, teachers worked relentlessly to provide the requested evidence for predicted grades, while simultaneously providing increased pastoral support for their students. The Government should have listened to these key workers and valued their skills, rather than an algorithm steeped in bias. We must do everything we can to ensure that these key workers are never undervalued again. Our future generation depends on them.
For students in Coventry, the academic year ended in uncertainty because of the coronavirus, but it is because of this Government that their next academic year has needlessly begun with uncertainty too. Colleges and universities, which are already under the pressure of adapting to blended learning and ensuring a safe working and learning environment, have also been forced to pick up the pieces from the Government’s chaotic handling of results day. Even now, there are students still uncertain whether they are starting university in just a matter of weeks, still unsure about accommodation and still in the dark about their immediate future.
I wholeheartedly welcome the Government’s U-turn, which saw the abandonment of their algorithm that graded by background and not by aptitude. However, I do not welcome the lost futures, mental anguish and disruption incurred by waiting for its arrival. As an NHS worker, I knew that young people’s mental health was already in crisis. This summer’s exam results will have undoubtedly exacerbated that crisis, already strained by lockdown and restricted access to mental health crisis care. A survey by YoungMinds found that 80% of respondents agreed that the coronavirus pandemic has made their mental health worse, with 31% saying that they were no longer able to access support but still needed it. I am also deeply concerned about the further impact that this mishandling of young people’s future has had on their mental health—