Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Hard-working parents are being hit by a triple whammy with regard to child care costs: they are getting less support to pay for it because of the cuts to tax credits; costs are creeping up; and places are disappearing because of cuts to local government and the removal of ring-fenced funding. What assessment have Ministers made of the impact of their choices on parental employment, especially among women, as well as on child poverty?

[Sarah Teather]

As I just said, substantial new money is going into early years. It is one of the few areas across Government where in fact—[Interruption.] It is two-year olds, but that extra money will of course benefit any of those settings that are working with two-year olds, and most of them will be working with two-year olds as well as older children. It is new money, particularly for disadvantaged areas that might not otherwise have taken two-year olds. I wish that the Labour party, instead of just carping, might sometimes congratulate the Government on putting extra money into disadvantaged areas.

Dyslexia

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Weir. I fear that the vote in the House has caused disruption for many people who intended to be in this debate, but what we lack in quantity we will make up for between us in quality.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) for securing this timely debate. As he said, I was at the meeting of the all-party group on dyslexia and specific learning difficulties at which he resolved to apply for this debate. His success in doing so gives us a great opportunity to take forward the discussion we were having in that meeting, along with the hon. Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset (Mr Liddell-Grainger), the noble Lords Addington and Clement-Jones and representatives from the main dyslexia organisations. We will continue that debate here today, and I hope we will receive responses from the Minister to some of our concerns.

I want to record my thanks to the Dyslexia-SpLD Trust, Dyslexia Action, the British Dyslexia Association and Patoss for not just the excellent briefings they provided in advance of the debate but for the work they do day in and day out to unlock the world of words for dyslexic people, particularly children and young adults. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton North gave an excellent speech, which drew on the many concerns that those organisations have raised with us about the current direction of travel in the education system—concerns shared by anyone with an interest in helping young people with special educational needs get the most from life.

My hon. Friend the Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) commented on the thinking that dyslexia, rather than being a disability, is to do with a very wide reading ability spectrum, along which most of society would fall. He knows that I disagree with him on that point. There is a huge amount of evidence that proves that dyslexia is a very real and significant disability, especially at the extreme end of the spectrum where it goes way beyond a problem with learning to read and affects memory and organisational ability.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am sure that we have all come across friends and relatives who have slight spelling disabilities, particularly with unusual names and foreign words. At that end of the spectrum, we are not talking about an inability to read. I am sure that my hon. Friend agrees that there is a difference between those of us who fairly quickly pick up names and foreign words and those who do not, and that is, I believe, the thin end of the dyslexia wedge.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I agree. My son is severely dyslexic, and it affects not just his spelling and writing capability. Dyslexics are often much slower in learning to speak, and when my son was younger the condition affected his speech. He was three before he first said a word that was understandable to others—I could understand his grunts and moans a bit earlier. He has very bad memory problems and organisational ability; dyslexia really does affect a large part of his life. My daughter has been a bad speller most of her life—she is 16 now and her spelling is getting a bit better—but in no way would I say that she has dyslexia as I know it. They do say, however, that the condition runs in families, so she might fall somewhere on the spectrum if she was ever tested.

[Graham Stringer]

I follow the people who do not take my hon. Friend’s view, such as Diane McGuiness and other academics who gave evidence to the Science and Technology Committee, but I was not trying to make the point that there is no complete scientific agreement that dyslexia exists. I was saying that having carefully considered the definition and how it was applied, the Committee came to the conclusion, which I will repeat, that the

“definition is so broad and blurred at the edges that it is difficult to see how it could be useful in any diagnostic sense.”

The Committee was concerned that because of the use of the term, people who had difficulties learning to read and who were not diagnosed were being discriminated against.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Obviously, I am not an expert in the diagnosis of dyslexia, but there are people who are, and when they do the various tests what comes out is something called a spiky chart. Where there is a huge disparity between performance in non-verbal reasoning and other tests of intelligence on the one hand and reading and writing ability on the other, it becomes very obvious that someone is dyslexic. If someone has not very good reading skills but equally does not have high levels of intelligence, they have a flatter profile. Perhaps at the lower edge of the spectrum, as my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North has said—this is getting into a very technical conversation—diagnosis might be difficult and there might be blurred edges, but as we progress along the spectrum I do not think that the edges are blurred. Again, however, I am not an expert.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend touched on dyslexia being an inherited characteristic, and I am sure that we all know families in which a parent is dyslexic and one or more of their children is. Two male friends of mine who are graduates have three children each, and dyslexia has affected only one child in each family, with that child having a serious spelling disability. All six children went to university and graduated.

[Mrs Hodgson]

The chair of our all-party group, the hon. Member for Bridgwater and West Somerset, is dyslexic, and I believe that his two sons are also. Yes, it is a trait that runs in families, and that is recognised.

Most Members here today know of my personal interest in this issue, as a mother of a severely dyslexic son. My son was unfortunately not diagnosed or helped anywhere near soon enough. The Minister also knows very well most of the concerns that have been raised today, because we have already had debates on the matter and have been in correspondence recently. I thank her for her comprehensive response to my first letter, and I look forward to her response to my reply, which she might preview today.

I wrote that first letter because I had started to see how various changes in education policy could, when taken together, start to put children with certain special educational needs at a disadvantage, and I used dyslexia to illustrate my point because that was the SEN I had personal experience of and knew best—I could see how the changes would have affected my son if he had been coming up to the start of key stage 4 now. I have no doubt that the potential effect is not desired at all by the Minister or her officials, and that it is one of those unintended consequences that we sometimes do not see unless we are looking at something from the outside, or until the effect has begun to manifest itself in statistics.

There are a number of issues on which I will touch briefly. My hon. Friend has mentioned many of them already. It is best in most narratives to start at the beginning, and in this case the beginning is initial teacher training. Without teachers in our classrooms who can spot the signs of dyslexia and teach in a way that does not alienate dyslexic children, we will continue to fail those children. I know from bitter experience that many teachers have a woefully inadequate knowledge of dyslexia. It was not until my son was nine that he came across a teacher who could spot what I now understand were glaringly obvious signs, and even then, that was probably because her own son had dyslexia as well, as I later found out. Too many children in their early years of school life are going through the motions without being noticed and supported. Like other communication difficulties, that can manifest itself in significant problems further down the line such as rebellious behaviour, depression or, as we find in our prisons and young offender institutions, criminality, which often starts as youth disorder.

The answer, in one word, is training. I understand that a module on dyslexia that has the backing of the sector has been prepared and is ready for incorporation in initial teacher training, but the Minister also indicated in her letter to me that the Department has commissioned new materials on specific learning difficulties, which will be available online in the spring. Will those materials form a mandatory part of the initial teacher training course, and will she consider the sector’s calls to incorporate the existing module from 2005 as a minimum requirement? She might be aware that the British Dyslexia Association has an online petition calling for the 2005 module to be used for teacher training; I think the BDA is seeking 100,000 signatures.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

My hon. Friend mentioned people in prison and people with personal difficulties in life. I am sure that she, like me, has come across youngsters with behavioural problems at school that can be traced back to self-esteem problems due to difficulties with spelling, which in their case is dyslexia. That stress can be relieved early on by saying, “You have a condition that we can help you to cope with. It is not something you should be ashamed of or behave badly over; it is something that we can help with and that many other people experience.” If we can convey that to young people, we can probably avoid a lot of the problems in life that many of them suffer.

[Mrs Hodgson]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Early identification is vital. The earlier we can identify all special educational needs, not just dyslexia, the better, but we find that speech, language and communication disorders such as dyslexia often have the biggest effect on children’s self-esteem, and can often lead to problems such as youth disorder further down the line. The number of people in prison with speech, language and communication difficulties and dyslexia is anywhere from 60% to 80%. The noble Lord Ramsbotham is knowledgeable about the issue and speaks about it a lot. Much of the problem could be failure to diagnose special educational needs in our schools. We must ensure that children with a label get the right label, whether it involves dyslexia, behavioural problems, autism or whatever, rather than “naughty”, “lazy” or “disruptive”.

[Kelvin Hopkins]

To refer to my childhood, which was a long time ago, teachers regularly used to beat us on the back of the hand with rulers in those days. I was not beaten, because I was not dyslexic and was good at sums, but lots of my classmates were, simply because they had those sorts of problem.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Hodgson]

That is a world we never want to go back to. Thankfully, that does not happen in our classrooms now, but what happens is that codes of conduct are given out. I saw it with my own son. He did not write down enough work from the board, so he came home with various punishments. The code of conduct was writing out the school rules. I got off the train from London one evening and walked into the house at 11 o’clock to find him still at the kitchen table writing out his punishment, the school rules. The punishment was given because the teacher thought he had not done enough work.

My son was 14 and had started at a new secondary school when we moved. I insisted that all the teachers at least knew that he was dyslexic. I was not asking for special treatment, just that they knew he was severely dyslexic and was statemented. I was assured that they would all be told. As I walked in and saw the punishment, I thought, “Either this is a very evil teacher, or he doesn’t realise my son is severely dyslexic.” I wrote a note to the teacher saying, “This is as far as my son got. I am stopping this punishment now. He is not going to do any more of these punishments. They must be proportionate to his ability.” It was like a child who came last in a sprint being forced to run a marathon. That was the equivalent of the punishment that he had been given.

A note came back the next day: “Very sorry, Mrs Hodgson, we had no idea your child was dyslexic.” That was unbelievable on many levels. The school was supposed to have told all his teachers that he had dyslexia, and it was obvious to anybody who knows anything about the condition that my son is dyslexic. That had not been picked up in him—a child in a new school. What if he had not been diagnosed in a previous school? At any stage in a child’s journey through school, teachers should be able to diagnose such disorders.

I know that we have plenty of time, but I will go back to the substance of my speech. The latest issue to present itself is the phonics screening that will now be required during children’s first years at school. I was more than a little annoyed to see in a departmental press release over the weekend that the Minister’s colleague, the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), referred to the fact that one in 10 11-year-olds could read no better than a seven-year-old as evidence that his favoured phonics scheme is needed, without mentioning that one in 10 11-year-olds have dyslexia.

Strangely, the same press release did not mention that two thirds of teachers who took part in the pilot disagreed that the check accurately assessed the decoding ability of pupils with special educational needs. That is why there are so many concerns about complete reliance on phonics as both a measure of ability and a teaching method. It is also crucial that children who fail the phonics test, as a dyslexic child almost certainly will, are not made to feel as though they have failed—although the test can be good, from the point of view that it identifies them. Appropriate remedial action, including testing for dyslexia, should be taken in a timely manner.

That brings me to the Government’s plans for the future of SEN provision, and the ability of those who will be expected to deliver it to do so. The Minister knows that I welcomed the Green Paper as a means of opening debate on SEN provision, and that I look forward to seeing the results of the consultation, as I know we all do. However, the concern throughout the sector is that young people with non-medical problems such as dyslexia might not warrant support when school action and school action plus are abolished, as very few dyslexic children are currently statemented. I sincerely hope that that will not be the case. I will welcome any assurance that the Minister can give us.

We then come to how support will be provided if a dyslexic pupil is deemed to need it. Local authority budgets are being stretched to breaking point right now. The proliferation of the academies and free schools desired by the Secretary of State will mean that few funds will be held centrally with which to sustain shared support services. I know that I have asked the Minister this before, but I hope that she will guarantee today that support for dyslexic students will not get worse before it gets better due to the austerity programme being imposed on local authorities, and that when the new system is fully up and running, the money will be there to back it.

I move to the end of students’ time in school. The Minister will know that I have concerns about the key stage 4 curriculum and examinations. I will not labour the point about the E-bac, but needless to say, it has been installed as the gold standard set of qualifications, despite the fact that it will exclude almost all young people with dyslexia, as they are usually not taught foreign languages, whether modern or ancient, for obvious reasons. On assessment, Ofqual confirmed in a press release today that it is implementing the changes to GCSEs that the Government told it to make—scrapping modular examinations, which allow students to break up their learning into more manageable chunks and sit exams as they go along, when the subject is fresh in their minds. Instead, from next year students will be required to learn for two years—a bit like when we sat our O-levels—and commit all of that learning to paper in one go. That intensity will pose a challenge for many children with SEN, but especially dyslexics, given the memory problems I mentioned.

The support that young people with dyslexia need to be able even to sit their exams, let alone do well in them, is also under threat. The Minister will, I hope, have seen my latest letter to her in which I drew her attention to an article by Jack Grimston in The Sunday Times on 20 November. He reports the concerns that school teachers have over the changes that the Joint Council for Qualifications has made to eligibility for access arrangements in examinations, which my hon. Friend the Member for Luton North highlighted.

The changes will prevent bright pupils with dyslexia from getting extra time or a reader and a scribe in exams to mitigate their limited reading and writing abilities, which gives them a level playing field with their non-dyslexic peers. That will have a detrimental effect on the qualifications that they will be able to achieve. There are many bright pupils with dyslexia, as we have heard today, some of whom go on to doctorates in physics. They say that Einstein was dyslexic, and I could list many other examples.

In a timed exam, the most intelligent young person is only ever as good as their ability to read the questions set and transfer the answers from their minds to the paper, which is why the most severely dyslexic pupil is given a reader and a scribe. In making the changes, the JCQ is limiting what intelligent dyslexics can achieve, and from my conversations with the sector, it appears to have done so without any consultation. I urge the Minister to look into the matter and intervene where necessary to ensure that such young people are not held back by their disability.

Finally, I understand from today’s Ofqual announcement that once the exams have been sat, dyslexics will be at a disadvantage yet again during marking, because the proportion of marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar in certain subjects is being increased following interventions from the Secretary of State. Even if a dyslexic pupil gets a reader and a scribe, whose spelling is the examiner marking?

[Kelvin Hopkins]

I am sorry to intervene once again on my hon. Friend’s excellent speech. The points she raises suggest that dyslexic pupils should be identified and the fact that a pupil is dyslexic recorded on the examination paper, so that allowances are made. I heard only today of a young woman who is highly intelligent in conversation and can come top of her class in most things, but has difficulty with writing due to her dyslexia. Every time she is tested orally, she does brilliantly, but when she is tested in writing, she has more difficulty.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I hope that the Minister will take up those other concerns with the JCQ and that compensations can be made in marking. We do not ask for favourable treatment for dyslexics, but for their disability to be recognised and accommodations made, so that there is a level playing field.

I have not set out to make political points today because the debate has been well informed and constructive, and I know that supporting young people with dyslexia is important to Members on both sides of both Houses. I sincerely hope that the Minister will commit to returning with her officials to look at the specific concerns raised today, and that she will take any necessary steps to mitigate, or indeed undo, the impact of what are the, I hope, unintended consequences that the various reforms and changes may have on the education and life chances of the estimated 750,000 young people in our schools and colleges who have dyslexia.

[Several hon. Members]

rose—

--- Later in debate ---

[Penny Mordaunt]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. Getting an assessment to start with is a battle for parents, and then they must have confidence in it and in the remedial action that should be taken. Many parents I have been dealing with have not had satisfaction on any of those fronts.

I would be grateful if the Minister could say more about the statutory responsibilities of the Department for Education and the discussions she may have had with the Department of Health. We need to strengthen the tools available to parents and other advocates for these children. My constituents certainly believe that they pay their taxes to ensure that the education system we provide gives every child the education they need to reach their full potential.

One of my final points relates to costs. Where we have not been able to get a school place for some of the children in my constituency, we have actually funded placements for them, and I should like to place on record my thanks to a number of London livery companies and local Rotarians for providing funds to allow that to happen. In just one year, the girl I mentioned at the start, who was four years behind her expected reading age, has caught up. She is a bright girl, and having been given the proper, full-time dyslexia teaching that she needed, she is now doing really well.

An argument that is often thrown back at us is that providing all the top-notch SEN provision that children need costs too much and that the state cannot possibly afford it, but that is a bit of a myth. The placement that we have funded for the child I mentioned cost less than the provision that the local authority would have had to put in place in the school that it chose for her. It is possible to do these things, and they will often save the state money not only initially, but, as has been mentioned, in the long term, given all the problems and issues that people have if they do not get the help that they need.

[Mrs Hodgson]

The hon. Lady is making some important points, and she makes a good point about spending money wisely. Research has been done—I do not have it in front of me, but that is not necessary to make my point—showing that an hour with a specialist dyslexia teacher is worth more than 50 hours with a well-meaning teaching assistant who is not able to give the specific support that a child needs. I might have the ratio wrong, but it is in that realm.

[Penny Mordaunt]

That is absolutely right.

To carry on using the example of the girl I mentioned—I have said this to the Minister before—the problem was not so much that the local authority could not be bothered to find her a suitable place as that the restrictions on how it could use its funding meant that it could not fund some of the obvious solutions. Will the Minister therefore say something about how she might reform the rules governing how local authorities and schools can spend particular pots of money, to ensure that we use that money in the best and most sensible way to meet people’s educational needs, whether they have dyslexia, a pragmatic language disorder or autism? We must ensure that we get every child who needs this provision the help that they need.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

One thing that we suggested in the Green Paper was speeding up the process, but this is also a question of trying to make clear what the thresholds should be, and I will say a little more about that later.

The other thing that informed the Government’s work on the Green Paper was Ofsted’s report, which showed that too many children are being over-identified as having SEN. In other words, the wrong children are often labelled as having SEN, and we need to ensure that we put in place the right support for children at the right time.

At the heart of the Government’s vision for the reforms is a desire to support better life outcomes for young people, to increase parents’ confidence in the system and to transfer powers to the front line and local communities, as we are trying to do across all areas of policy. To achieve those changes, we are introducing a new approach to identifying SEN to challenge the culture of low expectations. There will be a new, single early-years setting and school-based category of SEN.

I heard the concerns of the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West, who was worried that it might lead to some young people not getting the support they need, but I should stress that, of course, school action at the moment brings with it no extra funds. School action plus money is provided to schools on the basis of other proxy indicators, rather than the number of children actually in the relevant category in previous years, so it should make no difference to the resources that are allocated. However, it will make it easier for schools to decide how to deal with the young people that they focus on. Many of them say that the existing categories are somewhat bureaucratic. Ofsted has made the point that some children are labelled as having special education needs when really they are just falling behind. That is a rather different debate from the one about specific learning difficulties.

[Mrs Hodgson]

We are looking for reassurance that when the reason for children falling behind is an underlying special educational need, rather than there being no specific reason, they will still be identified by some marker. They might not need the education, health and care plan, and all that it brings, but the marker would have been school action or school action plus. Will there still be some mechanism to identify those children?

I suppose the reason for giving the relevant marker to children who fall behind might be to try to find out whether there is an underlying reason.

[Sarah Teather]

When Ofsted reported, a rather heated debate took place between teaching unions and Ofsted, and it shed a lot of heat but not light. Many accusations were thrown from both sides about motives. I do not think that teachers label a child as having special educational needs to get round league tables or for similar reasons. It is human nature, when a problem is seen, to label it. Unfortunately, that labelling was often not followed by action. It is all very well to label a child, but it is purposeless to do so if no action follows. The child then carries a label with them, irrespective of whether it is helpful, and does not get the support needed to enable them to progress. We are trying to get away from the focus on labelling, and instead to adopt an approach in which those concerned look at the child in front of them, and ask what they need. Some of that approach, to be fair, is about good teaching practice, which will deal with many needs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

I cannot comment on a specific case, but perhaps if the hon. Lady drops me a note about the matter, I will have a look at it. In the Green Paper, we indicated that local authorities need to provide support to families who are home schooling a child. They are often doing so because they have been unable to get the support that they need in mainstream settings or perhaps because their local special school did not provide them with the support that they wanted.

I want to say something about Achievement for All because it goes to the heart of some of the issues that we have been discussing about the need for someone to look at the child in front of them and have high aspirations, rather than necessarily think about the labels. The Achievement for All programme has been running in around 450 schools for the past two years, and the evaluation has demonstrated some dramatic results. Under the programme, children made greater progress in English and mathematics than other children with SEND across the country, and they also often exceeded the progress of children without SEND, so there has been a really dramatic improvement.

The independent evaluation, which was carried out by the university of Manchester, demonstrated that pupil attendance significantly improved. That picks up some of the other points that we were discussing a moment ago about additional needs sometimes being confused with SEN. Often the issue is just about getting young people to attend school. For children taking part in the Achievement for All programme, there was an average increase in attendance of just over 10%. The evaluation also found significant improvements in behaviour, including less bullying, stronger relationships between schools and parents and a greater awareness and focus on SEND.

Some of the points that the hon. Member for Portsmouth North discussed in relation to her Bill—parental engagement and the need to communicate better with parents—go partly at the heart of this. One of the key facets of the Achievement for All programme is parental engagement and enabling teachers to feel confident about having a conversation with parents about the progress of their child. The Government are investing £14 million to roll out the programme across the country, so that more children can benefit. The programme is being delivered by a newly formed charity, Achievement for All 3As, chaired by Brian Lamb and supported by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Schools can now see for themselves the evidence that the programme works, and we want more schools to come forward and sign up.

The evaluation highlighted some important lessons in how to improve the outcomes for pupils with SEND. Perhaps most crucially, there needs to be strong leadership from the head teacher and senior leadership team, rather than simply relying on a SENCO to provide leadership within a school, although that is important. Achievement for All 3As is currently engaged with 41 local authorities and 598 schools. We hope and estimate that, overall, 1,000 schools will have signed up to the programme by April next year.

I want to turn to some of the specific concerns, particularly on the Joint Council for Qualifications guidance, expressed by hon. Members. I understand that there has been significant concern following recent coverage about apparent changes to the availability of reasonable adjustments for dyslexic pupils. It is, of course, absolutely vital for the fairness of an exam system that reasonable adjustments are made where needed. We have therefore been in touch with the JCQ about the changes, and it maintains that there has been no change to the circumstances in which a student is entitled to extra time for an exam. What has changed is the type of evidence that is acceptable to demonstrate that such extra time is needed.

The most recent edition of the relevant guidance confirms that a school or college must consider and maintain on record the evidence that the student has been assessed as having a below-average standardised score in an assessment of processing, reading or writing speed. I emphasise that the previous guidance similarly required evidence of low standardised scores using assessments of processing speed, reading or writing. I am afraid that we are picking up differences in practice, not differences in the guidance. Such difficulties have always been the basis on which extra time can be awarded to dyslexic pupils, and difficulties in phonological awareness—understanding and decoding the sounds of words and verbal processing—were two of the characteristics of dyslexia identified by Sir Jim Rose.

I understand that Dyslexia Action has written directly to the JCQ to set out its concerns. It is right that the JCQ and Ofqual, as the independent body overseeing the examinations system, should respond to those and determine whether any further clarification of the arrangements is required. I understand that they will be meeting with dyslexia charities and experts in the new year to explore those differences further. Ofqual has assured me that pupils already granted extra time will remain entitled to it on the basis of their existing assessment. I hope that hon. Members will be reassured on that point.

[Mrs Hodgson]

On a point of clarity about the difference between the old and the new criteria, is it the case that, under the old criteria, students had to have a low score and that now it has to be below average? I am not sure whether I heard the Minister correctly.

[Sarah Teather]

There is no change in the criteria; there is a change in the evidence that has to be provided. What we are picking up on is how schools interpreted the previous guidance, not necessarily the actual guidance that was being provided. That raises some issues about how schools were interpreting the guidance and the freedom that they thought that it gave them. In fact, the guidance is the same, but slightly more rigorous evidence is being asked for to demonstrate that schools have met the guidance, and they are being asked to hold that on record. The best thing is for Ofqual and the JCQ to meet dyslexia charities in the new year, as they will do, along with other experts in the area. They should make those points to the JCQ and Ofqual at that stage.

The hon. Lady spoke briefly about the changes to spelling, punctuation and grammar in some GCSEs that were announced this afternoon. Hon. Members may be aware that that was likely to happen and that we would be restoring marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar in some key subjects that have extended pieces of writing. During Ofqual’s consultation on the proposals, it heard concerns from dyslexia organisations about the potential impact on pupils with special educational needs, particularly dyslexia. I understand that it will be considering that as it decides how to roll out and implement the proposal.

However, during the consultation, there was also widespread support for ensuring accuracy within the qualifications. People expect those with high grades in GCSEs to be able to write accurately. The need to include an assessment of accuracy in spelling, punctuation and grammar is key to restoring confidence in GCSEs as rigorous and valued qualifications. Ofqual has set the level at 5% of total marks for the GCSE, so that the assessment of subject knowledge is not affected disproportionately. There will be the possibility of partial marks. It is not an all-or-nothing assessment and students will be able to achieve some or all of the marks depending on the extent of accuracy and how well they have conveyed meaning. In practice, there will be no blanket effect on the grades achieved by individuals, and the credibility of the exam and the grades achieved will be increased for all. Such changes, alongside some of the reforms to special educational needs provision, will give a real incentive to teach all pupils those core skills and prevent pupils with special educational needs from being sidelined or aspirations being lowered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sarah Teather]

If we are to have a society that is less divided, we must ensure that all children, regardless of their background, are given the same benefits of that sound education. Putting those marks, even 5%, back into qualifications will create an incentive to ensure that all children have that grounding. That is really important.

[Mrs Hodgson]

To return to the subject of dyslexia and the dispensation that will be given for children with dyslexia, the additional 5% can make the difference between an A and an A* for a very bright, dyslexic pupil.

[Sarah Teather]

Ofqual will consider and take into account the concerns of dyslexic charities when it decides on implementation. The issue of reasonable adjustments continues to remain.

I should like to conclude now. I thought that we would not have many speakers. In fact, I seem to have prattled on for so long—[Interruption.] Are there 17 minutes left? I thought that we finished at 3.45 pm. I have been racing to the end and thought that I only had two minutes. In fact, we have loads of time. I might still conclude anyway, or I will not have any voice left.

I am very grateful to hon. Members for their contributions. I hope that I have been able to allay some concerns. Dyslexia charities will no doubt make the points that they made to the hon. Members who came to this debate to Ofqual and JCQ in the new year, but I want to leave hon. Members with the assurance that we are absolutely committed to reforming the support for children with special educational needs and disability. We will say much more in the new year, in response to the consultation. I am grateful to all hon. Members for their constructive input on this matter.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

The Department has commissioned an ongoing evaluation of children’s centres in England, so any changes that are made as a result of Government policy, particularly the move to payment by results and changes in other services offered by children’s centres, will certainly be picked up by the evaluation.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Last week the Department finally admitted that the Government’s damaging cuts to early years are resulting in services being withdrawn and children’s centres being decommissioned and having to close their doors to parents, but we all know that those figures are just the beginning. Councils are now looking ahead to the next financial year, with the reserves drained and the easy cuts having already been made. How many centres will have to close before this out-of-touch Government and out-of-touch Secretary of State admit their mistakes and save our Sure Starts?

[Sarah Teather]

Our survey suggests that there have been six closures and 124 mergers since last year, out of a total that started at 3,631, so there has been a 3% change in the number of Sure Start children’s centres, demonstrating that most local authorities are not only doing the best in what are, I recognise, very difficult circumstances, just as they are for the Government. Those authorities are prioritising services on the ground and that is certainly what we are encouraging them to do, as we ask them to publish the information on what they spend, under the new transparency requirements that the Government have introduced. Similarly, payments by results will focus them much more on outcomes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Monday 17th October 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

There is information available on directgov, and it links to what information we have about the children’s centres that are available in local authority areas. From speaking to local authorities, I certainly know, as I said in my answer just a few minutes ago, that on the whole good local authorities, which do have to make difficult decisions, are merging back-office functions and management functions to make sure that they can focus on outcomes—the point that I just made, and which I think every Member would want.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

As the Minister does not have a clue about the actual impact on the ground of her decision to cut Sure Start funding—cutting it by more than a fifth and removing the ring fence—I decided to find out for myself, and I will let her know what I have found: 83% of councils are cutting their funding this year; 89% of councils are cutting it next year; they are being forced to lay off qualified teachers; and in some areas children’s centres are actually closing. Given those findings, is she prepared to rethink her decisions and act to ensure that families are given the support that they need in the foundation years?

[Sarah Teather]

I believe I read in the press that the hon. Lady said that 47 children’s centres would close, and it would be helpful if she sent me that information. I suspect that not all local authorities replied to her, in just the same way as not all local authorities replied to us. She could do much to chivvy her local authorities to reply, because we could then make absolutely sure that the information on directgov was completely accurate. I am not sure that I have an awful lot more to add to the point that I have already made clear: the money is available in the early intervention grant, and we are making it clear to local authorities that Sure Start children’s centres are a priority. Indeed, some of her colleagues complained that I had placed a moral ring fence—

School Food

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

As always, it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne) on securing this important debate and on the clear and concise way in which he addressed a number of issues that are relevant to the wide topic of school food. It is no surprise that he has been so well supported by so many hon. Friends, even though, until yesterday, today was to be the last day of term.

I also congratulate and commend my hon. Friends the Members for City of Durham (Roberta Blackman-Woods) and for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on their excellent speeches. They are two of the most knowledgeable Members in the House on this issue, and their contributions should be given the weight that they deserve. I thank them for their contributions.

The consensus among Opposition Members is clear: the Tory-led Government are in real danger of undoing all the good work that has gone into improving the quality and uptake of school meals. Not only do the Government not value children having healthy meals in schools, but they think children should not be given the skills to make healthy choices at home.

The craziest thing is that the Government, who are so clearly focused on dealing with the country’s balance sheet at the expense of almost everything else, do not realise that these policies will, in all likelihood, end up costing the country more in the long run in terms of unfulfilled potential and the treatment of obesity-related illnesses. It is estimated that the cost to the NHS of treating obesity-related conditions could reach £10 billion a year by 2050, when those starting school this year will be in their mid-40s and probably parents of school-age children themselves. It is estimated that the wider social and economic cost will be three or four times that amount. Surely, spending a little now to reduce that bill by even a fraction would be money well spent.

The Government, and the Minister’s Department in particular, are nothing if not consistent in their approach to long-term issues in their “cut now, pay later” approach. For example, the Minister yesterday published her thoughts on the future of early-years provision and early intervention without mentioning the fact that she has taken huge chunks out of the budget for those services.

As with nutritional standards in free schools and academies—let us not forget that that would mean every school if the Education Secretary gets his way—Ministers are taking a “let’s cross our fingers and hope for the best” approach. In a letter to the Local Authority Caterers Association last month, the Minister typified that attitude. When challenged about real concerns in the sector about the lack of a duty on free schools and academies to abide by the standards that other schools strive to work to, which were not always popular in the sector, as many of us know, the Minister said that

“schools converting to Academies will already have been providing healthy, balanced meals that meet the current standards. We have no reason to believe that they will stop doing so on conversion, or that new Free Schools will not do so either.”

Does the Minister have reason to believe that such schools will provide food that is up to standard, or does the Department not really care either way? Is consideration of catering arrangements part of the review process for applications to set up a free school? If not, is that not completely inconsistent with all the warm words that we will undoubtedly hear from the Minister about the value of a nutritious lunch?

[Andrew Gwynne]

My hon. Friend is making exactly the right point about the Government’s answer in respect of any changes. Is it not a concern that the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), in reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame M. Morris), said:

“Free schools and academies, established since September 2010, are not required to comply with the school food standards, and are free to promote healthy eating and good nutrition as they see fit.”—[Official Report, 7 June 2011; Vol. 529, c. 50W.]

Is the concern not the words “as they see fit”, because many schools might not see fit to promote such things?

[Mrs Hodgson]

That is exactly the point. There are plenty of switched-on head teachers who will understand the value of healthy meals. I met one at Hall Mead school in Upminster at the launch of national school meals week last year, and there are many like him. Many of them work at primary and secondary schools in my constituency in Sunderland, where I have had the opportunity to try some of the great healthy food on offer to children there, but not every school has that culture or a leadership team that sees the benefits of healthy lunches.

[Lilian Greenwood]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Government appear to have learned nothing from the past? The previous Conservative Government scrapped nutritional standards, and school meals really declined in quality over a long period. They also put schools under immense financial pressure and introduced compulsory competitive tendering, which decimated the school meals service and reduced it to producing fast food, instead of investing in staff who could cook proper meals from scratch. It is only in the past 13 years that there has been huge investment in rebuilding kitchens and in reintroducing opportunities for school meals workers to produce the meals that they want to.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I agree. The point of the debate is that we must learn the lessons of the past, not repeat them. We cannot just sit by and allow everything we have achieved in the past 13 years to be undone, which is what is happening at the moment.

To illustrate the point that not all leadership teams understand the benefits of school food, I want to cite a case that was in the news recently, although it does not fall within the Minister’s purview. Bridgend council considered constructing a pathway between Brynteg comprehensive school and a McDonald’s, which just shows that the argument about the value of ensuring that all our children, not just those on free school meals, have a nutritious lunch in school has not yet been won. It also shows why stay-on-site policies are so important for secondary schools.

[Nic Dakin]

I wholeheartedly agree that stay-on-site policies are important for secondary schools. They improve behaviour at lunch and in the classroom afterwards, so I fully endorse my hon. Friend’s comments.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Exactly. A school or a local authority spending money on a path to a fast-food joint, rather than on instigating a stay-on-site policy, is almost as baffling as bringing in a fast-food giant to write public health policy, although, as we know, that, too, has happened. However, there is a serious point: despite all the evidence of the benefits, it is clear that not all school leaders or local authorities place the value that the majority of us in this room would like on children eating healthy lunches.

Everything that the Government have done so far means that standards will start to slide. Why? What possible benefit can there be for our children in giving certain schools the power to throw the rulebook out the window? Perhaps the Minister can at least explain that today. Of course, it is not only in new academies and free schools that standards could slide, because Ofsted no longer has to assess a school’s compliance with the regulations, so how do Ministers expect them to be honoured?

According to the Minister’s letter to caterers, which I mentioned earlier, mums and dads will now have to keep an eye on things, although she does not explain quite how they are expected to do that. However, she promises that, if they tell the Secretary of State about a school, he will use one of his ever-increasing number of powers to direct the school to jolly well buck up its ideas. Unless schools literally go back to the bad old days of turkey twizzlers and chips, however, I cannot imagine that many parents would notice any changes—for example, if the spaghetti bolognese, which might have met the standards before, suddenly had more fat or less vegetable content. That is a meaningless thing for the Minister to say. All that I would ask her is what possible benefit there is to schools or pupils in removing that element of an Ofsted inspection—none that I can think of.

It will be little surprise if nutritional standards slip; after all, the cash that subsidises them has effectively gone. Ministers say that it is within the direct schools grant, but again that is meaningless, because many schools are struggling with their budgets. For many of them, subsidising school meals will be far down the list of priorities, behind staff, materials and many services for which they would previously not have had to pay, such as the broadband bill, to take one example. One more service that they will now have to buy on a commercial basis will be advice from the School Food Trust on how to meet the nutritional standards—not really an attractive option if they do not now have to meet those standards anyway.

As we have heard—it was highlighted in the media last week—school meal take-up is on the rise. I congratulate the Minister on using that for some positive media coverage. I cannot really blame her, I suppose, but there is evidence that that spike could be due to pupil premium-chasing, as reported in The Independent on Sunday. The test of her policies will lie in whether we can see the same rise in three years’ time, and unless there is a radical rethink, I do not think we will. If it should become clear that we are spiralling in the wrong direction, I hope that the Minister will rethink her approach.

My colleagues have spoken at length on the merits of free school meals as a way of closing the gaps in health and educational attainment between children living in poverty and those from better-off backgrounds. It was, as has been said, a cruel blow to hundreds of thousands of young children in working poverty when the Minister and her colleagues scrapped the extended eligibility.

In the Westminster Hall debate on free school meals that I led last June, I noted what my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham has pointed out—that the Liberal Democrats were conspicuous by their absence, as were the Conservatives. That was hardly surprising given their part in one of the most regressive decisions that we have seen from the Government. It is noted that the Minister is here today representing her Lib Dem colleagues as well as her Conservative friends and that she is alone in that task. As my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish said in his excellent speech, the universal credit throws the whole system of free school meals into confusion, which will not be cleared up for some time.

[Roberta Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend is making a truly excellent speech. Does not the absence of coalition Members demonstrate that they do not understand the link between a healthy school meal in the middle of the day and narrowing the attainment gap? It demonstrates their narrow and blinkered thinking about education.

[Mrs Hodgson]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised that I agree.

The one thing that I ask the Minister is to ensure at least that least no one loses out because of universal credit. We never know; perhaps under the universal credit system the Government may be able to give a little something back to the half a million or so kids who lost out when the extended eligibility was scrapped last year. However, given the Government’s record so far, I do not think that many of us will be holding our breath.

We have a Government who pay lip service to the importance of school meals—both free and paid for—but whose actions are completely incongruous with that rhetoric. If that were not bad enough, they also do not think that cooking healthy meals is sufficient of a life skill to be taught to young teens. Just as a free school meal may be the only proper meal that some children get, there is a similar cohort for whom the only food skills that they get will be the ones that they learn at school. In fact, they are more than likely to be the same children. Given that fact, the Labour Government put together plans to ensure that all children get mandatory cookery lessons, in the hope that those skills would stay with the young people who received them for the rest of their lives and even transfer to their parents, too. There was evidence of that in the excellent work of Jamie Oliver, of which the Minister is no doubt aware. He has shown that children given knowledge of healthy food and how to cook it go home and influence the food choices made by their parents. In a letter to me, the Minister of State, Department for Education, the hon. Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb) justifies the decision to scrap the commitment by saying that the Labour Government did not take any legislative steps to make it compulsory—a pathetic excuse if ever I heard one. However, that is not surprising: after all, it might be difficult for those setting up free schools in an old pub or office to accommodate first-rate food technology classrooms. The simple fact is that the Tory-led Government’s half-baked policies are a recipe for disaster for our children.

I want in closing to ask the Minister two quick questions. Will she fight her corner for free school meals when decisions are taken following the report of the Social Security Advisory Committee and try to extend at least some help to the families who were short-changed by her Government last year? If it becomes clear that the policies that we have been discussing today are resulting in a fall in nutritional standards and/or the take-up of school meals—whether in free schools, academies or other schools—will she step in and do something, or does the “hope and pray” or, as she calls it, localism approach to government prevent her from doing so?

Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sarah Teather]

I thank my hon. Friend for making that clear and putting it on the record.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I know that the Minister wants parents to be more involved in their local children’s centres, but I am not sure that parents taking their council to court is exactly what she meant. Will the Secretary of State and the Ministers accept that it was their choice to slash the funding and remove the ring fence that led to the present chaos? If so, will they use the imminent early years statement finally to set out how they will keep their promise and the Prime Minister’s numerous promises to protect Sure Start from cuts and closures?

[Sarah Teather]

That was an awful lot of waffle. [Interruption.] I will have to wait until everybody stops yelling because I have not got enough voice to yell over everybody else today—[Interruption.]

Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State join me in condemning the mean-spirited actions of Tory-controlled Wandsworth council, which plans to introduce a charge of £2.50 for children to play in a publicly funded playground? Children there play together regardless of income or background, and for many local children the playground is their back garden, because they live in high-rise flats. Is this localism in action, or will the Secretary of State assure the House that the Government will press councils to ensure that this is not a slippery slope towards a price tag on playtime? [Interruption.]

[Michael Gove]

As my hon. Friends point out, a slippery slope is often something we would want in a playground. In fairness, however, as the hon. Lady pointed out, we want to ensure that children have the opportunity to play and enjoy play without fees or bureaucracy getting in the way. It is one of the responsibilities of local authorities to ensure that children have an opportunity to play freely, but it is also the responsibility of central Government to sweep away some of the ridiculous health and safety regulations that the previous Government put in place to prevent our young children from enjoying themselves properly.

Family Policy

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning, Mr Meale, after just about five hours’ sleep.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) on stepping in to lead this debate, which I understand was secured by the hon. Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan). I also thank her for providing me with notice of the particular aspects of family policy that she addressed. Yesterday, I learned that in a former life she was a lawyer specialising in family law, and that background certainly came to the fore today in her very well-informed speech. She praised Sure Start centres in her constituency and made the suggestion, which has a lot of merit, that parenting classes should become the norm. She also said that early intervention is not only about the money but about how it is used. I note that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) highlighted evidence on specific early interventions that work in his excellent report—I am sure that the Government are paying particular heed to that report. The hon. Lady also spoke about the speed of the safeguarding process, which we all agree takes far too long, especially for babies and toddlers.

I pay tribute to all the other hon. Members who have spoken this morning. There have been many excellent contributions, covering the whole gamut of family policy issues. We have heard some harrowing cases that have been used not to sensationalise but to highlight the worst that can happen when families break down, or when they were never whole or healthy in the first place. There is a cycle of damaged people having children, who are then in the system in one way or another, throughout their lives, from day one. I think that we are all united in an ambition to end the cycles of deprivation that we know exist right across the country, despite decades of initiatives and interventions.

Although the debate has been very well-attended, there are other hon. Members who would have wanted to be here but are no doubt tied up with campaigning around the country. Many of them will be speaking to families at this very moment, about the issues we are discussing here.

It goes without saying that families are the bedrock of our society, and one of the most important duties of Government is to support the parents of today in providing a stable and loving environment in which the parents of tomorrow can flourish. No two families are the same, however, and the needs of parents and children vary widely, making developing policy in this area as difficult as it is important.

On safeguarding, we are clearly waiting for the outcome of the Munro review, which was commissioned following the tragic case of Peter Connelly, and I would not want to presuppose what any of its final recommendations might be. Needless to say, I welcome Professor Munro’s initial findings, and I look forward to the final recommendations and to the Government response. It is welcome that the Government are seeking the advice of the professionals who deal with at-risk children and families every day to find out how we can improve the systems to help those children.

I have not been working on this particular area, but I think that I am safe in saying that we accept the need for a balance between the guidance and processes that adults and professionals working with children are given, and their ability to act on the basis of their judgment and to respond swiftly in co-operation with other agencies when a risk to a child’s safety or well-being is identified. There are concerns about whether the cuts to local authority budgets will mean a reduced social worker work force in some areas; many local authorities certainly expect an increased case load, and foresee problems due to cuts to police, mental health and primary care trust budgets. I hope, therefore, that we can implement any sensible changes quickly and seamlessly, to ensure that no children slip through the gaps in the meantime. As the hon. Member for Erewash described in highlighting a particularly concerning case, the unintended consequences of our care system often do not help or improve the life or outcomes of an already damaged child, and we must do all that we can to ensure that the system does not cause harm.

An area in which I have done a lot of work is that of early years and early intervention. This is another very important topic, and although the Government have been making some positive noises, it is actions that count, and their actions, so far, have left a lot to be desired. Again, they have sought wise counsel, and we have seen some very thoughtful, and at times convergent, reports from my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North and Dame Clare Tickell.

One of the programmes that my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North praises in his report is that of family nurse partnerships, in which young, first-time parents, possibly from families with multiple problems, are given help and support from the point of identification, past birth and into the early years of their child’s life. The intervention does not focus on just the health of the mother and the child—important though that is—but crucially on the aspirations that parents have both for their child and for themselves, and on how to achieve those aspirations. I have heard great things about the results, and look forward to shadowing a family nurse in my constituency later this month to see the work for myself as part of the Royal College of Nursing’s campaign for everyone to shadow a nurse. The Government have made a commitment to reach 12,000 families in that way by the end of this Parliament, but I hope that, given the strong recommendation in the Allen review, the Minister and her colleagues will look at rolling that kind of intervention out more widely, particularly as it focuses wholly on families who might not actively engage with other services, such as Sure Start children’s centres.

I also welcome the fact that the Minister has assembled an early years working group to advise on further policy development in this area, but I hope that she will listen to the group if it turns around and says that what she and her colleagues have done to early intervention funding—cutting the budget by some 22% this year and removing the ring fence—negates what we ought to be trying to achieve, which we all agree is to improve outcomes for all children. I have been trying to get that message across for a while now, but do not seem to have had much success, with the Opposition day debate on children’s centres last Wednesday a case in point. I have to place on record the fact that the Minister was very much missed from that debate, and I sincerely hope it was not through illness. The Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), might have his eye on her job. He is a very charming man, but I have to admit that I have grown to enjoy my little jousts with the Minister, so I am very pleased to see her in her place today.

On the afternoon of last Wednesday’s debate on children’s centres, the OECD published a report, “Doing Better for Families”, that called on Ministers to rethink their decisions to cut support for families, particularly support for early years services. The Government enjoy quoting OECD reports, so I hope that they will listen to this one. Perhaps the Minister will give us a few comments in a moment.

On wider policies affecting families, one key element that a family needs to thrive is the parents’ ability to earn a decent income with which to bring up their children. In the vast majority of cases, that means that they must be able to organise child care in order to go out to work. I do not want to take this collegial and serious debate down too political a route, but it is clear to most people that many of the choices made by the Minister’s colleagues over the past year have not been a great help to ordinary working families in that respect.

One decision that keeps coming up relates to working parents’ ability to pay for early education and child care. Hon. Members will be aware that Save the Children’s report on child well-being, published yesterday, places the UK 23rd out of 43 developed countries on that measure. That might be the subject for a later debate, but Save the Children’s chief executive, Justin Forsyth, said that the Government should reverse their cut to support for child care in tax credits, which reinforces what I have heard time and again from the sector.

I wanted to say a few more things, but I will conclude, as I think that everybody here wants to hear the Minister’s response to the debate. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Erewash for leading this debate. Given the day and many Members’ commitments to the campaign trail—and to catching up on sleep—it has proved to be a useful discussion. I hope that we will have many more opportunities to continue this vital discourse.

Sure Start Children’s Centres

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

This debate, like others before it, has shown the strength of feeling in this House that the children of this country deserve the very best.

Let us be clear about why we are here today. The Government’s mandate was to protect and improve the Sure Start network; instead, they have done the opposite and put centres up and down the country at risk of cutback and closure. There is no way in which Ministers can hide behind the favourite line we hear of late that this is a coalition and manifestos do not count. It is not the case that the Tories wanted to abolish Sure Start and the Lib Dems heroically stood their ground with the Business Secretary wielding his secret weapon menacingly, because the Prime Minister, the Deputy Prime Minister and every single Member sat opposite me today were elected on a promise to protect and build on the Sure Start centre network. The fact that they have done the opposite represents yet another broken promise to the British people.

I was always brought up to think that when someone breaks a promise, the least one can expect is an apology. This debate gave the Secretary of State a chance not only to apologise to the parents, carers and children who will suffer because of his broken promise but to make amends for it. Our motion gives Ministers an opportunity to say to all the parents who are fighting tooth and nail up and down the country to save their children’s centres, “We are sorry; we will keep our promise.” Ministers have said in this Chamber that there is enough money in the early intervention grant to maintain and improve Sure Start. In the comprehensive spending review, the Chancellor told us that there is £1.135 billion every year throughout this Parliament. If that were true, they would have no problem in voting for the motion, but they will not do so. The Minister will no doubt cite the localism agenda. Decisions should be taken locally, he will say—but these should be decisions about how to improve outcomes for children rather than where to cut inputs. In this case, localism is not about who makes the decisions but about who takes the blame.

Reinstating the ring fence is not a panacea, but it would bring back the stability and security that the Sure Start network needs. It would let managers and staff concentrate on how to deliver the improvements that we all want in children’s centres rather than forcing them to focus on financial fire-fighting year in, year out. Parents would have the sense of security, which they do not have at the moment, that their local centre would be there from the moment their child is born right up until they started school. We would have a sign that the Government are listening to all the advice that they have sought—not least from my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), whose excellent speech we heard earlier, and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen)—and that they are taking early education and early intervention seriously. It would also mean that we would not be left with situations such as those in Tory-controlled Hampshire, which is facing 35% budget cuts; Liberal Democrat-led Hull, with its smoke and mirrors and 50% cuts; and Tory-led Hammersmith and Fulham, which has a strange hub-and-spoke model where the spokes are buildings with a caretaker and a bottle of bleach. A building running on £25,000 a year or less is not a Sure Start children’s centre—it is just a building.

We are giving Ministers a chance to increase their popularity with parents—and not just the Toby Youngs of this world, either: parents such as those I met on mother’s day outside Downing street, who were handing in petitions from all over the country that, on that day alone, contained 52,000 signatures; parents such as the ones who came to the Sure Start seminar in Parliament, which was hosted by my right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham); parents such as those I met recently with my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Chris Williamson), who are fighting Tory-controlled Derby city council over its plans to close or cut centres; and parents such as those I have met on doorsteps over the past few weeks in Sheffield, York, Peterborough, Gravesham, Newcastle and Sunderland in my own constituency. No matter where one goes, the view is the same: the Government are letting down families and attacking social mobility at every stage of a child’s life.

We have heard a lot today about Hampshire. The debate has done a real service in exposing the cynicism of some Conservative councils. We heard the surprise news that a last-minute extraordinary meeting was called in Hampshire yesterday, although a final decision is not due until 24 May. That is a blatantly cynical move to get through the local election period. The council is still cutting £6 million from the budget, which will cut right to the heart of the service. One of the petitions handed into Downing street on mother’s day was from Hampshire, and another petition signed by 22,000 parents was handed in on 18 April by 50 mums from Hampshire. That may well have led to yesterday’s U-turn. Twenty-eight centres were earmarked for closure or serious cuts, and there was a legal challenge to the rushed consultation.

[Caroline Dinenage]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Mrs Hodgson]

You have already spoken, thank you.

We announced the subject of this Opposition day debate last week, just before the bank holiday weekend. The fact that an extraordinary meeting was called over a bank holiday weekend and hastily arranged for the other side of the weekend is very telling. I am sure that the tens of thousands of parents in Hampshire who signed the two petitions were happy when they heard the news, as we were when we heard it today. However, the news is bitter-sweet. Although we are told that no centres will close, they face a 35% budget cut: going from £17 million to £11 million is a £6 million cut, which is huge. A £6 million cut is much more than just the streamlining of services, and parents know that. They use the services, and will notice if they are taken away or diminished. Indeed, on the Facebook page for the Hampshire children’s centres campaign, this is not seen as a U-turn or a great victory. The group is still campaigning, because it is deeply worried about the £6 million cut and the effect it will have on children’s centres. It says that the campaign goes on.

The Secretary of State loves playing to the gallery, so why will he not give the people what they want and say that he will consider bringing back the ring fence? After all, it would be a nice boost for all those Tory and Lib Dem candidates who are struggling on the doorstep. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, who is one of the most knowledgeable people in this area, challenged the non-ring-fencing of this vital area of expenditure and said that the Government should change their attitude to non-ring-fencing. That is strong stuff from a highly respected expert in the area. I hope that the Government pay heed to that.

It is not as if the Secretary of State has not had practice at backing down. In fact, he is probably the most qualified person in the Cabinet when it comes to U-turns, and that Cabinet includes the Deputy Prime Minister. My right hon. Friend the Member for Leigh laid bare at the beginning of the debate the reasons the Secretary of State probably will not back down and support the motion. He repeated the claims of Ministers that Sure Start funding is protected and showed that that simply is not true. There is not enough money to maintain the current network of children’s centres if Ministers expect councils to deliver all the other important programmes that the grant pays for, such as short breaks for disabled children. How can there be enough, when there has been a real-terms cut of 22% in the pot?

If I am wrong, why are centres closing or effectively being mothballed, and why are services being cut? If I am wrong, why would Ministers have a problem with the motion? But I am not wrong: they are, just as they have been wrong on Bookstart, on EMA, on the English baccalaureate and on Building Schools for the Future. They are the most incompetent Department in a shambolic Government, and the worst thing is that children’s lives are at stake.

I know that some Government Members do see the value of Sure Start and recognise the importance of protecting it, and we have heard from some of them today. My plea to those Members is simple: support the motion and show their constituents that they understand the priorities and concerns of ordinary, hard-working families, even if their Front-Bench colleagues do not.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Thursday 31st March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Vince Cable]

Many of the problems of the dairy industry relate to the system of EU common agricultural policy financing, but I will look at the specific issue described by my hon. Friend and see what we can do to promote it.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

4. What discussions he has had with the North Eastern local enterprise partnership on the location of proposed enterprise zones; and if he will make a statement.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Mr Mark Prisk)]

Last Thursday, I was in the north-east and met the North Eastern local enterprise partnership. We had a very useful discussion about the way in which enterprise zones will help the growth of the local economy and I was encouraged by the positive response I received.

[Mrs Hodgson]

I am very pleased to hear that the Minister got a positive response—I would expect nothing less of the friendly north-east. The Chancellor said in his Budget statement last Wednesday that there would be an enterprise zone on Tyneside, but the Red Book refers to an enterprise zone in the North Eastern local enterprise partnership, and I am sure the Minister is aware that they are not one and the same. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change told the Sunderland Echo that Sunderland had a really good chance of getting an enterprise zone. Will the Minister confirm that the Chancellor misled the House last week and that a decision has not yet been made on where—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. I am sure the hon. Lady means “inadvertently” misled.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Of course, inadvertently.

[Mr Prisk]

Well, I am glad we cleared that up, Mr Speaker. I can make it very simple for the hon. Lady: we are not going to impose a command and control model. We are working with local enterprise partnerships and we have offered zones where LEPs would like to locate them within their areas. We will discuss this with partnerships in the north-east and elsewhere.