Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]

Tim Loughton Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Heidi Allen]

That is the strength of a decent consultation. I and many of us in this House believe that we can do both. The new clause allows us to spread the burden. It is tough, as some councils have borne a disproportionate burden of responsibility on their shoulders. Those councils have done amazingly, and it is time that other local authorities that have capacity share some of that burden. Guess what? If we consult as well as I think we can, I sense that we will find that we have capacity to manage both.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare my interest. My hon. Friend knows that I put my name to the amendment and that I support her. I do not want to get hung up on any particular scheme, Dubs or otherwise, because the Government have done an awful lot across many schemes, as the Home Affairs Committee has seen. Many authorities have come forward, and my concern is that we need to know exactly what capacity they realistically have to care for refugee children without there being a detriment to indigenous children, for whom there is a crisis in the number of foster care and residential children’s home places. The amendment might achieve that, whatever she might think.

[Heidi Allen]

Absolutely, and not least because of the refugee crisis. This is good housekeeping. It is good for us to have transparent data so that we can understand the capacity of our local authorities and our care system, which has to help children who are already in the UK care system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

I come in at the end of the Bill’s progress, having been in at the beginning on Second Reading, but I want to pay tribute to the hard work that has gone into the Bill and to crave your indulgence, Madam Deputy Speaker, in talking about something that did not make it into the legislation.

Having had experience of children’s Bills over the past 15 years or so, I find it interesting that they have a propensity to be hijacked by things not present on Second Reading that then become the headline in the final stages. True to form, that has happened again with amendments about sex and relationship education, which I fully support—I added my name to that amendment—and about child refugees, which I also support but which did not make it into the Bill in the form that some of us had hoped for. In many respects, that is a shame because it takes attention and focus away from the really important meat of the everyday experiences of vulnerable children, particularly those who find themselves in the care system through no fault of their own. Successive Governments have strived to do much and have achieved much for those children, but we still need to do much more. In welcoming the Bill, I draw the House’s attention to the really good things in it that we did not have much time to discuss today. They were perhaps the more important parts of the Bill as it went through its various stages.

I, too, welcome the addition of the sex and relationship educations clauses. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) said, that is ground breaking. Some of us have banged our head against brick walls in various shadow ministerial and post-ministerial positions over many, many years, and the need for it is so screamingly obvious, yet, for all sorts of reasons that I have never quite understood, the measure fails to make it into legislation.

There is an increasing online threat to our children. Shockingly, they are being lured into many things with which we would never have been confronted in our teenage years—just a few years ago in your case, Madam Deputy Speaker, but slightly longer ago for others. Children are exposed to those threats on a daily basis, and the best way to give them defences against those threats must surely be, at an early age at school, to educate, inform, warn and support them against the hazards out in the wider world and the wider web.

By way of example, there was a shocking interview with a teenage girl on “Woman’s Hour” a few years ago. She had been in a relationship with a teenage boy—I think both were under the age of 16—and he had forced her to watch and act out violent pornographic videos, and she had gone along with it. It is shocking that, at her young age, she was under pressure to do that and that it was deemed to be common practice. What was really alarming is that, when the interviewer asked, “Why on earth didn’t you tell him to get lost and report him?” her response was, “Well, I didn’t think I had the right.” If sex and relationships education is anything, it is about giving confidence and empowering young people, particularly young women, that theirs is the choice to say yes or no, and theirs alone.

If we can develop what has now become part of the Bill into an empowerment exercise for our young people, so that they respect other young people and have the confidence to say no—with no meaning no—we will have done this generation of children and future generations a huge service. We have taken a major step forward with this Bill, although the step was not intended on Second Reading, but fortunately it made it in at the last moment with wide cross-party consensus, which is excellent.

The House of Lords is forming a habit of disagreeing with the House of Commons, but I hope that in this case it does not disagree with us. When Ministers formulate the important guidance that needs to go with this legislation, I urge them to be sensitive because this is a big move for many people that will need to be handled carefully and cautiously.

There are many other good things in the Bill, including the local offer for care leavers. In our debates on the Bill we have heard numerous times the figures on the poor outcomes for children in care and for care leavers. The very small proportion who make it to university shows that we still have a long way to go. There is still a large gap in the educational achievement of children in care and others. The gap has narrowed a little, but we need to go so much further. The Government’s support for children in care and adopted children through the pupil premium is a small part of trying to level the playing field.

I welcome the measures, some more controversial than others, on regulating social workers and the need for continuing professional development, but the problem remains that we have a growing shortage of experienced child protection social workers. Work by the all-party parliamentary group for children—I will allude to the study in a minute—shows huge divergences between the experiences in different local authorities. At its worst, one local authority has a 57% locum rate for child social workers. How on earth can we have continuity of care and empathy of care for deeply traumatised and vulnerable children when they are being looked after by non-permanent social workers? That is a huge challenge, and we still have a lot of work to do.

The refugee amendment did not make it into the Bill, but I hope that the spirit of that amendment, which had great support on both sides of the House and on which many undertakings were given by Ministers, will not be forgotten as the Bill’s measures are turned into practice.

Clauses 32 to 39, on the so-called powers to test different ways of working, are no longer in the Bill. I congratulate the Government, because this is a good example of their listening to people from across various professions—academics, practitioners, children’s charities, politicians and others, including me—who were seriously concerned about the huge principles that would have been at stake had the clauses passed into law. There are no parallels for allowing a local authority, or, indeed, other agencies to step outside primary or secondary legislation effectively at the whim of the Secretary of State of the day. That has not been tried with adults—there are no examples of parallels in the Care Act 2014, the Mental Health Act 2007 or the Mental Capacity Act 2005—so why on earth would the Government risk using vulnerable children as guinea pigs to experiment with a new model of working?

I am all in favour of innovation and of being creative in how we get better outcomes and better support for children who most need it, particularly in the care system, but I just do not think we need to remove primary and secondary legislation that has been built up since 1933, on a whim and without consultation. Whatever the safeguards we were promised, at the end of the day it would mean a postcode lottery for the rights of children and for the responsibilities towards those children of different local authorities, depending on when those children happened to be in care.

Back in 2010, one of the first things the coalition Government did in the Department for Education was to recruit Professor Eileen Munro and appoint her to head the complete overhaul of child protection social work. I was pleased and proud to be part of appointing her and implementing her recommendations. We reduced social work legislation from something like 760 pages in the “Working Together” manual, which had accrued over years and years during which the solution to better child protection was more legislation. In the end, that got in the way of social workers being able to use their professionalism, instincts and training to do the right thing by the child. Instead, they had constantly to look at the rule book and over their shoulders.

It was right that we reduced that rule book and that manual and gave greater freedoms and flexibility to social workers, but at no point did that require us, or was it required of us, to remove any of the duties that make up the safety net of primary and secondary legislation. Professor Munro never asked for it; we never considered it; and it was never done. It would have been absolutely inappropriate to do it now, so it was completely appropriate that Professor Munro did not give her support to the Government’s previous proposals. I am pleased that they have listened, and I am grateful to Lord Laming and Lord Mackay in the other place, and to my hon. Friend the Member for Rochester and Strood (Kelly Tolhurst) today, for putting that message across to Ministers.

The Bill has to address the huge variations in practice and outcomes for vulnerable children in care throughout the country. The all-party group for children is about to produce a report on the state of children’s social care. Last year, the average rate of referrals to children’s services was 532 per 10,000 children in the local population. The lowest rate for a local authority was 187 and the highest was 753 per 10,000 children—that is a difference of nine times, just depending on where the child happened to be. Last year, the average national rate of children becoming subject to child protection plans was 54 per 10,000, but the lowest local authority rate was 16.5 and the highest was 180.5—a difference of 10 times. Our report highlights huge differences in experiences and outcomes for children in care, depending on what local authority they happen to live in. That is the biggest challenge that we face. We owe the same duty of care and responsibility to a vulnerable child in care regardless of whether he or she lives in Yorkshire, Sussex or Cornwall. Those clauses that are now no longer in the Bill would have just widened those differential experiences. The Government’s priority now must be to narrow those gaps to make sure that we are doing an ever better job for every child in care in every part of the country.

In closing, may I say that I welcome this Bill? I also welcome the fact that the Government have listened, that the debate has contributed to a great strengthening of some of the measures in this Bill and that some additional measures have been included, but, at the end of the day, we owe our thanks, our respect and our regard to the social workers on the frontline who do an exceedingly challenging job in very challenging circumstances, often dealing with very challenged children and families. We owe a duty of care, thanks and respect to the many foster carers and, increasingly, adoptive parents coming forward to give those children a second chance of a safe, stable and loving home. If there is one upside from our debate on refugees and the publicity about refugees, it is that more people have come forward to offer themselves as foster carers and adoptive parents both for refugee children coming to the county and for the indigenous children for whom we still have a large shortage of places in foster care and for adoption. Those are the people on the frontline who make the difference to children’s lives. We have a lot more to do. We owe much greater care to our vulnerable children, but this Bill is a very good step in making that achievable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 2nd February 2017 Commons Chamber

The Attorney General was asked—

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

1. What steps the Crown Prosecution Service is taking to support victims and witnesses giving evidence in court.

[Nigel Huddleston (Mid Worcestershire) (Con)]

4. What steps the Crown Prosecution Service is taking to support victims and witnesses giving evidence in court.

[The Attorney General (Jeremy Wright)]

Prosecutors can apply for special measures to allow victims and witnesses to give evidence in court unseen by the defendant. The Government are making available the opportunity for vulnerable witnesses to give pre-recorded evidence without going into a courtroom at all. In addition, recent CPS guidance, now implemented nationwide, makes it clear what prosecutors can do to explain what is likely to happen at court, so that victims and witnesses can better understand the trial process and give the best evidence they can.

[Tim Loughton]

I am encouraged by the Attorney General’s words, but half of all cases going through the courts at the moment are connected with sexual abuse, and with police investigating no fewer than 70,000 claims of historic child sex abuse this year alone, that figure is likely to remain high. Given the traumatising impact on historic survivors and children especially of reliving their experiences in the witness box, what additional measures are being taken to make the process less intimidating and ensure that appropriate counselling services are readily available?

[The Attorney General]

I agree with my hon. Friend. It is important that the system does all it can to reduce the effect, particularly on vulnerable witnesses, of giving evidence in these difficult cases. That is why I am delighted that my right hon. Friend the Lord Chancellor has decided to extend what I believe was a successful pilot of pre-recorded cross-examination. It means that vulnerable witnesses, particularly children, can give their evidence outside a courtroom environment and have it all done and dusted before the trial begins, which also means that they are not affected by any delays that the trial may then be subject to. That is hugely important, as is the opportunity for prosecutors to speak to witnesses and explain what is going on, and I am pleased to say that that has resulted in much improved satisfaction rates among witnesses for the support they get from the CPS.

School Funding

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 25th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I would go so far as to say that the meritocracy that the Prime Minister talks about is already in tatters.

The National Audit Office has said that the Secretary of State expects schools to make £1.7 billion of savings by “using staff more efficiently.” Can she guarantee today that those so-called efficiencies do not mean fewer staff? A £1.7 billion cut could mean up to 10,000 redundancies for teaching staff in our schools. She has resolutely failed to give us figures on the impact of the planned cut, but her own analysis of the research conducted by the education unions shows that, for example, the cuts in my region—the north-west—would amount to well over £400 million, requiring the loss of more than 2,000 teachers. Given that the Government have failed to meet their own teacher recruitment targets for the past five years in a row, I urge her to think again before she tries to solve school budget crises on the back of hard-working staff.

Make no mistake, this is a crisis. Indeed, schools are already resorting to staff cuts in order to cope. A Unison staff survey conducted last year showed that, even then, more than one in 10 respondents were reporting redundancies in the past year and in the coming year. More than one in five said that their school had left vacant posts unfilled over the past year or had cut maintenance. Nearly a quarter had seen increased class sizes, and over a quarter had experienced cuts to budgets for books and resources over the past year.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way. I am sorry that she does not agree with fair funding. How can she possibly justify a child in the constituencies of the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Home Secretary receiving, on average, £6,229 a year and £6,680 a year respectively while a child in my West Sussex constituency, which has deprived wards, will receive less than £4,200?

[Angela Rayner]

The Labour party is for fair funding, but this is not fair funding; this is unfair funding for every school in our nation. The hon. Gentleman should take heed of what that might mean for his constituency. Pulling people down is not the way forward. If we want to make the best of our economy post-Brexit, we must ensure that we invest in all our schools, not take from one school, robbing one group of young people, to give to another, leading to an overall cut in distribution.

Civil Partnership Act 2004 (Amendment) Bill

Tim Loughton Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 13th January 2017 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.

I am very excited because, in almost 20 years in the House, this is the first time that a Bill of mine has ever got an airing on a Friday morning. That shows what can happen if we persevere, and I do hope the Minister is not going to spoil it when he gets up to signal his vast support for this very sensible and much needed measure.

The debate over the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013 has passed. The Act has become law, and over 15,000 couples have taken advantage of that new opportunity. Whatever people on the opposite sides of the argument, then or now, think, the world has not fallen in. However, as some of us argued at the time, the extension of marriage then has unwittingly created a new inequality, and a Government who argued zealously that same-sex marriage was an equality issue seem to have rather lost interest when it comes to an equality that affects opposite-sex couples. That new inequality is that marriage is available to same-sex and opposite- sex couples, yet civil partnerships are available only to same-sex couples.

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

I absolutely support my hon. Friend’s Bill. He will recall that, at the time, the same-sex marriage Bill was known as the equal marriage Bill by many people. Does he agree that, for it to be truly an equal marriage Bill, it is essential that his Bill is enacted to make the situation properly equal as between homosexual and heterosexual couples?

[Tim Loughton]

I do agree, which is why, at the time, I argued that the amendment that forms part of the Bill would have prevented the inequality that was created, closed that loophole and made that Bill more acceptable for people who had difficulties with it. My hon. Friend is absolutely right.

[Nick Thomas-Symonds (Torfaen) (Lab)]

Many constituents have contacted me about this issue—different-sex couples who wish to give legal recognition to their relationship but not necessarily to get married. Does the Bill not deal precisely with that situation?

[Tim Loughton]

That is right, and I will come on to explain precisely why the Bill is needed.

I have described the inequality, but some people may say, “Well, so what?” Opposite-sex couples have always been able to get married in a church or a register office —or even, now, in medieval castles, on exotic beaches, or, increasingly, wherever else takes their fancy. The problem is that a great many of these couples choose not to go down that traditional marriage route.

The Office for National Statistics estimates that there are just under 3 million cohabiting opposite-sex couples in this country—almost double the figure reported some 15 years earlier—of whom over a third, about 38%, have children. Indeed, cohabitation is the fastest growing form of family in the UK. We need to recognise that our society is changing, just as we did when recognising same-sex partnerships in law back in 2004. That was the right thing to do, and I enthusiastically supported it at the time. It was a glaring inequality and injustice that until then loving same-sex couples were not recognised in the eyes of the state and enjoyed no protections under the law. That anomaly was rightly addressed by this House back in 2004, and I was proud to be part of that.

People choose not to get involved in the paraphernalia of formal marriage for a variety of reasons. It is seen as too much of an establishment thing to do. For many, it is identified as an innately religious institution; even if done in a register office, it has religious connotations. Some see it as having a patriarchal side—as being some form of social control and not a proper partnership. Those are not my own views, necessarily, but they are certainly how many people see it. There are a whole lot of complex motives as to why many of our constituents do not go down the formal marriage route. They are mostly still in committed, loving relationships, but if they do not want to go for traditional marriage, they have no way of having those relationships recognised in the eyes of the state, just as was the case for same-sex couples pre-2004.

[Mr David Nuttall (Bury North) (Con)]

Can my hon. Friend think of any reason why all those who supported the same-sex marriage legislation would not want to support his Bill?

[Tim Loughton]

Absolutely not. At the time, my proposal, which I set out in an amendment, was the policy of the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats, and supported by a good many Conservative Members, but for various reasons people voted against it. The logic is that of course we would want to address this inequality.

There are also various practical reasons for doing this. Particularly worrying is the common misconception that there is such a thing as a common-law wife or common-law husband, as a woman typically finds out abruptly on the death of a partner when there is an inheritance tax bill on the estate and potentially on the family home.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend think that if people realised that there was no such thing as a common-law wife or husband, they would opt for this to give them the protection in law that they do not have currently so that they would not lose their home?

[Tim Loughton]

That is a very practical advantage of this Bill. There is a great deal of ignorance among constituents who think that they have these protections.

If a woman has a child with her partner and the relationship breaks down, she is not entitled to any automatic form of financial support if they are not married, and there is no automatic entitlement to property even if she had been paying into the mortgage. Surely couples should not be forced to choose between having no legal protection or entering into an institution that is not right for them.

[Oliver Colvile (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Con)]

The other issue that is incredibly important is dependency, whereby, for example, a daughter who is looking after her elderly mother finds that when her mother dies her home is therefore in danger. Is that not something else that needs to be looked at?

[Tim Loughton]

This is about the future maintenance of children. It is about an inheritance tax bill that happens all of a sudden that could lead to the sale of a property so that someone finds themselves, in effect, homeless. These are all potential dangers currently faced by people who are not in a formal, legally recognised relationship.

[Rebecca Pow (Taunton Deane) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a very sound case. I was fascinated to hear the current statistics on cohabiting. If we are to build a balanced society, bringing up our children in a fair and good way, surely it is very important to bring forward the ideas encompassed in this Bill in order to help society as a whole.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend pre-empts a large plank of my speech. Rather than let everybody pre-run what I want to say, I think I shall get on with saying it. Perhaps I will take some contributions at a later stage.

Returning to the problem that I have identified, when one partner is much older than the other and there is a reasonable expectation that they will die some years before the other, the long-term survivor would not receive the same tax benefits as a married person or someone in a civil partnership, which is also discriminatory towards the couple’s children. Even a couple who are engaged to be married have more rights than a cohabiting couple. Offering a formalised role within an opposite-sex civil partnership could save a lot of retrospective ignorance and the ensuing heartache and financial implications.

It is for those reasons of natural justice and protecting the rights of partners that I am yet again promoting a private Member’s Bill to extend civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples, which I have been trying to do since the change to the legislation back in 2013. There is a deal of déjà vu involved in my reappearance on the same subject here today.

Without Government support, the Bill is unlikely to make headway, despite the support of hon. Members from all parts of the House and a nationwide campaign that has so far attracted more than 71,000 signatures to a petition. I am particularly pleased that we have the support of my hon. Friend the Member for Altrincham and Sale West (Mr Brady), who is the chairman of the 1922 Committee, the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), the hon. Member for Foyle (Mark Durkan) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). We have the support of hon. Members from just about every party represented in this House. The hon. Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), who speaks for the official Opposition on equality matters, wrote on her blog:

“we have the chance to take another step in extending true equality, admittedly only in one aspect of our lives; choosing the type of partnership that best suits our needs, faith and aspirations.”

She gave her support and that of her party to the Bill, and is sorry she could not be here to give it in person.

[Christina Rees (Neath) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on bringing forward the Bill. I have supported this proposal for a long time, as it is all about equality. I had a private Member’s Bill, which did not get as far as his, that would have corrected another anomaly in the law by putting mothers’ names and occupations on marriage certificates. The hon. Member for Charnwood (Edward Argar) has taken up the mantle on that. The Bill before us is about equality. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, despite the result of the appeal in the High Court, which is being challenged, it is for this House to decide the matter because it is of great public interest?

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady is right. I will refer to that case, which will go to appeal imminently, as she says. My Bill may not get much further than hers if I succeed in talking it out in the remaining minutes, so I will make some progress.

The Bill has high-profile supporters, including Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, the couple who instigated the campaign. I pay tribute to them. They appeared in the royal courts in London last November seeking to overturn the Government ban on different-sex civil partnerships, arguing that it is unfair because it treats people differently dependent on their sexuality.

By contrast and more recently, Claire Beale and Martin Loat became the first UK-based heterosexual couple to enter into a civil partnership in the British Isles. The catch is that they had to travel to the Isle of Man for the privilege. Bravely, the island recently made this reform to its legislation. While our British island cousins have made this step towards equality, the Government on the mainland of the United Kingdom claim, as they did when Rebecca and Charles first went to the High Court in January, and when I first tabled an amendment to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill, that such a change would be costly and complicated. I just cannot see how or why.

I am not convinced by the Government’s excuses. This change is very straightforward. Just as with same-sex civil partnerships, it would not be possible for someone to become a civil partner with a close family member or someone who is already in a union. Such a union would need to be subject to the same termination criteria. All that is required is a simple one-line amendment to the Civil Partnership Act 2004, which is what my Bill would enact. That is why it is a very short, one-clause Bill. It could all be done and dusted in Committee by tea time.

[Philip Davies]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will give way very briefly.

[Philip Davies]

I promise not to interrupt my hon. Friend again. Obviously, the other way of equalising the law would be to ban civil partnerships for gay couples. Would he be in favour of equalising the law in that way?

[Tim Loughton]

That would indeed provide equality and close the loophole, but it would be a retrograde step. For the reasons I mentioned, some couples do not want to go down the formal marriage route, whether they are of the same sex or opposite sexes. We would therefore be denying the civil partnerships to an awful lot of people. Many people have chosen to go down that route and many have chosen not to convert a same-sex civil partnership into a marriage, which they can now do.

Clearly, they have reasons why civil partnership suits them, but those of the opposite sex cannot have that same privilege if it suits them better than traditional marriage. My hon. Friend suggests one way of doing it, but there would be serious downsides.

In the Government’s original consultation before the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act 2013, 61% of respondents were in favour of extending civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples. Alas, for some inexplicable reason, it never made it into the legislation, which would have made it a better and fairer Act. Other hon. Members and I wrote recently to the Secretary of State for Education, who is also the Minister for Women and Equalities. In her reply on why the Government do not support the measure, she said that, as part of the exercise after the Act was introduced, the Government examined whether or not people supported extending civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples and found that the majority did not. However, a clear majority in a more extensive consultation before the Act did support the extension. Why do those views no longer count?

Aside from the equality question, there is a further major practical benefit of opening up civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples: family stability, which my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow) mentioned. The Centre for Social Justice has calculated that the cost to this country of family breakdown is some £48 billion each and every year, or some 2.5% of gross domestic product. That is a big, growing and costly problem—it is costly both financially and socially.

Fewer than one in 10 married parents have split up by the time a child reaches the age of five, compared with more than one in three of those who are cohabiting but not married, and 75% of family breakdowns involving children under five result from the separation of unmarried parents. There are all sorts of statistics showing that those children are more susceptible to not doing well at school and not ending up in good jobs, and that they have problems with housing, mental health and so on. That is not to be judgmental about parents who find themselves having to bring up a child alone through no fault of their own, but two partners make for greater stability.

We know that marriage works, but we also know that civil partnerships are beginning to show evidence of greater stability for same-sex couples, including those who have children, be it through adoption, surrogacy or whatever. There is a strong case for believing that extending civil partnerships would improve that stability for many more families in different ways. If just one in 10 cohabiting opposite-sex couples entered into a civil partnership, it would cover some 300,000 couples and their children. It would offer the prospect of yet greater security and stability, less likelihood of family breakdown, and better social and financial outcomes. That, surely, is progress, and would be particularly good for children in those families.

There is a further application. Many people who have strong religious beliefs, particularly Catholics, who end up getting divorced, which is in conflict with certain religious teachings, may not be inclined to get married again if they meet a new partner because their Church supposedly believes that they should be married for life. In many cases, however, they would be able to reconcile that position by entering into a new formal commitment through an opposite-sex civil partnership. There are a number of practical real-life scenarios in which civil partnerships for opposite-sex couples could achieve something very positive that would not be available to those loving couples otherwise.

Opposite-sex civil partnerships have not been cooked up haphazardly in this country. In South Africa, the Civil Union Act 2006 gave same-sex and opposite-sex couples the option to register a civil union by way of a marriage or a civil partnership on the same basis. In France, the pacte civil de solidarité, or PACS as it is known, was introduced in 1999 as a form of civil union between two adults of the same sex or the opposite sex. Gay marriage has been added. Interestingly, one in 10 PACS has been dissolved in France, while one in three—many more—marriages ends in divorce. There is evidence that some of those civil partnerships have created greater stability, whether they are opposite-sex or same-sex partnerships. In countries such as the Netherlands, where marriage and civil partnerships are open to all, the vast majority of different sex couples continue to choose marriage, so the measure in no way tries to undermine the traditional partnership of marriage. A significant minority choose civil partnerships, so surely UK couples should have that choice.

In the many years I have been banging away on this subject, support for the campaign has grown. The London Assembly recently gave its unanimous support to the change in the law and passed a motion that states:

“The Assembly notes that whilst same-sex couples are able to form a civil partnership, different-sex couples cannot.

The Assembly acknowledges that approximately one in five households in London consist of a cohabiting different-sex couple.

The Assembly believes that the current legal situation which prevents different-sex couples from forming a civil partnership is unfair and prevents these couples from being able to get legal recognition for their relationship in a way that matches their values.

The Assembly recognises that City Hall has often been at the forefront of efforts to extend rights and liberties: in 2000 it introduced the first ever registration scheme for same-sex couples.

The Assembly calls on the Mayor to support the equal civil partnerships campaign and urges him to make representations to the government for a change in the law if the Court of Appeal rejects Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan’s appeal against the High Court’s decision to reject their application to form a civil partnership.”

Last week, there was a very supportive article in the Solicitors Journal, which referred to the current anomaly as “discriminatory”. Marilyn Stowe, the senior partner at Stowe Family Law, said:

“To some couples the concept of marriage is outdated. They do not wish to marry but equally seek a legally recognised civil union where vows and promises to each other are not required.”

There is, therefore, a lot of support for this measure. I have received many emails from couples around the country who are waiting for this change in the law to be able to signal in the eyes of the public, their friends, the law and the state that they are part of a loving, secure and sustainable long-term union. It is just a different arrangement from that which many other people choose.

I would like to quote from two emails I have received in recent days:

“Dear Mr Loughton, my partner and I have lived together for 25 years. We are not religious, nor do we feel a registry wedding is suitable for us. We have worked full-time and very hard all our adult lives and feel we deserve the recognition that other couples enjoy. As we get older”—

they are in their 50s—

“we feel we deserve the financial and long-term benefits that are given to other couples who have contributed to this great nation, but we are currently being denied these rights.”

The second email reads:

“My male partner and I”—

she is female—

“have lived together for 38 years. We do not wish to marry for many reasons, for example my mother was very adversely affected by marriage in the days when women were immediately ejected from their careers upon marrying, and rape in a marriage was legal until 1991. My mother’s advice was ‘try to enjoy it, as it might reduce the physical damage.’ But we do want a civil partnership. We are now both dependent on our pensions, but if my partner died tomorrow, heaven forefend, I would not be recognised by his pension provider and would receive nothing from them. If we had a civil partnership, they would recognise my claim.”

That is just another example of the instability facing loving couples—in this case, they have been together for 38 years—if one of them dies, because the state does not recognise their relationship.

We need to close this anomaly. I do not understand why the Government have reneged, effectively, on their promise, after the Same Sex Marriage Act, to pursue this properly and to draw an end to the inadvertent inequality that has come about through that Act. Regardless of the Act, there is a case for extending civil partnerships to opposite-sex couples for the whole raft of positive reasons that I have set out in my short comments today. If the Government are to allow people to be as free as possible to make their own decisions without harming the freedom of others, what on earth are they doing failing to make it lawful for people of the opposite sex who happen to love each other to enter into a civil partnership, when they allow that very same freedom to people of the same sex? The current situation is unfair, illogical and needs to change. That is exactly what my Bill will do with minimum fuss and that is why I commend it to the House today.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills (Robert Halfon)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on introducing this Bill. He said that this was the first time that he has been able to speak on a private Member’s Bill—[Interruption.]

[Tim Loughton]

On my own.

[Robert Halfon]

On his own. Given that this is about civil partnerships and marriage, I congratulate my hon. Friend on losing his virginity with this Bill.

My hon. Friend talked about the 2014 consultation, which ran during the time that same-sex marriage was introduced. There were 11,500 respondents, 76% of whom opposed extending civil partnerships. The Government’s position is that we want to see what happens and to look at the data before taking any further decisions on the matter.

My hon. Friend also said that marriage has patriarchal and religious associations, but the concept of marriage has moved on from when women were considered chattel. Civil marriage ceremonies are available to all couples and contain no religious element. In fact, when I got married a few months ago, we had the “The Wizard of Oz” playing and a tin man in the registry office. Civil ceremonies can be personalised by the couple, which is exactly what we did, to include non-religious words and vows. There is no requirement for a couple to take vows to honour or obey each other. The only requirement is that the marriage takes place in the presence of witnesses and that the ceremony includes the statutory declarations and contracting words. It is no longer for everybody a religious and patriarchal way of making a commitment.

The Government have rightly taken great pride in championing equality for all. The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act was passed in 2013 and during the passage of the legislation the question arose of whether, if marriage was available to same-sex couples, civil partnerships should be open to opposite-sex couples as a matter of equality. My hon. Friend pointed out that the Government considered the issue at the time and decided that it would be a mistake to rush to amend the Civil Partnership Act 2004 owing to the unknown, untested effects on myriad legislation spanning areas such as pensions, devolution, international recognition, gender recognition, adultery and consummation. At the time, the House recognised that to invite such risk would be irresponsible and that the unforeseen issues that may arise, as with all issues that come from great legislative change, will take time to identify, understand and account for, lest we burden the public with expensive, ineffective laws.

I mentioned the consultation and the number of people who responded to say that they wanted no change to civil partnerships. My hon. Friend the Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster), who introduced his brilliant Bill, as the Minister for Digital and Culture said, with real panache earlier, also asked about civil partnerships. There has been an 85% decrease in the number of civil partnerships since 2013. In 2015 there were 861 civil partnerships, compared with 5,646 in 2013.

[Tim Loughton]

I understand what the Minister is saying, but all the potential legislative implications of my Bill are no less than, and no different from, the implications of the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act itself for laws that had to be changed. Those changes were rushed through in a space of months, whereas we have had several years to think about this. It is almost three years since the consultation, and I repeat that there was a big consultation before the Act was introduced in which the majority said that they wanted civil partnerships to be extended to opposite-sex couples. How much longer will we have to wait?

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend and other hon. Members will know that there are ongoing legal proceedings. I am sure he would agree that it is right for the Government to wait to see the Court’s judgment. It is fairly reasonable to say that, as the Court is considering this issue, the Government should wait to see what happens. His Bill would amend the Civil Partnership Act so that opposite-sex couples can form civil partnerships. As has been highlighted, he has tabled the proposal previously, and in response the Government tabled their own amendment to require formal review of the operation and future of the 2004 Act in England and Wales once marriage became possible for same-sex couples.

One reason for the Government moving their own amendment is that the impact on demand for civil partnerships caused by the extension of marriage to same-sex couples could not be predicted. When civil partnerships were introduced, there was a peak in the first year, and it took only a couple more years before the numbers started to stabilise. The coalition Government said at the time of the 2013 Act that we expected an early rush to marry for same-sex couples from 29 March 2014, when the Act came into force, and for there to be a similar initial peak in the number of same-sex couples wishing to convert their civil partnership to a marriage from 10 December 2014.

The coalition Government also believed that some couples might take much longer to decide between civil partnership and marriage if they wanted a legal relationship or, in particular, to decide whether conversion to marriage was a step they wished to take. Even now, it is still too early to tell whether that will happen in practice.

That is not the only reason why the Government now believe that my hon. Friend’s proposals would require significant further work. I will take each reason in turn: the legislative complexity introduced by a change to the law; the difficulty in estimating the size of the challenge in successfully making such a change; complications introduced by marriage being a devolved matter; treatment of other overseas relationships; the reaction of religious communities and stakeholders; and finding parliamentary time during this Parliament.

[Tim Loughton]

I understand that every single one of those considerations applied to the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act, which was taken through Parliament in a matter of months. Three years on, why is that an impediment?

[Robert Halfon]

There is always the law of unintended consequences, as I am sure my hon. Friend would acknowledge, and it is right that the Government make sure that all these avenues are carefully looked at before making any further changes to the law. That is not an unreasonable position.

My hon. Friend will know that marriage law is an inordinately complex landscape. References to marriage and civil partnerships are peppered through the entire body of law in this country. If we were to change the Civil Partnership Act to amend the definition of a civil partnership so that the term, wherever it appears in legislation, means a relationship between both same-sex and opposite-sex couples, we would need carefully and methodically to assess the impact of the change on all other relevant legislation where the term appears. We would need to check every position in all relevant legislation to ensure that the legislation still works as intended and, if not, to provide for consequential amendment of that legislation.

Let me give the House an indication of the complexity of this task. Policy decisions would need to be made by a number of Departments on issues such as pensions and benefit entitlements of same-sex couples entering into civil partnerships, the dissolution of civil partnerships for same-sex couples and the rights of same-sex couples in relation to assisted conception. In each case, the question would be whether—

A-level Archaeology

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 14th December 2016 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the future of A level archaeology.

First, I declare an interest, having studied archaeology at university. I have hacked through jungles in pursuit of Mayan pyramid sites and spent wet summers in duffel coats digging up Roman forts on Hadrian’s wall. I started such practices at the age of seven on a Saxon homestead on a windy hillside in Sussex. I am chairman of the all-party groups for archaeology and for the British Museum, and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. I want to put on record my thanks to Dr Mike Heyworth of the Council for British Archaeology, who provides the secretariat for the all-party group on archaeology and has provided very useful information for today’s debate.

The subject of the debate may seem somewhat niche, although I am sure it does not seem so to you, Mr Owen, but it is important. If nothing is done, the current cohort of students studying archaeology in our schools and colleges will be the last. We have already lost the GCSE in archaeology. I studied AO-level archaeology all those years ago. Those days are long since gone, because in October, the AQA examination board, the last board offering archaeology at A-level, announced that after a lot of consideration it had made the difficult decision to discontinue, from September 2017, its work creating new AS and A-level qualifications in archaeology, classical civilisation, history of art and statistics. That is despite the fact that in 2016 more than 600 candidates sat the AS exams in archaeology and 369 sat the A-level. The number has been fairly consistent over the past five years.

On its website, AQA describes archaeology as

“one of the most exciting subjects in the curriculum. It is the ultimate subject for an ‘all-round’ student, in that it combines elements of many other academic disciplines, such as Science, Art, Technology, Geography, History, Sociology and Religious Studies. The study of Archaeology challenges students to understand and use a range of evidence to draw substantiated conclusions and raises their awareness of the uncertainty of knowledge.”

Indeed, it is one of the most exciting, challenging and stretching subjects in the curriculum. Far from scrapping it, we should be promoting and expanding it to more schools and more students, particularly in the state sector.

Archaeology is not some dusty, crusty, outdated subject for eccentric fossils like me. It teaches us about who we are, where we come from, where we can go, and how we relate to those around us. As the great Roman republican senator, consul and historian, Cicero, said, to be ignorant of what happened before one was born is to remain always a child.

[Alex Chalk (Cheltenham) (Con)]

On that point, will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tim Loughton]

On the point of Cicero, I am delighted to have an intervention.

[Alex Chalk]

We will have some Ciceronian advocacy. Archaeology ought not to be seen as a poor cousin of history. All the reasons to study history apply in equal measure to archaeology.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Archaeology teaches us the disciplines of forensic analysis; how to peel back the layers of evidence, literally; how to contextualise and study the data in physical form—or often, as importantly, its absence in physical form—and to make assumptions based on scientific analysis. In a contemporary context, those same disciplines were brought to bear in the Shoreham air show tragedy in my constituency last year, when expert archaeologists were brought in to help in the grim but necessary job of identifying remains. There are many everyday applications for archaeologists in police, crime and detective work.

From archaeology, we learn a lot about our environment and the relationship between man and our landscape. We learn about why a bronze-age settlement was built on the side of the downs, for example, and about the relationship with sources of water and the preservation of scarce resources. How were the Romans able to keep food fresh and preserved without electricity and refrigeration? How did the Mayans build pyramids that mirrored the cosmos with the most accurate charts and calendars until the invention of the modern computer? How did the Greeks build such magnificent temples without JCBs and machines? They can all teach us a lot about recycling, respecting and conserving resources, and working in partnership with nature when food miles were scarce and expensive.

There are numerous examples of how archaeology has helped modern civilisation, such as the rediscovering of the Roman irrigation system in Libya to provide water for sustainable agriculture today. From archaeology we can learn about our society at a national and local level; what binds us together across generations; and where archaeological and heritage projects can be a major tool for regeneration and education, especially in deprived communities. Archaeology is a major driver of the economy, not only as a source of visitor attractions and because of its contribution to tourism, but as a serious employer in many sectors, too.

Heritage tourism in this country generated some £20.2 billion gross value added last year and is responsible for 386,000 jobs. The British Museum is the No. 1 visited attraction in the United Kingdom, with more than 7 million visitors. It is the world’s greatest museum—a museum of and for the world and the culture of mankind on this planet. There is a contribution, too, from marine archaeology, through famous wrecks such as the Mary Rose, which attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors to Portsmouth.

In the creative arts, the stories, films and programmes about the treasures of Tutankhamun and Howard Carter, the documentaries on Egypt and the more fanciful adventures of Indiana Jones, for example, are all linked to archaeology. In Syria, there are horrific scenes of man’s inhumanity to man, but more attention was given to the tragedy because of the destruction of archaeological treasures and UNESCO world heritage sites, such as the magnificent Palmyra, which I was privileged to visit when it was safe to do so.

[Kevin Foster (Torbay) (Con)]

My hon. Friend refers to the jobs created in the heritage sector. I am grateful to Dr John Davey, the lab manager for archaeology at the University of Exeter. He told me that 55.3% of those employed in this area are aged 45-55 years. Does my hon. Friend agree that that shows the importance of continuing A-level archaeology to recruit the people we will need in future to replace those retiring?

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend is right. I am very grateful for the work that many academics in archaeology departments have done to communicate important facts to Members of Parliament about how archaeology applies across the generations and across social backgrounds.

Going back to Syria, a nation’s soul is its culture and heritage. That is why it is so important to preserve and protect important sites and the products of their civilisations. If war-torn countries such as Syria are to pull themselves up and recover, retrieving a sense of cultural identity will be a major part of that, but when misused, archaeology can be distorted by nation states to create slanted, propaganda-driven visions of the past.

There is also the practical application of archaeology and archaeologists in a developed industrial country such as the United Kingdom. If we are to build houses, develop communities and construct major infrastructure projects, we need archaeologists to recce and clear the ground first. If the northern powerhouse, High Speed 2, garden cities and the like are to happen, we need trained archaeologists in at the beginning. They are in short supply, as confirmed by the Chartered Institute of Archaeologists and the study carried out by the all-party parliamentary group on archaeology.

Historic England has said that it is

“concerned to hear that archaeology will no longer be an option at A-level. We anticipate growing demand for archaeologists trained to handle the large number of excavations likely to be needed in advance of housing development and major infrastructure projects. So we need to be encouraging the development of archaeological skills, and broadening the appeal of archaeology as a discipline. This move will close off a small but significant route into the profession. To address the situation we are working with universities and other organisations to promote archaeology apprenticeships and vocational training to offer potential new routes into the profession.”

Professor Carenza Lewis of the University of Lincoln and of “Time Team” fame notes that archaeology develops a range of transferable knowledge and skills, such as credible thinking, structured working, reflective learning, report writing, team working, verbal communication and citizenship, and that a lack of those skills often disadvantages students, particularly those from less affluent backgrounds, when they attempt to continue their education or enter the workplace. I say “hear, hear” to that. I could add a whole list of disciplines involving the environment, sustainability, culture, regeneration and heritage.

Archaeology is also a major source of volunteering. In 1985, the Council for British Archaeology calculated that there were something like 100,000 archaeological volunteers across the country, spread between about 450 societies. By 2010, that had grown to 215,000, across 2,030 organised archaeological groups and societies. Dr Daniel Boatright, who teaches archaeology A-level at Worcester Sixth Form College and started a petition that has so far attracted 13,261 signatures, says:

“Specialist A-levels like archaeology are vital tools in sparking students’ interest in learning and in preparing vital skills for use when they go onto university courses. AQA is extremely naïve if it believes UK students will benefit from a curriculum of only the major subjects. What we will be most sorry to lose is a subject capable of bringing out talent and potential in students that might have been left undiscovered.”

He is absolutely right.

Why is archaeology A-level so integrally important? Nearly three quarters of students who study A-level archaeology go on to study it at university, from where many of our archaeology professionals come. That route to jobs will now be cut off.

It is clear that this decision by AQA is hasty and ill-thought-through. It was announced without any discussion with anyone in archaeology or anyone associated with the delivery of the A-level or its redevelopment. It came out of the blue, apparently flying in the face of the archaeological community, which is and has been ready to offer additional support and publicity for the new qualification and has already undertaken research on what is needed. A lot of hard work has already taken place in expectation that the archaeology A-level would be revamped, reinvigorated, grown and promoted. As the Council for British Archaeology said, the archaeology profession has been developing Government-approved apprenticeships, which are due to be launched in 2017. Together with A-level archaeology, they would have offered an important alternative pathway into the profession at a time when there is a growth in demand for archaeologists linked with large infrastructure projects. I want to pay tribute to the good work done by the Department for Education in promoting the Heritage Schools project to bring archaeologists and other experts into schools.

AQA has given three main reasons for its decision to discontinue the qualification: the complexity of the syllabus means that there is a lack of specialists to act as markers; there are declining numbers coming forward to study the subject, although they have been fairly constant over five years; and there are difficulties in maintaining a comparative marking system with the degree of optionality available in the specification.

The archaeological community has queried all three points. Feedback from Ofqual had been very positive about the development of the new specification and the progression of the drafts. There is general consensus among examiners and teachers that the new syllabus would reduce complexity; there is a wealth of qualified examiners and teachers; and there are offers of increased support from higher education archaeology academics. People who have applied to become markers of the archaeology A-level are on a waiting list. The necessary specialisms are available in the existing examining group; there has been no attempt by AQA to discuss this with the group, which I think is a great shame. It makes no sense that AQA has dropped the subject at this time.

[Alex Chalk]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the criticisms or concerns raised by AQA apply just as much to history of art? It made a U-turn on history of art, and therefore it ought to make a U-turn on this as well.

[Tim Loughton]

It has not made a U-turn on those subjects; they have been taken on by another examination board—I will come to that in a minute—but my hon. Friend makes a valid point.

There has been a glimmer of hope: alternative examination boards have shown an interest, most notably Pearson UK, which has previously come to the rescue of under-appreciated subjects, and which announced earlier this month that it would be taking over the art history and statistics A-levels and GSCEs and A-levels in five minor languages. Yet the archaeology A-level is left to languish unloved. I am encouraged to hear that, after an initial rejection, Pearson UK is meeting a delegation from the CBA, the chair of University Archaeology UK and the chief examiner for AQA A-level archaeology next week.

The archaeological sector has been galvanised into offering considerable support for the development and delivery of the new archaeology A-level specification, with offers from employers, academics, archaeological contractors, teachers, Historic England and assorted professional bodies. The all-party parliamentary group stands ready. Sir Tony Robinson—I am delighted that he is not far from us today—who did so much to inspire a generation of children, including my son, to dig up their garden in the pursuit of the past, as well as all his work with “Time Team”, is also fully behind the campaign. He has described the loss of archaeology A-level as

“a barbaric act…It feels like the Visigoths at the gates of Rome.”

So why is this down to the Government? What do I want the Minister to do? The situation comes about as a result of changes to A-levels under this Government. AQA has said that, prior to its decision, it was fully committed to offering a new A and AS-level in archaeology, accredited by Ofqual, using the subject criteria determined by the Department for Education. It had already put considerable resources into developing those new qualifications, fully intending to offer them from 2017. However, in the process of developing and obtaining accreditation for the new levels, it concluded that the new qualifications developed from the Government’s criteria would be extremely challenging to mark, as the large number and specialist nature of the options created major risk to safely awarding grades. It was in that context that AQA concluded that there were unacceptable awarding delivery risks for the new archaeology A-level.

AQA has signalled that, if it gives up the A-level, it is agreeable to handing over the majority of the specification material that has been developed for the planned archaeology A-level, together with initial comments from Ofqual. It also helpfully agreed to consider continuing to offer the existing specification for a further year to aid a transition to a new exam board and ensure that there is no gap. On 23 November, the Minister replied to me that he was in discussion with other examination boards on this issue. I would like to know what progress has been made. He praised Pearson UK for coming to the rescue of the other A-levels that had been dropped, but curiously not archaeology.

I know that the Minister is an accountant, but surely even he could not fail to be seized by the moment when Howard Carter glimpsed those treasures of Tutankhamun, hidden from human reach for 3,300 years; when Sir Leonard Woolley first came across the Sumerian treasures from the royal tombs at Ur; or when Hiram Bingham first glimpsed that fantastic Mayan city in the sky, Machu Picchu. Surely even the Minister, with his frenzied interest in spreadsheets and profit and loss balance paragraphs, could not have failed to be enthused and to grab for a four-inch pointing trowel to investigate what lay beneath his feet.

Parliament has a special relationship with archaeology. It was this House that, in 1753, in an Act of Parliament, established the British Museum as a universal museum; it now has 8 million items. Sir Austen Henry Layard, Liberal MP for Amersham from 1852, gave us invaluable archaeological records and some of the first sketches of the ruins at Nineveh, Nimrod and Babylon. Lord Avebury, MP for Maidstone from 1870, rescued Avebury—the largest stone-age site in Britain—invented the terms palaeolithic and neolithic, and drove the Ancient Monuments Protection Act 1882. We have a special relationship with, a special interest in, and a special duty to the archaeological treasures of this country and, indeed, the world.

This is an opportunity for the Minister to prove that he is not a Visigoth. All excavation archaeology is inevitably destructive, but has the legitimate and valuable purpose of adding to the knowledge of man.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I am going to finish.

Destroying such a successful route to widening that knowledge is unforgiveable and illegitimate. I hope that the Minister will think again.

[The Minister for School Standards (Mr Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) on securing this very important debate. I agree with him—I have never seen him as a dusty fossil, and I hope he does not see me as a Visigoth—about the importance of archaeology. It is an important discipline. It connects our present to our past and helps us understand what it means to be human. Anyone who has had the privilege to visit Pompeii or gaze in wonder at the treasures of Sutton Hoo—even an accountant—knows how far archaeology has enriched our cultural heritage and our understanding of the past. It would indeed be a tragedy if our young people were prevented from pursuing archaeology as a career in the future.

Securing a pipeline of students to study archaeology at university, as my hon. Friend did, is clearly very important, but it would be wrong to assume that only students who study the subject at A-level go on to degree-level study. As he knows, archaeology is a broad subject requiring critical analysis and research skills. It covers aspects of art, history, science, sociology and mathematics. Universities look for students who have a range of academic A-levels for entry to their archaeology courses.

For those reasons, and because the archaeology A-level is not widely available, universities do not require an A-level in the subject as a prerequisite for degree-level study. The number of students currently studying the subject at A-level is very low: there were just 340 entries in 2016, of which just 26 were from state-funded schools. Although the Council for British Archaeology has sought to encourage take-up of archaeology A-level, it also advises students who are contemplating a degree in archaeology to consider humanities A-levels, particularly history, geography or geology, and a science A-level where the course follows a science-based route. A knowledge of ancient languages can also be a useful route in many courses.

Those are the subjects that many universities are looking for. A greater focus on those facilitating subjects will ensure that a broad range of high-quality choices are available to A-level students and help them to choose the subject that will open the most doors to top university courses. We have worked with universities and exam boards to develop new A-levels that better prepare students for university study, including in each of those subjects.

In history A-level, students must study topics from a chronological range of at least 200 years, and might, for example, make use of archaeological sources to complete their compulsory, independently researched historical inquiry. In ancient history, students must develop a broad and extensive understanding of the ancient world. They must understand the nature and methods of the analysis and evaluation used to examine historical evidence. In geography and geology, students are now required to have extensive practical field work skills and the analytical knowledge to interpret their findings. Across a range of subjects, our reforms to A-levels will equip students with the knowledge that is essential for undergraduate study.

My hon. Friend raised concerns about AQA’s decision not to develop a new archaeology A-level for teaching from September 2017. I share his disappointment about its decision. I assure hon. Members that, contrary to some media reports, it was not a Government decision; it was taken by AQA itself. Our intention has always been that there should continue to be an A-level in archaeology, which is why we published subject content earlier this year. The way our exam system works is that individual exam boards decide which qualifications to develop once the Government have set the relevant framework. The Government can seek to persuade where necessary, but ultimately we cannot require the boards to develop particular qualifications. Their decisions on whether to do so depend on a range of factors, including the level of demand for a qualification and the extent to which they can offer a high-quality qualification and award grades to students fairly and consistently.

In this particular case, AQA initially intended to develop a new archaeology A-level, but, having submitted an initial specification to the regulator, Ofqual, for accreditation, it reviewed its position and concluded that it was not able to continue. It explained that the decision was due to concerns about challenges in ensuring that grades could be awarded in a safe and fair way, given the small number of students taking the subject and the wide range of options that the qualification would need to offer, which meant that ensuring comparability between students would be difficult.

[Tim Loughton]

The points that the Minister is making about archaeology apply also to statistics and history of art, which have been saved. I quoted the problems that AQA cited. Will the Minister acknowledge that there is a problem with AQA and that many people are moving away from it? It did not consult the archaeological community, which offered help on all those problems, so they could have been addressed. Because it is the only examining authority that still offers archaeology, the future of archaeology is now in peril.

[Mr Gibb]

I will come to the other A-levels that my hon. Friend refers to in a moment. AQA was also having difficulty recruiting suitable examiners for the qualification. Those challenges also apply to the existing A-level, which AQA offers. It tried for some time to find acceptable solutions, but unfortunately it has not been able to do so.

My hon. Friend asks what action the Government have taken to secure the future of the qualification. As soon as AQA notified us of its decision not to continue to develop A-level archaeology, in addition to, as my hon. Friend said, history of art, classical civilisation and statistics, we opened urgent discussions with the other exam boards to see whether they were willing to offer those subjects.

As my hon. Friend mentioned, discussions with the exam board Pearson were positive. On 1 December, in a written statement, I announced that Pearson is to develop A-levels in history of art and statistics. Classical civilisation has already been developed by another exam board, OCR, and the specification has been accredited, so the A-level is available for schools to teach from next September.

Unfortunately, no exam board has been willing to develop a new A-level in archaeology for teaching from 2017. Other boards felt unable to overcome the challenges identified by AQA in relation to that particular qualification. The A-level will therefore no longer be available for students starting courses from September 2017. The option for any exam board to develop an A-level in archaeology, however, will remain open. I reassure my hon. Friend that students studying archaeology A-level now, for examination in 2017 and 2018, are not affected by AQA’s decision. They may continue to study the subject and to take the qualification.

My hon. Friend also expressed the concern that, were students no longer able to study archaeology A-level, they would not have the opportunity to be introduced to archaeology as a discipline or be encouraged to take the subject further. I disagree with that analysis. Recent archaeological finds such as that of Richard III and the site at Must Farm, with the wide coverage they received, can only serve to engage and enthuse a new generation of potential archaeologists.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful for my right hon. Friend’s kind comments. I suspect that his school, Brockenhurst, must therefore be a major contributor to the 26 A-level archaeology entries of 2016, and I congratulate it on its wide-ranging curriculum. I assure him that I left no stone unturned in my encouragement of other exam boards to adopt the subject, as with the languages with small cohorts—we were successful in persuading Pearson to take up those subjects, too.

It remains open for any board to produce a specification or an offer to take forward archaeology. We published the content because we want the subject to continue. We remain open to any exam boards wanting to set an archaeology A-level.

The changes we have made to the national curriculum will help to provide students with a greater understanding of the subjects that they study, feeding their enthusiasm for further study. In history, students are now required to have greater chronological understanding through the study of a wider range of historical periods, including more than one ancient civilisation. Enrichment activities, such as battlefield tours of the western front, in which 1,400 schools have participated to date, have enabled students to gain a deeper understanding of, and develop an interest in, significant historical periods.

Many universities will expect students to arrive already having had work or volunteering experience in museums or heritage sites, or having had practical experience in the field, where possible. Organisations such as the Council for British Archaeology, which runs almost 70 Young Archaeologists’ Club branches all over the UK, and industry magazines such as Current Archaeology offer a wealth of volunteering opportunities around the country.

I hope that I have been able to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham that the Government are fully committed—

[Tim Loughton]

The Minister and I have been in this place a long time. With great respect, if he says that he really has left no stone unturned in pursuit of an alternative, he would not make a good archaeologist. Can the Minister honestly say that he has gone to every examination board and made a case as strongly as has clearly been made for those other subjects rescued and saved by Pearson and that he really thinks nothing further can be done? If so, that will come as a huge blow to many people in the archaeology community in this country, and in years to come, his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government will find their plans for infrastructure projects seriously thwarted because he has not been able to produce trained archaeologists to do that vital job.

Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]

Tim Loughton Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons & Money resolution: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & Ways and Means resolution: House of Commons
Monday 5th December 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

If the hon. Gentleman will forgive me, I would just like to explain some of the tenets of the Bill, and then I will take his intervention.

We are starting to see things change. This year, we have seen the first “outstanding” judgments under the most recent—and most challenging—Ofsted framework. Local authorities are testing innovative ways of supporting families through the children’s social care innovation programme. Examples of excellent leadership across the country are being celebrated by Ofsted and others.

However, we are under no illusion that there is still much more to be done. That is why, in July of this year, the Department for Education published a clear and ambitious vision and plan for the changes that need to be made to drive sustainable improvement across the whole country. This is our plan for putting children first. It sets out fundamental reforms across each of the three pillars on which the social care system stands: people and leadership, practice and systems, and governance and accountability. This Bill is a crucial part of delivering reforms across those three pillars.

Part 1 concerns children who are in care or supported by the state. Clause 1 sets out, for the first time, a set of corporate parenting principles designed to establish consistently high standards in the support of looked-after children and care leavers, and drive a culture of excellent corporate parenting. The principles are intended to help a local authority to think and act in the interests of the children in their care in the same way as any good parent would. This is not about putting a new set of duties on local authorities; it is about changing behaviour and practice. The aim is to ensure that all parts and every tier of local government have the needs and circumstances of looked-after children and care leavers in their minds in their planning and decisions. This responsibility goes beyond just children’s social care, reaching across the whole of the local authority.

Clause 2 will ensure that the corporate parenting ethos extends into adulthood and that all care leavers are clear about the support on offer to them and how to access it. Care leavers will have access to information about the services available to them through a local offer from their local authority, with each local offer based on consultation with care leavers themselves.

Clause 3 will give all care leavers access to support from a personal adviser at any point up to the age of 25. We amended the Bill in another place to make sure that the service is offered at least annually so that care leavers can take advantage of it whenever they need to.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Gibb]

If my hon. Friend will forgive me, may I make a little more progress, and then I will come back to him?

The next section of the Bill recognises that children who are adopted or who leave care under another permanence order often have ongoing difficulties resulting from their early life experiences. Clauses 4 to 7 will therefore give them access to the same support that looked-after children receive from virtual school heads at local authority level, and that designated teachers provide in schools to help with their education. Following an undertaking given in the other place, we are bringing forward amendments that will extend these provisions to children who have been adopted from overseas.

Clauses 8 and 9 expand the factors that courts and local authorities must take into account when deciding on the most appropriate place for a child. They do not give priority to one type of placement over another, but they do place more emphasis on stability and what would be in a child’s best long-term interests, taking account of the impact of any harm that the child may have suffered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gibb]

The local safeguarding arrangements set out in the Bill will provide a strong statutory framework that puts responsibility on the police, the NHS—through the clinical commissioning group—and the local authority to ensure that a robust safeguarding system is in place, but with greater local flexibility than we have at the moment, so that the arrangements are as effective as possible in meeting local needs. I also believe that the combination of improved national arrangements for analysing serious cases, which I will come on to, including child sexual abuse and exploitation, and for learning from them in a more systematic way, including higher standards for social workers, as set out in the Bill, will enable Oxfordshire and other counties across the country to keep children safer than is currently the case.

Chapter 2 of part 1 of the Bill focuses largely on arrangements for the safeguarding and protection of children. Earlier this year, Alan Wood, the former director of children’s services in Hackney who is president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, carried out a review for the Government on the role and functions of local safeguarding children boards. His report, which was published in May, found that local arrangements were patchy. Less than half of LSCBs were judged by Ofsted to be good or better, and he reported that there was a clear consensus in favour of reform. Strong partnership is, as we know from serious case reviews, key to keeping children safe.

Clauses 12 to 15 will establish a new child safeguarding practice review panel to review serious child safeguarding cases that are complex or of national importance. The purpose of the panel will be to improve the way in which we learn from cases where a child has died or been seriously harmed and neglect or abuse of the child was known or suspected.

Clauses 16 to 30 will introduce a stronger statutory framework for child safeguarding and protection at local level. The focus will shift away from wide-ranging local partnerships and will place a duty on the three key agencies involved in safeguarding children—namely local authorities, the police and the health service—to work together, and with any relevant agencies, to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

[Tim Loughton]

rose—

[Mr Gibb]

I will give way to my hon. Friend and am sorry that I did not do so earlier.

[Tim Loughton]

The Minister will be aware that this is not the original Bill, thanks to the good work of the House of Lords in removing clauses 29 to 33 on the duty to innovate. At the recent national children and adult services conference in Manchester, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said of that duty:

“It’s about how we can put you in the best position to protect those children properly.”

The trouble is that the “you”—meaning 150 organisations, including Coram, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, the British Association of Social Workers and 90% of all social workers—said that they did not want it and that they were opposed to it. Will the Minister confirm that he will not try to reintroduce those clauses in this House?

[Mr Gibb]

I listened carefully to my hon. Friend, who will be aware, of course, that Eileen Munro, whom he appointed to look into this whole area when he was the Minister, supported the power to innovate. The Local Government Association, ADCS and Catch22 also support it. The power is not to do with taking rights away from children or with saving money; it is about giving councils the opportunity to develop new ways of working that they believe will improve outcomes for children.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend says that it is not about taking rights away from children, but one of the scenarios is the abolition of independent reviewing officers, who absolutely can be the only voice independently standing up for vulnerable looked-after children in local authorities. If they go under the proposals, how is that not taking away the rights of children, particularly vulnerable children?

[Mr Gibb]

This is not about abolishing any statutory responsibilities. My hon. Friend should wait to see the amendments tabled in Committee. I am sure that he will want to talk about his concerns in more detail with the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families, who will take them very seriously indeed, particularly given my hon. Friend’s background and experience.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I draw the House’s attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

I welcome most parts of the Bill, and I particularly welcome the fact that it is now without certain parts, as I said earlier. It is good to have this opportunity to discuss child protection and social workers. We spend far too little time in the House highlighting the excellent practices that we expect our social workers to achieve in highly adverse conditions. I have always referred to social workers as our fourth emergency service, and I am proud to be a patron of the Social Worker of the Year awards, along with the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck). I attended the awards dinner just over a week ago, at which fantastic examples of dedication, hard work, skill and expertise were on display. Alas, none of that made it into the mainstream media, as is so often the case.

[Catherine West (Hornsey and Wood Green) (Lab)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that the challenges facing social workers are particularly intense as a result not only of immense reductions in funding, but of the fast-changing climate and the Government’s occasional initiative-itis that seems to attach itself to the social work sector?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

Social workers are certainly under a huge amount of pressure, but that initiative-itis has, to an extent, gone into reverse, not least through the shrinking in the past six years of the “working together” rule book—the bible of social workers and social work practice—which amounted to more than 750 pages when this Government came into office. Social workers were spending all their time checking what the rulebook said, looking over their shoulders and ticking boxes, rather than being allowed to get on with the business of being social workers, and eyeballing families and the vulnerable children whom they are there to protect and work with. With the support of Professor Munro, that work was an important initiative that tried to take away many of the administrative burdens on social workers, notwithstanding their other pressures and challenges.

I am proud of the work that the Conservative party has done in this area, starting with the commission on social work that I chaired back in 2007. I am delighted that my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Mrs Drummond) is in the Chamber because she played an important role in the commission. We produced the document “No More Blame Game—The Future for Children’s Social Workers”, which is as relevant today as it was then. The trouble is that social workers are still too often subject to the blame game, especially in the tabloid press, from which it would appear that it is social workers who abuse and murder vulnerable young children. Of course they do not; they are there to try to protect such children. Parents, carers and others commit those foul acts, but people would not believe that based on the reports. Too many people view our social workers with disdain.

From that piece of work, of which I am proud, came the suggestions for consultant social workers and a chief social worker. In 2010, our manifesto commitment was to take child protection back to the frontline. I am also pleased and proud that the first review initiated by the Department for Education after the 2010 election was not about schools or education matters; it was the excellent Munro review into child protection. I was slightly surprised that the Minister prayed in aid Professor Munro so explicitly. I appointed Professor Munro and worked closely with her, but the problem is that many of her 15 pertinent recommendations are still to be implemented, and they do not involve the removal of a local authority’s basic duty to protect vulnerable young children.

I support the Bill as it stands, but it could certainly be improved by a number of enhancing amendments, although I would not include among those any that would rehash clauses 29 to 33. I was alarmed by the Minister’s comments that strongly suggested that those clauses will be revisited. That would be a shame because, after the good work done in the Lords, we were promised a period of reflection —perhaps it could be referred to as a pause, as we have had for other legislation—but that reflection will not have lasted long if the Government return with amendments. I caution them to extend the period of reflection before they hurry into repeating what was clearly a mistake. A clear majority in the House of Lords and a great majority of important organisations involved in child protection were not in favour of the proposed changes and made their feelings clear.

Let us be clear, many good things have happened around child protection under this Government. The reform of fostering and adoption regulations has helped not only fosterers and adopters, but, most importantly, children who are being fostered. It has also helped more children to get adopted. There is more to be done, but a lot of progress has been made over the past six years. Ofsted’s inspection system is now much more appropriate and rigorous.

The Munro review gave rise to a lot of innovation in child protection. The child sexual exploitation action plan was published back in November 2011—well before the Savile scandal became so public and made CSE a headline issue of which we have never seen the like. We have the Staying Put policy which, although perhaps underfunded and less effective in certain local authorities, includes the right to a personal adviser until the age of 25 and places a duty on local authorities to stay in touch.

These are all good things being innovated through the Bill that, along with staying close until the age of 21, offer support to vulnerable children in the care system at what is often a most fragile time in their lives. Previously, at the age of 18 or even 16 they faced a cliff edge, coming out of care into the big wide world without the help and support—the safety net—that so many of these children and young people need.

[Catherine West]

The hon. Gentleman is being extremely generous in giving way a second time. Does he agree that much of this could be quite academic if funding does not accompany these exciting developments?

[Tim Loughton]

Funding is, of course, part of this, but we can do a lot better with existing funds, although the National Audit Office report showed that funding on vulnerable children had gone up as well. But what was not working properly is when social workers were spending, through the integrated children’s system and other very bureaucratic systems, up to 80% of their time in front of a computer filling in forms to do with child protection, rather than getting out there and dealing with children face to face. That was a huge waste of resources, but more importantly a huge waste of opportunities to deal more effectively and early on with children, who really did need to have the support, and often intervention, of professional services and social workers in particular.

Despite all these innovations, we still need to do an awful lot better for vulnerable children, children in the care system and our care leavers. It is a fact that 40%—almost half—of our care leavers aged 19 to 21 are classed as not in education, employment or training, and 4% of them are in custody. Two thirds of children in the care system have special educational needs, almost half of them with a diagnosable mental disorder. The percentage for the educational achievement of children achieving A* to C GCSEs is still in its teens, compared with its peer population now with over 60% achieving those grades.

I particularly welcome some of the Bill’s corporate parenting principles— although it will be interesting to see how they work in practice—that apply to physical and mental health, which is so important. Although this Government have again done a lot to raise the profile of mental health, particularly among children and young people, and have injected a further £1.4 billion into that area, the problem is that not nearly enough of it—and that is not enough in itself—is getting through to the frontline, to help the children and young people who so desperately need it, when they need it and where they need it.

These are challenging times. The NAO report on children in need of protection, to which various hon. Members have already referred, flagged up some worrying observations. Too often the way we look after vulnerable children is a postcode lottery. We are still very poor at sharing best practice in this country, yet a child in need, a child in care and a child in desperate need of protection should be dealt with no differently whether they are in Durham, Worthing, Exeter or anywhere else throughout the United Kingdom.

There was a surge following the horrific case of Baby Peter, but the number of children coming into the care system continues to rise: there are now in excess of 70,000 children in the care system in England—the highest since 1985, when the environment in respect of why children tended to come into the care system was very different. I do not know whether we need to take more children into care, or fewer, but I do know that we need to take the right children into care at the right time, and give them the right support and services if they cannot be supported living with their families or other kinship carers.

Another thing I am very proud of is the Government’s initiative on promoting adoption, which had fallen into neglect, frankly, after the good work done in the Adoption and Children Act 2002. The adoption figures have started to fall back considerably and there is still a very big grey space following the Munby judgment. But that should not have happened, because those adoption reforms were about bringing forward an easier system for adopters to offer their services and for children to go through all the hoops. There were too many hoops and it took too long for children to get adopted. We needed to bring onside not only those involved in adoption at the local authority level, which largely we did, but, contemporaneously and in sympathy, those in the legal profession, as many judges felt put upon, in that they were being told how to run cases in their courts. I am afraid that the Government have failed to do that and should not therefore be surprised by the disappointing reversal in the adoption figures, which I hope will be reversed again, because adoption does offer the best chance at a second childhood—a second possibility of being brought up in a safe and loving family—for a lot of children who still do not get that chance and are still in the care system.

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that although many younger children are being adopted, it is far more difficult to place older children? We need to do more to promote the benefits to those children of adoption at a later age.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady is right about that, but shiny, squeaky new babies have always been much more attractive to people who want to adopt than problematic teenagers who have been through all the trials and tribulations of broken families—perhaps abuse, neglect, mental health problems and behavioural disorders—and have been pushed from pillar to post in the care system. Those are the children we have most let down, which is one reason why the introduction of adoption scorecards was based not just on improving the number of children adopted, but on concentrating on those harder-to-adopt children: older children; large sibling groups; and children from black and minority ethnic communities. Too often these children were at the back of the adoption queue. I am glad to say that in recent years disproportionately they have found themselves more likely to get adopted than they were before. This is still not enough and there remains a lot to be done, but that was absolutely the right focus to bring in over the past few years.

Another thing I am concerned about is that despite all the good work the Government did on paralleling the kraamzorg system for health visitors in Holland, we have lost 722 health visitors since January and there has been a 13% decrease in the number of school nurses since 2010. They are really important people in early intervention—in identifying children with problems, and those for whom the support of social services and other caring services is essential, sooner rather than later.

Of course, I am also worried by the recent rise, again, in social worker vacancy rates in many authorities around the country, and too often the positions are taken by temporary social workers. Social work, particularly when dealing with child protection, is an area where staff need to forge empathetic relationships with those vulnerable children and families whom they are there to look after. Being pushed from pillar to post, from one home to another, from one social worker to another reviewing officer—or whoever it may be—only accentuates the instability and vulnerability of those children.

I worry when, even in this place, we are still too quick to point the finger of blame at the social workers because a child has been brutally assaulted or killed, as still happens in too many cases, by their carer, parent or close relative. We hear the talk of “wilful neglect”. There are social workers who are not doing their job properly, and there are social workers who are not up to the job and should not be in social work, and they should be removed from it, but they are a small minority. We should not make the rest of our excellent, hard-working, dedicated social worker force feel constantly that they are the ones to blame for many of these tragedies. We have to up everybody’s game, but they are part of the solution; in the vast majority of cases, they are not part of the problem.

It is odd therefore that at the heart of the original Bill, since eviscerated of clauses 29 to 33, which it would seem are about to make an unfortunate reappearance, were radical new proposals supposedly to test new ways of working, under the guise of promoting innovation. As I said earlier, the clauses were not remotely welcomed by the vast majority of people who are involved in the whole field of child protection. They were opposed by the British Association of Social Workers, the Care Leavers Association, the Children’s Rights Alliance for England, CoramBAAF, which is the Government’s appointed adoption provider, the Fostering Network, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and Action for Children. In various polls, about 90% of working social workers did not support those clauses either, which was hardly surprising given that the clauses came out of the blue. There was no consultation on absolutely fundamental changes to the way in which we apply duties of care to vulnerable children in this country.

I pay tribute to the House of Lords, particularly to Lord Ramsbotham, for putting forward the amendments that saw those clauses taken out of the Bill. Lord Ramsbotham referred to clause 29 as nothing less than

“the usurpation of the proper parliamentary process.”

He asked

“how the courts are expected to respond where a young person or child in a particular local authority area is clearly disadvantaged by the arbitrary disapplication or modification of the law as it is applied in all other parts of the country.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 November 2016; Vol. 776, c. 1056.]

As I said earlier, a child needs protection wherever he or she may be in the country. We cannot have a competition between different areas on ways of looking after vulnerable children, some of which will not work and some of which might. Every child needs the protection of the law as set out by Parliament, and it should not be subject to a postcode lottery, as is convenient for certain local authorities.

In the debate in the other place, Lord Low said:

“It is perfectly possible to test different ways of working…within the existing legislative framework…it makes no sense to get rid of the duty.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 8 November 2016; Vol. 776, c. 1063.]

The squeeze on funding, which Members have mentioned, and which is, I am afraid, inevitable at the moment—[Interruption.] I am afraid that it is inevitable because of the disastrous way in which the Labour Government ran the economy into the ground. In too many cases now local authorities are providing only what is their duty; additional services are no longer on the agenda at all. Taking away that duty means that some of these fundamental things could not happen in the future.

Clause 29 as it was would have allowed local authorities to request exemptions from their statutory duties in children’s social care. Every Act of Parliament and every subordinate piece of legislation concerned with children’s social care from 1933 onwards could have been affected. The proposed mechanism for exemption orders was to be statutory instruments, which would have handed over enormous powers to the Secretary of State and the Department for Education. I am afraid that the Minister for School Standards is wrong: the DfE acknowledged that this part of the Bill directly concerns children’s fundamental rights. How can vulnerable children challenge those lack of services? I gave an example—it was one of many examples raised in the House of Lords—of independent reviewing officers. I am a big fan of IROs—I think we can do better, and there is a bit of a postcode lottery—as their role is to stand up and be the voice, or the advocate, of children who are not getting the services to which they are entitled and which they need from local authorities. If no IRO is available because an exemption has been applied for and granted, which means that the authority has no IROs, where is that child to go? There are not just IROs, but key legal protections that exist in the form of regulations now, including the ban on corporal punishment in foster care and children’s homes, protection for disabled children placed away from home, leaving care entitlements and complaints procedures. All of those could be granted an exemption and could disappear from fundamental rights, which we apply to protect vulnerable children now. This would be the first time in the history of children’s welfare that legislation made for all vulnerable children and young people could be disapplied in a particular area. This is a very radical proposal that warranted at least a Green Paper and a White Paper and proper consultation, but there was none.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the NSPCC and Action for Children said that

“the case that the Government is making presents considerable risk. Despite numerous conversations with ministers and officials, the evidence for the need for this power remains unconvincing and does not justify the potential risks of suspending primary legislation.”

The British Association of Social Workers said:

“If the clauses are re-introduced it will pave the way for significant and dangerous changes to the provision of children’s social care which would jeopardise hard fought victories for children’s rights spanning decades.”

How would the pilots for these provisions be monitored? How would we monitor whether children were still safe and what the results were for those children? It is no surprise that only one in 10 practising social workers surveyed by the BASW and by Unison thought this was a good idea. That is why I have severe reservations if the clause is to be returned to the Bill.

The Munro review took away much of the bureaucracy from social workers. It gave flexibility on the timing of assessments of children and how social workers could prioritise. It gave greater powers and confidence back to social workers to use their professional judgment to do what they thought best in the interests of vulnerable children. Sometimes they will get it wrong. I always say to social workers, “What I want to do, and what the Munro review was all about, is to give you the confidence to make a mistake—hopefully, not often, but to do it for the very best of reasons, not simply because that’s what it says on page 117 of the rule book and you needed to tick the boxes.” That is not what social work is all about. It is not a science. It is a complicated and challenging job.

If we are going to give social workers those flexibilities and allow them to act in different and innovative ways because they think that is the best way of looking after vulnerable children, we do not need to take away the statutory duties of the local authorities which are the corporate parents of those children, so that those new ways do not have to abide by the fundamental duties which ensure that social workers are doing the right thing and looking after those vulnerable children.

Finally, I shall look at a few specific clauses and ask the Minister some questions, which I hope he will refer to in his summing up. Clause 1 is about corporate parenting principles, which I welcome, but it is not clear exactly what they amount to in practice. Are they in addition to the section 23 commitments of the Children Act 1989 or do they replace them? I have used examples which I welcome: promoting physical and mental health, promoting high aspirations and securing the best outcomes for those children and young people. Nobody could vote against such things, but in clause 3 new section 23CZB(7) states:

“Where a former relevant child to whom this section applies is not receiving advice and support under this section, the local authority must offer such advice and support . . . at least once in every 12 months.”

Once in every 12 months will not go very far for a vulnerable child who needs intensive help. Subsection(4) makes provision for personal advisers. The problem is that too many children in care whom I met and children leaving care had never heard of personal advisers, let alone knew who their own personal adviser was.

In clause 4 new section 23ZZA(3) gives a local authority this extraordinary power:

“A local authority in England may do anything else that they consider appropriate with a view to promoting the educational achievement of relevant children educated in their area”—

motherhood and apple pie. Why do we require that sort of thing in legislation? It strikes me that a bit much of this is a bit too mushy and full of cotton wool—too many vague assumptions which in practice, particularly with funding pressures and duties taken away, will not amount to a row of beans, if we are not careful.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

Obviously, the primary focus and concern is the duty of care to children, but there is also the issue of mothers who might well end up having successive children who end up in care. The local authority needs to have a responsibility for those vulnerable women, who may well be victims of a coercive relationship and have complex needs as a result. The sooner there is intervention and therapeutic care, the better, to avoid subsequent issues—maybe subsequent children and subsequent costs and concerns for all.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend, who has great expertise in this area, is right. Of course we cannot look at vulnerable children in isolation; we need to look at their families holistically. There are some really good examples. I hope that the Minister will stick to his word and provide funding for things such as FDAC, the family drug and alcohol court set up by the excellent Nick Crichton, a fantastic family district judge.

At FDAC, a mother—often a single mother—at risk of losing a child to the care system because of substance abuse or an abusive partner, say, is given a clear choice of an intensive package that will help her back on to the straight and narrow so that she can bring up her own child. It is a tough, challenging exercise. Alternatively, perhaps both parents will be involved. If they are able to do that, the whole family is put back together and the child stays, which is the best outcome. If not, that child will head for care.

I have sat in court, as has my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller), who will speak shortly, seeing mums who have had six, seven or eight children taken into the care system. We have to tackle the root of that problem: why is it? Is it that the mother just does not know how to parent, in which case what are society, social workers and the troubled families programme doing to help her become a fit parent if she remotely can? If she cannot, that child must go to a safe family elsewhere who can give them a second chance of a beneficial and happy upbringing.

I would like to make a few other quick points, Mr Deputy Speaker; I am aware that there are not too many speakers for this debate, so I have an opportunity to elaborate on some important points a little longer than the Chair normally allows. I know how generous you are in these matters, which are of great interest to you.

Clause 5 is about the designation of a member of staff at school

“having responsibility for promoting the educational achievement”

of children in the care system. That is a good initiative, but it already exists for children with caring responsibilities and alas that does not work in practice. It is a good idea, but it has to have some teeth so that it means something on the ground: that children in the care system have special attention from a designated teacher who understands the particular needs of such children, who are often subject to bullying, mental health problems and everything else. There must be more than a clause on paper in a Bill: the proposal has to work in practice.

There are some good points on the child safeguarding review panels, although I have concerns about the independence of the panels. Certainly when we gave a commitment before the 2010 election that we would publish serious case reviews—opposed by the Labour party, although the reviews have now become the norm—one of my concerns was also about the calibre of the people producing those SCRs and the quality of some of the reports. Effectively, they were not properly monitored; they were monitored only on a local basis. Some time ago, I put forward the idea that a national body should oversee the quality and that there should be a national register of authors of serious case reviews with a requirement for continuous professional development; there needed to be training, which would be updated. Before now, anybody, effectively, could apply to be the author of a serious case review. We need to regulate that important area rather better.

Under clause 13, the panel

“must publish the report, unless they consider it inappropriate to do so.”

Given that, previously, when serious case reviews were published, they were seen only by a few people locally and Department for Education officials if we were lucky, it was really important that, other than in exceptional circumstances where there could be detriment to surviving children or families, the reviews should be published and the lessons learned to see how they could apply elsewhere. This new review panel is an exercise in doing that and in disseminating best practice rather better. I very much support that, and I would like more details on how it is going to work.

Then, however, we have the section about safeguarding partners. These appear to be replacing the local safeguarding children boards, which are a really important feature of bringing together local agencies to make sure that we have workable solutions and partnerships in place, particularly to deal with child sexual exploitation at the moment. We need to be convinced about how these new bodies are better than, or different from, local safeguarding children boards and, in particular, about how they are going to be funded. Clause 20, on funding, says:

“The safeguarding partners for a local authority area in England may make payments”

towards the expenditure of these bodies

“by contributing to a fund”

or making payments directly. It also says:

“Relevant agencies for a local authority area…may make payments”.

The problem with LSCBs at the moment is that not all the partners pull their weight. In too many cases, key partners are, first, not turning up at the table and, secondly, not helping to fund the work of the LSCBs. Too often, it falls to the local authority—the default partner —to pick up too much of the tab. If we are going to put these things on a statutory basis, can we make sure that it is laid out clearly and unequivocally that the funding contribution from, and the active participation of, all the relevant partners is absolutely essential?

I am also concerned because clause 21 says:

“The safeguarding partners for two or more local authority areas in England may agree that their areas are to be treated as a single area”.

How big can they be? It is important that LSCBs are able to come up with local safeguarding plans and local plans to tackle child sexual exploitation in their areas—plans that are relevant to Rotherham, given the particular problems there, to Rochdale or to wherever. If these bodies are going to be looking after huge areas, their effect will surely be diluted in key hotspots. The Bill also talks about having cross-border constabulary co-operation, but these are very large areas, and I am concerned about how big these new bodies could become.

On the part of the Bill about the new body, Social Work England, I think we need to improve the regulation of social workers. I am not sure whether this is the right way to do it, and I would like to see more details. The demise of the College of Social Work is a shame, and I think it would have performed a lot of this function if it had been allowed to continue and to thrive. A lot of effort went into setting it up in the first place.

I am also concerned about the independence of Social Work England. My understanding is that it will be an Executive agency of the Department for Education, and we need to have some clarity over that.

[The Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families (Edward Timpson)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Tim Loughton]

Yes—I am delighted I am getting a response.

[Edward Timpson]

I can reassure my hon. Friend that the new Social Work England regulatory body will not be an Executive agency; it will be a non-departmental public body, so it will be at arm’s length from the Government and provide the independence that people called for and that I think is right.

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful, and gratefully reassured, and I look forward to being able to support that provision, as opposed to some others that I am not so reassured about.

In clause 31, one of the overarching objectives of Social Work England is

“to promote and maintain public confidence in social workers in England”,

and that is quite right. However, that is also the job of the chief social worker. One disappointment to me is that when we set up the chief social worker—originally, it was to be one chief social worker covering the elderly and children, but then it was split into a child social worker and an adult care social worker—the point was for them to be a high-profile face of social work, particularly for the public, and a reassuring face of child protection for the public in times of high-profile tragedies and disasters involving safeguarding issues. Therefore, while the current chief social worker for children said recently:

“I don’t pretend I am the voice of the profession. I am a civil servant and I see my role”

as

“offering advice to ministers based on what other people tell me about a the system”,

I think there is more to the role. This person must not just be a civil servant. They need to work closely alongside Ministers and civil servants, but equally—in action out on the street—to work alongside social workers, consultant social workers and practitioners at the sharp end. We need to revisit the balance that we currently have in that regard.

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker, for going on at length. This is a subject that interests me enormously. I have spent most of my career in Parliament involved with child safeguarding and child protection. I am very proud of the progress that has been made over years, but very worried that we still have a long way to go. Most of this Bill will help in that journey, but certain parts will not. I hope that when scrutinising the Bill in Committee and on Report, the Government reflect a little more before they rush to do some things that clearly are not in the best interests of vulnerable children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and to have heard not only Opposition Members’ broad support for the Bill, but the important points they have raised. There can never be too much consensus on these issues. As my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, we just need to do better for vulnerable children. Challenge is part of that, as are new ideas. We cannot allow the Bill to be a missed opportunity in terms of prevention or the knowledge we give to children, because they are as much a part of the safeguarding process as any other structure or law that we put through this place.

The focus of the Bill is very much children who cannot remain in the family home, but its scope has been widened, particularly through Government amendments made in the other place, to broader issues around child welfare. I will focus on some of the broader issues, particularly the provisions regarding adopted children and ongoing support for them; the more contentious issue of the power to innovate, which some Members have talked about today, the measures on which were voted down in the other place; and, finally, what more the Bill could do to improve the welfare of children and to empower children.

The Bill proposes improvements to the long-term placement of children for adoption and the assessment of their current and future needs through care orders. I hope that the Minister will take this opportunity to tell the House how the new measure sits alongside recent Government announcements on the adoption support fund. In particular, I am thinking about the interim cap on financial support that was put in place midway through the financial year.

The adoption support fund ensures that important therapeutic support can be funded for adopted children, some of whom are coping with difficult trauma, complex and challenging behaviour, and mental health problems. That can result in a high risk of adoption breakdown. The fund already helps thousands of families—I believe it was 3,500 last year—and the Government are increasing the budget to about £23 million this year. That significant investment perhaps underlines the Minister’s deep knowledge of the subject and his understanding of the challenges that parents of adopted children face, which he has gained from his own family’s experiences. I put on record my thanks to the Minister for all that he has done to support families with adopted children. I know that my constituents are enormously grateful for his expertise in this area.

Perhaps we should be unsurprised to hear that the demand for the fund has outstripped the supply of finances. The Minister, with the inevitable fiscal duties on him, had to introduce a cap to the budget in October. Although that was understandable as a normal response to keep control of budgetary pressures, it has inevitably created uncertainties for families such as my constituents, Mr and Mrs Cross, who adopted their son in August 2013. Mr and Mrs Cross are incredible. They have adopted a young child with foetal alcohol spectrum disorder which, as many will know, means their son requires significant support.

Mr and Mrs Cross have taken the necessary measures and are doing a fantastic job. The child’s therapy has been hugely beneficial, leading to real progress, but because it costs in excess of the new £5,000 cap, it is uncertain whether the funding will be available in the near future. The next phase of treatment costs about £10,000 and would require the local authority in Hampshire to match fund, in year, any costs over £5,000. Clause 8 calls for long-term plans for the care of a child to be in place, yet my constituents, who have made an incredible choice to care for a severely disabled child, are now unsure whether his care can be funded. I hope that the Minister, perhaps in his response to the debate, will reflect on how a local authority such as mine in Hampshire might respond, and reassure Mr and Mrs Cross that the support for their child will continue.

The second issue I want to speak about is the controversial power to innovate, which was contentious in the other place. Indeed, the then clauses 15 to 18 were removed from the Bill after a vote. The provisions would have allowed local authorities to apply to the Secretary of State to test new ways of raising children’s outcomes and to allow high-performing local authorities to be involved in that work. It is important that we pay heed to the strongly held concerns raised by expert voices, not just in the other place but outwith this place, and I will be interested to hear the Minister’s response to those concerns, which have been echoed again today.

None the less, the Department has put in place something that we need to look at again: the idea of giving “partners in practice”—my local authority in Hampshire is one of only eight in the country—the opportunity to look at innovative ways of working. If we are to find better ways to care for the vulnerable children about whom we all feel so deeply, we need to be open to new ideas, so I hope that we can revisit this idea, which was strongly supported by my local authority as well as experts such as Professor Eileen Munro. It is right that this tightly regulated area is as protected as it is, but I cannot believe that there would not be a benefit from our looking at new ways of working. We will all have seen examples of that in today’s briefings.

The problem might be—hon. Members might have put their finger on it today—that the proposals came somewhat out of the blue, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham said. We need to take care that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I do not think that the Minister had any intention for the proposals to create competition between local authorities; rather, the intention was to drive improvement, which we would all applaud. No one is suggesting that this approach would do anything other than drive innovation in an area that has developed, inevitably, in a piecemeal way in response to the various and sometimes quite appalling situations in which local authorities have found themselves.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham talked about the need for policy and law to work in practice. When I read the Hansard report of what the Minister in the other place said, I felt that that was exactly the purpose of the proposals. I think the intention is that local authorities are able to look at how they can make the law work in practice, rather than creating something of a postcode lottery. When there is an insight into better ways of working, authorities need to be able to pass it on to other areas to improve the way in which we care for this vulnerable group of individuals.

The final issue I want to raise, building on what the hon. Member for Walthamstow said, is what we are doing to empower children themselves, especially vulnerable children who might not have the consistent involvement of their parents in their lives and who, frankly, face really difficult situations when they have to take decisions about their own welfare without the input of other adults to guide them. This Bill is one of many pieces of legislation that have put in place laws, procedures and protocols to help to protect and improve the welfare of children through a whole host of agencies, but that does not directly address what we will do to help those children themselves. We need to ensure that they are armed with the knowledge that they need to make the right choices to safeguard themselves.

That is not a new concept, but something that we have done for many years. For example, we have tried to encourage children to understand the dangers of drugs, alcohol and, indeed, early pregnancy. It is important to take that forward in a more structured way. As parents and carers, we know that we have the prime responsibility to protect our children, but we also know that our children need the ability to make good choices. We cannot be there 24/7; social workers cannot be there 24/7. It is crucial that children have the ability to make decisions themselves in an informed way.

The Bill provides a perfect opportunity for the Government to respond positively to the five Select Committee Chairs who have called for PSHE and, in particular, sex and relationships education, to be made compulsory for school-age children. I am one of those Select Committee Chairs. Our work taking evidence on our recent inquiry on sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools was a sobering experience for all members of our Select Committee.

We need to help to empower children to make their own decisions. When we hear the evidence and some of the statistics about the challenges that young people face in respect of their own personal welfare, it becomes clear that this debate is overdue and that we need to take action now. Two thirds of girls regularly experience sexual harassment in school. Children as young as eight are seeing online pornography as a place to learn about sex, and there were 47,000 sexual offences against children in this country in the last year, a third of which were perpetrated by children against other children. Communities should be able to enjoy freedom and safety, and school communities are no different from any others.

When we look at what happens to children after their school life, we find that, according to a study by the National Union of Students, 68% of students say that they are subject to verbal or physical sexual harassment on campuses. The problem does not stop there, as some 85% of women are experiencing unwanted sexual attention in public places.

The hon. Member for Walthamstow is absolutely right when she says that this is all about prevention and making sure that we can stop these problems from happening in the first place by ensuring that children have the knowledge they need to make good decisions, to understand what consent means, and to achieve some control over their own personal space and their own bodies.

The Bill has been extensively debated in the other place, where many amendments were tabled, particularly relating to the importance for the welfare of children of joint working between agencies, including local authorities, the police and clinical commissioning groups. In the other place, the Government tabled amendment 113, which dealt with that, because they recognised that a multifaceted strategy was vital to children’s welfare.

Another set of organisations also have a crucial role to play in children’s welfare: schools. If the Bill is to do what it sets out to do and to promote welfare for children, it must make sex and relationships education compulsory. What is currently compulsory in secondary schools is the science of reproduction; the rest is based on guidance that was last updated at the turn of the millennium and makes no reference to pornography, through which, as we know, more young children are finding out about sex. We also know that 40% of schools do not teach SRE very well. Perhaps all that explains why organisations such as Barnardo’s have made clear that the development of an early understanding of and respect for each other’s bodies, and a knowledge of when to ask for help through PSHE, can help to build resilience and an understanding of what healthy relationships look like, as well as mitigating the effects of exposure to such things as pornography.

[Tim Loughton]

I am closely following what my right hon. Friend is saying and agree with much of it. As is the wont of speeches on Bills concerning children, hers is straying into a number of subjects that relate to children but are not dealt with in the Bill, but I support her on this subject. Does she agree that one way of securing the better-quality PHSE and SRE that we desperately need would be to bring in experts from outside schools, especially young experts such as youth workers? They could empathise with young people who would listen to them, take notice of them and act on their advice. Would that not be better than giving the task to Mrs Miggins the geography teacher who just happens to have a couple of free periods on a Thursday afternoon?

[Mrs Miller]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Expertise is necessary when it comes to teaching those subjects. However, as I have said, I have raised this issue because if we are to tackle the welfare of children, we must ensure that we do so effectively. It is no good leaving children out of the equation; we must tackle their welfare head on. While I do not disagree with my hon. Friend’s point that undertrained teachers will not provide effective sex and relationships education, I think that all teachers—whether they are Mrs Miggins teaching geography or anyone else—need to understand how they can stop the sexual harassment and sexual violence that too many young people told the Committee they took for granted in their everyday school lives, and which we would never take for granted as adults. All teachers should have some sort of training in this sphere because they are responsible for the wellbeing of children while they are at school.

West Sussex Schools Funding

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd November 2016 Westminster Hall

[Jeremy Quin (Horsham) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) on securing the debate and on his excellent framing of the argument.

As we look to our newly defined national future, the challenge of improving our national productivity is real and acute. Only through increased productivity will we deliver the public services and increases in the standard of living that every generation expects. Education and skills are among the most important drivers of that vital transformation in our national productivity. We need to continue the already positive improvement in science, technology, engineering and maths, and to my mind our trading future requires better results in foreign languages. Investment in education, properly targeted, is money well spent.

This is an important issue for the whole country, but the challenge is especially important for those of us who represent West Sussex, which is the worst funded of any county authority with funding of £4,198 per pupil. Under the current funding formula, the county receives £44 million less than the national average and some £200 million less than some London boroughs. I and my colleagues were pleased to stand on a manifesto that pledged a change in the funding structure of our schools, and I am delighted that the Government, having secured an overall majority, are pressing forward with far-reaching and long overdue reform. I await with interest the Government’s response to the first consultation.

A wide range of factors was proposed for possible inclusion in the funding formula. I am sure the new formula will be better than the current system, which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State described as arbitrary, unfair and out of date, but while the Government’s aim of maintaining higher funding for schools with issues of deprivation is laudable, I hope they will recognise the need for all school places to have satisfactory and effective funding. I am sure they will.

There are pockets of deprivation in every town and rural area. Every school has problems to confront, and ensuring proper recognition of the basic costs of providing the teaching staff and delivering the curriculum will be key. That is especially difficult in areas within commuting distance—subject to Southern rail and the National Union of Rail, Maritime and Transport Workers—of London. The cost of living in my constituency is very high, which makes it harder to recruit and retain the excellent teaching staff that children and parents rightly expect. That is especially true and worrisome in an area in which school infrastructure rarely seems to keep pace with population growth, adding to the strain placed on headteachers and staff. There is a worrying impact on class size, as at Tanbridge House school or Forest school in my constituency—at Forest secondary school, top set classes in core subjects already have 35 or 36 pupils. That obviously has a direct impact on teachers, but it also has practical consequences in classrooms designed for 30 pupils with a number of PCs to match. Schools that provide targeted support for struggling pupils used to do it in sets of 12 or 15, but now find that those sets have grown to 20, which means less effective lessons in which it is harder to focus.

Fair funding—redressing the balance—is critical. I look forward to the second consultation and what I trust will be an appropriate recognition of the high basic cost of education of every child. We are very proud of the good results generated by the schools in my constituency, but no one, least of all the Minister, would take that as a source of complacency. Excellent teaching, committed leadership and supportive parents all still need a solid underpinning of funding. In the immediate term, that foundation of solid funding is a source of real concern for headteachers across the county.

Costs have undoubtedly risen in the current year. I have had input from a large number of schools in my constituency; it would be invidious were I to go through every single one of them, but I will focus on one in particular. The Weald school in Billingshurst is an outstanding school. The current head has been in place for eight years. He started with 95 teachers and a senior leadership team of nine, including two deputy heads, and 1,440 pupils. He has managed to maintain 95 teachers, although the senior leadership team has been cut by a quarter, with now only one deputy; but the number of pupils has increased to 1,650—a 14% increase—and there has been a real-terms decrease in the per pupil funding of the school.

As my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex said when proposing the motion, this has been a problem for 30 years. With extra costs in recent years, reserves have been eaten into and in many cases eliminated. As did other schools in my area, The Weald predicated its financing on fair funding being introduced from 2017-18. It and other schools have had to contend with particular issues that will arise in the current year. From April 2016 there was a 1% increase in teachers’ pay, which meant a 1.23% increase for schools once national insurance is included. That equates to a £75,000 incremental cost to The Weald. For the past 30 years, schools have contributed 14.1% to teacher’s pensions. From September 2015 that went up to 16.4%—for good reasons, but it has an ongoing annual impact of £170,000 on The Weald’s budget. From April 2016, employer’s national insurance contributions were increased, which is an important and valuable change for the Treasury but will cost the school an estimated £120,000.

Looking forward, the impact of changes to the education support grant are expected to add an extra £45,000 of costs, while the apprenticeship levy will add an extra £30,000—and that is before any future increases in teachers’ salaries. The sum of those figures amounts to an estimated deficit of £425,000 in the next financial year for The Weald school. That is why there is so much demand in the immediate term for transitional funding to help schools to get over the hump until fair funding is introduced.

To appreciate the gearing effect, my right hon. Friend referred to £20 million raising the West Sussex average per pupil funding from where it is now, at the bottom, to being halfway towards the average. That £20 million would equate to £250,000 flowing through to The Weald school. As the Minister will see, no one would say that is easy living or easy budgeting in the context of a forecast deficit getting on for half a million pounds, but £250,000 would make a real impact on managing the short-term costs until the introduction of the fair funding formula.

As my right hon. Friend said, in trying to work out what to do, headteachers have been setting out alternative options that they could pursue. The one that has generated the most attention has been the threat to modify school opening hours, which I do not believe is appropriate in any circumstances. None of the other options being considered has happy consequences either; they include larger class sizes where practical, curriculum shrinkage and further staff reductions. It would be particularly galling if reducing the syllabus or not replacing staff occurred on a temporary basis, only to be reversed as and when—we hope—satisfactory results come through from the fair funding of the schools.

I congratulate the Department for Education on pursuing fairer funding, which I trust will put appropriate weight on basic per pupil costs. I recognise the fiscal constraints under which the Department is operating, but I hope the particular funding pressures on schools are recognised. When announcing the decision to delay the implementation of fair funding, the Secretary of State for Education said she would take a sensible approach to transitional arrangements for 2017-18. She made similar statements to the Education Select Committee, to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex referred. I look forward to the Minister’s response, and I also look forward to seeing the Secretary of State this afternoon. This is an issue that I very much hope we can address.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

rose—

[Mr James Gray (in the Chair)]

I call the right hon. Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert), even though he was not standing up.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

It is very gracious of you to call me to speak, Mr Gray. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Mid Sussex (Sir Nicholas Soames) on securing this important debate. I echo his tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin), who has led the very united charge by all West Sussex MPs. Of course, two of our number are slightly compromised in their support, one being the Minister for Schools and the other, my hon. Friend the Member for Crawley (Henry Smith), being a Parliamentary Private Secretary in the Department for Education. I am sure that their supportive sentiments are with us in spirit.

Those West Sussex Members are united with the county council, with every headteacher in every school in every constituency in West Sussex, and with the many thousands of parents who have written to us, signed petitions, joined us in presenting a petition to Downing Street just a couple of weeks ago and supported the “Worth Less?” campaign, which flags up the significant differences in the way pupils are funded and therefore treated and viewed in West Sussex, compared with so many other parts of the country. We are also united with all the local media, which is supportive.

This is a huge issue for all our constituents across the county. It comes on top of other huge issues such as the abject failure of our local rail service to deliver our constituents to their places of work and education remotely on time or reliably. The other huge issue is the work on the A27 in our constituencies. So this is a busy time for us, the issue is taking up a lot of time and resources and we need something to be done about it.

My hon. Friend the Member for Horsham rightly praised the Government’s efforts to reform education over the past six years, dragging this country’s educational standards into the 21st century, but as it stands the way we fund our schools in West Sussex remains resolutely in the 20th century.

We all welcomed the Government’s manifesto commitment, and their honouring in principle that commitment, to review the funding formula to ensure that we have a fairer funding formula to benefit counties such as West Sussex. Therefore, the Government’s announcement last year was widely welcomed in our constituencies, where things have been very tight for some time, but, frankly, time is running out to come to the rescue. The news earlier this year that the review is being delayed by another year is a potentially fatal body blow. We do not know what fairer funding will look like, how fair it will be in cash terms to counties such as West Sussex, or how long it will take to phase it in. It is unlikely to happen overnight. It is not an easy exercise and there will be winners and losers in other parts of the country. Therefore, there is still a lot of uncertainty.

The then Chief Secretary to the Treasury said in a letter to my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham that the

“Government wants to see every child achieve to the best of his or her ability regardless of their background or where they live.”

That is something of a grammatical car crash, but it is a sentiment with which we wholeheartedly agree. He went on:

“At the March Budget, the Chancellor announced that the Government will accelerate the move to the”

national funding formula.

“Subject to consultation, the aim is for 90% of the schools who will gain funding to receive the full amount they are due by 2020.”

We do not know what the full amount they are due equates to and we are now talking about 2020 at the earliest before that transition works its way in. That is almost another four years of pain, tightening budgets and difficult choices, to which my hon. Friends have alluded.

We have heard the figures and I will not go through them again, but it cannot be right that there is such a substantial anomaly between child funding of £4,196 per annum in West Sussex and, the most extreme example, child funding in Tower Hamlets of £7,014 per annum. In our neighbouring county of East Sussex, funding is substantially more, at £4,450 a year. The difference just to bring us up to the average funding is £41 million a year.

The Chief Secretary mentioned in his letter an additional £500 million of core funding to schools over the course of the spending review. That is welcome, but £41 million just to get us to the average represents 8% of that £500 million, which is being spread among the whole country. For us, that £41 million would represent 1,518 additional teachers in our schools, which are losing places, having to make redundancies and are not filling vacancies. The result is that subjects are being dropped and class sizes are becoming larger. That is the realistic outcome of the present situation and it can only get worse until it is resolved.

Hon. Members have lobbied hard. We have met Secretaries of State and Ministers, and we have further meetings later today. We have met many teachers and have been lobbied by many teachers and many parents. I will read out some letters from schools. One school in Worthing wrote to parents: “School leaders have made every conceivable cut to our provision and now we are faced with reducing basic services still further, all to the disadvantage of your child. Our finances are so bad that we are all having to consider the following types of action: modifying school opening hours, increasing teacher-to-pupil ratios again, reducing basic services such as cleaning and site and premises work, stopping any investment in books and IT equipment, designing curriculum offers that fulfil only basic requirements, not replacing staff who leave. As you can imagine, such radical considerations are the very last thing that any school wishes to do but we are being given no option. We do not understand why children in our school are worth less than others around the country. Even when a national funding formula is introduced, it will take at least three years to have a really significant effect on our budgets. We cannot wait that long.” That is a common cry across all our schools.

An excellent school in Worthing, Thomas A Becket junior school, is the largest primary school in Worthing; indeed it is one of the largest primary schools in south-east England. The head has written to me saying that its

“funding has been severely reduced by the reorganisation due to the Worthing Age of Transfer process.”

That happened recently and was very successful. The head continued:

“However, the main point I would like to draw to your attention is that if Thomas A Becket Junior was located in a London borough the school would receive, on average, an additional £1.8 million in its annual budget, enough to employ an additional 65 teachers. I have no doubt that with this extra budget share my school could improve at the rate of London schools over the past few years…The facts are well known to you; schools are facing an 8% decrease in real terms funding due to unfunded NI and pension contributions over which we have no control.”

Academies are also suffering. Shoreham academy in my constituency is rated outstanding. The head wrote to me:

“The huge difference in funding levels across the country mean that West Sussex schools are now at breaking point as a consequence and students are being treated unfairly and unjustly in terms of educational funding.”

This is not just vague bleating. Outstanding headteachers are really concerned and worried about the future prospects for their schools and their children. We share those concerns. These schools have dipped into their reserves in recent years because they have faced years of accumulated deficit because of the way the funding formula is fashioned, and in many of our schools there is nothing left in the tank.

As I said, we have the support of the county council. Louise Goldsmith, leader of West Sussex County Council, wrote to the former Chancellor, saying that the teaching

“profession has undoubtedly become less attractive in recent years and whilst we realise that there are a lot of new initiatives being promoted by the government to attract new teachers, and we welcome these, in the short term we need to be able to attract high calibre staff to West Sussex now. Unfortunately, due to the current low level of funding, the schools are having difficulty doing this, especially as they are unable to offer any enhanced salaries.

The government has stated that school funding is being protected in 2016/17. Whilst we obviously welcome that fact, in real terms the funding is in effect being eroded by unfunded cost pressures, such as the increase in employer’s pensions contributions and national insurance contributions, pay awards, the national living wage, as well as any ‘in-year’ growth in pupil numbers.”

The county council has had to top up a lot of money from its reserves and other areas, in a county where we are under severe pressure because of the high elderly population and the huge impact on the social care budget competing for increasingly scarce resources. In addition, as we have heard, West Sussex County Council has always generously recognised and endeavoured to fund the high special educational needs we have across the county. We have had shortfalls in the capital costs of new schools. We have an increasing population. There is the knock-on effect of Brighton: people moving out of Brighton into West Sussex because of cheaper property is raising costs in our county. There has been the cost of the recent age of transfer exercise that I mentioned, and there is the cost of living in West Sussex. It is one of the most expensive places to live in the whole country, yet our funding formula does not acknowledge that we have different cost pressures from other parts of the country.

We have support from the local media. All the local media have written editorials on the issue. For example, the Worthing Herald has written:

“The low funding, together with rising National Insurance and pension costs and the government’s decision to cut £600 million from education grants, has left schools at breaking point.

This is no exaggeration—our headteachers, who have been called upon to absorb further cuts while already struggling to make ends meet, fear schools may have to consider not opening five days a week if the funding crisis is not addressed by the government.”

It exhorts its readers to write to MPs and others. I exhort readers to write to the Secretary of State for Education and particularly to make submissions to the formal consultation on a fair funding formula that is being undertaken at the moment. We need examples of the real hardship that is happening here and now and can only get worse until this issue is resolved. We need those on the Secretary of State’s desk.

There have been disappointing explanations of the situation from Ministers. A previous Education Minister, who is now the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, my hon. Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr Gyimah), wrote back to the then cabinet member in West Sussex in slightly less than satisfactory terms. He wrote that the councillor

“mentions that schools in West Sussex are experiencing cost pressures as a result of increased pension and National Insurance contributions. It may be helpful if I explain the rationale behind our changes. We are asking schools, like other employers across the public sector, to contribute more towards their employees’ pensions to ensure that the costs of public sector pension schemes do not fall unfairly on taxpayers.”

Well, they are falling unfairly on taxpayers. Taxpayers in West Sussex are having to forgo other things from the county council because it is having to make up that money. The pension impact is considerable. Pension rates have gone up from 14.4% to 16.8%. That is an extra 2.4 percentage points added to the bill, and no extra money has been given to our schools to cover it. That is on top of the pay rise, which is only 1% but still adds £500 to the salary bill for the average teacher, and the increase in national insurance costs of some 2.3%, again for the average teacher.

The former Education Minister, in his helpful advice as to how we can do things to get round the funding shortfalls, goes on to talk about headteacher recruitment. He says that

“whilst the national headteacher vacancy rate remains fairly low at 0.2%, I do recognise that some schools are facing headteacher recruitment challenges. This was one of the reasons why we reformed leadership pay so that schools could pay more to attract the best headteachers. The government funds a number of targeted programmes that aim to address leadership supply, particularly within challenging schools. For example, Future Leaders aims to develop the skills of high-potential aspiring headteachers who want to work in some of the most challenging schools in the country. The Teaching Leaders programme develops middle leaders in primary and secondary schools in challenging contexts, putting them through a rigorous two-year training programme. A number of these middle leaders will go on to be the headteachers of tomorrow.”

We do not need the new, targeted teachers and headteachers of tomorrow; we need the basic subject teachers of today, and we are losing them. There are massive gaps in terms of teachers offering foreign languages, for example, across many of our schools. Those subjects are disappearing from the curriculum. The curriculum choice being offered to our pupils is shrinking simply because we do not have the teachers because we do not have the funding to attract them to one of the most expensive counties in the country.

There is no fat left. There is no money left in the reserves. There is virtually no leeway left for our headteachers somehow to juggle these finances. There is an urgent and critical need for the formula change, but also an urgent and critical need to recognise that we have a funding shortfall now and we have to have some help in the form of transitional funding to address that urgent situation now.

As I said, there is a shortfall of £41 million a year. The additional money that we have had in the past amounts to £930,000—a fraction of the reality of our funding shortfall. Yet again, West Sussex loses out. We lose out on central Government spend for the infrastructure in the county, yet our county is a large payer of taxes to central revenue. It is just not fair that our schoolchildren should lose out now and their whole future be compromised because we have an unfair funding formula that will still take several years to resolve and in the meantime is inflicting potentially huge damage on the life chances of our young people.

I hope that the Government will look again at the possibility of funding the shortfall with a transitional relief package. It is very hard for us as constituency MPs to support the Government’s programme on things such as grammar schools, with which in principle I certainly have a deal of sympathy but which will divert funds when we need those funds now in order to plug gaps in all the schools, of whatever type, across our county. We need the Minister and the Secretary of State to look more sympathetically on a dire situation that will only get worse over the next few years.

Looked-after Children/Social Work Reform

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 20th October 2016 Westminster Hall

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Fourth Report from the Education Committee of Session 2015-16, on Mental health and well-being of looked after children, HC 481, and the Government response, Cm 9284, and the Third Report from the Education Committee of Session 2016-17, on Social work reform, HC 201, and the Government response, HC 733.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. I am grateful to the House for the opportunity to debate the Select Committee on Education’s work on children’s services and the mental health and wellbeing of looked-after children, and on social work reform. Our Committee has a large and growing set of responsibilities, so it is an extremely good use of time to debate two of our reports at once. I appreciate the House’s indulgence. I pay tribute to the specialist advice we have received from Dr Matt Woolgar; Professor David Berridge, our adviser on such matters; and Marion Davis, also one of our advisers. All three contributed massively to the value of our work, and that is much appreciated.

During our inquiries, we heard from children in care, care leavers, foster carers, social workers and other front-line mental health workers. We visited the excellent services provided by Trafford Council, and we took evidence from a young woman in care and two carers with experience of mental health services. Our meetings with children and professionals in Trafford and Westminster were crucial to the recommendations we made. I thank all those who gave their time to speak to us; they spoke in a very helpful and frank manner.

There are significant challenges to overcome in both looked-after children’s mental health and social work reform. The responses from the Government to our recommendations were, frankly, a little disappointing. We need urgent action to solve problems with mental health services for looked-after children, but the Government have not acknowledged the urgency, and have passed the ball to an expert working group, rather than making the immediate changes that the Committee pressed for. Indeed, many of the people contributing to that working group will be similar to, if not the same as, those who contributed to our findings. Our recommendations on social work reform have largely been ignored. During our inquiry, it was clear that there are things that need to change, but again, the Department has not really taken what we suggested on board.

I shall start with the Select Committee’s inquiry on the mental health and wellbeing of looked-after children. Following a report on child and adolescent mental health services by the Health Committee and an update to the Government’s statutory guidance, we felt that it was a policy area that required scrutiny, so we launched our inquiry in September 2015. Almost half of children in care have a diagnosable mental health disorder, and they are significantly more likely to experience poor health and educational and social outcomes than their non-looked-after peers. Let us not forget that children in these situations are children of the state, because of their special circumstances. Our inquiry took evidence from experts including Sarah Brennan, chief executive of YoungMinds; Professor Peter Fonagy from NHS England; and Natasha Devon, founder of the Self-Esteem Team.

In April this year, we published our report. We found that provision for looked-after children with mental health concerns is poor in many areas throughout England. That variance should be of concern to us all. Some local authorities are providing integrated services, with a strong focus on multi-agency working and support for key workers such as foster carers and school staff; others are not. A significant number are failing to identify mental health issues when young children enter care, and services are turning away vulnerable young people for not meeting diagnostic thresholds, or for being without a stable placement. So there is good and there is bad, which is not acceptable. We found that methods of assessing children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing as they enter care are inconsistent, and too often fail to identify those in need of specialist care and support. For that reason, we recommended that all looked-after children have a full mental health assessment, carried out by a qualified mental health professional.

Leaving the care system can be a time of significant upheaval and disruption, and the period is likely to be even more unsettling for care leavers with mental health concerns. In short, it is the cliff-edge problem. We found that support for young people leaving care is inadequate and based too heavily on inflexible age restrictions. We therefore recommended that care leavers be able to access CAMHS up to the age of 25, rather than the current age of 18, and that the initial assessments of those entering care be carried out more thoroughly and consistently.

We received a huge amount of evidence on the capacity of CAMHS to respond and treat looked-after children and young people. We heard too many times that CAMHS refuse to treat young people who are without a permanent settled placement. The young woman we took evidence from, to whom I referred earlier, said that she had been waiting for CAMHS for more than two and a half years, but had been unable to access services because she had moved a staggering 13 times during that period. We recommended that CAMHS never refuse to see children or young people without a stable placement, or delay access to services until a placement becomes permanent. In recognition of the distinct challenges that looked-after children and young people face, we recommended that they have priority access to mental health assessments by specialist practitioners, and that subsequent treatment be based on clinical need.

The Government’s response acknowledged the vulnerability of looked-after children and the need for timely and effective mental health diagnosis and treatment. We are pleased that the Government have set up an expert working group for looked-after children’s mental health and wellbeing; however, having conducted a lengthy and detailed inquiry on the issue, we are disappointed that so many of our recommendations have simply been referred to that group. We will monitor the working group’s progress, and look forward to receiving updates from its co-chairs in due course, because we are very interested in the subject.

Let us move on to the second report. At the start of the year, we launched an inquiry on the Government’s plans for social work reform—and they do have plans. Although the Government had previously made it clear that improving the quality of child and family social workers and children’s services was a priority, the lack of clarity on how the aim would be achieved meant that we believed it was an important area for us to look at. During our inquiry, we heard from social workers, social work academics, local authority leaders, and many more experts in the field.

Social workers deliver an incredibly important service to some of the most vulnerable children in the country, but evidence suggests that they are doing more work than ever before. Children’s social workers are managing increased case loads: we have the highest number of children in care for 30 years, and the number of children subject to a child protection plan has risen by 50% in the past five years alone. Just last month, Sir James Munby, the president of the family courts, issued a warning about what he terms a “clear and imminent crisis” facing care proceedings, because in the past 10 years the number of care applications going through the courts has doubled. Despite those increased workloads, it is important to remember what an important job social workers do. The number of children who die due to homicide or assault has fallen by 69% since 1985 and remains in long-term decline. That is thanks to the hard work of social workers, police and others. This is not a story of social workers not doing things; the question is how they are led and resourced.

Although we can never be complacent when it comes to the safety of children, the Government need to ensure that in making reforms we do not forget about the good work that children’s social workers do across the country, which often goes unnoticed. On behalf of the Select Committee, I thank social workers for what they do, and I want that message to be amplified.

We published our report in July. We found significant weaknesses in the planned reforms, and recommended important changes. Existing career pathways are confusing, and provision of continuing professional development is inadequate and inconsistent. A national career development framework is urgently required. Children’s social workers need much more assistance after qualifying to enable them to specialise. That became increasingly obvious as we carried out our work. During our inquiry, we regularly heard that it is vital that social workers receive a generic start, with specialisation to follow afterwards. In the current system, however, that is far too difficult to achieve.

The Government’s reforms do not focus enough on tackling endemic retention problems. The average social worker’s career is only eight years long, compared with 16 years for a nurse or 25 years for a doctor. Almost a fifth of social work jobs are vacant, and they are mostly filled by agency workers. Poor working conditions, caused by high case loads, negative media coverage and the blame culture, are a threat to keeping good, experienced social workers in place. We need manageable case loads for those workers, and a national workforce planning system to forecast supply and demand. We also need to talk about social work in a positive way. I have done that already, but it is very important that we do so frequently. Without immediate action in these areas, experienced social workers will continue to feel under pressure and undervalued, and will therefore leave the profession.

One of the biggest problems facing social workers is the lack of a professional body. The closure of the College of Social Work in 2015 has led to a significant absence of high-profile leadership for the profession. A new body would take the lead on a number of crucial functions and so drive improvement in the sector, for example by defining CPD and the post-qualifying framework; endorsing courses; promoting practice excellence; and shaping national and local policy. That really is the No.1 priority and could address so many of the retention issues. The Government should halt their regulatory reforms until they have figured out a way to help the sector to replace the College of Social Work.

Finally, we could not ignore the wider context in which children’s social workers operate. While we welcome the attempt to introduce innovation, the Government’s proposals are untested. We do not believe that there should be any expansion of the independent trust model until there is clear evidence that it works. Unfortunately, despite the Government agreeing with us on so many issues in their response, that response seems to show that they are determined on their course of reform and unwilling to reconsider it.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests.

Does my hon. Friend share my frustration that too often there appears to be an obsession with changing structures, titles and the nature of the vehicles delivering children’s social care, when what really makes a difference are some of the things that he has already mentioned, such as making sure that we do not have 20% vacancies for social workers in certain parts of the country—that is why there is such a huge variance in the number of children taken into care in different local authorities—and looking at the quality of the outcomes for these children? We should do that, rather than obsessing about the system, which is supposedly there to help these children. It is the people on the ground and to whom my hon. Friend quite rightly paid tribute—the too-often maligned social workers—who really help, but they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

[Mr Carmichael]

I thank my hon. Friend for making some really strong points. He is absolutely right about the obsession with structure, as opposed to the importance of the people operating within it. That is why I first of all pay tribute to social workers, and believe that their leadership and reputation need to be enhanced and protected through a professional body; that is something that the Government have to think about carefully.

Although we are happy to hear that the Government plan to consult on many of their reforms, we still believe that there is a lack of detail on how to tackle some of the trickier issues, such as the retention of social workers. Moreover, there is a lack of detail on how some of the proposals are to be taken forward, and how extensive and binding the consultation exercises are likely to be.

The Government said in their response to our report:

“We agree that the development of a strong professional body for social work is important.”

However, they also said that they thought such a body

“would be one established by the…profession.”

We are a bit disappointed about that, because we believe that the Government need to be much more proactive in their efforts to replace the College of Social Work. I hope that the Minister will address that point when he rises to his feet.

The sector needs to be more heavily involved in this area, of course, but the Government have previously invested in the College of Social Work, and there is still a key role for them to play in the creation of a new professional body; it is not sufficient for them to say that the profession needs such a body while doing nothing to encourage its creation. The establishment instead of a Government-controlled regulator seems to suggest precisely the opposite: that the task of defining social work, and good social work practice, is being taken out of the hands of social workers. That is the opposite direction of travel to the one that we recommend. That is worrying, and we are concerned that the Government have not fully understood the significance of the move towards regulation, and away from supporting the creation of a professional body.

Social workers face pressurised working conditions, and the Government response suggests that action on that issue is not being taken quickly enough. Our recommendation that social workers nationally have manageable case loads was rejected. That was despite Ofsted saying that the local authorities that were judged to be good had almost always set manageable limits for their social workers—something we picked up on in Trafford. A recent National Audit Office report that was very critical of the Government’s action on improving children’s services also raised the issue of social worker case loads. We are disappointed that no immediate action on this front is planned.

In some cases, the Government’s response was to reject our recommendations without sufficient justification. For example, despite agreeing that the assessed and supported year in employment was important for newly qualified social workers, they rejected the recommendation to make it mandatory. We are unclear as to why they did that.

Both our inquiries revealed the pressures that children’s services are under. Our inquiry on the mental health of looked-after children found that CAMHS are overwhelmed, and that many specialist teams that offered targeted support for looked-after children have been abolished due to financial pressures. In some areas, children’s social workers face having unmanageable case loads, which is leading to low morale and poor working conditions, as was mentioned earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton).

Experienced social workers are exiting the profession in record numbers. As I have said, Ofsted has found that the local authorities that are judged to be good tend to be the ones that give their social workers manageable case loads; the Government must take account of that.

We also found that services were inconsistent across the country. I have already said this, but it is important to note that initial mental health assessments are highly variable. Many local authorities are not meeting their statutory requirement to ensure that all children are properly assessed on entering care. I would have thought that was of fundamental importance. While there are some good authorities—we cannot deny that, and we should always support those that are good—that support their children’s social workers with good leadership, access to continuing professional development and manageable case loads, far too many are still not in that category, or even in the vicinity of it. There are regions with significant retention problems, and it is clear from Ofsted reports that plugging the gap with agency workers does not bring about a satisfactory solution.

Both inquiries found that training and development for professionals in children’s services are poor. Children’s social workers lack a professional body, and their access to CPD is inconsistent and inadequate. Put simply, it is not good enough. A new professional body for social work, created with help from the Government, could define professional standards for qualifying and post-qualifying practice, and be given a mandate to define the CPD and post-qualifying pathways for the children’s social work profession. This debate is about a profession and the people within it, and we believe that they should have an appropriate body.

Training and support for foster and residential carers is highly variable, and many local authorities fail to equip carers with the knowledge and skills needed to support looked-after children with mental health difficulties. Foster and residential carers are professionals who need comprehensive and regular training in how properly to support children and young people in their care. We have recently launched a further inquiry on fostering, and we will look in more detail at the issues in the coming months.

Despite the Government agreeing with much of our thinking, the responses to both reports lacked the determined aim to implement change in an urgent fashion. It is hugely disappointing that the Government referred so many of the recommendations to an expert working group. On such an important and pressing issue, delaying action and effectively passing the buck is not helpful.

[Tim Loughton]

I share my hon. Friend’s frustration, but the frustration is worse than that: some of the recommendations in his Committee’s excellent reports relate to recommendations made in the Munro review, which reported in 2011. Since then, very little progress has been made on those recommendations, which have been looked at, researched and looked at again, and they remain unimplemented.

[Neil Carmichael]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s support. He underlines points that I have made, but he is absolutely right about the lack of progress since 2011.

I am pleased to have the opportunity to talk about these issues in the Chamber, because both reports are emblematic of our interest in the whole question of children’s services. I thank all the Members who have come to participate. Two of my colleagues on the Education Committee have done so, and I am grateful to them. We have a huge chance to make an important difference in both these critical areas. It is clear that we all share the objective of improving outcomes for children in care, and I do not doubt that the Minister is as keen as we are to see improvement. I am grateful for all that he has done in the past to demonstrate that commitment. We need a response to my questions, and an approach to our two reports that suggests a sense of urgency and a commitment to ensuring that we can deliver a better future for children in need of support and help. I commend those thoughts to the House, and I hope that the Minister will answer my questions in due course.

School Admissions Code

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 10th October 2016 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Hammond (Wimbledon) (Con)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for selecting me to speak on this matter this evening, some 13 months after I first raised it. Although the issues I intend to raise affect only a relatively small number of children, if they were resolved positively or we heard a positive response from the Minister tonight, it would undoubtedly improve the life chances of thousands of children in this country every year.

The definition of a summer-born child is one who is born between 1 April and 31 August. The key point at issue is that children must enter education on the September after their fifth birthday. Although many children are ready to do so, some are not. While no two summer-born or premature children have exactly the same needs, they face many common challenges: shortened attention span, delayed motor development, underdeveloped emotional maturity, smaller physical stature and ongoing medical issues. A wealth of academic research shows that summer-born children as a group lag significantly behind their older peers. Empirically and instinctively, it is easy to see why that is the case. With a gap of almost a year between the youngest and the oldest in a school year, it is unsurprising that the development of the youngest can be held back significantly.

The Minister will know that in 2014, his Department produced a study that showed that at the end of the first year in school, two thirds of summer-born children failed to meet the minimum standards in reading, writing, speaking, maths and other developmental skills. That compares with less than a third of those born between September and December.

Children who are the youngest in the year are disproportionately likely to report bullying and lower levels of self-confidence, and their overall satisfaction at school is significantly reduced. There has also been a higher incidence of diagnoses of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism among summer-born children. Most of the experts I have met believe that most of those diagnoses are the result of the child struggling from being placed in school too soon, being comparatively immature and struggling developmentally, rather than their suffering from the condition.

Almost exactly a year ago, but somewhat later at night, I was lucky enough to hold a debate on exactly the same subject, which I know the Minister will remember. I made three requests of him with regard to the admissions code. First, although I accept that there is no statutory barrier to a child being admitted outside their normal cohort, there is, as he knows, no right for the parents to insist or appeal. Secondly, several local authorities were insisting that although a child’s entry could be delayed, they would have to join year 1 and miss reception. Equally, some authorities said that although a child could delay entry by a year throughout their primary education, at secondary school level they would force the child to join their non-delayed cohort. The child would therefore start secondary education having missed a year of education. Finally, he will remember that I brought up the issue of prematurity in the context of summer-born children.

Most local authorities now allow summer-born children to start school a year later. However, many still demand a very high level of expert evidence for doing so. That is a barrier that many parents simply cannot pass. Most summer-born children are three and a half when their parents have to start applying for schools and decide when they should enter. That does not give much time for the experts, however skilled, to gauge a child’s strengths and needs. At that stage, the parents, who have assessed the child from birth, are probably in a better position to assess and make a decision about what is best for their child. At that early stage of a child’s life, parents have a real understanding of the abilities of their child and can judge whether they need extra time to develop.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a strong case, which I firmly support. The Minister announced last year his intention to amend the school admissions code. Does my hon. Friend share my disappointment that nothing has happened since? I have had various constituents chasing me, and I chased the Minister by writing to him on 6 July. Only last week I received a reply from Lord Nash, stating that the Department is giving the matter careful consideration and will announce its plans shortly. Is it not just taking too long? Another year of children starting school in September has been missed.

[Stephen Hammond]

I had hoped that progress might have been better, but it would be unfair on my hon. Friend the Minister to say that nothing has happened. He has met me on several occasions and pushed the case.

My hon. Friend could almost have been reading my speech, because I was about to remind the Minister of the issues that I raised last year, which I wish to raise with him again this evening. First, following that debate, he wrote a helpful letter to local authorities. The only problem is that a postcode lottery has developed. Some local authorities have been receptive to his letter, have taken the point that there is going to be a consultation, and have therefore looked to apply flexibility to when a child should enter school. That has been very good news for a number of parents. Unfortunately, many other authorities have said, “Well, that is just a letter from the Minister, and a consultation may happen at some stage in the future,” but have taken absolutely no notice. In the past two days I have had emails flooding in from people across the country sharing radically different experiences.

Secondly, as my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, we need the timetable for the changes to the code. That would lead to the end of the postcode lottery, but more importantly it would allow parents some certainty in planning their child’s future.

Schools White Paper

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 13th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I will take an intervention in a moment.

I have not heard anything from the hon. Lady about the other seven chapters of the White Paper, including our vision to spread educational excellence everywhere, for the profession to take responsibility for teacher accreditation, and to set high expectations for every child with a world-leading curriculum.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I am a supporter of the academies programme, and the experiences of my constituents have been largely—although not exclusively—positive. I am disappointed to see the Opposition go cold on one of their proudest innovations. As a Conservative, I also believe in choice, so will the Secretary of State outline the downside of allowing schools to migrate organically to academy status if they choose, rather than imposing a compulsory and arbitrary timeline on them?

[Nicky Morgan]

I will come on to that. My hon. Friend is right, and it is perfectly fair to ask that question. We are allowing six years for the change to be made. As a former Education Minister, he will recognise the benefits of allowing front-line professionals—heads, teachers and governors—to run their schools.