Care Crisis Review

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Lucy Allan]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point that perfectly illustrates my argument about the duties of local authorities to spend on the statutory crisis intervention measures they are required to take by law. They have nothing left in the pot for the preventive measures that would reduce in the long term the need to spend on crisis funding. It is difficult for a local authority to have the flexibility to do what it knows would work in the long term, because it is a statutory requirement that it uses its budget primarily to meet the statutory needs of the most vulnerable children in the borough.

That is a big issue that we neglect. If there are tight budgets for children’s services, councils have to take an increasing number of children into care, which costs more, and there is less chance of reducing that number through early intervention and support. That is why we have to think and act for the long term. If we believe that families do a better job than the state, we must work with families to support them, not just judge them and find them wanting—that helps no one. The Minister will agree because, like me, he has a wonderful family. The greatest gift he could give to any child to secure their life chances is a strong family.

Anyone who works in the system will say that the short-termism that they are forced to work with is wrong, and that instead of being able to fund early help, most authorities have to proceed with the statutory interventions that so many families experience as oppressive and destabilising. My plea is to invest in early help to make long-term savings. I am thinking not just of the huge financial savings, but of the emotional cost to a child of being removed from their family and losing their home, their siblings, their friends and their school. We know that happens. The Education Committee hears too often about fostering breakdowns, which cause children to go through a whole series of placements. Time and again, children feel abandoned and isolated, and have to put their possessions in a black plastic bag to move from foster home to foster home. They never quite feel that they belong.

I know that every Member would want to prevent that from happening to any child if possible. That is why I believe that the Government could be doing so much more to set the direction and insist on a ring-fenced element of funding for early intervention and prevention. As a Conservative Government, we care about families. We care about people being able to help themselves. We believe in helping people to help themselves, but we are not doing that. We are simply saying, “The state will take care of this, because you have failed as a parent.” What message does that send about our vision of society? The number of children in care goes on increasing while everyone takes a back seat and says, “Well, it’s not really central Government’s problem, because local authorities have to make these decisions on a case-by-case basis. It just so happens the numbers are going up.” We have to look at why that is, and that is exactly what the care crisis review did.

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

I declare an interest, which is detailed in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I agree with much of what my hon. Friend says, although I take issue with some of her analysis. Does she agree that the early help recommendation of the Munro review back in 2011 was crucial to allowing more preventive work to be done to keep families together? Alas, that recommendation never became reality. She will also be mindful of the worrying finding in the “Storing Up Trouble” report by the all-party parliamentary group on children, which came out at a similar time to the care crisis review and to which the Minister contributed, about the huge differences in intervention outcomes between authorities. A child in one local authority can be seven times more likely to be taken into care than one in another. That causes great concern.

[Lucy Allan]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that contribution. He has a long track record of expertise in this area, not least as an excellent Children’s Minister. His point about different treatment in different local authorities is vital, because it demonstrates that with the right support for families there is less need to take children into care. With the right support, children are more likely to be able to thrive safely at home. That illustrates my argument.

All Members would agree that taking children from their families must be a last resort. Indeed, the Prime Minister said exactly that when I raised the care crisis review at Prime Minister’s questions a few months ago. However, if nothing else is on offer to support a family in crisis, it suddenly is not a last resort—in some cases, it becomes the only tool a local authority can deploy. As I said, that will be of huge consequence to children, society and the state if we continue down the path of saying simply, “Let’s not invest in the long term and enabling children to stay safely at home with their families.”

Had I not seen it for myself, I would not have believed the cost of care proceedings where parents object, or the agonies they go through to keep their child with them. I have seen cases where the legal process has cost the state millions. Just think of the difference we could have made if only we had been able to support such families before they reached crisis—not only to the children’s lives, but with the millions of pounds we have spent on the court process, which is the most awful process for any family to have to go through.

I pay tribute to Edward Timpson, another excellent former Children’s Minister, for the work he did and for his knowledge and understanding of this area. He initiated fantastic projects such as Pause, which works with women who have repeatedly had children taken from them and put into the care system. To deal with their loss and grief, women continued to have children, which the state simply took away from them one after another without doing anything whatever to help them get out of the situation they were in. The futility of all that anguish seems senseless, so I am grateful to Edward Timpson for his legacy.

The only thing I would say about such projects is that, admirable as they are, they too often tinker at the edges rather than setting an overarching, long-term view of what could be done differently. That is why I welcome the suggestions in the care crisis review. Yes, some of them are about funding, which I have touched on, but the review contains all sorts of other suggestions. The Minister is very familiar with them, and I urge him to consider which ones could be implemented and which he could put his weight behind. It is important that we do not just have debates in which the Minister says, “I’m going to consider it,” and then the proposal dies a death. I have seen that happen many times. This is a real opportunity to use work that has been done for the Government by experts in the field to look carefully at what the Government can do to improve the system and make things better for children and families.

The cost to the state of a child being in care is enormous. We all know about the outcomes for care leavers and the huge challenges they face when they leave the care system. We know the statistics about the make-up of the prison population. Too often, people who have children taken from them are care leavers who did not have a parenting role model. The state deems that in itself to be a risk factor when assessing their suitability to parent. In too many cases, there is a self-perpetuating cycle of misery, and the Government do not intervene in the way they could to do amazing good. We have seen from the great projects I mentioned how much good can be done, but there does not seem to be an overarching, long-term Government strategy. Instead, understandably, the point is made that local authorities have to act on a case-by-case basis and the Government cannot intervene.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)]

It is an honour and a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) on securing this important debate. I know she is concerned about the number of children being taken into care and that she is a firm believer in early intervention and family support services as a vehicle for lowering care demand.

I acknowledge the increase in the number of care order applications and the number of children being taken into care in recent years. The Government are acutely aware of the impact that that has had and is having on local authorities and the courts. We are also very conscious of the implications for children and families. I am immensely grateful to all those who have worked in child protection and the family justice system, whether they are social workers, court staff, CAFCASS guardians, judges or those in other roles. We want every child to be in a loving, stable home that is right for them. In most cases, children are best looked after by their families. Children are only removed as a last resort, which is why my Department is continuing to deliver a comprehensive reform programme for children’s social care across England. I will say more about our reforms later.

I recognise the sector’s care crisis review and acknowledge the work that the Family Rights Group and others involved invested in it. The review is an important contribution to the work being done across the family justice system to address the pressures caused by rising public law volumes for local authorities and the family courts. I am pleased to say that tomorrow the Minister for family justice, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for South East Cambridgeshire (Lucy Frazer), who also has an interest in the report, and I are meeting members of the review team—Nigel Richardson, who chaired the review, and Cathy Ashley, who helped drive it—to discuss its findings.

In advance of that meeting, I can tell Members that officials in both our Departments have been carefully considering the options for change set out in the report, and we have taken action. The sector’s report sets out two specific options for change in relation to our “Working together to safeguard children” statutory guidance. First, it states that the guidance should be

“reviewed and amended so that the principles underpinning the legislation, including partnership and co-production with families, are clearly expressed and the processes for managing individual cases reflect the messages from research on the effectiveness of relationship-based practice.”

Secondly, it argued that the same guidance should be

“amended to place greater emphasis on the role to be played by key partner agencies, in addition to that played by children’s social care, in assessing and meeting the accommodation, health and educational needs of children and their families.”

I am pleased to say that we have addressed both those issues in the latest version of the statutory guidance, which we published in July. I hope Members and those who took part in the review welcome that. It is particularly important to recognise that the sector’s review stated that

“there are many overlapping factors contributing to the rise in care proceedings and the number of children in care. This complex picture means that there is no single solution.

That is in keeping with the Government’s own analysis and is why, in addition to the many reforms we are seeking to deliver, including those I will talk about shortly, we are working across Government to consider what more we can do. It includes the work that officials from my Department and the Ministry of Justice are doing with members of national and local family justice boards across England, through which we are seeking to understand the challenges in the family justice system better and consider with sector representatives what can be done to address them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Telford has an interest in early intervention. I assure her that, across Government, we are addressing the root causes of children’s needs early—be it by supporting children with alcohol-dependent parents or in families affected by domestic abuse, preventing young people from being drawn into serious violence, or investing in early years and children’s and young people’s mental health. Our “Working Together to Safeguard Children” statutory guidance is clear that local areas should have a comprehensive range of effective evidence-based services in place to address assessed needs early. The Government have also committed £920 million to the troubled families programme, which aims to achieve significant and sustained improvement for up to 400,000 families with multiple high-cost problems by 2020.

On the point that my hon. Friend made on funding for preventive support services, it is for local authorities to determine how to spend their non-ring-fenced income on the services they provide, including services for preventive support measures.

[Tim Loughton]

The Minister mentioned the troubled families programme, which has been a huge success in west Sussex. There is concern that the funding will not be renewed after 2020. Will he give a commitment now that that successful programme will be continued?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend is one of my excellent predecessors—hon. Members mentioned Edward Timpson, but the work that my hon. Friend did in the Department has been a high bar for me to attempt to meet. I have seen first hand the effectiveness of the troubled families programme, and when it comes to the spending review, I will be a champion in ensuring that we continue to commit. In many of the cases that were highlighted to me by social workers in Islington and other parts of the country, a whole support system is required to help those families deliver stability for the family and the child.

Since 2016, we have been working to implement the reforms set out by my predecessor, Edward Timpson, in the “Putting children first” strategy. They centre on three key areas: people and leadership, practice and systems, and governance and accountability. I fully support the strategy and am committed to implementing it. “Putting children first” set out a five-year reform programme for children’s social care in Europe, which includes developing the social work profession, supporting innovation and improvement and establishing a new What Works centre. I will say something about them and the impact that our reforms will have.

On the social work profession, our successful Step Up to Social Work and Frontline programmes have brought new people into the profession and promoted social work as a desirable graduate career. Recently, I was pleased to be able to announce a further £25 million for Step Up to Social Work to bring a further 700 talented future social workers into children’s services. Through investment in professional development at key stages throughout their career, and the new national accreditation and assessment system, which the shadow Minister effectively dissed—[Interruption.] Not at all. The very good social workers who have been through it show very high satisfaction ratings. Hon. Members will hear more of that in the future. We are really helping to ensure that the quality of practice is consistently excellent.

Innovation and improvements are at the heart of the Government’s vision for children’s social care. The £200 million Children’s Social Care Innovation programme has deepened evidence about what good social work looks like and about the potential for innovation. It has generated a portfolio of promising successful innovations, which we are rolling out more widely to understand the potential wider impact. I am also pleased to note that the sector-led report points out that many projects are doing effective and innovative work with families who are at risk of breakdown, including helping to reduce the numbers of children being taken into care. Information from the programme will form the wider bank of evidence going into the new What Works centre, which is currently in a testing and development phase, to improve outcomes for young people and learning for the sector. The What Works centre is pressing ahead with its research programme, including examining what works on reducing the need for children to enter care. We hope it will support the uptake of quality evidence in frontline practice in children’s social care.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 19th March 2018 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

Across the system over the next two years, the total core schools funding budget will be going up from just under £41 billion this year to £43.5 billion. Of course there have been cost pressures on schools. I do not deny that for a moment. It is one of the reasons why we are taking the steps I outlined a moment ago to try to help with those cost pressures, but across the system per pupil real-terms funding is being maintained.

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

We welcome the changes to the national funding formula and the additional money, but there is still a huge gap between the way schools are funded in West Sussex and in Greater London. Special schools are not included in the national funding formula, so an average 200-place school in West Sussex will receive something like £800,000 less than an equivalent school in Reading and £2 million less than one in London. When will the Secretary of State address this anomaly?

[Damian Hinds]

The intention of the national funding formula is not that every pupil throughout the country has exactly the same amount of money spent on them, because it is important that the formula recognises the difference in composition of pupil make-up. We were talking a moment ago about deprivation, but there are other measures of additional need that need to be reflected.

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[Nick Gibb]

No school in the country will lose funding under the new national funding formula. The minimum that schools will receive is an extra 0.5% increase, and that will be for schools that have been receiving more than that funding formula would produce. Therefore, no school will lose funding. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has said, there have been cost pressures in recent years, but we are helping schools to deal with them through school efficiency advisers and buying schemes to enable them to marshal their resources as efficiently as possible.

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

Recent figures from the Department show that, last year, 4,350 children were adopted in England. That is a near 20% decline from the peak in 2015. Why are adoptions in decline?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The Government are working with the sector via the Adoption Leadership Board to address the issue of adopter numbers early on, to ensure that there remain enough approved adopters for children who are waiting.

Foster Care

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Westminster Hall

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

I should declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on holding this unfashionable but important debate. He will be aware that funding of children’s services has increased, albeit in very challenging circumstances—particularly now—but there are huge differentials between experiences with different authorities. As a study by the all-party parliamentary group for children found, in one authority 166 children per 10,000 will be taken into care and, at the other end, at another authority the figure is 22 for every 10,000 children. There are similar big differentials for referrals to children’s services, child protection plans and so on. To what does he attribute the huge difference in experiences of vulnerable children in different authorities? It is not just based on funding pressures.

[Bill Esterson]

That is probably more of a question for the Minister. The hon. Gentleman said that funding had gone up. It is true that spending has gone up, but funding from central Government for local authorities is significantly down, including in children’s services. Some local authorities have seen significant cuts and some have seen very few. That may have something to do with what he says.

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[Dame Caroline Spelman]

I could not agree more. An important point that came out of the roundtable was that evidence must exist to help to support the fact that people of faith who offer their homes for good—for fostering—often prove to have greater “stickability”, and tend to stick with a child through thick and thin until they are launched into the world as an independent adult. I would like that evidence to be brought out in the open. It is collected; we know the data exists. There are data on the religious background of all the children in care, and of the foster-carers who come forward. It is about time that we used that evidence base to bust the myths.

[Tim Loughton]

My right hon. Friend is making a good point. Interestingly, the crisis point when Syrian refugees came to this country resulted in an increase in the number of families offering themselves as foster-carers or adopters for the long term. On her point about people of faith, we must remember that the Children’s Society was the Church of England Children’s Society. Barnardo’s was built on religious foundations. The important question is which family can offer the best and most appropriate loving home to a child in need of fostering or adoption. The Government had to change the law on adoption because of the prejudice against people who happen not to be of the same cultural or faith background, which excluded children who could have had a perfectly good, stable home with those parents—but it was not allowed. Does my right hon. Friend agree that the question is not one of cultural matching, but one of cultural sensitivity to a child’s background?

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

My hon. Friend, who is very knowledgeable about this matter, makes an extremely valid point. The issue is about opening our minds, removing barriers and preconceptions about why people cannot foster, and looking at the best solution for the child.

I know that there is pressure on time, Mr Howarth, and I do not want to delay the Minister’s response to the debate, but I just want to finish by mentioning something by way of a case study. One of the foster-carers present at yesterday’s event spoke powerfully about the five children in her care. She is of white Caucasian background and is married to a Jamaican, and they foster some Muslim children, some children of Christian heritage and some of no faith. Things work well in her household, which has proved a good match for those children. I think that challenges all of us to be more open-minded about opportunities to increase the number of foster-carers.

Another important point is that often people of faith are in communities of faith. When parents in a church community, for example, come forward to offer their home as a home for good, there is a tendency for others in that church community to be prompted to think, “Could I do that? If they can, I should be able to.” Before long, two or three families in the communities are fostering. The amazing advantage is that they support each other in the community, and the children feel more comfortable because they find others in their position. I encourage the Minister to help with that aspect, which was missed in the stocktake. Perhaps it is a little unfair to say that the official from the Department for Education who attended the round table pledged to bring the point back to the Department. I sincerely hope that when, as it will have to, the Department responds to the two reports—this is why the debate is so timely—the point about faith and fostering will not be missed.

Social Workers

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 13th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Alex Burghart]

I think for the people in this room, every day is national social worker day. I am sure we celebrate the work they do in our daily lives and in our jobs.

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

On that point, I do not think we have a social worker day, but, as patron of the Social Worker of the Year awards, I inform the hon. Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) that this coming Thursday there will be a reception on the Terrace for all the winners, and she is more than welcome to come along, meet them and pay her tribute in person.

[Alex Burghart]

Unbeknown to us, national social worker day is later this week—what we have achieved in the debate already! Most of my remarks will be confined to children’s social work as it is the area that I know best. That is in no way to denigrate the extraordinary work that adult social workers do. Indeed, on Friday I was with some of the adult social workers in Essex, who were absolutely impressive in their determination to make things better for local people. They were full of new ideas—they have developed an interesting new programme to support newly qualified social workers, which had seen recruitment increase substantially—and I am pleased to know that vulnerable adults and elderly people in my constituency can rely on them.

As I said, I came to this subject relatively recently in my career, and I did so by accident. I had started out working on education, and through good fortune and strange circumstances I ended up working for my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has graced us with his presence. That was back in 2008, and at that time social workers were in particularly difficult circumstances. Their public reputation had taken a hammering following the Victoria Climbié case and soon after I started that job the awful case of Peter Connelly—Baby P—broke in the newspapers. Very unfairly, for a while social workers alone took the blame for the mistakes made in those cases. It was symptomatic of a society and a news environment that did not understand child protection in the round and was searching for the easiest scapegoats.

By the time I joined my hon. Friend—my then boss—he had already written what turned out to be a seminal paper, called “No More Blame Game,” which sought to set aside the myths that had grown up in the public imagination and to give social workers the respect, training, resources and professional autonomy they needed to do their job properly. It was my great pleasure to work alongside him and at the Department for Education in those next few years to see that programme bear fruit. The most substantial part of it was the Munro review of child protection, which was launched in 2010 and reported in 2011. It intended to put a renewed focus on frontline social work—not on national statutory guidance or defensive systems designed to protect organisations from reputational damage, but on the frontline experience of the children being helped by a professional social work body.

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

I had not intended to speak, but such has been the eloquence of my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Alex Burghart) that I feel impelled to complement his wise words. I first declare my interest in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests, and I repeat my interest as a patron of the Social Worker of the Year awards, as is the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck).

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate on what is an unfashionable subject that we hear little of in this place—that has been a problem for many years. Not only was he well-schooled when he arrived here 10 years ago, but his experience then included, as he has mentioned, his time working as an essential part of the Munro review, before moving on to Barnardo’s and then becoming the deputy Children’s Commissioner. He has vast experience, which he has already brought to bear in his short time in this place. I am glad that he has done so again today.

My hon. Friend mentioned social workers as the fifth emergency service. We used to refer to them as the fourth emergency service—we do not want to downplay them. Their difference from the other emergency services is that they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Too often, they are subject to tabloid newspaper headlines that complain if they have the temerity to step in and take a child into care, particularly if the child is from a middle-class family who one would not expect to face action. They are damned if they do not step in early enough and take a child into care who subsequently becomes a Baby P, a Victoria Climbié or one of the many other high-profile cases, which are just the tip of the iceberg.

I am sure the Minister sees this now, but in my previous role as Children’s Minister, the most depressing start to the week was going through an audit of the new cases of severe child abuse and child fatalities that had come in during the previous week and what progress they had made in the courts or whatever. I am afraid that the cases we saw in the headlines were just a fraction of what was going on, day in, day out. I think the situation is better, but there are still, and always will be, people who do terrible things to vulnerable children. Too often, it is only social workers who stand between those people and the welfare—indeed, the lives—of those children.

I am glad that my hon. Friend mentioned “No More Blame Game”, which was a really important piece of work back in 2007, before the whole Baby P issue blew up. It was all about trusting social workers, rather than just pointing the finger of blame, as I am afraid had been the default position of too many people in positions of responsibility. Time and again, I found myself reminding people, during media interviews and elsewhere, that it was not the social worker who killed that child. It was the parents, carers or others close to that child who actually did the damage. The social workers desperately tried to avoid that.

The job of the social worker is to try to detect early where a child is vulnerable and to try to make a judgment about an appropriate intervention. It is not a science. That is why one of my big mantras regarding social workers was that I wanted to give them the power and the confidence to make a mistake. There had been numerous child protection Bills since the Victoria Climbié case, and all were exceedingly well-intentioned, but their net result was to add to the rulebook—to add more regulations. By 2010, the “Working Together” manual ran to something like 760 pages.

Unison revealed that social workers were spending more than 80% of their time in front of computers filling in process forms, rather than spending time face-to-face with those children. The net result was that they were constantly ticking boxes to comply with the rules, rather than using their gut instinct, their judgment and their training and professionalism to say, “Something isn’t quite right here. I’m going to step in and do something.” Occasionally, they will be wrong—as I say, it is not a science—but usually the decent social workers, as the vast majority are, will be right to do so. However, they lacked the confidence to step in because it was all about following the rulebook and ticking the boxes. That was a huge problem with the profession that caused them to lose confidence in doing the professional job that we wanted them to do.

Our review back in 2007 was an important start in saying that we need to trust social workers. We first flagged up the need to have a chief social worker to give the whole profession gravitas—a public face; somebody who was trusted—and to make sure that social worker training was integrated with other training as well. Some of the best safeguarding I have seen is when a social worker is sat next to a GP, who is sat next to a teacher, who is sat next to a police officer, in the same room, being taught from the same manual. Hot-desking is now often the favoured way forward in children’s centres and other multi-agency safeguarding hubs, which is absolutely right.

The Munro review was important. It was the first Department for Education review launched by the new Government in 2010. It was nothing to do with education; it was actually all about child protection and social work, which was not a fashionable subject in those days. The Munro review—Eileen Munro’s work was outstanding and respected, I think on all sides politically, and certainly throughout the profession—was all about how we peeled back some of the rules that were standing in the way of allowing social workers to get on with their job and use their professionalism and instincts to make the right judgments. It was a really important review.

My hon. Friend referred to children in need. It has been estimated that the cost of child neglect each and every year in this country is some £15 billion. That is £15 billion for not getting things right. Just think what we could achieve if a fraction of that were spent on prevention and ensuring that neglect became a thing of the past, or certainly a much more minority occupation. The Munro report was therefore very important.

The rewriting of the “Working Together” document, which was slimmed down from more than 750 pages to below 100, was also very important, because it set out the basic principles and then said to the social worker, “That is what you need to achieve. Now go out and do it. Use your professional talents to decide how you execute it in individual cases and, above all, spend time snooping around. Go into people’s homes. See people face to face. Eyeball those whom you suspect may be up to no good. Speak to the children—get the child’s voice and the child’s view on this.” That was so important.

It is also important that politicians and civil servants should have experience of that. I spent a year back in 2011 being a social worker in Stockport. I was going out on cases with real social workers—and gosh, they took me to some of their most challenging cases to see it like it is. My hon. Friend mentioned the former director of children’s services in Harrow, one of the most outstanding directors of children’s services that we had, who each week would take a group of children in the care of Harrow Borough out bowling and engage with them and hear from them exactly what was going on. In the Department for Education, we set up four panels of children: one of foster-children, one of children in residential homes, one of recent care leavers and one of children who had been adopted. They came along and told us, without the carers, managers and officials there, what was actually going on. That is where I learnt some of my best information, as I did by going out with social workers on patrol, without directors and managers—their bosses. That is very important. I think and hope that in that time we re-established some of the credentials and confidence in social workers.

Alas, there is still a lot to do. Money has been protected for child safeguarding, but clearly, financial pressures are considerable at the moment. The number of children coming into the care system has continued to rise. That may be a good thing. I do not know whether we are taking too many or too few children into care. What I am concerned about is that we are taking the right children into care, at the right time, and looking after them properly once they are in the care of the state.

[Alex Cunningham]

I have a friend who has a leading role on a safeguarding board. She tells me that the workload has increased, particularly as there have been more case reviews and, because more children have been dying, there have had to be specific inquiries. The work is tremendously resource-intensive. Is the hon. Gentleman convinced that there are sufficient resources for people to do that work effectively?

[Tim Loughton]

There will never be enough resources for social work, as with so many things. Adult social care also faces serious challenges.

[Alex Cunningham]

Priorities.

[Tim Loughton]

It is a question of priorities and of intervening at the appropriate time; that is why I was a big fan of the early intervention fund, which was set up in the Department for Education. However, getting things wrong is the most costly outcome of the lot, and previously an awful lot of money was being wasted on the system and constraining social workers, rather than letting them get on with their job. The consequence was huge vacancy rates, too many locums filling the places and a lack of continuity, and the cost was that much more. The most costly thing of all was when things went really wrong, as they did with Baby P, Victoria Climbié and the other high-profile cases. The cost of putting that right was considerable, so it is a false economy not to be doing the things to which we have referred.

The all-party parliamentary group for children, which I have the privilege to co-chair, produced a report on the state of children’s social care last year, and we are doing an update on that. What it showed, above everything, was huge disparities between outcomes and experiences in different parts of the country. For example, a child in Blackpool has a 166-in-10,000 chance of being in the care system, while an equivalent child in Richmond in London has only a 30-in-10,000 chance. Richmond and Blackpool are very different places, but are they so different that more children get taken into care? We found huge differentials around the country on a whole range of thresholds, and we desperately need to learn from that. We need to learn from social workers why those different experiences and outcomes are happening.

At the end of the day, I found that those of our failing children’s services departments—we have a large number in special measures at the moment—that were turned around most effectively were not those with some new structure, process, trust or whatever imposed on them, but those where an inspirational leader, director of children’s services, went in and trusted his or her staff. And ultimately, many of the successful, recovering children’s services authorities came through with the majority of the social workers they had started with.

I remember that one director of children’s services who gave evidence to our inquiry said that he went into the county, got his social workers together and said to them, “Name all your cases.” When it got up to about 15 or 16, they could not remember the others, so he said, “Well, that’s probably about the case load you should have, isn’t it?” and that was what he put into effect. It is now one of the best-performing—I will not name it—children’s services departments in the country and is spreading that good practice to other counties and authorities around the country.

It is not rocket science, but it would be much more difficult without the dedicated social workers whom we have in this country. We do not value them enough—I think we value them more than we did—which is why it is essential, when we have opportunities such as this, that we say thank you to social workers for the outstanding job they do despite all the challenges they face every day.

[Mr Philip Hollobone (in the Chair)]

If the Minister starts his remarks at 5.17 pm and I split the time between now and then, that gives both Opposition spokespeople five minutes each. I will set the clock to assist them to achieve that task.

Statutory PHSE Education

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 6th February 2018 Westminster Hall

[Will Quince (Colchester) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me, Mr Robertson. I congratulate the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead (Teresa Pearce) on securing this important debate. PHSE is one of the most important parts of our curriculum. Yes, we need to make sure that our children are given an academic education that enables them to compete with the rest of the world, but just as vital as academic skills are life skills. I am not saying that schools should replace parents in that regard, but they undoubtedly have a role to play.

It was nearly a year ago that the Government tabled amendments to what is now the Children and Social Work Act 2017 allowing for regulations requiring PHSE to be taught in all schools in England. The new curriculum containing PHSE is expected to be taught from September 2019, and the Department for Education launched a call for evidence on the issue last December, which is due to close in about a week’s time. One question it asks those taking part is:

“Thinking about PSHE in primary schools”

and secondary schools,

“what do you believe are the three most important subject areas that should be taught and why?”

I will put forward two things that should undoubtedly be taught as part of PSHE.

For one thing—I echo the comments of the hon. Member for Erith and Thamesmead, with whom I have worked closely on this issue—first aid should be taught to all children. The statistics in this area are startling. According to the British Red Cross, only 5% of adults would feel knowledgeable, confident and willing to act in a first aid emergency. That is particularly worrying when considering that up to 59% of pre-hospital deaths from injury could have been prevented with basic first aid.

I should clarify that first aid is already on the PHSE programme of study, under the theme of health and wellbeing. However, because it is not a mandatory component of the programme, coverage is patchy. Some schools do not include it at all, so 60% of children have no first aid education whatever. When I met the Minister—I know he cares passionately about this subject—he rightly pointed out that the curriculum is full and that teachers have important things to focus on. Let me be clear: I am talking about one hour of training, once per year. That is the minimum we would need to teach children the basic first aid skills to become life savers. I do not think it is onerous to find one hour in our curriculum to give our children the knowledge to save lives.

I would suggest that teachers agree. A 2014 YouGov survey of 1,157 teachers found that 97% believed it vital for young people to learn essential first aid skills in school. Hon. Members may say that parents would surely not agree and that they would want their children to learn academic subjects. Not at all. The survey suggests that 95% of parents agree that first aid should be taught at secondary school. Nor do students think it is a waste of their time, with 97% of 11 to 16-year-olds agreeing that first aid should be taught at secondary school. Frankly, I am not surprised by that. Evidence suggests that learning first aid can improve people’s life chances and empower them to step up and take responsibility, and that it provides them with a sense of contributing to their community. That is surely something we all want for our children, and it is achievable with one very simple change.

The second subject I would like to see taught in PHSE is weapons awareness education. We continue to have difficulty in tackling the scourge of knife crime, but that is not to say that the Government are not taking action. I welcome steps such as minimum custodial sentences for repeated knife possession, but we need to do more on education so that we tackle the issue at both ends.

I have campaigned on this issue for some time now. I remember attending a weapons awareness lesson run in my constituency by a charity based in the neighbouring constituency of Clacton called Only Cowards Carry. That charity was set up by Caroline Shearer, a truly inspirational woman, in 2012 after her son, Jay, was fatally stabbed in my constituency. What is really interesting is that these hard-hitting lessons show people the danger of carrying blades and knives. They show that someone is far more likely to be the victim of a knife crime if they are carrying a knife themselves. Trust me: the lessons have a lasting impact. Students who walk into a lesson cocky and confident walk away startled at the brutality of the impact that knives can have.

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

My hon. Friend is making a very good point, particularly on gang violence and knife crime, which as he knows are a real scourge. There are fantastic organisations such as Lives Not Knives in Croydon, which offers to go into schools where young people have been victims of knife violence or lost relatives and loved ones. Does my hon. Friend agree that making such education part of PSHE nationally, so that it is assumed that everyone will have access to it, is a good way of tackling this issue? Too many schools do not want to invite these people in, as that would be to admit that they have a problem, and they are often in denial that they do have a problem. Knife crime is a problem for all teenagers in this country, particularly in our inner cities, and they all need to be made aware of it.

[Will Quince]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, because he has made a point I was about to come to. Charities provide this education and awareness, often free of charge or at very low cost—it is often sponsored or funded by the local police and crime commissioner—but they have an issue getting through the door of the schools, because the headteachers and subject leaders will say, “We don’t really have an issue with knife crime” or “We don’t want to say that we have an issue with knife crime.” Whether people have an issue with knife crime or not, and whether the issue is in school or not, we know that it is affecting constituencies up and down the country. Given the growth in cases of county lines activity, cuckooing and grooming of young people, in particular, with gang violence, which brings with it the drugs, knife crime and intimidation, it is absolutely right that this education should be part of the PSHE curriculum so that we teach pupils about the danger of carrying knives.

Just as with first aid education, I have regularly been told about the great demands on our curriculum, but again, I am talking about only one 45-minute lesson in year 9 or 10. That would not be a huge burden on the national curriculum. I am therefore asking the Minister for a total of one hour and 45 minutes as part of the curriculum.

PSHE provides an important opportunity to ensure that children walk away from school not just with the knowledge that they get from academic subjects, but with those all-important life skills. First aid is an important life skill. We should commit to ensuring that every student receives training through PSHE, and not just to enable them to save lives, although that should be reason enough. By fostering self-esteem and confidence, we give students the opportunity to develop skills and we support their personal development. As I have said, the other part of their personal development on which we should focus is weapons awareness. Children should be left under no illusion whatever about the danger that comes with carrying a knife. As I said, the danger is to not just others but themselves.

I hope that the Government will commit to ensuring that children learn both subjects as part of the new curriculum, and that the Minister, who cares deeply about this issue, will be able to say that he is the Minister who made every child a life saver.

Education: Public Funding

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 4th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

Order. In view of the level of interest and the other business that I have to accommodate, I appeal to colleagues to ask brief, preferably single-sentence questions. I call Tim Loughton.

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

While appreciating the fact that the Government have done more to address the fair funding formula, the Minister knows from his own county, which is the worst-funded shire county in the country, that heads face urgent decisions. In view of the fact that the consultation has been put back a year, can we have an urgent steer on whether the formula is going to be resolved before the recess, because these challenges face heads now?

[Nick Gibb]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s question, because it was precisely to deal with historical underfunding of counties such as West Sussex and other f40 counties across the country that we went ahead and consulted on a national funding formula. Other Governments who were in office before us should have done that. I accept his concerns. We have made announcements about 2017-18, and we will respond to the second phase of the consultation shortly. We will have a response to that in the normal course of events.

Education and Local Services

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 27th June 2017 Commons Chamber

[Angela Rayner]

The hon. Gentleman will also note that we are in trillions of pounds of debt, and that the debt has doubled on the Government’s watch. They like to talk about the economy, but they failed on every single one of the fiscal rules introduced by the previous Chancellor. I will take no lectures on the economy from Conservative Members.

The Secretary of State seemed to suggest that Labour’s record in power was not one to be proud of. Of course, there are a number of aspects of our record that she failed to mention. Perhaps she will tell the House which party delivered record levels of investment in our schools; or perhaps she will tell us which party, during 13 years in power, slashed the attainment gap, and saw children from some of the most disadvantaged backgrounds do just as well as their more affluent peers. It certainly was not her party.

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

Perhaps it is the hon. Lady who is guilty of not telling the House that under the last Labour Government one in three children left primary school without the expected levels of numeracy and literacy, and there was a 3,500% increase in “equivalents to GCSEs” which were certainly not equivalents to GCSEs. That was conning children that what they were learning in schools was fit for purpose.

[Angela Rayner]

Again, it is clear that Conservative Members like to talk more about the Labour party than about their own record book. [Interruption.] Let me answer the question. Let us just be clear about the position. Where are we now in the programme for international student assessment tables? We are slipping again. It was the previous Secretary of State who said that the Government would be judged according to their standing in the PISA tables, but its status is falling continually, so I will take no more lectures. When the Government talk about, for instance, their free school programmes although they cannot even get the buildings up and running and are spending billions, I think we are seeing a record of shameful waste under the Conservatives.

--- Later in debate ---

[Carol Monaghan]

The hypocrisy is outstanding. We have heard the leader of the Tory party in Scotland tell us simultaneously that there is too much immigration, too little immigration, and just about the right amount of immigration. The Tory party is completely confused. If immigration powers were devolved to Scotland, we could make choices based on our economic needs.

Another point that I have raised numerous times relates to the fee status of EU students post-Brexit. I am astounded that we still do not have answers to that most basic question. It has been hinted that these students will be considered international students and will pay fees accordingly. It was also suggested to me by a Government Member that EU students will continue to come in the same pre-Brexit numbers after Brexit. I often wonder what planet Tory looks like, but it appears to have little connection to reality. If EU students are asked to pay international fees, this market will almost entirely disappear. It will become the reserve of the rich and privileged of Europe. In Scotland, access to higher education is based on ability to learn, never ability to pay, and we apply that to our EU students as well. In her discussions with the Prime Minister and the Brexit Secretary, I urge the Secretary of State for Education to be an advocate for our European students and push for a deal that will not preclude young Europeans from studying in the U.K.

Turning to funding, and Horizon 2020 funding in particular, the Prime Minister has offered some assurances to the research community, but that misses the point of Horizon 2020. EU funding ensures collaboration across multiple institutions. It means that a tapestry is woven, with each institution able to provide its particular expertise in an area. The funding is important, but the collaborations are what make the magic happen. To lose that will be a great blow to our research base. It would be like having an orchestra made up of only one drummer but with the expectation that it continues to produce a symphony. Whatever happens during the Brexit negotiations, our research community, their collaborations and their free movement must be protected.

People could be forgiven for thinking that the Technical and Further Education Act 2017 was about education and raising skills, particularly in the much-needed STEM area. Indeed, many employers are hoping that that is the case. However, technical education in that Act means general skills training. Of course, I have no problem with young people training in particular trades; the issue is that it is being billed as a breakthrough in tackling skills shortages. We know that we have massive shortages in STEM, in construction and in the digital and information and communications technology industry, and Brexit will deepen those difficulties.

Although there is no doubt that some of the Technical and Further Education Act’s intentions appear to be positive, why not be honest and call it “skills education” or have a vision for technical education that centres on actual technical education and goes some way to addressing the skills shortages in specific areas? This seems like a missed opportunity.

I am delighted that grammar schools appear to be off the table for the moment, but I wonder whether the new coalition will bring them back into discussions with the Government. I wait to see what will happen on that front.

Regardless of the Secretary of State’s comments earlier, Scotland is one of the most educated nations in Europe, with only Luxembourg having a higher proportion of people educated to tertiary level. In Scotland we provide routes to higher education through our further education—[Interruption.] New Conservative Members might learn something if they stopped shouting. In Scotland we provide routes to higher education through further education, and many of our young people from disadvantaged backgrounds take full advantage of that. Those numbers are not captured in the UCAS figures that the Secretary of State enjoys referencing.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady still has not answered the question. Why has the number of students from less-advantaged backgrounds going to university plateaued in Scotland, in contrast to England? Why is it that, because of Scotland’s tuition fees policy, Scottish students are finding it increasingly difficult to find a place at Scottish universities and are having to come to English universities instead?

[Carol Monaghan]

Maybe the hon. Gentleman missed what I have literally just said. When we consider alternative routes into higher education through further education colleges, in Scotland more young people from disadvantaged backgrounds access higher education than anywhere else in the UK.

It is interesting that the Secretary of State referred to a £2 billion black hole in the Labour party’s costings for higher education, but I can point to a £1.5 billion fund that appeared to become available only yesterday. Brexit is now a serious threat to our higher education, our research and our science community. We now need to take major steps to ensure that they are protected in all the negotiations.

--- Later in debate ---

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

It is a pleasure to follow two such accomplished maiden speeches and it is a great sadness that the time constraints mean that hon. Members trying to give an account of their constituencies and of their predecessors and also to talk about education do not get enough time to do so. Both were polished, accomplished, witty and gracious contributions and both Members will be great advocates for their constituents. The hon. Member for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker) will, I am sure, be no luddite in the progressive way in which she will represent her constituents, and my new hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen South (Ross Thomson)—one of 12 new Scottish Conservative hon. Friends, I am delighted to say—will be a great advocate for the people of Aberdeen and the majority of people of Scotland who want to stay in the Union that is the United Kingdom we value so much.

Much has been said about what is not in the Queen’s Speech, so I will break that habit and talk about some things that are in it. I certainly commend the eight Brexit Bills. They will give us many opportunities to talk long into the night, so I will not go into any detail here. I will, however, praise the inclusion of the domestic violence and abuse Bill. The Prime Minister in particular has long championed such legislation, and the record of this Government on domestic violence is second to none.

I particularly hope that we make progress on the disproportionate number of young women who are victims of domestic abuse. Some 12% of young women aged 16 to 19 were victims of domestic abuse in the last two years. Domestic abuse is prevalent in teenage relationships. It is an intergenerational blight that affects many young women in particular. Women who were brought up in households where domestic violence was the norm expect it. They think, “Well, that’s what will happen to me, isn’t it?” but it must not. We need legislation and much greater vigilance to drive out domestic abuse wherever it occurs. I saw, as a Children’s Minister, the impact that it has on child abuse, which is nearly always linked with some form of domestic violence. I welcome the inclusion of that Bill in the Queen’s Speech.

I also welcome the mention of mental health, and in particular that of school-age children. Approximately 200,000 young people aged 10 to 17 are referred to specialist mental health services each year. They are just the ones lucky enough to be referred. It is often too late, and too much of the additional funds that this Government have dedicated to mental health does not end up going to deal with mental illness issues, particularly among young people. We have a lot more to do in that area, and I am pleased that the Prime Minister flagged it up as such a priority issue at the beginning of the election campaign.

My main focus today is on the fair funding of schools, which was probably the single largest issue in my constituency during the election. West Sussex, where my constituency lies, is the worst-funded county authority in the country. A pupil in my constituency gets under £4,200 per year, which is way down the bottom of the list. I welcome the additional £4 billion that the Government have offered, but there will still be a shortfall, given the cost pressures coming along the line from pay increases, national insurance and the apprenticeship levy. The cumulative effect of being underfunded for so many years in West Sussex is that many of our schools do not have any further slack that they can take up; they are running on empty. That has to be dealt with as a matter of urgency.

West Sussex MPs have taken our headteachers to see the Minister, and I have invited all the heads in my constituency to a roundtable meeting next month, to see the exact impact of the funding situation at the moment. I obviously welcome the fact that the Secretary of State has consulted on a fair funding formula. Only this Government have done that. We had a second consultation on the fair funding formula, which ended on 22 March, but the general election interrupted it. We must urgently get a resolution through a fair funding formula that does not just tinker with the deprivation figures, rural sparsity figures or prior attainment figures. We must come up with a formula that means schools in my constituency have the basics they need to operate.

We can argue the toss about the pupil premium and all the extras for deprivation on top of it, but this cannot wait any longer. I hope that the Ministers present will take back the message to the Secretary of State that we need, as a matter of urgency, a resolution to this consultation and a meaningful settlement, so that schools in my constituency have fair funding, to give our children a fair start with the rest of the country.