Racial Discrimination in Schools

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Yvonne Fovargue (in the Chair)]

I call Kirsten Oswald. I apologise: I did not see you, Mr Shannon. I call Jim Shannon.

Childcare: Affordability and Availability

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury]

Yes. The hon. Member makes an excellent point. Depending on how it is measured, the UK has the third highest or the highest childcare costs to parents in the OECD countries. I ask the Department and the Treasury to look at how and why different Governments do things differently. In particular, the Canadian Government have recognised the economic benefit of properly organised and funded childcare.

Here are my questions to the Minister. Do the Government understand the importance of good-quality, affordable childcare? Do they know the difference it makes to education outcomes, women remaining in the workforce, inequality, the cost of living and the economy? We are not sure whether the Government are considering extending the free childcare option to one and two-year-olds, so we look forward to hearing what the Minister says on that. If they do, will that scheme and the current ones be adequately funded to cover the cost of provision? Will any extension include funding the reopening of settings that have closed and reskilling the workforce, as the current staff and managers will have moved on to other jobs, as they are already doing?

In conclusion, it is clear that the childcare system is broken. For many parents, the current provision is neither affordable nor available. The Government do not always like international comparisons, but they have to be made. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who I know will set out in further detail the difference a Labour Government will make. We desperately need a change, because the current system is broken, and parents, providers and children are having to live with the consequences. Back in November, more than 15,000 people took part in the “March of the Mummies”. Surely they should not have to march again this November. Surely we can see some action, rather than yet more dither and delay.

[Yvonne Fovargue (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that they should bob if they wish to be called. I call Justin Tomlinson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Justin Tomlinson]

We are all passionate about early years funding; we would not be here supporting this debate if we were not. I pay tribute to a predecessor in the hon. Lady’s party, David Laws, who was Minister for schools and early years. He also made a productive visit to my constituency. He was meant to be there for about 30 minutes and he stayed for more than three hours; he had to send his officials home. He learned some really good lessons, particularly about the significant difference that childcare can make to development in those early years—a point that was made powerfully in the opening speech. If we are to prioritise an area, those early years make a genuine difference.

As I said, I need to raise the challenges. It is important to keep the Minister absolutely focused, as I know she is. We have lost 500 childcare settings since 2019, with 300 in the last year. The main challenge impacting capacity fundamentally comes down to the fact that the increase in the national living wage, which is above inflation year in, year out, outstrips the set funding given for the 15 and 30 hours, and that makes viability an increasing challenge for nurseries. While we all support the increase in the national living wage, we all want the Minister to be empowered by Treasury to increase the funding provided for the 15 and 30 hours to match the national living wage increase. Then nurseries can worry about whether or not they make a profit on the non-free provision. We have to make it sustainable, because if we continue to lose capacity within the system, that will be an obstacle to people either returning to work or extending their hours.

I know that the Government are looking at different ways to try to provide financial support for nurseries. I know they are looking at ratios. I do not support lowering or changing the ratios because of the impact on quality, and I do not think there is support from parents. From our roundtable, I know that aside from balancing the increases in the national living wage, the other issue is staff retention. If we increase the workload, we will speed up the process of people leaving, which in itself is counterproductive. However, I think we could look at the qualified staff ratios that are needed to be legally compliant with Ofsted. In some cases, people who are in training could be counted for that ratio as well as those who have completed their training, but with Ofsted still keeping an overall view of the quality within the setting. That could be used in either good or outstanding nurseries, which would help.

I know that the Minister is particularly interested in the anomaly around business rates, which we have discussed in previous debates. A nursery within a school setting does not pay business rates, but a stand-alone nursery—like the one the Minister visited, which was about 50 metres away from a school—is subject to business rates, which equate to around £100 a child. If that £100 went back into the childcare provision, it would make a huge difference.

I speak to my final point as a former disability Minister. Society’s awareness of additional needs for young people has increased significantly, which is good and welcome. This was also brought up in the roundtable. Nurseries are about not just putting on fun arts and crafts and play sessions, but providing social care and support for special educational needs and disabilities, parents, communication and language and mental health. We want them to do well with all those extra responsibilities. It is no easy thing for a Minister—every Minister feels that their area should be looked after by Treasury, but Treasury simply cannot say yes to everything. One thing the Minister could do is to make the case for ringfencing additional premiums for those areas; in some cases, that will mean cash. We also heard at the roundtable about the ability to get quick advice. We had one example where a nursery had to wait six months to get advice—a relatively basic piece of training that ultimately was potentially life-saving—which meant that a child had to miss out for six months, because the nursery could not risk taking that child on until the training had been given. The support is partly around the money, and partly around being able to quickly get the staff.

I would not swap this Minister for any other to lead this fight. I know that she is working extremely hard, and she will have our full support if she can unlock any of those challenges.

[Yvonne Fovargue (in the Chair)]

I remind right hon. and hon. Members that a number of people wish to speak. If they could keep within six minutes, that would be very helpful. I call Tim Farron.

Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

I welcome the legislation to protect access to cash, which is a lifeline for many of the most vulnerable and one of the best budgeting tools there is. However, it needs to be enacted speedily, as closures are happening daily and the more there are, the more difficult and costly it is to reverse them. There needs to be statutory regulation for shops to offer cashback. It is a service offered by many but it could be withdrawn at any time at the moment. Shops also need to be forced to accept cash; people who choose to budget that way should be able to spend where they wish.

I also welcome the regulation to force banks to reimburse the losses through the push payment scams. Enforcement and tough penalties will be key, but I would also like to see transparency, so that customers can see how quickly and how many people banks reimburse on this aspect, and they can then choose their banks accordingly. More needs to be done to protect consumer rights, and not just by giving the Competition and Markets Authority new powers to fine firms that break the rules. We need to ensure that consumer review groups are consulted on all changes made to consumer protection, particularly when any EU laws are scrapped. We do not want a reduction in standards. There also needs to be a new duty and a clear remit for the Financial Conduct Authority to have regard to financial inclusion, and ensure that consumers are not excluded from products and services by the poverty premium.

Many comments have been made about people using food banks because they cannot budget or cook a meal from scratch. Both in my own experience and in 23 years dealing with people in debt and on low incomes, I have not found that to be the case. In fact, I have found quite the opposite, and I will give the House a little of my own experience to demonstrate that.

When I was left alone with a very young child, I did find a job very quickly. It was not very well paid, but I could manage if I was careful and if there were no unexpected bills, which are often the tipping point causing people to get people into debt. I got up at 6 am, got my daughter—who was 18 months old—ready for the childminder, prepared breakfast, drove 30 miles to work because there was no suitable public transport, did a day’s work, drove home, gave my daughter tea, bathed her and put her to bed. At 8 pm I thought about my tea, and prepared for the next day. That was what happened on every weekday; weekends were spent tidying, washing, and trying to spend some time playing with my daughter.

When people are doing that week in, week out, it is no wonder that they have little time or energy to prepare meals from scratch every day, or batch cook every weekend. I certainly did not. It is no wonder that people resort to frozen convenience food or, heaven forbid, a takeaway instead of a rushed sandwich. There is a saying about not judging people until you have walked a mile in their shoes. My work in a citizens advice bureau brought that home to me, and I think we would all do well to remember it.

There are now 2.1 million people a year using food banks to survive. It has been said that throwing money at the problem will not help, but actually it is probably the only thing that will help, as too many people have too little income to pay bills and eat and heat. A windfall tax is one possible measure; reinstating the £20 uplift to universal credit and a moratorium on deductions from benefits which leave people well below the poverty line would also help. Undoubtedly, however, there will be an increase in demand for debt advice, and an increase in the number of people who have no disposable income to pay their creditors.

I should like to know what discussions the Government are having with both businesses and their own Departments about the treatment of people who have no chance of paying off their debts owing to lack of income. According to the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, nearly 4 million low-income households are behind with essential bills, rent or debt payments, up threefold since the pandemic. What measures are being considered to help these people? Perhaps we should listen to Jubilee Debt Campaign and write off some of those debts. There is no point in leaving people in constant debt. All that that is doing is building up mental health problems and ill health generally and placing more and more pressure on the support networks.

The Prime Minister promised to bring his full fiscal firepower to tackle the cost of living crisis. Given their performance so far, these measures have proved a pretty damp squib for most of my constituents.

Kinship Care for Babies

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Yvonne Fovargue (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I remind hon. Members to observe social distancing and wear masks.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered kinship care for babies.

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship today, Ms Fovargue. Parents come in all shapes and sizes, and today I want to touch on the role of kinship care, particularly for babies. Recently, a constituent came to my surgery to talk to me about his then eight-month-old niece. For a couple of months, she had been under the care of her grandmother, who was understandably struggling to cope with the needs of a baby, so my constituent and his wife agreed to become kinship carers.

It was clear to me that my constituents were both fully committed to raising their niece as their own daughter, but it was also apparent that the level of support they received was almost zero. In order to formalise the kinship care arrangement, they each had to take a week of paid holiday to undergo compulsory training and complete all the administrative arrangements with the local authority. Then, to enable them spend vital time with their now almost one-year-old niece to build the secure bond that is so essential to the happy upbringing of any child, my constituent and his wife were only eligible for unpaid leave from their respective businesses, both of which are significant employers in the UK.

My constituent pointed out to me that if they had been formally adopting this gorgeous baby, they would have received similar pay and leave rights to birth parents—as it happens, both their employers would have offered up to 39 weeks of parental leave at close to full pay. My constituent, who also has older children of his own to support, had to choose between earning and parenting. Even if they had been fostering this baby, they would have received an income from the local authority, as well as ongoing support. This situation seems to me to be completely unfair.

It is estimated that 200,000 children in the United Kingdom who cannot live with their birth parents are being brought up by kinship carers—grandparents, older siblings or other wider family members. In England, surveys suggest that 51% of kinship carers are grandparents. Over 40,000 children in kinship care in the UK are aged nought to four. In my work on the Government’s early years healthy development review, we demonstrated the vital importance of the earliest years of a baby’s life. It is in the period from conception to the age of two—known as the 1,001 critical days—that the building blocks for good lifelong physical and emotional health are laid down. The quality of a baby’s attachment to their principal caregivers will literally determine their lifelong potential.

In its 2021 state of the nation survey, the charity Kinship reported that 96% of kinship carers expect their children to live with them permanently. It is clear that the kinship route has a low rate of disruption, offering much greater levels of stability for children than non-kinship foster care. Additionally, there is less risk of placement instability, and the likelihood of emotional and behavioural difficulties is lower, when children are in kinship care than when they are in non-kinship foster care. Where a baby is unable to stay with his or her birth parents—perhaps for reasons of death, mental health issues, incarceration, addictions or other problems—the younger the placement into kinship care, the greater the chance of a secure future for that baby or child.

One of the key concerns raised by every parent and carer, including kinship carers, during the research phase of the early years healthy development review was that parents and carers simply do not know what kind of support they might need. Even if they do know, they struggle to get access to the help that they are looking for. The Government’s vision for the best start for life seeks to address that fundamental challenge by requiring every local authority to publish a Start for Life offer for every new family in England and to provide universal support for every new family through the family hub model.

I was delighted that the Government announced in the spending review a £500 million investment package to help every family across 75 upper tier local authority areas over the next three years. The Start for Life unit is currently looking at how those 75 local authority areas will be selected. The spending review commitment includes £82 million for transformation of existing children’s services into family hubs. It also includes £100 million for infant and perinatal mental health services, £50 million for parenting programmes and another £50 million to develop breastfeeding support services, as well as a £200 million uplift for the supporting families programme. The commitment in the spending review also includes funding for early years workforce pilots to improve the capacity and skills mix of the early years workforce, as well as funding to enable every local authority to publish their Start for Life offer.

During the research phase of the early years healthy development review, we spoke to a number of kinship carers and heard directly from them about the extent of the additional practical and emotional support that they so often require when a baby or child who is going into kinship care has experienced significant trauma and neglect before arriving in their new family. The review also heard that kinship carers, particularly grandparents, often face financial problems as a result of caring for a young baby or a child. Kinship carers often step in to help just because it is the right thing to do for their broader family, but the personal sacrifice for them can mean having to give up work and make considerable changes to how they live. Clearly, for kinship care of babies to be a success, it is critical that there are good quality joined-up services to support the parent and infant relationship, but it is also vital that employers step up to the mark and treat kinship care of babies in the same way as they would childbirth, fostering or even adopting a baby.

Before covid, when I worked on the employment rights Bill as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, I pushed the idea of flexible work as standard for every employer. Flexible working can include part time, flexitime, compressed hours, staggered hours and job sharing. Since 2014, all employees have had the legal right to request flexible working, but it is still up to the employer whether to grant the request. Unfortunately, in too many cases we find that employees are afraid to request flexible work because they fear they will be seen as not committed. There is evidence that this can increase job insecurity—another reason why employees will be reluctant to request flexible working.

Flexible work as standard would involve jobs being advertised without a specific proposal for the number of hours or the days of the week to be worked. The employee would apply for the role and offer the working arrangements that suited them, and it would be for the employer to agree, to negotiate or to refuse. As we look to recover post pandemic, this policy can reflect the reality of post-covid preferences and support the needs of families, but it can also support the needs of employers. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that allowing and even encouraging people to work flexibly can boost productivity, increase diversity in the workforce and help general wellbeing. That would be a win for employers and a win for the quality of life of employees. I hope the Government will consider the role that that can play in our recovery.

Not only can more flexible work help our nation’s fiscal position and mental health, but it could encourage more families to consider kinship care or fostering. With so many families struggling and so many thousands of children already in care, a more flexible approach to work could enable many more children to benefit from the security and love of a family environment. I am aware that my hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) is working on a private Member’s Bill, the Kinship Care (Parental Leave) Bill. I pay tribute to her for her work in the area, and I pay tribute to all across the House who recognise what unsung heroes kinship carers really are.

I will end my remarks with good news. My constituent has recently been back in touch and has told me that, following his story, his employer is considering reviewing its employment practices and will be setting up a working group to look at better supporting kinship care. That is great news, and I hope other employers will listen to his story and be inspired to see how they can better support families and kinship carers right across the UK.

[Yvonne Fovargue (in the Chair)]

If people keep to around seven minutes, I think everyone should get in. I call Andrew Gwynne.

Budget Resolutions

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

It has been a good Budget for Beatles’ fans with the Chancellor’s £2 million for preliminary work on the Fab Four attraction on the Liverpool waterfront. But if it is “Here Comes the Sun” or “Good Day Sunshine” for them, it is more like “A Hard Day’s Night” for the millions of ordinary people who have suffered greatly in the pandemic and can gain little comfort from the Budget, because it hit the less well off the hardest.

We are not all in it together. The increased debt burden has disproportionately affected young people, disabled people, black, Asian and minority ethnic people and those who rent. More than 11 million people have built up £25 billion of arrears and debt to pay and 14 million people have suffered an income shock during the pandemic, with almost half turning to crisis borrowing for essential costs.

Those groups will also suffer disproportionately from rising prices, because they spend more of their income on essentials. The rise in wholesale energy prices, when it filters through to bills, will hit them particularly hard. For many this winter, it could come to a choice between putting food on the table or turning the heating on. Many advice agencies forecast that a huge rise in unmanageable debt is just around the corner.

There is some good news. I welcome the £65 million of rent arrears support, which might reduce the immediacy, but much more will be needed to turn the tide on the £360 million backlog of rent arrears built up during the pandemic. I welcome the increase in the national living wage and the improvement to the universal credit taper, but that does not do anything for people in receipt of universal credit who are out of work and looking for a job or for the 1.7 million people unable to work because of disability, health issues or caring responsibilities. About 5.8 million people are on universal credit, at least 2.5 million of whom will not benefit at all from the changes to the taper rate.

Lower income households are still likely to be worse off than they were before the temporary uplift with the increased national insurance contributions looming for many households from next year. A local secondary school head in my constituency told me that last Christmas, they did not give hampers but paid for a weeks’ essential shopping for struggling parents. This year, they are doing the same but are having to budget for double the amount of recipients. Those are parents in many different circumstances—some are working full time, some are sick and some are disabled—but what they have in common is that they are struggling to pay their bills and put food on the table.

Much more needs to be done if our poorest families are not to face a bleak future. We need to revisit social security levels to ensure that the system is truly a safety net. People on universal credit were struggling even with the uplift. We need a major rethink of the basic level of benefits, and we need to ensure that deductions from benefits are affordable and do not undermine claimants’ ability to meet their basic costs.

We need to look at the move towards decarbonisation, which will create additional problems for people in low-income groups, who will struggle to meet the inevitable higher costs without help. Net zero should be seen as an opportunity to help the poorest. As the Resolution Foundation said,

“Reducing the number of families living in fuel poverty should be the lens through which the Government addresses both the immediate gas price crisis, and future plans to decarbonise our homes as part of the UK’s net-zero transition.”

In practice, that means more direct help with energy bills beyond the warm home discount and the cap, including backing a social tariff that is linked to income, so that no one pays more than a percentage of their disposable income on energy.

The pandemic made the lives of the less well off in our country worse. More people are struggling to pay bills and are building up personal debt, none of which is their fault. The Budget was an opportunity to ensure that all people are better able to recover and place their finances on a sustainable footing, and to tackle the poverty premium. It lacks the vision or the policies to deliver that.

Early Years Education Funding

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Wednesday 21st July 2021 Westminster Hall

[Yvonne Fovargue (in the Chair)]

Hon. Members will be aware that social distancing is no longer in operation, but I remind them that Mr Speaker has encouraged us to wear masks. Please clean your spaces before you use them and before you leave the room.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered early years education funding.

It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Ms Fovargue.

I begin by saying a big thank you to early years providers for their efforts during the pandemic. Early years leaders and staff have risen to every challenge that the past year and a half has thrown at them. Time and again, they have put their health at risk to ensure that children are cared for and educated. They have truly put the needs of our children first. Each and every one of them, in Bath and throughout the country, deserves not only our thanks but our commitment to addressing the serious shortfall in early years funding.

I am delighted to have secured the debate, and I very much hope that the Minister will take on board the sector’s concerns. All the evidence points to the immense value of early years settings. They are about not only childcare—of course, that is extremely important—but education. The first five years of a child’s life are the most critical in shaping their development. Getting that right gives children the greatest chance of reaching their potential—a greater chance than is given by any other stage of their life.

Early years settings also provide long-term benefits for our economy. They remove barriers to employment and training, particularly for women, and help to close the attainment gap between children from low-income families and their more advantaged peers. Research shows that 40% of the gap in attainment outcomes is evident by the age of five.

Throughout the pandemic, I have been in regular contact with early years providers in my constituency. Far too often, they have felt like an afterthought. I pay tribute to First Steps Bath, which does excellent work in our local community to narrow the attainment gap.

Early years leaders are working hard to ensure that they can provide high-quality care and education. They are up to that challenge, but they need support from the Government. Their message to the Minister today is, “Acknowledge the value of early years education and pay what it costs to deliver it.”

Oral Answers to Questions

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend raises an important matter. We have asked Sir Kevan Collins to look across a full and broad range of ways of giving children a boost, not just to catch up on any learning that they have lost but more fundamentally, to make major changes to how we drive educational attainment over a generation and more. All of this is something that Sir Kevan will look at.

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab) [V]]

The unionlearn fund has provided access to skills for over 200,000 workers, many of whom previously had few or no qualifications. Will the Secretary of State reconsider the decision to scrap that highly successful programme and fund it through the national skills programme.

[Gavin Williamson]

No.

Equality of Funding: Post-16 Education

Yvonne Fovargue Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Yvonne Fovargue (Makerfield) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle).

I am always happy to speak up for my outstanding sixth-form colleges and to praise their achievements, but I also need to raise their issues. Peter McGhee, the head of St John Rigby College, puts their problems much better than I ever could. He says that we have outstanding provision in Wigan for school leavers, thanks to years and years of hard work dedicated to the needs of the young people in the community, but that is under threat due to chronic underfunding.

Peter is constantly in the difficult position of deciding between increasing the workload of staff members, who are paid £7,000 less on average than those in schools, reducing staff numbers, or restricting maintenance and equipment. What his college did was to restrict the maintenance and investment in equipment, despite the growth in student numbers. It prioritised teaching and staffing, and the essential support services that we hear so much about, because those enable students to learn successfully. However, it is now essential for the head to invest in equipment and in the estate. I support the need for some fund that colleges can make bids to, because they are now considering previously unpalatable decisions.

St John Rigby College is looking at the “Future Pathways” options, which inspire the next generation of scientists, leaders and teachers, and provide exceptional opportunities for young people to explore career options. However, they are not funded, and something has to give. In my area, where many young people traditionally have low aspirations, if those doors are closed, there will just be a further decline in the number of graduates, and young people’s horizons will be limited, just as we should be encouraging them to move forward.

Peter says that the marginal increase in rate will do little to address the years of catch-up investment needed, never mind the opportunity to provide exciting unfunded enrichment programmes, to forward plan or to provide the facilities and investment that young people in Wigan richly deserve. The wider community loses out too. This community college meets the needs of the wider community because it has weekend community sports provision, but that is desperate for investment. Winstanley College has not been able to offer German A-level for the past couple of years. Every year, it pays £200,000 to the Government in VAT.

I want to finish with some questions and comments, not from me, but from someone much better placed to speak about this issue—the principal at St John Rigby, who said:

“Why are we presenting our college leaders with such unpalatable decisions? Why do they have to decide each year on getting rid of the next ‘best worst option’? These colleges function as a whole package for our young people, educating the whole person, providing a college experience which transforms lives. We can dilute this experience no more. We must invest in the futures of our young people and we must put their educational experience at the heart of this investment.”

Hearing such heartfelt questions and comments from a dedicated professional who has spent his life working to benefit young people, and who heads a college designated as outstanding, will the Minister not agree that it is time to raise the rate?