Local Government Funding: North-East
Debate between Alex Cunningham and Baroness Chapman of DarlingtonWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
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Jenny Chapman
At least there is some consistency in approach between the Government and their local representatives. This was a straightforward bribe to Tory MPs threatening to vote against the Government’s financial settlement for local authorities and it worked. Members have spoken openly about being persuaded to support the Government’s plans following the receipt of transitional funds. This is the worst kind of pork-barrel politics I have ever seen.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The Minister might start to talk about the wonderful devolution deals that we are about to get in the north-east of England. In the Tees valley, we get £15 million a year for 30 years, whereas Aberdeen gets twice that over half that period. That will not save us, will it?
Jenny Chapman
No, it will not. I really wish the combined authority well, and I will work hard to support it, because we need to make these things work. However, I am not overly optimistic about the impact of that initiative on the outcomes for the people I represent. I do not know how to put this politely, in the phrase that I am looking for, but it is too little, it is peripheral and it is not widely supported in the community. We are having a mayor for a place that, to most people who live in my constituency or my hon. Friends’ constituencies, does not really exist, so we are not putting all our hope in that particular initiative.
The Government have taken support away from areas that need it most and that are least able to make up the shortfall through business rates or council tax increases—areas, most shockingly of all, whose only crime is to be guilty of voting Labour.
Childcare Bill [Lords]
Debate between Alex Cunningham and Baroness Chapman of Darlington(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Jenny Chapman
I am, of course, grateful to the Minister for his intervention, but I might just suggest that he will get the opportunity to make his own speech when I have finished, and he might want to answer some of my questions then. I will move on—
Alex Cunningham
I am grateful to my constituency near-neighbour for giving way. I was pleased to serve on the Bill Committee and I have never seen a Minister intervene so often during others’ speeches with reassurances such as “the Prime Minister’s promise will be fulfilled,” or “There will be sufficient quality places,” and all manner of other such statements. Would not the Minister be seen to be really reassuring us if he accepted new clause 1 and the scrutiny put down in law?
Jenny Chapman
My hon. Friend makes a good point, and does so very well. We all like a keen and perky and eager Minister, but it would be good if he were more willing to hold himself to account, after the introduction of this Bill, by adopting new clause 1. However, I shall move on to new clause 2.
This new clause, also in my name and that of my hon. Friends, requires the Government to monitor and report on the state of the attainment gap between young children, and it specifies between “different genders”, “different ethnic backgrounds”, “different socio-economic backgrounds”, those living in different parts of the country, and those
“who do and do not have a disability”.
Our experience tells us that unless Ministers monitor, and are required to report on, the gap, focus will be lost and equality of opportunity for all young people will never be achieved.
I would like to acknowledge the invaluable work of the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission in helping us to prepare new clause 2. I believe that setting up the commission was relatively easy for the Government, but listening to it and acting on what it says seem to be a step too far for them. The new clause would provide an opportunity to put that right in a very small way. The commission states that the Britain we should all aspire to help to build is
“one where opportunities are shared equally and are not dependent on the family you were born into, the place where you live or the school you attend. It is a society where being born poor does not condemn someone to a lifetime of poverty. Instead it is a society where your progress in life—the job you do, the income you earn, the lifestyle you enjoy—depends on your aptitude and ability, not your background or your birth.”
The commission’s most recent report warns that Britain is on the verge of becoming a “permanently divided nation”, and exposes some of the deep divisions that characterise our country. Those at the top in Britain today look remarkably similar to those who rose to the top 50 years ago. For example, 71% of senior judges, 62% of senior armed forces personnel and 55% of civil service departmental heads attended private schools, compared with just 7% of the general population.
Britain could become the most open, fair and mobile society in the modern world, but the policy and practice of this Government need to change, and that all starts with the early years. All children, whatever their background, should be school-ready by the age of five. However, less than half of the poorest children in England are ready for school by that age, compared with two thirds of the others, and a deep gender divide means that girls from the poorest families do almost as well as boys from the better-off families at that point. The commission has found that,
“efforts to improve the school-readiness of the poorest children are uncoordinated, confused and patchy.”
It also comments that,
“the complexity of the childcare funding system is hampering efforts to increase maternal employment.”
The commission has some straightforward suggestions for the Government to help to narrow the gap at the age of five. It says that the
“Government should end the strategic vacuum in the early years by introducing two clear, stretching, long-term objectives: to halve the development gap between the poorest children and the rest at age five; and to halve the gap in maternal employment between England and the best-performing nations, both by 2025.”
Further, the commission argues in relation to childcare that the Government
“should radically simplify the multiple streams which finance it”.
New clause 2 tells the Government that willing the gap in attainment and development of children to narrow is not enough. However, I believe that they have the will to do it. I have heard some of their mutterings and comments, and I believe that they have the will—
Jenny Chapman
I dread to think what my kids would say to that.
New clause 2 is a modest request, given the scale of the challenge that we face. It is also something that the Government should be doing anyway. The strategy to narrow the gap with properly co-ordinated policies and regular reporting to Parliament is urgently needed. The measures in the Bill have the potential to diminish the supply and quality of childcare, and we want to know that that gap-widening risk will be closely tracked and acted on by the Government.
New clause 2 encourages the Government to do some of the strategic thinking that we need. If it is adopted, the Government would have carefully to track the take-up of the offer among, say, the 40% most disadvantaged, better to understand the reasons for low take-up, and then they can seek to address them. The key to improving the attainment of the poorest children—high quality early education as opposed simply to childcare—is at risk due to the question marks over funding, which is why I encourage the Government to support the new clause. We know that poorer areas have a higher proportion of providers than the maintained sector, mainly pre-schools and children’s centres. Those providers face particular capacity challenges, and the National Association of Head Teachers has warned that they are unlikely to be able to deliver the increased hours, as they tend to take just two groups of children—one in the morning and one in the afternoon—and physically do not have the space to double their numbers.
Schools have also tended to cross-subsidise the funding of their early years provision from elsewhere in their budgets to ensure quality. The Government have committed £50 million of new capital funding to help with that, thereby acknowledging that there is a problem, but the figure is unlikely to meet the need and may leave some areas without new provision. All this clause does is seek to ensure that this problem does not result in a widening of the attainment gap.
Alex Cunningham
Does my hon. Friend agree that the Minister could win his place in education history by accepting this new clause, which has some great ideas? He believes that those ideas will narrow the attainment gap, and that everything will work. What has he got to fear from the scrutiny associated with this particular clause?
Jenny Chapman
My hon. Friend makes a good point. Not only would the Minister win his place in the history of education teams in Parliament, but it would be the first time ever in Parliament that a Government accepted a new clause tabled by the Opposition on Report. We can live in hope.
The Institute for Fiscal Studies says:
“We have already stumbled a long way in the dark in this policy area. It is time to stop stumbling, shine a light on the policy landscape, and plot an effective route forward.”
If the Government plan to spend £6 billion a year on childcare by 2019-20, I would argue—and I think that they would, too, if they were in opposition—that the risks of an ill-targeted and inefficient system should not be ignored. New clause 2 asks that the Government turn their head to narrowing the gap in early years attainment, and monitor the impact of their policy on this issue to ensure that the nation’s investment is rewarded.
Let me briefly speak to amendment 2, which is a probing amendment and is intended to assess the Government’s appetite for supporting a particular group—in this case, student nurses. This matter arose in Committee, and it is worth flagging up our concern about that particular group and its needs at this time. Members will recall that last week thousands of student nurses and midwives marched through London in protest at plans to scrap training bursaries. Many student nurses already have financial obligations such as mortgages, and many also have children. The Nursing and Midwifery Council requires them to have completed at least 4,600 hours while studying, with half of those in practice. The student nurses work the equivalent of 37 and a half hours a week at least. They work nights, days and weekends. It is very difficult for that particular group to get a part-time job to support dependants while training.
Have the Government made an assessment of the cost of extending the additional entitlement to student nurses with eligible children? I tried to do so, but I do not think that the data exist, so it would be interesting to see whether the Minister has been able to obtain an estimate of the cost. My parents were both nurses, and at the time there were hospital social clubs and a crèche. Obviously that was not recent, but the amendment encourages the Government to work with other Departments to ensure that particular groups—in this case, student nurses—are not disproportionately disadvantaged by a combination of Government policies. I commend new clauses 1 and 2 to the House.