Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Debate between Andrew Selous and Andrea Leadsom

Wednesday 19th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

This Budget has been billed as a resilient Budget for a resilient economy. I say that it is a robustly, and indeed resolutely, resilient Budget for a really strong future economy. I completely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat) that it passes all the tests of looking to the long term, rather than at short-term give-aways, which is so important in any Budget.

The first thing I would like to say is a huge thank you to the Chancellor on behalf of Northamptonshire for the contribution to a pothole fund, which Northamptonshire will be universally delighted about—[Interruption.]

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

It is not just for you.

[Andrea Leadsom]

That is a great shame. The Chancellor mentioned my hon. Friend the Member for Northampton North (Michael Ellis), so I was rather hoping that we would get to keep it all, but perhaps not.

I would like to mention the efforts that the Chancellor has made for business, which is the source of our country’s long-term recovery. Doubling the annual investment allowance to £500,000 per annum is superb for businesses and will allow manufacturing companies in my constituency, for example in motorsport valley—the area around Silverstone—to invest in plant and equipment. Doubling the UK’s direct export lending programme will enable us to create the export-led recovery for the long term that we so much want to see. Capping the carbon price support rate will save costs for manufacturers in the medium and long term. That is great news for the east midlands, the west midland, the north of England and the entire UK. I hope that Opposition Members will be honest enough to welcome those measures.

I commend the Chancellor on his work for savers and pensioners, which is truly groundbreaking. I also want to pay tribute to Dr Ros Altmann, who has long campaigned for changes to annuity rates. She has been pointing out the weakness in the annuity construction of pensions for many years. I understand that she was in fact an adviser to Opposition Members when they were in government. She has been trying to persuade Governments of all colours to lift the unfair obligation to buy an annuity on reaching retirement age. I am delighted about the news, which will really change the fate of future pensioners.

The annual ISA cap has been lifted to £15,000, but much more important is the allowing of investors to choose whether they want to invest in cash or stocks to meet their savings needs. These things are incredibly important. When it was introduced, quantitative easing was essential to try to prevent further harm to our economy. However, there can be no doubt that the historically low interest rates that have resulted from the QE programme have very badly harmed savers and pensioners—those on fixed incomes. The structural change that the Chancellor has made is really important and will be welcomed not just in my constituency but across the UK.

I have paid tribute to Dr Ros Altmann, who I feel sure is a woman of absolutely high enough calibre to be considered for the next post available on the Monetary Policy Committee, the Financial Conduct Authority or the Financial Policy Committee. I defy any Member to disabuse me of that notion. I also welcome the appointment, announced yesterday, of Dr Shafik to the Monetary Policy Committee.

Early Intervention

Debate between Andrew Selous and Andrea Leadsom

Tuesday 31st January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I completely agree that Home Start does some excellent work—in my constituency, it is actually based directly below Norpip—and we work together with it. But I am talking about psycho-therapeutic support for the most difficult early relationships. Often it is parents’ own unhappy lives that give them problems bonding with their babies.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I hugely congratulate my hon. Friend on the mature way in which she is discussing issues that politicians often find hard to discuss. Does she agree that it is often easier to give children this incredibly important love if both parents are loving and committed to each other? That can be hugely helpful.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes a good point. Of course, as I said, it is often parents’ own unhappy lives that cause them to struggle to bond with their baby. For example, a mother who did not form a bond with her own mum as a baby will struggle to bond with her own baby. Her capacity to love her baby will be impaired. Often, relationship or marital breakdown, extreme poverty, drug abuse, perhaps domestic violence and other such issues make it incredibly difficult for the mum and the family to find the love that the baby desperately needs. Often, the baby becomes the last person whom anybody thinks about.

In truth, of course, early intervention and early attachment is no respecter of class or wealth. One can be extremely poor and extremely securely attached to one’s baby, but equally one can be extremely wealthy, with all the privileges it brings, and bring up the least happy child in our society. It simply does not go with the turf.

I urge the Government, in the light of our correct decision to turn to localism in the early intervention agenda, to allow local communities, in as many ways as possible, to make decisions for themselves. We must educate people much more on the importance of early attachment and the need for that early bond. Oxpip, for example, trains social workers, health visitors and midwives, and on the evaluation forms almost everyone says, “If only I had known this sooner.”

In the case of baby Peter, I remember thinking, “How could any mother allow someone to stub out a cigarette on her baby? How poorly attached was she to that baby!”, but then my next thought was, “What if he had survived?” All the talk was about how physically damaged he was, but what about how mentally damaged he was? This is the problem. We have to educate people, particularly in the perinatal, infant health care and mental health care professions on the crucial importance of early attachment.

That requires, first, proper training for social workers, health visitors and midwives on understanding early attachment itself. We need proper training of the sort that Oxpip provides. Secondly, sadly we often find that schools say to a young girl, “Well, if you’re not going to make it as a hairdresser, have you thought of child care?” Too many nurses, therefore, are very young people—often girls—who themselves have not had a happy childhood and who are looking for love with somebody else’s baby, but of course it does not work that way. To be a proper nursery worker, somebody needs to have the empathy skills, not simply the right national vocational qualification or GCSEs. That is incredibly important.

Thirdly, on another call to action for the Government, we desperately need to ensure that children themselves understand this point. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) has talked of children entering school who do not recognise their own name unless it is yelled at them with real hatred—and probably with some stinking epithet attached at the end. The point is not that the child is not school-ready but that massive damage has already been done. If we do not intervene until school age, therefore, we are just dealing with the consequences—but that is not prevention; it is firefighting. What I would like to see, therefore, is all children in their science GSCE being taught about early brain development—being taught that the brain is not fully developed at birth and that the earliest relationship will have profound consequences for the healthiness of the brain as people grow up.

Finally—this is the other call to action—the protocols in nursery care often mean that someone will do the nappies for the morning run, while someone else will do the noon run and someone else the after-lunch run. That has to stop. Nurseries need to understand that for attachment to take place, there must be a bond between the nursery worker and the baby, so that that person can make a genuine contribution to the baby’s attachment ability, rather than detracting from it. Nursery protocols can therefore be either extraordinarily helpful or extraordinarily harmful in improving the quality of attachment.

There is an awful lot of understanding about the issue now. Most people would accept that early intervention is crucial, but when I go and talk at conferences, or even when I talk to colleagues in the House, people understand “early intervention” to mean different things. I have had councillors saying, “We do early intervention to prevent people from having house fires. We go round and advise them on smoke detectors, and so on.” Other people say, “Of course, early intervention is stopping teenage girls getting pregnant.” Others think that early intervention is about sports clubs to stop boys joining gangs. The terminology has become so confused that people do not really understand what early intervention is. All those other interventions have their place. They are all critical in repairing the damage that has been done. However, if we are serious about creating a better society for our children and our children’s children, “early years prevention” must mean just that: from conception to the age of two. We can do no better than that for our children.