Sure Start Children’s Centres

Andy Slaughter Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady is a highly energetic constituency MP—indeed, I was represented by her for a brief period, and I know how passionately she takes up such causes. However, Westminster, like many other local authorities, is succeeding not just in keeping the Sure Start children’s centre network open, but in providing an enhanced service for children and young people. The question that she and every Opposition Member must address is this: if they believe, as I do, that Sure Start is a valuable service, and that it is a good thing that the Government have set up an early intervention grant, and that we are devoting resources and intellectual energy to the early years, will they support the coalition in the steps that it is taking, or do they have an alternative plan? Do they believe that money should come from other areas of Government expenditure to spend more on any of those services? If they believe that we should spend more than we are spending, can they explain which services they would cut or which taxes they would increase? I am very happy to give way to any right hon. or hon. Member who can enlighten me on Labour’s economic policy, including the hon. Member for Hammersmith.

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

Let us deal with the figures. If the Secretary of State has come along simply to give incorrect figures, he does not help the debate at all. Hammersmith and Fulham was spending £3.983 million last year; this year it will spend £2.206 million. Most of the nine Sure Start centres will have their budgets cut. Some will receive £19,000 to be satellites—the £19,000 is for the upkeep of the premises, but services will be delivered on-site by another children’s centre. The Secretary of State must stand by his words if he says that that means he is keeping the centres open. However, his stance in this debate and making such assertions does him no credit. He should at least live with the consequences of his actions.

[Michael Gove]

The consequence of the Government’s actions is that we have ensured, as both Anne Longfield and Anand Shukla have pointed out, that there is enough money to maintain that network. In addition, under Conservative leadership, Hammersmith and Fulham has been singularly successful in reducing the council tax burden on its ratepayers, and in diversifying the sources of funding it receives to support education and care for children and young people. It is a superb local authority. Instead of continually talking down the service that is provided by public servants in Hammersmith and Fulham, it would be nice to hear from the hon. Gentleman some sunny, uplifting words, rather than grim predictions of disaster, which as we have just heard, turn out never to be true.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)]

It does not help the House if the Secretary of State comes here to defend the indefensible or to use what is essentially wrong information to do so. I will therefore correct some of the figures and facts that he got wrong—and, for the record, I will be doing so for the third or fourth time. I should also say that I do not have any local elections in my constituency. Indeed, it is somewhat insulting to say that Members who have supported their networks of children’s centres and been proud of them—that probably goes for Members from all parties in this place—have come to this debate simply to score cheap political points. That is not the case. I do not know whether my words will influence the outcome of the alternative vote referendum—if they lead to a yes vote for AV, then all well and good—but I assure the Secretary of State that that is not my intention today.

Hammersmith and Fulham council began on 10 January this year with a report, passed in full, that said:

“At present H&F has a network of 15 children’s centres…We are looking at options to restructure this provision in line with the likely levels of efficiency and grant reductions expected…However, it is not likely under this scenario that LBHF could continue to directly fund more than 6 Children’s centre teams.”

The cut in grant is about 13%, whereas, as I said in my intervention, the cut in the budget is about 45%. It is therefore no good Hammersmith and Fulham hiding behind the cut in grant. It is right to say, however, that as soon as that announcement was made public—albeit shortly after Christmas—there was, shall we say, a lively reaction in the constituency and the borough. A lot has happened in the three months since, partly because the local authority realised that it might be in breach of its statutory duties, which were quite properly introduced by the previous Government.

Those duties are such that either, first, the council would have had to return the nine centres that it was closing—those whose grants it was cutting entirely—to the Department for Education, or would have been liable to do so; secondly, it had not performed its statutory duty to consult before making the decision; or, thirdly, it was no longer clearly providing a network of children’s centres. The local authority’s response was based on trying to bring itself within the law, not on recognising it had made a mistake about levels of provision. Every one of the minor and incremental changes that it made was more to do with PR than with the service or keeping all the centres open. The general amount given to the nine centres that were, in fact, closing was £19,000. The council said that after consideration and consultation—it was a substantial consultation, with many thousands responding in fairly clear terms—it would increase the budget. In some cases, the budget was increased by £1,000 a year, so a budget that was £19,000 became £20,000, where previously it had been £250,000. Clearly the Secretary of State has been briefed in same propagandist way—“Yes, we’re going to open a new centre.” However, the new centre is one of the libraries that the authority is closing, and it will also receive a grant of £19,000, so we will have another empty building.

The third thing that happened was a substantial protest from my constituents. There were many demonstrations, including one attended by my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), the shadow Children’s Minister. We reciprocated by bringing a party of Hammersmith and Fulham parents to the mother’s day protest outside No. 10 Downing street and presenting 2,000 signatures from parents in my constituency against the Sure Start closures. When the inevitable decision was finally made on 18 April to go ahead with the closure programme, 150 parents with buggies again turned up to protest.

I pay tribute to Ruthie Walsh and those involved in Hammersmith and Fulham Parents Unite for organising those protests, not because they are politically motivated, but because they care about their children and they absolutely value the service. Many say it is a lifeline, helping them through relationship break-ups, or loss of job or income, or even helping them to get back into work, providing not just child minding or play services but high quality support, particularly for children with developmental difficulties or special educational needs. That is what Sure Start provides and what, however we dress it up, we are losing when we close nine centres in Hammersmith and Fulham. After all the protests, all the jiggery-pokery and all the propaganda, the net effect is that the budget is indeed being cut by 45%, from almost £4 million to just over £2 million, that the number of Sure Start centres in Hammersmith will now be six, rather than 15, and that the number of children served by those centres will go down by two thirds, to no more than 2,000. That is the reality, with the spin removed, about the services that will be provided.

It is no coincidence that the pattern of Sure Start cuts fits the pattern of cuts in other children’s services. Four of the borough’s seven youth clubs have been closed in my constituency, along with after-school services, of which we are very proud, play services and a complete network of dedicated services. That has all been shut down, and because of Government cuts, the playbuilders scheme and the Building Schools for the Future programme have also been cut. The impact of local government cuts, as well as those directed through local government from central Government, unavoidably bears down overwhelmingly on children and people on low incomes in my constituency.

One of the most shameful things—this might be unique to Hammersmith and Fulham—is that rather than say, “This is regrettable, but it’s to do with finance and matters of that kind,” the local authority has tried to rubbish Sure Start as a programme. In its most recent report on the cuts, the council said that

“no Sure Start Local programme effects emerged in the case of ‘school readiness’ defined in terms of children’s early language, numeracy and social skills needed to succeed in schools.”

So there we have it: the reason for the almost 50% cuts in children’s centre budgets and the two thirds cuts in provision for children is that they do not work. Is that the Government’s attitude? Despite the protestations, do they actually think that we are talking about a wasteful service that should not be provided, or that pre-school services should be provided only to those who can afford to pay for them? To give the council credit, that is clearly the view of Hammersmith and Fulham, but it is not the view of my constituents, irrespective of income or background.

I do not want to take up too much time, but I want briefly to mention some of the Sure Start centres in my constituency that cater for and care for thousands of children every year in Hammersmith and Fulham. Cathnor Park family centre was the first to open in 1998, and the council now describes it as a “super spoke”—it is much better than a satellite: it is a super spoke. The centre receives £50,000 in funding, as opposed to the £473,000 it received last year. The same goes for Broadway family centre, which also received £473,000 last year, but which will receive £19,000 this year. The funding for Wendell Park, my local Sure Start centre, has been cut from £250,000 to £25,000, and that of the Bayonne family centre has been cut from £250,000 to £19,000. The Normand Croft centre’s funding has been cut by the same amount.

Those centres are popular, well used and well loved by everyone who uses them. They have established themselves and they believed that they would continue because they were told by politicians of all parties that they were providing a wonderful service to the parents and children of the borough. However, they will all be gone. We do not know about closures in children’s services yet, but we know about the closures of youth centres and play centres. Not only are the services being closed, but the buildings are being sold off. The assets are being disposed of, so, if there is another Labour Government, or another Government who are more enlightened than this one, or a local authority able to provide the services, it will not be possible to recreate them. They will be gone for good. That will be the legacy of this Government, and it is the legacy of the Conservatives in local government in London.

These decisions are ideologically driven. If they were driven by the need to save money, we would be seeing what the Minister of State promised us when she responded to debates on the subject—namely, cuts at a level that would allow the networks to survive. I have said this before to the Secretary of State: he should intervene on those local authorities that are choosing to close their children’s centre networks or not to provide such networks. They could be in breach of their statutory duty, and there will certainly be a legal challenge in Hammersmith and Fulham. There has not been proper consultation, and we have heard nothing but spin and disinformation, which, to his discredit, the Secretary of State has repeated today. The Government purport to believe in children’s centres and early years development, yet local authorities are cutting services to the bone and closing them down, to the extent that nothing remains except the shell of the building. The Government should intervene to stop them.