Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her post, but I do not agree with the numbers she cites. In fact, the pay of nursery staff has gone up, according to independent statistics. More important, most of the provision is in the private sector. The Government cannot prescribe wages for people in the private sector, but we can cut taxes so that people can keep more of what they earn, and that is why we have raised the personal allowance to £10,000.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

6. What recent assessment she has made of the vulnerability of children missing from school and home to child sexual exploitation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

Nothing is more important than keeping children safe. To better protect missing children, we have introduced tougher statutory guidance and regulations, improved national data collection and published new practice standards for social workers. Ofsted has found that many, but not enough, local authorities are making progress, so we will continue to establish where that is not happening, and why, and will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure children’s safety.

[Ann Coffey]

A recent Ofsted report entitled “The sexual exploitation of children: it couldn’t happen here, could it?” said that most local authorities inspected are not making the connection between child sexual exploitation and children missing from school. Does the Minister agree that every local authority should keep a centrally held persistent absence list that could be cross-referenced by police and children’s services to identify children at risk and patterns of local child sexual exploitation?

[Mr Timpson]

I begin by thanking the hon. Lady and acknowledging the significant and important contribution she has made over a long period, and more recently through her report “Real Voices” on child exploitation in Greater Manchester. It poses many of the right questions, as she has this afternoon. I agree that it is absolutely right not only that all schools must inform the local authority of pupils who are missing education but that local authorities must identify pupils missing from school and take action as a result. Those duties already exist and Ofsted’s thematic review made it clear that in many cases that was not happening because of very basic practice failures across a range of agencies and organisations. The number of persistently absent children has dropped by 40% since 2010, but we need to highlight even more those children who are particularly vulnerable for the reasons the hon. Lady has outlined. I know I have a meeting with her in a week or two to discuss these matters further and I look forward to having a conversation to see what progress we can make.