Music Education

Barbara Keeley Excerpts
Tuesday 19th March 2024

(1 week, 3 days ago)

Commons Chamber
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Michael Ellis Portrait Sir Michael Ellis
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I knew that the hon. Gentleman and I would be singing from the same hymn sheet. His melodious tones resonate daily in this House, and on this subject, as on so many others, we are in complete agreement. He will know, as will other Members, that I am a former Culture Minister, so that pleases me greatly.

Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
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Music hubs have a vital role in providing high-quality music education to 87% of schools in England, as well as providing support outside schools. The right hon. and learned Gentleman rightly says that music hubs have effectively been on standstill funding for a decade, during a time of increasing costs, staff pay, venue hire and utility bills. I am sure that he will be moving on to discuss that, but I wish to add to it by setting out that the threats to the financial security of music hubs are a real concern. These hubs are often the only providers of instrumental tuition—at no cost or in heavily subsidised form—in state schools.

We have what is starting to be considered a crisis in music education, given that the number of young musicians being taught at advanced level by music hubs has halved over the past decade, and sadly there are now 20,000 fewer state school bands, orchestras, ensembles and choirs than there were seven years ago, so this is a timely debate. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree that by not addressing the funding issues, which I hope he is going to come on to, the Government risk losing music teachers, musicians and audience members, as well as failing to give children access to an activity that holds so many benefits for their academic, social and emotional development?

Michael Ellis Portrait Sir Michael Ellis
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I will be coming on to the funding aspect, but the hon. Lady speaks of the value of music and that is the point I am making.

Many schools serving my constituency and others in Northamptonshire offer tremendous music education. Northampton School for Boys, which borders my constituency and has a catchment area for Northampton North and Northampton South, regularly stages productions and concerts of the highest standard. Northampton School for Girls was the first specialist music college in the country. Malcom Arnold Academy has a strong music basis, as one can see from its name, with Ofsted having described the quality of music provision at that school as “exceptional”. Children at Headlands Primary School are exposed to music education from a very young age, with weekly singing classes from reception. So this is characteristic of not only my constituency, but all the constituencies in Northamptonshire and, doubtless, elsewhere.

That strong sense of the importance of introducing children to music in Northampton North is rooted in the Northamptonshire Music and Performing Arts Trust—NMPAT. It was established as an independent charitable company in 2012, after functioning for 40 years as the local authority music service. In May 2012 it was designated as the Government’s music and education hub lead for Northamptonshire, and later it became the hub lead for the county of Rutland as well.

The Andrew Lloyd Webber Foundation has described the importance of music education in the following instructive terms:

“engagement in the arts and heritage enriches lives, unlocks creative potential, improves skills, changes behaviour, increases confidence, and should be available to all. In order to maintain vibrancy in the arts, it is critical that the next generation of diverse artists is nurtured and encouraged.”

We have already heard from a representative of the Province of Northern Ireland, and I am so pleased that the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland is on the Front Bench. He is unable to speak from the Front Bench this evening, as is the Minister for Legal Migration and the Border, who is also present. I am sure that, as fellow Northamptonshire MPs, they will agree on the importance of music education.

NMPAT embodies that ethos wholly and fully, and, as a former Culture Minister, I strongly agree with it and understand it. The range of opportunities provided by that organisation is enriching and they are plentiful around Northamptonshire and Rutland:

Autism and Learning Disability Training

Barbara Keeley Excerpts
Tuesday 21st November 2023

(4 months, 1 week ago)

Westminster Hall
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Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
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I am very pleased to speak in this important debate with you in the Chair, Mr Vickers. I congratulate the hon. Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) on securing the debate and on the way in which she opened it.

I would like to pay tribute to Paula McGowan for her persistence in campaigning for this debate, for all her work to get the original debate that we held on this issue in 2018 and for all the campaigning work she has done since then. Paula has campaigned to secure around 70,000 signatures on the petition, so it is very good that we can discuss the Oliver McGowan mandatory training programme again. Her work has been instrumental in raising awareness of how we treat autistic people and people with learning disabilities in our health and care services. I pay tribute to her for that work.

In the debate which Paula helped to secure five years ago, I called for the Government to treat the introduction of mandatory training as an urgent priority. The Oliver McGowan mandatory training on learning disability and autism programme has now been delivered to around 750,000 healthcare staff—I think the hon. Lady said it was more than that, but that is the figure I have—and 200 people with a learning disability or autism have been trained to deliver parts of the programme. As we have heard, that is a very important part of it. Those are significant steps forward, but there is much more still to do.

Oliver’s case illustrates the degree to which people with learning disabilities or autism do not get the healthcare treatment they should expect from a civilised, compassionate society. Oliver was a young man with a full life expectancy who had overcome many challenges to excel as a footballer, as an athlete and in his exams. He was let down repeatedly because clinicians simply did not understand the nature of his autism. With better awareness and care adjustments, his death could have been avoided.

The petition on mandatory training that we are discussing recognises the role of teachers and schools in offering support to children and young people with a learning disability or autism. The rolling out of training on learning disabilities and autism is likely to significantly benefit the raising of awareness of learning disabilities and autism in the education sector.

The Government’s response to the petition states that headteachers should

“use their professional judgement to identify any further training”

for teachers. But the roll out of further training for education staff is clearly needed. Research by the National Autistic Society showed that 86% of secondary school teachers had received just half a day’s training on autism, and that three in four parents or carers of autistic children feel that their child’s school does not meet their needs.

One of my constituents—the parent of a boy aged nearly five who is showing traits of autism—told me about the struggle to get him support. She was told that he is “too naughty”, and he is limited to two hours of school a day. She said that her child

“is treated so differently, and he is more aware of it now. This makes him want to act out, as he thinks it’s what is expected of him. He cries every day when he has to leave so many hours earlier than the other children. I think this is another reason he acts out, because every day he knows he will only get a couple of hours of play with everything. He is overstimulated, and his behaviour is a lot worse during that time. If he had time to settle down, and a proper routine at school, he would be calmer and his behaviour would be a lot better, as it is at home. I worry that if he doesn’t receive the support he needs now, school may be a lot more difficult for him in the long run.”

Mandatory training on learning disabilities and autism for education staff could help to improve the situation for children and young people, as it undoubtably has been doing for health and care staff since it was rolled out.

Julian Smith Portrait Julian Smith
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One of the challenges for autistic kids seems to be that many people they interact with in the school system have not received the training that the hon. Lady has been talking about, and they are being treated in a behavioural context. Does she agree that we should persuade teachers, or people who interact with kids, that the reason why these children act in the way they do is nothing to do with behaviour?

Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley
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It is very much like the case I have just given: the parent of that five-year-old boy is told that he is “too naughty” to have more than two hours of school a day, and that is absolutely disgraceful. It is not a behavioural problem if it is autism.

Education, health and care plans are another important source of support. As we have heard, there are 200,000 school-age autistic pupils in England, but just 55% have an education, health and care plan. The Government’s investment plan for children with special educational needs and disabilities claims that this is a priority area, but the National Autistic Society said there is “little substance” in the Government’s plan for reducing waits for a child’s education, health and care plan.

Concerningly, there have also been reports that the Government have signed a deal with a consultancy aiming to reduce targets for education, health and care plans by 20% for 55 local authorities, as part of a delivering better value in SEND programme. The consultancy firm was tasked with reducing cost pressures on local authorities by targeting a 20% reduction in the number of new education, health and care plans issued. It is painfully ironic that the design of this so-called value-for-money programme seems to have to cost the Government nearly £20 million in consultancy fees to Newton Europe. It is also painful to understand that the Government see education, health and care plans as cost pressures to be managed down, and not as vital documents that set out the education provision that children with significant needs must receive by law.

Tim Farron Portrait Tim Farron
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I thank the hon. Lady for making such a valid point and for being so generous in giving way. It seems to me that even if we did not put an extra penny of funding into supporting young people with autism spectrum disorders—although we should—if we spent the money more intelligently and more fairly, we would do more good. We have a situation in which schools that do the right thing and accept young people with autism, and indeed other learning difficulties, are funded only once they get past the £7,000 threshold. Schools that do the right thing are having to spend out of their own coffers to support children, whereas schools that somehow dodge the bullet, so to speak, end up being financially rewarded. Is it not wiser that we spend money to support the schools that actually support the children?

Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley
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Indeed. Local authorities must be supported to fulfil their statutory duties to children and young people, just as schools and colleges, as a continuation, must access the training necessary to become genuinely inclusive. That is what we want to see.

As an MP, I raise many cases of parents and carers of children who have or are seeking a diagnosis of autism and are being failed by the schools they attend, yet it is such a fight to get an education, health and care plan for them. One of my constituents is the parent of a girl with complex special educational needs and disabilities who had to battle with the local authority to get an education, health and care plan for her daughter. My constituent told me about the battle she has had, saying that her daughter

“only has access to large mainstream secondary schools which is unacceptable for a child with such complex needs. I have provided all evidence, co-operated fully and repeated and repeated medical evidence and wrote lengthy information. They have all the information and now I am going to mediation and appeal. This process has taken over a year. I am exhausted. This is not good for anyone. I am not being heard and I am fighting to safeguard my daughter. I have a child with complex additional needs. My time, care and attention should be only focused on her but again I have to prepare now for mediation.”

I supported my constituent to get the plan for her daughter, but it took a long time and she ended up missing the first six months of secondary school.

It is crucial that we have better support for autistic pupils and pupils with learning disabilities. The Oliver McGowan mandatory training programme and education, health and care plans are both important elements in that respect. The Government must do more to ensure that autistic people and people with learning disabilities can receive the education they need, and that they are able to live long and independent lives in the community. Sadly, for far too many people that is a distant dream.

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David Johnston Portrait The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (David Johnston)
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It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers, and I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Dame Caroline Dinenage) for securing a debate on such an important subject. She has played an instrumental role in mandating learning disability and autism training across the health and care sector, and in rolling out the Oliver McGowan mandatory training. I know that my colleague the Secretary of State for Education, who championed that as a Minister in the Department of Health and Social Care, is an equally strong advocate for the training.

I thank Oliver’s family for their tireless dedication to this issue. They went through what no family should have to go through, and I share their passion for ensuring that dedicated and hardworking professionals have the knowledge, skills and expertise to provide the right support and try to ensure that no family experiences the same. I hope I might get the opportunity to meet Paula in a moment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gosport predicted some—not all—of my answers to her questions on the picture of learning disability and autism training for education professionals. Teachers in schools focus on SEND at each stage of their training. To be recommended by an accredited provider for qualified teacher status, trainees must demonstrate that they meet the teacher standards at the appropriate level. Both the initial teacher training core content framework and the early career framework outline what trainee and new teachers should learn, including content on adaptive teaching for students with special educational needs.

The universal services programme, which my hon. Friend touched on, provides SEND-specific training for the school and college workforce. So far, 6,600 school and college staff have accessed free online training modules, and 81 schools and 135 colleges have identified and led their own SEND-focused school improvement projects. Since the programme was launched in 2022, over 100,000 education professionals have undertaken autism awareness training through the Autism Education Trust’s “train the trainer” model. My hon. Friend may not know this, but the largest take-up of the programme’s range of online units has been within her own local authority of Hampshire. I assume that is in part due to her advocacy on this issue.

Our SEND and alternative provision practitioner standards, which will focus on supporting frontline practitioners in mainstream settings, will include a practitioner standard on autism. We will publish the first three practitioner standards by the end of 2025. Regarding the Department’s understanding of not only the quantity of training, but the quality, in the summer Ofsted carried out full inspections on all six lead providers of the early career framework that I referred to. All got a positive Ofsted judgment, with four of the six being awarded an “outstanding” judgment. Surveys from the universal services programme have consistently highlighted the positive impact of it, with 2,300 participants surveyed three to six months later finding that 98% had an improved confidence in identifying and meeting needs. Perhaps even more importantly, 93% had reported making changes to their practice as a result of accessing the activities.

I was asked about conversations I have personally had with teachers, parents and some of the excellent charities in this area. I have had a wide range of conversations as a constituency MP, because I visit a school in my own area pretty much every week. The issue of parents in Oxfordshire not getting the support they should for their children with special educational needs has been one of the top two issues I have been written to about in the last 18 months, so I had lots of conversations with parents, teachers and charities before I got to this role. In this role, I have made a number of visits around the country and had lots of meetings with different charities on this issue. The voice of parents has been incredibly important in elevating the status of this issue, more so even than the voice of schools or Government or local authorities. It is parents who very articulately describe what feels like a war of attrition to try to get the support they need for their children. It is a war that any parent would wage but no parent should have to.

On the confidence of professionals to teach neurodivergent children and children with learning disabilities so that their needs are met, our school and college panel survey indicated that just over half of schools agreed that they were able to effectively support pupils with special educational needs. The February 2023 parent, pupil and learner survey found that about 60% of all parents were confident in the school being able to meet their child’s needs.

My hon. Friend touched on the fact that the National Autistic Society and Ambitious about Autism reported that 87% of teachers surveyed felt confident supporting autistic children in the classroom. That is a very high figure, but I accept that, as she said, teachers’ confidence may not always reflect the experiences of children and their families. We are exploring opportunities to build teacher expertise by reviewing the initial teacher training framework and the early career framework, which we will conclude by the end of this year. In early 2024, we intend to publish what more we will do to support trainees and early career teachers to be more confident and have the most up-to-date evidence that should inform their practice.

SENCOs play a vital role in setting the direction of their schools and co-ordinating the support required by children with special educational needs. We want to invest in their training. That is why we have developed the new national professional qualification for SENCOs, which will come into force in autumn next year. We hope that will play a key role in improving outcomes for children with special educational needs in schools. We have also committed to funding 7,000 early years staff to gain an accredited level 3 SENCO qualification because, as we all know, the earlier we can identify need the better. That programme for the early years workforce has been hugely popular with the sector.

Turning to the point made by the hon. Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley), we are not targeting a 20% reduction in EHCPs or the growth of EHCPs. We have no target of that nature whatever. We want children to get the support they need at an early enough stage and without them needing an EHCP to get that support. I refer the hon. Lady to my letter to the Education Committee for further clarification.

Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley
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Will the Minister give way?

David Johnston Portrait David Johnston
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I am not sure I have time because I need to stop at 5.28 pm, but I am happy to write to her.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Darlington (Peter Gibson) on all his work, which includes setting up a forum for the families of those with autism. That is typical of his work as a local champion. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Skipton and Ripon (Julian Smith), he brought the voice of families to this debate, which is the most important voice when we are discussing these issues.

More broadly, the Department for Education has worked closely with the Department of Health and Social Care to develop a refreshed cross-Government autism strategy, which was published in 2021 and backed by more than £74 million. This year the Department of Health and Social Care has allocated £4.2 million to improve services for autistic children and young people, including assessment services through the autism in schools programme.

There is a lot happening as part of the £2.6 billion special educational needs and AP reform programme. Of course there is more to do. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport for bringing us this debate and all of those professionals and parents who are working so hard to support children with these conditions. I look forward to working with Members present on how we can ensure that these children get the support they need at an early enough stage.

Oral Answers to Questions

Barbara Keeley Excerpts
Monday 23rd October 2023

(5 months, 1 week ago)

Commons Chamber
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Lindsay Hoyle Portrait Mr Speaker
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I think we’ve got the story. The extra chapter was fine.

Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
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9. What assessment her Department has made of the adequacy of the provision of music education in schools.

Nick Gibb Portrait The Minister for Schools (Nick Gibb)
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I congratulate the hon. Lady on her appointment as shadow Minister for music and tourism.

The Government expect every school to teach music for at least an hour a week, supported by our music hub network, including the Greater Manchester hub led by the Bolton Music Service, and backed by £25 million of capital for instruments and a new £10,000 bursary for trainee music teachers.

Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley
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Last month, Ofsted reported:

“There remains a divide between the opportunities for children and young people whose families can afford to pay for music tuition and for those who come from lower socio-economic backgrounds.”

It also said that

“half the primary schools visited did not…offer any instrumental or vocal lessons”,

and that what lessons existed were being taught by non-specialist teachers in two thirds of primary schools. This is a damning reflection of the substantial decline in the provision of music education in England over which Conservative-led Governments have presided. What urgent action will the Government take in response to these findings?

Nick Gibb Portrait Nick Gibb
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From September next year, every music hub will be required to support music tuition for disadvantaged pupils. We are investing £2 million in a music progression programme in education investment areas to support up to 1,000 pupils to learn an instrument. From 2018-19 to 2022-23, between 96.4% and 94.7% of all hours taught in music were taught by a teacher with a relevant post-A-level qualification. There are now 7,184 full-time music teachers in our secondary schools, which is up from 7,000 last year.

Core School Budget Allocations

Barbara Keeley Excerpts
Tuesday 17th October 2023

(5 months, 2 weeks ago)

Commons Chamber
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Nick Gibb Portrait Nick Gibb
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My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: it was unfortunate. As a Minister, when officials gather outside my office to tell me great news about an error that has been made, my instinct is always to find out what the error is and rectify it as quickly as possible. That took about four weeks, compared with the normal six weeks to calculate the NFF, and we then published the figures as rapidly as possible. That is the approach that the Department and I have taken.

Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
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Earlier this year, the Sutton Trust reported that half of school leaders said that they had already been forced to cut back on trips and outings. That includes cultural trips to concerts and plays, which often have a profound effect on young people who would not otherwise be able to attend those events. The average secondary school is now being told that it will have around £58,000 less to spend than was announced in July—whatever the Minister says, those schools will have planned on the basis of that money. I am concerned that even fewer young people will now be able to access the benefits of cultural trips. What is the Minister doing to make sure that young people in state-funded schools still have access to cultural experiences that enrich their education?

Nick Gibb Portrait Nick Gibb
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The figures published in July were indicative figures. They are used by local authorities. Once the October census comes out with the pupil numbers, they then apply their local formula to those figures. That is the allocation that schools use for their budgeting, and that happens around December.

Over the period between 2021-22 and 2024-25, school funding has increased by 20%, so there has been a very significant increase. I agree with the hon. Member about the importance of cultural activities in schools, which is why we have a cultural education plan that is being worked on at the moment.

Higher Education Reform

Barbara Keeley Excerpts
Monday 17th July 2023

(8 months, 2 weeks ago)

Commons Chamber
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Gillian Keegan Portrait Gillian Keegan
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My hon. Friend makes an excellent point, and I know that he is a big champion of the University of Bolton, which I was delighted to meet recently. It is quite interesting that a lot of former polytechnics and newer universities are working and collaborating so well with businesses, offering more degree apprenticeships and more flexible courses, and storming up the league tables.

Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
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I am concerned that many university degrees that lead young people into the creative sector will be squeezed under the Government’s plans. Industry leaders have warned that limiting student numbers based on graduate earnings fails to account for the working patterns of graduates in the creative industries, and particularly the arts, where people do not immediately earn high salaries. The salaries in those professions do not reflect their importance to national wellbeing and the contribution that the arts make to our national income. What assessment has the Department for Education made of the damage that this latest policy will do to those arts and humanities subjects that have already been relentlessly cut back under Conservative-led Governments?

Gillian Keegan Portrait Gillian Keegan
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I am a huge supporter of our creative and arts industries, which are among our largest, and we are very successful in them. I work with them a lot to ensure that we can deliver even broader apprenticeship routes, because they are difficult industries to get into. I have asked the Office for Students to consider how to do this reform to ensure that we consider things like the creative arts and other routes, which sometimes take longer to get into but offer a different aspect of learning. That is why we have not just introduced a blunt tool. I will continue to work with our fantastic creative sector.

Budget Resolutions

Barbara Keeley Excerpts
Tuesday 2nd November 2021

(2 years, 4 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Nadhim Zahawi Portrait Nadhim Zahawi
- Parliament Live - Hansard - - - Excerpts

I am grateful for the hon. Member’s question. I think he may have missed, while trying to catch your eye, Mr Speaker, what I just said about the £1.7 billion to improve the wider social care system that was announced in September. The additional £3.6 billion to local government that was announced in the Budget is more money. This is not an arms race on how much we can spend; this Government are interested in delivering outcomes. Covid has, no doubt, added extra challenges to our reforming agenda, but it has not deflected us from delivering our promises; it has made our commitment more focused as we deliver and build back better. For me, that means skills, schools and families.

Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
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I detect a hint of complacency on funding for social care. The Secretary of State mentioned £500 million to go towards workforce issues. That is nothing; it is a drop in the ocean for the issues with the social care workforce. There are more than 100,000 vacancies in social care and turnover is 30%. The money just will not touch the sides. The reaction to the Budget from the social care sector, which I hope to speak about today, has been one of profound disappointment and disbelief, really, that the Government do not understand what a crisis the sector is in. I really think it is about time for the Secretary of State to change his tone on that.

Nadhim Zahawi Portrait Nadhim Zahawi
- Parliament Live - Hansard - - - Excerpts

I have to respectfully disagree with the hon. Lady. In my time as vaccines Minister, I saw the social care sector rise to the challenge and deliver. I opened my remarks by reminding the House of that and thanking the workers on the frontline. Of course, money does make a difference, including the £500 million announced to make sure that we retain and inspire the social care workforce.

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Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)
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You would not know from the Budget that our health and care system is in crisis, made worse by the fact that we are still in the middle of a pandemic that claimed 1,097 lives last week. One of the key factors in coping with the crisis caused by the covid pandemic has been the commitment of our health and care staff and the dedication of unpaid carers to support their family members, yet the Budget contained no costings for training and education budgets for the NHS workforce, no extra resources to improve support for unpaid carers, and no extra investment to meet the immediate needs for funding to relieve the crisis in social care.

The response to the Budget from the social care sector has been damning. Care England, which represents care providers, said there

“will be serious and far-reaching consequences”

from the lack of measures in the Budget to support adult social care. The Care and Support Alliance said:

“If the Prime Minister’s ambition to ‘fix social care’ is ever to be realised Rishi Sunak has to play his part by providing enough funding to make it happen. He hasn’t done so and therefore, unfortunately, the future of social care remains as uncertain as ever”.

There are now more than 100,000 care jobs vacant and continuing pressures on care providers, who are struggling to recruit enough staff to keep care facilities open.

The Care Quality Commission recently warned of a “tsunami of unmet need” in social care, which will in turn heap more pressure on the 13 million unpaid carers who give up so much time and energy to care for their family members, with little recognition or support. There is cross-party consensus that we need far more than the funds announced in the Budget to deal with this crisis in social care. The Health and Social Care Committee recently repeated our call for at least £7 billion a year of extra funding for social care to cover demographic changes, to uplift staff pay in line with the national minimum wage and to protect people who face catastrophic social care costs. What the Government have announced is that additional money from the health and care levy will only fund the cap on catastrophic care costs and some of the consequential costs of that, and the cap only starts to apply from October 2023. Although the Chancellor announced £4.8 billion of extra grant funding for local councils over the next three years, that is not ringfenced for social care, leaving councils to decide how to allocate it across all their cash-strapped services.

The Association of Directors of Adult Social Services said the Budget and spending review were “deeply disappointing”. It looked at the £1.6 billion a year extra and said

“it will do little more than meet the costs of the rise in the national living wage for care workers from next April.”

The Local Government Association told the Select Committee recently that the funding gap for adult social care was £6.1 billion and that this underfunding puts the workforce and unpaid family carers under further strain, creating unmet and under-met need.

For years, all we have had are sticking plasters from the Government in response to this ever-worsening crisis in social care, rather than recognition of how serious the underfunding issues are. The Budget missed an opportunity to do something about the crisis. The impact of that failure will be serious and far-reaching in social care. We have just heard my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy) raising that issue, and there will be more of us standing up here, week in, week out, describing the situation she has described in her local council areas. It will be all of us.

We need immediate investment to ensure that care staff are paid a proper wage that will compete with better rates paid in retail and hospitality. What are we doing when people can be paid more for flipping burgers than for looking after an elderly person, perhaps with dementia? We need investment so that unpaid carers get the breaks and support they need after 18 months that have very much broken them, and we need investment to address that tsunami of unmet need. It is shameful that we have not paid, as other countries have, a bonus for health and care staff. Indeed, the Minister for Care and Mental Health recently said, when asked about vacancy issues, that they can work millions more hours, just as they did during the pandemic.

I have outlined the failure of the Government to put the needed investment into social care, but the final point I want to make is about the failure of the Chancellor to reverse his £1,000 cut to universal credit, which will do so much damage this winter. Three quarters of families on universal credit lose more from the £20 cut than they gain from the Budget changes. The Resolution Foundation points out that the poorest fifth of households will still be an average of £280 a year worse off overall. One constituent told me that they, like many others, had been hopeful that the cut would be reversed in the Budget. They are now fearful that throughout this winter they will have to keep choosing between heating their home and eating. They have lost £80 a month due to the cut, but their energy prices have already risen by £95 a month. It was a callous and cruel cut to make in the middle of a cost of living crisis, and a shameful aspect of the Budget.

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Simon Clarke Portrait Mr Clarke
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I thank the hon. Lady; hers was one of the more thoughtful speeches in this debate. We have committed £162.5 million as part of our winter plan to help fund the adult social care workforce. That money is exactly designed to make sure that we can attract people into this most pivotal of sectors. That comes on top of the £5.4 billion across the spending review that we have committed, thanks to the new health and social care levy, and the record funding for local government that was announced in the SR. I am always happy to work with her on this, but there is more money for this sector.

Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley
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Unless there are pay increases for care staff, the small dribbles in amounts of training, and bits of this and bits of that, will not deal with this serious crisis. There are 105,000 vacancies, and people are leaving in droves to go and work in burger bars and other forms of retail.

Simon Clarke Portrait Mr Clarke
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Again, I thank the hon. Lady for raising that point. I do take this point seriously. We have committed in this Budget to the national living wage increase, which is a major increase—6.6%, rising to £9.50 an hour. That money comes as a complement to the extra funding that the Government have committed to help with labour shortages, and I believe it will make a real difference. Obviously we can continue to monitor the situation closely with the sector.

If I may make a little progress, I want to return to the core theme of today’s debate: our public services. As the Chancellor outlined last week, this Budget increases total departmental spending over this Parliament by £150 billion. That is the largest rise this century, with spending growing by 3.8% a year in real terms. We are taking forward plans to deliver more than £600 billion of gross public sector investment over this Parliament, meaning that public sector net investment will be at its highest sustained level as a share of GDP for nearly half a century. This is funding that can and will make real change possible for communities throughout the country.

Last week, my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) reminded the House when talking about the NHS that increased spending is not enough on its own and that we must strive to deliver value for taxpayers. I could not agree more. The measure of a Government’s compassion is not how much they spend, but the outcomes they deliver. In making these investments, the Government are committed to ensuring that every pound is spent well and makes a difference.

To take healthcare, we are building 40 new hospitals and upgrading 70 more, as well as funding 50,000 nurses and 50 million more primary healthcare appointments. We are working closely with the NHS to roll out a stream of innovative developments that will reduce backlogs, help cut waiting times and transform healthcare for good. Some 100 community diagnostic centres, rightly praised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Dehenna Davison), will help people to obtain tests close to home. New surgical hubs will cut waits for elective operations, and we are making a record investment in R&D to support the health technologies of the future.

Covid-19: Education Settings

Barbara Keeley Excerpts
Tuesday 6th July 2021

(2 years, 8 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Gavin Williamson Portrait Gavin Williamson
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My hon. Friend is a new Member, and he arrives here with a lot of optimism. I reassure him that we have a broad, balanced and knowledge-rich curriculum of which we should be proud, although we always work to make sure it gets even better.

It is with some sadness that I say the National Education Union started off by saying it did not want teachers to teach pupils in person, and then said it did not want teachers to teach students online. It starts to make me question whether the National Education Union really believes in education at all. We will wait and see, and hopefully it will be more co-operative and hard-working in the next academic year.

Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) [V]
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Regular testing for pupils and staff is going to be a vital part of stopping the spread of covid-19, but the decline in testing numbers shows that home testing is currently not working well. Tackling this with on-site testing would mean some schools in my constituency having to test 600 children a day, which they tell me they simply do not have the resources to do. Will the Secretary of State give schools the resources they need, including external support if they need it, to make sure they are able to carry out testing and keep children safe?

Gavin Williamson Portrait Gavin Williamson
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I would like to reassure the hon. Lady that we will be supporting schools as they roll out the testing. Schools have delivered asymptomatic testing on school premises incredibly successfully already in this academic year and we will look at providing the same level of support to them as we did earlier on, in March. We have every confidence that we will be able to deliver that right across the country.

Catch-up Premium

Barbara Keeley Excerpts
Tuesday 15th June 2021

(2 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) [V]
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It has—thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Today’s debate cuts to a central issue with this Government. Although there is much talk of levelling up, the reality is that the Chancellor holding the purse strings has no interest in investing in vital public services. It is telling that there is no Treasury Minister here today to defend his decisions. Trying to do recovery on the cheap simply will not work after the damaging year that our children and young people have had during the pandemic. The Government’s announcement means just one hour-long session of tutoring every fortnight; funding for this is only £1 per child a week. There is nothing for children’s mental health, wellbeing or socialisation. Importantly, there will be no dedicated support for disabled children.

Those are financial decisions with a real human impact. The Disabled Children’s Partnership makes it clear that the difference between current and pre-pandemic levels of support for disabled children is vast: 70% of disabled children have been unable to access services such as occupational therapy or speech and language therapy, and 60% of their families are still experiencing delays and challenges in accessing the health appointments they need. The lack of access to multiple education and health services has been detrimental to the health of parent carers, with their disabled children and wider families also persistently isolated. All that, sadly, now brings the threat of children developing additional long-term health problems.

In response to that, the Government have offered nothing. They have offered nothing to provide children with social activities to make up for a year spent isolated from their friends. They have offered no funding to help crucial services, such as speech and language therapy, to step up their delivery to make up for lost time. They have offered no funding to allow unpaid carers to take the respite breaks they need after the extra caring workload they have shouldered during the pandemic. Those are specific, targeted interventions, which the Treasury has decided are not worth the cost.

The education recovery fiasco shows that the Prime Minister does not care enough to stand up to the Chancellor over the challenges facing our country. How else can the Government explain Ministers telling Sir Kevan Collins that money is no object and then signing off on only a tenth of what is needed? If the Chancellor can simply say no to the Prime Minister’s own education tsar, what does that mean for other areas of investment? If the Chancellor will not support our children, how can we be sure that he will give the NHS the support it needs to address historic waiting lists? Will he provide the change that our social care system needs so that older and disabled people can live independently in their own homes, rather than being forced to sell their home to pay for care? Will levelling up turn out to be just another unfunded soundbite that does nothing for areas that desperately need change?

Our public services need a Government who are fully behind them, not a Chancellor who is more interested in his own profile and a Prime Minister who seems happy to take a back seat. Otherwise, the next few years will look much like the last decade: cuts for our crucial public services just when we can least afford them.

Investing in Children and Young People

Barbara Keeley Excerpts
Wednesday 9th June 2021

(2 years, 9 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) [V]
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The past year has taken a toll on everybody’s mental health. According to the Government’s own former education adviser, more than 200,000 children have developed mental health conditions over the last year. Barnardo’s charity says:

“A defining impact of the pandemic has been on children’s mental health.”

After months of missed face-to-face education and time away from their friends, this is no surprise, and it is not a new problem. It comes on top of years of Government neglect of children’s mental health services, which has led to a situation where young people are pushed to breaking point before they get help.

The Health and Social Care Committee recently heard from two young people who described how services simply were not there when they needed them. One of them described being on a two-year waiting list for child and adolescent mental health services, and because he had that referral, he could not even access the support offered by charities while he waited. In his words:

“There wasn’t anything until things got so dire that it was the crisis team.”

As his mental health deteriorated, he ended up in A&E seeking emergency support, but that was only a sticking plaster.

If we do not provide the mental health support that our children and young people need now, we are simply storing up problems for the future when they hit crisis point. As Sir Kevan Collins has made clear, the Government had an opportunity to take bold action and put in place robust support services to help children recover from the past year. They have totally failed to rise to the scale of this challenge. Rather than having the kind of ambition shown by Labour’s children’s recovery programme, the Secretary of State and the Prime Minister have allowed the Treasury to dictate the terms and block any real progress.

We all know that the recovery funding provided falls far short of what is needed—of course, before that, the funding of children’s mental health services was inadequate. Even if the Government meet their targets for mental health support by 2024, there will still be 7.5 million children without access to mental health support at school. That means that early intervention and targeted support will be unavailable to the vast majority of children and young people, forcing them to wait until they hit crisis point and then have to access heavily rationed NHS services. In contrast, Labour’s plans would put a trained mental health counsellor in every school, providing the early intervention needed to support the mental health of our children and young people.

Across the board, the Government have failed to offer the support that our children need. They have had to be shamed into feeding children over the school holidays. Their latest holiday activity and food scheme proposes providing food for just 16 days over the summer. Not only is that scheme not covering every weekday, but in Salford it is set to reach barely one in five of the children on free school meals. That means that more than 10,000 children are going hungry in Salford alone.

While councils have stepped up in the past to make up the shortfall, we cannot expect them to keep doing so when they are already overstretched and underfunded. Rather than continuing to try to do this on the cheap, will the Minister finally do the right thing and agree to feed every child who needs it across the whole school holidays until the end of the pandemic?

Further, after a year that has taken a real toll on disabled children and their families, the Government’s proposals contain nothing specific to help them recover. The Disabled Children’s Partnership found that four in five disabled children have seen their support services withdrawn over the past year, and three in four are now socially isolated. At the start of the pandemic in March 2020, the Government took sweeping steps that allowed local authorities to stop providing many services to disabled children. While similar provisions related to care for adults were repealed this spring, there has been no change for children’s services.

Will the Minister confirm that not only will the Government ensure that all funding for those services is reinstated urgently, but that more funding is put into the services to help disabled children to catch up? Half an hour of tutoring a week will not make up for a year of missed speech and language therapy, which is why we need a dedicated plan to help disabled children and their families to recover from the pandemic. The Government could and should show more ambition, and I urge them to change their approach to ensure that our children do not end up paying the price for Government incompetence.

Schools and Colleges: Qualification Results and Full Opening

Barbara Keeley Excerpts
Tuesday 1st September 2020

(3 years, 7 months ago)

Commons Chamber
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Gavin Williamson Portrait Gavin Williamson
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My right hon. Friend makes a valid point. He will know all too well that many schools across the Vale of Glamorgan have different pressures, and we are seeing this right across England as well. Whether a school has 40 pupils or 1,400, it will need to adapt and change to ensure that it creates a safe and secure environment for the pupils and for those who are working in the school. By doing that, it creates greater safety and confidence in the wider community. Guidance is there to support teachers, headteachers and all those who work in schools, and it is leading to all schools returning and the opportunity for all pupils to benefit from a great education.

Barbara Keeley Portrait Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab) [V]
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Schools across the country could be spending hundreds of millions of pounds to meet the costs of covid-19. With budgets already at breaking point, many will have to cut spending in other areas, such as support for disadvantaged students, in order to afford these costs. To ensure that no child is left behind, will the Secretary of State confirm that the Government could meet the full costs of making schools covid-secure and ensuring that they can return safely?