Queen’s Speech

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Tuesday 15th May 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I was heartened to see in the gracious Speech that the Government’s plans include striving to improve the lives of children and families, and particularly to support those with special needs. Noble Lords involved in the Welfare Reform Act and the LASPO Act will remember how worried we were about the counterintuitive effects that those Acts—especially the legal aid cuts—were certain to have on this vulnerable group. Therefore, I await details of what government action is proposed here with particular interest, not least in light of today’s announcement about cutting the number of those to be classified as having SEN.

Today I especially want to encourage the Government to take decisive and adequately funded action in another area of the gracious Speech—that of reducing and preventing crime, and to do so via the route of early intervention with dysfunctional families. Their children are among the most likely to end up spending their lives in prison at huge financial cost to the nation. We have known about the need for early intervention for many years but, alas, far too little has been done to tackle its root causes. Many of your Lordships will perhaps remember that it was more than 30 years ago when Keith Joseph made his famous “cycle of deprivation” speech. Now, at last, with the two recent seminal reports from Frank Field and Graham Allen, it seems that all political parties, and none, have begun to be convinced of the need for a different approach.

The coalition’s plans could be tied in with another new approach beginning to gain ground in your Lordships’ thinking; namely, a requirement for all Governments, before legislating, to establish and publish the cost and expected financial benefit of what is proposed. If that happened, and at an appropriate later stage a compulsory independent evaluation is made as to whether the benefit had met those expectations, we might see considerable financial as well as social and economic gain from working in such a way with dysfunctional and disadvantaged families. An even wider benefit of such a move might mean that parliamentarians could begin to have less hasty and ill prepared legislation to deal with.

The financial situation is, of course, dire but it is never a good time for initiatives such as these. However, I am convinced that with a determined and properly funded early intervention strategy, the long-term financial savings would be considerable. The kind of early intervention action needed also is ideal for testing the Government’s big society approach.

The Government have plans to build on what Sure Start centres are doing. More than that, the Minister for Children and Families, Sarah Teather, announced in March that the Government will be setting up an early intervention foundation and have put aside £3.5 million for this purpose. All that is excellent news but there is one big concern. The funding of the foundation by the Government will be available for only two years. After that the government funding will cease. It is here, alas, that one’s heart begins to sink. With children and young people’s charities facing public funding cuts of £405 million over the next five years, one must have grave doubts about how practical this is, particularly when combined with considerable cuts to local authority resources. At the very least, the Government must bear responsibility for ensuring that the necessary backers for the commission’s continuation will be found, together with time and money needed to deliver the anticipated early intervention financial savings. I hope that the Minister can give the House reassurance on these points.

Other aims in the gracious Speech to strive to improve the lives of children and families are welcome. The sharing of parental responsibilities, which was also mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, would be much easier if greater flexibility in working hours were equally available for both sexes—I stress the need for men at least as much as for women—and not just for when children are very young. There is plenty of scope for that flexibility much later in the lives of children.

Many citizens will have been heartened by the Prime Minister’s promise—I believe that it was two days ago—to look at reducing the crippling costs of childcare. I hope too that the Government will pay particular attention to the unnecessary costs highlighted in the excellent briefing from Carers UK, which I expect noble Lords have received. It points out that 1 million carers have given up work, one in three because there is an insufficient level of appropriately qualified state care available. A study by the LSE states that around £1.3 billion is lost annually to carers who are unable to work for those reasons and who have to rely on state benefits. I hope that the Government will give their attention to what should be the proper balance in this area.