Child Sexual Abuse: Safeguarding Failures

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Monday 10th September 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Walmsley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how they plan to respond to the report of the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse regarding safeguarding failures at Downside and Ampleforth schools, published in August 2018.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, before answering the noble Baroness’s Question, I inform the House that various members of my wife’s family attended Ampleforth. I have never visited the school nor had any other connection with it.

The report of the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse regarding Downside and Ampleforth schools did not make specific recommendations to my department. However, a regulator of independent schools is carefully considering the inquiry’s findings. We have asked inspectors to pay close attention to the matters in the report at the next inspection of Downside. Ampleforth is currently under regulatory action and must improve or face further action, which could include closure.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the committee had evidence that one of the schools consulted its legal adviser as to whether it was legally obliged to report the abuse that it knew about. Having learned that it was not so obliged, it decided to cover it up. How much more evidence do the Government require of the need for mandatory reporting of child abuse in regulated activity? Of course, that does not include social workers, because social work is not a regulated activity. Will the Government now follow the evidence and respond with legislation?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, it is absolutely unacceptable for anyone to conceal abuse. The Government are committed to ensuring that legislation can adequately deal with this. We will scope this issue fully during the current Parliament. What individuals and organisations should do is already clear in statutory guidance. The guidance also makes it clear that there is a legal duty on employers to make a referral to the Disclosure and Barring Service in certain circumstances.

Sure Start

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 12th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

Following up on the previous question, is the Minister aware that yesterday, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children published a report showing that many local authorities are unable to afford the early intervention programmes that have just been mentioned and are so effective? The result is that a lot of children in some parts of the country are not getting the services that they would with the same level of need in another part of the country. Many children and families in that situation are going into a downward spiral and getting to the point where they need much more invasive intervention—even taking the child into care. It is cheaper and more effective to intervene early, so will the Minister have a look at the 12 recommendations of that report? They have the evidence, and the Government ought to act on it.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I thank the noble Baroness for bringing the report to my attention; I will certainly look at it. It is worth saying that although there has been a reduction in Sure Start centres, the proportion of centres serving the 30% most disadvantaged areas has remained constant, so the focus on disadvantaged areas has remained.

Free School Lunches and Milk, and School and Early Years Finance (Amendments Relating to Universal Credit) (England) Regulations 2018

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 20th March 2018 Lords Chamber

My basic concern is that this proposal—as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth has said—drives a coach and horses through the whole aim of universal credit. The Government have taken most of the working-age benefit system, thrown it up in the air, at vast cost, at huge disruption, and for what? Just to bring back in the biggest cliff edge we have seen in the system in decades? Surely this cannot be right. Will the Government think again?

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I too echo the concerns of the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, about the Government’s proposals to introduce an earnings threshold for eligibility for free school meals and milk. This is very unfair, because it takes no account of the number of children who the parents have to feed. It is a cumbersome way of doing things which will make it very difficult for families to plan their budgets and, as we have heard, will cause a poverty trap for many. This comes on top of recent cuts in benefits which have already made many working families worse off and the food banks busier.

Let me say first why free school meals are so important. There is plenty of research showing that nutrition levels in school meals are vastly better than those in either the average packed lunch, only 1.6% of which reach the same nutritional standard, or certainly those in a cheap bag of chips and a fizzy drink from the shop on the corner. One of the best services we have for school-age children is the provision of a nourishing meal at lunchtime. For some children in poverty, this is the only decent meal they will get all day, and it is essential that it is provided for them if their parents cannot afford to pay. Many teachers will tell you that they have children in their class who come to school without any breakfast. One local authority has taken this so much on board that it has decided to offer free meals for poor children every day of the year. That is because teachers notice evidence of malnutrition in some children when they come back to school after the holidays.

A nourishing, balanced meal containing fruit and vegetables is important not just for the health of the child, providing the vitamins needed for healthy growth and helping to prevent obesity; it is important also for the child’s behaviour and academic attainment. Pilot studies on the effect of universal provision of free school meals for key stage 1 children when they were introduced by the coalition Government showed a distinct improvement in behaviour, and attainment advanced by as much as two months. This was particularly so with children from disadvantaged backgrounds. So it is clear that free school meals are one of the major tools in our armoury for closing the attainment gap between the rich and the poor.

The main objective of our education system must be to help all children attain their maximum potential, and good nutrition is one foundation of this. A hungry child is not a learning child. Anything that has the potential for reducing the number of poorer children who receive such meals should be rejected. Indeed, we should provide free meals for more children, not fewer, because a free meals regime increases uptake, decreases stigma and reduces the number of children bringing in sandwiches and biscuits or going to the chip shop. That in turn improves the attainment of all children.

The Government have told us that 50,000 more children will receive free meals under the new regulations than under the old and promise that no child already on free school meals will lose their meals while at their current stage of education. The problem with that is that children grow up. They get to the end of primary school or secondary school and, suddenly, children who were formerly eligible for free meals will no longer get them. There needs not to have been any change in their parents’ earnings for this to happen because there is now an earnings threshold which takes no account of the size of the family.

Every mum and dad knows that it takes twice as much money to feed two children as one, and three times as much to feed three. That is £10 a week for lunches every week of term, or £20 or £30 for bigger families, which could easily be enough to make it not worth taking a few extra hours’ work. Where then is the fundamental work incentive that is supposed to underpin universal credit? Where now is the mantra “making work pay”?

I am not going to go through the case studies in the briefing, as the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, has already done so, but there is clear potential for making a lot of families worse off. The Government need to look at the disposable income of a family once the 63% withdrawal of universal credit for every extra pound earned has been taken account of and school meals paid for. If they do that, they may come up with a fairer system.

School lunches are not a luxury; they are an essential of life for those families who find it hard to feed their children. Of course, we are talking not only about meals; many other passported benefits are linked to free school meals which help make bringing up children bearable. They currently include the early years pupil premium. I beg the Minister to decouple that at the very least, because, again, it is in the interests of closing the attainment gap.

Universal credit was supposed to avoid the cliff edge and make it worth while going to work. By introducing a lower earnings threshold, the Government are creating a cliff edge at a very low earnings level where it will hurt most and undermine the whole point of universal credit. In doing so, they are putting at risk the health and academic attainment of the poorest children. Will the Minister please think again?

[Lord Lexden (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bassam, made his case with characteristic vigour and force, and with deep feeling as he recalled life in the 1960s in a part of Essex with which I was very familiar myself. The Motion states that up to 1 million poor children could be deprived of free school meals as a result of government policies. As my noble friend Lord Patten has shown, independent experts have urged us to treat this truly alarming prediction with considerable caution. We should be wary about rushing to the conclusion that a crisis is in the making.

It is accepted on all sides that the introduction of universal credit throughout our country, so vital in helping more people into jobs, will affect the number of children eligible for free school meals while ensuring that poor families, whose needs must be safeguarded, remain at the centre of policy. Interim arrangements were announced last summer to secure free school meals for all pupils whose parents were at that time recipients of universal credit. Future recipients will be subject to a means test as regards the provision of free school meals to their children. There is nothing new or unexpected about this. It has been a feature of the plans for this major, constructive reform of our welfare system since 2013.

What are the implications? The Department for Education estimates that, in the years ahead, some 50,000 more children will be entitled to a free school meal than under the arrangements which universal credit is replacing. That is welcome reassurance, but the Government should perhaps consider some form of monitoring. I wonder whether arrangements could be made to publish at regular intervals between now and 2022 authoritative figures for the number of children actually receiving free school meals so that the effects of this hugely significant change of policy can be assessed. We need to be sure that the poorest families in our country continue to receive the help they need.

A Manifesto to Strengthen Families

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I start by welcoming the Minister to the House of Lords and congratulate him on his meteoric rise to the Government Front Bench. I also thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for a very interesting debate and extremely important manifesto. There are so many policy areas that could be improved in order to redress the magnitude of family breakdown in this country that it is hard to know where to start. However, I plan to mention adoptive families, the benefits of family hubs, what can be done to keep offenders in touch with their families to reduce reoffending and the importance of teaching children about relationships in school.

I start with adoptive families—not mentioned by anybody except the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford—since I have a particular interest in them. I was recently contacted by a couple who are both psychologists and are adoptive parents. I took very seriously the points they were making, which were about burnout of adoptive parents and the lack of support for them. They reminded me that adoptive parents take on some of the most needy and challenging children in our society—traumatised children whose mental and physical health has been damaged by their life experiences. The people who take on these children are heroes and their attempts to give them a stable and loving family in which to recover from their previous trauma should be applauded and supported. However, these adoptive parents often have to deal with violence directed at them or other siblings, self-harm, incontinence, inappropriate or dangerous sexual behaviour, anger, school refusal and many sorts of mental health problems. Adoptive parents cannot take sick leave, resign or ask for a transfer to another department. Unlike foster parents, they do not get much help. Indeed, if they adopt after fostering, whatever help they had before often just stops.

Adoption UK thinks that as many as a quarter of all adoptive parents are in crisis and in need of professional help to keep the family together. But local authority post-adoption services vary tremendously; despite the fact that adopters save local authorities a massive amount of money, some are less than helpful when asked for help. Can the Minister say what is being done to ensure that an appropriate level of support for adoptive families is offered everywhere? If we do not do this, the NHS will be saddled with the cost of the mental health issues of the parents as well as their children.

Mental health has been mentioned by several noble Lords—the noble Lords, Lord Farmer, Lord Shinkwin and Lord Alton, among others. This brings me to the subject of teaching relationship and sex education in schools and the ability of schools to identify and signpost mental health problems. The best way to deal with mental health is of course to prevent the problems arising in the first place—the noble Lord, Lord Bird, mentioned prevention. Many of the issues that children face arise from family break-up or from violence or poor relationships in the family. Many children do not have a good model of healthy and respectful relationships at home. It is therefore often the job of the school to pick up the pieces and help build up children’s resilience. There is a major role for relationship and sex education in this, so I welcomed the Children and Social Work Act earlier this year, which should ensure that all children get it in an age-appropriate manner as part of their PSHE curriculum.

I have become aware, however, that the regulations to mandate schools to prepare and publish their RSE policy have not yet been made. Can the Minister say why this is and when it will be done? I welcomed the Prime Minister’s initiative on mental health first aid training in schools and wonder if the Minister can update us on how that is progressing. Such work can help children to ride out the worst effects of family unhappiness or even breakdown.

We live in a very unequal country, and an interesting statistic in the briefings we have received caught my eye. It showed that poor families break up more frequently than more affluent ones. As the noble Lord, Lord Parekh, said, almost half of five year-olds in poorer families are in broken families, compared with 16% in wealthier ones. This did not surprise me. It is widely known that a high percentage of parents are worried about money, and that money is frequently the cause of family arguments, so what is being done to improve the finances of families with children? I am afraid that the marriage tax allowance, which the noble Lord, Lord Morrow, mentioned, brings in less than £5 a week, even if the family applies for it, so that is not going to make much difference. By the way, I am not suggesting that it be improved, as I do not approve of it in the first place. I do not think it is the role of the state to support particular kinds of families.

Benefit cuts and the six-week wait for universal credit have sent far too many families into debt, and to food banks. If the Government are really concerned to keep families together, which, of course, is a laudable aim, they need to do everything possible to ensure that parents can feed their children and pay the bills. We hear about the record number of people in work, but the fact is that many jobs are very low paid and a high percentage of poor people are in work and eligible for benefits, which makes a nonsense of the Government’s constant claim that the best way out of poverty is through work. I would say it depends what sort of work, and how well it is paid. Can the Minister say what plans the Government have to make what they choose to call the living wage into something people can actually live on?

Many families need a range of services to help them survive, stay together and bring up their children successfully, and it is desirable that these services be easily accessible and linked together. That is why I, like the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and others, support the idea of family hubs, which can be based on children’s centres or Sure Start centres. I hope they will not become what the noble Lord, Lord Mawson, called the shiny new thing that disappears before long, as they would offer a wide range of services for parents as well as children. This is not a new idea. Several years ago, I visited the Coram Centre, where all kinds of services such as debt advice, immigration advice, English lessons and help to find a job and a home were offered to the parents of children in the nursery. It was a great example of what can be done in response to the particular needs of the families in the locality. Therefore, can the Minister say whether the Government support family hubs and whether extra funding will be made available, given the savings to many other services that they could provide in the future?

I will say a few words about prisoners and their families. There is an important role for families to keep in touch with offenders while they are in prison in the interests of their relationships with their spouses and children, and of reducing reoffending. However, in many cases, the prison system does not make it easy for families to visit. There is some very good practice, such as Skype conversations, but in some cases it is hard to see the logic of where offenders are placed. For example, there is a large, brand new prison in Wrexham, near where I live in north Wales. I recently learned that only 10% of the inmates come from Wales and that many come from a very long way away in England. In addition, the prison is located on an industrial estate miles from the nearest railway station. It cannot be easy for families without their own car to visit in those circumstances, so what is being done to ensure that families who want to keep up their relationship with the offender are helped to do so?

Finally, from experience, I issue a warning about impact assessments. During the coalition Government, my then honourable friend Sarah Teather said that policies would have a child rights impact assessment. I am not aware that that is being done. Therefore, if we are to have a family impact assessment, I hope that it really happens.

Fire Safety: Schools

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Monday 3rd July 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Walmsley]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the Grenfell Tower fire, what plans they have to review their guidance Fire safety in new and existing school buildings.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, our thoughts and prayers are with the relatives, friends and families, and all those people affected by the Grenfell tragedy. The department certainly has no plans to introduce any changes to its guidance that would make fire safety laws for schools less strict. Alongside the rest of government, we will review and act appropriately on any findings from the tragic events at Grenfell Tower. We are undertaking an analysis of all school buildings to identify any at a fire risk from cladding.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

I thank the Minister for his reply and share his concerns about the victims of Grenfell. Is he aware that last year the London Fire Brigade did 184 school fire safety consultations and that, despite it feeling that all new and refurbished schools should have sprinklers fitted, only 2% of such schools were fitted with them? This indicates that the current guidance is not being followed. Given that sprinklers can save lives and reduce the rising cost of property damage, will the Government commit to making sprinklers mandatory in new and refurbished schools and producing up-to-date and robust information about the cost of school fires in lives, cash and educational disruption?

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, all new schools must comply with fire safety guidance before they are allowed to open and only in those assessed as low risk are sprinklers not expected to be installed. The number of fires in schools has halved in the past 10 years. The department is not aware of the claims that the noble Baroness makes. Our recent consultation involved discussions with experts from across the fire sector, including the Chief Fire Officers Association and the London Fire Brigade. We would welcome any intelligence that they or she have to offer in relation to this.