Sure Start Children’s Centres

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Steve Rotheram

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Sheerman]

May I help my hon. Friend, because he has just taken an intervention from the Chairman of the current Select Committee? I have read the Government’s response to our original response and it states:

“We are aware that Durham University published a report recently which suggested that Government investment in Sure Start had not delivered improvements in early language and numeracy development. We do not share that view—the 2010 Foundation Stage Profile results showed that the proportion of young children achieving a good level of development had increased by 4 percentage points compared to 2009”.

We must therefore balance what the Government actually said against what some people think they said.

[Steve Rotheram]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to make that point.

Secondly, the Committee urged the Government to give the programme time to bear fruit, given that even the oldest tranche of centres was only about six years old at that stage. The Committee said:

“It would be catastrophic if Children’s Centres were not afforded long-term policy stability and security of funding while evaluation is ongoing.”

Thirdly, the Committee categorically urged against the removal of ring-fencing, saying:

“We consider that it would be unwise to remove the ring-fence around Children’s Centres funding in the short or medium term; putting Centres at the mercy of local vicissitudes would risk radically different models and levels of service developing across the country, with differences out of proportion to the variation in community needs.”

Some Tory Members served on that Committee, so this was a cross-party report.