Sure Start Children’s Centres

Ben Gummer Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andy Burnham]

Sure Start was ring-fenced—that was the policy of our Government. The Labour manifesto talks of strengthening early intervention. I am holding the Prime Minister to account for what he said when he was seeking the votes of people in this country. He said, in terms, that he would strengthen Sure Start, so I am saying that we should look at the evidence on the ground. Is Sure Start strengthening or weakening? When I read the hon. Gentleman some of the evidence, I hope that he will make an honest judgment on whether the service is getting better or is under threat.

The research from the Library tells us that in England the average cut in the EIG between 2010-11 and 2011-12 is £50 for every child in this country. Altogether that is absolute proof that the PM, who is undoubtedly a good talker—a PR man—is dangerously cavalier with the facts at the Dispatch Box, as Oxford university recently found to its cost. He said at the election that he would protect Sure Start, but in fact he has cut it, in real terms, by about a quarter. This takes us to the crux of the matter. The Government have not had the guts to be honest about the cuts that they are making to Sure Start. Instead, they have cut the budget, removed the ring fence, and offloaded the problem and the responsibility on to local authorities up and down the country, some of which face invidious choices in cutting essential services for children—child safeguarding and other important services. That is a terrible position for local authorities to be in, be they Conservative, Liberal, Labour or in coalition. Some other councils are cutting way beyond what would have been the ring fence. They are cutting into funds that were given by the Government for the purposes of Sure Start, siphoning them off and spending them elsewhere.

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman talked about cavalier language. At the last election, Harriet Harman, the Member for—

[Mr Speaker]

Order. May I remind Members that they should not name other Members? The reference should be to the constituency represented; I think that the hon. Gentleman was about to get on to that.

[Ben Gummer]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, for correcting me.

At the time, the lady of whom I spoke came to Ipswich and told my constituents that children’s centres would be cut in Ipswich. Since the election, every single centre has stayed open and two more have been added. The right hon. Gentleman is a decent man. Will he apologise on her behalf for having misled people, because I have tried to get her to apologise and she has refused to answer my letters?

[Andy Burnham]

I will happily look at what is happening on the ground in Ipswich. However, there is an important difference that I point out to the hon. Gentleman. It is possible to keep a children’s centre’s lights on and keep a receptionist and a cleaner, but what is going on inside? Is he satisfied that an appropriate level of service is being provided to support the parents of Ipswich? That is the judgment that he has to make. It is not just a case of whether he can come to the House and say that Ipswich is keeping the lights on—it needs to do more than that. Indeed, his own Government have funded it to do more than that. Suffolk, which is the local authority concerned, has had a huge cut of £40 per child in its area. He has to ask his Front Benchers whether that is acceptable for his constituents.

Let me go around the towns and point out what is happening on the ground. Derby, home to a Tory-Liberal coalition, seems like a good place to start. Surely there, if anywhere, people would implement coalition policy to the letter, would they not? Well, perhaps not, because we find that in Derby six children’s centres are threatened with closure. In a BBC news report on 10 March, Kelly Jennings, daughter of the Tory leader of the council, Harvey Jennings, said:

“I voted for the Conservatives because I thought there was going to be more help for the NHS. Now they are cutting that off and locally they are cutting off the Sure Start centres which single parents like myself rely on.”

We have been very pleased to welcome Kelly into the Labour party because she sees that in these tough times only Labour will be the voice of people and stand up for the services on which people depend. [Interruption.] Conservative Members laugh, so let us look at some Tory authorities. We have heard wonderful praise for many local authorities today; let us look at a few others. Are they working hard, like other authorities, to implement the Prime Minister’s clear pre-election pledges?

In Hammersmith and Fulham, we saw the first use of an interesting tactic that my hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) mentioned earlier. Many of its 16 children’s centres were under threat of closure. My hon. Friend went to the council meeting to see it discuss the issue. Then we heard the news that six would become hubs and 10 would remain as spokes. Only when we dig a little deeper do we find that nine of those so-called spokes will receive £25,000 a year. What is that enough to pay for—a receptionist, a caretaker, a bottle of bleach? Is there much more that it would pay for? I do not know, but it could not be very much. At the last Education questions, my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) recalled the hospital without patients in “Yes Minister”. This coalition may be remembered for a more modern equivalent —a children’s centre without any children in it. That could be the Secretary of State’s legacy. I do not know about hubs and spokes, but there are certainly plenty of mirrors and smoke when it comes to presenting the facts about Sure Start.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ben Gummer (Ipswich) (Con)]

I have to profess that I am underwhelmed by the motion. It asks, in the end, for the Secretary of State to monitor the evidence. The Opposition do not ask for the closures of half the Sure Start centres in the country to be reversed, but that was the threat put before the electorate at the last election.

As I mentioned earlier, the right hon. and learned Member for Camberwell and Peckham (Ms Harman) was in my constituency during the last election. I confronted her at the entrance to the Tree House Sure Start centre. She shouted at me that centres in Ipswich would be closed within months of the general election. What has happened? Not only has every centre stayed open, but two new ones have opened. The services have been protected because of the decisions of the Conservative county council, which faces £90 million-worth of cuts over the next two years, and because of the strength of will of Councillor Graham Newman, who leads the children’s and young people’s services there.

Suffolk shows how it can be done. The shadow Secretary of State suggests that the centres are hollowed out. Last week I was at the Tree House centre, on the anniversary of that altercation with the right hon. and learned Lady. I went inside with Claire Ball, the manager of the centre. It is true that parts of the organisation of Sure Start centres are having to be remodelled, but Claire Ball is introducing new services and the county council is excited about the possibilities in the Health and Social Care Bill, which will allow it to integrate social services yet further within Sure Start centres.

I assure the shadow Secretary of State that every centre is staying open. Perhaps he will tell that to the right hon. and learned Lady. I have written to her and confirmed that she has not apologised for the smear that she made. Every centre has stayed open and the services are being improved and increased.

That bears testament to the passion that Government Members feel for Sure Start. It is telling that more Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members are attending this Opposition day debate than Labour Members. I exempt the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) from that criticism. I do not want to embarrass him once again by mentioning him, but he has driven many people on both sides of the Chamber into politics. Having been discouraged from this vocation from perhaps too close a connection with it, he was the one person who saved it in my mind.

The genesis of the right hon. Gentleman’s idea is to have a broader universal service, with funding targeted at those who need it most, to repair the damage of decades of failure—not dreamt of or created by anyone deliberately—in communities across the country. The failure has been of a structural welfare state that does not support families and does not, at times, support communities. That failure was not designed, but it has happened. We are in the process of re-stitching together communities, and Sure Start is part of that.

May I ask the Secretary of State and Ministers to address two things that could be improved? We need proper longitudinal studies through Sure Start into primary education so that we can understand the evidence, but there are blocks in data protection which prevent that from happening. Primary school teachers would very much welcome better co-ordination with Sure Start managers and assistants, and they could do that better if data protection rules were relaxed. It would also be useful to be able to encourage a greater diversity of providers so that we can share best practice across the country.

Conservative Members are passionately in favour of Sure Start, and that is why it is such a pleasure to see it flourishing in my constituency under this Government.