Children’s Education Recovery and Childcare Costs

Debate between Bridget Phillipson and Edward Timpson

Tuesday 7th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight that, as with all these things, it is a question of political priorities. A Labour Government would have prioritised our children’s recovery from the pandemic. They would have been at the heart of what we needed to see as we started to rebuild our country. That is what we would have delivered from government.

[Edward Timpson (Eddisbury) (Con)]

I will take the hon. Lady back to the closure of schools during lockdown. We now know that that had a profound impact on many children, for a host of reasons. I know that the Secretary of State has said that, in hindsight, the way it was done was perhaps not the right thing to do. First, does she agree with that? Secondly, does she agree that schools should become part of our essential national infrastructure so that we do not close them again should an unfortunate pandemic happen again?

[Bridget Phillipson]

I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Gentleman and I appreciate the expertise that he brings to these issues. He raises an important point about how we plan for the future and look at what worked during the pandemic and what needs to be done differently. I am glad that the inquiry into our covid response will now consider issues around children and schools. That is right and important.

I have a significant degree of sympathy for the very difficult decisions that Ministers faced right at the start of the pandemic when confronted with an unknown virus. We can all remember how terrifying that was; I think it was the right decision when Ministers acted in the way they did. What I find inexcusable, however, is that, from that point, there was no proper plan to get our children back to school as quickly as possible—to use all available methods to do that as safely as possible. I find it incomprehensible that we still do not have a proper plan, but I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s point about the need to ensure that, in the event that we see such a terrible situation again, our children are put first. I am afraid to say that they were not during this pandemic.

We see this as schools face eyewatering costs for their energy. A primary school on Merseyside recently contacted me with its electricity bills from April last year and April this year. For April 2021, its electricity bill was £1,514. For April 2022, its electricity bill was £8,145—a rise of more than 400%. Where are the Government, as those costs soar and our schools need help to protect children’s learning from rising crisis, to ensure that energy bills are not being paid by cutting back on staff, activities and summer trips, and the quality of children’s school lunches? Nowhere. Again and again, we see a Government not leading the way but leaving schools to work out 100 different solutions on their own.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bridget Phillipson and Edward Timpson

Monday 19th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

I am tempted not to give a response at all, Mr Speaker, and I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman has been tempted down that line of questioning. He knows full well that our intervention, whether in Birmingham, Doncaster or any other local authority, has had a positive effect: 29 of those local authorities where we have had direct intervention since 2010 have come out of that process. However, we need to make sure that where there is ingrained failure in children’s services we do all we can to bring those services up to scratch, and I am not going to shy away from making decisions that ensure children across this country have better services, better protection and better lives.

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

8. What assessment she has made of the effect of recent changes in child care costs on the affordability of nursery care for families on low and medium incomes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bridget Phillipson and Edward Timpson

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

14. What steps she is taking to ensure that local authorities recruit and retain an adequate number of qualified children and family social workers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

Since 2010, we have invested more than £0.5 billion in social worker training and improvement. The number of registered children and family social workers has risen to 24,845. Programmes such as Step Up to Social Work, the Assessed and Supported Year in Employment and, more recently, Frontline are all righty focused on bringing high-quality people into social work to improve the retention and status of social workers and, most importantly, the outcomes for children.

[Bridget Phillipson]

I am grateful to the Minister for highlighting the need to attract more people into social work in the difficult area of child protection, but is it not important for councils to strike the right balance between newly qualified social workers and experienced staff? If we expect newly qualified social workers to carry too high a case load and we do not provide the right support, that will not only damage retention, but have a negative impact on vulnerable children. What will he do to address that further?

[Mr Timpson]

I agree with the hon. Lady. It is important that newly qualified social workers get as much support as possible when we bring them into the profession, so that they see it as a legitimate career to remain in and so that too many of them do not leave it too soon. That is why the chief social worker, Isabelle Trowler, recently proposed an approved child and family practitioner accredited status, and said that we must ensure that we have accredited supervisors and a practice leader in all children’s services to lead practice from the front. On top of that, there has been better collaboration across the local authorities in areas such as the north-east, where the hon. Lady’s constituency is based, to look at social worker need in the region and keep vacancy rates as low as possible.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Bridget Phillipson and Edward Timpson

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Bridget Phillipson (Houghton and Sunderland South) (Lab)]

12. What recent assessment he has made of progress on inter-agency working for child protection; and if he will make a statement.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

Professor Eileen Munro looked at inter-agency working in her widely welcomed review of child protection. We endorsed her conclusion that a strong culture of inter-agency working and information sharing is needed in child protection. That is why we have strengthened the statutory guidance, “Working together to safeguard children” 2013, setting out the core responsibilities and legal requirements for all who come into contact with children in order to keep them safe.

[Mr Timpson]

The hon. Lady highlights an extremely serious issue which we have taken on board in relation to serious case reviews. It is important that we understand not only what happened but, as she rightly said, why that happened. We have seen in recent serious case reviews the need to get that analysis right so that in the future we see fewer of the problems of the past resurfacing. The Secretary of State will be making a speech later this week on precisely this issue and setting out his vision of what more we need to do to keep our children safe, but it is right that we keep that focus directly where it needs to be—on children—and that it remains our highest priority.

[Bridget Phillipson]

All too often serious case reviews feature a history of domestic violence in the family. What is the Minister doing across government to make sure that a range of professionals are properly trained in this area and are then able to identify and respond to domestic violence?

[Mr Timpson]

Before I came to this House and was practising in the family courts, it was a depressing feature of most cases that domestic violence was taking place in the presence of children and sometimes with children being the recipients of that violence. That is why we must be extremely vigilant in whatever work we do with children to make sure we root it out. The Home Office is doing work to try to address training and the understanding of domestic violence, and I know that that is one of the key areas on which the sexual violence against children and vulnerable people national group is working. I will encourage it to do so in collaboration with my Department.