Free School Meals

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I want to agree with two things that the shadow Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), said in her speech. The first is that no child should go hungry in this country. That is something that we all agree with in this House. The question is how we can ensure that outcome?

Before I was a Member of this House, I ran a charity working with children and families at risk, and I did a lot of work with schools, and I recognise that there is an important role for schools to facilitate social support for children and families. They can play an important role as a hub in the local community, as has been said, but it is not appropriate to make them a provider of welfare themselves. As we have heard from the shadow Secretary of State, there is a possibility of the proposal becoming permanent. That is not an appropriate use of schools. Now that schools are open again, it is not appropriate to make them welfare providers. That is a role for the welfare system. I pay tribute to the DWP and to the Ministers who have overseen universal credit. That system has been a great success, and without it we would be in a very serious way, That is the appropriate mechanism for delivering welfare to families.

More can be done and, of course, more is being done by the Government. We have seen a £20 a week uplift to universal credit, which will run through half-term, through Christmas and into next year. Free school meals are available for families with no recourse to public funds and, of course, extra money has been made available for local authorities to provide welfare to families, including £500,000 for my local authority in Wiltshire, which is very welcome. No doubt more can be done, and I echo my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) in calling for a comprehensive strategy to support families and children during the school holidays. That is an absolutely pressing need, and we need to get it right.

My second point of agreement with the shadow Secretary of State is on putting aside party politics. She then went on to make one of the most partisan speeches I have heard in my short time in this House, with references to test and trace, consultants and even the Prime Minister’s personal finances, which is pretty unnecessary.

I will talk quickly about the motivation behind this debate and of Members in this House. I hope we can agree that rudeness of the sort we saw earlier from the Opposition Front Bench is completely unacceptable. I do not think robust language is unacceptable. It is quite appropriate to use robust language—we should not bleed these debates of any emotion—and it is completely acceptable and understandable if Opposition Members want to attack the Government on their competence. I do not agree, but it is fair enough to attack us on our judgment.

Obviously, mistakes get made, which is understandable; but to attack us on our motivation and our morality, as we repeatedly hear from Opposition Members, is completely unacceptable, because it demeans this House and the quality of debate. It does not serve the people of this country. I ask Opposition Members to desist from that, to keep the debate on policy and to stop the trolling they are engaged in at the moment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Kieran Mullan (Crewe and Nantwich) (Con)]

I welcome this debate today, as it gives us an opportunity to have a discussion on challenging issues around poverty in our constituencies. The causes of poverty are not simple. What is most important is sustainable solutions. Increases in the living wage, increases in the income tax threshold, decreases in absolute poverty and income inequality in the long term—those are the sustainable, long-term achievements of this Government. Have we solved everything? No. Could we all—individuals, communities, millionaire celebrities and supermarkets—have a role to play in doing more? Yes. But to pretend that further increasing the role of the state directly in feeding children is a solution is mistaken. Yet again, it sends out the signal that our communities do not have to look after each other.

Again and again, we reinforce the idea that taking money off people through the tax system to support people less well off is always good, but asking people to choose to be generous and support other people in their communities in need is somehow bad. I want to live in a society where our local communities look out for each other and provide support to those who are less well off. I am incredibly proud of the hard work and effort put in by local charities in my constituency that, with help from donations and support from local people and local businesses, support those in need. The Government do have a role to play, but our communities play a role, too. What is so wrong with that?

[Danny Kruger]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the charities he is talking about are able to be much more targeted, precise, sensitive and generous than a blanket state system?

[Dr Mullan]

Indeed, and they tend to provide support in a wraparound way. Rather than just giving out a meal, it tends to be part of a broader package of support for a family that tackles things in the longer term.

Why is it that when the state tackles a problem using taxpayers’ money—our money—indirectly, it is always the right solution, but when people choose to help solve a problem themselves directly, it must be a reflection of some kind of failure? The reality is that those on the Opposition Benches are advocating for us to live in a world where the state caters to every need and every challenge and mitigates every consequence. That is the logical conclusion of what they argue. That is not the kind of country I want to live in, where generosity of spirit, kindness and support for our neighbours are somehow surplus to requirements.

I ask high-profile campaigners on this issue to urge their hundreds of thousands of social media followers, who are signing petitions and retweeting, to put an equal amount of energy into encouraging their friends and family to volunteer for charities, to mentor young people, to help parents who are struggling and to donate money to local organisations to fight poverty. I want voices such as Courtney Lawes to be heard as widely as Marcus Rashford’s. The combined wealth of some of the individuals and businesses who think this can all be fixed with money means that they are very well placed to make that change themselves if they think it is necessary.

Do not tell me these problems only start and end with Government. The number of people living in relative poverty in the UK has been around 14 million for decades. I listened to the hon. Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner) throwing accusations such as “shameful” at us. He is no longer in his place, but where was he under the Labour Government, when there were also millions of people, including children, living in poverty? It was not “shameful” then, but apparently when it is the Conservative Government, it becomes shameful.

This Government have acted, and they have played a role. Yes, we need to keep these issues at the heart of the Government’s agenda, and yes, we need to understand the impact of poverty and combat it, but our whole society has a role to play in contributing and helping one another to build lives, livelihoods and families and provide long-term solutions to these challenges.

Support for Children and Families: Covid-19

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

I am grateful to right hon. and hon. Members for their patience during the security scare, but all has now been satisfactorily resolved. This is a one and a half hour debate; it will start now and finish at 25 minutes past 11. One Member has chosen to withdraw from the list as he will not be able to be here between 11 am and 11.25 am. If there are others in a similar position, they can notify the Chair accordingly.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered support for children and families during the covid-19 outbreak.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher. I am very grateful to the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron) and my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) for supporting the application for this debate. We have become used to hearing that the pandemic has exacerbated the inequalities that existed in our society, and that we need to build back better. I do not intend to change that script. I want to start with some observations about family life under covid-19 and draw some lessons for the future.

I was very much a witness to the inequalities under lockdown. I spent it with my family in Wiltshire during the beautiful spring and early summer, watching the barley slowly ripen, under skies clear of planes; cycling on roads clear of cars. It was an idyllic existence. However, every day my inbox would fill with emails from families in crisis. I used to work with children and families at risk in disadvantaged parts of London, and I have some sense as to what parents in overcrowded accommodation without enough money must have been through this year. For families who were already in trouble, financially or emotionally, the pandemic has been a disaster. Rates of domestic violence have soared, alcohol and substance abuse have increased, people’s mental health has suffered, and, of course, poverty has worsened.

Save the Children reports that 40% of families have become worse off, and 20% of families have made use of food banks. Personal debt has risen dramatically, and children are the principal victims here, especially children with disabilities, looked-after children, and all those who really rely on support outside the home—support which in many cases disappeared during lockdown, and will remain unavailable in areas under local lockdowns.

I acknowledge how much the measures put in place by the Government have helped many of these families: universal credit, the brainchild of the my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith), has worked with incredible efficiency. It is a tribute to him and the current Ministers, and to the thousands of officials and jobcentre staff who manage that system. The £20 per week uplift has been a lifeline for countless families. Likewise the mortgage holidays, the protection against eviction, the furlough scheme and the self-employment income support scheme. The Government put a defensive ring around families’ homes and incomes and I pay tribute to them.

I want to pay tribute not only to the Government, but to the families themselves, or should I say “the family” as an institution. The resilience, capability and adaptability and the hidden resources of care and skill that families found in this crisis are extraordinary. The families are the single most important system for what we used to call social security. They have been the most effective defence against disaster for children and adults. They are the single greatest asset that we have as a country.

I mention this because it is right that we focus on these dreadful problems, but we also need to consider the conditions for success, to accentuate the positive, as Bing Crosby said, not just eliminate the negative. However, to eliminate the negative first, I have two simple principles to suggest to address the current crisis for families.

The first principle is that of greater support around the family through more investment in the social infrastructure of communities, especially civil society, especially through the family hubs that my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton and others have championed so assiduously and that are found in the Conservative manifesto. I would also like to see expansion of the help to claim and the flexible support fund. We are inching towards the vision my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green has for what he called universal support: a package of help provided by charities and community groups alongside the cash provided by universal credit.

The second immediate step that we should be taking to eliminate the negative, in order to meet the needs of families in trouble right now, is to invest directly in them. I respect the arguments of those who want to maintain the £20 a week uplift for all UC claimants beyond next April, but I would point out that it would not only cost nearly £6 billion a year but that half of those claimants do not have children, and in my view we should focus on households with children, aka families.

Let me finish with some high-level thoughts on how to accentuate the positive and strengthen families from within over the long term, so that people are better insulated against whatever shocks and challenges the next decades will throw at us. Here, I have to challenge what I see as a malign alliance of left and right, or more specifically liberals on the left and the right, who are the dominant force in both our tribes. By the way, I exclude from my idea of “liberal” the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, a Liberal Democrat. Where is he? Not here—withdrawn. He is a sound conservative in my book, but he is not here to defend himself against my suggestion that he is not really a liberal but a good conservative.

Anyway, liberals of left and right might disagree on the proper size and role of Government, but they agree that government and society in general should not try to influence family life. I think they are wrong and that government should seek to influence family life, because it does so anyway; it influences the choices that people make all the time. When it pretends to be neutral, its influence is no less real but is a lot less positive.

The policies that we have created in this country over many decades actively, although not intentionally, pull families apart. Our housing policy has created the smallest homes and our jobs market has created the longest commutes in Europe. We have childcare subsidies that only work for people if they put their kids into a nursery for most of the day, and we have a higher education system that makes young people study far from home for jobs that only exist in big cities. We have a social care system that only pays out to people if they put their parents into residential care or makes them sell the family home to pay for it. Most of all, we actively disincentivise family stability by penalising couples who live together. We pay couples more in benefits if they live apart. We tax people as individuals, which means we tax single-earner couples particularly hard, and then we compensate them in benefits. We then punish them for coming off benefits and moving into work with a very high effective marginal tax rate. I recognise that universal credit has greatly reduced that rate, but it remains too high. We have high taxes and high benefits, and we still leave families in poverty.

In contrast to the malign alliance of liberals who think that family life is no business of wider society and of the Government, I have a view of what good looks like. Before I cause alarm—I can sense the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) beginning to twitch—I should emphasise that I am not conjuring up the 1950s, with the nuclear family centred on the housewife. As David Brooks has written, the 1950s nuclear family, the single-earner household living literally detached from wider kin and community, was a brief and unsuccessful experiment only made tolerable by Valium. As Mary Harrington has argued, the trad wife—#tradwife, as it is trendily known in some conservative circles—is a historic anomaly. The really traditional wife was a trade wife; she was not just a domestic consumer, but a fully engaged player in the local economy. What I am getting at is that we need to recognise and support the economy of households and not just of individuals. You will know, Sir Christopher, that the economy of households is actually a tautology, because the etymology of our word “economy” is in fact the Greek world word for household—the oikos. The oikos was the smallest viable social unit, the foundation of society, and we need to strengthen it.

Yes, that means support for one-earner couples. I applaud the work of the Centre for Social Justice and the Centre for Policy Studies, and “A Manifesto To Strengthen Families”, led by the friend of many of us here, David Burrowes. They all call for an end to the couple penalty in the tax system. When Nigel Lawson introduced individual taxation in 1990, he always intended to let married couples share their combined personal allowances if one of them did not do paid work. Mrs Thatcher— possibly like the hon. Member for Walthamstow, who in so many ways she resembles—was not sympathetic to stay-at-home mothers.

We need to get this matter right, so that people who choose to work—unpaid—by looking after children or elderly relatives, or by helping in their community, are not penalised for doing so. My idea of what good looks like is both more old-fashioned than in the 1950s and more progressive; it is both medieval and modern, which I am sure Members will agree is what we should be aiming for in all things. Two parents where possible, multigenerational where possible, with both parents able to work from or close to home, in paid employment or self-employment, or caring for others without pay, and engaged in the local community. That is the vision that I think would command the support of the public. Middle-class families such as mine had a glimpse of that model during the lockdown, and I hope we can achieve it for everyone.

Free School Meals: Summer Holidays

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I agree with the hon. Lady about the importance of this debate and of working across the House. I am sorry that this topic has become such a political football because it is one that unites the House, but surely the question is not whether to support the most vulnerable children in our society, but how we do that. Will she acknowledge that the Government are working hard with councils, with schools, with businesses and, crucially, with civil society to put in place a system of support and activity through this summer to ensure that children get the support they need?

[Rebecca Long Bailey]

I thank the hon. Member for his comments. I await with bated breath the details of the Secretary of State’s summer scheme—I have some ideas to suggest to him for how it might be rolled out. Indeed, there is a wider suite of support that our children will need throughout the pandemic and as we exit lockdown. Tackling poverty is just one element.

Education Settings: Wider Opening

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Lady is inaccurate. The laptops that we promised to get out to vulnerable children and those who face exams in year 10 are on schedule. We said that they would all be distributed by the end of June and we are on target to do that. We decided to prioritise the most vulnerable children and I still think that that was the right decision. On a catch-up plan, this is not something that is just over a few weeks; the approach has to be over a full year and more. That is what we are putting in place and how we will support children in the long term.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

All schools and teachers have worked incredibly hard over this period, but some schools have managed to deliver whole-class direct teaching live through video. Does my right hon. Friend agree that sadly, some children in this country have received no online direct teaching at all and many have received very little because the teaching unions have opposed the practice, often with the support of Opposition Members? If the return to school is to be delayed further, what can we do to ensure that more children receive direct teaching?

[Gavin Williamson]

Where children are not in a position to return to school, we will set out clearly to all schools the basic minimum curriculum requirements we expect them to deliver for all children. That is to be expected and we hope that all schools follow that. It is not just through online learning, but through sharing resources with children. We have seen some excellent practice, but we want to keep driving up all schools to the very highest standards for all children.

Educational Settings

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Gentleman refers to his concerns about some of those children. I very much imagine that they would be included in those children who are most vulnerable.

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

I appreciate that children will not be sitting any exams this year, but is the expectation that they will continue to receive an education? Is there anything we can do to support schools to deliver remote teaching, and to support parents who want to help with home learning?

[Gavin Williamson]

As my hon. Friend will be aware, schools have been doing a lot to provide children with work and enable them to continue to study if the school closes. We are working closely with the BBC, and we are looking at putting more resources online in order to support children to continue to learn even if they are not in an education setting.

Self-defence Training in Schools

Danny Kruger Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) on securing this important debate, on a topic that grew out of the most terrible tragedy, the death of Ellie Gould. Ellie’s grandmother, Patricia Gould, is a constituent of mine who lives near Calne, and I have been in touch with her. I entirely associate myself with my hon. Friend’s remarks about the sentencing regime that badly let down the family in this case. I hope that the Lord Chancellor will reconsider the sentencing guidelines so that we can see some change.

I strongly endorse the proposal that we should try and see how schools can do more to equip young people with the skills needed to defend themselves against physical attacks. I fully support the Government’s focus on getting the basics right in education. We have seen a helpful correction over the past decade and a reminder of what education is really about. The primary purpose of schools is to equip children and young people with the academic ability that will be the foundation for their future life. That is what schools are for. However, that is not all that they are for and there is space in the curriculum to help them develop the wider life skills that they need to prosper. Alongside our relentless focus on academic standards, we should consider the skills that young people need for life, so we should think about the practical skills that they need outside of academic training or professional skills. They need to know how to live an adult life. That includes the focus on mental health and relationships that my hon. Friend mentioned.

I also think there is a role for equipping young people with the skills of de-escalation. There is so much conflict in our society, and I do not just mean physical attacks, which I will come to. Young people often encounter conflict. Naturally, they acquire the habits of managing that, but as adults we should equip them with those. There is a case to be made for thinking about organisations that work with young people, as with adults, to equip them with the skills to de-escalation conflict.

Most poignantly of all, and most importantly, we are here to discuss the skills of self-defence. I entirely endorse what my hon. Friend said. The programme need not be complex or expensive, and neither is it something that teachers should necessarily be responsible for providing. We should think about the role of community organisations and the community itself in providing support. I am glad to hear that the Minister affirmed that what happens in a school is the responsibility of teachers, schools and governing bodies. It is not appropriate for the Government to mandate that directly. Nevertheless, if the Government were to associate themselves with the campaign and strongly encourage schools to listen to students and parents, who I am sure would endorse it, we would see schools taking up the invitation.

I entirely commend today’s debate. I congratulate the young friends of Ellie Gould on their campaign and I would welcome the Minister’s support for this agenda as a fitting legacy for Ellie’s life.