Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Seventh sitting)

David Baines Excerpts

Committee stage
Thursday 30th January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Neil O'Brien]

The hon. Lady is quite right to point out the tension between wanting to avoid micromanagement and saying that if we are in the business of prescription, we might do some sensible things. I wanted to offer a positive suggestion rather than simply critique what the Government are doing, which is why that is there. Indeed, a lot of schools are already doing it. I understand the hon. Lady’s point, but one reason why Whitehall micromanagement is a bad idea is that rules dreamed up by civil service mandarins in London often go wrong when they make contact with the real world. That is exactly what has happened here.

I have no doubt that Ministers’ intentions for clause 23 are good, but it will have the opposite effect to the one they intend. It may well make things more expensive for parents—not less. That will hit many schools. Ministers said, in answer to a written question, that

“based on the Department’s 2023 cost of school uniforms survey of parents, we estimate that one third of primary schools and seven in ten secondary schools will have to remove compulsory branded items from their uniforms to comply”.

Instead of measures the Government could have brought forward in the Bill—things that the polls show are teacher priorities such as discipline, as Teacher Tapp shows—we will have at least 8,000 schools spending their time reviewing their uniform policy.

Worst of all, this may well end up increasing costs for parents overall. Many secondary schools will respond to this new primary legislation by stopping having uniform PE kit, at which point, highly brand-aware kids will push parents to have stuff from Adidas or Nike or whatever instead, which will be more expensive. What do we think that school leaders will get rid of in response to the new rules? We know that according to the Government, lots of them will have to change their uniforms in response to this.

In a poll of school leaders last year, more than half said that the first things they would remove in the event of such restrictions would be PE kit, but uniform PE kit is cheaper than sportswear brands; it is nearly half the price for secondary school kids. I worry that the Government have a sort of tunnel vision here. They want to cut the cost of uniform, but we really want to cut the cost of clothing children overall. The problem is that when we get rid of uniform, particularly PE kit, what will fill the space is often more expensive and worse.

[David Baines (St Helens North) (Lab)]

I speak as a parent of a child at a secondary school with branded PE kit, so I have some interest in this. Maybe my understanding is wrong, but surely any responsible school following this becoming law, as I hope it does, would still have a uniform? Uniform does not have to be branded to be uniform. This would not necessarily mean that it would be a free for all and that children would be encouraged to turn up in all sorts of branded sports gear. They can still wear plain sports clothes that are uniform and are not hugely expensive or branded by international sportswear brands.

[Neil O'Brien]

That is an incredibly helpful point, because it leads me to the point that the word “branded” here is being used in a very specific way, which is not a particularly natural meaning. Anything specific or anything where there is only a couple of shops that sell it will count as branded. For example, I think of the rugby jumper that I used to wear when I was doing rugby league in Huddersfield in the 1990s. It was a red jumper with a blue stripe. If it was freezing cold and snowing, I could reverse it. That jumper was branded. It did not have any brand on it—it was not sportswear—but anything like that is captured in the provision. I also remember that when I was at school, in summer we had very unbranded clothing. The school said, “You can have a black T-shirt.” What happened? Everyone had a black Nike or Adidas T-shirt, so more expensive stuff fills the space.

Let us take a worked example and think about the primary school that my children go to, which is typical. They have a jumper and a tie in the winter. My daughter has a summer dress. They have a PE hoodie, a PE T-shirt and a plastic book bag, so they are a couple of items over the limit. Our children are at a really typical state primary, so which of those items do Ministers want them to drop?

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (First sitting)

David Baines Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[Amanda Martin]

Q It is clear that we need strong partnerships to stop children slipping through the cracks, which happens far too often. What do you think will be the impact of creating the duty of safeguarding for partnerships to establish the multi-agency child protection teams? What lessons must we learn?

Dr Homden: I think we will need to send you a further briefing on that point, beyond what I have already said. The point is that if there is a duty, you are creating a framework within which there is much stronger accountability, assuming that it is carefully inspected, considered and acted on if it is not implemented.

I sympathise with the previous point. The welfare of the child is paramount and local authorities have an absolute duty to act, irrespective of any other duties on them, to ensure the safety of a child in acute circumstances. But the Bill protects that and makes that clear. Mandating family group decision making makes sure that best practice, in time, becomes the only practice.

[David Baines (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Q In your view, are the measures in the Bill proportionate for improving child safeguarding and protecting children? Local authorities’ spend on looked-after children in the past decade or so has increased from about £3.5 billion to over £8 billion a year. Will the measures in the Bill help to address that and bring it down?

Anne Longfield: I would say that they will begin to address that and bring it down. We are in quite an extreme situation. We know that the level of spend on children in care is very high and that it is not sustainable for any of us, for the public purse. We also know that it does not lead to the best outcomes for a lot of children. If early intervention had been in place, it could have been a very different situation.

I think it is proportionate for a first stage. There is much more that can be done, and there are things we could put in around interventions, play sufficiency, mental health support, children’s centres and family hubs that could extend that into something that can get beyond this first stage.

[David Baines]

Q So your view is not that it goes too far, but that in some cases it does not go far enough?

Anne Longfield: I think it is proportionate for now, but it needs to be strengthened in some areas if we are to tackle some of the deep-rooted issues that we know a lot of children are facing.

[David Baines]

Q What about the overall spend?

Anne Longfield: The only way to get around the spend in local authorities on children’s social care is to reduce those costs. I do not think that that is to deny children’s needs; it is about a different way. We know that the spending on early intervention has almost halved over the past decade, while the cost of crisis has doubled. A lot of the cost is residential provision for older children. There needs to be a focus on where we can intervene early and find alternative solutions with families.

[Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) (Lab)]

Q Before I was elected, I ran a domestic abuse and mental health charity, so I can definitely speak to the value of the mandate, even in a local authority setting, which was excellent. Anne, are the other measures in the Bill proportionate to the aim of driving local integration and making sure that the child is at the centre of all decision making?

Anne Longfield: There are a number of other interventions that we could include that would strengthen children’s participation and children’s being at the centre of their communities. One of those is around children’s play. We know that children’s access to play has reduced dramatically over recent years. Play is the thing that children say they want: it is at the top of their list. We were very worried about access to play and the dominance of social media in children’s lives. Wales introduced a play sufficiency duty in 2010. It was not a huge cost. It meant that local authorities had to plan for play and respond to play. That kind of strategy would be, for a first stage, a very cost-effective way of reflecting children’s needs in the community.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ellie Chowns]

Could you elaborate on that?

Julie McCulloch: Happily. We would like to see the expansion up to 18—at the moment, it goes up to only 16 —and we would like to see it expanded to all children in families receiving universal credit.

Paul Whiteman: We are in a similar position. We absolutely accept the evidence that well-fed students perform and work better. Our only concern is the level of funding that comes with it. The provision has to be funded properly, not just for buying the food but, importantly, for the capital costs to make sure that those things can be delivered properly.

[David Baines]

Q I am sure that we would all agree that we want to see high standards in every school for every child, whether that is for academic attainment and achievement or for safeguarding outcomes. In your view—broadly speaking; we have limited time—does the Bill help or hinder the ambition of high and rising standards in every school for every child?

Paul Whiteman: I certainly do not think it hinders that. On the extent to which the Bill addresses some of the struggles that we have had about attendance and support for children, it will certainly help. Often, when we are discussing such things, the language is very unhelpful, because most schools have high and rising standards already—it is a very small percentage of schools that are in real difficulty. My eye is therefore drawn to the provisions for when intervention occurs, how that support occurs and whether that will help, and I absolutely think it will. Having alternatives, not just one answer, will assist the local education economy and the local education effort to collaborate more and to help more. One of the things that we need to make sure that we are doing much better in a fragmented system is encouraging more collaboration between different trusts and schools.

Julie McCulloch: I certainly do not think that there are things in here that will hinder that, and there are some things that will help. More broadly, a lot of the measures that would help with high and rising standards in schools sit outside schools, perhaps in the Government’s broader opportunity mission. That links to the previous discussion around broader children’s and family services, and children living in poverty. There is absolutely some helpful stuff here, but much of the answer probably lies in other parts of the Government’s work.

Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Second sitting)

David Baines Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 21st January 2025 Public Bill Committees

[The Chair]

I understand that this session should run until 3.15 pm.

[David Baines (St Helens North) (Lab)]

Q Good afternoon. Can you tell us briefly, in your own words, about the urgency—in your view—or otherwise of the Bill? We all agree that your organisations do outstanding, amazing, essential work with vulnerable children and young people up and down the country. How has the landscape for children changed in the last decade? Have things got better for them or worse? Is the Bill needed or not?

Lynn Perry: As an individual charity, we run 800 services. However, right across the coalition, we are seeing an increased level of presenting need. A number of factors are influencers in that: of course, the long shadow of the covid pandemic and then, hard on its heels, the cost of living crisis, which has really impacted a lot of the families that we work with across our charities. Our practitioners across the charities also tell us that thresholds for services are getting increasingly high. Even within some of our early intervention services, we are working with increased complexity of need. That is a really important factor to recognise, because families are under pressure for much longer, which leads to issues that are much more intractable and difficult to address. That is part and parcel of the picture that we are seeking to address.

Without a significant investment in early intervention and early help—the level of spend—I do not think we will be able to achieve the radical transformation that the Bill aims to achieve. We have been doing a report since 2010 that looks at children’s services and funding and the spend on them. We are now seeing a tipping point. If we do not invest now in early help, it will be very difficult for the pendulum to swing back.

Mark Russell: I absolutely endorse all of that. The data in that report shows that councils in England spent £12.2 billion on children’s services, and that is an increase of £600 million on the previous year. However, expenditure on early intervention and support for families has halved during that period, and support for later interventions has doubled, so we are spending all the money at the crisis end. That is the first thing.

Allied to that, the cost of living crisis has hit families really hard around the country. My colleagues who work directly with children are having to buy food for children. We are having to buy shoes for children, duvets for children, and beds for children, who are struggling really deeply right now. I have always had a quote over my desk at home by an American writer called Frederick Douglass, who said:

“It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”

I think he was right. I welcome the Bill and also the engagement that our organisations have had with the Government on its content. Thank you for having us along to present our voice to this debate today. However, we need to do much more to give every child in Britain the best possible start in life.

Katharine Sacks-Jones: Just to add, children in the care system are some of the most vulnerable children in our country. We have more children in care than there have been historically—84,000 in England. The outcomes for them are getting worse on a number of issues, including more children being moved away from their local area, away from their family, brothers and sisters, and away from their school. Frequently, they are being moved just because there are not enough places for them to live closer to home. We are seeing an increase in young people leaving the care system and becoming homeless, so on all those issues the outcomes for children in the care system are getting worse. This is an opportunity to address some of those issues, and we very much welcome some of the provisions in the Bill, but there is an opportunity to go further to strengthen it and to really change things for children in the care system.

[The Chair]

I thank all the witnesses for coming today and giving evidence to the Committee. We now move on to our next panel.

Examination of Witnesses

Nigel Genders and Paul Barber gave evidence.

SEND Provision

David Baines Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[James Wild]

The hon. Gentleman will be aware from his presence in the Chamber that we did not win the election, so it is for the Government to come forward with what they will do. They are now in power and must take decisions and take responsibility—that is the difference between Opposition and Government.

Finally, I must highlight the impact of the Labour Government’s plans to impose VAT on independent schools from January and what that will mean for SEND provision. More than 100,000 children and young people without an EHCP are educated and receive specialist support in independent schools. My right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey) made the point well. She highlighted the fact that putting VAT on their fees will disrupt education for thousands of those pupils and place further strain on SEND provision in the state sector. By bringing the changes in partway through the academic year, Labour’s plans seem designed to cause maximum disruption to those children’s learning and to the state school system. Are the Minister and the Government listening to schools and parents, and will they act to ensure that those vulnerable children do not bear the brunt of that policy?

[David Baines (St Helens North) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is talking about disruption to children and their development. Under the previous Government, in the past 10 years, investment in early intervention such as children’s centres fell by about 44%. What effect did he think that had on young children?

[James Wild]

We need to look at such things in the round. We put record amounts into childcare and we have just seen the latest roll-out of our childcare plans, which I think the Government now support, albeit a little sotto voce.

To conclude and to leave the Minister time to respond, there is unity across this Chamber—I hope—about the desire to ensure that the SEND system provides the support and outcomes that children and young people deserve. To help to achieve that, the last Government set out a path of comprehensive reform. It now falls to the new Government to continue to drive improvements, to tackle the challenges set out in this debate by Members from all parties and to deliver the very best for children and their families.