Carers: Young People

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Thursday 18th July 2013 Ministerial Corrections

The full answer given was as follows:

[Mr Timpson]

I have been asked to reply on behalf of the Department for Education.

From 2011 to 2013, the Department allocated over £1.5 million in grant funding to The Children's Society and Carers Trust to improve the support available for young carers. This followed the conclusion of a three-year funding grant to help 18 local authorities develop and test intensive family focused models of support for families with young carers as part of the young carers pathfinder programme.

The funding has enabled The Children's Society and Carers Trust to deliver regional events for practitioners in local statutory and voluntary services on designing and delivering 'whole family' approaches to support for young carers. The events include training on engaging young carers in "hard-to-reach" groups, such as those belonging to Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups who have English as a second language. The training is based on learning and resources developed in partnership with the Black Carers Network and young carers from BAME communities. In February I announced the award of a new contract worth up to £1 2 million to those two organisations to continue this work for a further two years.

Additionally, the Department has worked closely with the two organisations to share evidence-based tools and good practice guidance, including an online training package for school staff which raises awareness about the issues facing young people with caring responsibilities and how it can impact on their school attendance and attainment.

The correct answer should have been:

[Mr Timpson]

I have been asked to reply on behalf of the Department for Education.

From 2011 to 2013, the Department allocated over £1.5 million in grant funding to The Children's Society and Carers Trust to improve the support available for young carers. This followed the conclusion of a three-year funding grant to help 18 local authorities develop and test intensive family focused models of support for families with young carers as part of the young carers pathfinder programme. In February I announced the award of a new contract worth up to £1.2 million to the two organisations to continue this work for a further two years.

The funding is enabling The Children's Society and Carers Trust to deliver regional events for practitioners in local statutory and voluntary services on designing and delivering 'whole family' approaches to support for young carers. The events include training on engaging young carers in "hard-to-reach" groups, such as those belonging to Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) groups who have English as a second language. The training is based on learning and resources developed in partnership with the Black Carers Network and young carers from BAME communities.

Additionally, the Department has worked closely with the two organisations to share evidence-based tools and good practice guidance, including an online training package for school staff which raises awareness about the issues facing young people with caring responsibilities and how it can impact on their school attendance and attainment.

Surrey County Council and Adoption

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) on securing this important debate. I know from his contributions to the Commons stages of the Children and Families Bill that he shares my determination to speed up and improve the adoption system from start to finish.

It is a shame that this debate has come about because of the catalogue of distressing experiences that my hon. Friend’s constituents have had with Surrey’s adoption service. It is pleasing to hear that, despite those problems, his constituents have persevered and are now the proud parents of two little girls who now have the stable, loving family home that they so desperately needed. I am sure that he will understand that I am unable to comment or intervene on an individual case—such cases are always best dealt with locally, where the circumstances are well known. I can assure him, however, that if his constituents want to provide my officials with permission, I am more than happy to write to the chief executive of Surrey county council to inquire about whether the director of children’s services is aware of their concerns and has any plans to consider them formally in the way that he suggests.

I can very much relate to the many challenges and joys of adoption and the care system that my hon. Friend describes. As he knows, I have two adoptive brothers who are among the more than 80 children, many from incredibly difficult backgrounds, that my family have fostered over 30 years. That clearly was not always easy, but I came to treasure seeing how love, stability and routine helped my brothers lay down roots, grow and eventually thrive. I know first hand just how life changing adoption can be.

We know that the permanency of adoption provides vulnerable children with one of the strongest foundations for a brighter future, so it is right that we do all that we can to remove the barriers and blockages that keep children in need and prospective parents apart.

As my hon. Friend’s constituents found, the existing system is clearly far too often failing to deliver for many people. Chronic delays mean that children in care wait on average two years—in the worst cases, three years—to be adopted, and some children are never adopted. Currently, just over 4,500 children are waiting to move in with their new family, and we need around 2,000 more adopters than are currently approved to meet that demand, with an extra 700 adopters needed each year to meet future demand, which is a 25% growth in the system’s capacity. We need not only more adopters but more adopters such as his constituents who can welcome older children and pairs or groups of siblings into their family. There is no doubt that we face a significant challenge on adopter recruitment.

The hopes of children waiting for a family are draining away all the time. Evidence shows that a child’s chances of adoption are reduced by almost 20% for every year that they spend in care. I am determined to do whatever it takes to change that situation, which is why we are taking action on a number of fronts to speed up and simplify the adoption system. I assure my hon. Friend that that includes significant measures to drive up performance locally.

We have made £150 million available to councils to boost adoption rates, and through adoption scorecards we have strengthened accountability by publishing information on how long it takes each local authority to place children for adoption. Nationally, some local authorities are doing excellent work on adoption, which we must recognise. That work is reflected in the 12% rise in adoptions last year, compared with the year before. Although that is very welcome, performance across the country is still too patchy, which is why we will continue to monitor closely local authorities, including Surrey, through the adoption scorecard and other available data. Where progress gives cause for concern, we will not hesitate to take the appropriate and necessary action.

As well as getting local authorities to raise their game on adoption, there is also increased support for prospective adopters, backed up by the excellent training available from adoption agencies. When I talk to adopters and prospective adopters, one of the many questions that they have, as well as those on the assessment process, is on what happens next. Where does the support come from? What role will the local authority or voluntary adoption agency play in ensuring that the adoption will be successful? The worst thing that can happen to the child is that the adoption is not successful because the right support was not provided at the right time. We need to ensure that we work closely with local authorities, voluntary adoption agencies and other national adoption organisations, so that we can make really good progress by implementing the adoption action plan, by creating the adoption gateway, by reforming regulations to create more streamlined approval processes and by publishing transparent scorecard data on timeliness, so not only officials and politicians but the public and prospective adopters can see the performance of local authorities and so that others can also have a chance to understand how good or bad the performance of their local authority is.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I hear what the Minister is saying, but on paper and from what he is saying, Surrey county council would have appeared to have put in the support and so on. The difficulty is that, looking at it from the outside, it is virtually impossible to tell that that help is a hindrance.

[Mr Timpson]

My hon. Friend makes a key point about the quality of the support that is available. One of the areas on which we are putting more focus is the quality of social work training, and therefore on the standard and quality of social workers who work with families right from the very start, so that they get a better, higher and more consistent level of support, which we know can help to ensure that a placement is successful.

One of the changes that will help push that through is the new inspection regime that Ofsted is introducing, which will bind together both child protection and looked-after children, including adoption, so that there is a much brighter light and a much deeper look at what is happening within children’s services. We owe it to the children whose best future we have decided lies in adoption to provide them with the best opportunity at the earliest opportunity to make those all important attachments with their new family and to ensure that any delay is flushed out of the system wherever possible.

We will continue to develop the adoption scorecards and ensure that they are contextualised in a way that really reflects performance within local authorities. We have also introduced the First4Adoption phone and online service and the adoption passport, so that potential adopters have much better information and support. They do not have to go to the local authority to get that information and support, because it is provided in one place by many people who have personal experience of adoption and who are therefore in a good position to provide a better understanding of what prospective adopters are letting themselves in for and the great benefits that adoption can bring to them and, we hope, their family in the future.

Additionally, we have the new, fast, two-stage adopter approval process that started on 1 July. In most cases, prospective adopters can expect to wait no more than six months to be approved from when they register their interest. I was recently told of a couple who started the process in about October 2012, and twin babies were placed with them on an adoptive placement by February 2013. That is a fantastic example of how we can speed up the process but still ensure that we get a good match and a good-quality placement.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

Surrey county council seemed to take the right approach to begin with. It was a twin-track approach of sorting out the parents and bringing in the children together. Then, of course, it flew apart. Is that what the Minister means by a twin-track approach?

[Mr Timpson]

What I am talking about relates to the adopter approval process. The twin-track approach is sometimes called concurrent planning. In the Bill, we are trying to promote fostering for adoption, so that rather than waiting until the final decision is made about whether the birth family is capable of caring for a child in the long term, moves can start to be made to establish the child in the placement most likely to be their permanent one. The aim is to avoid situations in which a child planned for adoption is still within the care system, moving from one foster placement to another.

The beauty of fostering for adoption, which some authorities, such as East Sussex, already carry out, is that the risk falls fairly and squarely on the prospective adopters. There is no risk to the child, who can be placed much earlier with their prospective adopters, so that the family can start to create the bonds that will stabilise their future hugely and avoid unnecessary delay, which we know only causes more problems rather than more solutions.

The two-stage process involves the initial two-month preparation period, during which the prospective adopters gather the information that they need to understand adoption in greater detail and the relevant checks and references are carried out. Those who successfully complete it then go on to the second stage—a more detailed and more appropriately focused four-month assessment. The beauty, as I said, is that it focuses on the essentials to ensure that prospective adopters can give what is necessary for a child to be placed with them successfully.

It is also worth noting that, since 1 July, a fast-track approval process has been introduced for those who have already adopted and fostered and are looking to adopt again. They do not need to start the whole process again, as they currently do; they can be fast-tracked, which will help reduce delay. The approach will dramatically reduce the amount of time that children must wait before they can move into their permanent home and their number of temporary placements. Stability is a key factor of a successful outcome for a child in care moving on to a permanent placement. The more we can reduce the number of placements, the more likely the child will have a successful childhood.

Adopters will be able to take a much more active role in identifying children through the measures in the Bill to allow approved prospective adopters to access the adoption register directly, which they have not been able to do before now. Again, we expect that that will drive up speed and the number of matches made, as well as increasing the pool of potential matches available directly to prospective adopters. We will pilot the new register in a number of local authorities before deciding whether it should be rolled out nationally, but we believe that that is the right approach, and it is supported by many excellent adoption charities.

We will change contact arrangements through the Bill, so that they are demonstrably more in the best interests of the child than anybody else’s. There have been dramatic reductions in delays since we introduced the new clause on the 26-week time limit for care proceedings. The time has gone from an average of 57 weeks to about 40 weeks, and it is falling fast. That will also help to solve many of the problems identified by my hon. Friend and experienced by his constituents.

As I have outlined, a great deal of work is under way to overhaul the adoption system fundamentally and tackle head-on many of the issues that my hon. Friend rightly raised, but we need to go further and faster, especially with regard to adopter recruitment. The backlog of 4,500 children in care waiting to be adopted needs to fall rapidly, and the system needs to sustain the ability to cope with increased future demand for prospective adopters. We know from the recent research carried out that hundreds of thousands of people out there would love the opportunity to adopt and consider it an aspect of their lives that they would like the opportunity to fulfil.

We need to grab that opportunity and make people feel welcome when they approach a local authority or voluntary adoption agency, so that they feel that the whole system is not set against them but there to support and encourage them and provide them with the advice and guidance that they need to feel equipped and confident when the great day comes and that child or those children end up in the bosom of their family. We will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that we have a system that is deserved by our most vulnerable children, as well as by the thousands of generous, loving people like my hon. Friend’s constituents who have gone to such great lengths to open up their homes and hearts. I join him in wishing his constituents and their two little girls the very best in future.

We must always be alive to the fact that the system that we have created is never perfect, but we do know that for too long the adoption system has failed to deliver for too many children. That is why it remains a high priority not just for me or the Secretary of State, who has his own personal experience of adoption, but for the Prime Minister, who from the start of this Government has championed adoption as one of the best ways to give children, some of them with the most difficult start in life, the best possible chance of the brightest future. It is therefore incumbent on us all to ensure that we achieve that, and I believe that the work that we are doing will go a long way to address many of the concerns that my hon. Friend’s constituents have rightly raised and that he raised on their behalf. We will not take our foot off the gas.

Young Fathers

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Friday 5th July 2013 Commons Chamber

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

In the time I have left, I will do my utmost to address the issues that the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) has raised, but if I am unable to do so, I will endeavour in the usual way to write to him and explain in as much detail as I can what the Government are doing to address the important issues he has raised.

I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on securing this important debate. The House knows well the great importance that he places on supporting fathers, which is built not just on his huge insight, but on his personal experiences, which he has eloquently communicated in books, articles and papers that he has written on the subject. Only a few weeks ago, as I was driving to a primary school in Staffordshire Moorlands, I was listening to him on the radio giving a powerful demonstration of why it is important to keep our eye on the ball, not just for fathers generally but for young fathers specifically.

Like the right hon. Gentleman, the Government recognise that a father’s role in his child’s life is important. Children benefit greatly from a continuing relationship with both fathers and mothers. The evidence is clear that the positive involvement of fathers can lead to enhanced educational attainment, improved behaviour, better well-being and better relationships with their children. As he said, the foundations of so many social problems—and success stories—are laid in the early years. The evidence shows that what parents do in their child’s early years is a critical factor in that child’s future attainment and behaviour.

Children’s centres have the capacity to be life changing, ensuring that the families who need the services the most get the support they need. By identifying, reaching and helping the families in greatest need, they help to improve parenting capacity and health and well-being, and support the development of children so that they are well prepared to start school. Children’s centres offer different approaches to provide an environment in which fathers feel comfortable. For example, many offer stay and play sessions for fathers and children or networks to enable fathers to meet up and feel confident to use their local centres. I remember a few years ago, as part of an inquiry by the Children, Schools and Families Committee, visiting a children’s centre in Westminster North where it was doing exactly that: trying to work out how better to engage with young dads.

Some centres work closely with teenage fathers, supporting them in their parenting role and encouraging them to develop their skills for work. The right hon. Gentleman mentioned Earlsmead children’s centre in his constituency, which supported a young father who was the main carer for a child under the age of two. Through the stay and play sessions, and through interacting with the staff to enable him to be better around his child and to access other services, he went from being unemployed to being referred to the centre through a back-to-work programme, resulting in him successfully getting a job. That is a fantastic example of how children’s centres can make a huge difference.

The right hon. Gentleman highlighted his concern that the needs of young fathers were not being addressed through the Work programme. I can assure him that one-size-fits-all employment programmes no longer exist. The current programmes recognise that young people need more tailored support to find work. Children’s centres such as Earlsmead play their part by working closely with local employment services to help ensure that that is delivered. I will, however, speak to my colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions to see if there is anything more we can do to learn from recent experiences since the changes were brought in.

Some local authorities make children’s centres one of the places where parents can register births; for example, in Manchester, Bury and York. They have found that the opportunity to register births in children’s centres is potentially a very effective means of exposing parents to the support available through centres. They have reported improved engagement with hard-to-reach families. For example, the Benchill children’s centre in Manchester reported that 100% of young parents who registered their baby at Benchill have re-engaged with the services offered by the centre.

I share the right hon. Gentleman’s preference for joint birth registration, because it promotes the involvement of both parents in the upbringing of their children. He will know that the Government’s position, rather than having catch-all legislation, is to pursue ways to strengthen the existing guidance to registrars to make clearer to mothers the expectation that the father’s name should always be recorded on the register unless there are very good reasons why that should not happen. I am happy to take up his case with other Departments to see if that approach has the effect we all want to see.

The voluntary sector has a strong track record of supporting families. Charities such as 4Children, Barnardo’s and Action for Children, as well as the many mentioned by the right hon. Gentleman, run many children’s centres on behalf of local authorities. In my constituency and elsewhere, many parents who have children under the age of five benefit from the valued support of Home-Start UK. We are also funding the Fatherhood Institute to work in four local authorities to improve educational outcomes for children from deprived communities. The focus is on helping early years services to engage fathers, including non-resident fathers, in their children’s learning.

It is vital that very young people who are about to become parents get the support they need too. Pregnancy and birth present the first opportunity to engage fathers in the care and upbringing of their children. It is important that both the mother and father feel involved in the pregnancy from an early stage. In 2011, the Royal College of Midwives published “Top Tips for Involving Fathers in Maternity Care”. It cites the teenage pregnancy support unit in Hull, which assesses the needs of young fathers as well as young mothers, and provides support to develop parenting skills. On a recent visit to Eagle Bridge health centre in Crewe, I met a teenage couple who were first-time parents. They spoke about how they were benefiting from the personalised support they were receiving from the family nurse partnership programme. The right hon. Gentleman spoke about a wake-up call, and that was very much that couple’s experience of the programme, which supports children in some of the most disadvantaged circumstances. By 2015, some 16,000 families in need will be benefiting from the service.

I have only a short time left but I echo the right hon. Gentleman’s comments about young offenders who are also fathers. He also mentioned that many of them have spent time in the care system. Some 50% of those in young offender institutions have spent some time in care. There was a strong correlation between the two. Having accepted that those who have done wrong need to be punished, I want to do more, through my Department and working with the Ministry of Justice, to understand how to use that time to give them the resilience, support and education they need to better their lives when they are, we hope, rehabilitated back into the community.

The Government are undertaking a number of other initiatives, including relationship support, the CANparent trials and the online and telephone helpline services for families, to name but a few, as well as the proposed changes to paternity leave and the measures in the Children and Families Bill.

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for securing this debate. Like him, I firmly believe that children need their fathers as much as they need their mothers, and we must do all we can to ensure, wherever possible, that both parents are fully involved in their child’s upbringing.

The measures that the Government are taking will help to ensure that we support parents, and parents-to-be, who need it most. Be that as it may, I am always more than happy to discuss with the right hon. Gentleman what more we can do to ensure that young fathers play as full and active a role as possible in their children’s lives and, in doing that, we have the opportunity—

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Monday 24th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)]

3. What recent progress he has made on reform of the adoption system.

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

I am determined to reform the adoption system to reduce delay for children. One of our most pressing priorities is increasing the number of approved adopters. We have already launched the First4Adoption telephone and online service to provide information to all potential adopters and published the adoption passport, and we are bringing in a quicker two-stage adopter approvals process from 1 July.

[John Glen]

My constituent Helen Holgate is a respected and experienced foster carer, but she still tells me that there are considerable court delays during the concurrency process. What steps is the Minister taking to improve the concurrent care process so that children can be placed permanently and more swiftly with a loving family on a full-time, permanent basis?

[Mr Timpson]

First, I would like to pay tribute to Helen Holgate and all the other fantastic foster carers helping many vulnerable children in our country. We are working towards streamlining the approval process for foster carers. On court proceedings, through the Children and Families Bill, we are introducing fostering for adoption rules to ensure that children are placed earlier with prospective adopters, and with the work of the Family Justice Board, we are helping to strip out unnecessary delays in care proceedings. As a result, the average length of a care case has already been reduced from 57 to 42.2 weeks.

[Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)]

What more does the Minister think local government should be doing to support foster carers who, according to the Fostering Network, feel unsupported and often take in children when they do not feel quite prepared to do so?

[Mr Timpson]

With the Fostering Network and many other fostering charities, we have developed some excellent training materials for foster carers, to provide them with the support that they need. This will make them feel confident that they are in control of the placement, with the day-to-day decisions such as whether children get their hair cut or go on a sleepover being delegated to them. This will also help the children to feel that they have a normal family existence while they are in a foster care arrangement.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

What more can be done under the reforms to encourage older people to adopt children?

[Mr Timpson]

One of the many myths surrounding adoption relates to the age of prospective adopters. We want anyone who is interested in adopting to come forward and use the new adoption gateway, which is the easy way of getting the information and advice that they need. We do not want to put people off adopting; we want to welcome them with open arms and do all that we can to support them in providing children with the homes they desperately need.

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[Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (Con)]

7. What steps he is taking to improve the quality of children and families social work.

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

Building on the recommendations of the Munro review, we have put in place an ambitious reform programme for social work that seeks to improve initial social work education through the Step Up to Social Work and Frontline training initiatives to get the best people into the profession as well as improve the quality of front-line practice by revising Working Together to Safeguard Children and appointing a chief social worker.

[Dr Lee]

I thank the Minister for his answer. How does he plan to ensure that newly qualified social workers both have a degree that best equips them for the front line and receive proper support in the first few years of their career?

[Mr Timpson]

My hon. Friend pinpoints a key area of our reform agenda. That is why we have asked Sir Martin Narey to look carefully at social work education and report back to Ministers later this year. It is also why we have introduced, along with the chief social worker, principal family social workers in each local authority area to help champion and challenge social work as well as to provide assistance and support in the first year, which we know has been so successful.

[Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)]

More than half of councils say that they are planning further cuts to children’s services. What impact does the Minister think this will have on social workers and their case loads?

[Mr Timpson]

To date we have seen strong protection of children’s services across local authorities, which recognise the importance of providing the best quality service in their areas. Social worker vacancy rates have fallen, not risen, from 10% in 2010 to 7% in 2012. Many local authorities are doing a fantastic job, but we need to ensure that all raise their game.

[Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)]

Given rising caseloads and the pressure exerted by the increase in child poverty up and down the country, does the Minister accept that more resources are needed to pay for additional social workers to deal with rising demand?

[Mr Timpson]

I explained in my previous answer the approach that local authorities quite rightly take to ensure that children’s services are the best they can be, but we can enable that through the revised Working Together to Safeguard Children, making it clearer who is responsible for providing which services while ensuring that the quality of social work is as high as possible. That is why I set out in my initial answer why this is such a high priority for the Government.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

Has the Minister seen the recent survey of 2,000 social workers, which paints a shocking picture of, in their words, “crisis”, “breaking point” and “chaos”. It shows increasing caseloads, long waiting lists, the use of non-qualified staff to assess children, the use of agency workers, and children who need help being turned away as thresholds are revised upwards to cope with the situation. As one social worker put it, “amber is the new green”. Is it not time that the Government got on red alert and did something about this crisis?

[Mr Timpson]

I am sorry that the hon. Lady, who was so supportive of many of the measures we have taken to bring in the recommendations of the Munro review, decides to use this set piece to provide a dividing line that does not need to be there. We are all trying to achieve the same thing: to improve outcomes for children who come into contact with children’s services. We are seeing improvements in the country, but they are needed across the board, and we are introducing reforms to ensure that children and families get high quality social work and support when they need it.

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[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

10. What steps he is taking to support young carers’ attendance at school.

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

The Department has developed an online training module for school staff. It is designed to raise awareness about young carers, including awareness of the potential impact that their caring responsibilities can have on their school attendance and attainment. Importantly, the Department of Health has recently started training school nurses to be champions for young carers, and to help head teachers and governors to decide how best to support them at school.

[Stephen Barclay]

There are about 300 young carers in my constituency. As my hon. Friend recognised in his answer, young carers often reflect many of the best values, but their education suffers as a result of their caring duties. Will my hon. Friend write to me saying what he considers to be the best scheme to support them, and what impediments there are to the spreading of such measures, given that even neighbouring districts such as Fenland and Huntingdon take such different approaches?

[Mr Timpson]

I praise my hon. Friend for the work that he is doing in his constituency. He has led by example in writing to all local secondary school heads to remind them of the support that young carers need, and to raise their awareness of what is available.

As my hon. Friend has acknowledged, there is a wealth of good practice out there. We recently awarded a £1.2 million contract to the Children’s Society and the Carers Trust to work directly with local services, including schools, and help them to improve support for young carers. However, I am happy to write to my hon. Friend explaining what we are doing over and above that, and what more we can do collectively—at both national and local levels—to improve support for young carers in schools.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

The Minister knows that many of us on both sides of this House care very deeply about the hundreds of thousands of young carers in this country and that they should get the support they need to fulfil their potential. He just cited the support role school nurses can play for young carers, but he must know from the parliamentary questions I have asked that the number of school nurses across the country is tiny—indeed, I think one answer stated I had one in the whole of Sunderland. If this is the solution, he might want to look at that. We welcome the assurances the Minister gave at the Report stage of the Children and Families Bill, but as it is due to be debated in the other place next week, will he give us and our noble colleagues a guarantee that he will make this work an immediate priority, so the Bill will make the changes we want to see for these young people, as the care services Minister, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), promised last year.

[Mr Timpson]

As ever, may I thank the hon. Lady for the tone she strikes with her question? We are at one in wanting to improve the support young carers receive. As she knows, I have met the Minister for care and support to agree some key principles for work in this area and to look at how we can use both the Care Bill and the Children and Families Bill to bring about a closer connection between adult and young carers, so there is a whole-family approach to the support they receive. We will use the stages through the other place to try to make that approach much clearer.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

11. What assessment he has made of the effect of the pupil premium on attainment of children from socially deprived backgrounds.

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[Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)]

14. What recent steps his Department has taken to improve youth services; and if he will make a statement.

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

In December 2011, “Positive for Youth” set out, for the first time, an overarching vision for youth policy, a key principle of which is that local authorities are best placed to decide how to shape their services to meet the needs of local young people. Their duty to secure sufficient services is outlined in the revised statutory guidance issued in June 2012. This Government have also spent an additional £141 million in a network of 63 myplace youth centres to support local youth service provision.

[Mr Raynsford]

In the aftermath of the appalling killing of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, the Prime Minister heard at first hand while visiting Woolwich about, among other things, the importance of a more proactive role for the youth service in providing constructive alternative options for young people at risk of being sucked into extremism or criminal gangs. Has the Department for Education yet submitted evidence to the Government’s taskforce on extremism? If not, will this be given priority by the Department?

[Mr Timpson]

The right hon. Gentleman raises a very important and serious point, which is all the more echoed around this Chamber today, as we will hear later during the Home Secretary’s statement. This is a priority for this Government and this Department. We have already submitted some evidence to the taskforce, and we will play a full and active role to make sure it achieves its objectives.

[Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)]

15. What his plans are for the future of GCSEs.

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[David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)]

T6. Bewsey Lodge primary school is a very good school in a difficult part of Warrington. It has a large special needs unit that, although it is high quality, reduces the overall performance metrics, which affects morale. Better school comparability could be achieved if metrics were produced with, and without, special needs units.

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

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his keen interest in schools in his constituency that provide important and excellent special educational needs provision. It is important that we have an accountability system that recognises the achievements of all pupils, which very much chimes with Sir Michael Wilshaw’s comments last week, as well as the strengthening of the SEN element of inspection from September 2012. We will launch an accountability consultation shortly, and doubtless my hon. Friend will want to contribute to it on the very point that he has just made.

[John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State assure the House that the heads of academies cannot create small sub-committees of governors that can then take crucial decisions about the general future of the schools in question?

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

In response to a cross-party amendment to the Children and Families Bill proposing a continuation of funding to foster carers until care leavers reach the age of 21, the Minister said that he was reviewing the current arrangements and was prepared to legislate if necessary. Will he give the House an indication of the time scale for that review?

[Mr Timpson]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, both for his continued and passionate support for children in care and care leavers, and for his instrumental work in securing the junior ISAs—individual savings accounts—which have proved to be a great success, with over 30,000 in operation. We want to enable care leavers to continue to live with former foster carers where it is right for them to do so. I know from my own family experience that it can be a hugely beneficial part of their transition to adult life.

Although staying put policies have been clearly set out—and I wrote to all the directors of children’s services in October to lay out the terrain so that they can do more to support foster children in that situation—we want to see further improvements. More figures will be published later this year on the staying put pilots and how they are beginning to spread more widely. We will look at those keenly, as we want more progress more quickly.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

School governance is an increasingly topical issue. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is important to ensure that our school governing bodies are strong, courageous and capable of making sure that all schools provide decent education for all their pupils?

Speech, Language and Communication Education

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Wednesday 19th June 2013 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dobbin, for the remaining 35 minutes of this debate. I hope that my time in office will be longer than that, so I can reach the end of the debate still in post.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon (Mr Buckland) on securing this important and still timely debate—it follows Report of the Children and Families Bill last week—which has been well attended by Members on both sides the House. I know that he speaks from a voluminous amount of personal experience, as he does valuable work with children and young people with special educational needs and their families in his constituency.

As my hon. Friend rightly reminded us, he is also the vice-chair of the all-party group on speech and language difficulties. He has been championing the cause not just through that group but through the work that he has done on the Bill. As a member of the Committee that considered the SEN provisions in the Bill, he helped to shine a bright light on many of the key issues by tabling amendments and making wise and measured contributions to the discussions. I thank him again for his engagement. I also thank the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), who has been another constructive participant in those debates.

I will try to cover as many of the points raised as possible. In the usual way, I will be happy to write to hon. Members to provide full answers if any points remain outstanding. I will deal at the outset with the specific points raised. The points made by my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) on behalf of his constituents exemplify why it is necessary for us to push through these important reforms, so that parents in his constituency and across the country do not face the battles that form the downside of their experience in trying to access special educational provision for their children. Those problems prevent them from feeling that the system is working with them rather than against them, which happens on too many occasions.

The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West raised the importance of the local offer in trying to drive improvements on the ground. The local offer will set out in one place information about all the services that the local authority expects to be available in the local area and beyond for local children and young people with special educational needs and their parents. We have been clear in the indicative regulations that it must cover support for all children and young people with SEN, not just those with education, health and care plans. That could include provision from small specialist services providing outreach support to schools, such as those offering support to children using alternative and augmentative communication, as well as the provision normally available in mainstream settings and on offer in special schools and specialist colleges, including those in the non-maintained and independent sectors.

The local offer will also let parents know how to access services, what support is available to enable them to do so and what to do if they are unhappy with the support on offer. My approach is to make that engagement as clear and simple as possible for parents to access, so that they do not have to navigate through what I have described in the past as a labyrinthine array of different organisations and processes. We must have a single, easy entry into ensuring that those services are properly provided.

Regulations and a new SEN code of practice will set out a common framework for the local offer, but the key to the success of the local offer in each area will be the transparency of information and the involvement of local parents, children and young people in developing and reviewing it. That will help to ensure that it is responsive to local needs. Arguments have been made for stipulating minimum standards for the local offer. I believe that that would weaken local accountability and lead to a race to the bottom, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon said in Committee.

We made an indicative draft of the code of practice available to the Committee to aid consideration of the SEN provisions in the Bill, and we are revising the guidance in the draft to take account of the points raised in Committee and the wider discussions that we are having and continue to have with others. To that end, I had a productive meeting recently with the Communication Trust, another key interest in the speech, language and communication sector. I also had the privilege, only last week, of visiting Springfield special school in my constituency, which makes excellent provision for children’s speech, language and communication needs, particularly for those who need alternative and augmented communication. If I have time, I will explain a little more about how that experience has enriched my understanding of this important area. My officials will shortly meet the Communication Trust and many of its constituent groups—I believe it is made up of 47 such groups—to discuss the code of practice. That will offer the opportunity to consider the guidance on the local offer and the issues raised this morning.

Important points were raised about the need to ensure that we identify and provide for children’s speech, language and communication needs as quickly and as early as possible. My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs and my hon. Friends the Members for South Swindon, for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) and for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) all made that point.

Age two is an important time for children and their parents because it is when problems with language development and behaviour become readily identifiable and when intervention may be more effective than for an older child. That can make a real difference to a child’s future. The early years progress check that we introduced at age two and our work with the Department of Health to develop an integrated health and development review at age two to two and a half will make a real difference. Developmental delays, including in speech and language, will form part of that review and the training of clinicians will include assessing speech and language needs.

As my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon said, by 2015, we will recruit and train an extra 4,200 health visitors to identify disability and special educational needs, to provide advice and support and to suggest activities to enhance language development and communication skills, including referral for speech and language therapy when appropriate. We have also commissioned the Early Language Consortium to deliver a £1.4 million three-year early language training programme to train practitioners to identify language development problems and to work with children and families. We aim to train nearly 13,000 professionals and to reach 95,000 families through that programme.

Ofsted evidence points to over-identification of SEN. The better communication research programme was funded by the Department for Education and arose from a recommendation by the Bercow review. We are continuing to take forward many of the key recommendations, including our work with the Communication Trust, our grants and contracts with the trust, to help to disseminate much of the good practice that came out of that research programme and to ensure that all that is brought together in one place, with the involvement of the royal colleges, and used effectively and pragmatically where we know it can make a difference on the ground.

That research also shows that some groups, such as those with speech, language and communication needs, are under-identified. We plan to replace the present system of School Action and School Action Plus in schools with new guidance to help schools to ensure that they identify children with SEN more accurately and put the right support in place as quickly as possible. The new SEN code of practice will include clear expectations for schools on the processes for identifying and assessing pupils, setting objectives for them, reviewing progress and securing further support. That will not change the legislative duties on schools to use their best endeavours to secure special educational provision, to have an SEN co-ordinator, to notify parents of such provision and to publish information on how they are implementing their policy on SEN and disability. Those are all set out in the Children and Families Bill.

The local offer presents clear opportunities for local authorities and schools to reflect approaches with good evidence of positive impact. I CAN’s programme, “A Chance to Talk”, which is supported by funding from my Department, is one example. It provides a comprehensive approach to children’s speech and language development across clusters of schools and through the involvement of NHS speech and language therapists. It incorporates a joint commissioning approach to ensure that children with the most complex needs receive specialist help at school. That is very much the model that my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon talked about and it has flourished in his constituency. It provides flexibility in health and education, breaks down many of the barriers that my right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs spoke about in relation to his constituency, and starts to bring about the culture change that we need to see on the ground.

Teachers tell us that the quality of their training is increasing, and many hon. Members have spoken about the importance of training the work force. Through the school direct programme, we are giving schools greater control over how they recruit and train teachers to meet the needs of their pupils. For example, ARK school is working with Canterbury Christ Church university to train 54 teachers through school direct. The programme includes intensive training during the first three years of a new teacher’s career, with additional training in inclusion behaviour and the teaching of reading and writing. They have a clear focus on SEN and equipping teaching to meet the range of pupils’ needs.

I am aware that the practical tools for schools developed by the better communication research programme, including those for developing communication supporting classrooms, are being widely disseminated by the Communication Trust as part of its work with the Department and elsewhere. The Department is also supporting the development of teachers’ skills in meeting SEN in other ways. A national scholarship fund for teachers has helped 600 teachers to obtain a qualification related to SEN, and there have been specialist resources for initial teacher training and new advanced level online modules for serving teachers, including on dyslexia, autism and speech and language skills. Funding has been provided for new SENCOs to complete the master’s-level national award for SEN co-ordination, with 10,119 between 2009 and 2012 and a further 800 in 2013-14.

Additional training for established SENCOs has been offered through NASEN, formerly the National Association for Special Educational Needs, to 5,000 teachers to date and there has been funding for several sector-specialist organisations, including the Communication Trust, to support the implementation of SEN reforms and to provide information to schools and teachers. The Institute of Education was awarded a grant in 2013-14 to explore the development of a scalable pilot to increase knowledge and skills in SEN within initial teacher training for trainees who wish to study this area in greater depth as part of their programme.

There has been a strong effort in initial teacher training and the current work force to develop skills and expertise in special educational needs, so that the ambitions set out in the Green Paper are reflected in the draft code of practice, which states that all teachers should be special educational needs teachers. That is becoming a reality following the work that I have mentioned.

A key change to the Bill, which several hon. Members have mentioned today and in Committee, is the introduction of a specific duty requiring those responsible for commissioning health provision to secure the health care provision in education, health and care plans. That significant change has been acknowledged and widely welcomed. The new duty builds on the joint commissioning duty in the Bill which requires local authorities and clinical commissioning groups, as well as NHS England when appropriate for national commissioning, to assess the needs of the local population of children and young people with SEN, and to plan and commission services to meet those needs. Joint commissioning arrangements must include those for securing education, health and care needs assessments, and the education, health and care provision specified in education, health and care plans. The new health duty requires health commissioners to ensure that the health care elements of those plans are provided for each individual. That provides direct clarity to parents that the support their child needs will be provided.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon raised particular concerns in Committee, on Report and again today about clause 21 of the Bill and about when health provision is to be regarded as special educational provision. My right hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs also made that point. Clause 21(5) states:

“Health care provision or social care provision which is made wholly or mainly for the purposes of the education or training of a child or young person is to be treated as special educational provision”.

That was included to fulfil an undertaking I gave during pre-legislative scrutiny that we would maintain existing protections, including case law, and preserve the current position where there is no duty to secure the health provision in plans.

Under the broader, integrated assessments and plans in the Bill, decisions will be based on special educational, health and care provision. Without clause 21(5), it may be difficult for a tribunal to say that, although speech and language therapy is health care provision made by health care providers, it is in fact special educational provision. The clause also enables appeals to the tribunal in respect of health provision when it is defined as special educational provision, as now. However, as I said on Report—I am happy to reiterate it for the purposes of this debate—we want to get things right, so that the position is clear for parents and for young people and children with a special educational need. I am content to continue listening to the views expressed in this House and in the other place to ensure that that is the case.

[Mr Buckland]

I applaud the Minister for his efforts, but will he look again at the Bromley case that I referred to on Report? Although I accept that it was in the context of the old system of statements of special educational need, there, we had a very clear exposition from Lord Justice Stephen Sedley, as he then was, of what is necessary for the purposes of provision. As for my wording, I agree that just removing “wholly or mainly” may not be the right approach, but we all need to strive together to get the wording absolutely right, so that we avoid the nice legal arguments that the Minister and I might enjoy academically, but which are no good to families.

[Mr Timpson]

As ever, my hon. Friend makes an excellent point, which reminds us lawyers that sometimes we need to look beyond the boundaries of a legal document and reflect more on what it seeks to achieve, as a way of ensuring that it does what we intend it to. I will look carefully at the Bromley case that he mentioned, not only in context, but as a demonstration of where we need to think through the implications of the clause as drafted to ensure that some of those eventualities do not still pertain in the new environment and in the reformed system that we all want to see work. I am happy to do that, and I have clearly indicated my intent to continue thinking carefully about how that aspect of the Bill will fulfil all those objectives.

I completely agree with my hon. Friend and with the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West that young offenders, including those with special educational needs, need to receive the right support and access to education, both when in custody and when they return to their communities. Clause 69 is necessary because it prevents our legislation from coming into conflict with existing comprehensive statutory provisions governing how education support is delivered in custody, as set out in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009, which I am sure the hon. Lady remembers well.

Duties placed on local authorities by that legislation are fulfilled through contracts held by the Education Funding Agency that are funded by the Ministry of Justice. As hon. Members will know, the MOJ is clear that the current system is not working, which is why it recently consulted on transformational reforms to how education and support in youth custody should be delivered in future. I have ensured that the education element for children, including those with SEN, in the care system and elsewhere, is being properly considered as part of the review. That provides an important opportunity to be absolutely clear about what role the time that a young person spends in custody plays, both as a form of punishment and in rehabilitation, so that when they come out of custody, they have every prospect of moving on in a positive direction. We have done that elsewhere in the prison estate. There are some good examples, but we can do much better, which is why I have given a commitment to my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon that we want to make progress, both in my Department and across Government, as the Bill moves on and as other work is done by the Ministry of Justice on the consultation that is taking place.

[Mr Buckland]

I know that the Minister was a family practitioner, but does he agree, perhaps from his experience dealing with criminal cases, that, very often, crimes of violence are precipitated by communications misunderstandings and young people resorting to using their fists—or worse—instead of being able to communicate with each other to resolve any differences?

[Mr Timpson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He will know—as do I, from my family’s experience of fostering many children—that some manifestations of the inability to communicate result in outbursts of anger. I have spoken before, on one occasion, about when someone who appeared to be, on the surface, a quiet, unassuming young man ended up smashing every single pane in my Dad’s greenhouse, because he did not know how else to communicate his anger, frustration and worry about what had happened to him in the past. I am very alive to that fact, which is why I am determined that we make progress in that important area.

I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard)—I am looking forward to coming to his working group later today on speech, language and communication needs—on the importance of ensuring that children and young people who need specialised communication aids have access to them. I know that he has raised that vociferously on a number of occasions, including in Prime Minister’s questions, in which the Prime Minister was clear that he wanted to help bring about the important changes that my hon. Friend wants.

My hon. Friend made the point about whether the interest in Government in the issue lies in health or education. The best answer I can give is that it is in both, which is why, in both those Departments, there is a strong interest from Ministers, who work not only individually, but collectively. I have met the Minister of State, Department of Health, who has responsibility for care, on a number of occasions to discuss that and other matters that transcend the Children and Families Bill, to ensure that we are moving in the right direction and in a way that will bring about the best results.

For lower-level alternative and augmentative communication needs, it will be up to health commissioners and their local authority partners to work together—we should lead by example by doing that in national Government—to ensure that the right services are in place locally to meet the needs of the population, and to reflect those services in the local offer. Highly specialist services needed by only a very small number of children will be commissioned centrally by NHS England, as my hon. Friend will know.

Prior to 1 April this year, there was no national commissioning of AAC services. There was no standard or nationally consistent definition of the services that were the commissioning and funding responsibility of the NHS. As a result, there was variation in organisations and in the commissioning and funding of specialised AAC services, and inequitable access to such services. A key priority must be to ensure that commissioning arrangements for specialised services are placed on a much more robust and equitable footing across England. That is currently being undertaken by NHS England’s area teams.

Work is under way to establish the required baseline for AAC services. Area teams are working with colleagues in clinical commissioning groups to identify the value of contracts for communication aids. My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon mentioned the work of the former communication champion, Jean Gross, whose 2010 report suggested that a national budget of £14 million was required for 2012 to 2014 to bring the required baseline into effect. Working with experts on its AAC sub-group, NHS England will be looking at the report’s assumptions and other available data. We need to be clear that the progress on AAC has to be fulfilled to a degree that ensures the greatest level of equitable access that we can achieve. The development of the national commissioning of those services provides an opportunity to have much more consistency. I hope that that will be an important step forward.

One reason why I am pleased to support my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys in trying to improve the situation is that I saw for myself, on my visit to Springfield school in Crewe, some of the incredible aids that are now available. Those are quickly coming on stream all the time. I was given a number of demonstrations involving buttons and click mouses, and I was also told about gaze technology—I confess that I cannot remember the exact phraseology, but that is the term that I have decided to use—in which the length of time a person keeps their eyes fixed on the screen determines their command to the device. That is an astonishing way of providing anyone, whatever their level of communication, with an opportunity to communicate.

As the technology advances, some of the costs of the technology, certainly in the early stages, prove quite significant, so we need to think carefully about how we ensure, as my hon. Friend rightly said, that the equipment can still benefit the individual as they move on from compulsory education and, we hope, make the transition to a fulfilling adult life.

[Mrs Hodgson]

There was recently a reception, which some hon. Members may have gone to, about the gaming industry. One company there, SpecialEffect, is developing some of this eye-movement technology. It works in the gaming industry, but also on the educational opportunities provided by that technology. A lot of people may think that gaming is not necessary, but this is a very important move, with regard to cohesion, and young people feeling included in society, and able to play games and take part in other online activities in the same way that their peers can. The cost of the technology could be prohibitive, so I am pleased that the Minister is aware of it and has availed himself of it. I hope that we can ensure that where these technologies can help children with their education and the social aspects of their life, they will not be deemed too prohibitively expensive all the time.

[Mr Timpson]

The hon. Lady is a great advocate of the role that information technology can play in the lives of many children and young people with special educational needs. That even led to her persuading me, in Committee, to include elements relating to IT in the code of practice. This is another example of where we have the chance to widen the opportunities for many young people with speech, language and communication needs who, not many years ago, would not have had any of that at their disposal. Yes, there will be costs that must be taken into account, but with some of the new commissioning arrangements that are coming on board, including the joint commissioning in the Bill, and with personal budgets, there is a raft of ways in which, with the right support, many families can start to consider that as a reality, rather than a pipe dream. It is incumbent on all of us to think carefully about how we can help them to achieve exactly that.

I want to touch on an important issue that my hon. Friends the Members for Mid Dorset and North Poole, and for South Swindon, touched on—the Ofqual consultation proposal not to assess formally speaking and listening skills at GCSE. Clearly, pupils need speaking skills for their future progression, and employers value good communication skills and want them to be taught. The subject content of the new English language GCSE will strengthen the requirement to teach pupils how to become more confident in using spoken language in formal settings. The key point is how speaking skills are taught. Often, we dwell on the subject matter, rather than how that will be put across and absorbed by each individual child in such a way that it will endure. We do not want it to be just an exercise in process.

Improvements to the new national curriculum key stage 2 and 3 programmes of study for English will result in students being better prepared for the start of their GCSE courses. We do not want to undermine the robust standard of this subject by including assessments that cannot be externally validated, and that is reflected in Ofqual’s proposals. We have consulted organisations representing students with special educational needs as part of the equality analysis that we published in March. Overall, we believe that the benefit to all students will be positive. Students will follow more robust and challenging GCSE courses that will have real value for their future progression to further education and employment. Those with special educational needs can, through the Equality Act 2010, be supported in their exams through reasonable adjustments, such as extra time or supervised rest breaks. Ofqual, as the independent regulator, will monitor access arrangements and reasonable adjustments as the reformed GCSEs are introduced.

The consultation is still open. I know that the Communication Trust and others have submitted their own reflections on the proposals, and I have no doubt that Ofqual will take those reflections extremely seriously. We shall have to wait for the outcome of the consultation to see what steps are to be taken next, but it is important that Members of the House have the opportunity, both through the consultation and through the debate today, to make their feelings known, so that every angle is properly considered when understanding the ramifications of any changes on which Ofqual is consulting.

The changes that we are making in relation to special educational needs through the Children and Families Bill and through the 20 pathfinders across 31 local authorities are a key feature of our determination to ensure that all vulnerable children, whatever their background, have the chance to reach their full potential, not just in their education but in their wider life socially, culturally and otherwise. It is encouraging that we have reached the halfway point of the Bill’s passage and there is strong consensus on much of what it is designed to achieve and how we are going about that.

We are not talking about a small cohort of children in our country. We are talking about a significant number of children, and as my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon rightly pointed out on a number of occasions, we have a duty to ensure that they have every opportunity to reach their goals, academic or otherwise, that we would want for our own children. I know that as the Bill moves on, many Members here and in the other place will want to continue this dialogue, which has been extremely constructive to date, to ensure that we meet our responsibilities in Parliament to provide the best possible framework for the local agencies that are working so hard on the ground, in the public, private and voluntary sectors, to help to bring about these important changes. I am confident that we have set our stall out in a way that will drive reform and bring about the culture change that we all want and that, as a consequence, many children and families will feel that rather than the system working against them, it is much more on their side.

We are already starting to see, in some of the evaluation of the work that the pathfinders are doing, reports from parents who are starting to feel more included. They are being properly consulted. They are seeing changes in attitude, particularly in the health service, towards their involvement in not just the assessment process, but the delivery of services. The building blocks are starting to be put in place. Some of the relationships are starting to be recalibrated and are starting to mesh; my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon said that was happening already in his constituency.

We still have a huge amount of work to do. We are under no illusions about the fact that it will be a monumental task for all of us to ensure that this is a lasting and fulfilling change for many families, but the signs are encouraging, and I look forward to working with hon. Members on both sides of the House to continue to do all that we can to ensure that these important reforms really do hit the mark.

Children and Families Bill

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

[Mr Speaker]

With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:

New clause 8—Support for children with specified health conditions—

‘(1) The governing body of a mainstream school has a duty to produce and implement a medical conditions policy that defines how it plans to support the needs of children with specified health conditions.

(2) The medical conditions policy must include provision about—

(a) the means by which records of the specified health conditions of children at the school are to be recorded and maintained; and

(b) the preparation of an individual healthcare plan for each child with a specified health condition which sets out the needs of that child arising from that condition.

(3) The medical conditions policy must include requirements relating to the provision of appropriate training for school staff to support the implementation of individual healthcare plans.

(4) In preparing an individual healthcare plan the governing body must—

(a) consult the parent of the child concerned and, where appropriate, the child about the contents of the plan; and

(b) there shall be a duty on NHS bodies to co-operate with the governing body in its preparation and implementation of individual healthcare plans.

(5) Local authorities and clinical commissioning groups must co-operate with governing bodies in fulfilling their functions under this Act.

(6) The Secretary of State may by regulations define “specified health conditions” for the purposes of this section.

(7) For the purposes of this section “NHS bodies” has the same meaning as in the Health and Social Care Act 2012.’.

New clause 21—Inclusive and accessible education, health and social care provision—

‘(1) In exercising a function under Part 3, a local authority and NHS bodies in England must promote and secure inclusive and accessible education, health and social care provision to support children, young people and their families.

(2) Regulations will set out requirements on an authority and its partner NHS commissioning bodies to promote and secure inclusive and accessible education, health and social care provision in its local area, in particular through—

(a) the planning;

(b) the design;

(c) the commissioning or funding;

(d) the delivery; and

(e) the evaluation of such services.’.

New clause 24—Publication of information relating to Special Educational Needs tribunal cases—

‘(1) The Secretary of State must collect information on all cases related to special educational needs which are considered by the Tribunal Service, including—

(a) the local authority involved;

(b) the cost to the Tribunal Service;

(c) the amount spent by the local authority on fighting each case;

(d) the nature of each case; and

(e) the outcome of each case.

(2) The Secretary of State must collate and publish information collected in the exercise of his functions under subsection (1) once a year.

(3) The following bodies must make arrangements to provide such information to the Secretary of State as is necessary to enable him to perform his functions under this section—

(a) the Tribunal Service;

(b) local authorities.’.

Amendment 59, in clause 19, page 18, line 22, at end add—

‘(e) the right of the parent to make their own arrangements for some or all of the special educational provision under section 7 of the Education Act 1996.’.

Amendment 39, in clause 21, page 19, line 16, leave out ‘wholly or mainly’.

Amendment 60, in clause 23, page 19, line 29, leave out ‘may have’ and insert ‘probably has’.

Amendment 61, page 19, line 32, leave out ‘may have’ and insert ‘probably has’.

Amendment 46, in clause 27, page 22, line 3, at end insert—

‘(2A) If the education and care provision provided as part of the local offer is deemed insufficient to meet the needs of children and young people under subsection (2), a local authority must—

(a) publish these findings;

(b) improve that provision until it is deemed sufficient by—

(i) those consulted under subsection (3); and

(ii) Ofsted.’.

Amendment 62, in clause 28, page 23, line 29, at end insert ‘;

(n) Parent Carer Forums.’.

Amendment 66, in clause 30, page 24, line 21, leave out ‘it expects to be’ and insert ‘which is’.

Amendment 67, page 24, line 24, leave out ‘it expects to be’ and insert ‘which is’.

Amendment 30, page 24, line 34, at end insert—

‘(f) arrangements to assist young people and parents in managing a personal budget should they choose one.’.

Amendment 68, page 24, line 39, at end insert ‘, including in online communities.’.

Amendment 69, page 25, line 7, at end insert—

‘(7A) The Secretary of State shall lay a draft of regulations setting out the minimum level of specific special educational provision, health care provision and social care provision that local authorities must provide as part of their local offer, and the regulations are not to be made unless they have been approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.

(7B) Once regulations under subsection (7A) have been made, the Secretary of State must—

(a) issued guidance to local authorities on how to meet these regulations, and

(b) publish information on these regulations accessible to the families of children and young people with special educational needs on the Department’s website, and in any other way he sees fit.’.

Amendment 65, in clause 36, page 28, line 21, at end insert—

‘(1A) A person acting on behalf of a school or a post-16 institution (“A”) must request an EHC needs assessment for a child or young person (“B”) as soon as A becomes aware that B has been diagnosed with epilepsy or a related condition.’.

Amendment 40, page 29, line 20, leave out subsection (10).

Amendment 44, in clause 37, page 30, line 8, leave out from ‘provision’ to end of line 10 and insert

‘required by the child or young person.’.

Amendment 41, page 30, line 13, leave out subsection (4).

Amendment 45, in clause 38, page 30, line 35, at end insert—

‘(g) an institution of higher education which the young person has accepted an offer from.’.

Government amendment 17.

Amendment 37, in clause 42, page 33, line 6, at end insert—

‘(2A) If the plan specifies social care provision, the responsible local authority must secure the specified social care provision for the child or young person.’.

Amendment 63, page 33, line 13, leave out ‘suitable alternative arrangements’ and insert

‘arrangements suitable to the age, ability, aptitude and special needs of the child or young person and has chosen not to receive assistance with making provision.’.

Amendment 42, in clause 44, page 34, line 3, leave out subsection (5).

Amendment 43, in clause 45, page 34, line 37, leave out subsection (4).

Amendment 64, page 34, line 39, at end insert—

‘(4A) A local authority must not cease to maintain an EHC plan on the sole ground that the child or young person is educated otherwise than at school in accordance with section 7 of the Education Act 1996.’.

Government amendments 18 to 20.

Amendment 70, in clause 48, page 36, line 21, at end add—

‘(6) This section will not have effect until an Order is made by the Secretary of State, subject to affirmative resolution by both Houses of Parliament.

(7) Before making an Order under subsection (6), the Secretary of State must lay a copy of a report before both Houses of Parliament detailing findings from the pathfinder authorities established under the Special Educational Needs (Direct Payments) (Pilot Scheme) Order 2012, including but not limited to—

(a) the impact on educational outcomes for children and young people;

(b) the quality of provision received by children and young people;

(c) the value for money achieved;

(d) the impact on services provided for children and young people without EHC plans, or those for whom direct payments were not made.

(8) The Secretary of State may not prepare a report under subsection (7) until September 2014.

(9) An Order made under subsection (6) may amend this section as the Secretary of State deems necessary to ensure the effective operation of personal budgets, having had regard to the finding of the report produced by virtue of subsection (7).’.

Government amendment 21.

Amendment 38, in clause 50, page 37, line 18, at end insert ‘;

(g) the social care provision specified in an EHC plan;

(h) the healthcare provision specified in an EHC plan.’.

Amendment 47, in page 48, line 35, leave out clause 69.

Amendment 71, in clause 65, page 45, line 37, leave out ‘19’ and insert ‘25’.

Amendment 72, page 46, line 11, leave out ‘19’ and insert ‘25’.

Amendment 73, in clause 67, page 47, line 21, leave out

‘such persons as the Secretary of State sees fit’

and insert

‘publicly, for a period of not less than 90 days’.

Amendment 74, page 47, line 22, leave out ‘by them’ and insert

‘as part of that consultation’.

Amendment 75, in clause 67, page 47, line 23, leave out subsections (3) to (8) and insert—

‘(3) A code, or revision of a code, does not come into operation until the Secretary of State by order so provides.

(4) The power conferred by subsection (3) shall be made by statutory instrument.

(5) An order bringing a code, or revision of a code, into operation may not be made unless a draft order has been laid before and approved by resolution of each House of Parliament.

(6) When an Order or draft of an order is laid, the code or revision of a code to which it relates must also be laid.

(7) No order or draft of an order may be laid until the consultation required by subsection (2) has taken place.’.

Amendment 48, in clause 72, page 49, line 46, leave out from ‘education,’ to end of line 1 on page 50.

Government amendments 22 to 25.

[Mr Timpson]

Part 3 of the Bill introduces a much stronger framework for supporting children and young people with special educational needs. These reforms have been widely welcomed, and I am grateful to Members in all parts of the House for their interest in and support for them. We can be sure in the knowledge that the Bill has been significantly strengthened since draft clauses were published last autumn.

We have all met constituents who have had to battle to get the special educational support that their child needs. These reforms are ambitious; they aim to ensure that in future, children, young people and their parents are at the heart of the system, and that special educational provision builds around them, instead of asking them to adjust to the system. It will not always work perfectly in every case, but the pathfinders that I have visited have convinced me that we have a really exciting reform under way—one that challenges local authorities to design a system around those who use it, rather than conform to existing structures and processes. The reforms are also ambitious as regards personal aspirations. The new system will support young people through further education and training, up to the age of 25 for those who need it, and focus much more strongly on independent living and helping them to find paid employment. The provisions extend support to younger years as well, so that children are supported as soon as their needs are identified, from birth onwards, instead of having to wait until they reach school to be assessed.

The reforms provide the foundation for a system in which children and young people’s needs are picked up early; parents know what services they can reasonably expect their local schools, colleges, local authority, and health and social care services to provide, without having to fight for the information; those with more severe or complex needs have a co-ordinated assessment built around them and a single education, health and care plan from birth to 25; and parents and young people have greater control over their support. I believe these ambitions are shared across the House.

We had a wide-ranging, constructive debate on Second Reading, and the Committee sittings were passionate, knowledgeable and helpful. I hope that today we can build on the broad consensus that has characterised the debate to date.

We have also listened carefully to the views expressed by Members of the House, parents and young people, and many of the organisations supporting them, and we have acted to improve the SEN provisions following pre-legislative scrutiny and as the Bill has made its way through the House.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The Minister may recall that he kindly met me to discuss my particular concerns about children who had suffered from cancer and perhaps missed quite a large amount of school but did not fit in with the SEN criteria. What level of support could they expect under these proposals?

[Mr Timpson]

I recall the constructive meeting that I had with the hon. Gentleman and he will remember that I gave a commitment then to work with him and with organisations with which he has been working with great astuteness to see what more we can do through the code of practice and other means to provide the additional support that we all want to see so that no child, particularly a child with cancer, misses out on the opportunity to fulfil their potential, and I will continue to work with him to achieve that.

Following the Education Committee’s thorough and well-argued report—another one—in December, we amended the Bill in several ways. By virtue of clause 19, we introduced a requirement for local authorities when exercising a function under part 3 to have regard to the views, wishes and feelings of a child and his or her parent, or of the young person, and the importance of them participating as fully as possible in decisions, and being provided with information and support to enable them to do so—an important set of transcending principles.

We have clearly specified the right of parents and young people themselves to request an assessment for special educational needs, to remove any uncertainty. We have ensured that young people on apprenticeships can receive support through an education, health and care plan. We have enabled independent special schools and specialist colleges to apply to be on a list of institutions for which parents and young people with education, health and care plans could express a preference. We have changed our approach to mediation so that parents and young people must consider mediation but do not have to take it up and can go straight to appeal to the tribunal if they wish without prejudicing their position.

To ensure that services are responsive to families’ needs we added a requirement for local authorities to involve children, young people and parents in reviewing the local offer and to publish their comments about the local offer and what action they will take to respond, and we made provision for the SEN code of practice to be approved by Parliament by way of negative resolution.

[Mr Tom Clarke (Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill) (Lab)]

I apologise for missing the first two minutes of the Minister’s speech. He outlines responsibilities that have rightly been referred to various public agencies, but I find it somewhat confusing that nowhere can I find, either in the new clause or in the amendments, any reference to advocacy. I might have missed something, but what role do the Government see for advocates in the situations that we are discussing?

[Mr Timpson]

The right hon. Gentleman raises an important point. Advocacy comes in different forms. We have advocacy in relation to the legal process, and legal aid will still apply up to the point of tribunal for those who require legal advice. There is also advocacy in terms of trying to navigate the system. One thing that we are doing in relation to the pathfinders is to see who can help co-ordinate and navigate for parents and young people in a system that often has been too impenetrable, labyrinthine and drawn out. That could be through a key working role or through the work that the special educational needs co-ordinators carry out so effectively in so many of our schools. It is a practical response to the problem that we know exists while ensuring that the advocacy that is currently available for the legal process continues into the future. We set that out in Committee and I encourage the right hon. Gentleman to look carefully at what we said.

[Guy Opperman (Hexham) (Con)]

Will the Minister reassure some local authorities that the proposal will still ensure integration between the 1970 legislation, the Children Act 1989 and this Act, and make sure that there is not a silo system that does not have the integrated service that we all so want?

[Mr Timpson]

My hon. Friend touches on the heart of the Bill, which is to tackle the perennial problem of special educational needs, in that education, health and social care have tended to work in parallel rather than in conjunction with one another. In many of the clauses, both through the general duty to co-operate, the joint commissioning clause, and now the duty on health as well as the duty to consult parents and children themselves, there is already, with the pathfinders, a growing involvement of each of those different agencies in coming together and concentrating on the central and most important issue, which is the child. I hope he will see that the Bill gives local authorities an opportunity to nurture and grow their relationships with health and other agencies, and ensure that as a consequence they are providing better services for children in their local area.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend on behalf of the Education Committee for taking such a positive and constructive approach to our pre-legislative scrutiny report, and implementing so many of the proposals, as he has just listed.

My hon. Friend appeared before the Committee this morning in our inquiry into school sports, and he suggested that he would consider looking at the code of practice to ensure that rather than disabled children being sent to the library while others are doing sport, as we heard in evidence sometimes happens, they have access to sport in schools, and that that is part of an overall package to meet their needs.

[Mr Timpson]

As ever, I am grateful to the Chair of the Education Committee for raising a crucial element for many young people with a disability, and that is access to other activities outside those of the classroom. I am mindful of that and as I told the Committee this morning have seen for myself, at a special school in Chislehurst only last week, how the integration of sport in schools, where children with both physical and other disabilities are able to participate, can have a huge knock-on effect in other areas of their life. It would not always be appropriate through the identification of the needs and therefore the support for each child in relation to their plan to have a built-in element that incorporates and encompasses physical activity, but clearly we want to provide as much opportunity for them as for any other child. The schools should be doing it anyway under the Equality Act 2010 and the reasonable adjustments for which they are responsible, but it also makes good sense, as we know. I am happy—I made this commitment to the Committee—to look at that in the context of the code of practice, but also to work with many of the organisations and charities who are already out there, through the project ability scheme and others, to see what more they can do to spread good practice in this area. I am happy to keep my hon. Friend informed of that process.

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

As has been mentioned, the Select Committee held a series of pre-legislative scrutiny meetings. Is the Minister satisfied that there are sufficient accountability mechanisms for agency co-operation, and that the appropriate agency will automatically take the lead? How will that work out in different cases?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Timpson]

Briefly to disaggregate my hon. Friend’s two points, clearly it is important that we know what is happening in schools on the delivery of SEN provision, and since September 2012 we have had a strengthened Ofsted framework that seeks to do that. I and my colleague in the Department of Health want to explore what more we can do to try to bring about a more multidimensional accountability and inspection regime for special educational needs that goes beyond the school gates and looks at it across education, health and social care, so there is more that we can do in that area. The Education Department is also looking at some of the destination measures in schools as a way of ensuring that we do not miss out on understanding the progress of children who sometimes fall below the radar because they do not count towards any of the measures of success that the school is being marked against. We need to get around that and make it more explicit that every child needs to be making progress whatever their ability, and there is no reason why all of them should not be doing so, and every school has a responsibility in that regard.

We made further changes in Committee, where I was pleased to include a specific duty requiring those responsible for commissioning health provision to secure the health care provision education, health and care plans. This is a hugely significant change and has been widely welcomed. Srabani Sen, board member of the Every Disabled Child Matters campaign and chief executive of Contact a Family, when giving evidence to the Committee on 5 March, said that

“it was phenomenally good news to hear this morning about the duty on health to provide. One of the things that that helps with enormously is bringing people together to work together at a service delivery level”—

a point that my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Guy Opperman) made—

“but it also gives parents something solid that they can use when they are having these discussions with their service providers about how they get the right services for their child. I do not think we can overestimate the potential of what you”—

I think that means me—

“announced this morning. It is phenomenally useful.”––[Official Report, Children and Families Bill Public Bill Committee, 5 March 2013; c. 47-48, Q103.]

The new duty builds on the joint commissioning duty set out in the Bill, which requires local authorities and clinical commissioning groups, and NHS England where relevant, to assess the needs of the local population of children and young people with SEN and plan and commission services to meet them.

[Mr Tom Clarke]

The Minister has referred several times to the role of local authorities, but the reality is that some local authorities give greater priority to this than others. Because this ought to be—I think that the Government agree—person-centred, considering the needs, rights and ambitions of young people, has he had an opportunity to speak with the Local Government Association, for example?

[Mr Timpson]

Yes, I have had a number of meetings with the Local Government Association, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services and other bodies that will be responsible for delivering education, health and care plans and, more widely, SEN provision within their local area. This has been a huge consultative exercise, and one that continues through the pathfinders. One of the messages we have been clear about throughout the process is that legislation, although a key component of long-term, sustainable reform, is not the whole solution. We also need to see—this is happening through the pathfinders and starting to spread outside them as we develop the changes in the system more widely—a recognition that those bodies must play their part at grass-roots level and recalibrate the sorts of relationships that in the past have not been good enough to help deliver the required provision.

[Alison Seabeck (Plymouth, Moor View) (Lab)]

I would like to build on the comments my right hon. Friend the Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Mr Clarke) made about the role of local authorities. The Royal National Institute of Blind People has raised specific concerns about the registration of visually impaired children—it is worried that some local authorities will do it but some will not. Has the Minister had an opportunity since that was discussed in Committee to have any further conversations with either the RNIB directly or local authorities on that issue?

[Mr Timpson]

I will be corrected if I am wrong, but my understanding is that there have been ongoing discussions. We are aware of the issue. As with all organisations that have expressed an interest in the Bill, we have been keen to keep an open dialogue with the RNIB to see what solutions we can find. Many of the solutions will be found at local level. We must accept that some conditions have a high incidence and some have a low incidence, and that can affect the sort of provision available right across the country. The beauty of trying to develop the local offer is that it will make it far more transparent not only in a local area, but across a regional area, so parents and young people will have a greater understanding of what is available to them, how they can access it and, if they are unable to do so, how they can make a complaint, which in the past has been quite a convoluted and impenetrable process. We must ensure that they have the power to make those decisions.

[Guy Opperman]

I am not sure whether I need to, but I will make a declaration: I have represented about 100 applicants for statements at special educational needs and disability tribunals, and local authorities still owe me money for some of them from before 2010. The simple question that my constituents in Northumberland would like answered, if that is possible, is this: will these proposals make it easier to gain a statement for those parents who have been trying to do so for so long, given that the process has been so convoluted and difficult over the years, as we have all found?

[Mr Timpson]

The short answer is yes. That is the intention of the Bill. There are a number of reasons for saying that. One of the complaints from parents about the statementing process relates less to the statement itself and more to early identification and the need for much greater effort from different agencies in co-ordinating the assessment and the plan. Everything in the Bill tries to encourage that and, in some circumstances, cajole the different bodies to come together and work with the family, rather than, as we have heard far too often, the family feeling that they are working in a different environment from those around them. By ensuring that that happens, we will reduce the prospect of conflict, misunderstanding and, therefore, the road to tribunal, which we all want to avoid. That is why we included the mediation process, albeit on a voluntary basis, to give parents and those responsible for providing services every opportunity to work together, co-operate and consult at every stage, but particularly in the early stages, in order to avoid unnecessary discord and damage further down the line.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

While the Minister is on the subject of conflict between local authorities and parents, may I press him, as many of my amendments do, on home-educating parents, who all too often have been subject to misinformation and abuse of power by local authorities? Will he give serious consideration to including a provision stating that parents who home educate are not to have their children’s SEN support removed and that local authorities, despite their duty to find children with SEN, do not have their powers to demand access to children strengthened? We should reinforce the primacy of parents in deciding what should happen to their children and ensure that local authorities are the servants of families, not their masters.

[Mr Timpson]

I have a strong memory of spending a late night in the House a few years ago when my hon. Friend managed to get more than 100 of us to present petitions on behalf of many of those parents who decided to home educate their children. I know that he, as chair of the all-party group on home education, has been a great advocate on their behalf. Clearly we want to ensure that every child with SEN, however they are educated, during the period of compulsory age and beyond, from nought to 25, gets the support they require to meet their full potential. That should be no different in the circumstances he describes. I will be able to respond in more detail when we debate his amendments, and I am happy to continue that conversation with him outside the Chamber.

[Neil Carmichael]

On home education and the obvious issues relating to special educational needs, what consideration has the Minister given to registration of those children who are home educated?

[Mr Timpson]

I am straying slightly outside my portfolio, but where it impinges on special educational needs clearly we want to ensure that those children receive the support they require. There were attempts in the last Parliament to bring about some form of registration, which was eventually put out to grass. I think we have the balance right at this stage, but of course it is something that my ministerial colleagues who are responsible for these matters will no doubt keep under review.

The new duty in the Bill relating to health commissioning also brings in joint commissioning arrangements, which must include those for securing education, health and care needs assessments and the education, health and care provision specified in the education, health and care plans. The new health duty requires health commissioners to ensure that the health elements of those plans are provided for each individual, thus providing direct clarity for parents that the support their child needs will be provided

We have taken an open approach to the Bill, listened carefully to the views of a wide range of people and made changes to improve it. I know that is the approach that my ministerial colleagues in the other place, including Lord Nash, intend to continue when the Bill makes its way to them. However, before it does we have some important business to conclude in this House today.

I will begin our consideration of the Bill’s SEN provisions by speaking to new clause 9 in a little more detail and to Government amendments 17 to 25. These amendments clarify responsibilities and make consequential amendments to legislation as a result of provisions in the Bill. With regard to new clause 9, it is important that the responsibilities of local authorities are clear when a child or young person with an education, health and care plan moves from one area to another. The new clause provides for regulations to specify those responsibilities. Regulations will make it clear that the new local authority is treated as though it had made the plan. This ensures that plans do not lapse when children and young people move from one area to another and that support for their special educational needs is maintained. I therefore urge the House to support new clause 9.

Amendment 17 to clause 41 has been tabled at the request of the Welsh Government. It would enable independent schools that are specially organised for making provision for children and young people with special educational needs, and specialist post-16 institutions in Wales, to apply to the Secretary of State for Education to be on a list of independent institutions that those with education, health and care plans can ask to be named on their plan. If independent schools in Wales wish to put themselves forward for approval, the amendment will be of benefit to children and young people who live close to the Welsh border whose needs would be best met in a Welsh independent school or those who would be appropriately placed in independent boarding provision in Wales. I urge the House to support the amendment.

On amendments 18 to 20 on personal budgets, I signalled our intention to table these consequential amendments when we debated clause 48 on personal budgets in Committee. The changes they make are necessary because of the changes we made to clause 42 in Committee by placing the duty in clause 42(3) on health commissioners to secure the health provision identified in an education, health and care plan. The amendments allow health commissioners to discharge their duty to make health care provision specified in EHC plans when this provision is secured using a direct payment. This replicates the equivalent provision on local authorities set out in clause 48(5). The amendments clarify that when parents or young people exercise their direct payment, this allows the commissioning body to discharge its statutory duty. The proposed use of the words “having been” in clauses 48(5) and 48(7) makes it clear that the duties on commissioning bodies and local authorities to secure provision are discharged only through the use of a direct payment when the child or young person has actually received the provision, in a manner in keeping with the regulations. I urge the House to support these amendments.

Government amendment 21 relates to clause 49, which inserts new section 17ZA into the Children Act 1989, giving local authorities a power to continue to provide services they have been providing under section 17 to a young person before their 18th birthday to that young person when they are 18 and over. This is a technical amendment that makes it clear that the power in section 17ZA applies only to local authorities in England.

Government amendments 22 to 25 relate to schedule 3 and make further amendments to existing legislation as a consequence of the Bill’s provisions—for example, replacing references to statements and learning difficulty assessments throughout. These are necessary changes to ensure the proper implementation of the reforms in part 3, and I therefore urge hon. Members to approve them.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to debate this Bill again, this time on the Floor of the House. In Committee we had some excellent debates on this part of the Bill, in particular. A large number of amendments were tabled by hon. Members on both sides of the Committee, but we were at all times united in our ambition for the children and young people to whom the Bill applies.

It is crucial that children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities be given the support they need to access education and reach their potential, academically and in terms of their physical, social and emotional development. It is not just a moral imperative that leads us to seek those better outcomes for all children; there is also a financial imperative for the whole country. A young person who makes a successful transition to adulthood and has achieved as much as they can educationally is likely to be less in need of welfare, health and social care support and more likely to be able to work and contribute their skills to the economy and their taxes to the Treasury. We support a great many of the reforms that the Government are making to achieve these better outcomes, but we have sought at all stages to ensure that we are going as far as we can, that current rights and entitlements are protected and built on, and that children and young people, and their families, are at the very heart of the changes made and are able adequately to hold agencies to account where they do not get the support they should.

We support the introduction of personal budgets to allow families a greater degree of choice in securing the choice that their child needs. As I said in Committee, I would have greatly welcomed such an opportunity when I was trying to get my severely dyslexic son the support he needed to get through his GCSEs. However, there are serious and abiding concerns about whether they can work in the sense of improving outcomes while providing value for money for the taxpayer, and there are still questions about how the market for support that this reform will create will really look. The Government are running pathfinders in an effort to answer these questions, but they have not been answered yet. Parliament is therefore being asked to legislate for something that we do not know will work and could well be a costly failure.

--- Later in debate ---

I promised to keep my comments brief, and I think I have managed to speak for only four minutes. I would like to thank the Secretary of State and the Minister for having tabled the new clause. Portability and an ability to recognise care plans across different local authorities will be of critical importance to all those families who have struggled to ensure that their children get the provision they need.

[Mr Timpson]

I thank my hon. Friends the Members for South Swindon (Mr Buckland), for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes), for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) and for Torbay (Mr Sanders) and the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) for the amendments they tabled. I thank in particular the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for embodying in her approach the very essence of this part of the Bill, in that she has demonstrated a lot of co-operation and constructive consultation and has, I suspect, sometimes strayed into the occasional bit of joint commissioning, which I welcome. I also thank other Members who have spoken in this debate on the SEN provisions. I will do my best to respond to the amendments and the key points that have been made.

Amendments 30, 46, 62 and 66 to 69 and new clause 21 are concerned with arrangements for improving local provision. I hope I will be able to address the concerns that are behind amendment 30—as just raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Romsey and Southampton North—through regulations and the code of practice. Draft regulations under clause 48 would require local authorities to provide information, advice and support in relation to personal budgets, including information about independent organisations. Draft regulations made under clause 36 would require local authorities to provide any support they consider necessary for parents or young people to take part effectively in the education, health and care assessment, and regulations made under clause 30 would require local authorities to include in their local offer sources of information, advice and support for children and young people with special educational needs and their families. The indicative code of practice—which my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon helpfully pointed out was made available in Committee and proved invaluable as a consequence—clarifies that this should include information, advice and support available in relation to personal budgets.

I share the aim of my hon. Friend’s amendment 46, which is to ensure that education and social care provision is sufficient to meet the needs of children and young people with SEN and to promote improvements in that provision, but that should be balanced with the need to retain local decision making; that point seemed to unite the House in the debate we have just had. Local authorities, schools and other services must determine spending on provision for children and young people with special educational needs, taking account of their legal responsibilities. Clause 27(3) would require local authorities to consult a wide range of people and organisations in reviewing provision, including, importantly, children and young people with special educational needs and their parents, but placing a specific legal duty on them to improve special educational and social care provision until everyone consulted agrees it is sufficient would be impractical, as views of different people and groups would inevitably differ. Local authorities will be able to reflect the outcomes of the reviews they undertake under clause 27 in the local offer, which also requires the close involvement of children and young people with special educational needs and their parents in its development and review.

On amendments 66 to 69, I can assure the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West and other hon. Members that the local offer will not be a speculative document. It will set out what the local authority expects will actually be available. The local authority does not have control of all the services set out in the local offer, so it can only set out what it expects to be available. If it can only reflect what is currently available, that will prevent the local offer from setting out, for example, what provision it expects to become available in the near future. This could, for example, include new provision in a school, which parents or young people will want to know about in advance.

On amendment 68, I agree that online communities can be a valuable way to socialise, and perhaps that is especially true for young people with special needs. Only yesterday I had the opportunity to visit Springfield special school in my constituency. The children being educated there were keen to show me first their school’s IT suite, where they had developed some important skills in a number of innovative ways. I agree that online communities have their dangers, and that young people should be equipped to socialise over the internet safely. I repeat the commitment I gave in Committee: I will consider including a reference to online communities in the code, in the context of preparing for adulthood. I do not believe it is necessary to amend the Bill in order to achieve what Members want, but I think what I have said demonstrates the importance of this area both now and in the future.

Amendment 69 concerns minimum standards in the local offer. The key to the success of the local offer in each area will be the transparency of information, and the involvement of local parents, children and young people in developing and reviewing the local offer. Central prescription would stifle the very innovation and responsiveness we want to see the local offer trigger, and stipulating minimum standards for the local offer would weaken local accountability. They would constrain parents’ ability to influence a local authority, which could point to meeting minimum requirements to end further discussion. That is a potential “race to the bottom” that we must avoid; my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon raised that point in Committee. I hope that detail about what will be in the offer and the strength of the processes for agreeing it will reassure Members that such a potentially counter-productive minimum standard is not necessary.

Amendment 62, from my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness, the Chair of the Education Committee, reflects the view expressed by his Committee about the importance of parent carer forums, whose national network I believe I am meeting tomorrow. I share my hon. Friend’s views about the importance of parents helping to shape local policies for supporting children and young people with special educational needs. The indicative SEN code of practice makes clear reference to that and to the value of parent carer forums, but as they are not legally constituted bodies we cannot include them in the list in clause 28 of organisations with which a local authority must consult when carrying out its functions under the Bill.

Provision has been made in clause 27 for local authorities to consult children and young people with special educational needs and parents of children with SEN, along with

“such other persons as the authority thinks appropriate”,

when carrying out their statutory duty to keep their special educational provision and social care provision under review. I am sure that local authorities will want to consult parent carer forums as they carry out that duty, which is reflected in the draft code of practice. The SE7 pathfinder, for example, is working closely with its local parent carer forums to develop the local offer, to ensure that it reflects the needs of children, young people and parents.

Turning to new clause 21, local authorities aim to provide services close to home, and I know how important it is for families for provision to be made locally. However, as has been said, that is not always practical for those who require specialist support that is available only in very few places. Clause 27 requires local authorities to consult children and young people with special educational needs and their parents when they are reviewing their special educational provision and social care provision. Local authorities, clinical commissioning groups and NHS England must develop effective ways of harnessing the views of their local communities, and they will undoubtedly want to engage with Healthwatch organisations, patient representative groups, parent partnerships, parent carer forums and other local voluntary organisations and community groups.

Clause 30 requires local authorities to involve children and young people with special educational needs and their parents in developing and reviewing the local offer. That will ensure a continuing dialogue between local authorities and their partners, including children, young people and families, and keep a focus on the need for local provision. I recently discussed these issues with Scope, which has a good deal of experience in this area, and undertook to consider how the guidance in the SEN code of practice could best encourage the development of services that are responsive to local needs.

Amendments 44, 37 and 39, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon, are all concerned with ensuring an integrated approach to meeting the needs of children and young people. I share the goal of amendment 44—integrated health and social care support—but cannot agree that it is the best way to achieve it. Under the Bill, the support that must be available to the child or young person is that reasonably required by his or her special educational needs.

Local authorities and health commissioners have the power to include other social and health care if they feel it is appropriate. So a child with special educational needs arising from cerebral palsy who needs a wheelchair would have that in their plan. If the child developed an unrelated minor infection, any prescribed medication would not normally be included. Amendment 44 would add unnecessary bureaucracy and hinder pragmatic decision making. I am alive to the case studies that my hon. Friend brought to the House’s attention and will look carefully at them in understanding the consequences of the point he makes. I am happy to continue to discuss that with him, but as things stand I am not convinced that his amendment is necessary.

Amendment 37 seeks a specific duty on authorities to deliver social care provision in EHC plans. As I said in Committee, existing duties in section 17 of the Children Act 1989 provide important protections. I understand concerns that this is a general, not an individual duty, but I fully expect that local authorities will provide care services to meet assessed needs. In the case of disabled children, the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970 applies, and once the authority is satisfied it is necessary to provide support and assistance, it is required to do just that. I do not think it right to prioritise, as a matter of course, children with EHC plans over all other children in need, who would then risk being marginalised—I am thinking, for example, of children suffering neglect or abuse.

On amendment 39, I know that my hon. Friend has concerns about clause 21, and my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), among others, has also raised this issue. Clause 21(5) fulfils an undertaking I gave during pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill that we would maintain existing protections, including case law. The subsection was included to preserve the current position whereby, of course, there is no duty to secure the health provision in plans. Amendment 39 goes further than current case law and would define all social care and health care provision made for a child or young person with SEN as special educational provision, if it was in some way for the purposes of education or training.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dan Rogerson]

The logic throughout what the Minister has set out has been about bringing together providers to offer one point of contact with families and young people affected. If, as the pilots continue and this policy is brought into effect, it emerges that it might be preferable for there to be some kind of unified appeal process, would there be the mechanism to bring that about subsequently through secondary legislation? Alternatively, for that to happen would it need to be in the Bill?

[Mr Timpson]

My hon. Friend makes a point about the importance to the parents and the young person of having a single point of access into any complaints procedure. That is why we are looking at how there can be a single point of interface for them, providing them with the information and navigation they require to find themselves in the right part of that complaints process. Clearly, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon said, there are tribunal rules in place and there are always practical ways in which we can look at trying to enmesh more clearly together the various strands in the complaints mechanisms. We need to develop that through the pathfinders and, as we hopefully reduce the number of cases that end up in the tribunal system, see whether that has had an effect. We will keep that under close review.

New clause 24, tabled by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West, was discussed in Committee, following which I wrote clarifying what information was already published. The effect of the new clause would be that details were published by individual case. It would not be appropriate to publish information that could identify details of private cases. Clearly, we want to reduce contention. Publishing information on individual cases is likely to extend the contention beyond the delivery of the tribunal’s judgment.

Information would have to be published on the tribunal service and authorities’ costs, and that raises the question whether information would also have to be published on the relative complexity of cases to justify what may be a proportionate expense. The wish to publish information on the cost to authorities may be based on the misapprehension that authorities usually engage legal representation. The most recent figures show that authorities were legally represented at only 15% of hearings, and in most cases authorities would just be providing information on officer time costs. Publishing seemingly simple information on costs without proper context may well lead to greater confusion, therefore, but I have no doubt that the hon. Lady will want to return to that area in due course.

New clause 8, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay, and amendment 65, tabled by the hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz), both concern children with health conditions. It is right that every child with a long-term health need is entitled to a high-quality education. Their needs must be identified and addressed promptly, so that they can achieve their full potential. Imposing further statutory duties on schools to ensure that is not necessarily the answer, however.

The right hon. Member for Wentworth and Dearne (John Healey), in a powerful and passionate speech, demonstrated an acute knowledge of life as a Minister and the response that he was likely receive as to current provision. The Education Act 2002 already places a duty on the governing body of a maintained school to promote the well-being of pupils and, as the right hon. Gentleman said, schools are already under a duty through the Equality Act 2010 not to discriminate against pupils with long-term health problems that have an adverse effect on their ability to carry out their normal day-to-day activities. Nor should we require schools and further education institutions to request an EHC assessment for everyone with epilepsy or a related condition.

In a recent written answer to a parliamentary question, I announced that the “managing medicines” guidance would be issued this year, which will further clarify schools’ responsibilities. I am confident that it will address the right hon. Gentleman’s concerns. However, I take what he said extremely seriously and will look closely at the details of what he and others have proposed. I would be more than happy to discuss these matters with him as we consider how we can improve practice in our schools, some of which is still below the level that we should be seeing. We know from figures cited by my hon. Friend the Member for Torbay that the number of children affected by conditions that require support in school is not small, so every effort needs to be made to improve practice on the ground.

[Mr Sanders]

The statistics seem to show that while there are provisions in previous legislation that are supposed to work, they are not working for large numbers of children with these medical conditions. That is the point of new clause 8.

[Mr Timpson]

I understand the intention behind the new clause, but when the raft of legislation directly or indirectly related to the point that my hon. Friend raises is still not bringing about the required support for children in our schools, one wonders whether additional legislation is necessarily the answer. We are seeking to provide the best possible guidance to schools on managing medicines, set against the current legislative framework; and under the new Ofsted inspection of schools, safety is a key feature.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

I find the Minister’s answer inadequate. It is shameful that successive Governments have gone for so many years with a significant minority of children simply not having their needs met in school. When they have a condition or a flare-up that requires action, they get sent off to hospital, or their parents get called, whereas if the school had trained someone up, it could meet that need. This is not good enough. The Minister has done so much under the Bill; this is another area where there could be an historic, positive settlement coming out of the legislation. It would be a shame if the opportunity were missed.

[Mr Timpson]

I had been doing so well with my hon. Friend, throughout the day. He is quite right to continue to challenge us, and schools, on this point. The question that has to go back to schools is why some are able to manage medicines effectively and others are not. That suggests to me that there is not necessarily a direct relation to the legislative framework that they are working under, and that it is down to differences in practice and to the school’s commitment to dealing with the issue. As I say, I am not stopping the discussion at this juncture. I am sure that there will be other opportunities for us to explore what more we can do. Reissuing the guidance is an important step, because it will provide very clear advice to schools on how they should approach this important issue. We will follow that up closely, both through Government channels and through Ofsted’s work in its role as inspector.

My hon. Friend tabled amendments to part 3 in respect of children who are home-educated. I know, because we have discussed the issue, that he takes a keen interest in these matters, both as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on home education and as the Chair of the Select Committee on Education. He recently wrote to the Secretary of State about the Bill’s implications for home educators. He will receive a reply shortly. In the meantime, I reassure him that the Bill will bring benefits to all children and young people with special educational needs, including those who are home-educated. In particular, clause 19 says that in exercising their functions under this part of the Bill, local authorities have to have regard to parents’ views, wishes and feelings, which might, of course, include a wish for home education.

Parents will still have the right to educate their children at home. Where local authorities draw up education, health and care plans that say that home education is right for the child, the local authority will have a duty to arrange the special educational provision set out in the plan, in co-operation with the parents.

[Mr Tom Clarke]

I was impressed by almost everything that the Minister said until he got to the words, “local authorities have to have regard to”. Does he not feel that that is rather a weak way to challenge local authorities? Is it possible that people will look at that in another place?

[Mr Timpson]

As to the right hon. Gentleman’s second point, I am sure that they will; that is the beauty of the process that we find ourselves in. We are content that we have the right balance. We also need to be alive to the fact that home-educated children require support—this goes to the earlier point about proportionality and reasonableness—that fits in with their education. Clearly, every child’s needs have to be assessed, and local authorities should have that in mind.

Where a child has a plan that names a school as the appropriate environment in which to receive his or her education, parents will still be able to decide to home-educate; that is an important point. If they do, the local authority must assure itself that the parents are providing an education in accordance with section 7 of the Education Act 1996—that is, a full-time education that is suitable for the child’s age, ability, aptitude and special educational needs. If the local authority is so assured, it will be relieved of its duty to make the special educational provision set out in the plan, just as it is now with regard to statements. However, local authorities will continue to have the power to help parents to make suitable provision in the home by providing support services. To take on the right hon. Gentleman’s point, I would strongly encourage local authorities to consider exercising that power when making decisions about whether the provision being made by parents is suitable.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend says that local authorities must assure themselves that parents are delivering the education in accordance with 1996 Act. I do not think that that is the case. They have to act if they have reason to believe that parents are not providing suitable education. They have no such overarching duty to assure themselves that every single home educating parent is doing so. The parent, not the local authority, has primacy in the education of their child. The local education authority acts only if it finds out that there is a problem. It does not have to seek it.

[Mr Timpson]

I hope that our differentiation is based simply on the semantics of some of the vocabulary that is being used, but clearly we need to have absolute clarity on the role of each agency in the life of a child, whether they are educated within the school sector or at home. I will write to my hon. Friend to ensure that he has chapter and verse on precisely that point.

I come now to amendments 60 and 6l. I understand from my hon. Friend that home educators are concerned that clause 23 will mean that local authorities will have to assess every home educated child to see if they have SEN, which takes us back to the previous Parliament, where we had many of these discussions. I can assure him that this is not the case. Clause 23 sets out which children and young people local authorities are responsible for under this part of the Bill. These will be children and young people who have already been identified by the authority or who have been brought to the authority’s attention as having, or possibly having, SEN. There is not that overarching forensic exercise of trying to locate each child.

Amendment 63 seeks to tie the definition of the suitability of any alternative arrangements that parents make for children with an EHC plan more closely to the definition of parents’ right to home educate as set out in section 7 of the Education Act 1996. However, this is unnecessary as the provision in the amendment is already contained within the phrase “suitable alternative arrangements”, so does not need to be spelled out in this way. Similarly, while I understand the concern that amendment 64 seeks to address, it is not necessary. Where a child has a plan that says that education provided in the home is the right provision for the child, the local authority could only cease the plan when it felt it was no longer necessary to meet the child’s needs, as set out in the legislation.

Where parents take a child out of school to home educate and are making suitable provision, as is the case now with statements, the local authority will be under a duty to review the plan annually to ensure that the provision that the parents are making continues to be suitable. The local authority could cease to maintain the plan only where it was decided it was no longer needed to meet the child’s needs. Moreover, the new duty on commissioning bodies to arrange the health provision in the plan and the greater expectation that the social care provision will be made will mean that parents can expect that these will continue to be provided. There is further scope within the code of practice to provide clarity on these issues for local authorities, and no doubt my hon. Friend will want, through his connections with the home education lobby, to contribute to that consultation, which will be happening later this year.

On amendments 40 to 43, I find myself completely agreeing once again with my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon that some young people with special educational needs require more time to complete the education that other young people have already finished by the age of 18. The Bill rightly enables them to do so, but we want to avoid the expectation that every young person with SEN has an entitlement to education up to 25—a point that I think he accepted in Committee—regardless of whether they are ready to, or have already made, a successful transition into adult life. The Education Committee recommended that we clarify whether there is an entitlement to special education provision up to age 25. The requirement to have regard to age makes it clear that there is not. However, I can categorically assure my hon. Friend that no young person who needs an education, health and care plan to complete or consolidate their learning can be denied one just because they are over 18. Local authorities must rightly consider a range of matters in coming to these important decisions.

Clause 45(3) requires local authorities to consider whether the educational outcomes specified in the plan have been achieved when it is deciding whether it should cease to maintain a plan. The indicative code of practice, at section 6.18, says:

“local authorities must not simply cease to maintain plans once a young person reaches 18”.

They should consider whether young people have met their agreed outcomes, whether continued education will help them achieve those outcomes, and whether the young person wants to stay in education. Of course, in what we hope will be rare instances, a young person may appeal against a decision to cease their plan, a step forward from the current system.

My hon. Friend also tabled amendments 45 and 48. Securing a place at university is a positive outcome for any young person, and we are right to have high aspirations for children and young people with SEN and disabilities. However, it does not follow that higher education institutions must be part of this Bill. Local authorities are not responsible for the education of young people in higher education and it would be unreasonable to hold them accountable for securing special education provision while the young person is there. As my hon. Friend has already noted, the higher education sector has its own very successful system of support in the form of disabled students’ allowance. DSAs are not means-tested, are awarded in addition to the standard package of support and do not have to be repaid. We should not seek to duplicate or replace that system when it appears predominantly to be working well. In the academic year 2010-11, DSA provided 47,400 full-time students with support totalling £109.2 million. The Government also provided £13 million to HEIs in 2012-13 through the disability premium to help them recruit and support disabled students, and in 2013-14 that figure will rise to £15 million.

However, I agree that we must improve the transition to university. Draft regulations require that when a young person is within two years of leaving formal education a review of their EHC plan must set out plans for helping them make a successful transition to adulthood. We will make it clear in the code of practice that good transition planning includes sharing the EHC plan with the university, with the young person’s consent; ensuring that the young person is aware of DSA and has made an early application so that support is in place when their university course begins, on which the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West shared her experience with the Committee; and ensuring continuity of health and care services where those continue to be required by the young person. In addition, we will work with those conducting DSA assessments to ensure that they understand the EHC plans, as well as how they can assist and inform the assessment and ensure that details of DSA are included in the local offer so that all young people thinking of applying to university are aware of the support available to them.

Under proposals in the Care Bill, which is currently in Committee in the other place, 18-year-olds with eligible needs will receive a statutory care and support plan. The new legislation will ensure that there is no gap in provision as young people make the transition from children’s services to adult services and, when they move from one local authority area to another, that the new authority continues to meet their needs until it has undertaken its own assessment.

With regard to amendment 47, I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon that all young offenders, including those with SEN, need to receive the right support and access to education, both in custody and when they return to their communities. Since our debate in Committee, I have considered the issue further and remain of the view that clause 69 is necessary, not because we are not committed to supporting young offenders, but because it prevents our legislation from coming into conflict with existing comprehensive statutory provisions governing how education support is delivered in custody, as set out in the Apprenticeship, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon will know that the duties placed on local authorities by that legislation are currently fulfilled through the contracts held by the Education Funding Agency and that local authorities are often not involved. The Ministry of Justice, which funds that arrangement, is clear that the current system is not working, which is why it recently consulted on transformational reforms to how education and support in youth custody should be delivered in future. I have ensured that I have been kept in close contact with Justice Ministers so that the education element for children—not only those with SEN, but others in the care system and elsewhere—is being properly considered as part of the review.

[Mr Buckland]

Will my hon. Friend undertake to ensure that when the Bill goes to the other place a careful eye is kept on clause 69 and that the Ministry of Justice moves in a way that is properly co-ordinated so that we do not end up with the nightmare scenario of those young people simply falling through the gap?

[Mr Timpson]

I strongly share my hon. Friend’s view. I want to make progress on that, both in my Department and across Government. The commitment I gave him earlier will continue as the Bill moves on and other work is done by the Ministry of Justice on the consultation it has carried out, because it is important that we make as much progress on that as possible at an important stage of development in many of our institutions and within the secure estate.

Clause 69 also plays an important technical function by disapplying duties with the SEN clauses that it would be impractical to deliver while a young offender is in custody. For those reasons, I do not agree that we can simply remove the clause ahead of the significant reforms to education in custody that the Ministry of Justice is considering and the resulting changes that might need to be made to existing legislation. However, I have sought to reassure my hon. Friend the Member for South Swindon and hope that provides him with some confidence as we move forward.

Turning to amendments 71 and 72, tabled by the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West, we are continuing to strengthen our understanding of young people’s post-16 educational outcomes. The Department for Education will be publishing destination data on students with SEN at key stage 4 before the summer break, and later in the year for those at key stage 5. The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills already publishes data on participation and attainment in further education by students with SEN aged 19 and over, and that will continue. I do not think that it is necessary to place additional reporting requirements on the further education sector when those data are already being made public. However, as I have said previously, I am sure that she will continue to press that point as the Bill moves on to the other place.

On amendments 73 to 75, we will ensure that any code of practice laid before Parliament has been subject to proper consultation and that Parliament is given the opportunity to scrutinise new or updated versions. Clause 67(2) already ensures that the Secretary of State carries out sensible and proper consultation on the code of practice. We intend to publish a draft code of practice on the Department’s website for public consultation in the autumn of this year and to give ample time for comment, over and above the draft that we provided for the purposes of Committee. If we did not consult appropriately, there would be every reason for this House or the other place to resolve not to approve the code.

The Education Committee considered the careful balance between proper consultation and parliamentary scrutiny and keeping the SEN code of practice up to date during pre-legislative scrutiny. The Bill delivers on their recommendation that the draft should be subject to consultation and approved by Parliament using the negative resolution procedure. This brings the code into line with other statutory codes, such as the school admissions code, and enables an appropriate level of parliamentary scrutiny.

This debate has continued the good faith that has been a hallmark of the progress of this part of the Bill. Given what I have said, I hope that hon. Members will feel sufficiently assured not to press their amendments.

Question put and agreed to.

New clause 9 accordingly read a Second time, and added to the Bill.

New Clause 10

Childcare costs scheme: preparatory expenditure

‘The Commissioners for Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs may incur expenditure in preparing for the introduction of a scheme for providing assistance in respect of the costs of childcare.’.—(Elizabeth Truss.)

Brought up, and read the First time.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Elizabeth Truss)]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Elfyn Llwyd (Dwyfor Meirionnydd) (PC)]

I would like to speak briefly to amendments Nos 5, 6, 7 and 8, which seek to introduce greater flexibility and understanding of the 26-week target for care proceedings. Nobody in this place would deny that that target is very helpful and we hope that, in most cases, we will be able to meet it. But we know—for example from the Norgrove report—that, on average, cases take up to 61 weeks: 48 weeks in family court proceedings. The Justice Committee, of which I am a member, held an inquiry into the operation of family courts. In its evidence to us, Barnardo’s made the point:

“Two months of delay in making decisions in the best interest of a child equates to 1% of childhood that cannot be restored.”

For this reason, both the all-party group on child protection and the Justice Committee welcomed the Government’s aim of reducing unnecessary delay in the care system.

Care must be taken with regard to the target as well. Clause 14 provides the starting point for courts in setting a time for cases; proceedings should come to an end within 26 weeks, as I mentioned. But there is some ambiguity as to when courts should deem an extension appropriate. As the College of Social Work and the Family Rights Group have argued, there is a genuine risk that the proposed 26-week limit could result in too much focus on procedure and not enough on the welfare of the child.

The vast majority of cases will be concluded within six months, but deciding on permanent options can take longer for some children, not always due to problems with the court process or unnecessary delay. Social workers will attest that situations can change in the course of proceedings; for example, when relatives present themselves as possible carers late in the process. The Family Rights Group has pointed out that, under the new limit, if family members are late in offering themselves as carers there may well not be enough time for the relevant assessments to be carried out.

Equally, placing a child with grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins or other siblings can reinforce aspects of a child’s identity. In many cases, however, relatives will be reluctant to offer this option if they think that there is still a chance that the child will be able to be returned to his or her parents.

I anticipate that Government Members will point out that the safeguard for granting extensions to cases is robust enough to allow for complications to be ironed out. Sadly, I have it on good evidence that judges are, in some cases, already imposing a 26-week deadline on proceedings even before the limit has been introduced. It is crucial that time considerations do not supersede the welfare of the child concerned. What is more, some intervention programmes take longer than 26 weeks due to parents undergoing treatment for substance misuse issues and similar problems. The pilot boroughs—Hammersmith and Fulham, Westminster, and Kensington and Chelsea—have estimated that 25 to 30 per cent. of all cases will take longer than the 26-week limit.

Intensive family programmes, such as the NSPCC’s infant and family team, are another example. The programme was developed in the United States and is now being piloted in the United Kingdom. A four-year evaluation of the programme in the US showed improved outcomes for children and adults in all groups that undertook the programme. I will be unable to address that point as fully as I should like in the time allotted, but one of the motivations behind the amendments I am speaking to—by the way, I am hugely indebted to the NSPCC for its assistance in this matter—is that some cases should be exempted from the limit from the outset. Although the Bill as drafted would allow for incremental eight-week extensions, practitioners in the field have warned that they would need to know at the beginning of proceedings how much time they have to work with the family, in order to secure the best possible outcome.

Equally worryingly, practitioners warn that social workers could be deterred from seeking extensions other than in highly exceptional circumstances, as the “specific justification” test in clause 14(7) may be perceived as a barrier in borderline cases. That is why amendment 5 would allow courts to exempt certain cases from the 26-week limit from the very start of proceedings if evidence relating to a planned intervention or programme requiring a longer period was presented to the court, or if the court considered it necessary to permit additional time to safeguard the child’s welfare.

Amendments 7 and 8 relate to clause 17, which introduces significant reforms to the way in which courts scrutinise care plans. I do not have time to go into the context; all I would say is that I, too, am disappointed that our time is limited today. These are very important matters. I have skimmed through what I was going to say—I am grateful that I was able to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker—and I know that the NSPCC and many other organisations will be bitterly disappointed that we have had to truncate such important debates in this way.

[Mr Timpson]

This group of amendments covers a wide range of issues relating to the care and protection of children. As I will be unable to address all the points made, I will endeavour to write to all hon. Members in response to their amendments and the questions they posed, particularly the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), who has been very convivial and constructive during the passage of this Bill, and my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has raised a number of important areas of debate, particularly in making some powerful points about returning home from care. I will look at those points extremely carefully and am happy to discuss them with him on another occasion.

I want to focus on a number of issues about which I have some important points to make. They are: care leavers, young carers, fostering for adoption, child witnesses and sex and relationships education. On carer leavers, new clause 4 considers “staying put” arrangements, where care leavers live with their former foster carer after they have left care. Many hon. Members have expressed their support for new clause 4, and I would welcome the opportunity to discuss how we can extend those arrangements. The legislative framework relating to care leavers is comprehensive and clear. I have written to all directors of children’s services asking them to prioritise “staying put” arrangements. We have also issued practical guidance on tax and benefits issues. We are monitoring “staying put” arrangements and reviewing local progress through Ofsted inspections and feedback from care leaver groups. If no progress is being made, I will consider whether legislation is required, but I do not believe we should make that change only two years after changing the statutory framework.

On young carers, in Committee we heard heart-felt arguments about the need to do more for young carers. I promised to reflect carefully on the arguments for legislative change. Since then I have discussed the matter with the Minister for care services, my hon. Friend the Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), and we have agreed that our joint aim is to ensure that young carers are protected. We firmly believe that taking a “whole family” approach to the assessment of care needs will be the key to achieving just that. I have now given the matter careful thought and, with the changes being introduced by the Care Bill for adult carers, I am persuaded that the time is right to see what we can do to remove any barriers that may be preventing these vulnerable young people and their families from receiving the life-changing support they need.

I have asked officials to look at how the legislation for young carers might be changed so that rights and responsibilities are clearer to young carers and practitioners alike. We will also look at how we can ensure that children’s legislation works with adults’ legislation to support the linking of assessments, as set out in the Care Bill, to enable “whole family” approaches. We will ensure that interested parties, including hon. Members, are consulted on that work.

There is a strong consensus about the policy intention behind fostering for adoption: that children should be placed as early as possible in a stable placement. Amendment 33 would mean that clause 1 would bite too early for concurrent planning. I listened to the concerns raised in Committee about the impact on kinship carers, but there is no intention that kinship carers should be overlooked as a consequence of this clause. I am pleased to reassure hon. Members that I am giving consideration to amending the clause to be clearer that local authorities must first consider placing a child with relatives and friends before they consider a “fostering for adoption” placement. This is an issue that I expect to be returned to in the other place, and I know that Members will welcome that reassurance. I know that hon. Members will also be pleased by today’s announcement from the Secretary of State for Justice on child witnesses. That represents an important move forward.

On personal, social and health education, we all recognise that this is an important issue, but we do not have unanimity on what constitutes the best approach. The expectation that all schools should teach PSHE is outlined in the introduction to the framework of the proposed new national curriculum. It is not a statutory requirement, however, as we strongly believe that teachers need the flexibility to use their professional judgment to decide when and how best to provide PSHE in their local circumstances. The Government do not believe that the right of parents to withdraw their children from sex and relationships education should be diminished in the way proposed. We see no need to amend the existing legislation, which provides a clear and workable model for schools and parents. Moreover, the new provision would place a disproportionate burden on teachers, who would have to make and defend decisions on what constitutes “sufficient maturity”—

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Timpson]

I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.

Let me begin by thanking all Members who served on the Public Bill Committee. The debate was constructive and—dare I say it?—mature, exceedingly thorough and all the more encouraging for being the first such Committee for many of the newly elected Members on both sides of the House. We had 19 sittings, 397 amendments were tabled, and every issue was thoughtfully scrutinised. I am sure that we all agree with the hon. Members for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) and for Wigan (Lisa Nandy)—I extend to them my personal thanks for their responsible and fair-minded contributions —who told us that it was

“a hard-working, good-natured and somewhat consensual Committee. At times, we have agreed more than we have disagreed, which is for the good… the legislation we are shaping is extremely important for millions of our most vulnerable children now and in future.”––[Official Report, Children and Families Public Bill Committee, 25 April 2013; c. 815.]

I would also like to thank the Under-Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, my hon. Friend the Member for East Dunbartonshire (Jo Swinson), who has led jointly on the Bill with great aplomb in this House and before the four Select Committees that considered much of the Bill during pre-legislative scrutiny, even when the odd stray nut sought to scupper her endeavours.

The debates in Committee and today have reflected the importance of the issues the Bill seeks to address. It seeks to improve the lives of some of our most vulnerable children. Improving the life chances of every child, whatever their background, by putting their needs first in all that we do is at the heart of the Government’s agenda.

[Hugh Bayley (York Central) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Timpson]

I will take a brief intervention, but I am mindful of the time and know that other Back Benchers wish to speak.

[Hugh Bayley]

I, too, am mindful of the time, so I am grateful to the Minister for giving way—I understand why he could not do so during his speech on Report. I rise on behalf of a constituent who fosters three children. As a consequence of the Government’s decision to exempt only one bedroom from the bedroom tax for foster carers, she is required to pay £14 a week to carry on fostering. If she moved into smaller accommodation, she could foster only one of those three children, and there would be a cost of about £3,000 a week if the children went into care. Will he, together with the Minister responsible for welfare reform, look at the issue and reflect on whether they can give a further concession?

[Mr Timpson]

Of course I am happy to look at the specific case the hon. Gentleman raises in the context of the changes that have been made. As he and Opposition Front Benchers will know, I have worked hard, both before coming into government and since, to try to ensure that foster carers are given the best possible support in their endeavours, because we want to encourage more people to foster, and we know from the research we have done that many more would like to take up that opportunity. The Welfare Minister, Lord Freud, and I have written jointly to all local authorities to explain the importance of this, with regard to both the single room subsidy and making the discretionary housing fund available to foster carers where appropriate. We have committed to an independent review of that progress, and I will be keeping a keen and close eye on how that develops. I know that the Fostering Network, which has done some excellent work on the issue, will also take a lead in ensuring that we have a clear understanding of the impact of the changes.

The Bill will overhaul services for vulnerable children and support strong families. It will raise aspirations and place children and young people at the heart of decision making and support in the SEN system. It will reduce delays in the adoption system. It is part of a wider set of reforms to improve children’s services so that everyone involved in a vulnerable child’s life—teachers, social workers, health professionals and the police—has a proper sense of responsibility for the child’s prospects, not just focusing on their precise duties and whether they have followed the correct processes and ticked all the boxes, but looking at the child’s overall welfare. That means refocusing the system on the child’s needs in a child’s time frame, foremost among which must be the need to keep the child safe from harm.

We often hear that the care system fails children, that it damages and betrays them. Too often it does, but, as I know from my family and the fostering and adopting we have undertaken, it can also transform lives. As the recent research report “Safeguarding Children Across Services” pointed out, when compared with those who are reunited with their birth families, the majority of maltreated children do better in care or accommodation. Looked-after children can and do achieve in care in a stable placement. We know, for example, that there is a marked correlation between the length of time in care and the stability of placements and achieving good educational outcomes at GCSE, yet we must remain resolute in ensuring that the child’s best interests, not administrative or personnel considerations, are always at the heart of the system.

Delays in care and adoption services mean that it currently takes, on average, 21 months to place a child. Those delays damage a child’s development and reduce their chances of finding the love and stability they need with a new family. The Bill will help to sweep away such barriers through measures designed to speed up the adoption process, help recruit more potential adopters and improve the support they can receive. It will enable children to be placed earlier with their potential adopters.

Building on the family justice review, we are tackling unacceptable delays in the courts, ensuring that children’s best interests remain at the heart of decision making, and encouraging parents to resolve disputes outside the court where possible. By introducing a 26-week time limit for care and supervision proceedings, the Bill will ensure that courts focus on the essentials and that the most vulnerable children are not damaged further by unnecessary drift and delay. This is already having an impact in our courts. As the president of the family division recently wrote to everyone involved in the family courts system:

“We must get away from existing practice. All too often, and partly as a result of previous initiatives, local authorities are filing enormously voluminous materials, which—and this is not their fault—are not merely far too long; too often they are narrative and historical, rather than analytical...I want to send out a clear message: local authority materials can be much shorter...and...should be more focused on analysis.”

We also want to improve support for children remaining in local authority care, and so the Bill will make the virtual school head a statutory role in local authorities. This sends out the strongest possible signal about the priority we attach to the educational attainment of looked after children. Changes to the Office of the Children’s Commissioner will help the commissioner act as a strong advocate for children, promoting and protecting their rights. For children and young people with special educational needs, the Bill will introduce a single system from birth to age 25; new education, health and care plans which ensure that health, education and social care are planned around the needs of the child or young person; new rights and protections for 16 to 25-year-olds in further education and training; and a clear focus on outcomes, including independent living and paid employment.

The most frequent complaint I have heard from parents about SEN is that the current system is opaque and inflexible, leaving children and families to battle for access to services in a fog of bureaucracy. By requiring local authorities to publish a clear and transparent local offer, families will, in future, know what support is available in their area and how to access it.

Crucially, the duty on clinical commissioning groups to secure provision of health services as part of an EHC plan strengthens the Bill’s creation of a more integrated approach to care and support, and it has been widely and warmly welcomed by the SEN charitable sector. I want to express my gratitude to the Secretary of State for Health and his ministerial team for their willingness to help to push the boundaries towards better health integration in SEN service provision.

We are committed to reforming child care substantially to increase the availability of high-quality, affordable provision. The enabling measures in the Bill will offer greater choice and flexibility for providers and parents. We are introducing shared parental leave, giving working parents greater choice over who looks after their child in the first year and offering fathers the opportunity to be more involved in caring for their children. Together with the extension of the right to request flexible working to all employees, these measures will make the labour market more flexible, equitable and family friendly.

We all share an ambition for this Bill to make a tangible, lasting difference to the lives of children and families. Many in this House and beyond have made important points about how we ensure that the Bill really achieves that. I am grateful for that valuable expertise and measured consideration. I particularly thank the Education Committee, the Justice Committee, the Adoption Legislation Committee and the Joint Committee on Human Rights for their valuable scrutiny of the Bill. I am grateful to the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for its children’s rights impact assessment and to the children’s rights director for his superb version of the Bill for children, which is so jargon-free that it should make all of us in Westminster and Whitehall blush. I thank the many organisations that gave and submitted evidence in Committee and worked with me, my officials and hon. Members across the House to make sure that the many important issues that the Bill touches on are properly understood in terms of its content and implementation.

Throughout the development and passage of the Bill, we have listened and made changes so that the Bill we now pass to the other place is an improved one. This is a detailed Bill and it is vital that we take time to consider the points made and get the legislation and implementation right. Therefore, as I indicated earlier, we will consider some key issues over the summer and hope that progress can be made in the other place. In particular, we will look at these issues: clarifying whether, before local authorities can consider a fostering for adoption placement, they must consider placing the child with a relative or friend; introducing new safeguards through regulations to ensure that a local authority notifies the child’s birth parents when considering a fostering for adoption placement; seeing what more we can do to improve outcomes for young carers, ensuring that our approach complements the changes being introduced through the Care Bill; and identifying further improvements to the support that young offenders with SEN receive in custody.

As the Bill moves on to the other place, I am confident that it will be viewed as a Bill that all of us in this House can look back on, in whole or in part, and feel sure that we did right by giving our most vulnerable children, who all too often have the weakest voice, the chance to be heard and respected and the prospect of a better future. I commend the Bill to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mrs Hodgson]

I agree with my hon. Friend and will probably repeat some of the points that she has just made. I commend her for her tireless and excellent campaigning on behalf of young carers since she promoted her private Member’s Bill. I know that she will continue that work when this Bill goes to the other place.

As I pointed out to the Minister for children and families in Committee, the Minister of State, Department of Health, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who has responsibility for care, promised my hon. Friend and those of us who were present for the Second Reading of her private Member’s Bill last September that young carers would be provided for in the Children and Families Bill, yet we are still waiting to see what those provisions will be. The Minister gave some warm assurances on that issue during his closing remarks, so we look forward to seeing it addressed in the Bill.

[Mr Timpson]

Just to clarify, if the hon. Lady looks back at Hansard she will see that just before the end of Report I gave some strong indications of the direction of travel I am persuaded to take with regard to young carers.

[Mrs Hodgson]

That is very good; I will do that.

At the very least, we need to ensure that agencies that come into contact with families know how to spot a child who might be providing care and how to refer that child and their family to the support that exists for the majority of young carers. That needs to happen in order to address the much poorer outcomes that such children have because of their responsibilities.

As the Children’s Society discovered recently in its “Hidden from View” report, about one in 20 young carers misses school because of caring responsibilities. Young carers attain the equivalent of nine grades lower than their peers at GCSE level and are consequently more likely than other young people to be classed as not in education, employment or training after school. There are also health implications. Young carers are one and a half times more likely to have a special educational need, a long-standing illness or a disability than their peers. Those who are dedicated to looking after someone else often do not take good enough care of themselves. That is particularly true of young carers.

There are 166,363 young carers in England according to the latest census data, which were released on 16 May this year. That is 166,363 young people who stand a much poorer chance of reaching their educational potential and a much greater chance of suffering poor health or being a NEET. It does not need to be that way. I know that the Minister has outlined measures, but he could make the changes to the Bill that we have suggested in the other place or bring forward his own changes to ensure that those young carers are given the support that they need.

The Minister will not be surprised that I am also keen for progress to be made on ensuring that children’s centres are better able to identify and help every family in their area who needs it by adopting the measures tabled by the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom). She has not made a speech today and I hope that she has a chance to do so in a moment. Those measures would require NHS trusts to share the live births register with Sure Start outreach workers and would roll out trials of births being registered in children’s centres. That would mean that all parents would have to visit their local children’s centre, where they would be shown all the opportunities and services that are available to them and their child. That would contribute greatly to ensuring that we reach out to and help the most vulnerable families and, once again, improve the outcomes of the children within them.

I know that many hon. Members are keen to speak, so I will bring my remarks to a conclusion. We will not oppose the Bill on Third Reading and we are as keen as Ministers for it to make speedy progress to the other place. However, I hope that the House and the Government are left in no doubt that there are a number of issues that my noble colleagues and, I am sure, peers on all sides in the other place will revisit. We are expecting big things from Ministers before then and I sincerely hope that they do not disappoint.

Most notably, we want measures to ensure that support is not denied to young offenders with special educational needs and measures to increase the chance of young carers being identified and given the support that they need in order to improve their outcomes. We hope that the Government reconsider their position on PSHE and, in particular, sex and relationships education, and that they bring forward measures to make it compulsory before the Bill reaches the other place.

I would like to take this opportunity to pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Airdrie and Shotts (Pamela Nash) for her superb leadership through the all-party parliamentary group on HIV and AIDS in pursuing education on HIV and AIDS. One in four young people leaves school without being taught about HIV. The work that she has done in that area is commendable.

If all the issues raised by Her Majesty’s Opposition and hon. Members from all parts of the House in the preceding debate are addressed, the Minister will be able to answer the question posed by my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan on Second Reading and be confident that the Bill will improve the outcomes for millions of children, young people and families for a long time to come. In the hope that those improvements will be made, the Bill proceeds with our blessing.

Education

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Monday 20th May 2013 Ministerial Corrections

[Mrs Hodgson]

To ask the Secretary of State for Education how much each local authority has spent on short breaks for disabled children in each financial year since 2010-11.

[Official Report, 17 April 2013, Vol. 561, c. 475-77W.]

Letter of correction from Edward Timpson:

An error has been identified in the written answer given to the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) on 17 April 2013.

The full answer given was as follows:

[Mr Timpson]

Data on how much each local authority spends on short breaks for disabled children is collected through the section 251 return. Data from the section 251 returns for 2010-2011 and 2011-12 are set out in the following table. Data for 2012-13 will be available at the beginning of 2014.

[Mr Timpson]

Data on how much each local authority spends on short breaks for disabled children is collected through the section 251 return. Data from the section 251 returns for 2010-11 and 2011-12 are set out below. Data for 2012-13 will be available at the beginning of 2014.

Children and Families Bill Committee (Ministerial Clarification)

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Written Statements

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

During the Children and Families Bill Committee on 16 April I said in the debate on the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West’s (Mrs Hodgson) new clause 20 that:

“The Ministry of Justice and Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service already publish information on the number of appeals registered, the outcomes, the type of special educational need to which the appeals relate, the number of appeals registered against each local authority, and other information, including judicial costs, venue costs, administration costs, the cost to a local authority defending a tribunal case and so on”.

The Ministry of Justice (MOJ) does publish statistics on the appeals to the first-tier tribunal (special educational needs and disability) on its website but it does not include information about costs.

The MOJ publishes for each quarter on its website statistics on the work of the tribunals within Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCS). The publication for the second quarter (July to September) which is usually published in January, contains annual statistics for the first-tier tribunal (SEND), covering September to August of the previous academic year.

The tables for SEN appeals cover the number of appeals by type of appeal, by the type of SEN, the decisions by type of SEN, the outcomes (whether they were decided, withdrawn or conceded) the outcomes by type of SEN, the breakdown of the child’s ethnic origin and the legal representation for parents and local authorities at hearings (although the figures for the last two years are not available). Similar information is published on disability discrimination claims the tribunal receives. Figures on the number of SEN appeals registered by local authority, both raw numbers and per 10,000 of the school population, are also published. The first-tier tribunal (SEND) section of the MOJ’s website (http://www.justice.gov.uk/tribunals/send) has also now started providing a link to the quarterly statistics. Information about costs is not published.

I apologise for inadvertently misleading the Committee and I have written to Committee members in addition to this statement. A copy of that letter has been placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

Oral Answers to Questions

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Greg Mulholland (Leeds North West) (LD)]

2. What recent assessment he has made of the adequacy of training for teachers and school staff on (a) autism and (b) fabricated or induced illness by carers.

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

All teachers are teachers of children with special educational needs, including autism. It is for schools themselves to decide what training their staff require to meet their pupils’ needs. We have contracted the Autism Education Trust to provide training for education staff, and it is the responsibility of local safeguarding children boards to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of local training.

[Greg Mulholland]

Parents seeking a diagnosis of autism can be, and in some cases have been, subjected to unjustified child protection inquiries. Does the Minister agree that we need to look at the guidelines on fabricated and induced illness, and will he meet a family in my constituency who have suffered as a result of that very problem?

[Mr Timpson]

My hon. Friend is right to emphasise the value to teachers of being aware of the needs of children with autism. That is why we are funding the Autism Education Trust, and why we are continuing to support the national scholarship scheme, which has elements relating to special educational needs, and the training of more than 10,000 special educational needs co-ordinators as qualified teachers. However, my hon. Friend is right to continue to think about how we can improve the guidelines that are made available in relation to both autism and fabricated or induced illness. The National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence has issued such guidelines, but I should be happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss them further and see what more we can do.

[Mr David Burrowes (Enfield, Southgate) (Con)]

Has the Minister had an opportunity to attend a school that is participating in the Anderson Foundation schools challenge, which is encouraging pupils and teachers to complete 50 tasks to celebrate the 50 years in which the National Autistic Society has been raising awareness of autism?

[Mr Timpson]

I am aware of that schools challenge. I suspect that my hon. Friend’s question constitutes an invitation to visit Enfield, Southgate on some future date. I should be happy to learn more about the work that is taking place to support the National Autistic Society and many other autism charities for the great work they do, and I look forward to learning more with my hon. Friend’s support.

[Gavin Williamson (South Staffordshire) (Con)]

3. What assessment he has made of the level of education funding received by children in South Staffordshire; and if he will make a statement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

6. What plans he has for child care and early intervention provision; and if he will make a statement.

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

There is consensus across the House that early intervention is both effective and necessary, and the Government are determined to build on that, with the Early Intervention Foundation, formally launched on 15 April, playing an important role in gathering information about what works. We already know how powerful high-quality education and child care can be as an early intervention tool, which is why we are extending early learning for two-year-olds from low-income families.

[Paul Blomfield]

In Education questions on 4 March, I asked the Secretary of State about the cut of 27%, or £6.8 million, to Sheffield’s early intervention grant, forcing the council to make deep cuts in early years provision. In his reply, he cited a grant of £25.2 million, describing it as an increase of 3.9%. I have since confirmed the position with council officers, who said that they could only—I quote—

“assume the Minister made an error on this. The £25.2 million refers to the current year. The figure of £6.8 million EIG reduction was the figure provided by DCLG. The cut in fact was £7.4 million when the Government confirmed the Council funding for 2013.”

Will the Secretary of State apologise and accept that he was in error and that my figures were right and, more importantly, apologise to the parents of Sheffield whose child care is being threatened?

[Mr Timpson]

The hon. Gentleman will know that the Secretary of State is always delighted to speak to people and professionals in Sheffield to see how the early intervention grant, which is rising from £2.3 billion to £2.5 billion, can be best spent in the Sheffield area. I am sure that is a discussion he will be happy to have.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

In Blackpool North and Cleveleys, we eagerly anticipate the new statutory duty that will see 15 hours of early learning made available to two-year-olds from low-income backgrounds. Can the Minister speculate on the impact that should have on achievement levels for primary pupils in areas such as Blackpool and Cleveleys, which are deprived seaside towns?

[Mr Timpson]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who highlights a key component of our early years intervention programme, which will see a rise from 20% to 40% in the number of two-year-olds from low-income families benefiting from the statutory duty. We anticipate that it will ensure that they get high quality care at a much younger age so that their future outcomes will be much more positive. That can only be a good thing for the people and children of Blackpool and across the country.

[Meg Hillier (Hackney South and Shoreditch) (Lab/Co-op)]

First we had the pile ’em high, teach ’em cheap approach to child care, increasing ratios for child minders. Today, the children’s Minister was reported talking about chaos in nurseries for two-year-olds. Meanwhile, in my constituency, parents wait two and a half years for a place for their baby. What are the Government doing to increase the supply of child care for working parents?

[Mr Timpson]

I think what the hon. Lady said towards the end of her question is exactly why we need to push hard to create a high-quality child care system that is both affordable and flexible. Less than a third of nurseries currently employ graduate teachers, yet the importance of qualified staff is clear; it has a direct link to the quality of child care and therefore outcomes for children. The hon. Lady should welcome the moves we are making to increase flexibility and improve quality and affordability, so that more parents can have better child care.

[Miss Anne McIntosh (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend look at the early intervention situation for looked-after children, in particular the 28-day deadline that is being piloted in north Yorkshire? Will he give the House an assurance that where there are special circumstances, the 28-day rule will not be applied?

[Mr Timpson]

I will happily look at the point my hon. Friend raises. As we have done with the new “Working Together” statutory guidance document, we want to make sure that all children, whether they are in need or whether they require protection, are given the earliest possible help, so that the problems in their lives do not fester longer than they need to, but I am happy to look at what she says.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I hope that Ministers, especially the Minister responsible for child care, will set an example of the behaviour they clearly want to see from the nation’s toddlers, and that they will sit silently and listen and then answer politely. Professor Cathy Nutbrown is the latest expert commissioned by the Government to slam the Minister for her plans to loosen adult to child ratios, saying that they will

“shake the foundations of quality provision for young children.”

I know that the child care Minister has a touch of the Iron Lady about her—she might take that as a compliment—but will she ever be for turning on that? Will she or the Government ever listen to the experts they have commissioned and the tens of thousands of professionals and parents who disagree with her?

[Mr Timpson]

What I do know is that my hon. Friend is used to a maelstrom of linguistic turbulence coming from the Opposition, but I doubt whether that will turn her from her strong and well-evidenced reform programme, which ensures that ratios, which are not mandatory but which are, along with staff salaries, the lowest in Europe, are going to work towards our having higher quality child care which is more flexible and which parents can afford. The hon. Lady should welcome that and I hope she will listen attentively when the Minister with responsibility for child care makes that case in the future.

[Mr Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

7. What recent assessment he has made of the school priority building programme; and if he will make a statement.

--- Later in debate ---

[Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)]

The average age for leaving home is 24, yet currently only one in 20 foster children is able to stay with their foster carers beyond their 18th birthday. If the Secretary of State is as shocked as I am by that, will he lead and co-ordinate an urgent initiative aimed at ensuring that every foster child, like any child, can leave home when they are ready?

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

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, who I know takes a keen interest in this area. He will, I hope, be encouraged by the fact that I have written to every director of children’s services to re-emphasise the importance of the exact point he has just made. We have supported the “staying put” pilot, which continues in many local authorities, and I am looking at what more we can do to support care leavers, not only when they leave care, but also after they have left, so that they get all the support that they need and deserve.

[Pauline Latham (Mid Derbyshire) (Con)]

T8. May I draw the House’s attention to the fact that I am going through the process of becoming a board member of the new Free the Children charitable organisation in Britain? The Government’s National Citizen Service positively engages young people during their school holidays. Does my right hon. Friend agree that charitable organisations such as Free the Children, which now exists in Britain, add value to children’s primary and secondary education throughout the year, and are an excellent example of the big society in action?

--- Later in debate ---

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

The Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), who has responsibility for children’s matters, is concerned about the high numbers of children placed in children’s homes some distance outside their local areas, the difficulty of supporting those children, and their vulnerability to child sexual exploitation. I am pleased that he is planning to make changes to tackle that problem, but will he update hon. Members on progress?

[Mr Timpson]

I once again express my gratitude to the hon. Lady for the serious and significant contribution she has made to the work my Department has done to try to tackle the important problem of children who are placed out of area in residential care—the number is almost 50%, which is far too high. That is why we have already made one change, whereby Ofsted must now report to police the location of all children’s homes. We will go further with changes to much of the regulatory framework to improve the “out of sight, out of mind” culture. I am happy to discuss with her in the coming weeks how we implement that, as I have discussed it with her in the past. An announcement will be made very shortly.

[Lorely Burt (Solihull) (LD)]

T9. I have recently participated in a cross-party inquiry into unwanted pregnancy. We found that there were gaping holes in understanding not only of the mechanics of sex, but of how relationships work. In a letter to the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), admitted that academies are not required to teach sex education. Given the life-changing consequences of such ignorance, does the Secretary of State agree that sex and relationships education should be compulsory in all schools?

National Plan for Cultural Education

Edward Timpson Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2013 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) on securing this important debate, and I acknowledge her strong advocacy over a long period for cultural education and the eloquent contribution that she has made to this debate. I am sure that she will agree that children in England—and elsewhere, but in England for the purposes of this debate—can lay claim to a rich cultural heritage. It should be our collective aim to ensure that they all have the chance to take part in it, supported by high-quality and engaging local opportunities that help to ignite the lifelong love of culture that we all want to engender in every young person.

We know that local authorities already provide extensive access to cultural activities through their investment in libraries, museums, galleries, arts centres, archives, public art and so on. Cornwall, for example, has a vibrant arts offering including 150 festivals, 300 private galleries, 10 theatre and dance companies, 72 museums and 1,000 village halls regularly used for cultural activities. There are many other examples across the country. Alongside that, the arm’s-length bodies of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport—the Arts Council England, English Heritage, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the British Film Institute, among many others—invest their grant in aid and national lottery funding in substantial educational activity.

Against that backdrop, we asked Darren Henley to conduct a review of cultural education. I understand the hon. Lady’s impatience and frustration. She has secured a debate a year on, and she wants to see the plan up and running. I am in a position to tell her that that plan will be published very soon indeed, and will set out our ambitious programmes to support the arts and recognise the huge contribution made by many charitable, philanthropic and voluntary organisations, local authorities and other arts and cultural organisations to the fantastic wealth of provision out there.

In the past 12 months, an enormous amount of work has been undertaken. The hon. Lady acknowledged in her contribution that the Government’s commitment was not a shallow one; we have set up new programmes and brokered new partnerships. It is an opportune time to reflect on progress thus far and make clear our expectations for the future. The plan will do so, and will affirm our commitment to ensuring that all pupils have access to a rich and fulfilling cultural education. That commitment is backed by £292 million in funding for cultural educational activity over the three years to 2015.

The plan will highlight the many examples of partnerships and initiatives supported by investment from schools, local authorities, voluntary organisations and bodies such as the Arts Council, and the Government also support a host of programmes designed to strengthen access and the take-up of provision, which will enhance the quality of the local and national cultural education available to schools and help to achieve greater opportunity for young people. I am afraid that the volume of those programmes does not allow me to go through the whole repertoire in the short time available for this debate, so I will draw attention to a core selection, some of which she referred to. Some are aimed at children with a special interest or promise in the arts; some are broader and focus on improving provision for all children.

In his review of cultural education in England, Darren Henley recognised that despite the magnificent talent that we are lucky to have in this country in both contemporary and classical dance, there was no centrally funded national youth dance company, so one has been set up, jointly funded and overseen by the new Arts Council England and managed by Sadler’s Wells Trust Ltd. The first annual company of talented performers aged 16 to 19 has been recruited, and its members are training and performing with the help of world-leading choreographers.

In art and design, together with Arts Council England, we are providing funding to scale up the Sorrell Foundation’s national Saturday art and design clubs. They are free and give young people aged 14 to 16 the opportunity to participate in inspiring classes every Saturday morning, with activities ranging from drawing to sculpture, printmaking, stop-frame animation and so on.

We have formed a unique partnership with the BFI, investing in the innovative BFI film academy, specifically for 16 to 19 year olds, which aims to give a diverse group of young people from all backgrounds the ability to be part of the film industry by providing them with opportunities to develop new skills and to build their career. It builds on the BFI’s existing education scheme for five to 19 year olds. We have the first fully integrated, nationally co-ordinated programme of developing young film talent ever established in the UK.

Since our response last April to Darren Henley’s review of cultural education in England, we have set up a museums and schools programme to increase the level of engagement in 10 regions of low participation. By January this year, more than 4,000 visits had been made as a result of the programme. In music, In Harmony is jointly funded by the Department for Education and the national lottery through Arts Council England. It aims to inspire and transform the lives of children through community-based orchestral music making. We continue to fund two original In Harmony projects in Lambeth and Liverpool, for three years from 2012 to 2015. In May 2012, an expansion of the scheme was agreed for four additional projects in areas of exceptional deprivation.

To celebrate and commemorate our culture and history, we are supporting the heritage schools programme. English Heritage is working with schools to help them to make effective use of their local historical environment and to bring the curriculum to life. Two thousand teachers will participate in training programmes to support their development in 190 schools. Additionally, we are planning a lasting educational legacy in remembrance of one of the most significant events in our history, the first world war. The flagship scheme announced by the Prime Minister at the Imperial War Museum at the end of last year—I was privileged to attend that event—will give thousands of schoolchildren and teachers the opportunity to visit the great war battlefields; pupils will learn first hand about the sacrifices made and the personal stories of those involved, with schools encouraged to establish commemoration projects such as collecting photographs and uncovering local stories.

To support teachers, we are funding a network of teaching school alliances that specialise in the cultural aspects of the curriculum. I am happy to provide the hon. Lady with more details, because I know she has a particular interest in that. The network will play a leading role in developing and disseminating professional development materials and resources for teachers. Those programmes are additional to the music education activity under way following the publication of “The Importance of Music: A National Plan for Music Education” in November 2011. On its publication, we announced funding for a national network of music education hubs, building on the existing music education provision and bringing together partnerships between music services, schools, education and arts organisations. A total of 123 hubs, managed by Arts Council England on our behalf, began work in September 2012 and they are already delivering innovative projects throughout the country, including access for all pupils, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds, which is crucial, and they are working to augment and broaden the range of music activities on offer. That is just one example of the new partnerships that we are brokering in cultural education.

Darren Henley’s review concluded that, despite some excellent examples of collaboration between arts organisations and schools, a more systematic approach was necessary to develop a coherent and educationally sound cultural offer for young people. Some schools can be overwhelmed by the provision on offer, while some might struggle to find support that meets their needs. In response to the review’s recommendations, a strategic partnership between Arts Council England, the Heritage Lottery Fund, the British Film Institute and English Heritage has been brokered as the cultural education partnership group. The group is working to ensure that the priorities for cultural education are more than a sum of parts. It has identified three areas in which to test a shared approach, with a greater alignment of group members’ activities and resources: in the city of Bristol, in Barking and Dagenham, and in Great Yarmouth.

To reassure the hon. Lady about a joint ministerial board, a cross-Government group will start next month, with my Department and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on the board, which will be chaired jointly by the Ministers; it will oversee progress in this complex field of activity. It will bring together Ministers from both Departments and include arm’s length body delivery partners and school representatives to support and challenge the development of the national cultural education offer. I am happy to write to her with more details of exactly how the group will operate and about the involvement of the various participants.

We support the Arts Council in extending the reach of its bridge organisations, whose role is to improve the delivery of arts opportunities for children and young people by bringing together schools and cultural organisations. That encourages consistency and coherence across an often complex arts and education landscape, helping young people and local communities to benefit from the wide range of high-quality creative and artistic experience on offer. With additional investment from my Department, bridge organisations will increase engagement with schools, in particular teaching schools, and partnerships, with a wider range of cultural organisations, encompassing the arts, museums, libraries, film centres and heritage sites.

Schools clearly have an essential role to play in introducing cultural experiences to their students as part of a broad and rich curriculum. The most successful schools put culture at the heart of their curriculum. Our aim is to enable all schools to match the achievement of the best. The new national curriculum has set out the essential knowledge that all children and young people should know between the ages of five and 16. As the hon. Lady knows, we have completed the consultation, and I am sure that she made her views known. It will ensure that all pupils have the chance to read books, sing, make music, film or animation, dance, draw, design and perform, and be given opportunities to attend art galleries, museums, cultural and world cinema, theatre and concert performances. Creativity is not an optional add-on but is fundamental to our whole approach to education. If we provide teachers with the freedom to innovate and design their own curriculum, rather than being over-prescriptive, schools will be able to provide a rich and creative experience for their pupils.

The hon. Lady has emphasised on the Floor of the House and elsewhere that she wishes to ensure clear accountability for schools on how they are delivering the creative element of their education through the measures to be put in place. According to recent announcements by the Secretary of State, the new accountability measures, on which we will be consulting, are to be broadened in range; the hon. Lady welcomed that and, I think, was slightly surprised at the time that she had been so successful in persuading the Secretary of State of the right approach. Those arts subjects and creative areas of education will form part of the accountability measures that schools will have to take into consideration when deciding on what to do to provide a rich and broad curriculum.

GCSEs will be comprehensively reformed, with more challenging subject content and more rigorous assessment structures. The changes will initially apply to subjects such as English language and literature, and changes to other subjects including cultural ones will follow as soon as possible. The aim is for the new qualifications to be in place for teaching from September 2016. Increasing numbers of pupils have chosen to study vocational arts, and we have already taken steps to improve vocational qualifications. Following the Wolf review, we have ensured proper assessment and tighter quality controls on vocational courses. We have recognised, too, concerns about the EBacc and, specifically, whether the accountability system includes the right incentives to encourage and recognise achievement in arts subjects. I hope that some of the movement in recent weeks has reassured the hon. Lady that we are not trying to remove the importance of a rich cultural curriculum; in many respects, we are trying to enhance it.

We are looking at how we can improve the way in which secondary schools are held accountable, and we are consulting on proposals. The proposed changes will mean a more balanced and meaningful accountability system that includes a progress measure based on eight qualifications, as opposed to the qualifications within the EBacc. That will enable arts subjects to receive full recognition in secondary school accountability, encouraging a broad and balanced curriculum at key stage 4. The cultural education plan will reflect those developments in accountability, qualifications and the new national curriculum, and that is one reason why we have taken time over it; we should see the plan very soon.

[Fiona Mactaggart]

If the reduction in the offer of arts and creative subjects reported in the MORI survey I referred to continues, what will the Minister do about it?

[Mr Timpson]

As the hon. Lady knows, that reduction goes back over a four-year period and it is not a new problem. It needs to be looked at in the context of the increase in the vocational take-up. We need to look at that in the round and consider whether we are providing the best possible offer in every educational and vocational setting available. I am happy to convey her concerns to the Minister responsible for seeing this through as the programme develops and the plan comes online to ensure that they are taken into consideration. Clearly, we are in the early stages of any new accountability measures, but they will be a helpful way of monitoring how schools are performing in fulfilling a curriculum that takes cultural education as seriously as we all want it to be. I look forward to the hon. Lady seeing the plan very soon, and I hope that she will be satisfied that it does what she wants it to do.