Oral Answers to Questions

Elizabeth Truss Excerpts

Monday 21st January 2013 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce (Congleton) (Con)]

4. What steps he is taking to raise awareness in schools of the dangers of human trafficking in the UK.

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

Human trafficking is a heinous crime, and I salute my hon. Friend’s work in raising awareness of this issue. Schools can ensure that pupils receive appropriate information on this important topic through personal, social, health and economic education.

[Fiona Bruce]

I thank the Minister for that reply. I commend the work undertaken among girls at Sandbach high school in my constituency, raising awareness that trafficking is happening right here in many UK towns and cities. What are the Government doing to make sure that school pupils recognise grooming, are aware of the dangers to which it can lead and know how to avoid becoming victims?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I, too, commend the work done by pupils and teachers at Sandbach high school, and I thank my hon. Friend for bringing it to my attention. I would be interested to hear more from her about how that school carries out best practice. She rightly highlights that PSHE plays a role in ensuring how pupils learn about, recognise and spot the signs of abuse and grooming, helping them to stay safe and to make informed choices.

[Fiona Mactaggart (Slough) (Lab)]

Are not too many teachers anxious about raising such subjects in the classroom? We know of the real risks that young girls face—most brutally revealed at the Old Bailey last week by the cases of young children in Oxford? What can the Minister do to help teachers in the classroom to have the tools they need to protect these girls?

[Elizabeth Truss]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that we need teachers to be aware of, and well trained in, these issues. I would like to learn from the case raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and to share it as best practice, so that we can ensure that those important issues are taught in our schools.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

One of the signs, of course, is children who go missing from school on a regular basis. In 2011, the Select Committee recommended that the Secretary of State should write to schools annually, reminding them of their responsibilities. Is that now happening?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I am not sure, but I will certainly undertake to get back to the right hon. Gentleman. He raises a very important point, and schools should be vigilant about it.

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

5. How many children went missing from local authority care in each of the last three years.

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[Barbara Keeley (Worsley and Eccles South) (Lab)]

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

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

Ensuring that children benefit from high-quality early education and child care is a key priority. This Government spend more than £5 billion per year. As a proportion of GDP, that is higher than Germany and as much as France, yet our parents pay some of the highest costs and child care workers in England receive lower salaries than those in comparable countries. There is much scope to reform our system to achieve higher quality and better value for money.

[Barbara Keeley]

As the Minister says, the UK has some of the most expensive child care in the OECD. The Resolution Foundation tells us that a woman second earner working full-time on the minimum wage would bring home only £4 extra from that second role in her family, after paying child care costs and losing tax credits, and the Government hardly helped by cutting the child care element of the working tax credit, which hit 400,000 families. Is it not time that the Government got on and did something to help parents with those high child care costs?

[Elizabeth Truss]

As we announced in the mid-term review, we will help hard-working families with the cost of child care and we will announce measures on that in due course. As a country we spend more than £5 billion a year, more than countries such as Germany and the same amount as France, and we are not yet getting value for money. My other aim is to make sure that we use the money in our system much better to ensure that more money goes to the front line and that our hard-working child care workers in nurseries and our child minders receive more of the money coming from parents and the Government.

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

21. In the Minister’s focus on the quality of child care, will she not forget the value of parents and relatives looking after young children at home?

[Elizabeth Truss]

My role is to make sure that the child care provided in this country is of the highest quality and provides value for the money that the Government are putting in. My hon. Friend is right: many parents choose to look after their own children at home. That is important, too, but my role is very much to ensure that child care is of the highest quality.

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

Two expert advisers on child care, Professors Helen Penn and Eva Lloyd, have warned the Government about their child care plans. Does the Minister agree with Professor Lloyd that changing ratios would not reduce costs, but would result in “a reduction in quality”? Will the Minister publish the expert report that her Department commissioned nine months ago and take the advice of these experts who said, in effect, that she needs to go back to the drawing board?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I suggest that the hon. Lady speaks to her boss, who has advocated Danish and Swedish child care systems, both of which have higher ratios than we currently have in England. They also have higher salaries and higher levels of qualification.

We are looking at best practice in Germany, France, Denmark and the Netherlands to make sure that we end up with a system in which we pay child care workers more than the £6.60 an hour that they are getting at the moment. That is a legacy of the previous Government. We are paying those who should be highly paid professionals £6.60 an hour—barely more than the minimum wage.

[Kelvin Hopkins (Luton North) (Lab)]

13. What recent assessment he has made of the success of sixth-form colleges; and if he will make a statement.

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[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

15. What progress he has made on ensuring the provision of a high-quality information, advice and guidance service in all secondary schools.

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

An excellent, broad education grounded in core subjects such as maths, languages and sciences is an important foundation for a successful career. That is why we have introduced the English baccalaureate to encourage students not to close off their options too early. We have also given schools a new duty to secure independent careers guidance, which will help students to make informed choices about the best study routes for them.

[Mr Sheerman]

The Minister must know that children from more socially deprived backgrounds desperately need high-quality careers advice. All the evidence is that that careers advice is diminishing rapidly up and down this country. What is she going to do about that to help those young people?

[Elizabeth Truss]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question. As I have said, ensuring that more students are taking core subjects means that they will have better career opportunities later in life, and extending the opportunity to study maths and English beyond GCSE level for those who have not got a grade C means that they will get those important points. We have developed the National Careers Service, and the helpline has had 62,000 contacts with 13 to 18-year-olds, giving people these opportunities. We also ask schools to offer face-to-face advice. The key is that students get a good education; that is what will help them to compete in the world.

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

Tens of billions of pounds are spent on post-14 education alone, and the choices made by young people are crucial to their future and to that of the nation. The Education Committee’s report on careers advice and guidance will come out on Wednesday. Does the Minister agree that we must ensure that the right advice and guidance is in place, not only to help those most disadvantaged in our society but to ensure the most effective use of public funds?

[Elizabeth Truss]

Of course I will be extremely interested to see what the Select Committee report says on the subject. We do need good careers guidance, but we also need a system where students have an incentive to take subjects that will prove of value to them later in life. That is the whole point of the English baccalaureate.

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

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

Earlier, the Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), hinted again about changes to child care. A week or so ago there were major trails in the Sunday papers about imminent announcements. Has she been thwarted in her ambitions by members of the Government who do not wish to see women back in the workplace and contributing to the Government’s tax take?

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

We will shortly announce proposals on child care. As I mentioned earlier, we are not getting value for money for the £5 billion that we spend. In the mid-term review, we said that we would put forward a new offer for working parents. At the moment, our parents pay more than those in virtually any other OECD country, after 13 years of Labour creating a system that does not work. We are going to fix it.

[Michael Fabricant (Lichfield) (Con)]

We heard earlier about the success of Northamptonshire in introducing academies. We have not been as successful in Staffordshire, and one reason for that has been peer pressure by headmasters on those headmasters who want to establish academies. What steps can the Department take—if any—to encourage headmasters to have a little bit more courage to go ahead and take that step?