Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old

Janet Daby Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

On the Opposition Benches, we have been hearing about the cost of living crisis. We hear about it in the media, from our constituents and on the news. We hear about it constantly, but it feels like it is somehow falling on deaf ears, because in the Queen’s Speech the Government failed to address it.

It is with shock and horror that we hear that because of the cost of living crisis 1.3 million people in the UK are set to fall below the poverty line next year, including 500,000 children who will experience severe poverty. If we look at that in more detail, it will affect what children eat, the quality of their food, the size of their portions and perhaps the frequency with which they eat. It will affect their ability to be warm in their home. It could affect their clothing and how much clothing is purchased for them, as we heard from other Members. It could affect their health—we heard from other Members about obesity being linked to poverty. There are many areas where children will experience deprivation and disadvantage, but it seems like the Government are set to be okay on that. Before the cost of living crisis even hit, 3,500 children in Lewisham were already in absolute poverty. That figure is rising and is only set to increase further. The Government must get a grip on the cost of living so that our young children will not suffer.

If children are experiencing deprivation and disadvantage and are going to be in severe poverty, some costs will only be passed on to another area. If the Government invested now, they would be doing what is right now rather than passing certain costs on to the health service because of health issues, on to the criminal justice system because a rise in poverty often leads to an increase in crime, and on to children’s social care because the chances are that more intervention from public services will be needed. As we know, local authorities are already suffering. Those costs are being passed on, so why are the Government not making the choice to invest now in people’s lives, rather than being in the situation of controlling people’s lives?

It is vital that we protect children and new parents. Early years learning is essential to ensure that children have the best possible start in life and the Government need to get it right for all children. The Government should aim for state education to be as good as grammar schools and private schools. Each child, including SEND children, should have an equal chance of success. The Government clearly have a long way to go to achieve that.

In addition to education, older children are often perceived and managed negatively by the police and the criminal justice system, and that can affect their wellbeing and health. Many older children’s interaction with the justice system can leave them traumatised and with a negative experience of the police. We need only to look at child Q for evidence of that. There are many examples of stopping and searching young black men and women in London in particular, and we know those situations are detrimental to their health. We only need to look at Bianca Williams, the Commonwealth gold medallist, when she had that awful experience of a roadside stop.

There are stories of children across the UK being held for up to 18 hours in custody in a police cell. That is shockingly long—it should be a shock for everybody who hears it for the first time. Current legislation requires that they be detained only as a last resort for the shortest appropriate period. That is clearly not happening. Young people have described the experience as horrible and devastating. I am standing with Vicky Kemp, a principal research fellow at the University of Nottingham who specialises in this area, to press the Government to cut the statutory stay limit for children from 24 hours to 12 hours. I really hope the Government are listening.

According to a report by the Children’s Commissioner, the average waiting time for an appropriate adult is nine hours. My 15-year-old constituent was detained for nine hours before his mother was even called to be informed that he was in a police cell. I am campaigning with the National Appropriate Adult Network to speed up the attendance of appropriate adults coming to young people’s aid in a police cell. The Government must ensure that children are treated as children within the care of public bodies and in the care of the police.

Foster Carers

Janet Daby Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kate Osborne]

Yes, I agree, and I will refer to a similar point in my speech.

As I was preparing for this debate and looking at the statistics, two particular facts on recruitment stood out to me. First, the number of initial inquiries to foster is at an all-time high. There were 160,635 initial inquiries from prospective fostering households in the year ending 31 March 2021. In contrast, only 10,145 applications—a mere 6% of initial inquiries—were actually received. Secondly, according to the annual fostering statistics published by Ofsted, the number of foster carers in England has increased by only 4% since 2014, while the number of children in foster care has increased by 11%.

Those statistics show a crisis in recruitment and retention. Members on both sides must ask why those significant shortfalls in the fostering sector are occurring and what we in this place can do to help to alleviate this recruitment and retention crisis. I believe that we need to champion foster carers, but central to that must be deeds, not just words: we need to make sure that foster carers are fairly paid and respected as workers.

Set out in its 2021 “State of the Nation’s Foster Care” report, the Fostering Network’s findings on pay are damning:

“Over a third of foster carers said that their allowances do not meet the full cost of looking after a child.”

That is certainly something I can give personal testimony of, from my experience as a foster carer before entering this place; it has also been said to me today by some of the foster carers present.

Secondly, the report notes:

“Fourteen local authorities reported that their foster care allowances were below the NMA for at least one age group across England. Of these, two were in London, four were in the South East and ten were in the area of the rest of England.”

While I thank the Children’s Minister for writing to 13 local authorities on the specific issue of the national minimum allowance, that has to be weighted against this Government’s political decision to put the burden of inflation and the cost of living crisis on the backs of ordinary people.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making a meaningful speech, including about her own experiences as a foster carer. She may or may not know that I used to be a manager in fostering, and for as long as I can remember there was an issue with the retention of foster carers and with those carers not being valued enough. Does my hon. Friend agree that the severe cuts to local government funding have had an indirect impact on the support that social workers can offer foster carers, which in turn has an impact on their ability to continue fostering and how they can look after, or manage the welfare of, a child?

[Kate Osborne]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: we cannot keep taking money out of local authorities and expect them to still deliver the same level of services. The impact, unfortunately, is felt by the children and young people who are in the fostering system or child services.

The financial pressures and stresses felt by carers, highlighted by the Fostering Network’s research, are only set to get worse. The Nationwide Association of Fostering Providers believes that the Government should urgently make a pay award to foster carers, both within local authorities and independent fostering agencies, to preserve and protect this precious resource for children and young people in need. This would be an important signal to foster carers that the Government really do value their contribution.

Another critical issue that we have to be aware of is the responsibility local authorities and IFAs have in providing vital—often emergency—wraparound support for foster carers and their families. I put on record my thanks to South Tyneside Council, one of my local authorities, for its progressive outlook in prioritising this area. First and foremost, we have to recognise that each child currently being supported through fostering services has different and complex needs, which must be met from the first moment that child comes under the care of their carer. That is why South Tyneside’s model of training carers to degrees, whereby they can be matched with the child best suited to their level of training—a model that is in the best interests of all parties and, most importantly, those of the child or young person—is highly commendable. In this, it is vital that children are kept as close to the local authority as possible. This approach means that at crisis point there is no delay in support, and any crisis has a better chance of being mitigated, as tailored, traumatic and therapeutic support can be accessed quickly.

Special Educational Needs and Disabilities Review

Janet Daby Excerpts

Tuesday 29th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I will happily meet my hon. Friend. Today, we announced the first tranche of £1.4 billion out of £2.6 billion for up to 40 specialist and AP settings.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Parents and carers find it extremely stressful when there is a lack of school places, and a lack of choice of places, for children with special educational needs. In the meantime, it is the children who really suffer. It has been brought again to my attention that the exclusion rate for children with SEND is disproportionately high. That is just not acceptable. Can the Secretary of State say how that will be addressed in his review and what he will do?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Lady’s final point is absolutely right. The plans for supporting parents will lead to much greater transparency and improved choice through more local inclusive mainstream provision. The combination of the schools White Paper, the Green Paper and the children’s social care review that Josh MacAlister is carrying out for me will allow me for the first time, working with the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to knit together a system that really delivers for parents and delivers clarity on what they should be getting for their child, wherever in England they live.

Schools White Paper

Janet Daby Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Ofsted’s 2019 framework has, in many ways, helped schools both to focus on literacy and numeracy and to have a knowledge-rich curriculum, from which this White Paper does not deviate. We are working in lockstep with our colleagues in Ofsted to make sure we deliver the highest-quality outcomes for children. If we focus on outcomes, we will not get it wrong.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I am not convinced that the Government are listening. They do not have the support of the National Association of Head Teachers, the Association of School and College Leaders or the National Education Union for this White Paper. If the Secretary of State is really listening, headteachers are telling me that they need the classroom support teachers who have been so drastically cut over the years by this Tory Government.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I remind the hon. Lady that there are now 217,000 teaching assistants in classrooms, a 6,000 increase since 2010. I speak to ASCL and the other unions to share evidence and to share our work on the White Paper, and they have been engaging with us. The Education Endowment Foundation, which provides evidence in other areas, has an excellent review of how best to use teaching assistants. Every school should look at that review.

Arthur Labinjo-Hughes

Janet Daby Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend raises a fundamental issue, which is that the system needs to have the confidence and ability to safeguard, protect and build on relationships that a child may have with other family members via kinship care, if necessary, or otherwise. That comes through high-quality leadership, which is why that was so much the focus of my work when I was Minister for Children and Families. I know that the present Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester, continues that work, but my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt) is right that the review should look at it too.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I have 15 years of experience in children’s social care as a social worker. I thank the Secretary of State for saying that he will be a champion for social workers. The death of Arthur is absolutely tragic.

I thank the Secretary of State for his statement. However, it is not a new phenomenon that social workers are overworked and spend most of their time doing bureaucratic work. The Munro review, Louise Casey and Josh MacAlister have stated that social workers spend far too much time on the bureaucracy of their work instead of being with families. Social workers are overworked. What interim measures will the Secretary of State put in place now? What are the timescales for when the review will be completed?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I thank the hon. Lady for her 15 years of service as a social worker. She is absolutely right. In the first quarter of next year, there will be a reduction in that bureaucracy; that is coming down the line even before the review.[Official Report, 16 December 2021, Vol. 705, c. 6MC.] She is also right to say that there is too much bureaucracy. I will never forget going out with a brilliant social worker in Brighton who is a phenomenon, doing incredible work with the most vulnerable young people. She said to me privately, “I know I shouldn’t be saying this to you, because you’re the Minister, but I’m not good at using some of these technologies and this bureaucracy. That’s why I’m finding it so difficult, so I’m going to retire.” That is the sort of thing that I think the MacAlister review needs to look at very thoroughly.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [Lords]

Janet Daby Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 15th November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to the staff at Christ the King Sixth Form College, which I have recently been in contact with. They really do go the extra mile to support young people in my constituency with vocational and non-vocational skills and learning.

I am very supportive of the aims of the Bill, but in content it is just too weak to meet the task facing us. It tries to make up for over a decade of neglect with too little action. We have a serious shortage of skilled workers in certain British jobs. Eleven years of short-sighted education policy in this country has contributed to that issue, but education is not the only factor. Due to the disastrous Tory Brexit agreement, we are now experiencing a wide variety of economic issues. Only now are some people realising how important EU migrant workers were. We are all now feeling the effects of the worker shortage and supply chain issues. Only now are some people realising that they were wrong in their attitudes of superiority over that workforce and eating humble pie.

Of course, the Government should be turning their attention to further education to try to fix their crisis, but taking a bulldozer to the current BTEC system is not the answer. BTECs have helped so many students, in my constituency and beyond, to pursue their potential in vocational subjects. It is indeed important to open alternative pathways for young adults who do not feel that the traditional sixth-form education is for them. Sadly, the numbers show that pupils with different skills and interests from the standard academic subjects have been failed by successive Tory Governments. A staggering four in 10 young people are currently leaving education without level 3 qualifications. When we consider that those Governments have slashed further education by a third since 2010, it is not that much of a surprise.

The Bill is not popular across the board. Some 86% of respondents to the Department for Education’s consultations were against the proposals for qualifications to overlap A-levels and T-levels. The Secretary of State said that he will look at the data, but he is obviously not looking or paying attention to that data. Even Margaret Thatcher’s Education Secretary, Lord Baker, has spoken out against the proposals, so why are the Government persisting with scrapping the BTEC system when students and professionals alike are so against that?

If the Government really want to strengthen the workforce of the future, they will invest more money, more resources, more teaching, more child and adolescent mental health services, more student choice and more financial support for students. Let us improve what we have, not defund it and not move towards scrapping it all together.

Covid-19: Impact on Attendance in Education Settings

Janet Daby Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend is so right. The provisions—whether it was the roll-out of mass testing across all schools, or the restrictions and levels of safety that we had to put into schools—have all been designed around getting children into schools for the maximum amount of time, ensuring that they are in front of the teacher with their friends, having the very best classroom experience. That is the No. 1 priority. As we move out of this crisis, we want to lift as many of those restrictions as possible and liberate schools to be able to operate in the best possible way for themselves.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab)]

Does the Secretary of State agree that the Government’s failure to get border controls in place has enabled the delta variant to take hold in the UK, forcing children out of classrooms and away from their friends?

[Gavin Williamson]

At every stage, the Government have been one of the first to act in order to keep this country safe; this was one of the first countries in Europe to impose travel restrictions on India as a result of the delta variant. The new Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, the Transport Secretary and the Prime Minister take that responsibility incredibly seriously.

Catch-up Premium

Janet Daby Excerpts

Tuesday 15th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab) [V]]

We expect a competent Government to step up and give the nation’s children the support they need. I think we all need to know why this Government are ignoring their own commissioner.

Children in deprived and disadvantaged circumstances need the Government to care about them and their future. During the pandemic, those of us on the Opposition Benches have had to fight to ensure that schoolchildren are not left without food. We have seen poorer families lose out on digital learning, and we have seen school heads struggle to manage a depleted budget and ever-changing situations with little guidance. And now, instead of investing in each child to give them a bright future, the Chancellor has decided that they will receive less than £1 a day to make up for the days they missed from school.

Education attainment gaps are only getting wider. That will have implications for many children; children with disabilities, refugees and asylum seekers, and children from poor and diverse backgrounds will be affected for decades to come if the Government do not do the right thing. In my constituency, black Caribbean boys are some of those who need the greatest therapeutic and educational support. We should not have to put a price on the gift of education for all children, but £1 is certainly not enough.

The Government had a chance to show that they care about these young lives by just listening and learning from their own education recovery commissioner, Sir Kevan Collins, but they did not like the reality he showed them. What is the point in hiring an education recovery commissioner and then refusing to enact their recommendations to support the recovery? It is shocking and disgraceful.

In my constituency, around 34% of children live in poverty, with their parents or carers struggling to cover the cost of uniforms, food, new school shoes—and, with growing feet, new school shoes again—not to mention energy bills and rent; the list goes on. In February, all parents, carers and grandparents were told that every child would be supported to catch up on their education. Now, we find out from the Government that that is just not true.

Finally, I thank all school staff, including teachers, admin staff, caretakers and so on, for all the work they have done and will continue to do to educate our children during the pandemic and in times—hopefully much better times—to come.

Support for Children Entitled to Free School Meals

Janet Daby Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab) [V]]

Although it is a real pleasure to be able to speak today, it is disturbing to be speaking in a debate about children going hungry, especially as the UK is the fifth richest country in the world by GDP. A quarter of the country’s wealth is held by a mere 1% of the population, however. That is an absolute shame. That is why, in 2021, I and other Members are still having to call on the Government to keep children fed during the school holidays.

The issue of food poverty goes well beyond children relying on free school meals; it affects our whole community. Indeed, it is a crisis of the Government’s own making. Cuts to funding have resulted in a reduction of local authorities’ spend, which has meant the loss of youth services and children’s social services. The cuts have also reduced the third sector’s capacity to deliver services and, in some cases, the ability of those services to exist at all. In my borough of Lewisham, the council has to make additional £28 million of cuts for this coming year, after 11 difficult years of austerity. Schools desperately want to support families in need, but they have also had their own budgets decimated.

Members have already heard this, but they will hear it again: the Joseph Rowntree Foundation writes that

“food poverty is just poverty”

and that the only way to solve poverty is

“with better jobs, affordable homes and strong social security.”

I agree. Too many adults continue to struggle through jobs that are high effort but low income. Indeed, food banks in my constituency, like those in other Members’ constituencies, have seen a rise in users and people suffering from in-work poverty. Those people may have two or three jobs, but still have little security and measly wages. They are struggling, their families are struggling, and the people around them are struggling.

Universal credit’s initial five-week delay to benefits harms families by presuming that debt is the norm. That was ludicrous at the beginning and remains ludicrous now. Universal credit works against women as it is only paid into one person’s bank account, and its two-child limit discriminates against families. Child Poverty Action Group estimates that childcare costs have risen by 42% since 2008, but child benefit has not risen accordingly. With rising rents in London and higher energy bills as a result of the pandemic, families repeatedly have to make sacrifices to make ends meet. Many parents are themselves going without food so that they can feed their children.

That is a miserable and cruel situation for any parent, but it is not inevitable. The last Labour Government brought 900,000 children out of poverty. We can do it and we must do it, so why are we not doing it again? The real question is this: why have this Government chosen to keep children in food poverty?

[Dr Rupa Huq (in the Chair)]

From south-east London to south-west London, and from the virtual world to the Boothroyd Room, I call Siobhain McDonagh.

University Students: Compensation for Lost Teaching and Rent

Janet Daby Excerpts

Thursday 15th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

My hon. Friend is right: the wider student experience has been extremely impacted over the last year, despite the hard work of universities and student unions. UUK is sharing best practice and ideas to support universities to prioritise and enrich the student experience on return, and we are working with UUK on that.

Throughout the pandemic, I have reiterated to universities the importance of prioritising mental health and wellbeing and worked with them to enable that, including by convening a mental health working group. We have also worked closely with the OfS and launched Student Space, a £3 million mental health platform through which students can access support during the pandemic.

[Janet Daby (Lewisham East) (Lab) [V]]

Time spent away from in-person learning has had a particularly damaging impact on students from deprived and disadvantaged backgrounds. Goldsmiths, University of London has raised with me its concerns about the widening gap between students from wealthy backgrounds, who have networks to help them to find jobs beyond university, and those from low-income families, who do not. To ensure that the gap in social mobility does not hold students back in the job market, what steps will the Minister take to make sure that tailored careers support and advice are provided?

[Michelle Donelan]

We are currently working with universities and sector representatives on a package of support for those who will graduate this year. It is important to note that we have already done a number of things, including putting an additional £32 million into the national careers service. The number of work coaches in this country is now up to 27,000, and we have the skills toolkit, which is a fantastic free resource that enables students or graduates to access courses that will add to their employability.