Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Jess Asato Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Jess Asato (Lowestoft) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education for bringing forward this landmark piece of genuinely transformational legislation. As someone who spent three years in the voluntary sector fighting for vulnerable children, I know that the Bill prioritises children and their needs, righting many of the wrongs of the last 14 years of failure under the Conservatives. The Bill signifies a much-needed movement towards preventive services, which were shamefully slashed by the Conservative party. Sure Start, with its huge impact on child development, disappeared. Youth services were decimated. Due to the huge cuts by the Conservative party, in England we spend 11 times more on late intervention, and spending on early intervention has fallen by 44% since 2010.

The reforms laid out today, coupled with the funding needed to realise them properly, have the potential to ensure that, with the right support, more children can remain safely living with their birth families. The Bill should also ensure that when children need to live with foster parents or in a residential home, we are able to provide them with the best possible care. These children, after all, are the responsibility of the state. We are their parents, and we need to have the same high ambitions for them as we do for our own children. The recognition in the Bill that young people need more support when they first leave care must also be celebrated. The Bill will help to improve the situation by finally extending Staying Close to all areas of the country. That was a key recommendation of the independent review of children’s social care.

That review also recommended extending corporate parenting principles, so that they apply not just to children’s services but to a greater range of public organisations. In November, the Government outlined that that important reform would be implemented. Will the Secretary of State confirm that extending corporate parenting responsibilities remains part of the Government’s plan to improve support for care leavers? We have also heard about the postcode lottery in the help available for care leavers. The support that a young person receives too often depends on where they live, not what they need. That is why we need a national offer of support, which could include things suggested by the children’s charity Barnardo’s, such as the right to a free bus pass, free prescriptions, and help with rental deposits.

Like the Children’s Commissioner for England, I believe that the Bill presents an opportunity for this House to ensure finally that children in England, like their counterparts in Scotland and Wales, receive equal protection from assault and battery. We cannot adequately ensure children’s welfare if we fail to protect their physical safety and wellbeing. A 2021 review in The Lancet of 70 studies found that physical punishment had no positive outcomes for children, and was instead linked to greater child behaviour problems over time. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health also found that children who experience physical punishment are 2.6 times more likely to experience mental health problems, and potentially 2.3 times more likely to experience more serious forms of physical abuse. These children are also more likely to believe that violence is an acceptable and normal way of expressing frustration, contributing to a cycle of violence in society that we need to break.

Though physical punishment may, for many of us, seem a relic of the past, data from 2020-21 found that more than one in five 10-year-olds have experienced physical punishment, and the NSPCC has seen a threefold increase in the number of child welfare calls mentioning physical punishment in the past couple of years. Given that 71% of adults believe that physical punishment is unacceptable, the time to end this injustice is now. In the context of one child dying every four days from deliberately inflicted injuries, and the horrific murder of Sara Sharif, whose father sought to justify her treatment under the dark cloak of discipline, it is clear that the threat of violence that children face should no longer be given legal cover.

The Bill does so much for children and young people, and it is my view that by extending corporate parenting, ensuring equal protection and establishing a national care leavers offer, we can do even more to ensure that everyone growing up is given the opportunity to flourish.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Tice (Boston and Skegness) (Reform)]

I will vote for the reasoned amendment and against the Bill, not only because of the catastrophic damage that the Bill will do to the academy movement, as so amply explained by the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh), but because it fails to take the opportunity for a national public inquiry dedicated to the child rape and grooming scandal. Yes, victims and survivors want action now, but they also want answers. I fear that there is a great misunderstanding and misinformation about the previous national inquiry led by Professor Jay. That was an all-encompassing umbrella inquiry on child sex exploitation.

[Jess Asato]

Does the hon. Member agree that there was a two-year inquiry on organised networks and sexual exploitation, which is grooming gangs, in the language of inquiry? The chief executive of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood said:

“we urge the Government to focus on delivering improvements… rather than proposing new inquiries that may potentially delay action even further”.

[Richard Tice]

I shall come to the hon. Lady’s point, but the reality is that Professor Jay’s inquiry was an overarching one, and its references to grooming gangs were minuscule. It mentioned only Rotherham, but we know that there are dozens of towns—primarily Labour-led towns—where horrific things have taken place. Victims and survivors want not only action but answers. This is an opportunity for both. The hon. Lady referred to the need for action, but surely, in this great nation of ours, we can ensure both, in parallel. We can say, “Yes, these actions are required, following the recommendations of the Jay inquiry, but alongside that, for continuing public confidence and to get the answers that victims and survivors want, we need to keep exploring in specific towns.”