Care Leavers
Debate between Josh MacAlister and Jonathan Brash(6 days, 14 hours ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Josh MacAlister)
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Doncaster Central (Sally Jameson) for securing this debate at the start of Care Leavers Month. She brings to this place her insights from the prison system, in which she saw the tragic and avoidable over-representation of the care-experienced community.
There have been many excellent interventions and contributions by Members from across the House. I particularly want to mention the repeated mention of the important role that supported lodgings can play in our care system. I agree that they are underused—I thank the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) and others for flagging that. I will gladly work with all Members to improve outcomes for this group throughout my time in this role. On calls for a national approach to care leavers in custody, I can share that my colleagues in the Ministry of Justice are looking at this, and will give Members an update by the end of 2025.
Let me start by making a point that may seem obvious: the disadvantage faced by the care-experienced community is one of the greatest social justice issues of our time. Ensuring that those who grow up in the care of the state have a shot at a good life is a collective obligation, and for too long, we have been found wanting when it comes to ensuring that the obligation is met. That is in part because meeting it is about providing assets that any Government or service would struggle to provide. These assets are so fundamental. They are the need for belonging—a tribe—and the need for something intrinsic to the human condition: lifelong, loving relationships. That is why, at the start of this first ever Care Leavers Month, I say plainly, as the Minister for Children and Families, that the creation and sustenance of those relationships must become the obsession of the care and leaving care systems in England.
When we fail care-experienced people in that endeavour, we leave them with lives that are more isolated, a weaker sense of belonging, and questions about their self-worth. The tragic consequences for some is a life cut short. Suicide and early death are, tragically, a part of the care experience for too many. To start to solve a problem, we must first confront it. That is why I have commissioned the Department for Education to review the shockingly high number of early deaths in the care-experienced community.
However, we do not need to wait to act, and this Government certainly have not waited. We have a comprehensive plan to fix the children’s social care system at every single level. That is core to the relentless focus of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State on breaking down barriers to opportunity at every stage. Let me give the House a sense of the recent action that we have taken to improve support for care leavers. We have removed the local area connection test in social housing allocations for care leavers. That is crucial for those who have grown up in care and moved around between different local authorities. We have expanded corporate parenting duties to public bodies, especially the NHS. We have committed to expanding Staying Close and local authority offers of support for housing. We have disapplied the intentionally homeless test for eligible care leavers, meaning that they should no longer have to declare themselves homeless to their corporate parent in order to receive housing support. Very recently, the Secretary of State for Education automatically made care leavers able to get the highest level of maintenance support at university. Overall, we have doubled down on the Families First programme, which will see many more families stay together successfully, avoiding the need for the care system, including through much greater support for kinship care.
Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
My hon. Friend has outlined the vast range of steps that the Government have taken in short order to fix a very broken care system, but these things take time, and local authorities are under unimaginable pressure—they are at breaking point in many cases. What can he do in the short term to ensure that local authorities can continue to provide care for looked-after children and do not reach breaking point?
Josh MacAlister
I thank my hon. Friend for that important intervention. As a country, we must reset the children’s social care system. We must move away from the crisis-led approach that the system has been stuck in for far too long, and towards earlier effective intervention for families. Local authorities need help and support to do that. They will have my full backing in making that transition. We are rolling out a national programme that will leave no local authority behind in the pursuit of that goal. I will speak to local authorities at the end of this month to set out more detail of how they will get the Government’s full backing to make those changes.
Further to that point, we must do much more to support the recruitment and retention of foster carers across our country. Much of what we see in the care system is a symptom of a fostering system that has been in decline for too long. Next year is the centenary of the fostering system in England, and I cannot think of a better time than now to reset how we do fostering.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Josh MacAlister and Jonathan Brash(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Mr Jonathan Brash (Hartlepool) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Josh MacAlister)
The Government’s spending watchdog reported in 2017 that planned free schools would add an estimated 57,500 more spare school places. We are taking a common-sense approach, so that we can prove value for money from every pound of taxpayer money spent.
Mr Brash
Residents in Wynyard, in my Hartlepool constituency, have waited for far too long, thanks primarily to the mess left by the Conservative party, for their new primary school, St Joseph’s, which has been caught up in this review. Understandably, parents are frustrated by the continued delays, so will the Minister commit to using every possible lever at his disposal to expedite the decision, so that Wynyard families can finally have access to the high-quality school provision that they have been promised for so long?
Josh MacAlister
My hon. Friend has been a vocal champion for St Joseph’s Catholic primary school since he entered this place last year. I want every child in the country to go to school in an appropriate building. His community wants certainty, and that is what we want too. An update will be provided later this year, and I would be happy to speak to him before that time.
Nuclear Industry: Cumbria
Debate between Josh MacAlister and Jonathan Brash(1 year ago)
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Josh MacAlister
My hon. Friend and I frequently talk about the demographic challenges facing Cumbria, like many other post-industrial parts of our country. New nuclear can put those communities on the map and act as a magnet for inward investment and migration from elsewhere in the UK. Hypothetical future decommissioning work, not yet approved or funded by Government and that could use different available land, is putting a very real and current proposal to build new nuclear power at Moorside in jeopardy. That is simply unacceptable to me and to my community.
I am incredibly proud of the world-leading decommissioning work taking place at Sellafield. It is our biggest local employer, with 12,000 people directly employed and thousands more in the supply chain. The work being done there under the leadership of CEO Euan Hutton is truly groundbreaking, and it has ensured that west Cumbria will continue to play a crucial role in the nuclear industry well into the future. I will back any viable new projects that speed up decommissioning and create more opportunities for my community. What must change is that that work must become a springboard for Cumbria’s future opportunities and not simply an anchor providing security.
In truth, I have met too many people in Whitehall who think that we in west Cumbria should consider ourselves lucky to have what we have. I have absolutely no time for that sentiment. It shows a complete lack of regard for the members of a community who have been custodians of one of Europe’s most hazardous sites and who want and deserve a diverse economic future that is not simply dependent on one employer.
New nuclear is the key to creating that springboard to a diversified, vibrant and entrepreneurial economy. New nuclear would create a Cumbrian magnet for the energy-intensive industries hungry for the clean, reliable baseload power that only nuclear can provide. It would build on our existing world-leading workforce and strengthen it too. It would capitalise on the good will of a community whose members understand nuclear and are eager to get building. In short, new nuclear power generation is in no way incompatible with my community’s role in decommissioning. In fact, it is a mutually beneficial endeavour.
I understand the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s position—the clue is in the name. It is there to deliver safe, efficient and effective decommissioning programmes for our nuclear waste across the UK. However, under the Energy Act 2023 it also has a responsibility to work in the interests of the local community. Our community needs and deserves more than simply decommissioning work into the future.
I am confident that the NDA can come up with a plan B for its future that will preserve Moorside for its original purpose of new nuclear. I say that with confidence because until 2018 the NDA was planning on the basis of gigawatt-scale reactors at Moorside. My community, which overwhelmingly supports the building of new nuclear, and has the skills and expertise to deliver it, has a site designated for new nuclear, so my ask of the Minister is simple: I would like his Department to make clear the primacy of new nuclear use on sites currently designated for new nuclear over any other potential future uses of those bits of land—not just those in my constituency. I would like the land needed for new nuclear at Moorside transferred from the NDA to Great British Nuclear to make that intent clear.
GBN has taken ownership of other land for nuclear developments, and it is now time that the same should happen at Moorside. The clock is ticking on the need for that transfer of land, as GBN will make siting decisions in the coming months. I also ask that the Government support the NDA to come up with plans for laydown using other land available, and that they provide long-term confidence to the NDA on some of the major decommissioning choices that lie ahead, not least on plutonium. Finally, I would like the Department to instruct GBN to assess the Moorside site as it stands, and not on the basis of any other future land use, hypothetical or real. It is my firm belief that the Moorside site will score very highly without those roadblocks in its way.
West Cumbrians are ready to play our part in Britain’s new nuclear future. We are globally recognised in the nuclear sector as an area with a match-fit supply chain, decades of knowledge, and the experience needed to build complex nuclear technology. We have a strong skills base that wants to deliver the net zero infrastructure of the future, backed up by the excellent educational institutions needed. My hon. Friend the Minister and the Government have been handed a mess by their predecessors, which they are now being asked to fix at the eleventh hour. It is my hope that the new Government will support Cumbria in our ambitions, and remove the roadblocks that stand in our way.