Investing in Children and Young People

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]]

I pay tribute to all parents, Liverpool City Council, and all staff working with children and young people in Liverpool, Riverside, who have provided invaluable support over the past 14 months during the pandemic.

In this country, 4.3 million children are living in poverty, and in my Liverpool, Riverside constituency, 38%—11 children, on average, in every single classroom in my constituency. That is totally unacceptable. It is the legacy of this Government, including a decade of Tory austerity that hollowed out vital services, leaving millions of children in need and at risk, and my council with £450 million less to spend on those in greatest need.

If there was any doubt about this Government’s priorities, the pandemic has laid them bare for all to see. In the past year, this Government have chosen to spend more on one month of the disastrous Eat Out to Help Out scheme than on the entire year’s budget for schools catch-up, and put only £50 per pupil into the education recovery fund. This is scandalous when £25 million of this meagre budget has been spent on a contract outsourcing teaching to a HR firm with little teaching experience—another example of cronyism. That the Government’s own education recovery commissioner has resigned over the pitiful funding pledge to help pupils catch up speaks volumes. They are still threatening to cut the universal credit uplift of £20 that has been an invaluable lifeline for so many families living on the breadline in Liverpool and across the country. Barnardo’s, the largest children’s charity in the UK, has identified that nearly 300,000 children were referred to children’s services during the pandemic, many of them previously unknown to local authorities. Two thirds of its workers have supported families in the last year who were unable to put food on the table. This speaks to a crisis of poverty and the welfare of children. It is a shameful state of affairs for a country as wealthy as ours, the fifth richest country in the world. This Government have presided over the expansion of the wealth of billionaires by 25% during the pandemic, while the use of food banks has rocketed by a third in the same time.

If this Government are serious about ensuring that no child is left behind, we need an urgent change in direction. Can the Minister give me a straight answer: does he accept that this Government’s funding pledge for post-pandemic education recovery is entirely inadequate, and will he commit today to go back to his Government and get a commitment to proper resourcing on a par with the investment made by other countries, so that we can provide an education system that supports high standards and places pupil wellbeing at its heart—yes or no, Minister?

We are emerging from an unprecedented crisis that has shone a spotlight on the struggles of the poorest and most vulnerable in our country, particularly black young people, who are twice as likely to be unemployed, six times more likely to be excluded from school and over-represented in the criminal justice system. This must be a turning point—one where our country fundamentally shifts our priorities and commits serious resources towards eradicating child poverty, improving our welfare and education systems and creating a country in which every child can thrive, for the many, not the few.

Educational Settings: Reopening

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend is right to raise those issues, and I agree with him to the extent that vaccination is an important criterion that will determine how and when we emerge from the national lockdown position, of which schools are an important part. But vaccination is only one of the criteria; hospitalisation rates and mortality rates are also important, as is the challenge of any new variants. We rely on the advice of the scientists to weigh up those different criteria and to advise us on when and how soon we can undo the national lockdown.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab) [V]]

I send my thanks and solidarity to all the teachers and support staff in my constituency of Liverpool, Riverside who are working through these very challenging times. The pandemic and school closures have widened the educational attainment gap for working-class black and white pupils. The catch-up funding is not sufficient to achieve the levelling up required. Will the Government review the progress made with the financial support allocated to schools and provide more funding where necessary?

[Nick Gibb]

The hon. Member is right. Everything that this Government have been seeking to do since 2010 has been about closing the attainment gap between children from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers, and we do not intend to let this pandemic divert us from that overarching objective. There is no question but that the pandemic has, during this period, widened the attainment gap, and our objective is to close that gap again as soon as we can. That is why we secured £1 billion of catch-up funding, of which £650 million is a catch-up premium for pupils. Some £350 million of that is funding the national tutoring programme, which is designed to help the most disadvantaged young people with one-to-one and small-group tuition, which is an effective way of helping children to catch up.

Education: Return in January

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I can absolutely confirm that I will respond to my hon. Friend’s pressing me to press others to do that. I know how important it is and what a heroic job so many in our schools have been doing to ensure continuity of education for all our children.

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

Pupils in Liverpool, Riverside have suffered disproportionate learning loss. We have heard the rhetoric on how this Government are levelling up, but it is time to move from the rhetoric to the reality. How many of the thousands of laptops have made it to those in the greatest need? Has that been monitored? The national tutoring programme is projected to reach just 1 in 6 pupils on free school meals. Will the Minister join me in thanking and supporting all education and support staff in my constituency, who have gone above and beyond since the first lockdown to support both children and our community throughout this pandemic?

[Gavin Williamson]

I join the hon. Lady in thanking all those in her constituency who have done so much to ensure continuity of education for so many children. The great city of Liverpool is one of the areas that have experienced very high infection rates. The teaching staff and communities making sure that schools stayed open and that children were able to get the benefit of education are a real testament to the hard work done by so many in the teaching profession.

Over 500,000 of the laptops have already been distributed to children from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. Many hundreds of thousands more will be distributed in the coming weeks. That will benefit the hon. Lady’s constituents, mine and the constituents of us all.

Union Learning Fund

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone, and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this morning. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood) on securing this important and timely debate.

The Government have declared that they will put reskilling workers at the heart of their economic recovery plans after the pandemic. That was a significant and welcome announcement, so why are they now proposing to scrap one of the most successful schemes for encouraging workers to upskill? Since it was launched in 1998, the union learning fund has provided training and qualifications to around 200,000 workers every year—almost 4.5 million new qualifications that contribute not just to the worker’s confidence, skills and knowledge, but to the business they work in.

As a former Unison rep, I have witnessed first-hand the success of the ULF. Last year the union learning fund cost £12 million—a mere £60 per learner. Learners undertake all sorts of job-relevant training, including in basic literacy, numeracy, information and communications technology skills, apprenticeships, traineeships, vocational training, continuing professional development and other informal and informal courses.

At the heart of the model is the union learning representative, a trained worker who understands the workforce, the nature of the business and the skill gaps that exist. They work with employers, their own union and Unionlearn to broker access to relevant learning opportunities for workers in their workplaces. There are more than 44,000 in England. And the model works; 37% of union members regularly access workplace learning, compared with just 19% of workers in non-unionised workplaces.

The essential food industry is reliant on migrant workers and those with no or low-level qualifications. The Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union has provided Unionlearn-funded training to more than 31,000 workers over the past 20 years, including functional literacy and numeracy skills and English to speakers of other languages. Like other union partners, it provides a route back in for those failed by the education system, those with low confidence, and those whose first language is not English but who are likely to be key to the success of the business. An independent study in 2018 from the University of Exeter found that 68% of learners with no previous qualifications gained a qualification.

It is incredible that the Government—who were prepared to put billions of pounds into contracts with Serco for test, track and trace, and millions into precuring personal protective equipment not fit for use—made the decision to scrap the ULF. I urge the Minister to reconsider that decision.

Tuition Fees

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Monday 16th November 2020 Westminster Hall

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David. I also want to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Islwyn (Chris Evans) for securing this timely and important debate.

Covid-19 hit the student population hard in spring and summer this year, particularly the three universities in my Liverpool, Riverside constituency. The immediate response was to shift to online learning wherever possible. Students were advised to return home for their third term and some—although by no means all—university accommodation offered refunds. The House of Commons Petitions Committee’s second report, “The impact of Covid-19 on university students” published in July, acknowledged that, although it shifted the responsibility on to individual universities and student accommodation to assess all calls for refunds from individual students. Seventy-eight per cent of students surveyed reported being dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their learning experience in that period, compared with 84% being satisfied or very satisfied in the previous year. I think that if the survey were done again now, we would find the levels of dissatisfaction to be even higher.

Despite the lack of an effective test, track and trace system, hundreds of thousands of students were encouraged back on to campus in September and we saw the impact of that almost immediately. Rates of infection spiralled among the student population, particularly for first years in halls of residence. Forty thousand students have tested positive for covid-19 and thousands more have been forced to self-isolate. Far from experiencing the same quality of student experience in freshers’ week, as so many universities promised, for many students the reality was being locked down in small rooms, only having access to online teaching and a socially isolated experience, with deteriorating mental health. We have seen young adults, most of them away from their homes for the first time, being locked in and their premises patrolled by guards as they are charged extortionate amounts of money for poor-quality food parcels. Two weeks ago, we saw the situation in Fallowfield in Manchester, where the university students were fenced in in their halls.

Now, students are being encouraged to leave for home between 2 and 9 December; encouraged to vacate their accommodation three weeks early. None of that is the students’ fault. They were encouraged by the Government and the universities to return full time to campuses, despite warnings from student bodies and campus unions, concerned about those scenarios. There is no certainty that university life—social or teaching—will return to normal for the second term. That is not worth £9,000-plus of anyone’s money, and it is not good enough for the Government to put the responsibility of the crisis on individual students to request refunds. The Secretary of State for Education must take responsibility and develop a system for refunding fees for students who have suffered from a lack of face-to-face teaching, and students must be compensated for breaking their tenancy agreements, so that they can return home where they will get the support they need.

Children and Young Persons

Kim Johnson Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

The number of looked-after children continues to rise; there were over 78,000 children in care nationally last year, a 4% rise on the previous year and a shocking 30% rise since 2010. In my home city of Liverpool, there are nearly 1,500 vulnerable children in care who need these protections, including 115 unaccompanied child asylum seekers—double the rate of the national percentage. This represents a rise on last year, with additional numbers coming under the protection of social services during this pandemic.

As schools return and hidden harms are exposed, Liverpool City Council is, like most local authorities, expecting a further rise in referrals. Liverpool is also a referral centre for unaccompanied children seeking asylum—children who need the maximum possible care and support to help them overcome the most traumatic of experiences. At a time when we need to ensure that our most vulnerable children have the support and care they need to survive trauma, neglect and abuse, it is most disappointing to see the Government relaxing these safeguards for financial reasons.

As the Government know, looked-after children face greater hurdles than other children in their adult lives. They are more likely to suffer mental health issues, more likely to end up in the prison system, more likely to succumb to drug or alcohol addiction, less likely to achieve educationally, and more likely to be unemployed. How will loosening the monitoring and support redress the situation?

Nationally, recent analysis by national agencies, including Action for Children, Barnardo’s, the National Children’s Bureau, the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and the Children’s Society, estimates that funding for local authority children’s services has fallen by an astonishing 23% since 2010, with a fall of £2.2 billion nationally. Liverpool City Council has seen its Government income slashed by 64% over the past 10 years, leaving a £460-million gaping hole. If the Government are serious about protecting our most vulnerable children and enabling them positive life chances, the answer lies not in reducing safeguards when they are under the protection of local authorities, but in adequately funding local authorities to allow them to do their job.

I am also concerned that neither the Children’s Commissioner nor the major agencies concerned with children’s welfare were consulted on these changes and nor was there a public consultation. If the Government truly believe their proposals were for the better, why the lack of consultation?

The coronavirus pandemic must not be used as an excuse to force through these measures that the Government have unsuccessfully tried to put through for four years. Allowing local authorities the right to opt out of ensuring that certain safeguards or regular monitoring are in place would have a detrimental impact on the lives of children and their families and erode the rights and entitlements of children.

In conclusion, I call on the Minister to think again and to revoke this SI, to consult and listen to the Children’s Commissioner and the expert organisations, and, indeed, to talk to children and their families. We need to do what is right, not what is possible, and that means looking to adequately fund local authorities to provide maximum care and protection.

Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms) Bill

Kim Johnson Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 13th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Kim Johnson (Liverpool, Riverside) (Lab)]

I congratulate my good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Weaver Vale (Mike Amesbury), on his Bill. As we all know on the Opposition Benches, 10 years of austerity have had a major impact on the most vulnerable and plunged many into precarious financial positions. Liverpool, Riverside has some of the most deprived wards in the country, and many parents do not have the money to feed their kids, particularly during the summer holidays, never mind being able to find hundreds of pounds for branded uniforms. If this Government are serious about levelling up, they need to get this Bill done.