Education, Skills and Training

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Motherwell and Wishaw (Marion Fellows) and to see you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have to say, however, that prior to your arrival you missed a parade of relatively churlish speeches from Opposition Members, which I found surprising, as the Queen’s Speech appears to be a smorgasbord of legislative delights. It is a legislative Milk Tray, filled with hard and soft centres, from which one can take one’s pick—perhaps the hon. Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) was worried that he would get the coffee cream. In the Speech that he described as “rubbish” I found a huge amount of value, and I wish to take the opportunity today to run through some of the issues that will be important in the months to come.

The Children and Social Work Bill, to which the hon. Lady referred, is possibly the most important Bill in this Session. In his conference speech from October of the year before last—I believe it was then—the Prime Minister electrified the room by painting a fairly bleak picture of the lives of children in care. They are four times more likely to commit suicide, and 70% of all prostitutes in the UK have been through the care system. He told us all then that the care system shamed us all as a nation, and he was quite right. It is therefore a tribute to him and to the Minister for Children and Families that this Bill has appeared. That Minister said at the outset that his mission was to put children in care front and centre of the political debate, and he appears to have achieved that.

The Bill contains many measures that will be vital to those children’s lives in the future, but let me mention two in particular. The first is the focus on getting local authorities to realise that they are corporate parents—that these children are their charges and should not necessarily be competing for attention and resources with other issues, be it potholes, refuse or whatever it might be. We would not put our own children second to other requirements in our house, so why would we put children in care second, third or even last on the list in the priorities for a local authority? Defining more clearly for local authorities what their responsibilities are to those children, what their obligations are and the fact that they have to publish those and consult on them locally with people will be vital in creating transparency on the way these children live in all our communities.

The second measure is the concentration on leaving care. It may well be that we are not looking after these children terribly well or that we are looking after them patchily in the care system, but when they leave care our obligation to them does not cease. Providing each of them with an adviser up to the age of 25, improving leaving care services and, in particular, getting local authorities to publish their plans for leaving care and to consult on them, allowing local people to see what is being done in their name to all of our collective children, will be vital to driving standards up.

I would, however, like to see two areas added to the Bill, so I put the Minister on notice here. First, if it is right that children leaving care should have an adviser up to 25, surely it is also right that we look earlier in their lives at how we might be able to influence their outcomes in their adult life. In particular, I am thinking about what happens where educational attainment is extremely low. It strikes me that a sensible thing to do for those children who are underachieving—this is what any parent would do—is to try to look for assistance outside of school. In London, there is this strange phenomenon whereby parents of underperforming children who are entitled to free school meals are still managing to scrape together the money to pay for a tutor. I do not understand why officials in local authorities do not look at children in care as they would their own children and say, “If they are underachieving, we should be providing them with tutors.”

The Government have done lots around designated teachers, and there is more to come in this Bill, and lots around virtual headteachers, but there is no substitute for one-to-one assistance for children in care as they go through education, particularly the early years. Four, five, six and seven are critical ages for setting the foundation for future life. If those children were to get one-to-one tuition, as the most privileged kids—and often non-privileged kids—do in our society, it would make a big difference.

[Rebecca Pow]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. Do you think that your suggestions about the care of children would link very well—

[Rebecca Pow]

Madam Deputy Speaker, may I say that you make an exceedingly good point? I am suitably reprimanded. The point that I was trying to make is that these suggestions in relation to the care system link very well with our reforms of the prison system. Too often, people in prison have gone through many care systems themselves.

[Kit Malthouse]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I will come on to some of those points a little later. Incidentally, Madam Deputy Speaker, “youse” is a term of abuse in Liverpool, so you absolutely should not allow that in the Chamber.

Secondly, private schools have charitable status, and I wonder whether there is more we can do to encourage them to take on children in care. By my maths, if each private school were to take about 20 children, which is not a huge amount in a school of 400 to 600, it would mean that every child in care could go to a private school. Given that those schools benefit from charitable status, they should look a little further than their local community and consider allowing some of our more disadvantaged children to take advantage of the facilities that they provide. I look forward to helping that Bill through its passage, as it will be incredibly valuable.

Let me rattle through some other issues. The initiatives that are proposed on prisons, courts reform, and policing and crime, which allow for greater innovation, will be vital. As a famous Labour politician once said:

“I bear the scars on my back”

from trying to do a moderate amount of innovation in the criminal justice system at Feltham. We attempted to look at youth offending from a different point of view. It was an incredibly difficult and bureaucratic process. In the end, the attempt foundered in a morass of something like 19 organisations that were required to agree and a Ministry of Justice that was broadly reluctant. Getting innovation into the criminal justice system and giving people on the ground the ability to create and design their own solutions to the problems that we face, such as education in prisons, will be absolutely key.

The Digital Economy Bill is incredibly exciting for those of us who have rural constituencies, as it recognises that 25% of all small businesses—that is half a million small businesses—are registered in rural area. Allowing people to have the right to demand a universal service obligation of 10 megabits for their internet is absolutely critical. Twelve per cent. of GDP now comes to the internet in the UK, so, if we are to grow as an economy, it is vital that we connect up all the people.

Many of us have neighbourhood plans in our constituencies. I have several going to referendum this year, and one is going through already. If the Government are to get people to take up their planning policy, it is vital that neighbourhood planning is strengthened and protected. I understand that the neighbourhood planning Bill is designed to do that. In particular, it will allow local authorities greater scope to protect their own five-year housing supply figures, so that developers cannot constantly challenge them, or wear them down by a war of attrition in the courts and with the planning inspectors, to get their way on speculative developments. There will be many Members from rural communities and elsewhere who will be watching that Bill with care.

The modern transport Bill is very exciting. If we are to be at the forefront of developments, we need to grab this technology for ourselves, rather than, as the British normally do, allow the Japanese to miniaturise it and the Americans to consumerise it. We should take some of the things that we have invented and try to exploit them. Although modern transport is largely focused around autonomous cars, I urge Ministers to look at the hydrogen economy. There is absolutely no doubt that the fuel cell is coming. In California, Toyota has already launched the Mirai, the next generation Prius. It is a hydrogen fuel cell car. Powered by hydrogen, the car emits only water. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe and holds out the option of extremely cheap power for all of us, and so using this Bill to accelerate our adoption of that technology is key.

Finally, the better markets Bill holds out enormous promise for consumers, in particular those who want to shift banks. I have one plea: please may we use the Bill to get rid of the requirement to produce utility bills wherever we go? For those of us who pay by direct debit and are paperless, those things are anachronistic, and the foresters of Britain will rejoice at the trees that will not be required to be felled as a result.