Draft Child Safeguarding Practice Review and Relevant Agency (England) Regulations 2018

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Tuesday 8th May 2018 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Child Safeguarding Practice Review and Relevant Agency (England) Regulations 2018.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. The regulations are critical to delivering the safeguarding reforms set out in the Children Act 2004, as inserted by the Children and Social Work Act 2017. Their aim is to improve the protection of children across the country. The reforms in the 2017 Act were based on the findings of Sir Alan Wood’s 2016 review of the role and functions of local safeguarding children boards. The review found widespread agreement that the current system of multi-agency working should change in favour of a stronger but more flexible statutory framework. Alan Wood also recommended a new system of reviews to replace serious case reviews. That should include new centralised arrangements for reviews of national importance. At the same time, local reviews should be improved, and learning and the experience of the child should be at the centre of all reviews.

The 2017 Act enables the establishment of the new Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. The key function of the panel is to identify serious child safeguarding cases and trace issues that are complex or of national importance. Where the panel considers it appropriate, it will arrange for cases to be reviewed under its supervision.

I am absolutely delighted that, following a recruitment exercise conducted in accordance with the Cabinet Office procedures, Edward Timpson agreed to bring his skills and experience to chair the new panel. Following his advice and that of a skilled and representative assessment panel, last week we confirmed five appointments to bring a range of experience, which includes operational, strategic and academic rigour, to support him in this important work. The 2017 Act also gives the three safeguarding partners—chief officers of police, clinical commissioning groups and local authorities—a duty to work together to make arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of children in the area. As part of that, they must determine the agencies with whom they intend to work as part of these arrangements.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I am listening to the Minister with interest, in particular to what he said about the appointment of the former Children’s Minister to chair that body. One of the great concerns that many people have is that giving more flexibility at a time when there have been huge cuts to public services could make it much more difficult to get agencies to take their child protection responsibilities seriously. The police in my local area are already saying that they will attend only if it is set out in legislation that they have to do so, because of the severity of the cuts. Can the Minister give some reassurance about that?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Lady mentioned the police in her area; the best answer I can give her is that Simon Bailey, the National Police Chiefs Council lead on child protection, stated in his response:

“Overall, I welcome the continued focus of Government on child safeguarding and the desire to improve the services available to children and young people across England in terms of safeguarding and multi-agency working…I believe the new arrangements present an opportunity to renew focus on safeguarding across partners including an increased focus on early intervention and prevention.”

I hope that gives the hon. Lady some confidence in what we are doing—hopefully with cross-party support.

[Lisa Nandy]

It is very hot in this room, so I promise that I will not keep Members here for longer than the air lasts. It would provide reassurance if the Department set out how the regulations will be monitored. The explanatory memorandum specifies that they will be reviewed again in three to five years; however, it would be helpful to know what will be done by the Department responsible for safeguarding children to monitor activity in other areas and make sure that the arrangements do not fall apart in the meantime.

[The Chair]

Order. Members are free to remove jackets if they wish.

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[Nadhim Zahawi]

If the hon. Gentleman will let me make some more headway, I hope I shall be able to convince him by the end of the debate.

The local review requirements in the regulations have some similarities with the national reviews. That section of the regulations also covers criteria, appointment and removal of reviewers, reports and the publication of reports. Like the panel, the safeguarding partners must make decisions about when it is appropriate to commission a review, taking the local review criteria into account. If the panel considers that a local review may be more appropriate, the safeguarding partners must also take that into account.

The safeguarding partners must consider the timeliness and quality of a review, and may seek information from the reviewer during the review to enable them to make that judgment. The regulations make it clear that the safeguarding partners may remove a reviewer who they have appointed at any time prior to the report being published to support the principles, which the new arrangements seek to establish, that the report should be high quality and produced on a timely basis. There is an expectation that improvements will be clearly identified, and there are clear requirements for publication.

[Lisa Nandy]

I am really grateful to the Minister for giving us the time. I welcome the fact that the pool of potential reviewers will be made publicly available, but I am concerned about the lack of independent oversight or scrutiny of the system. In particular, the regulations say that the panel may

“select a person as a potential reviewer who is not in the pool”

if it considers that somebody is not suitable. What thought has the Department given to ensuring independent oversight or scrutiny, for example by asking the Select Committee on Education to review or endorse the panel before a decision is made?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

It is important to remember that the panel is independent of Government. Of course, if the Education Committee chooses to call a witness for evidence, the chairman or any member of the panel will be compelled to go before it. To return to the funding issue, the Government will fully fund the national reviewers.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Gentleman mentions local government. The Local Government Association responding by saying that it welcomes the

“introduction of shared responsibility between health, the police and the local authority,”

which has the potential to give the new arrangements more authority over those core agencies. Ofsted, which obviously inspects local government, says that it is pleased to see a stronger emphasis on the involvement of schools and local partnership arrangements. I am confident that what we are putting in place will deliver the engagement, including of local candidates, to carry out those local reviews.

[Lisa Nandy]

I support the point that my hon. Friend the Member for Stockton North has made. Before I came into this place, I worked with child migrants, often in settings where they were primarily seen as migrants and not as children, of which immigration detention was the most acute. If someone had a safeguarding concern in one of those settings, they would want to ensure that they had access to somebody suitable who could carry out a review and who had a much more diverse range of experience than the pool might. If the Minister cannot answer that point today, I would be grateful if he at least took it away and thought about how the Department might develop arrangements along those lines.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I shall certainly take the hon. Lady’s point away. In terms of funding and non-participation, which hon. Members have mentioned several times, safeguarding partners and agencies must comply with the arrangements. Public bodies may be held to account if necessary through legislation, which allows the Secretary of State to take action, so there is a lever that applies in terms of compelling safeguarding partners and agencies.

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[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

It remains unclear whether the Secretary of State will be able to override panel decisions in relation to which cases are and are not put forward to the panel. If he can do so, then the panel’s independence and political neutrality will be entirely compromised. I hope that the Minister will advise us on that in his response.

Will the Minister also expand on a related point? It remains unclear what requirements—such as qualifications, professional body registration and experience—will be deemed appropriate for reviewers and panel members. In recent years, the Department has tended to appoint people with experience of finance and investment to boards, as opposed to people with actual frontline experience of working in child protection. I am sure the Minister will agree that experience of child protection is vital when it comes to safeguarding and reviewing the most serious cases where harm has been caused to a child.

[Lisa Nandy]

I apologise again to everyone in the room for intervening.

I agree with what my hon. Friend is saying about frontline professionals, but the group of people that I have found to have the best understanding of what needs to change in child safeguarding and child protection are young people who have been through the system themselves, and who have often suffered serious harm. They quite often tell us that they want to see less of a blame culture and much more learning enacted when we have conducted these reviews. I did not hear any indication from the Minister that the Government are listening to those young people, or that they will make sure that what is learned from these serious case reviews or national reviews is actually implemented so that we do not have to keep having review after review where the same things are highlighted but very little is done. Perhaps the Minister will correct that in his closing remarks.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. She comes to a point that I will be making shortly—great minds think alike.

May I also ask the Minister what his Department envisages will be the cap, if any, on pay, remuneration and expenses for the panel’s chair, board members and reviewers, especially since he gave assurances today that the new arrangements would be no more costly than the current arrangements?

The Minister will be aware that, despite the efforts of noble Lords and MPs from the Labour party throughout the passage of the 2017 Act, there remains a concern that reliance on local safeguarding partners is limited to the local authority, clinical commissioning groups and chief officers of police. That leaves schools and others who have always been core partners in local safeguarding arrangements out of the loop. Can he explain why, despite representations in the consultation phase expressing concerns about the absence of schools in particular as core partners, the Department is still struggling to understand that schools are vital in this process?

My final query relates to the dissemination of lessons learned and their practical application. Historically, the same lessons to be learned are highlighted time and time again when a child has been seriously harmed and such harm has resulted in their death. Yet rarely does anything on the ground change. Instead, a blame game is pursued. How does the Minister envisage the new arrangements making a difference, and what checks and balances does he feel are in place so that the same old outcomes of blame and increased bureaucracy and legislation will not be the stock go-to solution? That is ever more important against a backdrop of savage Government-imposed cuts that have served only to strangle a profession that is already undermined and is becoming increasingly demoralised.

[Alex Cunningham]

I had not intended to speak, and I will keep the Committee only a short time. The Minister spoke of receiving a positive response from the consultees, and that is fine. I do not have a problem with what is envisaged, but I worry about the implementation. The Minister said that he hoped during his speech to reassure us on the issues we raised in our interventions, but I am afraid that he has not reassured me—I do not know about my hon. Friends.

Where will the pool of expertise come from? I am not convinced that the people are out there who would be committed to doing the work. I gave the illustration earlier of trying to find chairs for local safeguarding boards. The people fishing in this pool, if I can put it like that, will face the same problems, so I ask the Minister again to address that. If he cannot do that today, I ask him at least to write to members of the Committee to tell us exactly where those people will come from.

My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan raised the issue of independent scrutiny of the pool, and that point was not adequately responded to either. Where is the provision to direct people to participate, and where is the resource commitment from the Minister? No dedicated new funding is being introduced for the delivery of what the Minister described as substantial reports. There is no detail on people being held to account for not participating. A letter from the Department, or even from the scary Secretary of State, is just not good enough. What will the Minister do to ensure that we do not need to send any such letters because people will know that they have a responsibility under the law to participate in the reviews?

[Lisa Nandy]

One of the concerns that my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields and I have raised is about the blame culture and the damage it does, particularly to frontline social workers who are trying to deal with very difficult issues, often with incomplete information, under pressure and in an era in which cuts have become the norm. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that one of the unintended consequences could be that the blame culture is exacerbated, because the pressure and the spotlight will be very much on the Minister?

It is not hard to envisage that something terrible happens, a review is commissioned, and the Minister is under pressure and seeks to apportion blame before the review has been completed, firing off letters to the local area to show that he or she is taking the matter seriously. Would my hon. Friend welcome as much as I would a commitment from the Minister that that is not what is intended and, explicitly, that the Department intends to take a different approach from now on? That is not a party political point; we have seen instances of that under different parties over the years. It does huge damage and it should stop.

[Alex Cunningham]

I certainly would welcome a commitment from the Minister to ensure that we do not end up in a blame culture. Last week I was given the honour of starting to chair the all-party parliamentary group on social work, and the first presentation was about the stresses that social services departments are already under in delivering children’s services. In my own local authority, we spend 57% of our entire council budget on social care issues—on children’s services and adult services. They are feeling the strain, and people are looking elsewhere to see how on earth they can get out of some of the corners they are in, particularly when things go wrong.

Warm words are great, and I know that the Minister is a sincere man, but we need guarantees. We need to that people will participate, that the reviews will be done, that we will learn from them and, most importantly of all, that they can happen in the first place by being properly resourced.

Foster Care

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Wednesday 14th March 2018 Westminster Hall

[Bill Esterson]

That is probably more of a question for the Minister. The hon. Gentleman said that funding had gone up. It is true that spending has gone up, but funding from central Government for local authorities is significantly down, including in children’s services. Some local authorities have seen significant cuts and some have seen very few. That may have something to do with what he says.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I do not want to stop my hon. Friend because he is making some incredibly important points, but there is also a clear issue about cuts to services other than children’s services, which are putting greater strain on local authorities. In areas of high deprivation, where all those services are under significant strain, the result is much worse outcomes for children. It is essential to look at the whole picture of what is happening to these children every day in their communities.

[Bill Esterson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We cannot ignore the effects of the wider local government and public service spending situation. Numerous organisations who provided briefings for the debate pointed out that if the support is not there for families, it is difficult for local authority children’s services departments to act in anything other than a reactive way, intervening only in a crisis. That is an expensive way to operate. If the services, social workers and local foster-carers are not available, outcomes are more expensive. In a demand-led service, a crisis is invariably more expensive and, in the areas of highest deprivation that my hon. Friend mentioned, it is more likely that intervention happens only in such a situation.

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[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) on securing the debate. As the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) said, it may not be fashionable, but it is critical. I could not agree more with the sentiments expressed by the right hon. Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman) about the role of faith in fostering. The placement must be right for, and meet the needs of, the child. That means we must pay attention to the things that matter to the children who enter the care system.

I want to begin by asking why so many children are being taken into care in the first place. The Minister will be aware that I worked with children and young people for some time before I entered Parliament. I have never known the situation for children and families in this country to be as desperate as it is currently. We should be deeply concerned about the fact that the number of children in care is, as Barnardo’s says, at its highest point since the mid-1980s. The number of children entering the care system has increased every year for nine years. In the first six years of the coalition and Conservative Governments, the number of children subject to a child protection plan went up by 29%. The Minister will be aware that the Association of Directors of Children’s Services identified a £2 billion funding gap, which my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central mentioned, between the demand for children’s services and the available resources. Often when I have conversations with social workers they tell me that they are unable to take children into care when they think they need to, because of the resources available. That suggests that the situation is even starker than the figures lead us to understand.

The ADCS is clear about the reasons for what is happening. It has laid the blame squarely at the door of the coalition austerity policies that have continued under the present Government. It has blamed long delays for universal credit, and I recognise that issue from my constituency, which was a pilot area. The hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham shakes his head, but I spent Friday sitting with representatives of charities, primary school teachers, police and clergy in one of the poorest areas of my constituency, and some of those people were in tears because in 19 years of working with children in that community they have never known a situation so bad: it is to do with policies such as the two-child limit on benefits and the housing benefit cuts. In my area in particular the bedroom tax has been devastating. We never had the smaller properties, but we had big family homes; they were built on purpose because they were better for families. We placed families in them, and suddenly told them, “You can’t pay your rent, and it is your own fault.” The impact on those families has been devastating. There is usually nowhere to move to apart from the private rented sector, and we do not have a huge private rented sector, so many people are stuck in their accommodation accruing arrears and worrying every day how they will pay the bills and feed their children.

The situation has an impact on the profession, too. There are currently 5,540 child and family social work vacancies. That means that 13% of the children’s social work workforce is missing. Is it any wonder, then, that there are issues of continuity of care and support for children, as my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) has mentioned? During the time in question, support outside children’s services has been stripped away; 600 youth centres have closed in four years; there has been a huge loss of Sure Start and children’s centres across the country. The upshot is stark. As the ADCS found in a report last year, children in the poorest areas are 10 times more likely to be put on a child protection plan or be subject to care proceedings than those in the wealthiest areas. It is an absolute disgrace.

While I sat with frontline workers in my constituency on Friday trying to work through with them how better to support families in crisis, representatives of the secondary school—the academy—were absent. There were police at the meeting to raise concerns about the welfare of particular children. The academy tells me that it has not expelled them, but it has given them managed transfers outside the school—presumably because of the impact of some of the children on results. From 2010 onwards, many of the Members present for the debate have been coming to debates and Select Committees warning Ministers that if the children’s service workforce is fragmented—if that family of professionals who used to hang on to children and families in times of crisis is broken up—the result will be what is happening now. We see it in our communities; we see the impact on children.

I want to focus on what happens to children when they go into care. As my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central has said, there has been a lot of focus on adoption in recent years. I do not criticise the Government at all for wanting to look closely at what happens in adoption, and to make sure that the children for whom it is right get placements quickly—that they do not miss out and find that there are no suitable families to take them. However, as my hon. Friend said, the vast majority of children in the care system are fostered. There was a lot of anxiety, in the years when it seemed that the Government were interested only in adoption services, about the lack of attention being paid to pressing problems in fostering. That is why the fostering stocktake was greeted with such enthusiasm by the sector, but it would be wrong not to explain to the Minister the real sense of anger and frustration about the fostering stocktake and its inability to deliver on the promise it made.

Before I talk a little bit about some of the problems that have emerged with that report, I will say that one area in which it is particularly strong—knowing Martin Narey as I have for many years, I am not surprised by that—is the positive role that care can play in children’s lives. He is absolutely right to highlight in the report the fact that it is not primarily the fault of the care system that children often leave care with such poor educational outcomes. My hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central cited the figures on young people from the care system who get into trouble with the law or end up in prison.

In the vast majority of cases, the care system does a tremendous job in supporting and enabling children to go on and live better lives than they would otherwise have done. We cannot expect the care system to compensate entirely for every single thing that happens to children before they come into care. In fact, to see the most successful examples of children who have left care, we must look to the children themselves, their ambitions and aspirations, and the support we package around that, rather than telling them how to do it.

The concern about the fostering stocktake centres on a number of key areas. There is a real sense that it is dismissive of the shortage of foster-carers and therefore the numbers who are placed outside care. As my hon. Friend rightly said, it is not that there are not enough foster-carers in the country, but that there is not enough spare capacity, so that when a child in one particular area needs a foster-placement that is available in that area. As a consequence, we are still seeing far too many children moved outside their area, stranded a long way from school, family members and friends.

In all the time I worked with children and young people, what stayed with me most was that the thing that sustains them through the hardest time in their life—being taken away from family and forced to confront a whole new life unfolding ahead of them—is relationships. Sustaining those relationships ought to be a primary goal of public policy for these children, because friends and family are their top priority. It cannot be right that, at the moment when they feel they have lost everything, they also lose the trusted aunt, the best friend or the teacher who cared.

The fostering stocktake does not pay anywhere near enough attention to that issue, or to the fact that one third of foster-carers are now being referred to look after children who lack any prior knowledge about them and whose needs are outside their approved scope, as the Fostering Network reminded me this morning. The stocktake does not reflect the real hardship that many foster-carers have to endure in order to care for children. The Minister will be aware of the “State of the Nation’s Foster Care” report that the Fostering Network undertakes every two years. The most recent one was published in 2016. Some 2,500 foster-carers were consulted and 42% of them said that their allowances covered the costs. That left 58% of foster-carers who had to dig into their own pockets to cover the full cost of foster care.

To me, that seems to be nonsense. It matters to all of us that we get this right for children. We should not be saying to those children or the people who step up to care for them that they have to suffer hardship to do it. There is an issue with staying put, which the Minister may be aware of; one third of foster-carers who did not continue with placements said it was down to financial hardship. He will know of the huge battle that many of us in this House fought to get that on the agenda. We were led by my right hon. Friend, the late Paul Goggins, who did such tremendous work for children. The former children’s Minister, Edward Timpson, rightly took that issue up and said, “We have to do right by these children; we have to make sure they have the same level of stability as we would expect in any other family.” The truth is that it is not working, and the reason is the level of allowances that are paid, or sometimes not paid at all, to those foster-carers.

[Mr Sheerman]

I agree with almost every word that my hon. Friend says, but what comes out of both reports is the amateur basis on which we have run fostering for a long time. We do not have a national register or a national training system, and getting the balance between fostering as a calling and as a profession has not been addressed.

[Lisa Nandy]

As always, I have reason to thank my hon. Friend, because he brings me nicely and neatly on to my final concern, which I think is shared by many outside this place, about the fostering stocktake. The sense of professionalism that many foster-carers feel about the work they do is not adequately reflected in the report. I would really like to hear from the Minister a response to the concern that, while foster-carers foster out of compassion, love and a sense of duty to step up and care for some of the most vulnerable children in the country at a moment of crisis, foster-carers’ rights and children’s rights are pitted against each other in this report.

That is the problem with the report. In all the foster situations that I have had the privilege to witness or deal with over the last 20 years, I can tell the Minister that the needs and the rights of foster-carers and the children they care for go hand in hand. They are integral to each other. I would be grateful if he said something about the professionalism with which foster-carers conduct themselves, and the need for a formal structure around fostering.

What has disappointed me most of all about the fostering stocktake, and about Government policy in recent years, is that the voice of the child does not seem to be present in either. When we talk to children, as the Minister will know, they tell us that stability, security and preserving those relationships are central to them.

[Dame Caroline Spelman]

The hon. Lady makes a very persuasive point. I do not know whether she has read this book, but if colleagues have not done so, I was profoundly moved by reading “My Name is Leon”, which was turned into a film. It is told from the perspective of a child aged nine in the system. It certainly altered my understanding of what it feels like for them. The risk aversion that is built into the way we try to get it right for the children can end up causing incredible heartache for the child—the one we are most trying to help.

[Lisa Nandy]

I am grateful to the right hon. Lady. I have read that book. Before I came to this place I worked for the Children’s Society, and before that I worked for Centrepoint with young homeless teenagers. Almost on a daily basis, when I worked in those roles, speaking to children and young people surprised me. They said very different things about their own ambitions and aspirations, the way they perceived injustice and what mattered to them from what we had assumed, sitting in an office 200 miles away.

The absence of the child’s voice from the fostering stocktake is really quite serious. I would be grateful if the Minister, when he responds to the debate, said something about how the Department is making efforts to ensure that children’s voices are heard as the Government responds to the fostering stocktake. In all the time I worked with children and young people, the need for stability and security and to preserve those relationships was at the heart of what they felt mattered.

I will never forget sitting with a nine-year-old child who shook with anger, who did not want to talk to me or anyone in the room about her own experiences. The former Children’s Commissioner had set up the meeting with children and young people so they could talk to us about their experiences of care. After a while, the child said, “Well, why should I talk to you? Who are you?” She was right; why should she? She said, “And how long are you sticking around?” I asked her, “Have you had a lot of people in your life?” She had had six social workers in three years.

I say to the Minister that we must take that seriously for children, and one of the reasons we are totally unable to get to grips with it is the austerity policies this Government are pursuing, which are causing havoc in communities such as mine. I appreciate that he is the Minister for Schools—the Minister for Children and Families has to be at the Select Committee on Education and therefore, disappointingly, cannot be here—so this is slightly outside of his natural remit. However, he must see the impact of this on children every day when he talks to teachers and teaching assistants in his own schools. I say to him what one of the teaching assistants said to me on Friday: the biggest threat to family life in this country now is this Government. That has to be taken seriously.

I want to ask the Minister a particular question about stability for children. I am not sure whether he can answer it, but if not, I would appreciate it if he wrote to me. As he knows, there was a Westminster Hall debate before Christmas, in which the Government committed to ensuring that foster-children were covered by the 30-hours childcare pledge. That was extremely welcome, but the then Minister for children was, unfortunately, sacked in the reshuffle a few weeks later. I wrote to his successor, who kindly wrote back and said that the Government were still progressing those plans to ensure that foster-children were covered by the 30-hours pledge. However, his letter caused me some concern, because he wrote that the Government were developing plans to

“allow access to extended entitlement where foster parents are working outside of their fostering responsibilities.”

I would really like to know what happens if a child already has the 30-hours entitlement and therefore has a place at a nursery or other childcare setting, then goes into foster care where the foster-carer is not working. If the child were to lose that place as a consequence of going into foster care, it would cause all the damage that is done, as I have explained, when children lose not only their families, but their friends and everything that is familiar to them. I would also be grateful if the Minister clarified whether those plans are developing at sufficient speed, so that families will be able to access them by this September.

I am aware, Mr Howarth, that I have taken up a great deal of time, and I apologise to other Members for doing so, but I feel that this debate, introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Sefton Central, is absolutely central to a group of people in this country who do not have a voice. They do not have the right to vote and they are not normally heard in this place. However, they have every bit of ambition, optimism, energy, creativity and commitment to the future that each of us have—in fact, in my experience, they have more. Sadly, at the moment, we are lacking a plan that matches that. We have to do better.

Childcare for Fostered Children

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Tuesday 19th December 2017 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered childcare for fostered children.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship in this important debate, Mr Hollobone. In September, the Government extended free childcare for three and four-year-olds. The policy, which was widely welcomed, applies to all children whose parents work more than 16 hours a week and earn less than £100,000 a year—all, that is, except foster children, who are the only group of children excluded in this way.

When we ask any child what matters most to them, they tell us that it is their family and friends. A decade of working with children in care before I was elected to Parliament taught me that protecting and nurturing relationships is everything for them. The Fostering Network has already learned of children who have lost their nursery places as a result of the policy, because when they went into care they were no longer entitled to the additional funding. For so many children, their wider relationships with trusted adults and friends in a familiar setting are what sustains them most at the most difficult time in their lives. It is unthinkable that we should allow a policy that destroys those relationships to continue.

[The Minister for Children and Families (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

At the risk of being a spoiler, may I let the hon. Lady know that she will hear what she wants to hear when I make my speech?

[Lisa Nandy]

It is not very often that I am speechless, but I am extremely pleased to hear that. My hon. Friends and I will await the Minister’s speech with great interest.

The Government’s policy has created a terrible disparity. Under the scheme, foster carers have been able to claim for their birth children but not for the foster children in their care, meaning that of two children growing up in the same household, one can attend nursery and one cannot. A common thread running through the stories that children tell about the pain of growing up in care is the feeling of being marked out as different from other children. The exclusion of foster children from the scheme enshrines that difference and discrimination in Government policy. As the Chair of the Select Committee on Education, the right hon. Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), has rightly said, that is indefensible.

[Ruth George (High Peak) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent argument. Does she agree that one of the serious problems with the exclusion of foster children from the scheme is the impact on relationships within a family, between the foster child and the other children? The foster child may get to spend more time with the parent, which can exacerbate tensions with the other children.

[Lisa Nandy]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful and important point about the problem with treating foster children as different from other children in a family unit. I know she is very aware of the issue as a result of her previous experience and her constituency work.

For children who have experienced trauma and upheaval, the early years are critical. Some children’s best interests are served by being at home with their foster carer, but others—particularly those who have had limited social interaction—absolutely thrive around other children of the same age. The Children Act 1989 makes it very clear that a child’s best interests must be the primary consideration in all decisions affecting them. At the moment, the policy simply does not meet that test.

One foster carer from Norwich expressed it very well when he said that

“we currently foster the youngest two siblings from a large family. They came from a chaotic background where their only examples of behaviour and relationships with peers were those experienced in a very poor home environment. The youngest is now attending Pre-School, but anything over 15 hours has to be funded by ourselves, whereas a child from any other home would have 30 hours free. It is essential that he experience as much contact with his peers as he can comfortably manage, to enable him to learn how to behave appropriately before he starts school in September next year. To this end we are increasing his hours at our expense over the next few months which eats into the allowance we receive to feed, clothe and generally look after him.”

Such hardship is a common story among foster carers, as the GMB has highlighted. Foster carers are under immense financial pressure; barely 10% earn the equivalent of the national living wage.

[Thelma Walker (Colne Valley) (Lab)]

Given that only 10% of foster carers earn the national living wage, does my hon. Friend agree that excluding them from the 30 hours of free childcare seems only to reinforce the spiral of poverty that many of them face?

[Lisa Nandy]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that point. As my hon. Friend the Member for High Peak (Ruth George) pointed out, we need to think about the impact not just on the foster child, but on the other children in the family. When the Earl of Listowel, a great champion for children, raised the issue in the other place, the then Minister Lord Nash said:

“The local authority must provide a fostering allowance which covers the full cost of caring for the child. For this reason, foster carers are not eligible for additional support through tax-free childcare or child tax credits for children who have been placed with them.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 1 July 2015; Vol. 762, c. 2124.]

The Government are right that foster carers are eligible for a national minimum fostering allowance that covers food, transport, clothing, toiletries and other items such as furniture. However, having been among those who lobbied the last Labour Government for the introduction of that allowance, I can tell the Government that it does not contain any element that covers childcare.

In any case, as The Fostering Network points out, around one council in seven pays a rate that is below the national minimum. Its report, “State of the Nation’s Foster Care 2016”, found that the proportion of foster carers who believe that their allowance is sufficient to cover the costs of fostering has halved in recent years. It told me that

“when we asked this question two years ago 80 per cent of respondents felt their allowances did cover the costs of fostering. In 2016 this figure has fallen sharply to only 42 per cent.”

That starkly illustrates the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Thelma Walker).

The situation for “family and friends” carers, particularly grandparents, is very stark. Hardship is a real issue for many families. One family in my constituency recently faced a heartbreaking choice when their sister died: they had to choose between experiencing real hardship or seeing their two children taken into care and probably placed quite far away from their school, losing all the relationships that matter.

[Melanie Onn (Great Grimsby) (Lab)]

Has my hon. Friend considered the effect of the policy on the nearly 9,000 children who are in kinship foster care of the kind that she has described? Kinship foster carers do not have the luxury of assessing their finances before they decide to foster; keeping the child in the family is not a choice, but a necessity. Childcare is really important to them. Does she agree that the policy is particularly unfair on the children?

[Lisa Nandy]

I could not agree more. The policy is particularly difficult for the family I have been supporting back in Wigan, because all the other siblings who might take care of the children face exactly the choice she describes.

As Edward Timpson—the former Conservative Minister for Children, Schools and Families, who I rated very highly—wrote recently, foster carers who need it should be

“offered flexibility and support to enable them to combine fostering with other work.”

There is a precedent for foster carers to receive additional support, although the Minister has previously suggested that they were not eligible for it. For example, foster carers in receipt of universal credit can claim free school meals for the children they foster, so it is wrong to suggest that there is no way round the problem. With record numbers of children in care—The Fostering Network estimates that we need to recruit more than 7,000 additional foster carers to meet children’s need—the Government are instead pursuing a policy that will make the situation worse, leaving more children stranded in unsuitable placements or forced to leave their siblings or grandparents behind because no local placements are available.

For some of the most vulnerable children in this country, the human cost of that oversight is beyond measure. What makes it even more difficult to accept is that the state is their corporate parent; we hold collective corporate responsibility for them because their parents cannot or will not be responsible. No parent would allow their children to become an afterthought in critical decisions that affect them or to remain unresponsive to their needs or best interests, and quite simply we should not do so either. For that reason I warmly welcome—

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Lisa Nandy]

As I was saying, for that reason I warmly welcome the Education Secretary’s statement that Ministers are “actively looking at” the issue, and I particularly welcome the Minister’s intriguing intervention during my opening remarks. In his response to my written questions, the Minister rightly reaffirmed the Government’s commitment to promoting the best interests of the child and told me that he will

“work with local councils, fostering service providers and others in the sector to ensure we get the balance right.”

When he responds, will he tell us whether he still intends to consult on the policy and, if he does, whether it will be a formal consultation that includes The Fostering Network and other fostering organisations?

If the Minister does intend to consult before making a further announcement, will he commit to beginning the process in January and to ensuring that it is not delayed by the foster care stocktake? Will he also give us a commitment that it will have concluded with a view to implementation at least by September, so that foster children do not have to face another year of exclusion from the policy? Does he intend to amend the legislation and, if not, will he commit to putting in additional funding now? Suggestions for how that might be achieved have been proposed by a number of different organisations and Members of Parliament, so will he commit to considering those? Given the problems that the overall scheme has faced, will he heed the concerns of the National Day Nurseries Association and ensure that the funding provided is sufficient to meet the true costs of the scheme?

Finally, the Minister in the other place said in a written answer in November:

“As of March 2017, there were 3,030 three and four year olds looked after in foster care and subsequently excluded from receiving the 15 additional hours of free childcare.”

Given the relatively small number of children and the fact that not all of them would take up the offer, does the Minister accept that the cost of righting this wrong is relatively low but that the cost of not doing so for foster children is far, far too high?

--- Later in debate ---

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone, especially when time limits have been removed. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on securing this important debate, but also on the tireless work she has done in this House in highlighting the need for foster parents and the needs of foster parents. We are now eagerly awaiting the Minister’s comments, because it appears that he may have an early Christmas present for her—that is something we would all enjoy.

The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) spoke about his role as a grandparent, but he also spoke about his grandchildren growing up in a nurtured and loving household, and that is what we would wish for every child, whether they are in the care system or live in their own home. Fostering makes up an important part of the care system. When families are in crisis, fostering can offer the stability needed to keep a child’s life on track. At present, the system puts very little investment into foster families and depends on people being willing to make financial sacrifices to take a child into their home. It can also require career sacrifices, as many children who go into care often have high needs that mean a foster parent must reduce their hours of employment to cater for them, but this form of care is far more cost-effective than other types of care. Foster parents in a loving foster home can provide many great benefits to the young person as they go through life, but they require some help to carry on with their vital duties.

As the hon. Gentleman said, this debate is about childcare in England. The situation is different in Scotland, but I will keep my comments to England. Many have concerns that foster children are exempt from the extra 15 hours of free childcare for three and four-year-olds. That childcare can make a vast difference to their life chances and in reducing educational inequalities. The CEOs and directors of 13 child welfare charities have written to the children’s Minister to ask for the policy to be reconsidered. The charities also say that grandparents and others who foster members of their own families would particularly benefit from access to the additional 15 hours a week of childcare, as would long-term carers.

The hon. Member for Great Grimsby (Melanie Onn) is no longer in her place, but she mentioned the importance of kinship carers. That is recognised, but it is often overlooked. We also have people fostering on extremely tight budgets, and they need all the help they can get. There is no reason for foster families not to receive the same level of support as any other family.

A survey by The Fostering Network this year found that the majority of foster carers across England are unpaid or underpaid. The hon. Member for Wigan has already mentioned that only one in 10 was reported to receive the equivalent of the national living wage for a 40-hour week, and we know that fostering takes far more time than those 40 hours. On top of that, fees charged by nurseries have risen in recent years. That makes it extremely difficult for people to consider fostering as an option. There are people who would make excellent foster parents who cannot take in children in need. That has a great impact on young people’s life chances.

I want to talk a little about the bedroom tax and its impact. In Scotland, all social housing tenants are exempt from the bedroom tax due to mitigation by the Scottish Government, but it must still be paid across England. It disproportionately affects foster carers because, by nature, those planning to foster a child must have a spare bedroom in which to house them.

[Lisa Nandy]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for raising that outstanding issue, which many foster families face. In my view, the problems with the bedroom tax were created because too often looked-after children are simply invisible when it comes to policymaking; they are an afterthought. Would the hon. Lady welcome hearing the Minister’s views on how we can make sure that when decisions are taken that may affect this group of children, by not just the Department for Education but other Government Departments, they are considered first, so that we do not have to constantly keep trying to put the situation right afterwards?

[Carol Monaghan]

The hon. Lady speaks with great experience and insight on this matter. We see here how a policy area can have a great impact, sometimes unintended, in another area. The issue for these young children is that potential foster carers—people who desperately want to play a part and certainly have the skills and experience that would make them ideal—simply are not able to consider it. It has put many eligible people off the idea of fostering, and I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that aspect.

The other area where this policy does not work in reality is where children requiring foster care have brothers and sisters in the same situation. Exemptions for single spare rooms mean that siblings are needlessly split up across the care system. That is in nobody’s interest, least of all the child’s.

I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to offer today. It is an opportunity to right something that was—I will be generous since it is Christmas—unintentionally written into policy. The Minister now has the opportunity to right that and do the best he possibly can for the children who need the best out of the care system.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Children and Families (Mr Robert Goodwill)]

Thank you, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) on securing this debate on the vital issue of ensuring that foster carers and families with small children have access to high-quality, affordable care. I expect there will be time for her to make some closing remarks when I conclude.

First, let me be clear that children in foster care should have access to the same support and opportunities that all children have. Our ambitions for children and young people during and after being looked after are the same as for any other child: that they have access to good health and wellbeing, fulfil their educational potential, build and maintain lasting relationships and participate positively in society. The role of the foster carer is central to achieving those high ambitions for the children in their care.

Around three quarters of looked-after children are in foster care. Fostering provides stability, a home and an alternative family. I have heard at first hand how children and young people in foster care want to feel part of a family and have a normal family life. We need to support foster carers and local authorities in a way that achieves that.

To meet the diverse needs of all looked-after children, we need to ensure that there is a wide pool of high-quality foster placements. Foster carers play a vital role in supporting some of our most vulnerable children, as we have heard, and this Conservative Government are committed to ensuring that foster carers get the appropriate recognition and support to ensure every looked-after child receives the high-quality care that they need. That includes foster carers being able to work outside their caring responsibilities if it has no impact on the child.

We have introduced the foster family-friendly employer policy, with the Department for Education leading by example in ensuring support and flexibility for its employees who foster. We have also commissioned the national fostering stocktake, a comprehensive review of the fostering system, which is now nearing completion. The stocktake is looking at a wide range of issues, including the recruitment and retention of foster carers and the support they receive, and the reviewers will report to me with recommendations this week.

Since the current exclusion from the 30-hours policy for children in foster care was brought to my attention, I have been looking at it carefully. I have instructed my officials to work up plans to allow children in foster care to take up the additional hours when it is right for the child to do so. We will work with local authorities, fostering service providers and others in the sector to ensure we implement this change in a way that promotes the best interests of the child. I will set out more detail about how we will deliver that shortly.

Many hon. Members referred to the 30 hours of free childcare, so it might be useful to give the House a short update about where we are on that. We are looking at January for the next intake.

[Lisa Nandy]

Before the Minister moves on to that very important issue, may I ask him about the timescales for this work? One of the great concerns that foster carers have is that if this is not begun immediately and implemented quickly, foster children may face another year of being excluded.

[Mr Goodwill]

We have already begun to engage with councils and The Fostering Network, and we will continue to do further work on the detail in January. We will involve fostering organisations and foster carers.

[Mr Goodwill]

I was just coming to that. We were planning to announce this in January, which would have given us a bit more time to do some of the preliminary work. The Secretary of State and I made the decision a couple of weeks ago that we should do this. We need to look at whether we need secondary legislation—I hope not. We also need to look very carefully at the role of social workers, because in some instances it may not be appropriate for the child to go to a nursery or a child minder. As we have heard, some children are deeply damaged, so it is important that we look at how we involve the social workers working with those children when we make that decision. There may be a small number of children for whom it is not the best possible way forward. September is a realistic opportunity. If there are no glitches along the way, I would like to think that we will have this in place by September.

[Lisa Nandy]

I am grateful to the Minister for being forthcoming with that information and for giving way so generously. May I urge some caution in relation to the role of social workers? Foster carers are under great pressure at the moment because of the financial constraints on local authorities, and I am extremely worried that the Government will inadvertently create a system in which there is financial pressure on social workers and an incentive to ration access to a scheme to help foster children. I worked with social workers in my career before coming to Parliament, and I say that in the knowledge that the vast majority of social workers have the best interests of the child in mind. Obviously, when they have a limited pot of funding, they have to be mindful of all the children they are trying to help. It is really important that the funding for this scheme is allocated according to the best interests of the child, not on the basis of rationing at a time when resources are scarce.

[Mr Goodwill]

I hope what I said was not ambiguous. I was certainly not talking about rationing access to the 30 hours in any way. The way we fund it is to do a headcount of children in January, so social workers will not see it impact on their budgets. There may be—or there may not, depending on how the consultation and conversation turn out—some specific situations where it is not appropriate because of the child’s experiences. It is important that we involve everybody, including the foster carers and the social workers, to check that it is in the best interest of the child in every case. In a small number of cases it may not be appropriate, particularly if the children have disabilities, unless the fosterers have been upskilled.

I talked to staff at a children’s services department in south London last week, and they are talking about upskilling some of their foster carers to look after children with particular difficulties or disabilities. In those cases, it may be appropriate, given that those foster carers are paid over and above the allowance they are normally paid. It is a limited number of situations. This is not about excluding children from access to the 30 hours; it is about including as many children as possible and ensuring the best interests of the child are always respected.

As expected, 30 hours has been popular with parents across the country since being rolled out nationally in September. I am pleased to be able to update the House that we have published new statistics for 30 hours, which show that about 202,800 children are in a 30-hours place. That is great news, and means that tens of thousands of families are benefiting from the additional hours of childcare we have made available to them. Demand remains high as we approach the next school term. I can also update the House that, as of last week, more than 305,000 codes have been generated for the spring term, and that 74% of them have already been checked by a provider. As with the autumn term, I expect those figures to continue to rise over the next few weeks. I ask hon. Members to encourage their constituents to take their code to their provider as soon as possible to secure a 30-hours place in the spring term.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lisa Nandy]

I am very grateful to the Minister for what he has just said and, in particular, for the child-centred nature of his approach, which will reassure many people outside this place that he has the best interests of the child at heart. In particular, I welcome the commitment to get the matter resolved by September, the willingness to engage with The Fostering Network, social workers, local authorities and others, and his very strong statement about the intention not to ration the care, but to include as many children as possible. I was also interested in what he said about kinship care.

We will of course watch what happens next with interest. My hon. Friends and I will hold the Minister to his promises today, as I am sure he knows. Finally, I place on the record my sincere thanks for his constructive and thoroughly decent approach to this issue and to today’s debate, which shows clearly that there are many of us in this House who are capable of working across party lines in the best interests of children.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered childcare for fostered children.

Grammar and Faith Schools

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Tuesday 8th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House notes recent proposals by the Government to expand the role of grammar and faith schools; and calls on the Government to conduct a full assessment of the evidence relating to the effect of grammar schools and faith schools on children’s learning.

Today’s debate asks the Minister to consider the evidence before making profound changes to education policy that will affect children, their lives, their communities and our prospects as a country for many decades to come. There is a raft of evidence on the impact of grammar schools on the children in them, and on the children outside them. We know that children who get into grammar schools are more than five times less likely to be on free school meals. We know from the Department for Education itself that they are less likely to have special educational needs. We know that children who previously attended independent schools are over-represented in grammar school intakes. For these and many other reasons, we know that grammar schools, as the Government have at times acknowledged, and as the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) eloquently put it in a piece he wrote this morning, are not engines of social mobility.

Most children do not get into grammar schools, and the situation for disadvantaged children in this country is particularly stark. The Government’s case, which appears to be based on the notion that an expansion of grammar school places increases parental choice, is pretty flawed and pretty limiting. If someone cannot get into a grammar school, its existence has not given them a choice—it has given them a problem. That the Government have a plan only for some children in this country was revealed pretty well by the Education Minister Lord Nash, who said recently that under the Government’s plans parents will

“have a choice between a highly performing grammar school and a highly performing academy, which may well suit that pupil better.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 15 September 2016; Vol. 774, c. 1572.]

But where is the choice for children who do not get into those grammar schools?

The Secretary of State recently suggested that university technical colleges might provide an alternative. I welcome her focus on UTCs—I have one in my constituency, in Wigan—and given the recruitment problems many of them have faced, leading to the closure of three, and to two not even opening, and the fact that provision in them, which Sir Michael Wilshaw recently called “patchy”, ranges all the way from outstanding to poor, this is an area that deserves her attention. However, her proposal is troubling because, in essence, she is proposing the tripartite system of old, which collapsed last time, for many reasons, including because local authorities could not afford to establish and sustain that system. What in the funding crisis that this Government have created for local authorities makes her think that it would be different this time?

The new plans will create a great cost. We do not yet know, however, how much they will cost. In the consultation paper, the Government set out that they are planning to allocate £50 million a year to this experiment in education. This morning, however, when he appeared before the Select Committee on Education, the Minister said that he did not know how many grammar schools might emerge. The Green Paper also suggests that the Department will ask independent schools or universities to set up new schools or sponsor others as part of its bid to get all schools up to standard. How much will that cost? So far, the Government do not know and have not said. At a time when school budgets are under serious pressure in communities around the country, this is simply not good enough.

[Helen Whately (Faversham and Mid Kent) (Con)]

The hon. Lady talks about the cost of the proposals. Is she aware that grammar schools such as those in Kent and in my constituency tend to get lower per-pupil funding under the funding formula? Even though they receive a relatively low financial settlement, the vast majority are outstanding schools giving an excellent education.

[Lisa Nandy]

The hon. Lady makes my point for me. Grammar schools tend to receive a lower funding allocation because, as the Minister has admitted, they tend not to take children from disadvantaged backgrounds, and the funding formula is skewed to provide additional funding for children from such backgrounds. In 2016, in Britain, we can do better than this.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister who will reply to the debate was a member of the Select Committee when I was the Chair. We looked at this question and we specifically considered Kent, but we had the rule that we should have evidence-based policy. Where is the evidence that people in Kent or outside Kent benefit from an educational system that is split in this horrendous way?

[Lisa Nandy]

I do not always agree with my hon. Friend on these issues, but I certainly agree with him on that point. The issue of funding and how we spend resources that, as a result of choices made by this Government, are incredibly scarce, is important.

[Keith Vaz (Leicester East) (Lab)]

One way in which funds can be spent appropriately is through faith schools. In Leicester we have St Paul’s Catholic School, the Hindu Krishna Avanti Primary School, the Sikh Falcons Primary School and the Madani Muslim schools. It is important that if parents wish to send their children to faith schools, they are allowed to do so, but such schools should be vehicles for integrating communities; they should not be exclusive, but open.

[Lisa Nandy]

I agree with my right hon. Friend’s point about integrating communities. This highlights the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman). There are many types of school that provide a good education, and provided that they are inclusive, have a broad curriculum and work hard to serve the needs of their community, they do very well by their children. The important thing behind today’s motion is that hon. Members on both sides of the House, most of whom are troubled by the Government’s plans, but some of whom support them, would like the Government to proceed on the basis of evidence, especially as schools face a £600 million black hole since the Government abandoned their Education Bill, leaving councils around the country to pay for educational services without the grants to do so.

In their consultation document, the Government make a number of wide-ranging commitments to support their grammar schools plan, but they have not said yet whether this will be new money from the Treasury, or money taken from a schools budget that is already being cut for the first time in nearly two decades. My hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), who has consistently campaigned against the Government’s proposals, has repeatedly asked for this information; could we finally have it today?

The Secretary of State is apparently consulting on the school funding formula at the same time. The Green Paper says:

“We will ensure that the formula rewards those schools that support schools with a higher proportion of lower attaining pupils and those from less wealthy households.”

Surely the issue of funding should be resolved first. Surely we should know how big the funding pot is and how the funds will be allocated before we are asked to respond to a consultation and vote on proposals that will have profound consequences for children in this country.

There is also reason to believe that people travel further to attend grammar schools. What assessment have the Government done of the additional cost of transport for children under their proposals? The proposed pot is £50 million a year for new grammar schools, but how much in total do the Government plan to allocate to the whole programme? If adequate funding is not forthcoming, that is another reason why children may be well disadvantaged under the plans.

There are other reasons, based on the evidence, to believe that the proposals will make life worse for children in this country. In their consultation document, the Government rightly identified a group of children whose parents are struggling to get by, but who are not eligible for free school meals. That group is much larger since the Government restricted access to benefits. The proportion of pupils on free school meals is now at a 14-year low, despite the fact that there are record projections of child poverty. Having created a hidden group in hardship, Ministers are belatedly going looking for them. They state in their consultation that they plan to develop some kind of methodology to understand where the children are and what impact the new plans will have on them. The most polite thing that I can say about this utterly absurd situation is that Ministers are putting the cart before the horse. May I remind the Minister that it is only a few short years since his Department commissioned Dr Ben Goldacre to help it to ensure that evidence informs policy? Now its approach appears to be to develop policy that informs its evidence instead.

[Liz Kendall (Leicester West) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that we have evidence about what helps poor kids to do well at school? It is high-quality early-years education, the best heads and teachers in the schools that need them most, and an inspiring curriculum for academic and vocational qualifications. Is that not what the Government should focus on—not on expanding grammar schools?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lisa Nandy]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for highlighting those aspects. I will say a little more about them in a moment, but in the meantime, I pay tribute to her for the work that she has done to make sure that we do not forget about the importance of investing in young people in their early years, not least because one of the great problems with the Government’s proposals is that by the age of 11, disadvantaged pupils are already 10 months behind their peers, and so are less likely to be able to pass that entrance exam and have a fair chance.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (Chesham and Amersham) (Con)]

The hon. Lady seems to be opposed to the Government consulting on these matters and opposed to choice, which Conservative Members support. What evidence does she have that children in Buckinghamshire are disadvantaged? We have 13 grammar schools, seven of them the lowest-funded schools in the country, and 90% of our schools are good or outstanding. There is no evidence showing anything other than the grammar school system in Buckinghamshire providing a good education right across the board to all children.

[Lisa Nandy]

The very troubling question for the right hon. Lady is: where is the choice for children who cannot get into the grammar schools? The Education Policy Institute recently produced research that showed that the more highly selective an area, the worse the schools are, disadvantaging everyone. I will happily give way to the right hon. Lady again if she will tell me what she would say to a child stuck in a system where education standards are worse due to the highly selective nature of education in their area, and who is not given a choice because they cannot get into a grammar school.

[Mrs Gillan]

I would say to the hon. Lady: bring me that evidence from Buckinghamshire. Our non-grammar schools provide an excellent education to children in Buckinghamshire, and if she is casting aspersions on the education that they provide, I invite her to come and see some of them. It is some of the best education, but it is different from the education provided in the grammar schools.

[Lisa Nandy]

Many children and young people, not just in the right hon. Lady’s area but around the country, will be extremely disappointed by that response. The idea that in 2016 any child is better off by being segregated and branded a failure at the age of 11, or that we are better off as a country with that system, is particularly backward-looking.

[Lucy Powell (Manchester Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent opening speech. Is she aware that Buckinghamshire has the largest gap in educational attainment between disadvantaged pupils and their peers of any borough in the country? Is that a record that the House should applaud?

[Lisa Nandy]

It is absolutely not a record that any Member of the House should applaud, as the chief inspector made clear only a few days ago.

[Catherine McKinnell (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that the Government, in their approach to grammar schools, appear to be trying to have their cake and eat it? They want to talk about increasing the number of grammar schools, but not about the side effects of that, which is recreating secondary moderns. Not one study shows that children are better off in secondary modern schools.

[Lisa Nandy]

My hon. Friend posed an interesting question to the Minister in the Education Committee’s evidence session this morning. She asked why, if he was keen to ensure that all schools improved, rather than recreating a system of grammar schools and secondary moderns, he did not just enable children to go to good schools by expanding the number of places in good comprehensive schools. The Minister did not seem to give an answer, but I hope that he will have an answer by the time he responds to the debate.

[Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)]

As my hon. Friend knows, in my local authority of Trafford we have selective education. We also have high-performing schools, but they do not perform well for every child, and particularly not for the most disadvantaged. Nor does every parent, or indeed the majority of parents, get a choice of school. Most parents, if they put their child forward for the entrance examination for the grammar school, find that their child is not successful and is not admitted. The choice of which school their child goes to is made by the schools, not by the parents.

[Lisa Nandy]

I suspect that the Minister would reply that the Government want to expand the number of places in grammar schools, so that more children will get in. There is no question but that grammar schools outperform non-selective schools in terms of exam results, but the Government make a great leap in claiming that grammar schools are somehow intrinsically better for the children in them than other similar schools in the area. I want the Minister to consider for a moment that there is evidence to the contrary.

We know that when grammar schools were the norm, working-class children were far more likely to drop out of those schools. The Robbins report revealed that only 2% of children whose parents were semi-skilled or low skilled then went on to university. The Minister’s claim that disadvantaged grammar school pupils are more likely to go on to a Russell Group university, which I have heard him repeat often, is based on research that does not control for prior attainment. He also often mentions the Sutton Trust research. The 2011 report concluded:

“Given their selective intake, grammar schools would appear to be underrepresented among the most successful schools for Oxbridge entry”.

All I am asking the Minister to do is consider the whole range of evidence on this subject and base education policy on it accordingly. This morning before the Education Committee we saw what happens when Ministers do not do that. He was forced to admit that in areas of selection, the impact on children in non-selective schools is mixed. Until now, he has been fond of citing one report by the Sutton Trust, which says that there is no negative effect on children who are not in grammar schools in areas where there is selection, but against that the Education Committee was able to cite Dr Becky Allen, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, the Education Policy Institute, and the education journalist Chris Cook, who found that the only thing that shifts in areas where selection is introduced is who does well, not how many do well, and that, put simply, the better-off do well at the expense of the rest.

Policy Exchange set out clearly the stark impact in terms of lost opportunities and earnings for those who do not attend grammar schools, and the Institute for Social and Economic Research says that for girls there was some raised wage potential, but not for boys.

[The Minister for School Standards (Mr Nick Gibb)]

The evidence this morning was that there was no negative effect in areas of selection or a slight negative effect of one tenth of a grade in those pupils in non-grammar schools in selective areas. There are other reports that say that the negative effect is slightly higher, but what the hon. Lady is describing and what those reports are describing is the current situation, and it is the situation that prevailed when Labour was in power for 13 years. The consultation document seeks to find a solution to that problem by requiring all new grammar schools that are established and all grammar schools that want to expand to help raise the academic standard in those non-selective schools in those areas—something that her Government did not propose, and her party today are not proposing.

[Lisa Nandy]

What I am asking the Minister to understand is that this new approach set out in the consultation document is based on no evidence. If he says that we have to discount all the evidence that we have had about the education system thus far, it is incumbent on the Government to prove that this new, expensive approach, which will be highly disruptive to children’s education and to the education system as a whole, will be better for children. This morning at the Education Committee the Minister was forced to admit that there is no evidence that it will be better.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gateshead (Ian Mearns) put to the Minister a simple proposition: there are areas of the country, as we have already heard, where selection still exists. Kent is the one that my hon. Friend mentioned to the Minister when he said that if the Minister is so sure that the new system will work and if he is so keen to explore new ways of working, why does he not pilot it in one area of the country. I ask him please not to inflict an experiment based on such flimsy evidence on millions of children who cannot afford for the Government to fail.

[Mr Sheerman]

As chair of the advisory board of the Sutton Trust, I get sick to death of Ministers in this Government quoting Sutton Trust research out of context and selectively. They should read the report and see what the Sutton Trust actually says.

[Lisa Nandy]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend. I was reflecting this morning when I listened to the evidence session that education policy is always plagued by ideology and by personal experiences. No Government have ever managed to escape from that, but I have never heard a Minister rely as selectively on the evidence base as I heard this morning. What the Government propose to do will have profound consequences for children. I welcome the fact that they are consulting, but I do not welcome the fact that so far, based on everything that I have seen from the Secretary of State, the Prime Minister and the Minister’s evidence this morning, the Government are not listening.

The consultation paper says that the Government might ask grammar schools to

“take a proportion of pupils from lower income households. This would ensure that selective education is not reserved for those with the means to move into the catchment area or pay for tuition to pass the test”.

That highlights a very real problem and it is a very strong statement. Can the Minister tell us what he means by it? Many free schools introduced in the previous Parliament by Ministers in the Government in which he served claimed to be inclusive, because the proportion of children on free school meals that they took was similar to the national average. However, a closer look at what those free schools were doing revealed that many, such as the West London free school, were admitting as high a proportion of children on free school meals as the national average, but fewer children on free school meals than in the local community. Can the Minister tell us whether the Government are committed to schools that reflect their neighbourhoods and, if so, whether he means by that statement in the consultation document that schools will reflect the levels of disadvantage and diversity in their own communities?

The plans for a more inclusive intake get thinner by the minute. As I said earlier, by the age of 11 disadvantaged children are 10 months behind their peers. Does the Minister have any evidence that asking grammar schools to work with primary schools, which seems to be the big idea to address the issue, will eradicate that difference? How quickly does he think that will happen? More troubling is the finding from the Education Policy Institute that the more selective an area, the fewer the benefits to children in grammar schools. A wealth of evidence already exists. When that is assessed against the Government’s stated goals, it shows their plans to be deeply, deeply flawed.

The consultation paper makes no mention of the impact on society. It is not that long since the Conservatives had a party leader who appealed to their one-nation tradition. Surely no Government of that one-nation stripe would seek to deny children and young people in this country the opportunity to get to know one another. Surely the goal of an education system is to give every child the opportunity to fulfil their potential, both academically and socially, and to allow children to gain social enlightenment, not just social advantage, and live a larger, richer, deeper life as a consequence.

Instead, this Government appear to be set on a path that will pit children against one another and make losers of us all. The tragedy, as my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) has highlighted so often, is that there are real problems in the education system. Attracting and retaining teachers remains one of our biggest challenges. The National Audit Office report highlighted a shocking rise in the number of teacher vacancies between 2011 and 2014. In the face of this, it is baffling why the Government are rushing headlong down a road that will make the situation worse. A poll for The Times Educational Supplement found that more than half of teachers would not work in a grammar school. Three quarters of teachers and headteachers are opposed to these plans. Why does the Minister think he knows better than all of them?

It would make more sense if the Government said, “Look, we’ve considered every option for dealing with some of the problems in our schools system. We can’t find anything else that works, so this is something that we are prepared to try”, but I saw recently that the hon. Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) had asked the Government whether they had considered the merits of streaming children in comprehensive schools, rather than pursuing the grammar schools route. The answer came back that they had not. This is the worst sort of dogma, of which we have seen too much in education policy over the years. Worse than that, it will cost the nation dearly.

There is no other country in the world that is proceeding in the direction of trying to segregate children over and over again. Poland, for example, which has delayed selection in recent years to improve its results, has seen a boost in maths, reading and science as a result. Finland used to be a favourite of Education Ministers. When I served on the Education Committee, we used to hear a lot from the former Education Secretary about how brilliant Finland was. We went to have a look for ourselves. It is one of the least selective countries in the world.

Many counties are now trying to end the divide between technical, vocational and academic education, recognising that in the decades to come most of us will need a combination of all three. The hon. Member for Stroud and I visited Germany a few years ago to look at its education system. As Sir Michael Wilshaw recently pointed out, Germany has had a similar model for most of the post-war years and is now attempting to disassemble it, because of worries about its effects both on students and on the country’s productivity, not to mention international rankings.

In the coming years, we will succeed less for what we know, and more for how we use that knowledge. The system of education that this Government are pursuing was not fit for the economy of the 1950s, let alone that of the 2020s and a world in which Britain stands outside the European Union, and we urgently need to address our growing skills gap.

This morning, the Minister told the Education Committee that those who shout the loudest in opposition to his plans are doing the least to address the problems we face. Let me say to him now, on behalf of everybody who cares about children’s education in this country, that that is profoundly offensive. Let me ask him first to put the interests of children above party politics. Will he acknowledge that the previous Labour Government put significant funding into the education system, bringing us up to the European average after years of our schools being terribly and harmfully neglected? As a result, we saw a 31% rise in the proportion of children and young people getting good GCSEs, and I know that because I was working with them in the voluntary sector at the time. The difference in those years was stark: there were more teachers, better buildings, and IT facilities in schools, often for the first time.

One of the things we learnt in those years in government is that frequent interference in the education system can be incredibly damaging; it can undermine the morale of teachers and school leaders and children’s achievement. Perhaps the Government could learn from what Labour got wrong in office, but they should please also learn from what we got right.

If we are to try to end the dogma, let us think about how we learn from the best schools. This morning, the Minister said that grammar schools are very good—I have heard him say that repeatedly—but just for once could he admit that some comprehensive schools in this country are very good, too? The Education Policy Institute said in September:

“If you compare high attaining pupils in grammar schools with similar pupils who attend high quality non selective schools, there are five times as many high quality non selective schools as there are grammar schools.”

Sir Michael Wilshaw said this weekend:

“The latest research shows that the best comprehensives are doing better than grammar schools for the most able children.”

Why are the Government not praising them and looking to them?

I will tell Members why I think that is such a great problem. As Estelle Morris, the former Education Secretary, pointed out last month:

“Many selective schools do well by the children they choose, and of course they should contribute to education beyond their own doors. But does their success with bright, motivated young people from supportive home backgrounds give them the skills and experience to turn round schools with large numbers of struggling and disaffected children?”

The answer lies on Ministers’ own doorsteps, and if they would only take the ideological blinkers off, they would be able to see it for the benefit of children. The Minister recently admitted in a Westminster Hall debate on grammar school funding that grammar schools are, by definition, unlikely to take children who are struggling or on free school meals. Why, then, would they be the major source of expertise on how to help those children succeed?

Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall), there are lessons we can learn about what works. The most dramatic improvements in education that we have seen in my adult lifetime came as a result of the London Challenge programme, which brought comprehensive schools together to lift standards for all their children. We replicated that in Greater Manchester, where I live, with great success—so much so that, even when the Government dismantled the scheme, those teachers carried on working together because they said, “If there is a child in any school in Greater Manchester who is not doing well, that is our collective responsibility and we will come together to sort it out.” They understand that collaboration is the key driver of school improvement, not competition, and that, as the OECD has repeatedly proven, strong autonomy coupled with strong accountability are the ingredients of a great education system.

Ministers have rightly pointed to the absurd situation we have at present where in some parts of the country we already have selection, by wealth and house price. I would have more sympathy with that argument if the Government had not pushed through a benefits cap that has socially cleansed large areas of the country and forced tens of thousands of poorer families to move out of inner London, and if they had not introduced a model of free schools in the last Parliament that allowed schools to draw their own catchment areas and exclude poorer areas.

The answer to the Minister’s problem is surely to make every school a good school. The fact that the Government appear to have completely given up on that, in Britain in 2016, is such a pitiful sight for young people in this country. There are far too many—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Mrs Eleanor Laing)]

Order. I hesitate to interrupt the hon. Lady, and I appreciate that she is speaking with passion and that the House is listening to what she is saying, but I will point out that, even though we have quite a lot of time this afternoon and there is not an awful lot of pressure, she has now been speaking for over half an hour—it has passed quickly, because she is speaking with such passion. She does not have to finish immediately, but I am sure that she will be drawing her speech to a close soon.

[Lisa Nandy]

As a matter of fact, Madam Deputy Speaker, I intend to draw to a close, by reminding the Minister that too many children in this country are unable to learn because of overcrowded housing, poverty and family pressures, and by telling him that the education maintenance allowance and Aimhigher, both of which were abolished by his Government, lifted the number of academic children in my constituency who went on to finish college and go to university by 40% in just six short years. Nothing that the Prime Minister, the Education Secretary or the Minister have said so far on the subject leads me to think that those children are their priority. Instead, they are fond of telling us when we object to policies based on such flimsy evidence that these policies are deeply popular.

I say to the Minister that there is a warning from history here. The Crowther report, commissioned by a Conservative Secretary of State in 1959, highlighted the public clamour that had grown up against a competitive element in grammar school selection. By 1964, when the Conservative party lost the general election, grammar schools had become deeply unpopular with three out of four voters, because segregated education is, by definition, divisive. Perhaps that is why the policy was set out not in his party’s manifesto, but in that of the UK Independence party, one of the most divisive forces in the country.

I will bring my remarks to a close, because many hon. Members wish to speak. In trying to divide children in this country, the Government have succeeded in uniting a range of voices, including the teaching unions, the chief inspector of schools, their own mobility tsar, the previous Education Secretary, the former Universities Minister, the previous Chancellor of the Exchequer and a significant number of MPs from all parties in the House. Together, we will ensure that the Government do better than this.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lisa Nandy]

All this motion did was ask the Minister to consider the evidence before us and to pause for a moment and reflect before setting this country on a path that will damage children’s life chances and the economic prospects of this country as a whole. Instead, throughout this debate, and especially in his closing remarks, he has given this House the strong impression that he will have to be dragged kicking and screaming before he confronts the reality of what the evidence tells us about children’s life chances and the educational system in this country. He has done absolutely nothing during this debate to tell us how much the Government intend to spend on these reforms and what impact there will be on the schools budget overall and, therefore, on children who do not attend grammar schools.

The Minister barely mentioned the serious issues that my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green) raised about special educational needs. The point she was making to the Minister, based on experience of having seen this in her area, was that discrimination against those children is intrinsic to the system that he is proposing. He continued to cite evidence that was at best flimsy and at worst deliberately misleading. The Russell Group evidence that he cited ignores any issue around prior attainment, and he selectively quoted the Education Policy Institute. He holds up the EBacc as a measure of educational success and he ignored the evidence on Oxbridge admissions. This is a Minister who is looking for evidence to inform his policy.

I asked the Minister finally to acknowledge for the first time that comprehensive schools around this country are good schools that have something to offer their pupils and pupils in other schools. Instead, his answer was insulting to the majority of schools, the majority of teachers and the majority of parents, and therefore to the majority of children. He will have learned in today’s debate that many of us on both sides of the House do not agree with him. We will seek to ensure that the Government do not proceed with these utterly divisive, disgraceful plans.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House notes recent proposals by the Government to expand the role of grammar and faith schools; and calls on the Government to conduct a full assessment of the evidence relating to the effect of grammar schools and faith schools on children’s learning.

Young People in Care

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

First, I thank the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) for introducing the debate and the report. I also thank all those involved in producing it, because it contains many good and helpful points. It has been a pleasure to listen to all the Members who have spoken so far. They have all spoken with passion, interest and a real, earnest endeavour on behalf of young people, and it is good to hear the House united in that.

Ensuring that our young people, particularly those who are vulnerable, have somewhere to call home—somewhere that is important to them—is vital. I have no doubt in my mind that every child is entitled to a hot meal, a warm home and, most importantly, a loving home—that seems natural and fair. In fact, to me it is a basic human right. As the report states, not every child has that, and we need to work extra hard to give those children who, for whatever reason, do not have a permanent home with their parents a home they can call their own. That is why I am pleased to make a contribution here. A number of charities actively help to do just that, including Action for Children, Citizens Advice and Bridging the Gap, to name just a few.

Young people leaving care are among the most vulnerable groups in society, so it is little wonder that there needs to be adequate provision in place, not just for when young people are in care, but to help them when they leave. Each Member who has spoken, particularly the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), has made that point clearly.

Some of the statistics about young people in care are truly worrying. They are three times more likely to be cautioned or convicted of an offence; they are four times more likely to have a mental health disorder; they are five times less likely to achieve five good GCSEs; they are eight times more likely to be excluded from school and less likely to go to university; and finally, one in five homeless people are care leavers. Those horrifying statistics make us think about those in society whom we have a responsibility to assist.

The fact that one in five care leavers end up living on the streets is undoubtedly a direct result of academic underachievement, criminal records and/or mental health conditions, all of which stem from a disrupted upbringing. That is why we need to do more to create stable home environments as quickly as possible after problems arise. Our main aim is to ensure that young people have a roof over their head. We do not want them to be continually moving around as if they were playing a game of musical chairs or as if they were just a piece of the furniture. We must promote stability, although I do understand that that is not always possible. We must also do our absolute best to work with the charities and other organisations to get young people into care and long-term homes. When the Minister responds to this debate, perhaps he could tell me what discussions he has had with the charities that work at the coalface, as they understand the issues involved.

The options available to young people in care include fostering, adoption, family short breaks and residential care, all of which ensure that young people have some form of accommodation. The greatest issue facing young people is not necessarily while they are in care, but after they leave care. That concern has been expressed in every contribution so far.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way and to the Education Committee for producing this important report. It is more than a decade since I worked with Hammersmith and Fulham council to phase out the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation for vulnerable 16 and 17-year-olds, including care leavers. Given our special and unique responsibility to these young people who rely on the state to keep them safe, and the fact that councils such as Hammersmith and Fulham showed over a decade ago that it could be done, surely the time has come to outlaw the use of bed-and-breakfast accommodation for these young people. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that such accommodation is entirely unsuitable?

[Jim Shannon]

I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. Earlier, I said that I was surprised that she was not here at the start of the debate, because I know that she has a real, deep interest in this subject. I am pleased to see her here now, and I agree wholeheartedly with what she said, and I am sure that that applies to everyone else in the Chamber. It is always good to exchange ideas.

In Northern Ireland, a public consultation was held in 2012 to decipher the best way forward for young adults living in supported accommodation. Ten key principles were developed and they are now used by charities and organisations in Northern Ireland for those in care and those leaving care. They are dignity and respect, independence, rights, equality and diversity, choice, fulfilment, safeguarding, privacy, confidentiality and partnership. A variety of options are available for those who leave care, and they include supported lodgings and private rented or social housing.

Young people may wish to remain with foster families or return to their birth parents, but the options available to those over 18 who want to move on can be limited. Has the Minister had any discussion with John O’Dowd, the Minister for Education in the Northern Ireland Assembly, about the report we compiled in Northern Ireland? The figures for young people in care working and having adequate academic achievements need to be better. Supported lodgings are an option for young people but, depending on where they live, they may not be available to them. The option that is used the most in Northern Ireland is social housing, but that young person can fall between two stools. No one seems to grasp the problem, and it becomes very frustrating.

Although charities such as Action for Children do fantastic work and try to give young people in care and those who leave care the best opportunities and homes available, we need to do more. We must do all we can to reduce the number of people living on the streets, and to help young people in care to reach their academic potential. That means that they would be in a better position to get jobs and set up homes in the future. We should consider setting up some sort of support system in schools and further education colleges aimed specifically at helping young people in care to get the skills and qualifications that they need for the future.

I strongly believe that family is the cornerstone of society. I am not necessarily talking about birth family. Family means providing care, support and love. It comes in many forms and it is up to us to ensure that young people in care, our most vulnerable young people, get the support and stability they need at home, which will give them the best possible chance to reach their academic potential.

Finally, I say well done to the Education Committee for producing this report, which highlights all the issues. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I congratulate the Chairman and members of the Education Committee, many of whom have spoken today, on the report, which is a model of the well-argued, thought-provoking body of work that we have come to rely on from the Select Committee system. It has proved helpful in focusing attention on the types of accommodation available to young people aged 16 and over who are cared for by local authorities—a population of about 14,000, representing about 20% of the total population of looked-after children,

The Children Act 1989 requires that young people aged 16 and over should be given a personal adviser to help them to progress to independence. That involves helping them to make choices, and ensuring that their pathway plan and review actually happen, and that the plan includes the skills needed for independent living. The Select Committee cites the children’s rights director as saying that almost half—49%—of care leavers thought that they had been badly or very badly prepared for independent life. Key deficiencies include a lack of basic skills such as cooking and financial management.

The report made me wonder whether there is too much focus on the post of personal adviser, and not enough on the task. Foster carers and other significant adults should principally perform those tasks, as they are the people with whom the young person already has an important relationship. I know that the Minister, too, has reflected on that. I was struck during a recent visit to Hackney’s fostering unit by the impressive work that it does, and its use of social pedagogy as a tool for development. The Minister is on the record as saying that the personal adviser is a function, rather than a specifically appointed person, and that there is nothing in the regulations or guidance to stop local authorities using resources such as foster carers or people who work in children’s homes as personal advisers.

[Lisa Nandy]

I am grateful for my hon. Friend’s generosity in giving way, especially as I could not be here for the start of the debate. I was interested in his use of the word “relationship”. Does he agree that a key point about the system that we have constructed for children in care is that often it does not see or value those crucial relationships in young people’s lives? At the time when they most need them the system often drives a coach and horses through them. Does he agree that if we were serious about helping children, sustaining them through the hardest period in their life, we would restructure the system so that it could see, support and value those relationships with key trusted adults, whoever they are?

[Steve McCabe]

That is exactly the point. We should concentrate on continuity and relationships. At times we are sidetracked by posts and appointments.

I want to move on to local authorities, whose responsibilities change when a young person turns 18. Too many people think that local authorities interpret that change as meaning that their responsibilities diminish, despite the fact that they have a continuing obligation to those young people until the age of 21, or 25 for those still in education and training. As we have heard several times, the Minister has recently extended the previous Government’s pilots to create a new obligation or arrangement for staying put in foster care until the age of 21. Like others, I think that that is a welcome measure, although I urge him to look at authorities that are trying to avoid paying foster rates, arguing that such arrangements are in fact board and lodging provision. I have recently been made aware that that is happening in one or two places, and the Minister will agree that that is certainly not what he had in mind.

I welcome the part of the Government’s response to the report which says that they believe that fewer young people should leave care before the age of 18 unless there are exceptional circumstances. In his reply, can the Minister say a little more about what practical steps the Government will take to translate this belief into reality? Despite personal advisers and strengthened guidance, the Committee found that young people are often given neither a choice of placement nor the opportunity to voice a preference. The Coram Group, an excellent organisation, said in its evidence:

“The young person’s views are frequently not adequately considered and advocacy support is vital to ensure this happens”.

An independent advocate is a statutory requirement, yet it is not a service that is always offered or that enough young people are made aware of.

The Government say in their response that they have given the Children’s Commissioner a new power to provide advice and assistance to individual children in receipt of social care services and to make representations on behalf of care leavers. Am I right in thinking that the commissioner has no real new powers? Is the Minister satisfied that the power to make representations is a sufficient new power for the Children’s Commissioner? The Government argue that they have strengthened the guidance on pathway planning and point to the fact that directors of children’s services are now required to sign off the arrangements for any 16 or 17-year-old leaving care. However, as we have heard from a number of speakers today, the evidence suggests that the pathway plans are weak, and one glaring omission is the failure to consider maintaining positive relationships with siblings and other people thought to be important in the young person’s life.

My hon. Friends the Members for Stockton North (Alex Cunningham) and for Stockport (Ann Coffey) both drew attention to the impact that this can have, particularly when it is almost ignored in the planning arrangements. Like others, I wonder how we can expect young people to develop into normal, well-adjusted adults if we deny them the opportunities that we take for granted for our own children and many others. I welcome the addition to the guidance on the pathway plans in this respect and I trust that the Minister will continue to focus on this area in the months ahead.

One of the inevitable results of the “Staying Put” initiative is that, as we heard, it has raised the question of those in residential care and the related issue of staying close. There appears to be a perception in some local authorities that their responsibilities decrease when a child reaches 16. That is certainly the sense among young people who feel that 16 is the cut-off point when they are required to leave care. This came across in the evidence that the Committee took. I am not sure about the equality aspect of “Staying Put” for non-foster care. I do not know whether it would withstand a legal challenge. From his previous incarnation the Minister might be much more familiar with how the law would deal with that. Aside from that, my own view is that 16 is the age for most young people to set out on their own. Like the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) I attended a recent meeting of the all-party group for looked-after children, where many of those said that even at the age of 18 they did not feel that they were ready to move on.

I know that this is a difficult matter for many people. I have some doubts about whether it is realistic for someone to continue in a children’s home to the age of 21 or beyond, although I am rather sceptical of the validity of some of the counter-arguments. Particularly on safeguarding, I tend to agree with the Every Child Leaving Care Matters group, which said that it is difficult

“to see how a young person who is settled in a children’s home and enjoys positive relationships with staff and peers should suddenly become a safeguarding risk at 18 when they never were before.”

I am keen that the Government set to work as soon as possible on addressing this matter. We have heard about some of the work involving the National Children’s Bureau, the Who Cares? Trust, Barnardo’s and others. Will the Minister tell us how much money from the innovation programme has gone into that work to date, and what time scale he is considering for further proposals indicating his plans for staying close and “Staying Put”?

Oral Answers to Questions

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

I can promise my hon. Friend that a fairer funding formula will be delivered in 2015-16. His own area will receive an additional £5.7 million. This is the biggest move towards fair funding across England in a decade, and it is long overdue. It should have taken place under the previous Government, and it will take place under this one.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

T3. I was glad to read in the newspapers that the Minister had finally abandoned plans to allow firms such as G4S to run child protection services, but then I looked more closely and discovered that he now intends to allow those firms to set up not-for-profit subsidiaries that would run those services anyway. That would mean that the same firm could place a child into a care home and run that care home, and not be inspected by Ofsted. How on earth can the Minister think that that would be good for children?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

I think the hon. Lady should talk to those on her Front Bench, as well as to her colleagues in the previous Labour Government who started this whole process by legislating on social work practices. We have been clear, following the consultation, that there will be non-profit organisations running children’s services but also that the same levels of accountability and oversight will apply as a consequence. She needs to look carefully at the detail and talk to her Front Benchers about what their position is.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Monday 16th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call Lisa Nandy.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Speaker]

I thought that the hon. Lady was seeking to catch my eye. Never mind; there will be other opportunities I call Margot James.

--- Later in debate ---

[Michael Gove]

I will ensure that a Minister meets my hon. Friend, whom I thank for his dogged and determined work on behalf of his constituents. We have both had our frustrations with Lancashire county council over the years, but any vulnerable child in Burnley has a highly effective champion in my hon. Friend.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

Will the Secretary of State tell the House exactly when Dominic Cummings ceased to hold the pass that allowed him access to the Department for Education?

[Michael Gove]

I think it was Jimmy Carter who was once attacked by critics for worrying about exactly who was using the tennis courts at the White House. I am not responsible for the allocation of passes to the Department for Education, but I am always happy to welcome constructive critics such as the hon. Lady for an enjoyable discussion over a cup of tea whenever she wants to come to the Department.

Birmingham Schools

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Monday 9th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is one of the pleasures of my job to visit voluntary aided schools and schools with a faith ethos that do an outstanding job of respecting the religious beliefs of children and making sure those children are fit for a life in modern Britain. It is important to stress that none of the schools that we are talking about are faith schools. One of the issues is that they are secular schools that governors have sought to turn into faith schools of a particular narrow kind in a way that is unacceptable.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

Since the Secretary of State took on his job, he has limited local accountability and Ofsted oversight, and has fought attempts to publish the costs and funding agreements of schools and to reveal who is advising those schools and his Department, and on what basis. Given that he has fought openness and transparency from his Department tooth and nail, will he tell us, following the recent appalling events, whether he understands the importance of transparency to education and whether his Department will operate on a completely different basis from now on?

[Michael Gove]

I understand the hon. Lady’s point. She has taken the opportunity of this statement to raise one or two other questions. I believe absolutely in the importance of openness and transparency. I also think that it is important that the advice that is given by officials in confidence to shape ministerial decisions is protected as a safe space. I also agree that it is vital that when we discover things that have gone wrong in the education system, as is shown by the reports today, we publish in full.

Free Schools

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2013 Westminster Hall

[Ian Mearns]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, who makes a telling point. We are talking about educating children at a cost to the public purse. When the public purse is involved, we should expect minimum standard requirements in education. My hon. Friend makes the point well.

We are talking about the standards of education that these children receive. All too often, school policy is discussed as if it is somehow divorced from the fact that the ultimate victims of school failure are the children themselves. Let us not forget that even though these are free schools it is still public money that is paying for them.

The Al-Madinah school was branded “dysfunctional and inadequate” by Ofsted and “a national embarrassment” by Muslim leaders. Its own head teacher, Andrew Cutts-McKay, dismayed at poor governance and lack of foresight, turned whistleblower to expose the worrying slide in standards. Ofsted lamented the “limited knowledge and experience” of the governing body and the fact that teachers lacked proper skills to deliver a quality education. It condemned the school’s governance in no uncertain terms, stating:

“Accounting systems are not in place to ensure public money is properly spent and governors have failed to ensure an acceptable standard of education is provided by the school.”

Kings science school in Bradford has been accused of “serious financial mismanagement” and possibly fraud. Indeed, as with the Al-Madinah school, it was a member of the Kings science school staff—the finance director—who blew the whistle on the management of the school.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate. Does he share my concern that it took a full year after the whistleblower first raised these concerns for the Department for Education to publish that report into the alleged failings? Is that not just another example of the lack of transparency that has surrounded the free schools project from the beginning?

[Ian Mearns]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for making that point.

Although the Department for Education, Ofsted or any other inspectorate should be absolutely sure of its facts before going public, the time delay is worrying. The worrying precedent is that in those cases we have had to rely on whistleblowers—had they not been stripped of powers in relation to free schools, local authority officers would be uncovering failures. The EFA and Ofsted obviously do not have the required infrastructure, and are therefore not currently up to the job.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ian Mearns]

The Minister has heard my hon. Friend’s question, and I echo that sentiment.

The Barnfield Federation has taken on some 10 schools in recent years, and I share the concerns that the federation might have overstretched itself by trying to take on too many schools too quickly. Although Barnfield college has stressed that it remains financially viable, its managerial viability is still a major cause of concern.

Advice given to those looking to set up free schools is careful to stress the importance of acquiring

“the right level of expertise to oversee the financial management of your school.”

It seems odd that the Government stress the importance of financial expertise in free schools—we have seen such failures—but have little concern about the expertise, standards or professional qualifications of the teaching staff. As I have previously mentioned, Ofsted raised concerns about both the financial and teaching provision at the Al-Madinah school, but Ofsted has not commented on the Secretary of State’s repeated assertion that free schools, and indeed all academies, do not need to have qualified teachers at all. That is apparently based on his view that what is good enough for Eton is good enough for any school. I appreciate that there is a little local difficulty in the coalition on that, but the Secretary of State and his Liberal Democrat Minister for Schools, at least, seem to be in accord, despite the apparent wider political Cleggmire.

The Government stress that expertise is necessary for the financial management of schools, yet they offer little insistence on such expertise when it comes to the governance and oversight of free schools. Many of the problems that I have outlined at the Al-Madinah school and Kings science academy, Bradford, stem from a lack of credible, organised governance and a lack of experience. The Department for Education may stress the importance of financial expertise, but if the systems of governance are poor, the financial health of a school will suffer as a direct consequence.

As free schools are autonomous, there is no way for local authorities to ensure that free schools in their jurisdiction have adequate, well rounded governance. It is imperative that that issue is addressed, urgently. The Government may write off Al-Madinah school as a one-off or as a contained incident, but the fact remains that that debacle has lifted the curtain on the fallacies and frailties of the programme. The Government simply do not have a clue about how many other free schools are in a similar situation.

The Department for Education’s website states:

“The right school can transform a child’s life and help them achieve things they may never have imagined.”

But what is the make-up of “the right school,” and what will the “wrong” school do for its students, who are ultimately children for whom we all have a duty of care?

Aside from good teachers and good facilities, I believe it is imperative that there is excellent governance, guaranteed by extensive oversight and rigorous inspection. I have called this debate because I have serious concerns about the oversight of free schools. I also have more general concerns about free schools, especially the disproportionate amount of the education budget eaten up by such schools. The unit costs of free schools bear no comparison with the vast majority of schools or schoolchildren.

One of my biggest concerns is the admissions policies adopted by many free schools that appear to be at best opaque, and at worst deliberately exclusive. A study by Race on the Agenda titled “Do free schools help to build a more equal society?” shows that only two out of 78 free schools are fully meeting their legal requirement to publish information pertaining to measurable equality objectives.

The ROTA report further states that only six free schools have published at least one equality objective, which is a poorer level of compliance than any other type of school. The question posed by the report is seemingly answered by those dismal figures. Free schools are doing very little to build a more equal society.

[Lisa Nandy]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. What lies behind this is the fact that schools are not islands: what happens in one school has an impact on children in other schools and across the wider community. Does he agree that the free-for-all that free schools have become is bad for children—not just in the failing schools he talked about, but in other schools?

[Ian Mearns]

It is clear that free schools have an impact on other schools in their areas. Where those other schools hoped to have a comprehensive intake, the free schools will have a skewing effect. Indeed, they might also undermine the financial viability of other schools by taking pupils away from them. This is about not just whether free schools have a positive impact on the children who go to them, but whether they have a significant negative impact and a destabilising effect on other schools nearby.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I am pleased to be in a coalition Government when the Deputy Prime Minister has made a commitment to the extension of free school meals to five, six and seven-year-olds. We should never make the perfect the enemy of the good. Let me take this opportunity to praise Liberal Democrat colleagues who worked with us in order to ensure that more children have the opportunity to enjoy high-quality lunches. Let me say, too, to the hon. Member for North Devon (Sir Nick Harvey), with whom I normally agree, that on this occasion I have to part company with him and say that his leader has done the right thing, with which I am delighted to be associated.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State has said that circumstances should never hold any child back. How, then, does he plan to respond to this week’s Institute for Fiscal Studies report that showed that grammar schools are five times less likely to admit poorer children than their state counterparts?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. The introduction of academies and free schools is making sure that more children have the chance to attend academically excellent schools. For those living in areas where there are grammar schools who feel that the quality of education they enjoy is not good enough, we are providing choice through the growth of academies and choice through the growth of free schools. Through the pupil premium we are investing £2.5 billion for the very poorest children—a commitment to social justice of the kind to which I know Mr Speaker believes we should all be committed.