Covid-19: Children

Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)]

My Lords, we are all indebted to my noble friend Lady Morris for sponsoring this debate and for opening it so passionately and powerfully. I think she has inspired many of the subsequent speakers, because there really has been a high standard of contribution today, including from the Benches opposite. But I have to say that fewer than one-quarter of the speakers were from the governing party, and it will not have escaped the Minister’s attention that, with one exception—there always has to be an outlier, I suppose—the speeches were if not outright critical then certainly not very supportive of what the Government have done thus far for children in the time of the pandemic.

The pandemic exposed deep inequalities in our society, but of course it did not create them, as many noble Lords have said. Child poverty was rising before the pandemic and is set to rise further still. The figures on child poverty have been well referenced and I will not repeat them, but my noble friend Lady Sherlock referenced working poverty, which is in itself a shocking term. For the figure of those classified as being in poverty to encompass 31% of all children in one of the richest countries in the world is nothing short of a national disgrace. And yet it seems the Government just do not really get it.

The Child Poverty Commission was founded in 2010; in 2012, it became the Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission. In 2016, “Child Poverty” was dropped from the title. I do not like the term “social mobility”, which suggests that the status quo is somehow tolerable providing that a few people manage to clamber up the ladder a level or two. I prefer “social justice”, which is much more meaningful and a much greater prize if it can be achieved. However, it can stem only from ambition, something which the Government certainly do not have enough of. The impact of poverty on children is well documented. Those from low-income families are much more likely to experience poorer physical and mental health, do less well in school and have fewer social and economic opportunities in the future. The charity Action for Children, one of many children’s charities which sent noble Lords excellent briefings in advance of this debate, established a coronavirus emergency fund. The families which it helped revealed that over one-third of households were experiencing financial pressures due to the increased costs of the pandemic, two-fifths were struggling to feed their children and one-third needed resources for children’s learning and play.

Even when forced to reckon with the scale of child poverty in this country, it seems that the Government are not inclined to help. They did everything they could to avoid providing meals for children outside the school term—in the midst of a pandemic. Even now, the Government’s free school meal plans will cover only 16 of 30 weekdays during the summer. More recently, the DfE changed the way that the pupil premium is calculated, clawing back hundreds of millions of pounds of school funding from the children who need it most. As my noble friend Lady Blower said, this is not a one-off hit for schools as the Government claim; it will come back next year and the year after. Labour’s shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, Jonathan Reynolds, had to fight tooth and nail to stop the Government cancelling the £20 uplift to universal credit. Even now, the Chancellor is still insisting that the uplift must be scrapped in the autumn, despite the evidence that this will plunge hundreds of thousands more into poverty.

We need to look at urgent support to allow our children to process the events of the past year and to bounce back from them, such as quality, accessible mental health provision and longer-term goals, giving them optimism for what they can achieve in the future. That is why Labour is supporting the National Education Union’s No Child Left Behind campaign on child poverty, to which several noble Lords referred. This needs to be a cross-government effort, recognising the challenge that our children are facing, the opportunities they deserve and the huge potential they have.

The pandemic forced the education system to transform overnight. Schools had to close their doors to the vast majority of children and provide remote learning to millions of pupils. It was pleasing—indeed encouraging —to see the extent to which leaders, teachers, parents and children rose to that challenge. I must mention the reference by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leeds to his 10 year-old grandson. I certainly recognise the difficulties that he had. I have a 10 year-old, but he is a son not a grandson, so I am not able to go home at the end of the day and reflect on what I have had to do, or have not done. It is very much the blind being led by the enlightened. I am reminded of someone who sees a person out with a great big dog and asks who is taking who for a walk. That question could be asked in much the same way when it comes to me giving my son home tuition.

This enormous effort by everybody connected with education took place almost despite the Government, and that should be a source of shame. Over the course of the pandemic, the Conservatives seem to have treated the nation’s children as an afterthought, consistently failing to safeguard their well-being and learning. They caused chaos and additional stress for A-level, GCSE and BTEC pupils last summer and then failed to put a plan in place for this year’s exams until only weeks before they were due to go ahead. As noble Lords have heard, over 1 million children were left without adequate access to an electronic device for months, unable to take part in remote learning. In contrast, Labour’s vision is to make Britain the best place to grow up, by prioritising children’s well-being, education and life chances. On Tuesday, noble Lords discussed the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill. If our young people are to have not just the opportunity to develop the skills for the economy of the future but the ability to do so, the building blocks need to be put in place now. As my noble friend Lady McIntosh said, that will not happen under the present narrow national curriculum. I regret having to say to her—I am sure she is aware of it anyway—that the problem will intensify if the Government’s plans to restructure initial teacher training on the basis of political ideology come to fruition. As my noble friend Lord Puttnam said, many of us will meet that threat head-on.

Noble Lords will have received the briefing paper from the Child Poverty Action Group. The package of measures set out by shadow Secretary of State Kate Green two weeks ago very much echoes those plans for extended schools, where services are delivered that go beyond the core function of a classroom education for children within the normal school day. Schools need to be given the resources to provide every child with new opportunities to socialise, learn and develop post-pandemic working to reverse the widening gap in learning. With extra-curricular activities, mental health support in schools and small-group teaching available to all pupils who will benefit, Labour’s plans prioritise children’s well-being and social development as an essential part of supporting learning. As my noble friend Lady Morris said, there is an urgent need for quality mental health support in every school, with every child having access to qualified in-school counselling staff, alongside boosting well-being through extra activities and an education recovery premium which supports children who faced the greatest disruption during the pandemic, from early years through to further education.

Unlike this Government, the Government of Wales yesterday announced plans that appreciate the magnitude of the problem, as mentioned by my noble friend Lady Wilcox. I certainly hope that this Government follow the suggestion of my noble friend Lady Andrews to do what it takes to bring Sir Kevan Collins back. Yes, it would mean providing the resources he called for, but it would be a sign that the Government really were committed to being bold, to use a term the noble Lord, Lord Moynihan, mentioned. The Government are showing a lack of ambition for our children’s futures. Lockdown conditions had an undeniable effect on children and young people’s social and emotional well-being, as the charity YoungMinds found out that we have now increased from one in nine children with mental health problems to one in six—and that situation is only going to deteriorate. That is why its advocacy of early support hubs is an interesting idea. These would offer easy-to-access drop-in support on a self-referral basis for young people who do not meet the threshold for children and young people’s mental health services, or with emerging mental health needs, right up to the age of 25.

As I said, too often children seem to have been an afterthought for this Government. Children need to be at the centre of the Government’s levelling-up agenda, supported by a Minister for Children with the right to attend Cabinet and a cross-government strategy which should include early support for the many families who have struggled to access the support they need, especially new parents.

There has been a rise in the number of children entering care due to the increased pressure on families during lockdown and, sadly, a rise in abuse and neglect. Children who have been in local authority care generally have poorer outcomes than their peers, and they are often faced with a cliff edge at the age of 18 as support drops off, but it can be even younger. We have argued against and remain extremely concerned that recent regulations continue to allow the use of unregulated accommodation for looked-after children aged 16 and 17. We would expect far better for our own children, so surely we must demand better for children looked after by the state.

The first report of the government-funded review into children’s social care was published today, as has been referenced by noble Lords. It contains a basic contradiction, however, highlighting the fact that England’s children’s social services are under significant financial pressure” after what the report describes as years of cuts, during which council-run family support services have been reduced by a third. But it then claims that funding has barely kept pace with demand for children’s social care over the past decade. The truth is that it has not kept pace at all, and unless the review eventually recommends significant additional resources, the cuts to services that it correctly identifies will not be reversed.

As my noble friend Lady Andrews said, early years is a crucial time in children’s development, yet earlier this week we had the shocking announcement of a systematic and deliberate underfunding of early years childcare in the education sector by the Government. That was revealed in a report by the Early Years Alliance, which had to use the Freedom of Information Act to receive that information. It is not surprising that the Government fought for two years to block it.

These findings are truly shocking and make the need for an independent review of child care affordability and funding all the more urgent. Research shows that investment in early years education saves the Exchequer money in the long run. The Government’s short-sighted funding decisions affect the life chances not only of children but of their parents.

The Government proclaim their intention to level up but before they can begin to do that, they must arrest the downward direction of travel for children’s services across the board. The pandemic has been a time of loss and sacrifice for the whole country, and indeed across the globe. After such disruption and asking children and young people to give up so much—largely, it should be said, for the protection of others, including the age demographic of this Chamber—we must make support for their health, well-being and education our first priority. We must match the ambition that children have for their own futures and provide the investment and opportunity to back that up.

As my noble friend Lady Morris said in her inspiring opening to this debate, the public are looking for change in how we provide services for children. We need a government department with the ambition to take the lead while working collaboratively with other departments. The DfE announced this week a new education and skills delivery unit. I hope the Minister will tell us that this is the first step towards cross-departmental working, properly resourced and with the needs of children at the heart of every policy. It pains me to say it, but I am afraid that I lack the confidence, based on the Government’s record, that we should expect such a change in direction and priorities any time soon.