Oral Answers to Questions
Maria Miller Excerpts(2 years, 9 months ago)
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Mr Walker
The hon. Gentleman is clearly a champion for that school—he has made the case for it many times before. I would be surprised if that was the content of my noble Friend’s letter, because a programme is due to open shortly, as he will know. Of course, we cannot pre-empt the programme, but I know that he has made a strong case for his school.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
Ofsted’s inquiry last year into the Everyone’s Invited campaign, which exposed sexual harassment and other safeguarding concerns in schools, focused on the importance of mandatory sex and relationship education, as did Ministers. As a result of the actions of this Government, such education is mandatory for all school-age children. Will the Minister look to Ofsted to do further work on how schools are implementing relationship and sex education, because I am sure Members across the House are concerned about that?
A Brighter Future for the Next Generation
Maria Miller Excerpts(3 years, 6 months ago)
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Gavin Williamson
I think the hon. Gentleman is warming up for what will no doubt be a long speech later in the day. He obviously needs to come and see the brilliant progress that we are making in maths in England, unlike the sad reversals that we have seen in Scotland, with the failed education system that the SNP has presided over and the damage it has done to the education system in Scotland. If he had the benefit of sitting in some of the schools that are delivering such brilliant maths education right across England, he would understand that the Turing scheme opens up opportunities in many more countries than just 27. In fact, it will be a global scheme that looks beyond the European Union, to countries right across the world, making sure that young people have more and greater opportunities, not less. His horizons might reach only as far as the European Union, but we recognise that young people want opportunities on a global scale, in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, India, China—emerging great economies as well as old friends and allies.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
My right hon. Friend is making an important point about the opportunities that we give young people. Will he join me in welcoming the opening of a new special school in Basingstoke under the Government’s academy programme, the Austen Academy, to ensure that children with special needs get the sorts of opportunities that he is talking about?
Gavin Williamson
I know that my right hon. Friend has been a real champion of the Austen Academy, recognising the important role that academies can play in delivering not just mainstream education but more specialist support for some pupils. It is an important step forward, ensuring that we get high-quality education across all our schools. We have seen some amazing work being done in our special schools, and I look forward to seeing that school grow and prosper into the future.
We want to encourage people to stay part of their community. Rather than encouraging them to leave home to find a rewarding career, we intend to empower them to find fulfilling and rewarding work wherever they live, invigorating communities and driving economic growth up and down the country. They do not need to leave their home towns in order to succeed.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
Thank you very much, Madam Deputy Speaker.
After 12 months of challenge, this Queen’s Speech needed to do two things: tackle the aftermath of the pandemic and lay firm foundations for a brighter future. It does exactly that. Bills tackling investment in our health service and social care sit alongside town deals, the higher education Bill and the Environment Bill. This clear vision for optimism is based on the Government’s levelling up agenda for the whole country. It is really about unleashing the full potential of the whole country. That was the message that ignited the electorate in the elections last week. From Hartlepool to the west midlands and to Basingstoke, voters profoundly rejected negative campaigning and embraced the positive message that we, as a Conservative party, had to give—nowhere more so than in my own constituency of Basingstoke, where we took back control of the council with a resounding majority.
This Queen’s Speech is all about levelling up and unleashing that potential, and it is an optimistic message for the country. It is about investing in our towns and in the infrastructure in the midlands, the north-east, the north-west and, indeed, around the whole of the United Kingdom. It means that reaching one’s full potential does not mean moving away from one’s home town. That has a personal resonance for me, because in the late 1960s, when my family left the Black Country where I had been born and bred, they did so to seek a better job and to be able to move from council accommodation to a private house. I would like to see a change in the need to do that, and I welcome the focus of this Queen’s Speech in allowing that to happen. That message is also important for places such as my own constituency of Basingstoke, because growth has been concentrated in the south-east for too long at the expense of other parts of the United Kingdom, causing extraordinary pressure on housing, transport and the local environment. Making sure that we level up across the country is important for every single citizen in the United Kingdom.
The Queen’s Speech is also about levelling up for those groups everywhere who are still not achieving their full potential, particularly through education and work opportunities. The education and skills Bill will be an essential ingredient in this, as lifelong training is the reality for all of us wherever we work.
When it comes to work, the past 12 months have been an enormous challenge for employers. They have been tested more than ever before, and the overwhelming majority have worked with their employees to find new ways to work and support their families, and to support staff suffering from the mental health challenges of the pandemic. If we are to enable everyone in this country to reach their full potential, we need to be actively levelling up in the workplace, too. Within the Government’s legislative programme, we need to tackle some of the issues that we encountered with working practices during the pandemic. We must be optimistic about ensuring that everybody—every woman, in particular, and every parent—in this country can reach their potential.
Since 2010, this Government have made it an important priority to help women to level up in the workplace. There has been progress in recording and cutting the gender pay gap for women under 35, in increasing childcare and in extending the right to request flexible working, but a truly bright future for the next generation will take these steps further. Ensuring that everyone in this country can reach their full potential in work is important not only because it is fair, but because it is essential for the prosperity of our entire nation. Making all jobs flexible by default has become the reality for the past 12 months, so let us not slip back into the old ways of working. Let us use the challenges of the past 12 months as a platform for a more positive, flexible way to work from now on. And let us level up for pregnant women at work, too, because too many of them have suffered from their employers’ lack of understanding of the law during the pandemic, being put on sick leave when they should not have been.
The Government already know that 50,000 women a year leave their jobs when they are pregnant because of discrimination, often covered up by the use of non-disclosure agreements, many forced out of work at a time when they cannot get another job. Too many women still see a lack of a level playing field at work, so let us level up for them too, and let us have within the Government legislative programme plans to stop pregnant women being made redundant and stop the use of non-disclosure agreements covering up unlawful activity, particularly sexual harassment and discrimination at work. Let us have proper shared care for dads, too, because it is better for everyone. All jobs as flexible by default unless there is a good reason not to—that is what levelling up has to look like for everyone in the future.
Finally, I welcome the online harms Bill included in the Gracious Speech, published yesterday for scrutiny before being formally debated in this place. A ground- breaking piece of legislation—the UK truly leading the world in tackling online harms. An important part of a bright future for the next generation needs to be an internet that benefits, not detracts from, our lives. As well as regulating that industry to ensure that it does not create harm, we need laws to give victims protections, too. So either within or alongside the Online Safety Bill, the Government need to tackle the deficits in the law, especially on sharing intimate sexual images without consent. The Law Commission review is now finished and will be complete before the Bill comes to the House, and I hope the Government will undertake to insert into the Online Safety Bill important changes in criminal law to protect victims of that heinous crime of intimate image abuse.
The Bills in the Queen’s Speech start to rebuild our country after the challenges of the pandemic. Its optimism and vision to level up are exactly what our country needs.
STEM Subjects: Science and Discovery Centres
Maria Miller Excerpts(3 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Maria Miller (in the Chair)
I remind hon. Members that there have been some changes to normal practices to support the new hybrid arrangements. Timings of debates have been amended to allow technical arrangements to be made for the next debate, and there will be suspensions between each debate.
I remind Members participating physically and virtually that they must arrive for the start of the debates in Westminster Hall. Members are expected to remain for the entire debate. I must also remind Members participating virtually that they are visible at all times, both to each other and to us in the Boothroyd Room. If Members attending virtually have any technical problems, they should email the Westminster Hall Clerk’s email address.
Members attending physically should clean their spaces before they use them and, please, when they leave the room. I remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn in Westminster Hall, except of course when people are participating in the debate. Members attending physically who are in the latter stages of the call list may use the seats at the back—I do not think that will be a problem for us in this debate.
I will not need to set a formal time limit for this debate, but I encourage Members to be aware of the call list and the time. I will call Front-Bench speakers from about 3.28 pm. With that, let us move on to the main debate.
Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)
I welcome the debate and congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Dr Spencer) on making the running and on his excellent opening remarks.
I will not detain the House for long, but I want to make a few comments about the Winchester Science Centre, which I am very fortunate to have in my constituency. It is an independent educational charity that receives no statutory funding from local authorities or Government and raises more than £3 million every year to supports its core purpose of sparking curiosity in STEM. Many of your constituents will no doubt have visited it over the years, Mrs Miller.
It is all the more disappointing, then, in the context of the debate, that the Winchester Science Centre will lose an expected £2.5 million in revenue because of this dreadful pandemic. I place on record how incredibly grateful we are to the Government for their support with the furlough scheme and the many other support packages for businesses, which, it is no exaggeration to say, have prevented what could have been a much worse outcome. The Winchester Science Centre charity, however, has been excluded from applying for additional Government support—namely, the culture recovery fund, which I have spent a lot of time scrutinising as a member of the DCMS Committee. Other organisations in the local area that do similar activities have received large grants, which has created an uneven playing field.
Some excellent research published by University College London in 2017 clearly states that informal science education must start at primary school age, which is good, because the Winchester Science Centre has been focusing on five to 12-year-olds since 1986. That means that almost 4,000 children, who might otherwise not have had the opportunity, have taken part in free, informal science activities this past year, thanks to the centre’s widening participation in STEM outreach programme.
The facts speak for themselves. Some 170,000 visitors enjoy live science, hands-on activities, and an immersive 360° planetarium show each normal year—it is a fantastic show. Forty-five thousand school visitors engage with the activities every year, from 16 different counties across the south-east. That includes, of course, constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Runnymede and Weybridge.
Just to touch on the careers part of what we are discussing today, we in Winchester have strong STEM relationships across the extremely sci-tech rich M3 corridor, including a multi-year partnership with Airbus, memorandums of understanding for public engagement with the University of Southampton and the University of Surrey, which is in Guildford, and many collaborations with industry through, among others, the Enterprise M3 local enterprise partnership.
Going back to covid—as, regrettably, we always must—I know that the BBC gets all the plaudits for singing its own praises for its home learning work in the past year, but I would argue that science centres have more than done their bit. Winchester’s digital Science@Home campaign reached over a million people during a crisis where many organisations were not able to operate at all. Almost a quarter of a million children from across the UK watched a digital Christmas coding pantomime—it sounds such fun. That was developed as part of our “Get with the Program”, and promoted through Winchester’s schools network in last December.
We have heard today about the Association for Science and Discovery Centres, and I suspect that the Minister will be aware of that organisation. Winchester is, of course, a respected member of it, regularly participating in special interest groups to share best practice for the things they are doing. I know that, during the first lockdown, the Winchester team co-created a new website offering other science centres around the country best advice on how to make their experiences more accessible to all.
The future should be very positive and strong. We have not come this far to go down now. I know the team at Winchester, led by the excellent Ben Ward, are determined to move on from covid and come back stronger.
The truth is that, whatever the restrictions say, the school trips are not coming back any time soon, possibly not even in September—no matter my view on the over-caution that that would represent—so I would like the Minister, when she sums up, and colleagues across Government and at the Department for Education, to make the positive case for school trips later this year, and to give school leaders the confidence to get back out there.
As we have heard today, science centres will benefit from that because their main customer base is back, but the country will also benefit because of their obvious support for education and careers in STEM subjects—and boy, has the past 12 months shown how much we need them.
Mrs Maria Miller (in the Chair)
We now move to the Front-Bench speakers. I remind the Minister that, when she makes her contribution, she will need to wind up by about 3.58 pm to enable Dr Spencer to make his winding-up speech.
Students’ Return to Universities
Maria Miller Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Gavin Williamson
We continue to work with the sector to ensure that there is the very best quality of teaching. If youngsters have an issue with the quality of teaching, the Office for Students has made it absolutely clear that it will investigate this and take action where it is required against universities that are not delivering what is in their contract with the students.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I welcome my right hon. Friend’s statement. Our fiercely independent universities are rapidly adapting to this new way of operating so that thousands of young people who have been hard hit by coronavirus can get on with their lives after six months of the pandemic, and I think they deserve all our support. However, many of those students might have planned to use the summer months to earn money to support themselves through university or, indeed, they might have been looking for part-time work while they were studying as a way of ensuring that they could support themselves through these important years of their lives. I am interested to hear from my right hon. Friend what additional work the universities will be doing to ensure that those students who are working hard will be able to get the support they need if they hit financial hardship.
Gavin Williamson
Quite rightly, both this Government and the previous Labour Government put a really high value on ensuring that students who started their studies were able to complete them. The ways in which universities ensure that that happens is something that we monitor closely. We have worked with the Office for Students to ensure that hardship funding is available. That is part of a quarter of a billion pound package that was made available to universities so that proper assessments could be made of students if they required that support. The Student Loans Company also offers a system whereby extra maintenance support can be made available through individual assessment if a student chooses to go down that route.
Oral Answers to Questions
Maria Miller Excerpts(4 years, 5 months ago)
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Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)
The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)
Since 1 June, we have taken positive steps in welcoming children back to school. Teachers and heads have done an excellent job in opening schools to more pupils, and our latest attendance figures show that approximately 92% of education institutions are open with thousands more children back in classrooms, where they can learn best, reunited with their teachers and friends. SAGE papers are being published in tranches, including those of the Children’s Task and Finish Working Group.
Mrs Miller
Let me take this opportunity to associate myself with the comments made earlier about the terror attack in Reading, a near neighbour to my Basingstoke constituency. Our thoughts are with the residents of that town.
There is no substitute for face-to-face learning and thanks must go to the school staff across my own constituency in Basingstoke and, indeed, across Hampshire, who are all working so hard to help ensure that as many eligible children as possible can safely return to school. Parents want to know when all children can be back in school. What advice can my right hon. Friend give to my constituents, who are approaching me on that and who are also asking what organisations are being told to provide summer childcare support for working parents so that we can also support parents to get back to work?
Nick Gibb
We are working towards bringing all children and young people back to school in September. The Government’s ambition is that all organisations running holiday clubs and activities for children over the summer holiday will be able to open if, of course, the science allows. The time anticipated for holiday clubs to open is no earlier than 4 July as part of step three of the Government’s recovery strategy.
Early Years Family Support
Maria Miller Excerpts(5 years, 4 months ago)
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Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
What has marked out this debate already is Members’ great passion for and commitment to this subject. It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) and to hear more about the work she has been doing. However, the absolute tribute has to go to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), who is quite simply the oracle on early years and attachment theory.
I will always remember the first time I met my right hon. Friend, and I had a teach-in that most people would pay for on early years attachment theory. I think that it was in the car park of a pub, but I very much appreciated that teach-in. Actually, I do not think she realised it, but she sparked a real interest in this area for me. This conversation happened many years before we were both in Parliament together, and it really marked out a very deep interest for me. I was able to follow that up as a shadow Minister—not particularly when I had a ministerial post, but when I was a shadow Minister—in the years before 2010.
My right hon. Friend is an expert in early years and attachment theory, and I do not want to add to what she and, indeed, the hon. Member for Manchester Central have said on a number of these issues. I want to go on to some other areas to expand the debate a bit more, but before I do so, let me say that it is absolutely fundamental that we get it right for every single baby in this country. The early intervention that my right hon. Friend and the hon. Lady have talked about in the debate is completely critical and vital.
As my right hon. Friend has said, having universal and targeted services is a critical part of this. While she was talking, I was reflecting on the service offered in my own constituency by Basingstoke breastfeeding counsellors. They are a mixture of paid-for counsellors and volunteers, but this is very much focused on volunteers who are there for mums to be able effectively and successfully to breastfeed in those early weeks and months. It is a service, frankly, that the NHS finds quite difficult to provide and that involves those expert counsellors. That is one way we can help to improve not only the health of our babies, but attachment from those very early weeks and months. That sort of support can be so important for babies and new mums in the early weeks—certainly, it was for me when I had my three children. Health visitor support makes a real difference in supporting mental health, breastfeeding and the health of the mother and baby.
I want to expand on the specific issues talked about today, because we need to get it right for families, too. To get it right for babies, we need secure and stable families and parents before babies are born, as well as afterwards. My right hon. Friend talked about the stress that can be put on mothers during pregnancy and how it can be transferred to the unborn child. That is one reason why I introduced a 10-minute rule Bill to try to change the law with regard to redundancy and pregnant women. More than 50,000 women a year in this country feel that they have no choice but to leave their jobs when they are pregnant. Those of us who have been pregnant, or have had partners who have been pregnant, can think of no time of our lives when we have less wanted to leave a job. At a time when financial stability is so important, one can only imagine the pressure individuals who have to give up their jobs are under.
In addition to specific expert support for parents around attachment, the Government need to reflect specifically on how we ensure pregnant women receive the support they need. In Germany, a law is in place that stops, except in extreme circumstances, any pregnant woman being made redundant. Not only does that help to alleviate some of the stress we have talked about, it enables that country to ensure that more women go back into employment after they have had children, and that helps to close the gender pay gap. I hope that the UK Government will continue to think about this issue, particularly at a time when we now have more women than men coming out of our best universities with science degrees. We need to find a way to ensure that those women can stay in the labour market and have a successful family life.
My right hon. Friend touched on the mental health of women after they have given birth. I commend the National Childbirth Trust’s campaign for a six-week maternal post-natal check. I think that happened in the past, but it seems to have dropped out of the most recent iteration of the GP contract back in 2005 or 2006. It would be a great way to ensure that, as well as protecting mums before they give birth, we have a mental health check after they give birth. If mum’s mental health is good, attachment can be strong.
Wera Hobhouse
The right hon. Lady is making a very powerful point about the perinatal mental health of women. NHS England and the British Medical Association are conducting a review of post-natal checks and the GP contract. Does she agree that now is the right time to include in the GP contract a mandatory check, as the NCT is asking for?
Mrs Miller
I have very strong sympathies with that. It should happen by rote for every woman, and I think that it happens haphazardly now. I can remember having that sort of conversation with my GP after the birth of my children, but it does not happen routinely. The NCT is right to pick this up. If we are to ensure that early years family support is as good as it can be, it needs to include a mental health check for mums. All of us know individuals who have gone through post-natal depression. For the health of the mother as well as the children, it is so important that it is identified early on and action is taken.
As well as protecting mothers who are pregnant or have new babies, and as well as making sure that they get the right support from their GPs on mental health, the Government also need to reflect on a couple of other areas to make sure that our children have the best early years support possible. We heard about one of these earlier from my hon. Friend the Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately), who talked about flexible working. The Government have already heard an expert dissertation from her, so I will not repeat what she said. In summary, however, the more that we can give flexibility to families, particularly when they have very small children, but not solely then—I speak as the mother of a teenager, as my youngest is now—so that they can balance work and family life, the better. This goes on for our children’s entire lives, even beyond them being children, so I hope that the Government are making sure that they take very seriously flexibility and flexible working as a default, which my hon. Friend spoke about in relation to her ten-minute rule Bill.
No Government have gone further than this one and the coalition Government in making flexible working something that we can all now request. We will take no lessons from anybody about any lack of understanding from Government Members on that, and I commend the Government for all the work that they have done, but we now need to look at going further to make sure that businesses take that flexibility for granted. The best businesses already do, of course, but we need more to do it routinely.
My final point is on shared parental leave. If we are to get it really right for our littlest people—the half a million babies that are born every single year—we need to get it right for both parents. At the moment, we do not get it right for dads at all. All the research coming out of countries such as Germany shows that if we have proper shared parental leave, fathers and children have much better relationships not just in the early years, but throughout their lives, including even if the adult relationship with the other parent breaks down. It is absolutely proven that a shared parental leave policy involving fathers far more in the lives of their children at an early age can lead to far better relations later in life as well. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to consider very carefully the role of shared parental leave in future. My Committee—the Women and Equalities Committee—has done an excellent paper on it, which he can read at his leisure. It shows clearly that three months of “use it or lose it” leave for dads is one of the best ways that we can support family life and help to address the gender pay gap.
Those are just some other ideas, building on the debate secured by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire, on how we can make sure that every child in this country gets the best start in life and that every family can thrive.
Tim Loughton
I am completely recharged and relieved by that. The hon. Lady is my absolute favourite Member of Parliament for Manchester Central, and many things besides. But this debate is getting far too consensual, so I shall return to the points that I was trying to make.
The phrase “1,000 days”—or, for those whose glass is half full, “1,001 days”—is almost becoming common parlance as well, and it needs to. It needs to be almost a brand. People need to understand that those 1,001-ish days of life from conception to the age of two are the period that will have the most impact on a child’s future life. If we do not invest in the right support then, the cost of picking up the pieces later will be so much greater, both financially and, as I think everyone here recognises, socially.
I should declare an interest, in that I chair PIP UK—the Parent Infant Partnership—which was set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire. I became chairman of the trustees, and am proud still to be so. Our most recent report is “Rare Jewels”. I pay tribute to Sally Hogg, who works for PIP and who did a great deal of research on the scarcity of parent and infant mental health specialist support. That was a false economy.
I shall now be slightly unconventional, and talk about the motion. The motion is about the inter-ministerial group, and I want to talk about some of the experiences of that group. As I found during my few years as a Minister, joined-up government is a complete myth. What the group almost uniquely did, because of the vim and force of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire, was bring together key Ministers from half a dozen key Departments to try to create joined-up solutions. A child’s mental health, and those early years affecting the child and his or her parents, are not just the preserve of the Department for Education and of children’s social care. They touch on the work of so many other Departments
I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) is still here. She will remember that some years ago, when I was the Children’s Minister and Sarah Teather was also an Education Minister, we tried to put together the early intervention fund, which was largely intended to bring together different interests with a pooled budget so that we could work together on smarter solutions. However, that did not really fit the way in which the civil service worked.
We struggled for some months to pull together a plan that would involve various other Departments, and we were being frustrated at every turn; so we formed a pizza club, well before my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire was on the scene. My then colleague Sarah Teather and I rang other colleagues—Housing Ministers, Health Ministers and others. I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke was then a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions. We got together in “The Adjournment” restaurant, had a pizza, agreed what we wanted to do, and all went back to our Departments in the following days and told our civil servants what we wanted to do. The response was “Well, I’m sorry but that’s not the way we do things around here, Minister”, to which our response was “Tough, we’re now doing it.” That was the only way we could actually get through an important joined-up policy because the system just did not work. I do not think things have improved much at all.
Another innovation I set up then was the Youth Action Group. Again, there were problems and I tried to youth-proof all Government policy, which is something I still bang on about. There were many problems that transcended different Departments, and yet if there was a problem, it would go from one Department to another in a vicious triangle, as it were. So I got together six major charities led by The Prince’s Trust and Barnardo’s. I co-chaired it and, at one stage, I think we had nine Ministers from nine different Departments. Invariably most of those Ministers would turn up to those meetings and the children’s charities and youth charities would bring particular problems to us. One problem was about housing benefit for looked-after children who were care leavers, which was the responsibility of the Department for Education for care, the Department for Communities and Local Government—whatever it was called in those days—for housing and the Department for Work and Pensions for benefits. We got the three Ministers together with the three lead officials and said, “Here’s the problem; can you please take it away and solve it and come back with a solution that the children and youth workers can then take away?” Alas, that group no longer exists, but we need far more of that sort of rationale and mentality in Government. The inter-ministerial group showed how it could be done, and it is so important that the work continues. I hope that the recommendations that have been made are taken up and run with.
We need a Minister for early years children and families at Cabinet level. It should not just be left to civil servants to people those committees when what we need is a co-ordinated ministerial response. This needs to be led by a high-profile Minister who has the clout, enthusiasm and drive to bring all the relevant Departments together and come up with a cross-departmental solution. I am afraid that we are still a long way from that in common practice, and that is partly what is wrong with Government and with our civil service. So that is my main plea.
On the investment equation, I am not going to repeat everything that has been said, but we know that healthy social and emotional development in the first 1,001 days means that individuals are more likely to have improved mental and physical health outcomes from cradle to grave and children will start school with the language, social and emotional skills they need to play and explore and learn. Children and young people will also be better able to understand and manage their emotions and behaviours, leading to less risky and antisocial behaviours and the costs that these bring to individuals and society, and they will have the skills they need to form trusting, healthy relationships—something we heard about in the Chamber earlier. If they had that, we would not have to spend such a lot of time teaching it to them at school because it would come naturally, and they would know what a proper quality, trusting relationship actually is. And if they know, they are much more likely to be able to hand it on and nurture their own children as they become parents in the future.
The cost of getting this wrong is huge. Some years ago—although it is still as true and important today—the Maternal Mental Health Alliance calculated the cost of getting perinatal mental health care wrong for the one in six women who will have some form of perinatal mental illness. The cost of that was £8.1 billion each and every year, and the cost of child neglect in this country is £15 billion each and every year; so £23.1 billion is the price of getting it wrong. A fraction of that spent on early intervention—well-targeted, well-timed, well-positioned by well-qualified and trained professionals—could save so much personal grief and so much financial and social grief later on.
It is not rocket science, as I constantly say; it is technically neuroscience, but it really is something we should have been doing so many years ago. The troubled families programme is the model here, and it is essential that the troubled families programme is not just retained, but expanded in the comprehensive spending review. I have always said that we need a pre-troubled families programme, because in the troubled families programme we are dealing with the symptoms of getting it wrong earlier. If we prevented those symptoms in the first place, working in those very early years, so that we have a well-balanced parent or parents with well-balanced children, they are more likely to arrive at school eager and able to learn and be contributing members of society. That is so vital. Some 28% of mothers with mental health problems report having difficulties bonding with their child. Research suggests that this initial dysfunction in the mother-baby relationship affects the child’s development by impairing the baby’s psychomotor and socio-emotional development.
Postnatal depression has also been linked with depression in fathers, and with higher rates of family breakdown. We forget the impact on fathers of not knowing how to deal with a mum—a partner—who all of a sudden has some form of postnatal mental illness. A lot of fathers are affected by this. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on fatherhood, is going to talk about this. It is essential that we look at all parents, when both parents are on the scene, and give support to the family as a whole.
Mrs Miller
I well remember working with my hon. Friend and I remember his huge commitment in this area. If there are now more debates and discussions about child mental health, a lot of that is down to him. I should like to highlight a report that the Select Committee is doing on men’s mental health. Does he agree that the NHS needs to think long and hard about the way in which men can access mental health services? We are receiving evidence that the way in which these services are delivered is almost highly feminised, making it difficult for men to access them.
Tim Loughton
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is still this myth that it is not manly to admit to having some form of mental illness. I hope that we are getting away from the stigma of that, but we still have far to go in encouraging people. Hon. Members in this place who have come forward with their own very painful experiences have done a huge service by providing role models, as have celebrities in sport and showbusiness, and by showing that there is nothing unmanly or abnormal about coming forward when they have an illness that happens to be a mental illness, just as they would come forward if they had a physical illness. Why should there be any difference? However, we need to make it easier for men to cross that threshold in the first place. We need to ensure that they can come and talk to somebody and get checked out.
I am not going to go into the whole children’s centre argument. That is an important issue but this is not just about the bricks and mortar. However, one of my criticisms is that those places need to be much more dad-friendly, and much more imaginatively used. I have opened many children’s centres in my time, and I have seen some great ones that have football clubs on Saturday afternoons when the children’s centre is too often closed because it is a nine-to-five, Monday to Friday institution. Dads bring their kids and they play football together, then they do computers and reading with their kids afterwards. That is great bonding and co-educational time as well. Again, this is not rocket science. We need to make those places more welcoming for dads, and we need to put them in places that young fathers inhabit.
The killer statistic that I always use is that if a 15 or 16-year-old child in school has some form of depression, there is a 99% likelihood that their mother suffered from some form of mental illness during pregnancy or soon afterwards. The correlation is that close, and if we do nothing to help the mother at that early stage, we will certainly see the consequences later on. It is great that the Prime Minister has flagged up mental illness, and it is great that so much more will be happening with additional funding—not enough, but there will be additional funding—for mental health services in schools, but we need to do all this before school as well so that kids are less susceptible to mental illness problems, given all the pressures that they will face as they go through their school years. We need a much more joined-up approach.
Research by the Children’s Commissioner shows that 8,300 babies under the age of one in England currently live in a household where domestic violence, alcohol or drug dependency and severe mental illness are all present. That is a very worrying amount. That is why the Domestic Abuse Bill, which was at last introduced today, is very important, but we need to look at the impact on children as well as the impact on parents, because that trauma will be long-lasting. We tend to look at the immediate victim of domestic violence without looking at the collateral damage that it also causes. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire mentioned the horrific statistic of something like one third of domestic violence starting during pregnancy.
I will come to a conclusion shortly, Mr Deputy Speaker, although you do not look too impatient, so I might go on a bit. To join up Departments, it is crucial to have key players who are wedded and committed to the issue and who want to work to achieve solutions. Domestic violence is dealt with in the Home Office. Child sexual exploitation is now dealt with in the Home Office. There is an impact on housing, which is dealt with in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. There is an impact on justice as well. The consequences of social media—now dealt with by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport—have an impact on children’s mental health. I used to deal with most of those things in one Department when I was Children’s Minister, but they have now been dispersed across Government, and we have to bring them back together.
I will finish on the role of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and public health. Health visitors are a huge resource. One of the great achievements of the Cameron Government—I was part of the discussions in the shadow Health team when we came up with the idea—was the huge expansion of the health visitor programme. Based on the research we did in the Netherlands with the Kraamzorg programme, which showed the impact that health visitors can have at an early stage when they have good, strong engagement with new mums and dads, there was a commitment in the 2010 manifesto to increase the number of health visitors to a figure of, I think, some 4,200. By 2015, that figure had just about been achieved. Alas, since then, things have gone into reverse.
I pay tribute particularly to Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, head of the Institute of Health Visiting, who has had a major input into the work that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire has already mentioned and the all-party parliamentary group that I chair. As the IHV recently noted, England is now at risk of sleepwalking into the loss of the health visiting service as we know it, unless urgent action is taken to address the current threats it faces. There are ongoing cuts to the public health grant, a 26% reduction in NHS- employed health visitors since 2015 and an unwarranted variation in the quality of services commissioned for families based on where they live rather than the level of need. As the IHV says, investing in the earliest years saves money in the long run and ensures that every child is supported to achieve the best start in life, yet the cuts to services in England persist at a time when inequalities are widening and infant mortality is increasing.
Health visitors are the trusted face on the doorstep. Whereas social workers are often treated with scepticism and fear when they knock on the door, the health visitor is usually welcomed over the threshold, particularly by new parents. He or she is an early warning system of some deficiency in parenting, as well as for safeguarding. It is absolutely essential that we build those numbers back up before we lose too many more of those experienced health visitors, working out of children centres or wherever—hot desking even, with social workers, with the district nurses and other welfare officers—so that they can detect and signpost families to the relevant services. They really are absolutely invaluable. Since the switch in responsibility from the NHS to local authorities—this is no detriment to local government—there has been a lack of experience in how those sorts of services are run, and therefore the issue is not treated as a priority. It is a priority and we need to get back to that.
Finally, I reiterate the recommendations made in the “Building Great Britons” report that the all-party parliamentary group produced in 2015. It was about having a joined-up Government approach to the 1,001 days; about every local authority drawing up its local plan and working with all the local agencies on how to deliver that plan for the 1,001 days, within a five-year term at least; and about having a monitoring system, which I based on the adoption scorecards that we brought in back in 2012, so that there is no place to hide and everyone has to be transparent about how they are progressing towards producing those services, compared with other parts of the country.
The solutions were in that report. We all know what needs to be done. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire led the way in bringing together the relevant parties and Departments to show how it could be done. Now we need to do it.
Education
Maria Miller Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
I rise to speak in support of the statutory instrument before us today, and to congratulate my right hon. Friends sitting on the Front Bench on doing what no other Ministers have been able to do for almost two decades. That deserves fulsome congratulations from every Member of this House. As has been said, the world has changed for our children—changed beyond all recognition. This SI rewrites the statutory guidance for schools to deliver relationships and sex education that is actually relevant for our children and not of a bygone age, and it is long overdue.
The internet proved to be the straw that broke the camel’s back. An issue around which we can all unite is the appalling impact of the social media and the online world on our children’s lives. After years of campaigning for change by numerous organisations outside of here and by many, many individuals inside this House, it was the impact of the internet that proved to be the uniting factor—the factor that meant we could no longer ignore the need for change. It is important to recognise that that is what happened. It was the House of Commons making its voice heard.
Two years ago, on 27 February 2017, my then colleague David Burrowes and I tabled new clause 5 to the Children and Social Work Bill with the support of 46 cross-party MPs, including the hon. Members for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips) and for Rotherham (Sarah Champion), my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce), the hon. Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston), my right hon. Friend the Member for Meriden (Dame Caroline Spelman), the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field), my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous), the hon. Members for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon), the right hon. Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan)—the list goes on. The fact that they all wanted to make a change followed research from Barnardo’s that showed that seven out of 10 secondary school children wanted relationships and sex education to be compulsory. It also followed an important report of the Women and Equalities Committee that exposed the scale of sexual harassment and sexual violence in our schools. Our new clause was supported by Barnardo’s, the National Children’s Bureau, Plan International UK, the Terrence Higgins Trust, the Children’s Society, Girlguiding—the list goes on.
I think it was putting those party political differences aside on this issue that enabled Ministers to act; otherwise, we would not be here today. Credit goes to those individuals—they know who they are—who made it happen. On 1 March 2017, the Government tabled their own amendment to make RSE compulsory for all children. That is the power of Members working together; we should not forget it.
David Burrowes and I were united in the need for change because of the way in which the internet was changing our own children’s lives: the fact that children now routinely see pornography at the age of eight; the fact that pornography is now the way that most children learn about sex; the impact on children of websites showing self-harm; and the never-ending bullying through social media websites. As somebody said to me yesterday—it might have been the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley—the internet does not know the religion of the children who watch it. It does not know whether they are Christian or Muslim or have no faith at all. There is no filter. All our children need to know how to use the internet safely.
Those of us who came together can be proud of what is happening today, but only if schools take seriously the important role that they now have. They must make sure that parents do not see this as an opportunity to opt out of the system. Instead, schools must see it as an opportunity to explain to parents why it is more important than ever that their children get the sort of education that they are now obliged to give them in terms of relationships and sex education.
Relationships and Sex Education
Maria Miller Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
The last time sex and relationships guidance was updated, the internet had not been invented, sexting had not been invented, social media had not been invented—the list goes on. All these things have become part of our children’s childhood, so my right hon. Friends on the Front Bench today deserve the wholehearted support of everyone in this House for what they have done.
How will my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State make sure that parents understand that enabling their children to be part of sex and relationship education is about helping to keep them safe and that it is not a threat to their children’s safety? It is through that work that the Government can most help schools understand how they deliver.
Damian Hinds
My right hon. Friend characteristically makes a very telling intervention. She is absolutely right. As we have gone through this process, I have been struck by the support that has come from some quite unexpected quarters. Often that is because of the jolt that adults have had from discovering the things that children find out and see on the internet in particular. There have always been stranger dangers, but there are now dangers from people whom children do not consider to be strangers or to be a threat and that has galvanised many people into supporting this kind of action.
Relationships and Sex Education
Maria Miller Excerpts(5 years, 8 months ago)
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John Howell (Henley) (Con)
I shall try to be absolutely impeccable, Mrs Moon. It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship. It is also a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Warrington North (Helen Jones), whom I seem to follow often in Westminster Hall debates. It is very appropriate that we should discuss this subject today when, as we can all see from the annunciators, the Secretary of State is still talking about relationships and sex education in the main Chamber.
There are two issues and I will treat them separately. The first is sex education, which is essentially about reproduction, and the second is relationships education. The issue of sex education raises two interesting points for me. The first is faith schools, and the second is the rights of parents. I am not one of those people who think that we should simply abolish all faith schools. Faith schools play a crucial role in our society and, at a time when we have gone a huge way to seeing what parents want—how they want their children to be taught—and allowing them to bring forward free schools, it is crucial that we acknowledge their rights to continue to have that with faith schools.
On the question of the rights of parents, I would like to start from the other end by saying that I do not think it is appropriate to put all the effort on to headteachers, who should have this decided by parents. I am sure that many of us remember the times when we had to have conversations with our own children about sex education, and however embarrassing they may have been—it was for me as a parent—it was for us to take them forward. I would like much more in the way of encouragement for the rights of parents. That is why I am enthusiastic about the right to opt out of sex education and to see that as part of the role of parents.
Mrs Miller
My hon. Friend talks compellingly about the rights of parents and of faith schools. Does he not also think that children have the right to know what a good, healthy relationship looks like in this day and age and how to keep safe? Do children not have that right as well?
John Howell
I partially agree with my right hon. Friend but am not sure I go all the way with it. Faith schools provide a lot of such education, or could provide a lot of it, if they were worked with and engaged with in a much more successful way.
Relationships and Sex Education
Maria Miller Excerpts(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Damian Hinds
I welcome what I think were the hon. Lady’s words of welcome for what the Government are bringing forward today. Look, this has been a journey. Society changes. It is 18 years since this guidance was last updated. A lot has changed in the world since then, including the online world, and it is right that we reflect that.
The hon. Lady asked why it needs to take two years for children to be able to access good-quality content. It does not. Many schools do much of this today. Through this exercise, we will ensure that it is done comprehensively throughout the system, while also increasing consistency and making sure that children can access quality materials. We will make sure that this is all available from September 2019. As for when it becomes compulsory, I have made a commitment to the profession to give it due time to prepare for significant changes like this. I think that is the right approach.
Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)
In 2016, the Women and Equalities Committee called for compulsory relationships and sex education to help to tackle a culture of unacceptable sexual harassment in schools. I am so proud that this Conservative Government have listened and acted after a cross-party amendment to the Bill that became the Children and Social Work Act, so that, after a decade and a half of inaction by Governments of all colours, these proposals are before us today.
I pay tribute to the huge number of organisations that have campaigned on this over many years, including Girlguiding, the Children’s Society and Stonewall—the list goes on. There are also individuals who are behind why we are here today, such as my right hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Justine Greening). The Minister for Apprenticeships and Skills, my right hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), who is in her place, has done huge amounts behind the scenes to make sure that this is happening today. I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for continuing with this work, and the Minister for School Standards, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), for his tenacity in giving us improving standards in our schools and being able to embrace these sorts of ideas, which are challenging for Members across the House.
These are issues of child safety. How will we ensure that we do not have to wait another 17 years for this guidance to be updated? I know that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be thinking about that, but perhaps he could talk about it further. We also have to get the Government’s recommendations put into action, as the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) said, and avoid any further bureaucracy. What can parents do now to make sure that the schools that their children are in put compulsory relationships and sex education in place by September 2019 and do not create any further delay?
Damian Hinds
My right hon. Friend was correct to identify, as did the hon. Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), a number of individuals and organisations that have been instrumental in this process. She could of course have added herself to that list; I commend her for her work.
My right hon. Friend is right about the importance of children knowing about issues around harassment and sexual violence. This whole approach is about building up from the very basic building blocks of respect for others. Then, as things develop and children get older, yes, it is very important to deal with these matters. Page 22 of the guidance states: “Pupils should know” about
“the concepts of, and laws relating to, sexual consent, sexual exploitation, abuse, grooming, coercion, harassment and domestic abuse and how these can affect current and future relationships.”
The hon. Lady asked about how parents can ensure that this is happening in schools, but of course in many schools it is happening. It is important to say that. We want schools to publish their policies on these matters and to encourage parental engagement.
Finally, on updates, yes, it must not be another 18 years before that happens again. We will update the guidance about every three years, because the pace at which the world is now changing—the online world in particular—requires that.