Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Munira Wilson Excerpts(3 weeks, 3 days ago)
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Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
After five years in this place, I am relieved and delighted that I and other hon. Members finally have the chance to consider a piece of legislation that focuses on children. The Bill gets to the heart of our shared duty as public representatives to ensure the safety and wellbeing of our children. The Liberal Democrats will approach the Bill in a spirit of constructive co-operation. I urge colleagues across the House to do the same for the sake of our children up and down the country.
On that particular note, I turn to the reasoned amendment tabled in the name of the Leader of the Opposition, the right hon. Member for North West Essex (Mrs Badenoch). Everyone in this House agrees that no child should ever face sexual abuse and exploitation. We all agree that the state must comprehensively investigate all allegations. We must deliver justice and prevent these sickening acts from happening again in future. Where we disagree is on how to achieve that. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches want action that helps victims and prevents these crimes from happening again. The Conservative party wants to derail this important Bill instead. We will table amendments ensuring the recommendations of the Jay inquiry are implemented in full. We will be a party of constructive opposition and we will aim to strengthen the Bill and its crucial measures on child protection and safeguarding. For that reason, we cannot accept the Opposition’s wrecking amendment. Our children’s safety and wellbeing is simply far too important. We owe it to them all to get this right.
Graham Stuart
Can the hon. Lady set out exactly in what way the amendment, which I think is entirely constructive—it accepts the safeguarding element, but challenges the educational vandalism that is being undertaken by the Government—is so objectionable?
Munira Wilson
I humbly say to the right hon. Gentleman, who has been in this place much longer than I have, that I understand that if the reasoned amendment were passed, the Bill would fall. That is why it is not a constructive amendment. That is why it is a wrecking amendment. I do not think killing a Bill that seeks to improve safeguards and safety for our children is the way to get justice for innocent victims of sexual abuse.
There is much in the Bill that we on the Liberal Democrat Benches welcome, but of course there are areas of detail where we will seek to probe and strengthen, and measures on which we will seek to go further. As the Bill makes its way through the House, we will provide that detailed scrutiny, challenge and improvement.
Some important changes are in the provisions on kinship care. The Secretary of State will be aware that this is a subject close to my heart and those of my party colleagues.
Bobby Dean (Carshalton and Wallington) (LD)
It is an issue close to my heart as well, as I moved into the care of my grandparents as a young teenager. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is crucial we get this absolutely right first time, because it is such a rare opportunity to address kinship care? Ministers should keep listening to kinship organisations to fill in the gaps that those organisations see in the Bill, particularly in relation to the definition and to mental health care support.
Munira Wilson
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. He is absolutely right. I welcome the measures that put information about the local kinship care offer on a statutory footing, recognising the crucial role of kinship carers and finally putting a statutory definition into law, which we have long called for. Yet a definition in and of itself will not provide the financial and practical support that many families and children need. Areas where the Government are taking action are limited to certain sub-groups of kinship carers and their children, thus undermining the value of the proposed definition. The charity Kinship says it would
“hope to see future legislation and the forthcoming multi-year spending review further prioritise wider kinship care reform”.
I therefore ask the Secretary of State, and will ask the Minister during the progress of the Bill, when they plan to expand the current pilot scheme to provide allowances to all kinship carers. Why does the educational support in the Bill not seek to extend pupil premium plus and priority admissions for children in kinship care?
We welcome the Bill’s provisions on child safeguarding, including the register of children not in school. As Liberals, our party firmly upholds the right of parents to educate their children at home when it is the best choice for their child. In 99% of cases a parent knows what is best for their child, but it is deeply concerning that there may be many thousands of children whose whereabouts are simply unknown. That reality can contribute, as we have seen all too recently, to tragic safeguarding failures, and that cannot continue.
Graham Stuart
Can the hon. Lady provide a single instance where a child who was in home education—we must remember that children at school spend about 86% of their time out of school—who was at harm was not known to social services already? Too easily there is a conflation of a failure of social services, which needs to be fixed, with home education, which is entirely separate.
Munira Wilson
All the evidence points to the fact that the education and schools sector must be a key safeguarding partner, which is why it is in the Bill. When a child has been identified as being at risk, ensuring that they are in school, which the Bill seeks to do, will help to safeguard them. We saw this all too tragically in the recent case of Sara Sharif: she was taken out of school and then abused at home, and tragically died.
Munira Wilson
The point is that this is just an additional measure to ensure that children like her are safe.
I want to reiterate to colleagues across the House that we absolutely support and champion the right of parents to home-educate. This is not an attack on home education; it is about ensuring that all children are safe. That is the view of the Children’s Commissioner, the National Society for the Protection of Cruelty to Children and many other organisations, and in fact parties across the House. The Conservatives themselves started to legislate for this in the last Parliament but then binned the provision. There is cross-party consensus on this measure.
There are areas of detail that we need to dig into during the Bill’s progress, but in headline terms, the register is a crucial tool in the armoury that we give local authorities to ensure that our children are safe. As I have said, it has been called for by many organisations and all parties. However, the volume of information requested from parents places a significant and potentially intrusive burden on those who choose to home-educate for the right reasons, so we must ensure that data collection is strictly necessary and proportionate and is being used appropriately.
Clause 24 sets out the cases in which parents and carers must seek permission to withdraw children from school. I would question the inclusion of children placed in special schools. When there are safeguarding concerns about a child, the local authorities should be able to step in to ensure that they receive their education at school. However, some children’s needs will not be met in the special schools in which they are placed, and parents may feel that they have no option but to home-educate. In such cases, should not the presumed options be to improve the child’s experience of the school or to work with the family to secure alternative provision, rather than using the blunt instrument of clause 24?
We know that, after years of neglect and mismanagement by the Conservatives, our schools are crying out for support. For students, parents and teachers enduring crumbling buildings, persistent underfunding and a spiralling SEND crisis, hearing the Conservatives’ rhetoric today will be utterly galling. The Bill takes welcome steps in restoring local authorities’ powers to propose new maintained schools—especially given the desperate need in many areas for new special schools, which local authorities have regularly been prevented from establishing in recent years—although, it is disappointing that it does nothing else to start addressing the reforms that are so desperately needed to improve the special educational needs system. We also welcome the co-operation on school admissions criteria. Together, these changes empower communities to allocate educational resources locally, but some clarifications are needed.
Let me ask specifically what assessment the Government have made of the impact of requiring every single teacher to have, or to work towards, qualified teacher status, and whether they have spoken to the sector about that. We all agree that we want qualified teachers in our schools, but there may be some unintended consequences when non-qualified teachers are brought in to run certain services and extracurricular activities. Are the Government confident that this measure will not lead to those unintended consequences?
The provisions on pay should seek only to set a minimum floor, not a maximum ceiling, on what staff can be paid. I take on board what the Secretary of State said in response to an earlier intervention—that no one’s pay would be cut—but that is a retrospective reflection. I hope that in future all schools, whether or not they are academies, should be able to pay a premium in order to attract the right staff, if they have the resources to do so. [Interruption.] From a sedentary position, the Conservatives are saying that they will not be able to do that. In Committee, we will seek to amend the Bill to make it clear that this should be a floor, not a ceiling.
Mrs Sarah Russell
My experience as an employment lawyer is that academy schools generate large amounts of employment rights litigation because they tend not to treat their staff very well. [Interruption.] Some do, of course, but litigation is not in the best interests of children, and ensuring that children have teachers who are adequately paid is a key consideration for Labour Members.
Munira Wilson
I am not in a position to comment on the statistics relating to employment law issues in different types of school. I suspect that whichever type of school we look at, we will find cases across the board, but I am not sure that is up for debate today.
The title of the Bill includes the words “Children’s Wellbeing”, but child poverty is the key issue hindering the wellbeing of children in the UK today. The shameful legacy of the Conservative Government is one of far too many children going hungry at school. We Liberal Democrats have put forward a fully costed plan to extend free school meals to the 900,000 children in poverty up to the age of 18 who are currently excluded, and it is disappointing that the Government have not taken this opportunity to ensure that no child goes hungry throughout the school day. A meal at lunch time may be the only hot, nutritious meal that some children get, and all the evidence shows that it helps them to concentrate and learn through the course of the day and achieve better outcomes. We must also bear in mind that hunger does not end at 11. Breakfast clubs can be useful, but expanding lunch provision is a far more ambitious measure, and one that would have a greater impact on child hunger.
As was pointed out by the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), far too many families who are entitled to claim free school meals are not doing so; there are an estimated 470,000 such cases. Not only are those children missing out on the hot meals to which they are entitled, but their schools are missing out on much-needed pupil premium funding.
Chris Vince
I welcome the hon. Lady’s comments about the need for young people to have hot food. At Jerounds primary school in my constituency, the kitchen is closed because of reinforced autoclaved aerated concrete and the last Government’s failure to provide the necessary funds, so none of those children can have hot food. Does the hon. Lady agree that is not good enough?
Munira Wilson
Absolutely, and I am very sorry to hear about that case. The last Government did not deal with RAAC in our school buildings, and it was as a result of work that my colleagues and I did, along with Labour Members, to expose some of the shocking extent of it that we finally started to get some traction on the issue.
The Liberal Democrat-led coalition administration in Durham county council introduced auto-enrolment for free school meals in September last year. An extra 2,500 children have been signed up, and there has been an extra £3 million in pupil premium funding for the county. Just imagine the impact that that model could have nationally. I hope that the Government will take this opportunity to expand free school meals and introduce auto-enrolment.
I was disappointed to see no mention of mental health in a “wellbeing Bill.” This was an opportunity to tackle the mental health crisis that we are seeing among our children, and it is crucial that we do not allow that opportunity to slide away. Given that, on average, six children in every classroom have a mental health condition, the Government could have seized the chance to ensure that every school in the country, whether primary or secondary, has a statutory and fully funded duty to provide a dedicated mental health professional. As the Bill progresses, my Liberal Democrat colleagues and I will seek to do just that, and I am sure that we can count on support from across the House.
Gideon Amos (Taunton and Wellington) (LD)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent and balanced case for protecting children. Many children with mental health problems and autism are educated at home because there is no realistic alternative. Does she agree that the Secretary of State should be encouraged to ensure that the support given to home-educating families under clause 25 includes free access to examinations, which can cost hundreds of pounds? Children are struggling to benefit from a good home education because of the cost. Does my hon. Friend support that idea?
Munira Wilson
I am happy to support that. In fact, when the previous Administration introduced the schools Bill, which they then decided to bin, the Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords tabled an amendment that did just that, and I am sure that we will seek to do the same this time around to help the families who choose to home-educate.
Although this Bill sets out some important reforms to our schools system, the Liberal Democrats would like to see greater ambition. The attainment gap has widened significantly in recent years, and it is unacceptable that outcomes for less affluent and more vulnerable students are getting worse. We believe that one piece of the puzzle would be a tutoring guarantee for every disadvantaged pupil who needs support. When implemented correctly, tutoring has proved its worth time and again. Seven in 10 parents whose children receive tutoring at school say that it has raised their child’s attainment. We know that it also boosts young people’s confidence, and tutoring can help tackle persistent absence, which is a huge issue in our schools. I hope the Secretary of State agrees that a tutoring guarantee, introduced via this Bill, would be a powerful tool in narrowing the attainment gap and ensuring that every child gets the high-quality education they deserve.
Let me reiterate that this is a Bill that we must get right. Now is not the time to play politics. Now is the time to work to keep our children safe, to give them the chance to flourish. That is our task across this House, and it is the mission that my party will pursue as the Bill progresses.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
I do not wish to set a time limit, so if colleagues keep their contributions nice and short and tight, we can try to get everybody in.
Children’s Social Care
Munira Wilson Excerpts(2 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The review of children’s social care carried out by the hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) in 2022 found that, without reform, there could be almost 100,000 children in care by 2032, costing an extra £5 billion a year, so it is essential that we recognise the scale and urgency of this crisis and move quickly, unlike the previous Conservative Government. Today’s announcements are therefore a welcome step forward.
Tackling profiteering will help not only to address the financial crisis facing councils, but to deliver better outcomes for our most vulnerable children and young people. These are children for whom we in this place all bear a huge responsibility, and it is simply unacceptable that they have become a cash cow for private equity companies raking in profits of 28% or more, so could the Secretary of State spell out when we will see these reforms implemented, and when she anticipates the backstop taking effect?
Cracking down on profiteering is only one side of the bargain. To put provision on a stable and sustainable footing, we must also ensure that councils can provide these services themselves, where necessary, so will the Government work to support local authorities in running children’s homes, where they want to do so and where there is need? Many of these private equity firms are also profiteering from special schools, and we are starting to see them in the early years sector, too. Is the Secretary of State looking at those areas, and will she apply some of today’s announcements to them?
A new focus on family care is very welcome, as early support for families can keep children out of care who do not need to be there. Kinship carers are unsung heroes who often step up at a moment’s notice to look after family members. Will the Secretary of State please commit to moving beyond the very limited pilots that have been proposed, to a universal allowance for kinship carers, on a par with that received by foster carers? Will she also take the opportunity offered by the Employment Rights Bill, which is currently before the House, to legislate for paid employment leave for kinship carers? All the evidence points to that leading to better outcomes—and it would achieve cost savings immediately, not just in the long term.
Bridget Phillipson
The hon. Lady has rightly championed the cause of kinship carers for many years in this House, and I pay tribute to her for drawing attention to this crucial area. The measures we set out in the Budget represent the single biggest investment in kinship care ever made by a Government. This is an important first step, but it is not the only action we need to take in this area. I will, of course, work with her and with Members on both sides of the House to make sure that kinship carers have all the support they need.
The hon. Lady is right that, in this House, we all bear a responsibility to represent the needs of vulnerable children, whose voices are often not heard in our deliberations. We will seek to bring forward measures as soon as parliamentary time allows, because we know that the crisis we face is urgent.
Yes, we will work with councils on the services they can provide, either directly or by working with charities and others. I have seen great examples across the country of that already happening. Councils need the Government to give them further backing to do this on a bigger scale, and the plans we are setting out today will provide for precisely that.
Today, I am calling time on excessive profiteering, and if providers do not respond, we will not hesitate to bring forward measures to cap their profits. We are looking very closely at special schools, too.
Oral Answers to Questions
Munira Wilson Excerpts(4 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Catherine McKinnell
We accepted the School Teachers Review Body’s recommendation of a 5.5% award for teachers and leaders in maintained schools in England from September. It is a substantial award that recognises the hard work of those in our teaching profession. We recognise the challenges in the FE sector also and the issues that the hon. Lady outlines. We will continue to keep the matter under review, because we want to ensure that every child has the best opportunities, whether that is in our school system or in our FE sector.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
The new Government’s focus on the serious recruitment and retention crisis is welcome. However, as we have heard, the recent pay announcement overlooked teachers who work in colleges, who already face a pay gap of more than £9,000. We have twice the proportion of students from disadvantaged backgrounds in our colleges as in school sixth forms, so the recruitment issue is even more pressing in our colleges. Why is it that teachers of 16-year-olds in schools deserve a pay rise, but teachers of 16-year-olds in colleges do not?
Catherine McKinnell
We recognise the challenges that the hon. Lady sets out. We are facing an incredibly challenging fiscal position. From the previous Government, we inherited a £22 billion black hole to make up. This is about the opportunities of young people in this country, and we take the issues that she outlines incredibly seriously. We will continue to do what we can within the fiscal envelope that we have, and within the system that we have inherited. That is why we honoured the recommendations of the STRB review, and we will continue to do what we can in FE.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
Disadvantaged pupils between 16 and 19 are likely to be up to four grades behind their more affluent peers. We know that funding drops by about a third at 16, yet 16-to-19 tuition was axed in July, and the pupil premium has never applied to that age group. If the Secretary of State is serious about smashing the glass ceiling, will she consider increasing funding targeted at this group?
Bridget Phillipson
I share the hon. Lady’s concern about making sure that we target funding in the most effective way. That is why I have said that my No. 1 priority is ensuring that we support children and young people at the earliest possible point, and give a real commitment around early education and childcare, because that is the single biggest way to ensure that our children arrive at school really well prepared and to stop those gaps opening up as children progress through education.
Education and Opportunity
Munira Wilson Excerpts(6 months, 1 week ago)
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Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
May I warmly welcome you to the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker? It is a pleasure to see you. I also warmly welcome the Education Secretary and all her Ministers to their posts. As the right hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) said, they absolutely have the best jobs in Government. I am very jealous indeed, but I am looking forward to working with them constructively over the course of this Parliament to deliver the best possible start for children and young people. I am delighted to be speaking today on behalf of the third party in the House from the vastly expanded Liberal Democrat Benches.
I am grateful for the Government making time today for a dedicated debate on education and opportunity. Over the past few years, children and young people’s education has frankly been sidelined in the political agenda. It was no surprise to me that His Majesty’s loyal Opposition did not seek to allocate specific time for this area during the King’s Speech debates, instead bundling all public services, welfare and the economy into a single evening’s debate. Today’s debate is therefore very welcome indeed. Education is the greatest investment that we can make to ensure that every child, no matter their background, has the opportunity to flourish to their full potential. As a result, it is also the greatest investment that we can make for our economy and our society.
The King’s Speech and Government announcements in the past three weeks have included some encouraging measures that the Liberal Democrats welcome. On that note, I very much welcome the Education Secretary’s announcement on the level 3 qualifications review. The Liberal Democrats have long been saying that BTecs should not be funded until T-levels have properly bedded in. Actually, T-levels are squeezing so many young people out of the system and leaving them without options that we need a good range of options, so the review is very welcome. I also welcome the curriculum review that she announced. The devil, of course, in all the announcements so far will be in the detail. I hope that Ministers will work collaboratively, cross-party, on the areas where we are in agreement, though there are areas where we are not in agreement.
One area where we are in violent agreement is the state in which the Conservative Government left our schools and colleges. Shortly before the election, I spoke to a school governor in my constituency who told me that their school is at rock bottom. Their school budget has been so squeezed that they are reliant on Amazon wish lists from which parents are asked to provide basic essentials such as whiteboard pens and glue sticks. That has become the reality for so many schools up and down the country. Not only are schools struggling to afford basic supplies, but they lack the resources to maintain their buildings. It is now well documented that the Leader of the Opposition, when he was Chancellor, repeatedly refused to fund the investment in school buildings that the Department for Education made clear was needed. The result? Children are being taught in classrooms with leaky windows, broken heating and crumbling concrete.
Where even to start with special educational needs? We heard about this issue from the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes). I suspect that every Member across this House, new and returning, has a bulging inbox of SEND casework. The system is in crisis. Local authorities are stretched to the limit and our most vulnerable children are struggling, with their parents stuck in an adversarial system, fighting day in and day out to ensure that their children can get an education and the support that they deserve to thrive. Inadequate support for SEND children in mainstream schools, coupled with a lack of specialist provision, means that too many children are languishing at home without proper access to education, or travelling huge distances at great cost to overstretched local authorities because there just is not enough local provision.
The lack of provision is having an impact on not only our pupils but our teachers. Many are being driven out of the profession because of the pressures that they face. They often tell me that they are acting as the fourth emergency service, because all the support services outside our schools are crumbling. Not enough new teachers are entering our classrooms, despite the figures that the shadow Secretary of State gave. The previous Conservative Government missed their own secondary schoolteacher training targets for 10 out of 11 years. That means not only that many children are not being taught by a specialist in their subject but that existing teachers are having to take on inordinate workloads due to the lack of staff. A study conducted this year found that 86% of teachers believe that their job has negatively impacted their mental health, with an increased workload being the main cause of stress. Over the past nine years, the Conservatives neglected our education system, and our children and young people are now paying the price. For the sake of our future generations, we must prioritise fixing it. [Interruption.] I will mention the coalition shortly, just to cheer up the hon. Member for South West Hertfordshire (Mr Mohindra).
The Liberal Democrats welcomed the announcement in the King’s Speech of a children’s wellbeing Bill. We have long argued that wellbeing should be at the heart of our policymaking for children and young people. Hungry children struggling with their mental health will not be able to achieve their potential, either academically or socially. We know that poverty and mental ill health are significant contributors to the staggering numbers of children missing from school. We welcome the long-awaited introduction of the children-not-in-school register, a measure that has had cross-party support for several years and featured in the Liberal Democrat manifesto. This is particularly important given that last autumn term there were 33,000 children missing from education, with vulnerable children slipping under the radar. The change is long overdue, and I hope that the Government implement it without delay.
That register is very important for safeguarding, but we must address the underlying causes of school absence. We have seen an explosion of mental ill health among children and young people in recent years. It is estimated that one in five children have a probable mental health disorder—that is six in every classroom. A lack of available mental health support means that many children are left languishing at home, missing out on key learning time. It also has much more serious consequences. The day after the election was called, I spoke to a local secondary headteacher in my constituency; several children in recent months had ended up in A&E after attempted suicide. A broken mother, whose teenage daughter had tragically been successful in taking her own life earlier this year, approached me in a local park and spoke to me about how local services had let her daughter down.
Prevention is better than cure. The Liberal Democrats welcome the Government’s commitment to introducing a mental health practitioner in every secondary school, but we must start at a younger age. That is why the Liberal Democrats have long called for the introduction of mental health practitioners in every primary and secondary school. I recognise the mental health support teams introduced by the previous Government, but they are shared across far too many schools. The average primary school gets half a day a week, and the average secondary school gets maybe one or two days a week. Those schools need full-time dedicated support, given the level of need in schools. We know that 50% of all lifetime mental health disorders develop by the age of 14. Putting mental health practitioners in every primary school would allow us to address those issues before they become permanent, ultimately saving our health services money in the long term.
Another underlying cause of absence from school, and pressure on school staff, is the growing number of children living in poverty. It is disappointing that the Government continue to refuse to lift the two-child cap on benefits. The Liberal Democrats will continue to campaign for that cruel policy to be removed, which would immediately lift 300,000 children out of poverty. Children up and down the country cannot afford to eat, with some children being forced to pretend to eat out of empty lunchboxes, or reportedly even eating rubbers out of desperation. In a country as wealthy as ours, no child should be going hungry at school. That is why I am immensely proud that it was the Liberal Democrats in Government who introduced free school meals for every infant schoolchild. [Interruption.] It was a Liberal Democrat policy that we had to fight for in Government. The benefits of free school meals are immense. They save parents time and money, help children to eat more healthily, and have even been proven to boost educational outcomes.
Although Labour has proposed free breakfast clubs for children in primary school, which will be beneficial, often the children most in need are those living very far from school in temporary accommodation, who have extremely long journeys and simply cannot get to school in time for breakfast. Free school meals guarantee that those children have access to a hot, healthy meal in the middle of each school day to give them the energy that they need to learn. Most importantly, hunger does not stop at the age of 11. According to the Child Poverty Action Group, an estimated 900,000 children in poverty miss out on free school meals, and many of them are in secondary school. That is why the Liberal Democrats are committed to rolling out free school meals to every child in poverty, whether they are primary or secondary school age, in line with Henry Dimbleby’s recommendations to the previous Conservative Government, which they completely ignored.
Sadly, research shows that the inequalities within our education system are deepening. As we have heard, according to data published by the Education Policy Institute just last week, by the time students from a disadvantaged background leave secondary school they are 19.2 months behind their peers. That is the highest attainment gap in over 10 years. Established by the Liberal Democrats in Government, the pupil premium was once a vital fund to support disadvantaged children. Unfortunately, we have seen that value erode by some 14% in real terms since the Tories were left to their own devices in 2015. One proven method to tackle the attainment gap is tutoring in small groups and one to one. In fact, research conducted by the Education Endowment Foundation shows that over the course of a year an average four months of additional progress is made because of tutoring. Although flawed in its delivery, the national tutoring programme, which was introduced during covid, and the 16 to 19 tuition fund had a transformational impact for many pupils. Talking about his experience of tutoring, Aiden from London South East Colleges said that he was aiming only for a 4 the third time he retook his English GCSE—he just wanted to get it over and done with—but he now has a 6, and it is all thanks to his tutor. He is going on to do higher-level qualifications, and he hopes to go to university and become a paramedic.
It was not just Aiden whose grades improved; there were 62,000 additional passes in GCSE English and maths over the two years that Government-funded tutoring was in existence. Sadly, at the last Budget, the Conservative Government refused to continue funding for the national tutoring programme or the 16 to 19 tuition fund. The funding runs out today, pretty much, because it is the end of the academic year. Given the new Secretary of State’s stated commitment to extending opportunity to all and narrowing the attainment gap, will she look at the programme urgently and ensure that tutoring funding continues?
Susan Murray (Mid Dunbartonshire) (LD)
Will my right hon. Friend allow an intervention?
Susan Murray
Apologies. Given what my hon. Friend is talking about, it is important to note that applying VAT to independent schools will have a significant effect on their affordability for parents who make that choice. In my Mid Dunbartonshire constituency, not all parents will be able to afford the extra 20% per child. We hear about the pressure that the state is already under. Does she agree that there will be significant additional costs to the state in Scotland, as well as in England and Wales—
Munira Wilson
I thank my hon. Friend for her important intervention. She pre-empts what I was about to say about the issue of VAT on private school fees and the pressures that it will create for some families and schools.
I have set out a range of targeted measures that I think would help tackle the disadvantage gap. They were part of an ambitious package that the Liberal Democrats put forward at the election to ensure that our education system enables every child to thrive and that the local state school is the school of choice for every family in this country. But as liberals, we champion choice, and it is important that parents can choose the best and most appropriate option for their children. Importantly, and fundamentally, we believe in the principle that education—whether we are talking about private schools, music tuition, private tutoring or childcare—should not be taxed, so we oppose the Labour Government’s policy to introduce VAT on independent school fees.
I do not think the policy will do much at all to boost our state schools. In fact, it risks reducing the brilliant partnership work—the sharing of staff time and facilities, for example—that we see between so many private schools and their local state schools. I have seen that vividly, with Hampton school and Lady Eleanor Holles school in my constituency working with the Reach academy in Feltham, in a very deprived area. They have really helped to boost the life chances of many of those children in Feltham, including by helping with coaching for university and medical school interviews.
Sarah Green (Chesham and Amersham) (LD)
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that in many local authority areas, such as mine in Buckinghamshire, schools are already oversubscribed, so the places in the state sector simply do not exist for independent school parents who find they can no longer afford the fees?
Munira Wilson
I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I hear repeatedly that there are areas across the country where schools are full and parents are wondering where on earth they will be able to send their children to school. It is simply not true that it is just the ultra-wealthy who send their kids to private school. I am particularly concerned about those parents who, for whatever reason, feel that the local state school is not best suited to their child’s needs. That particularly applies to the 100,000 children in the independent sector with special educational needs who do not qualify for an education, health and care plan and will not be exempted under the Government’s proposed policy.
I have heard too often from parents, on the doorstep and in my inbox, “I really want to send my child to the local state school, and we tried it, but it just couldn’t meet my child’s needs, so we are now making all sorts of sacrifices to send them to a much smaller, more pastoral independent school, where they have been transformed.” It is those families, who will be penalised under this policy, that I am particularly worried about. The vast majority of independent schools are small, with fewer than 400 pupils, and a number will struggle to survive as parents are priced out, putting pressure on state schools, as we have heard.
Today’s debate is focused on education and opportunity. As Liberal Democrats, we recognise that education is the ultimate creator of opportunity and empowers every person to build a better future for themselves and contribute to our economy and society, yet our young people have been let down for far too long. I desperately hope that, with a new Government, that will change, and I look forward to working constructively with them wherever possible on meaningful action to ensure that it does.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Ghani)
We come to our first maiden speech this afternoon—I call Darren Paffey.