Oral Answers to Questions

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Monday 21st July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

May I join Ministers in thanking our school and college staff up and down the country for their dedication? I wish them happy and restorative summer holidays.

Children with special educational needs who started reception last year were over a year behind their peers, according to the Education Policy Institute. Staggeringly, those with an education, health and care plan were already over 20 months behind—the widest gap that the EPI has recorded since it started monitoring in 2013. Given the importance of the early years in narrowing the gap, it is crucial that we give every child the help that they need as soon as possible. Will the Minister confirm how much of the £760 million for SEND transformation announced in the spending review will go towards early identification and intervention?

[Stephen Morgan]

The Government are committed to ensuring excellence for everyone so that children have the support, skills and opportunities that they need, and that starts in early years. We are actively working with parents and experts on solutions, including more early intervention to prevent needs from escalating. Any changes we make will improve support for children and parents, stop parents having to fight for support, and protect current effective provision.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

Order. Please, we have to try to get in as many Members as possible. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I echo the Secretary of State’s remarks about the tragedy in Minehead. My thoughts and prayers are with all those affected.

Every parent who puts a baby into childcare wants to know that they are safe. In the light of the crucial role that CCTV played in the harrowing case at Twickenham Green nursery in my constituency, which resulted in a nursery worker being convicted of 21 counts of child cruelty last month, and in the tragic case of Gigi Meehan in Cheadle, will the Secretary of State commit to issuing fresh guidance to nurseries on the use and regular monitoring of CCTV footage?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Stephen Morgan)]

The hon. Member will know that I met the family of Genevieve Meehan recently. That was a tragic case. We need to make sure that we are doing everything we possibly can to protect children in nursery settings. That is why I am pleased that in the “best start in life” strategy, published just two weeks ago, we committed to have early years settings inspected within 18 months and, indeed, within four years. I have offered a meeting with the hon. Member, and I am very happy to discuss these issues further.

Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Wednesday 16th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I welcome this opportunity to talk about giving every child the best start in life. I suspect there are not many people in this Chamber who would disagree that every child, no matter their background or needs, deserves the very best start in life. It is our duty as elected representatives and policymakers to ensure that parents and carers have access to the help and support they need to ensure that every child gets that best start in life.

The Best Start family hubs announced last week are very welcome and present a great opportunity for the Government to address the growing inequalities across our education system that were left behind by the previous Government. If resourced properly, the Best Start family hubs expansion could help to achieve many of the things that we on the Liberal Democrat Benches have been calling for, including: the early identification of special educational needs and disabilities; contact time with mental health practitioners; and access to nutritional advice. However, the Government’s ambitious aims must be matched with effective delivery. Children and families cannot afford for the Government to get this wrong, after many years under the Conservatives when early years provision really started to disintegrate.

The strategy states that

“high-quality early education and childcare boosts children’s life chances and enables parents to work”.

I warmly welcome plans to invest in training and qualifications to raise the skill levels of the early years workforce, but I am afraid that the Government’s rhetoric does not quite meet the reality on the ground. The funding promised by the Conservative Government for their 30 hours childcare proposals fell far short of what it actually costs to deliver that provision, and I am afraid that Labour’s current proposals are also insufficient for nurseries.

Labour’s ill-advised national insurance hike has not only hampered economic growth, but put hundreds of charitable and private nurseries at risk of collapse. Indeed, the Early Years Alliance reports that nearly one third of providers are at risk of permanent closure in the next year, and that four in 10 would reduce the number of funded places for three and four-year-olds. When coupled with damaging new guidance to local authorities on funding agreements, the Government risk expanding the childcare deserts left behind by the Conservative Government. What is the point of expanding early years entitlements for children if parents are not able to access them because providers are simply unable to fulfil them?

With the expansion of childcare provision, keeping our children safe is paramount. I welcome confirmation last week that the frequency of Ofsted inspections of early years settings will increase and that work is being done to develop an effective approach to group inspections. However, as the Minister knows from some of our conversations, if we are to prevent tragedies, such as the case of baby Gigi Meehan in Cheadle and the recent shocking case in my own constituency that last month saw a nursery worker convicted of 21 counts of child cruelty at Twickenham Green nursery, Ministers must go further and they must go faster.

The early years foundation framework urgently needs to be strengthened, and better guidance needs to be put in place for how we keep babies in particular safe in early years settings. That is particularly important as we see the expansion of childcare provision for the under-twos. I hope we will see clearer guidance on safe sleep practice, but also on the use of CCTV, which proved critical in the cases I cited, and on the regular review of that CCTV footage. The strategy points to a

“golden thread of evidence-informed practice”,

so I hope the Minister tell us whether she will work with health authorities and expert charities to co-ordinate national safe sleep standards for use in early years settings. We must ensure that that goes hand in hand with multi-agency safeguarding training.

Giving children the best start in the early years also means giving parents genuine choice on whether to spend more time at home or go back to work full time. I am immensely proud that it was the Liberal Democrats in Government who introduced shared parental leave—yet, years later, take-up remains far too low because of low rates of statutory maternity and paternity pay, and shared parental leave pay. I am aware that the Government have started their review into parental leave and pay, which I warmly welcome.

The Liberal Democrats have long called for statutory maternity and shared parental pay to be doubled to £350 a week, and for fathers to be entitled to a month of paternity leave, as well as a “use it or lose it” month of shared parental leave, because we know just how valuable the first months of a child’s life are and the importance of the involvement of both parents. I hope the Minister and his colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade will heed our calls. I also want to press him again on the strong economic and moral case for granting statutory paid leave for kinship carers, so many of whom are forced out of work when they take on caring responsibilities to provide a safe and stable home for children.

We must acknowledge that despite all efforts, some children simply will not get the best start in life due to unimaginable trauma, which can mean that the only safe course of action is to separate them from their birth parents. It therefore falls to us collectively as corporate parents to ensure those children get the very best second chance at life. Family hubs must be more than signposting services; they should offer trusted relationships and trauma-informed practice embedded within staff training and service design as part of the Government’s commitment to rebuilding trust with families.

Continuing on that theme, the adoption and special guardianship support fund, as many Members will know, provides funding for vital therapy to help the most vulnerable children to process their trauma. These sessions are not easy, with some children taking months to even step through the door, but it is vital that these children are given the space, time and support to relearn how to trust adults. Slashing the funding for each child from £5,000 to £3,000 means that many will stop their therapy sessions just as they get through the door and start to make progress. Not only is this incredibly frustrating for the adoptive parents and special guardians; it sadly compounds the child’s tragic belief that all adults do is let them down.

Both the Minister who opened the debate and the Minister for Children and Families, who is sitting next to him on the Front Bench, know that I am determined to see the full £5,000 grant funding restored for every eligible child. I press the Minister again to go to the Treasury and demand the additional funds to meet the growth in demand for those grants so that the next generation can believe that there are adults, and even Governments, worth trusting. I have pointed out previously that halving the Department’s advertising and consultancy budget would enable the ASGSF to grow by 50% from £50 million to £75 million to meet that additional demand.

Short of that, I urge the Minister not to leave parents, carers and children in limbo again by waiting until the last minute to announce whether the fund will continue next year. Instead, I hope that Ministers will commit to announcing the future of the fund by September, now that we have had the spending review, so that families and providers can plan and have certainty for the future.

Finally, parents and carers have for far too long been subjected to an adversarial special educational needs system where they have had to fight tooth and nail to secure their children’s right to learn. A good education helps children to discover who they are and what they are good at, but sadly far too many have been denied the help they need. As the Chair of the Education Committee has pointed out, the rumours that have been swirling have left many families up and down the country deeply concerned. We met a number of those families in Parliament yesterday, and I know that the inboxes of Members across the House have been filled with worried emails on this matter.

It is clear the system is broken and needs reform, but any change must have children at its heart, not a Treasury drive for savings by removing rights in a vacuum. I am glad to see that inclusive practice for children with SEND will be embedded in early years teaching; early identification is crucial in ensuring that children can get the help they need when they need it. However, it remains to be seen just what that help will be. The Government have failed continuously to communicate with those directly affected by their decisions, but they have the chance today to tell parents whether education, health and care plans will be removed from any child.

I reiterate what my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) said to the Prime Minister last week, and what my right hon. Friend and I said in the letter we sent to the Education Secretary and the Prime Minister, in which we set out the Liberal Democrats’ five principles for SEND reform. We are very happy to work constructively with the Government on that reform, because we know that all these children—whether they have special needs and whatever their background—deserve the very best start in life.

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Snell]

My hon. Friend has made the point excellently. Although she and I will talk passionately about the experiences that we see in our own city, I am sure that in every city like ours across the country—including, I would wager, Bradford, Madam Deputy Speaker—there are good teachers who go above and beyond to support local communities, and schools that act more as hubs for social support, community involvement and neighbourhood engagement than simply as places for young people to be educated.

We are very fortunate in Stoke-on-Trent, because we already have some family hubs. I have two in my constituency. There is one at Bentilee, which does exceedingly good work, supported by Simon French and the Alpha Academies Trust, and Thrive at Five; multi-agency activity there is genuinely looking at the direct causes of the attainment issues and at what can be done practically to support families. We also have the hub at Thomas Boughey children’s centre.

The family hubs model is not particularly revolutionary, because it replicates what happened with Sure Start. My daughter is now 14, and her mother and I had to access the Sure Start system when she was born. There were things that, as new parents in our mid-20s, we simply did not know. My family and hers both lived far away, and our network of support was really quite small, so we naturally turned to our Sure Start centre, which was based up the road in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee), who is no longer in his place—I have denied him the opportunity for another intervention. We walked into the Sure Start centre, spoke to a lovely woman and explained our problems, which were about latching and trying to understand routines.

Unless people have someone who can sit them down and talk them through it, they do not really know what they are doing. As a new parent who did not really know what I was doing, my instinct was to think, “I’m probably doing it badly and wrong.” We went to the Sure Start centre, and it was lovely and welcoming. We sat down and had a conversation with somebody. We went through what we were worried about, and we were reassured that the anxiety we were experiencing as new, young parents was perfectly normal and in line with everybody else’s expectations and understanding. Somebody there was a lifeline for us, and we were signposted to a room down the corridor and told when we could pop by again and have another conversation with somebody who had a level of expertise and who could offer support.

The model that we are now rerunning in Stoke-on-Trent has benefits. Looking at some of the data coming out of Bentilee in particular, we can see that there are improvements in the attainment levels of children starting school who have been through the programme, who have interacted with some of the schemes and who have accessed the maintained school nursery at the same site. I know the Minister will be aware of the importance of maintained nursery schools—those teacher-led facilities that really get to the crux of the problem in some of the communities that are the hardest to deal with.

Alongside the family hub, I welcome all the work that the Government are doing in this area. There is a breakfast club at the Co-op Academy Grove school in Northwood. Mrs Carrigan and I were there one morning as it was starting, and I noticed not just that children were coming in to have a hot breakfast, which was reassuring and welcome, but that they were interacting and talking to each other. In fact, the staff told me that the most popular thing that the young boys do after they have their breakfast is to go and play with the playdough. They do not want to play electronic games; they want to build and model stuff. As a result, the staff are looking at setting up a science, technology, engineering and maths group, because they can see that that is where some of the young people want to go.

Mrs Carrigan told me that the children were also more settled; because they have come into school slightly earlier, have had their breakfast and taken off their coats, when the day starts they are ready to start learning from the moment the bell goes, which means those vital minutes in the morning are used for teaching, not for trying to calm down a class of 30 children who are a little bit all over the place. We cannot underestimate how much those minutes accrue over the course of a year and how much time can be brought back for education purposes.

Fundamentally, the challenges I face in Stoke-on-Trent, and that other Members have eloquently articulated in their own communities, stem from the fact that the attainment rate for the best start to life in places like Stoke-on-Trent is not as great as for children in other areas because of the poverty levels. Whether we call it furniture poverty, food poverty or child poverty—whatever we call it—it is poverty: young people growing up in households that simply do not have enough coming in to meet all their outgoings.

The best start in life is not only an educational issue. I appreciate that this debate is being led by the Department for Education because that is where the policy area sits, but if we want to give a child a good start in life, they need a safe, warm home that is not draughty; they need somewhere where they have the space to grow, develop and learn; and they need secure play areas where they feel comfortable to socialise and interact with their peers. They also need access to good-quality dentists, as the huge levels of tooth decay in Stoke mean that children are missing school; access to those vital health services is crucial.

Let me turn to the parenting aspect. Too many of my constituents tell me that they had a really bad experience at school, so they do not want to go back into school to get help, advice and support. For them, school was a moment of trauma—a time that they did not particularly enjoy—so being asked to go back to school, in some cases to see the same members of staff who taught them 20 years earlier, gives them the sense that they are being judged.

We need to think much more holistically and about what levers we can pull, through Government and local government, to see our aspiration of improved outcomes for young people. Education is one of those levers, but we also have to make sure that parents can access good-quality support for their own health and mental health, and good-quality jobs so that they can afford to have a good work-life balance and to spend time with their children. We need to have a think about the way in which we establish networks for young people so that, as well as the formal education setting, they can access necessary social activities, whether through formal organisations like the scouts or through sporting clubs. There has to be an opportunity for young people to socialise in the way that they are happiest to do.

Fundamentally—I know the Minister gets this because I have spoken to her about it—we have to think about the nuances for individual groups of young people, who need specific support. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) rightly pointed out that the removal of the adoption and special guardianship support fund is a particular challenge for a small but high-need group of young people. I have made my views on that known to the Minister, and I hope that her Department will look at what more can be done to support children growing up in kinship care arrangements, like I did, because they face specific challenges. This is not necessarily a poverty-related issue, but it is about accessing support services that allow them to live a fruitful childhood.

Finally, on SEND, I am proud to be a governor of the Abbey Hill special school, which is in the constituency of my neighbour my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South. One of the biggest challenges we face relates to EHCPs and how to give young people a particularly good chance in life. Under section I, parents can identify the particular school they want their child to go to. I agree with the Government’s plan on this; if we can keep children who have additional needs—whether that be SEND or social, emotional, and mental health requirements—in the mainstream setting with the right help and the right support, we should do so. That frees up places for the children who need that specialist, bespoke support in special schools, to a level that means everyone is in the right place.

We need to stop those mainly alternative providers, which are running huge profits, marketing their schools to children and families who are desperately in need of help and support, and saying to them, “Tell your local authority, under section I, that you want to go to this particular school”, because that means the money flows out. Hundreds of thousands of pounds are spent on alternative providers, normally outside of the area, and those providers get that money through marketing; they sell young people and their parents a dream of a particular type of education that they can access, regardless of the standard of that education.

[Munira Wilson]

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches tried to put forward an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to extend the profit cap that the Government have proposed for children’s social care homes run by private equity firms to the special schools creaming off profits from our local authorities and denying vulnerable children the education they need. However, I am afraid that Labour Members voted against it, so will he join me in convincing Ministers to think again while the other place is considering the Bill?

[Gareth Snell]

I would not say that the hon. Lady’s intervention was helpful to me, but she has made her point. The Government have been quite clear that we must look at how some alternative provision and specialist independent providers are making huge profits off the back of some of the most desperate and vulnerable children in our society, and at how local authorities need the tools to tackle that. In a new programme opening in my own city, one of the trusts that runs one of the special schools is looking to do mainstream work with some of the other trusts’ schools, but that is about getting trusts to work together. I do not remember her amendment, but I have absolute faith in the ministerial team—[Interruption.] I am sorry, but I cannot honestly say that I read everything that the Liberal Democrats produce.

To move this forward slightly, I do know, and the hon. Lady will know, that the Government have been quite clear about the need to tackle the profiteering and price gouging happening in the sector. I am almost certain that the Minister will have a better answer for her than I can give her while I am speaking. That is obviously something we all agree on as a principle, and I am sure we can have a discussion another time about how we get there. However, in places such as Stoke, the higher needs budget is being blown because thousands of pounds are being taken by these glossy brochure schools that are making huge profits, and that does not give the young people in my city the best start in life. I think it gives them false hope.

Finally, I would say to the Minister that the best start in life is about the first 1,001 days. I am very proud to chair the APPG on literacy, and I am really glad that the Department for Education has announced the year of reading. The bond of reading to your child is so important. Early years literacy, which also helps with oracy, means young people can start school with a set of skills that will help them thrive throughout their education.

The other part of this that we need to think about is how we help parents who do not have a level of literacy necessary to start reading to their children. Again, all too often in my constituency I talk to parents who want to talk about literacy, but their confidence in their own literacy skills is such that they do not feel able to do that. It would be welcome if, as part of the National Year of Reading, the Department not only helped young people and children get more into reading and enjoying books—enjoying reading for pleasure, as opposed to having to read for work as most of us do—but ensured that parents were supported to improve their literacy in a way that allows them to interact with their children for longer as their own education progresses, I know that would be a huge benefit not just in my constituency but across the whole country.

Educational Attainment of Boys

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 10th July 2025 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

Can I start by warmly congratulating the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) on securing this incredibly important debate and on his powerful and insightful opening speech? It behoves all of us to spend more time on this topic, so I am grateful that he has made me look into it more than I had previously. It goes without saying that our education system should enable every child to flourish, no matter their gender, needs or background, but as we have heard all too clearly already, for too long cohorts of boys have failed to thrive in our education system in the way that they should, with a widening attainment gap between boys and girls, particularly among white working-class boys.

We have heard the statistics already, and I note that many of them come from the excellent report by the Centre for Social Justice, but they bear repetition because they are so shocking. Where 75% of girls are school-ready, only 60% of boys are. In GCSE exams boys achieve on average half a grade lower than girls across every subject, and at A-level girls outperform boys by an average of over a grade and a half across their best three subjects. Too many boys are quite clearly failing to reach their potential at school, and this is having severe and long-lasting consequences for our society and the economy.

Since the pandemic alone, the number of young men aged 16 to 24 who are not in education, employment or training has increased by a staggering 40%. According to the Higher Education Policy Institute, men with no qualifications are nearly twice as likely as women with no qualifications to be unemployed, and if they are employed, they are more likely to work in hazardous, menial or stagnant roles. That makes men less likely to look after their mental and physical health, leading to higher rates of substance abuse, smoking and alcohol consumption, lower life expectancy, and much higher rates of imprisonment and death by suicide.

It is hardly surprising that so many boys feel hopeless. Some 41% of teenagers report that they have been taught that young men are a problem for society. Tim Page, service co-ordinator at Catch22, said:

“There is no trust or hope in the future, a young man from a disadvantaged background has no clear path towards making a future for themselves, the only options for hundreds of boys and young men I have worked with are crime or benefits.”

I think that should make us all stop and reflect.

Education is obviously vital in tackling this tragic and disturbing trend, not just to enable pupils to achieve good grades and a decent salary, but to inspire our children so that they grow up to do good and important things as part of a thriving community and society. I agree with the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland; I think it probably is time for a gender-specific strategy looking at boys in particular, but as the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), pointed out, some of the wider systemic challenges facing our education system have a particular impact on boys. As the Government are considering a number of these issues, I think it would be worth looking at them through a gender-specific lens.

We need good teachers to stay in our boys’ lives and to guide and encourage them, whether on career options for the future or just as good role models, yet over the past 12 years more than 40,000 state school teachers left within one year of qualifying, and just 24% of the overall teaching workforce are male and 30% of primary schools have no male teacher at all. I was thinking about this last night, actually. Both my children are at primary school. One of them will leave in the next few weeks, and by far and away the teacher that she has talked about the most in her seven years there has been a male teacher. He has only been teaching her for a day a week in year 6, but all the kids love him and look up to him. I have never heard them speak about any other teacher in such a way. It is largely a female-dominated school, and it is wonderful to see such affection for a male teacher and such a role model for all the children, both girls and boys.

Many attribute the shortage of teachers—both male and female—to the conditions that teachers face and a lack of career progression. I believe that the presence of more male teachers would normalise learning as a suitable activity for men and boys and may especially help children who do not have positive male role models at home. However, as the Minister knows, schools are facing the impossible task of trying to find more money in their already squeezed budgets to cover underfunded national insurance increases and teacher pay rises. While the Government have promised to recruit 6,500 more teachers, I have yet to see how they will be able to achieve that.

Some of the hopelessness that many boys are experiencing also stems from inadequate mental health support. We know that boys are twice as likely as girls to be excluded from school. Sadly, exclusion and criminal activity are too often intimately related. Those who are excluded multiple times from school are more likely to have a younger age of first conviction.

Mental health researchers have noted that boys in emotional mental distress tend to use coping strategies that externalise into violence and destruction, while girls are more likely to internalise into self-harm and depression. We Liberal Democrats have long called for a dedicated qualified mental health practitioner to be placed in every primary and secondary school to help tackle mental health and behavioural concerns early. While I am glad that the Government are continuing to roll out mental health support teams in schools, I fear that those teams are really overstretched, because they are often shared between several primary and secondary schools, with perhaps half a day or a day a week of mental health practitioner time in each, meaning that children do not have consistent access five days a week to a trusted person to support them with their mental health. I hope the Minister will say something about how the roll-out can be sped up and those teams grown so that there is more coverage for each of our schools.

Of course, there is a big overlap between mental health provision and special educational needs and disability provision. Boys make up over 60% of those receiving special educational needs support and over 70% of those on education, health and care plans. Those receiving SEND support are more than twice as likely to be excluded as the average boy, and more than five times as likely to be excluded as the average girl. Too many children are being forced out of school due to a failure to provide the required support for them to learn.

I have heard time and again from parents and kinship carers who feel that they have been let down by the SEND system in this country and that they are having to try to educate their children with no support. That has very much driven up the number of children being home-schooled, so I hope the Minister will use this opportunity to assure parents and carers of children with SEND across the country that their rights will not be rolled back when the Government look to reform our broken SEND system. Families must be at the heart of these changes, so that all children can access the support they deserve. I urge the Minister to look at the five principles for SEND reform that the Liberal Democrats published yesterday.

Finally, seriously tackling the feeling of hopelessness among young boys means looking at the online world. We have seen from research that algorithms are feeding increasingly violent and misogynistic content towards boys. With 60% of children aged eight to 10 having a social media account, it is wrong that companies can profit from addictive and harmful algorithms. We need to start taking a health approach to online safety, with tighter regulation of the tech giants and by empowering and educating young people and the adults who care for them about the online world. Crucially, we need to provide alternative spaces and activities for young people, so that they are not always glued to a screen when they have spare time.

The Liberal Democrats want the digital age of consent raised, to end addictive algorithms and to stop companies trading on our children’s attention. I very much hope that the Government will not kowtow to Donald Trump and remove the digital services tax, but instead treble it, so that that money can be invested in improving our children’s wellbeing and mental health. I once again thank the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland for securing this important debate, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Judith Cummins)]

I call the shadow Minister.

Department for Education

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 24th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I congratulate the Chair of the Education Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), on securing this important debate on the Department’s estimate. Given the constraints you just mentioned, Mr Deputy Speaker, and how the Department’s remit is huge, I want to touch on a couple of areas: day-to-day school budgets and funding to support some of our most vulnerable children. I also hope that the Minister might answer some questions on the recent free school meal announcement.

It is fair to say that since the Labour Government swept to victory a year ago there has been a huge amount of rhetoric about the opportunity mission and putting children at the heart of policymaking, but the reality on the ground feels a little different. Despite what the Government would have us believe, school budgets across the country are at best frozen and at worst falling into deficit. Years of Conservative mismanagement and underfunding from 2015 onwards—[Interruption.] Conservative Members chunter, but the figures are there. We all know that from 2015 onwards, their mismanagement—[Interruption.]

[Mr Deputy Speaker]

Order.

[Munira Wilson]

The Conservatives’ decisions cast a long shadow over our schools and colleges. Although the Government trumpeted £4.7 billion for schools in the spending review, they failed to mention that school budgets will see an increase in real terms of only 0.4% over the spending review period. When I speak to school leaders, as I do regularly, they still express the same level of despair as I heard during the last Parliament, when the Conservatives barely mentioned children or schools.

School leaders are tearing their hair out trying to balance the books while shouldering the double blow of an underfunded rise in employers’ national insurance and underfunded teacher pay rises. One school in my constituency has shared its budget figures with me in detail to show what is really happening. It has about a quarter of a million pounds of salary pressures as a result of the NI and pay rises, yet only an additional £30,000 to fund that hole. The result is that the most vulnerable children will suffer, with learning support assistance and inclusion staff most likely to go to protect teaching staff, who are obviously essential. Although prudence in previous years means that reserves can be drawn on and future capital projects cancelled to keep the lights on this year, the school is looking down the barrel of redundancies in 2026-27. Having seen figures from other schools’ budgets, I know that its situation is not unique.

Following the spending review, the IFS said that schools would need to make efficiencies to the tune of £300 million to £400 million to afford the underfunded teacher pay rises and NI increases. When schools are facing ever-increasing pressures—special educational needs demand, student attendance challenges, behavioural issues and much more—it is ridiculous for the Government to ask them to find efficiencies.

I know that school staff are already straining every sinew to find every penny possible, down to banning things like colour photocopying. It was frankly insulting, therefore, when the written ministerial statement came out just before the May recess, which lectured them on taking responsibility

“to ensure that their funding is spent as efficiently as possible”,—[Official Report, 22 May 2025; Vol. 767, c. 48WS.]

as if they do not already do that. Those so-called efficiencies are actually cuts, whether to staff, extracurricular activities, school trips or mental health support. To quote one headteacher from my constituency:

“every year you think you’re going to go into bankruptcy”.

I am not sure that was what the Government meant by their opportunity mission. After the Minister accused me last month of imagining these problems, I hope she will confirm to the House how she expects schools to cough up the extra money for the teacher pay deal and national insurance. If not, will she go into bat with the Treasury for more?

I want to touch briefly on an issue that a number of my hon. Friends have spoken about: the cuts in grants to the adoption and special guardianship support fund, which are measures that will hurt our most vulnerable children. We know that the fund provides therapy for children who, in many cases, have been through deep trauma and who, without significant therapeutic intervention, will struggle to have a fulfilling childhood and life ahead of them. After the fund expired, Ministers were dragged to this place to confirm that it would continue, but they then snuck out announcements over the Easter recess of 40% cuts to the grants.

I know that the Minister will come back and say that, at £50 million, the size of the pot remains the same, but that is simply not the point. If £3,000—that is what the grants have been cut to—cannot fund the therapy a child needs, it might as well be zero. Just speak to the professionals and the unsung heroes who have stepped up as adopters and kinship carers, who are dealing with the consequences of the trauma every day. They feel deeply let down by this Government.

We are not dealing with massive figures here. Indeed, when we look at the billions in the departmental estimates, we are talking about small packages that will make a huge amount of difference, and not just to individual children but to the taxpayer in future, with money saved further down the track. It is not only immoral; it is short-sighted. Halving the Department’s spend on consultancy and advertising would allow Ministers to reinstate grants to previous levels by boosting the fund from £50 million to £75 million. As we debate these estimates, I once again call on the Minister to reverse those cuts. Also, now that the spending review is complete, I call on her to announce the ASGSF settlement for 2026-27 very soon, and by October at the latest, so that families and service providers can plan.

I want to touch briefly on the welcome recent announcement to expand free school meals—a policy for which the Liberal Democrats have been calling and campaigning for many years, and for which we have campaigned alongside many others to ensure it was adopted. Even though it is a welcome announcement, there are a number of questions that need to be addressed. How many children are estimated to be losing out on free school meals as a result of the end of transitional protections? There has been some suggestion from some quarters that children currently in receipt of free school meals will now lose access to pupil premium funding, as well as home-to-school transport. Will the Minister clarify on the record to this House what the position is? We are also still in the dark as to where exactly the money for the free school meal expansion is coming from.

In conclusion, while spinners in the Department for Education have made a good fist of ensuring that the headlines proclaimed that the Department was a victor in the spending review battle, there are still a number of crucial issues hidden beneath the top line. Our schools and our most vulnerable young people have been left struggling. The devil is in the detail. I therefore hope that the Minister can persuade us otherwise and convince us that she really believes in extending opportunity to every child and young person in this country.

--- Later in debate ---

[Catherine McKinnell]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point, and I was about to respond to a question that she raised in her very good contribution to this debate. We will set out the details of our approach to SEND reform in a schools White Paper, which we intend to publish in the autumn.

We recognise that we need to support mainstream schools in providing much greater inclusion for children with SEND. We need to commence a phased transition process, which will include working with local authorities to manage their SEND system, including deficits. There will also be an extension to the dedicated schools grant statutory override until the end of 2027-28—an issue that many Members have raised on behalf of their local authorities. We will provide more details by the end of the year, including a plan for supporting local authorities with both historical and accruing deficits.

I turn to teacher training. I was very sorry to hear about the experience of the hon. Member for Yeovil (Adam Dance). He is incredibly brave, and it is important that he has shared that. To respond to his question, high-quality teaching is central to ensuring that all pupils are given the best possible opportunities to achieve. To support all teachers, the Department is implementing a range of teacher training reforms that will ensure that teachers have the skills to help all pupils to succeed.

We are determined to make sure that every family is a stable, loving home, and that no child grows up in poverty, lacks food or warmth or is denied success due to their background. We are determined to turn things around, tackle child poverty and spread growth and opportunity to every family in every corner of the country. The Labour Government have announced that we are extending free school meals to all children from households in receipt of universal credit from September 2026. That will lift 100,000 children across England out of poverty and put £500 back in families’ pockets. We are supporting parents through that decisive action, which will improve lives—and that is before the child poverty strategy comes out later this year. Providing over half a million children from disadvantaged backgrounds with a free, nutritious lunch time meal, every school day, will also lead to higher attainment, improved behaviour and better outcomes, which means that children will get the best possible education and chance to succeed in work and life.

We will provide more detail in due course, but decisions such as expanding free school meals do not happen by accident, nor are they simply the outcome of hard work by campaigners outside this place. They are decisions about who we put first in our national life, and who has the first call on our country’s resources. Our Government put children first. Expanding free school meal eligibility is a choice made by this Government, who are determined to secure a brighter tomorrow for our children and ensure excellence everywhere, for all our young people. This Government know that delivering the most equal society—something that we Government Members are determined to make real—is a choice, not something achieved by chance.

On the points hon. Members raised about children’s social care, we are putting children first. This Government are committed to delivering children’s social care reform, to break the cycle of late intervention, and to help more children and families thrive and stay safely together. For 2025-26, the Department has allocated £380 million to deliver children’s social care reform, including £44 million of new investment to support children in kinship and foster care, as announced at the autumn Budget.

Because this Government are determined to ensure that all children have the best start in life, by 2028 we aim for 75% of children to reach a good level of development by the end of reception, which means that approximately 45,000 more children each year will start school ready to learn, thrive and succeed. That is ambitious. No progress has been made on this measure in many years. We are creating 6,000 nursery places in schools across the country through the first wave of 300 school-based nurseries; that is backed by £37 million.

[Munira Wilson]

The Minister talked about the Government making choices to prioritise children, and about keeping families together. How will the cuts to grants for therapies for some of the most vulnerable, traumatised children in our society help families stay together? Those children manifest the most challenging behaviours, which result in adoption placement breakdown, and that means worse outcomes for those families. How is that putting children first?

[Catherine McKinnell]

The changes that we have made to the fair access limits will ensure that more children have access to the fund, because year-on-year demands have increased. When we brought forward the legislation, which was the biggest overhaul in children’s social care in a generation, the opposition parties voted against it. We are determined to improve the life chances of children, to broaden access, and to ensure support for those that need it, despite our tough fiscal inheritance.

To return to childcare, at the spending review, we announced almost £370 million of further funding to create tens of thousands of places in new and expanded school-based nurseries. Despite the tough decisions we made to get our public finances back on track, we are continuing to invest in early years, and are supporting the delivery of entitlements. We will create a reception-year experience that sets children up for success, and are working with sector leaders to drive high-quality reception practice. We are increasing access to evidence-based programmes teaching early literacy and numeracy skills. We are delivering the largest ever uplift of 45% in the early years pupil premium to better support disadvantaged children at the earliest point in their school lives.

Unfortunately, having taken a couple of interventions, I have gone over my time. To summarise, we have inherited a challenging set of circumstances, but we are determined to change the life chances of children in this country. My final words are of appreciation for everyone working in our education system to support our children and young people. Our shared goal has to be providing the highest-quality outcomes for every child. The Government are investing in education, and we remain committed to renewing the entire system to make our ambitions a reality. We are putting our promises into action, and we are determined to change the lives of children across the country.

Social Mobility: Careers Education

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 19th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Wrexham (Andrew Ranger) on securing this important debate.

There is general consensus in the Chamber that every young person, no matter their background or needs, should have the opportunity to fulfil their potential. They should be able to get the information and advice that they need to pursue a variety of career options for the many jobs and careers of the future. The options are growing by the day, and many of us do not even know about them yet. We know, however, that 12.5% of all 16 to 24-year-olds are not in employment, education or training, and that 37% of gen Z feel they will be financially worse off by the time they reach their parents’ age—a sobering statistic.

We know, as we have heard clearly today, that many people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds cannot rely on the parental networks, role models, advice and guidance that so many of us—including many of my constituents—are able to benefit from. It is important for the Government and us, as parliamentarians and policymakers, to find ways of trying to even out those inequalities. That is challenging, but there are steps we can take to address them.

As things stand, careers information, guidance and advice often comes too late in a young person’s academic career, and when it does, it can be quite generic and inconsistent. It is not even a compulsory element of all schools’ curricula. When it comes to thinking about higher education post school, students from more affluent backgrounds are 1.4 times more likely to think about higher education at primary school, say, than their disadvantaged peers. UCAS notes:

“Disadvantaged students are more likely to consider higher education later, which can limit their choices, especially for more selective subjects and higher tariff providers.”

The problem is not limited to just those who want to go to university. The Social Market Foundation reported in 2022 that support for students pursuing vocational options was weaker than for those pursuing academic options, with university often presented as the “default option”. One child told SMF that it was not until they got to year 12 that they realised there were other options besides university, with another saying that, “Help isn’t given to you,” if people do not want to go to university. It is high time that we level the playing field and put forward the full range of options—whether that is apprenticeships or other vocational training—on a par with going to university. How can we excite our children and young people about the wide variety of futures that could lie before them if they do not feel they have the options?

When high-quality and effective careers guidance is offered, the benefits to young people are immediately tangible. Students in schools that meet all eight Gatsby benchmarks for careers guidance are 8% less likely to not be in education, employment or training, and that figure increases to 20% for students from disadvantaged backgrounds. We know that schools and organisations that engage with local employers and businesses also score well on the Gatsby benchmarks.

That is where I would like to pay tribute to the south London careers hub, which works across five boroughs of south London, including my own. It works with 80 business volunteers and has provided meaningful experience in the world of work for students in 95 schools across those five boroughs. It has held themed events focused on certain sectors of the economy, such as the green economy. I opened an event for the hub in my constituency a couple of years ago that focused on entrepreneurship and showed young people how they could create their own work and business opportunities in the future. Critically—to speak to some of the points already made—it also focuses on SEND provision, because we often overlook those with particular needs.

At the other end of the country, I visited South Durham university technical college a couple of years ago. UTCs are different from mainstream schools and colleges because they focus on vocational skills. I was blown away by the partnership that that UTC—I know this is also true for other UTCs across the country—has developed with local major employers to provide meaningful experiences for the young people it is working with. For example, its careers guidance people accompany young people to meetings and events with employers. Clearly, schools do not have the capacity and resources to do that kind of intensive careers guidance, but there is a lot for mainstream schools to learn from UTCs.

I have several asks of the Minister. As the Government are looking at the curriculum and assessment review, will they ensure that high-quality, age-appropriate careers education, starting from primary school, is part of the curriculum? Will they look at including financial literacy, as recommended by the Education Committee?

The hon. Member for Wrexham talked about soft skills; I would not call such skills—communication, teamwork and so on—soft; they are life skills that are critical to success in the world of work. They are key to securing a job, being able to navigate interviews and networking, and then holding down a job in the workplace.

Have the Government considered expanding the National Careers Service to ensure more face-to-face time for careers guidance for adults, particularly now that we know that so many people will be changing careers and going into new and emerging sectors of the economy? What plans do the Government have to strengthen the professional careers guidance workforce, as well as to ensure that our main teacher workforce is recruited from a diverse range of backgrounds, to share those experiences with children and young people?

I will end with the elephant in the room: none of this will be possible until we fix school funding. I know from talking to headteachers across the country, including those in my constituency just yesterday, that school budgets are absolutely at breaking point. With neither the rise in employers’ national insurance nor the teachers’ pay rise being fully reimbursed, they are having to make all sorts of cuts, and some of them are planning teacher redundancies. Careers education will be one of the first areas that they look to cut, because they do not want to compromise on teaching the core subjects that they have to get children through.

I therefore ask the Minister, when she responds, to address some of those questions. How will she fund schools so that they can provide the careers education and guidance that our children absolutely need and deserve?

Free School Meals

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 5th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I, too, thank the Minister for advance sight of the statement.

I warmly welcome this announcement, which will make such a difference to the lives of children up and down the country. We know the impact that free school meals can have. A hot, healthy meal in the middle of the day helps children to learn, concentrate and thrive. Making sure a child does not go hungry in school can truly change their life. That is why Liberal Democrats have for so long championed free school meals. That is why we have long called on successive Governments to take this step. That is why this policy was in our election manifesto last year. I am delighted that, even though it was not in Labour’s manifesto, they are taking our idea today. The Liberal Democrats introduced universal infant free school meals when we were in government, and we are today sharing in the joy of the tireless campaigners and struggling families for whom this announcement is such as victory. For far too long, far too many children in this country have gone hungry through the school day. The previous Conservative Government ignored the advice of their own food tsar, Henry Dimbleby, and even Michael Gove, to leave children in poverty without the meals they deserve and need.

This announcement can only be the start. We need to see the policy fully funded and properly implemented. We need to see auto-enrolment, as the Chair of the Select Committee said, so that every child receives the meals they are entitled to, because thousands of eligible children currently miss out. Now we know that the Government are finally looking to the Liberal Democrats for policy ideas on tackling the cost of learning, may I urge them to look again at capping the cost of branded uniform items, not the number of branded uniform items? Lastly, if the Government are serious about tackling the scourge of child poverty, will they finally scrap the two-child benefit cap?

[Stephen Morgan]

I thank the hon. Member for welcoming so positively the announcement today. She has been, like so many others in her party, a real champion on these matters. She has made clear in this place how important the policy will be to children’s wellbeing, attainment and attendance, and I of course wholeheartedly agree with her. I note her call for auto-enrolment. She made those points at various intervals during the Committee stage of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, and I look forward to working with her to hear her views going forward. We will, of course, continue to improve ways of registering children for free school meals, as I set out earlier, and today’s announcement makes that easier for families and schools. I also pay tribute to school food campaigners, who I meet on a regular basis, for helping to get us to today’s announcement. I look forward to continuing to work with the hon. Lady through the passage of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, and to work constructively to improve the life chances of children and young people across our country.

School Teachers’ Review Body: Recommendations

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Thursday 22nd May 2025 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

Each and every week, I hear from teachers and school leaders in my constituency and across the country. In my time in this place, never has their outlook been as gloomy as it is right now. After years of underfunding and neglect from the Conservatives, schools now face a double blow of underfunded national insurance increases and unfunded teacher pay rises, if the reports are to be believed. Together, these represent massive cuts to school budgets. Frankly, schools expected better from Labour.

School governors in my constituency recently told me that they are all setting deficit budgets, which one described as “beyond imagining”. That is why teachers are so desperately worried. Parents are, too, because ultimately it is our children who will suffer—and the most vulnerable, at that. The Government’s claim that schools can find the money through efficiencies simply does not stack up; budgets are already cut to the bone, with schools relying on parents to buy them the basics, such as glue sticks, through Amazon wish lists. They are already cutting back subjects, cancelling trips and cutting back on teaching assistants—meaning that children with special educational needs and disabilities will suffer the most—and now they are planning redundancies. Budget decisions for next year are already being made. We need urgent clarity about whether the pay rise will be funded, so will the Minister tell schools across the country where exactly they are expected to find this money?

[Catherine McKinnell]

There was an awful lot of imagining in the hon. Lady’s question, and understandably so—less understandable, though, in relation to some of her comments. The statement is due today, and the hon. Lady will have to await it, as will all Members of this House and those who are keenly looking at their schools’ budgets to ensure they can provide the best education possible. I know that is what schools are rightly focused on doing, and we are focused on supporting them to do that.

I gently remind Opposition Members that this is the earliest STRB announcement in a decade, because we recognise how important budgeting is for schools and how important it is that they have this information in a timely way. That was not respected under the previous Government. We want to provider this information in good time and give notice as early as possible, so that schools can plan the excellent outcomes for children that I know they are striving for. We will also support them to use their funding as efficiently as possible. The Department has worked on a whole suite of productivity initiatives, as well as support for schools to manage energy costs and banking costs and to minimise any expenditure that is not on the frontline, supporting children. That is what we will continue to do.

Adoption and Kinship Placements

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 20th May 2025 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I congratulate the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) on securing this important debate; she and I are both passionate about this issue, and I know she cares about it deeply.

I will start by reminding colleagues—as many have done already—about who the children we are talking about are. These are children who have experienced the kind of trauma that none of us should ever have to experience in our life. After I first brought up the adoption and special guardianship support fund with the Prime Minister in March, a lady from Lincolnshire wrote to me. She is a special guardian for a child who witnessed her mother being murdered by her father at the age of two. For some reason that child does not qualify for child and adolescent mental health support, and has been able to access only a limited amount of counselling. That is the sort of child the ASGSF is for.

These are also children who have been abused and neglected. When I spoke to the Purple Elephant Project, a therapy provider in Twickenham, its chief executive officer Jenny, who has worked with adopted children for many years, spoke to me about children she had worked with who had been made to sleep in the garden, or who had ingested heroin. Those are the sorts of experiences these children have been through. They need our collective help and support to overcome that trauma, as do the amazing people who step up to care for them, whether through adoption or often as kinship carers overnight.

As one adoptive parent in my constituency said to me, these children deserve

“the absolute best second chance in life.”

I implore the Minister, who has a professional background in this area and cares about this issue deeply, to please listen to the pleas from those on all Benches about the support that is desperately needed.

Before I talk in a bit more detail about the ASGSF, let me say a couple of words on kinship carers, given that I have been proud to campaign alongside my party for kinship carers for a number of years. I welcome the limited progress we have seen under this Government and the previous one on support and recognition of kinship carers, but as the hon. Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) said, we have to go much further. We have to roll out allowances on a par with those for foster carers across the country to all kinship carers, extend employment leave to kinship carers and ensure that children in kinship care are given the support that they need in education through pupil premium plus and priority school admission.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Harrogate and Knaresborough (Tom Gordon) said in a recent debate, adoptive parents make a “lifelong commitment” to children. We heard from the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), who has also adopted, that the state needs to give them a lot more support. One constituent said to me that the ASGSF is the only post-adoption support there is for these children.

That brings me to the ASGSF. I cannot begin to describe my anger and dismay at what has happened. I will try to contain that emotion as I speak. The stories that have been sent to me, and that I have heard face to face as I have been working on this issue in recent weeks and months, have on a number of occasions moved me to tears. These families faced months of uncertainty. The Minister had to answer a litany of written questions and letters from Members from all parties on whether the ASGSF would continue for this financial year. Those Members were stonewalled.

I have explained the trauma that these children have experienced. They have had a huge amount of uncertainty and instability in their lives, and the Government added to it. We were all stonewalled. It took me dragging the Minister kicking and screaming to the House of Commons Chamber to answer an urgent question the day after the fund expired for her finally to commit to renewing it for this financial year. There was a sigh of relief among carers, adoptive parents, kinship carers and charities across the sector that the uncertainty had ended, despite the backlog that had built up in the meantime and the interruption in therapy for so many children who had had to stop therapy because they had run out of money from last year’s fund.

However, there was no hint from the Minister during her response to my urgent question of the cuts that were to come. Instead, the Government waited until the depths of the Easter recess to sneak out a private letter to local authorities and charities about the 40% cut to grants, the removal of the assessment grant and the scrapping of the match funding. An adoptive mother I met at the drop-in organised by Adoption UK and Kinship yesterday told me that that felt very underhand. She said, “It felt like the Government didn’t care as I was dealing with my adoptive son, who was dysregulated and trying to hurt me.”

There was no consultation with the sector, despite the fact that the Government have reference groups, such as the kinship care reference group, that they talk to on a regular basis. There was no consultation with them and no formal public announcement. Even the Government website on the ASGSF remained out of date for several weeks, until our first day back after recess, when the Minister issued a fairly scant written ministerial statement. My first question to her is: when she answered my urgent question on 1 April, was she aware that these cuts were coming, or did she inadvertently mislead the House on that occasion?

The impact of the changes to the ASGSF means that we have a backlog. Everybody who had previously applied—some 46% of applications for grants for this financial year exceed the £3,000 limit—has to reapply. There will now be a delay and an interruption in therapy. The mum I met yesterday told me that she is borrowing money from friends and family to continue therapy because, in her son’s last therapy session, they finally achieved a breakthrough and she cannot bear to stop it. Purple Elephant in Twickenham is desperately fundraising to try to make sure that there is no interruption in therapy for the 40 or so children that it supports.

We know that, with smaller grants, providers will struggle to provide adequate therapy. Given the sorts of trauma that we have talked about, these children’s brains need rewiring and they need time to build trust. Often, therapists have to run several sessions before a child will even come through the door. That takes time; it will not be done in the few short sessions that the grants will cover. Given that the assessment costs will now have to come out of the reduced grant of £3,000, after a bespoke assessment is made there will be very little, if anything at all, left for the actual therapy.

In addition to the impact on the children and the carers who are desperately trying to look after them, the changes will undermine and destabilise the charities and other providers that offer support in this area. As many hon. Members have said, we are talking about children who are dysregulated and exhibit challenging behaviours, and the changes will lead to adoption and kinship care placement breakdown, which will result in extra costs for the taxpayer, because more children will go back into care. We will probably also see more school exclusions as a result of dysregulated behaviours, and therefore poorer educational and employment outcomes. Sadly, care-experienced children are four times more likely than other children to end up with a criminal conviction by the age of 24.

The costs to the taxpayer of the changes, in the short term and the long term, are exorbitant, yet the fund is only £50 million; in the grand scheme of things, it is not a huge amount of money. If the Government wanted to extend the fund, say by 50%, I could tell the Minister exactly where she can get the money from. In her written ministerial statement, she suggested that the fund can be topped up from local authority children’s services budgets. I am not sure whether she is aware of this, but a lot of local authorities are on the brink financially, and many children’s services budgets are in huge deficit. However, where she can find the money is in the £46.5 million that the Department for Education spent on advertising, consultancy and marketing costs in the last year. I suggest that she halves that budget, and instead expands the ASGSF by 50%.

These cuts are entirely incoherent and contradict Government policy. The DFE has recently written to Adoption England calling for improvements in adopter recruitment, and the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill mandates the signposting of support, yet everything we have discussed today will go against those measures. I have three asks of the Minister: please apologise to carers and children up and down the country, reverse the cuts—I have told her where to get the money—and fight tooth and nail in the Treasury over the spending review for the next financial year, and make that announcement early. Carers and children will continue to campaign, and I will be alongside them.

Oral Answers to Questions

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Monday 28th April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

Addictive algorithms that serve up harmful content are fuelling the children’s mental health crisis, as well as worrying behaviour both inside and outside the classroom. With almost two thirds of children having a social media account by the end of year 7, will Ministers commit to working with their counterparts in the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to support the Liberal Democrats’ amendment to the Data (Use and Access) Bill, which would stop tech companies trading on our children’s attention by raising the digital age of data consent from 13 to 16, so that they cannot process children’s data to feed toxic algorithms without parental consent?

[Stephen Morgan]

Protecting children from online harm is a cross-Government priority, and Ofcom’s draft code of practice for child safety sets out why it is so important that we continue with our efforts to protect children. From July, the child online safety regime will be fully in force, and Ofcom will be able to take robust enforcement action against those failing to comply with the child safety duties. I know the DSIT Secretary of State will want to look very closely at any future further proposals.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Speaker]

I call Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

Last year the Secretary of State said:

“There can be no goal more important and more urgent than extending opportunities to our most vulnerable children”.—[Official Report, 24 July 2024; Vol. 752, c. 700.]

Actions speak louder than words, so will she commit to reversing her 40% cut to the grants available through the adoption and special guardianship support fund so that vulnerable children are not made to pay the price for the Conservatives’ financial mess?

[Bridget Phillipson]

The hon. Lady will know that we have confirmed £50 million for ’25-26. Further considerations will be for the spending review. We have made changes in order to maximise the number of children who can access the fund. In addition to the funding that is provided there, we are also trialling kinship allowances, investing more in foster care and investing another £0.5 billion in providing local authorities with the support they need to provide preventive services. I agree that it is important that vulnerable children who have been through the adoption system and beyond get the support that they need to thrive.

Relationship Education in Schools

Munira Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 1st April 2025 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship this afternoon, Sir Jeremy, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Epsom and Ewell (Helen Maguire) on securing this incredibly important debate.

As we have heard from hon. Members on both sides of the Chamber today, it is vital that all children and young people are equipped to develop safe, healthy and happy relationships, and it is vital that they recognise what is inappropriate, unacceptable and abusive behaviour. Parents and carers, and wider family and friend networks, as well as schools, have an important role to play in developing this knowledge and understanding. However, we cannot take this knowledge for granted. As we have heard with the proliferation of harmful online content served up to our children and young people, they are at increased risk of encountering extreme and harmful content that distorts their understanding of how we should be interacting with each other.

According to Internet Matters, girls experience a disproportionate level of harm online, with three in four girls aged 13 to 16 reporting harmful online experiences. Sadly, this translates into inappropriate behaviour in real life. Despite some really excellent work that I have heard about from secondary schools in my constituency, worryingly, a survey by Kingston and Richmond Youth Council found that 40% of girls had been physically followed in a way that made them feel unsafe or uncomfortable and 50% had felt pressured into sending intimate pictures of themselves online, but 83% of those who experienced sexual harassment did not report it. The survey also found that over 20% of boys were not confident of knowing that exposure of body parts is a form of sexual harassment, and 69% were unsure whether they would intervene if they witnessed their friends sexually harassing someone.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council warned last year that young boys were being radicalised by influencers such as Andrew Tate, and talked of epidemic levels of violence against women and girls, driven in part by extreme online misogyny. That is why I was so shocked to hear the Leader of the Opposition be so dismissive of the issue on LBC today, saying that there were bigger problems that we should be focused on. We need a culture change in all aspects of society, and we need to encourage the men in our lives—our brothers, fathers, friends, boyfriends, husbands and sons—to stand up against toxic masculinity, to demonstrate to the young men in their lives what it means to be compassionate and kind in all relationships, and that this is a strength, not a weakness.

That culture change must come in part from the education that we provide in the classroom. Age-appropriate relationships and sex education at school has a crucial role to play alongside the role of parents and carers. The Liberal Democrats believe that an age-appropriate RSE curriculum should be led by a qualified teacher and delivered in a safe, non-judgmental setting, and should include teaching about sexual consent, LGBTQ+ relationships and issues surrounding explicit images, because all young people deserve access to high quality education that empowers them to make safe and informed choices. In addition, ensuring children learn about consent, healthy relationships, and online risks such as pornography and sexting is essential for safeguarding.

Schools and teachers need proper funding, training and support as well as resources to deliver high quality RSHE. Therefore, we Liberal Democrats will continue to campaign for specialist RSE training to ensure that teachers feel confident in delivering sensitive topics effectively. I hope the Minister will confirm when she plans to publish the updated RSHE guidance. She responded to a written question from me today, but again it did not set out the timelines; I do not know if she can fill us in when she gets up to speak.

Before I finish, I will touch on what we must press the social media giants to do; they need to be regulated much more toughly. Sir Jeremy, I know you were pretty active on the Online Safety Bill when it was going through Parliament, and have been active since. We must see it implemented vigorously. The Liberal Democrats want to see the digital age of consent raised, and will push for that change through the Data (Use and Access) Bill.

Seriously tackling violence against women and girls has to start with prevention. We have got to tackle the online giants, but schools must also play a key role in education. We must support an education system in which every child is free to be themselves and reach their full potential, unencumbered by fear and abuse, and receiving the support they need to thrive.