Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Debate between Munira Wilson and Graham Stuart

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[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.

[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.

[Graham Stuart]

She was being abused anyway.

[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.

Finance Bill

Debate between Munira Wilson and Graham Stuart

Committee of the whole House
Wednesday 11th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

Like so many Liberal Democrats, the hon. Lady seems to have forgotten that her party was the first major party to call for a referendum. Brexit was supported by the British people, not the Conservative party. The leadership of the Conservative party at the time was in favour of remain. The people decided. It is about time the Liberal Democrats learned to respect the people’s choice.

[Munira Wilson]

I remind the right hon. Gentleman that it was his Government who negotiated the Brexit deal. I want to put that on the record.

Colleagues from across the House have spoken frequently in recent months about the crisis facing SEND provision in this country, and we have heard so many stories of struggling families fighting within a failing system to get their children the education they deserve. After years of Conservative neglect, the system is on its knees. Just this week, we have heard from the Institute for Fiscal Studies about the scale of the problem. Once again, its report laid out clearly the huge costs that have left local councils on the brink, while failing to deliver better outcomes for children. Two out of every three special schools are oversubscribed. Just half of education, health and care plans are granted within the statutory 20-week limit, and 98% of those rejected are granted on appeal when parents go to tribunal.

It is clear that the system is failing families and our vulnerable young people, so is it any wonder that parents who feel that their children’s needs cannot be met in the state system are turning to the independent sector if they can just about manage it? Small schools of less than 100 pupils make up some 40% of the independent sector. In so many cases, those are the schools that struggle and strive each day to provide desperately needed support for SEND pupils—support that, sadly, is all too often unavailable in their local state school. Those are the schools that will be punished under this measure, and the families who will need to bear the load. The Government have said that pupils who have been placed by a local authority in an independent school to fulfil the terms of their EHCP will be exempt from the VAT hike. Taken in isolation, that is a welcome mitigation to this damaging policy, but there are a whopping 100,000 SEND pupils in the independent sector who do not have an EHCP, and their families will be saddled with this VAT hike.

One such family came to see me in my surgery a few weeks ago. The parents were in tears in front of me. Their son has autism and various other needs. When he was in an excellent local state primary school, he was at risk of exclusion because of the behaviours that were manifesting as a result of his additional needs, which could not be supported in that state primary school. Those parents made the difficult decision to remove him and put him in a local private school, where he is thriving. He is coping well and his conditions are being well managed. His parents are not just paying the basic school fees; they are paying an extra £18,000 a year on top of the school fees for the additional support their child needs. All of that will be subject to VAT, which is why they were in my office in tears. They do not know how they are going to meet those costs to keep their child, who was at threat of being excluded from a state school, thriving. That is the individual human reality of this policy, which the Minister just waves away with numbers, as if these statistics do not have human stories and faces behind them.

Energy Bills: Self-disconnection

Debate between Munira Wilson and Graham Stuart

Wednesday 25th January 2023 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

I thank my hon. Friend for her extremely pertinent question. We will be promoting through a whole array of groups and, of course, local authorities are key partners in that. We will be looking for support from colleagues across the House, from local authorities, and from the voluntary sector. We have also been doing a larger-scale public communications exercise than the Department has ever previously engaged with. In answer to her final question: for those who are not easily able to access the Government portal, there will be a telephone support service as well. Again, this will be an application-based system. We will not get to 100%, but I hope that we can work constructively. All ideas are welcome so that we do everything we can to maximise the take-up and make sure that people get the support to which they are entitled.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

My constituents living in houseboats and on heat networks have been left out in the cold for months without support or information. This is despite repeated assurances from the Minister about the vital £400 from the energy bills support scheme alternative funding. Applications for that were promised to be opened by the end of January, yet, yesterday, in a private briefing for Members, the Minister revealed that the earliest that the applications would be open is the end of February, with money not coming through until the end of March. Yesterday, he also replied to a written question in writing to a Member of this House that the scheme was still going to open in January. Does the Minister accept that his answers to Members of this House have been misleading and that he has broken promises to off-grid customers? What on earth is he doing to ensure that my constituents and people up and down this country get the support they need in the freezing cold right now?

[Graham Stuart]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I think she will find that the letter stated that the Government had announced that the scheme would open in January, which was true—we did announce that we aimed to open it in January. The pilot and engagement with local authorities has shown that we need to delay that to February, so I organised briefings yesterday afternoon to make sure that all Members of the House had heard about that. I am also seeking to notify the House as quickly as possible by writing to Select Committee Chairmen and others to let them know. We are doing everything possible to make sure that we have a robust system in place. I set out that this is a novel system: it is complex and it does rely on local authorities. It was after personally meeting representatives of those pilot local authorities that I came to the decision. I felt that this was the right thing to do to ensure speedy delivery of this support to her houseboat owners among others. It is also worth noting that they have seen support if they come through a commercial supplier of electricity through the energy bill relief scheme, but I want to see them get their £400 as well, and I want a system that works, is effective and is as quick as possible.

Out-of-Turn Supplementary Estimates 2022-23

Debate between Munira Wilson and Graham Stuart

Monday 24th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Graham Stuart]

Grid charges need to reflect the costs involved. As the hon. Lady will be aware, we are reviewing and looking at how best to deal with the grid going forward, because the grid is fundamental to everything we want to do in this space. There is room for change, but I am not sure that I necessarily agree with her. I will wait for others more expert than me to come forward with recommendations for ministerial decision on how best to structure that. Removing price signals from the system would not be beneficial. We need price signals in there; that is right and proper.

The hon. Lady mentioned heating oil. I represent a rural constituency with many consumers on heating oil. The Government looked carefully and shared information showing that from September 2021 to September 2022, heating oil costs increased by average of about 147%. We also looked at what has happened to gas prices after the effect of the EPG, and they have increased by 130%. That is why the £100 covers that. The numbers are there—we can see what the average family spends and what the increase has been, so we can make the comparison.

Given the party that the hon. Lady represents, I understand that she will always say that we should do more. That is one thing, but what she cannot say—or she should not, and I appeal to her not to do so—is that it is not fair between those on the gas grid and those on heating oil. Some might want to do more overall, but I believe, and I think our numbers show, that we are creating something equitable between the two. It is important that people who are often in isolated rural areas and can feel hard done by are not told that they are being unfairly treated compared with others. They are not. Even if it suits a political purpose, it is important that politicians do not make such allegations unless there is a basis for them, because then they would be not serving those people well but misleading them. I know that she in particular would never want to do that.

Energy is an essential and unavoidable expense for households and businesses. The economic fallout from the pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine has led to unprecedented rises in energy prices. The Government will provide crucial support to families and businesses with their energy costs over the winter period.

[Munira Wilson]

rose—

[Graham Stuart]

I will give way to the hon. Lady.

[Munira Wilson]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I have finally won—he would not give way last week when I had an amendment to discuss on communal heating networks.

The Minister made a strong political point about fairness. Last week, I said that people on communal heating networks living in particular in blocks of flats in my constituency and across London and the country have faced heating price rises of more than 500%, yet the support package they were offered was not equivalent to that of other households, so there was a fundamental unfairness. Everybody is subject to the six-month review, so will the Minister guarantee from the Dispatch Box that when the Government review the package for other households, communal heat networks will get the equivalent support that they were promised all along? They were offered only six months.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Munira Wilson and Graham Stuart

Thursday 23rd January 2020 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for International Trade (Graham Stuart)]

The Department’s high potential opportunities programme, which aims to identify and promote a range of foreign direct investment opportunities throughout the UK, is currently working with the Enterprise M3 local enterprise partnership and others in Guildford to highlight the commercial opportunities offered by the video game and 5G clusters in that region, which are world-leading.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

T2. Given President Trump’s description of climate campaigners as prophets of doom, and given the revelations that he has banned all reference to a climate crisis in any US trade deal, what assurances can the Secretary of State give the House that any UK-US trade deal will support the UK’s own climate objectives, and, indeed, persuade the US to recommit itself to the Paris agreement?