Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I must congratulate the hon. Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Mrs Hamilton) on her speech, which she delivered with such feeling. I was sitting here waiting for clapping from the Gallery above—she must warn people not to do that, but she would have deserved it. Her speech was absolutely brilliant.

Given the time strictures, I will touch on just one little Bill. It would not be hard for people to work out that it is a trade Bill—the Trade (Australia and New Zealand) Bill, which will help to make Britain the best place in which to live. There is great kith and kin support between the United Kingdom and the antipodes. Most of my parents’ generation used to talk about this country as home, even if they had never been here. Many a New Zealand coffee table of that generation displayed a copy of one of those amazing books of beautiful photographs of the United Kingdom. The amazing thing was that they were all taken on a sunny day!

The deal with New Zealand and Australia is the UK’s first new free trade agreement since leaving the European Union. It is long overdue. New Zealand and Australia were sore when we went into the Common Market. I am a member of the UK National Farmers Union and, locally, there has been some concern about the deal as both Australia and New Zealand are agricultural juggernauts. The biggest dairy farmer in my Mole Valley constituency has about 350 cows. I think my largest sheep farmer probably has about 1,000 sheep. A couple of dairy farmers in the north of the South Island are milking 1,500 and 2,500 cows. The farm I left to come here, after lambing, had 30,000 sheep. Fortunately, the balance of timing means that we can work together. Moreover, the New Zealand NFU equivalent is looking to work with our farmers to assist in fulfilling some of the bids going into Europe.

The economic opportunities under the agreement will be considerable across a range of sectors and businesses. Any visitor to New Zealand or Australia will be struck by the fact that cars, trucks, and agricultural machinery—I do not just mean tractors—are dominated by south-east Asia, particularly by Japan. There is a desire to buy British trucks, cars and so on, but they are too expensive. The tariff change should give us an opportunity, but we need to get in there. I have been urging the appropriate Minister to get onto the manufacturers and to promote our goods in Australia and New Zealand. I have already suggested a campaign and have offered to translate. I hope that with the Government stimulating our industries we will get in there, open the doors and work towards going into the trans-Pacific partnership.

Given the time limit, I will stop at that point, but I reiterate that I am willing to help and need to help. This is an opportunity for huge sales to make Britain the best place in which to live.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

The hon. Gentleman has been exemplary in watching the time limit but, although he has set such an excellent example, I am just going to make sure that everyone else adheres to the five minutes by setting a formal time limit. It is still five minutes, which is a long time if you speak quickly.

School Uniform Costs

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2019 Westminster Hall

[Emma Hardy]

I completely agree. I will go on to talk about uniform exchanges and the impact on the environment. The House of Commons did some social media outreach in advance of this debate. Someone from Birmingham said: “My niece is from a disadvantaged school background and had to completely replace her school uniform within six months of starting a new secondary school.” Someone else wrote: “My dad needs to buy me a PE kit, which is around £80 for everything I need. I can’t do PE, and get detention every time I go to PE. I feel embarrassed going to PE knowing everyone will make fun of me not being able to afford the extreme costs.” There are many other examples.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I am interested in what the hon. Lady is saying, because I have also had people contact me. One lady said that supermarkets are an ideal place to go because she can get matching clothes. I was surprised to find that Tesco used to embroider badges on at parents’ request. It does not do it now, but the supplier will do it. Parents pay £4 for a pair of trousers, instead of something outrageous if it is from the key supplier. It is in the hands of the schools if they wish to do it.

[Emma Hardy]

I agree in part, but I want to put a bit of pressure on the Minister to try to force schools to ensure that uniforms are as cheap as possible, because there are alternatives out there.

This is not just about the increasing cost of uniforms; the fashionable zero-tolerance approach to behaviour is also having an impact on the education of children from hard-up families. More than one in 20 parents reported that their child had been sent home for wearing non-approved clothes or shoes, or even the wrong socks, as a result of struggling to afford the costs. That is something that came up in the evidence. Children are being sent home or are being put into isolation for the day because their uniform is not absolutely accurate. Based on Department for Education statistics on the number of children in primary and secondary schools across England, that translates to about half a million children having suffered the indignity and humiliation of being sent home from school or put in isolation—punished for no reason other than the misfortune of having been born part of a family that is living in poverty.

The pernicious nature of poverty sours even what we might remember as the fun parts of school. It is known that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are likely to miss out on school extras, such as trips or music lessons, but evidence has emerged recently showing that the growing trend of schools increasing the number of dress-up days, often as a means of shoring up their depleted funds, is resulting in an increase in the number of unauthorised absences among those pupils.

An analysis of attendance data by the Association of School and College Leaders shows a significant increase in the number of unauthorised absences among pupils on 14 December. The date puzzled the researchers until they realised that the date was traditionally Christmas jumper day. Unauthorised absences among pupils regarded as disadvantaged in the schools studied were nearly three times higher than on a typical day. For those regarded as without disadvantage, it was still nearly twice as high. At the risk of sounding like the Grinch before Christmas, I encourage schools to change Christmas jumper day to something more straightforward, such as Christmas hat day. The school could provide all the materials for the children, who could still dress up and enjoy Christmas, but it would not put off children from poorer backgrounds from attending school that day and learning, just because they cannot afford the cost of a Christmas jumper.

The fact that the embarrassment of standing out drives pupils to skip school casts a different light on the Children’s Society’s findings: about one in 10 said that the unaffordability of uniforms had led to the child wearing unclean or ill-fitting uniforms to school. I received feedback from some teenage girls about that, and they talked about the humiliation they felt at having to go to school in ill-fitting uniforms. One parent told me that her daughter was sent home because her skirt was too tight and was seen as not correctly following the school uniform code. However, the girl had grown considerably after a sudden growth spurt, and the parent was unable to afford a new uniform, especially as the need for logos makes it more expensive.

Our children are growing up in an increasingly image-conscious world where bullying has become easier through social media. As I have said, children in poverty are four times more likely to have a mental health problem by the age of 11. It seems unlikely that there is no connection between children being forced to go to school in ill-fitting or unclean uniform and their feeling an impact on their mental health.

My response to hearing the harrowing testimony from mothers at the Education Committee hearing was to organise a uniform exchange in my constituency, called RE:Uniform, which began at the beginning of summer term and ran through the summer holidays. Thanks to a network of volunteers—in particular, I thank Reverend David Speirs and Susie Steel from the Methodist Church, the Hessle Road Network and many others—items of school uniform that were no longer needed but still perfectly wearable were collected at pick-up-and drop-off points. They were washed, ironed, sorted and made available, for free, to anyone who needed them. It was a huge success—we helped more than 500 families and we intend to repeat it. That kind of scheme should be part of everyday life. Although some schools do similar schemes, one of the great things about the RE:Uniform project was that it mixed up uniform from across the city. Some areas may have a more expensive generic uniforms, and it might end up being distributed to another area of the city. That was its strength and the reason it worked so well.

International Men’s Day

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Thursday 17th November 2016 Commons Chamber

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I join in the thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Shipley (Philip Davies) for launching this topic on what is probably an unsuspecting House.

Having recently had a small brush with the Committee on Standards in Public Life, I must declare some interests. One thing I will touch on relates to dentistry, and I still practise a tiny bit of dentistry. Then there is the obvious one: I am a male and a father of three sons, so I have a considerable interest in this particular subject. Even my wife says that I am overly interested in it.

My original thoughts on this topic are derived from a cover story in that highly respected weekly journal, The Economist. Its cover story, at the end of May last year, was entitled “The Weaker Sex”. As many members of the fairer sex, particularly my wife, my sister, my daughter and my daughters-in-law, point out, a superficial first glance would suggest that males’ domination of cultural and political life is secure. More than 90% of Presidents and Prime Ministers are male, as are nearly all big corporate bosses. Men appear to dominate finance, technology, films, sports and music. With that said, there is still plenty of cause for concern. Men tend to find themselves either at the very top or at the very bottom of our systems. They are far more likely than women to be jailed; more likely to be estranged from their children; and, as we have heard, very much more likely to commit suicide. Men earn fewer university degrees than women. Boys in the developed world are 50% more likely to fail maths, reading and science entirely.

Then we have the little issue of the human papilloma virus. Girls are vaccinated against it—this is to stop cervical cancer. It is unlikely that men will get cervical cancer, but they do get penile cancer. From my point of view as a dentist, roughly 40% of head and neck cancers are caused by the virus. More men get head and neck cancer than women, so why are we not vaccinating boys as well as girls? It is long overdue. The Australians do it; and if the Australians are doing it, we have just got to do it. These trends are particularly apparent in working-class men living in developed countries who have struggled to adapt to a hugely changed world and to the increasing changes to the job market in the past 50 years. The ever increasing power of technology and the ability to import more from abroad has seen a steep decline in the need for traditional muscle-based work in the United Kingdom.

By sharp contrast, women are becoming a majority in key areas such as healthcare and education. They are helped by their superior skills, which they gain because they respond better to education. As education has become more important, boys have fallen behind girls in school. The latest shock is in the theatre. The role of King Lear has been played by many male greats such as John Gielgud, Laurence Olivier and Donald Sinden, whom I knew so well, and many other superior male actors. Now that male role has been taken by our former colleague, or comrade, Glenda Jackson. Christopher Biggins’ Widow Twankey does not quite match that!

The way that males are becoming the weaker sex is seriously worrying. It is even happening in the Antipodes. In 25 years’ time, there is a possibility that the New Zealand women’s rugby team will beat the All Blacks—actually, realistically, that is probably a haka too far.

The article in The Economist that I mentioned says:

“Men who lose jobs in manufacturing often never work again. And men without work find it hard to attract a permanent mate. The result, for low-skilled men, is a poisonous combination of no job, no family and no prospects.”

The political consensus has been that economics is to blame for this situation. The argument goes that shrinking job opportunities for men are entrenching poverty and destroying families. In America, pay for men with only a high school certificate fell by 21% in real terms between 1979 and 2013; for women with similar qualifications, it rose—only by 3%, but it rose. Around a fifth of working-age American men with only a high school diploma have no job.

Part of the solution lies in a change in cultural attitudes, as the hon. Member for Coventry North East (Colleen Fletcher) mentioned. Over the past generation, middle-class men have learned that they need to help with childcare, and they have changed their behaviour, but, sadly, it appears from the Economist article and others that working-class men need to catch up. Women have learned that they can be doctors, dentists, surgeons, opticians, engineers and physicists without losing their femininity. Men need to understand that traditional manual jobs are not coming back, but that they can be nurses, hairdressers, waiters or—this is vital—primary school teachers. I visited a primary school today which has a totally female staff except for one male teacher. The headmistress spoke about the vital importance of a male role model in the school, which is missing from many other schools.

The most important focus must be reform of the education system, which is essentially still based in a pre-digital era where most male jobs were, as I said, muscle-based. We as politicians need to recognise that boys’ underachievement is a serious problem, and we need to sort it out now. Some sensible policies that are good for everybody are particularly good for boys. Early childhood education provides boys with more structure and a better chance of developing verbal and social skills. Countries with successful vocational systems, such as Germany, have done a better job than we have here in the UK. We need to reinvent vocational education for an age when trainees are more likely to get jobs in hospitals, IT or teaching than in factories.

The growing equality of the sexes is one of the biggest achievements of the post-war era: people have greater opportunities than ever before to achieve their ambitions, regardless of their gender. We have to accept that many men fail to cope in this world. When it comes to health, men really are the weaker sex. They are more likely to get cancer than women and are also more likely to die from it. They are more likely to suffer from heart disease, stroke and obesity. When it comes to happiness, women again appear to have the upper hand, to judge from the suicide rates. Experts know that men are particularly bad at seeking medical help, even when they need it. Men are still dying younger. In England and Wales, 42% of men die before their 75th birthday. The corresponding figure is 26% for women. I think about this every time I struggle to open a door for a lady.

It is very easy and tempting to blame men for the current position and to be fatalistic about it, but that is not the way forward. To put an absolute number on it, almost 100,000 men—enough to fill all the British Army’s full-time posts—are dying prematurely each year, compared with 66,000 women. Much of this is self-inflicted. As a group, men out-drink and out-smoke women. Men are also more likely to end their life violently in a car accident or, as has been mentioned, by suicide. Interestingly, the rates of suicide attempts do not differ between men and women; men are just better at it.

It is generally accepted that men are very bad at seeking help. Men visit the GP less because the health system is not working for them. It is not male-friendly. Could it be that aspects of our society have turned so far towards women that they are now against men?

[Richard Arkless (Dumfries and Galloway) (SNP)]

Despite the obvious sense of many of the contributions, I feel slightly uncomfortable with the subject of this debate. Although I recognise differentials in terms of suicide, the number of primary school teachers and perhaps even fathers’ residence rights, it is not women who caused misogyny, it is not women who caused the pay gap, and it is certainly not women who deprived women of the vote. Should we not be working towards equality, or am I just a man who cannot cry, or a feminist? I am not quite sure.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

rose—

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Natascha Engel)]

Order. I just remind the hon. Gentleman that we have an informal limit of eight minutes. Nothing has been imposed, but he has been speaking for almost 10 minutes now, so if he could start coming to a conclusion, I would be very grateful.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I think I will probably be one of the last men—certainly in my area and my family—to be called a misogynist. We are failing men; that is the point.

We have the Women and Equalities Committee, and I am sorry the Chairwoman is not here, but perhaps, under the equalities section of its remit, it could look into the issue of where we are failing men.

Child Sexual Exploitation (Oxfordshire)

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

I think that is a matter for the leaders and elected members of Oxfordshire county council to consider. The serious case review obviously covers failings from 2004 to 2011. We have today asked for a further locally led assessment of child sexual exploitation in Oxfordshire and for Sophie Humphreys to continue that work. Let me say to the hon. Gentleman that this work is ongoing.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

Two weeks ago I was with the Metropolitan police jigsaw unit and paedophile unit, and they will be delighted to a degree to hear her statement on education, because they feel that that is the answer, but they want it to be slanted more towards prevention. Teach what is normally taught, but also teach children about prevention, particularly on the internet. The Metropolitan police used to have a very good scheme that certainly worked for children and teachers, but it seems to have disappeared.

[Nicky Morgan]

My hon. Friend is right about the importance of education. It is all about the quality of the teaching materials and of the teaching that goes on in schools. There is no point having some sort of lip service paid to lessons about consent or anything else if the lessons do not sink in. The Government have invested in the PSHE Association, supporting improved teaching materials and improved guidance on consent.

Surrey County Council and Adoption

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Westminster Hall

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I am raising the anonymous case of a small group of parents—potentially—who started an adoption procedure with Surrey county council at the same time. I am not happy with the procedure, and nor are the individual set of parents whom I will talk about. I must say at the beginning that I am very supportive of the Government’s moves to speed up and sort out the adoption procedures. Perhaps they ought to be grabbing Surrey county council by the back of the neck and shaking it.

This case—the one I am choosing to talk about—involves a married couple in my constituency. They are professional people, they own their own home in a small village in the constituency and they are near an excellent primary school, which feeds one of the best secondary schools. The mother has become a full-time mum for the two little sisters they have adopted. Put bluntly, after an appalling start in life things are looking good for those two little girls.

The adoptive parents expressed an interest in adopting to Surrey county council at an adoption meeting in November 2010. They submitted a formal application. A meeting was held with a social worker in January 2011. Prior to approval to progress, the couple attended an initial four-day training course in 2011 with seven other couples. So we are talking about eight couples, potentially—this is not a single-couple case.

On the fourth day of the four-day training course, the couple I am talking about were shown details of some children who were available for adoption. However, it soon became apparent that Surrey county council should not have done that, as its procedures had another eight months to run before approval. My constituents—this couple—looked at the list of children’s details in late March 2011, as produced by Surrey county council, and were attracted towards adopting two young sisters. One was aged five, going on six, and the other was aged two, going on three. At that stage, the two little girls had been in care for two years. On that final day of the training course, all the couples were told that Surrey county council would fast-track an application, as we would wish, if a suitable match was identified during the preparation for adoption. However, in my opinion, or at least in the opinion of the couple, Surrey county council seemed incapable of speeding up any progress at all. In fact, looking at the case in retrospect, the council did the opposite.

At the end of the first stage, the couple were assigned a social worker to take them through the preparation stage; that was in late March 2011. They first met their assigned social worker at the start of May 2011—two months’ delay. By early summer, the couple had started to express serious interest in adopting the two little girls, having seen their child permanence reports and later a short DVD of the children. As a result of that, the social worker agreed to start to run the adoption approval process, so as to approve the couple as adopters. It was agreed that the matching panel process would run in parallel. In October 2011, six months later, the couple met the children’s social worker for the first time, and reconfirmed their wish to proceed to adopt these two little girls, so that the processes could continue in parallel. At that stage, there seemed to be mutual agreement that, given the girls’ age and the length of time they had spent in care, the process should be moved quickly.

The adoption panel was set for early November 2011—12 months’ delay. The matching panel was expected to take place in late November 2011, but no date was set. The couple were deeply concerned that, at that time, their social worker had still not interviewed the required three referees from the six who had written reports about them as potential adoptive parents. In October 2011, as the distance between the meetings got longer, the social worker realised that she could not complete the work in the time required and the adoption panel meeting was slid back another 10 days.

After 14 separate daytime meetings, each one lasting between two and three hours, the social worker prepared a report and took the potential parents and the report to the panel in late November 2011. Appallingly, the panel decided that there were some basic deficiencies in the report. For example, the social worker was required to interview three referees but she had only interviewed two and, to make matters worse, still presented the report.

The panel therefore felt that it had to defer the case. To make matters even worse, the panel felt that, among other things, the social worker’s report contained too many references to the specific children—the two girls—instead of fictitious ones, which apparently was the normal procedure. Again, that was a Surrey county council problem.

As a result of that, the panel was apparently not confident that the couple were a suitable match, but that was entirely based on the inadequate report, and so we went backwards. As I am sure the Minister will understand, the adoptive couple were slightly upset—to put it mildly—as the panel was supposed to be judging their suitability as generic adopters, but in fact the couple had been led down the road of considering specific individual girls.

Things got worse. First, the social worker went off sick with stress and disappeared for nine months. A week after the social worker went off sick, the couple met the social worker’s manager, who apologised for the inadequate report. I find that somewhat strange, because the manager is ultimately responsible for the report before it is progressed with. However, the manager did not appear to notice that.

The couple were told to drop the match prospects with the two little girls, which was very upsetting. There were three further meetings with the manager, written submissions from the couple and so on. The matter proceeded on, so that the panel decision was brought forward to late January 2012 and was positive.

I find it extraordinary, but at that stage the couple had difficulty persuading the manager working with them that it was appropriate for them to adopt siblings. The couple were assigned a new social worker and told to look for a new potential match. In March 2012, they discovered from other potential adopters that the two little girls—

--- Later in debate ---

[Hugh Bayley (in the Chair)]

We have been absent for seven minutes, so the sitting will continue until 5.7 pm.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I will scurry, Mr Bayley.

In March 2012, the adoptive couple discovered that their potential adoptees—the two little girls—were still on the list for adoption. They had been offered to other potential adopters but not accepted, for some reason. On that understanding, the couple approached the manager. They were told by the manager, once again, to forget the match and move on, even though Surrey county council had no alternative options for the children. Thanks to delays, at this stage the eldest girl was now nearly seven. At no time during the process were my constituents ever informed why they may or may not have been an unsuitable match.

In April 2012, my constituents ran out of patience with Surrey county council. They discovered, through Adoption UK, that there was an adoption exchange day in London, where a large number of adoptive agencies were present with the profiles of children for adoption. They discovered that it would be helpful to bring along a short biography to give out. This they prepared themselves, only to discover on arrival at the event that it should have been prepared with the assistance of Surrey county council. They still attended. Different Surrey county council staff were present, to whom they explained this long difficulty. They were assured that the staff were somewhat appalled.

Fortunately, on a Friday evening in April, the same manager—the one who had been there all along and who originally took them through the adoption panel—rang to say that she had had further discussions with colleagues. She said that Surrey county council now supported placing the two youngsters with them. The next matching panel took place in June 2012, which was a further delay of two months. Introductions were to commence in early July, but there was another two-week delay. To save the Minister the arithmetic, that was some 16 months after the first possible approach, after having first seen the details of the little girls. The two sisters latterly moved in with the adoptive parents, because of success, in August 2012. By this stage, the two girls had been in care for more than three years and had lived with two sets of foster carers.

Bad though that is, there is more. First, there was a shambolic lack of clarity over the contact arrangements with the birth parents. In broad summary, there were two differing opinions from two social workers. One social worker wanted up to six contacts a year for the birth parents with the girls, the other wanted no contact. Decisions were made, undone and remade. Confusion and upset reigned for the wee girls, for the adopting parents and for the birth mother. The final decision was no contact, which was backed by the court but opposed by the birth mother.

Surrey social workers decided at this stage that they needed to support the new combined family once the children had moved in with their adoptive parents-to-be. In September, the two girls were about to start at their new school. The elder of the sisters was going through a difficult settling-in stage. In its wisdom, children’s services decided that the mother would need more help, which was accepted. A social worker was allocated to the new family on a weekly basis, after school. She was, I understand, young and clearly inexperienced. Whatever advice was sought, or when changes were suggested in the strategy for caring for the children, she had to rush back to the manager, again, and return with the advice the following week. This support was so pathetic and inadequate that, by mutual consent, these support arrangements were shelved.

In addition to this inadequate support, the adoptive mother received visits every three weeks from the children’s social worker and from the parents’ own social worker—not together, but separately. The two social workers did not agree with each other’s approach. This, of course, made life challenging and every visit from the children’s social worker resulted in a period of unsettled behaviour from the children, who blamed the adoptive mother for the move. Fortunately, Surrey did something right. It bought in SafeBase, an external specialist organisation, which supported and helped the parents.

In January 2013, when the children were quite settled—they had got through their first Christmas with their new parents and the adoption process was about to begin—for some unknown reason, the children’s social worker decided that she needed to start visiting once a week to work on the children’s life story books. Why she needed to do this in conjunction, and in close proximity, with the children, I cannot fathom, and the timing was bad. Of course, predictably, that weekly visit, including pulling information together for the life story, had the immediate effect of unsettling the children yet again, as the social worker raked up their past on a weekly basis. That persisted for more than a month, until the social worker was signed off sick with a broken wrist—so they could not inflict other visits. The frequency of visits reduced and a semblance of normality started to return, and there was progress through to what one would consider proper normality.

To add to the problems, the children’s social worker delayed the commencement of the court process for the adoption by almost four weeks, by failing to provide the parents with the address of the birth parents. This was only resolved by going back to the manager again. To further aggravate the situation, the first court hearing was adjourned because the judge was not satisfied that adequate efforts had been made by Surrey county council to contact the birth parents, and he delayed the adoption by another six weeks.

In the middle of all that, the children were told about the contradiction of the contact with their birth parents. That was done by the children’s social worker in March 2013. I understand that it went through well.

The children are now adopted and in the home. I have met them, although the children do not realise it. It is understandable that Surrey county council children’s services department was concerned about how the parents would cope with the demands, but it seemed to make it worse at every stage. The adoption is now complete, and I should like the procedures that Surrey county council went through to be looked at, preferably independently, by somebody outside, if the Minister—if he acts—can persuade Surrey county council of that.

I have had dealings with Surrey county council’s social services in the past, and it was like banging my head on a brick wall. It shelters behind data protection, and progress is zero. A group of potential parents came together in November 2010, and I hope they can have their cases briefly looked at as a paper exercise and that the individual parents can then be interviewed, because if social services continue as they have been in Surrey, we are doomed when it comes to helping those children.

The children are now in what I know is a happy home. I wish them all the very best, but I must warn the parents, as a parent with adult children: just wait till those wee girls are teenagers. Then the fun starts.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mole Valley (Sir Paul Beresford) on securing this important debate. I know from his contributions to the Commons stages of the Children and Families Bill that he shares my determination to speed up and improve the adoption system from start to finish.

It is a shame that this debate has come about because of the catalogue of distressing experiences that my hon. Friend’s constituents have had with Surrey’s adoption service. It is pleasing to hear that, despite those problems, his constituents have persevered and are now the proud parents of two little girls who now have the stable, loving family home that they so desperately needed. I am sure that he will understand that I am unable to comment or intervene on an individual case—such cases are always best dealt with locally, where the circumstances are well known. I can assure him, however, that if his constituents want to provide my officials with permission, I am more than happy to write to the chief executive of Surrey county council to inquire about whether the director of children’s services is aware of their concerns and has any plans to consider them formally in the way that he suggests.

I can very much relate to the many challenges and joys of adoption and the care system that my hon. Friend describes. As he knows, I have two adoptive brothers who are among the more than 80 children, many from incredibly difficult backgrounds, that my family have fostered over 30 years. That clearly was not always easy, but I came to treasure seeing how love, stability and routine helped my brothers lay down roots, grow and eventually thrive. I know first hand just how life changing adoption can be.

We know that the permanency of adoption provides vulnerable children with one of the strongest foundations for a brighter future, so it is right that we do all that we can to remove the barriers and blockages that keep children in need and prospective parents apart.

As my hon. Friend’s constituents found, the existing system is clearly far too often failing to deliver for many people. Chronic delays mean that children in care wait on average two years—in the worst cases, three years—to be adopted, and some children are never adopted. Currently, just over 4,500 children are waiting to move in with their new family, and we need around 2,000 more adopters than are currently approved to meet that demand, with an extra 700 adopters needed each year to meet future demand, which is a 25% growth in the system’s capacity. We need not only more adopters but more adopters such as his constituents who can welcome older children and pairs or groups of siblings into their family. There is no doubt that we face a significant challenge on adopter recruitment.

The hopes of children waiting for a family are draining away all the time. Evidence shows that a child’s chances of adoption are reduced by almost 20% for every year that they spend in care. I am determined to do whatever it takes to change that situation, which is why we are taking action on a number of fronts to speed up and simplify the adoption system. I assure my hon. Friend that that includes significant measures to drive up performance locally.

We have made £150 million available to councils to boost adoption rates, and through adoption scorecards we have strengthened accountability by publishing information on how long it takes each local authority to place children for adoption. Nationally, some local authorities are doing excellent work on adoption, which we must recognise. That work is reflected in the 12% rise in adoptions last year, compared with the year before. Although that is very welcome, performance across the country is still too patchy, which is why we will continue to monitor closely local authorities, including Surrey, through the adoption scorecard and other available data. Where progress gives cause for concern, we will not hesitate to take the appropriate and necessary action.

As well as getting local authorities to raise their game on adoption, there is also increased support for prospective adopters, backed up by the excellent training available from adoption agencies. When I talk to adopters and prospective adopters, one of the many questions that they have, as well as those on the assessment process, is on what happens next. Where does the support come from? What role will the local authority or voluntary adoption agency play in ensuring that the adoption will be successful? The worst thing that can happen to the child is that the adoption is not successful because the right support was not provided at the right time. We need to ensure that we work closely with local authorities, voluntary adoption agencies and other national adoption organisations, so that we can make really good progress by implementing the adoption action plan, by creating the adoption gateway, by reforming regulations to create more streamlined approval processes and by publishing transparent scorecard data on timeliness, so not only officials and politicians but the public and prospective adopters can see the performance of local authorities and so that others can also have a chance to understand how good or bad the performance of their local authority is.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

I hear what the Minister is saying, but on paper and from what he is saying, Surrey county council would have appeared to have put in the support and so on. The difficulty is that, looking at it from the outside, it is virtually impossible to tell that that help is a hindrance.

[Mr Timpson]

My hon. Friend makes a key point about the quality of the support that is available. One of the areas on which we are putting more focus is the quality of social work training, and therefore on the standard and quality of social workers who work with families right from the very start, so that they get a better, higher and more consistent level of support, which we know can help to ensure that a placement is successful.

One of the changes that will help push that through is the new inspection regime that Ofsted is introducing, which will bind together both child protection and looked-after children, including adoption, so that there is a much brighter light and a much deeper look at what is happening within children’s services. We owe it to the children whose best future we have decided lies in adoption to provide them with the best opportunity at the earliest opportunity to make those all important attachments with their new family and to ensure that any delay is flushed out of the system wherever possible.

We will continue to develop the adoption scorecards and ensure that they are contextualised in a way that really reflects performance within local authorities. We have also introduced the First4Adoption phone and online service and the adoption passport, so that potential adopters have much better information and support. They do not have to go to the local authority to get that information and support, because it is provided in one place by many people who have personal experience of adoption and who are therefore in a good position to provide a better understanding of what prospective adopters are letting themselves in for and the great benefits that adoption can bring to them and, we hope, their family in the future.

Additionally, we have the new, fast, two-stage adopter approval process that started on 1 July. In most cases, prospective adopters can expect to wait no more than six months to be approved from when they register their interest. I was recently told of a couple who started the process in about October 2012, and twin babies were placed with them on an adoptive placement by February 2013. That is a fantastic example of how we can speed up the process but still ensure that we get a good match and a good-quality placement.

[Sir Paul Beresford]

Surrey county council seemed to take the right approach to begin with. It was a twin-track approach of sorting out the parents and bringing in the children together. Then, of course, it flew apart. Is that what the Minister means by a twin-track approach?

[Mr Timpson]

What I am talking about relates to the adopter approval process. The twin-track approach is sometimes called concurrent planning. In the Bill, we are trying to promote fostering for adoption, so that rather than waiting until the final decision is made about whether the birth family is capable of caring for a child in the long term, moves can start to be made to establish the child in the placement most likely to be their permanent one. The aim is to avoid situations in which a child planned for adoption is still within the care system, moving from one foster placement to another.

The beauty of fostering for adoption, which some authorities, such as East Sussex, already carry out, is that the risk falls fairly and squarely on the prospective adopters. There is no risk to the child, who can be placed much earlier with their prospective adopters, so that the family can start to create the bonds that will stabilise their future hugely and avoid unnecessary delay, which we know only causes more problems rather than more solutions.

The two-stage process involves the initial two-month preparation period, during which the prospective adopters gather the information that they need to understand adoption in greater detail and the relevant checks and references are carried out. Those who successfully complete it then go on to the second stage—a more detailed and more appropriately focused four-month assessment. The beauty, as I said, is that it focuses on the essentials to ensure that prospective adopters can give what is necessary for a child to be placed with them successfully.

It is also worth noting that, since 1 July, a fast-track approval process has been introduced for those who have already adopted and fostered and are looking to adopt again. They do not need to start the whole process again, as they currently do; they can be fast-tracked, which will help reduce delay. The approach will dramatically reduce the amount of time that children must wait before they can move into their permanent home and their number of temporary placements. Stability is a key factor of a successful outcome for a child in care moving on to a permanent placement. The more we can reduce the number of placements, the more likely the child will have a successful childhood.

Adopters will be able to take a much more active role in identifying children through the measures in the Bill to allow approved prospective adopters to access the adoption register directly, which they have not been able to do before now. Again, we expect that that will drive up speed and the number of matches made, as well as increasing the pool of potential matches available directly to prospective adopters. We will pilot the new register in a number of local authorities before deciding whether it should be rolled out nationally, but we believe that that is the right approach, and it is supported by many excellent adoption charities.

We will change contact arrangements through the Bill, so that they are demonstrably more in the best interests of the child than anybody else’s. There have been dramatic reductions in delays since we introduced the new clause on the 26-week time limit for care proceedings. The time has gone from an average of 57 weeks to about 40 weeks, and it is falling fast. That will also help to solve many of the problems identified by my hon. Friend and experienced by his constituents.

As I have outlined, a great deal of work is under way to overhaul the adoption system fundamentally and tackle head-on many of the issues that my hon. Friend rightly raised, but we need to go further and faster, especially with regard to adopter recruitment. The backlog of 4,500 children in care waiting to be adopted needs to fall rapidly, and the system needs to sustain the ability to cope with increased future demand for prospective adopters. We know from the recent research carried out that hundreds of thousands of people out there would love the opportunity to adopt and consider it an aspect of their lives that they would like the opportunity to fulfil.

We need to grab that opportunity and make people feel welcome when they approach a local authority or voluntary adoption agency, so that they feel that the whole system is not set against them but there to support and encourage them and provide them with the advice and guidance that they need to feel equipped and confident when the great day comes and that child or those children end up in the bosom of their family. We will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure that we have a system that is deserved by our most vulnerable children, as well as by the thousands of generous, loving people like my hon. Friend’s constituents who have gone to such great lengths to open up their homes and hearts. I join him in wishing his constituents and their two little girls the very best in future.

We must always be alive to the fact that the system that we have created is never perfect, but we do know that for too long the adoption system has failed to deliver for too many children. That is why it remains a high priority not just for me or the Secretary of State, who has his own personal experience of adoption, but for the Prime Minister, who from the start of this Government has championed adoption as one of the best ways to give children, some of them with the most difficult start in life, the best possible chance of the brightest future. It is therefore incumbent on us all to ensure that we achieve that, and I believe that the work that we are doing will go a long way to address many of the concerns that my hon. Friend’s constituents have rightly raised and that he raised on their behalf. We will not take our foot off the gas.

Children and Families Bill

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. That is why we are streamlining the assessment process for adopters so that it will take no longer than six months, whereas I have heard of cases in which it takes as long as three years for a couple or a single person to be approved as a prospective adopter. It is also why we have launched the national gateway to provide a single point of advice and information for anyone who is interested in adopting so that they are not immediately cocooned within their own local authority area as regards any potential assessment and thereafter matching. We are doing what we can right across the adoption system to make it more adopter-led and more streamlined to break down some of the barriers that have existed for far too long.

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

In response to the question by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell), does my hon. Friend agree not only that more money is going into the system but that savings will come from its being streamlined so that the process of adopting children will move faster?

[Mr Timpson]

One of the reasons we want to encourage local authorities, through this additional funding, to move into a more consortia-type arrangement is that that reduces overheads. At the moment, more than 180 adoption agencies are recruiting, on average, 17 adopters each year. That is not a good economy of scale. There is huge scope within the system to make savings and to get the money to where we want it to help to get children adopted.

--- Later in debate ---

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

I congratulate Ministers and ex-Ministers on this Bill—the way it has proceeded and been put together—and on their willingness to discuss it. Ministers will be aware from the discussion this evening that much of this Second Reading debate has turned into a Committee stage. I do not intend to continue that and will say merely that this broad Bill is about looking after children—something I have been interested in since the early ’80s when I was on a social services committee in an inner-London borough.

The point I want to pick up briefly and congratulate Ministers on concerns adoption. The social services committee was looking after a broad spectrum of issues—everything one could possibly expect in inner London, with all its problems—but one point that struck some of us was that an awfully large number of looked-after children were in homes. Although those homes were good and tried hard, there was a turnover and no parental influence, and the opportunities for children to progress were not good. Some of those children were not suitable for adoption, but the whole council attitude changed and we pushed towards fostering and adoption with huge success.

As I have said, that took place in the early ’80s in the days before political correctness came in. We saw some extraordinary and beneficial changes and I will relate a small story as an example. As councillors, we met all the adoption and fostering people regularly, including one young couple who had adopted two boys—they were pre-school age, just. The father was English and the mother Australian, and one of the two boys was white and one black although both were exactly the same age. The success of the family was striking, and by that I mean even the extended family. The grandmother in Sydney knitted pullovers for both boys, each with his name across the front. On the first visit to grandma, they flew into Sydney. The boys decided that they were going to fool grandma so they swapped their pullovers which, if you think about it, is actually about a big smile. What I am really getting at is that the change and opportunity for those kids once they were adopted were striking.

Through my constituency actions and going back to that local authority, I was staggered at the way the system had gummed up and how children and those who wished to adopt were not getting the opportunity to do so. Progress had stopped. As speaker after speaker has pointed out, that space of time is short for us but long for those children. Therefore, succinctly, I congratulate Ministers on going ahead and taking on those problems, and on having the courage to tackle the political correctness while recognising an element of truth in what people say.

Public Disorder

Paul Beresford Excerpts

Thursday 11th August 2011 Commons Chamber

[Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) (Con)]

My constituency was not hit by any rioters—and may it remain so—although we supplied police and so on, but I have considerable professional and political experience, over years, of the inner cities. I had great sympathy with the hon. Member for Hackney North and Stoke Newington (Ms Abbott) when she spoke. She is right: very few of the young and of the youth were involved. I would expect that. However, this takes me back to when I was in education in an inner-city area, looking at some of the special schools we had, including a very special school for very difficult youngsters. It is as well that the Secretary of State for Education is here, because I have him nailed to the seat and I can raise the issue.

At the bottom, the people who feed the gangs are the very young, and they are feral. We are talking about parenting, but they do not have parents—or not what we would call parents. The father has gone, or the mother, or both, or drugs and so forth are involved, so they are not what we would call parents. In some cases, even if the parents try, they are physically abused by their children. Those are the sort of children in some of these schools and, in particular, I have been talking to one of the teachers who helps to run one of the schools for these little and not-so-little monsters. She tells me the conviction method we must introduce has to break up that social life pattern. She says they must be forced for several months—perhaps years—to attend a really tough school or undertake real community service from 8 in the morning to 6 at night, preferably for seven days a week, and that they are otherwise to be at home with an electronic tag, under a curfew. They should have no mobile phones, no BlackBerrys, no lying in bed, no mixing or drinking with their gang mates and no shop-lifting or shop thieving, for either sport or supplies. In other words, we should disrupt their social networking and perhaps give them some education, hopefully, while obtaining some real community work from them, if we can.

That will cost money, but it just might help. It might give a break. If we can do that at the bottom—some Opposition Members who have had the same experience as I have will recognise this—we will start to stop feeding the gangs in our inner city and to stop them spreading.