Oral Answers to Questions

Robin Walker Excerpts

Wednesday 17th May 2023 Commons Chamber

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

I am very proud of the fact that this Government have given record numbers of people the opportunity to have jobs and employment, which is the surest route out of poverty. I believe that up to 3.6 million new jobs have been created under this Government.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

It is truly excellent news to see England rising up the international league tables for reading to become the highest performing country in the western world. That is testament to the hard work of our teachers and the dedication of the Minister for Schools, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb), to following evidence-based policy, but this progress will only be sustained if children are in school regularly and able to learn. Can I strongly commend to the Deputy Prime Minister and the Government the ten-minute rule Bill presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond)? It has cross-party support and delivers on key recommendations of the Education Committee and the Children’s Commissioner. The Government should adopt it as soon as possible.

[The Deputy Prime Minister]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight those brilliant figures, which show that we have now jumped to fourth best in the world for reading. I certainly see this in schools; it is much more demanding than it was in my day, and that is a tribute to the ministerial team who have done a fabulous job. I will of course examine the details of the ten-minute rule Bill to which he refers.

Budget Resolutions and Economic Situation

Robin Walker Excerpts

Wednesday 15th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

My hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin) made her contribution to the debate by talking about inflation. I agree with some of the contributions I have heard, but just as important as the fact that we have avoided a technical recession is that inflation figures are forecast to come down very sharply. That is hugely important and it is right that the Government have helped households with the cost of living, including the £94 billion package set out in the Budget, which is not to be sniffed at. I particularly welcome the announcement on prepayment meters. I congratulate the hon. Member for Brent Central (Dawn Butler) on her campaign. It is an important issue of social justice and many of us have been raising concerns about prepayment meters over a long period of time, so I congratulate her on her success in that regard.

The main thing I want to say, as Chairman of the Education Committee, is thank you to the Chancellor for listening to the concerns raised by colleagues on both sides of the House about the affordability of childcare. I pay tribute to the Members who have raised this issue consistently: the hon. Members for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) and for Birmingham, Yardley (Jess Phillips); the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), who speaks for the Liberal Democrats; my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie); my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom); my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson); my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris); and my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds). All have spoken up about the need to reform childcare and the need to properly fund the so-called free—more correctly, subsidised —hours of childcare that we provide.

There are some really welcome decisions in the Budget that go further on this issue. The first is the decision to invest. I spoke recently in the estimates day debate on the Department for Education. I described investing in childcare in the early years as a win to the power of four. The decision that the Chancellor has taken to invest in childcare in the early years is, after defence, the next big spending commitment in the Budget. I welcome both key investments for the long run.

I welcome the idea of extending the 30 hours offer to one and two-year-olds. The gap that exists between the end of parental leave and the beginning of support has been pointed out by many Members on both sides of the House. That gap has been made significantly smaller by the Government’s introduction of the 30 hours for three and four-year-olds. It has been made significantly better for a small group of people by the offer for disadvantaged two-year-olds. Widening the offer to cover 30 hours for one, two, three and four-year-olds could be game changing, but only if we ensure the sector is properly funded. In that respect, I welcome the fact that, as part of today’s announcement, the Government have announced a step up in the funding for the existing allowances: £204 million next year, increasing to £288 million the year after.

However, the Select Committee has heard concerns about the very real cost pressures that the sector faces right now. Those include substantial increases in business rates—a real problem affecting the voluntary and independent sector, which is such a key part of the childcare sector. I join the calls from the Opposition and Government Benches for further consideration of business rates reform. Another concern I have about the childcare announcements is the ratios. The Select Committee has heard clearly from the sector that if the change is voluntary, not many will take it up, and they certainly do not hear from parents that they want it. However, I welcome the fact that the Government have listened to the consultation and have at least made it optional.

I listened carefully to the arguments made by my right hon. Friend the Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena) about family taxation. There is great sympathy on the Select Committee for going further to provide genuine tax-free childcare, and I hope that we will be able to pick that up as we move forward with our inquiry. I very much welcome the emphasis on expanding the provision of childminding and the reforms to universal credit, which can make a substantial contribution in this space. Again, that is going with the grain of the sector, but we need to ensure that we have sustainable funding for both maintained and voluntary and independent nurseries.

Investing in childcare and early years is the right thing to do, but there are other pressures within the Department for Education’s remit. We heard from the IFS that, under a Conservative Government, investment in the early years has grown faster than in almost any other area of education spending, but its summary of education spending over the last decade also stated that the post-16 further education provision—what my predecessor as Select Committee chair, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), often describes as a “Cinderella sector”—is one of the most tightly squeezed. As we move forward from the Budget towards the autumn statement, I hope that the Treasury will look carefully at the need for more investment in that sector. Although I welcome the £2.3 billion extra for schools from the spending review, they still face a real squeeze from the combination of inflationary pressures and pay rises for teaching and non-teaching staff.

I welcome smaller Budget announcements, such as the £3 million for supported internships. Buried away in the Red Book and not in the Chancellor’s speech was £11.5 million for Ukrainians to access language programmes. That is welcome, and I know from my time at the DFE that the provision of English for speakers of other languages could be variable. Any extra money spent on supporting Ukrainian families in all our constituencies will be well-spent.

I welcome the extra support for children in care and the amazing people who support them. I hope that the Government will look carefully at extending that further, particularly when it comes to kinship carers. I listened with interest to what my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) said about attendance allowance for grandparents.

I want to pick on the action taken on pensions to help keep doctors in the NHS, which is extremely welcome and important. That will also help to improve retention of headteachers. In addition to action to keep and retain doctors, we need more places in medical schools. This morning I met the Hospitals Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), along with MPs from across Worcestershire, Herefordshire and Gloucestershire to press the case for funded places at the Three Counties Medical School in my constituency. That will make a real difference. I heard the Chancellor mention his long-term NHS workforce plan, and I am glad that it will be announced shortly. I will keep pushing for the fact that funded places at the Three Counties Medical School in Worcester need to be part of that.

Childcare and Early Years

Robin Walker Excerpts

Wednesday 8th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

It is great to see you back in your place, Madam Deputy Speaker. Both you and the late Baroness Boothroyd have demonstrated amply, on International Women’s Day, that a woman’s place is in the Chamber and preferably in the Chair of the Chamber.

I am very grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for approving this very important and timely debate, and to all colleagues across all parties and across the House who supported my bid for it. I would also like to pass on my thanks to the Liaison Committee, under whose auspices these estimates day debates take place. I pay tribute to the work that the Petitions Committee has done in this area. I have come hot foot to this Chamber from a meeting of the Petitions Committee, as has my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) and the all-party parliamentary group for childcare and early education which he chairs.

The departmental estimates briefing from the House of Commons Library shows education as the second-biggest winner after health in absolute terms when it comes to changes in day-to-day spending—the so-called resource departmental expenditure limits line in estimates—and a minor loser on capital DEL. The welcome increase in the former, however, is dominated by the impact of the revaluation of the student loan book.

As a former schools Minister, I cannot begrudge the fact that the largest proportion of the £3.9 billion increase in the education resource budget is going to schools, and I am in no doubt that the extra funding of £2 billion in each year of the next two years announced in the spending review is needed in the schools system. Nor do I in any way regret that the second-biggest winner in the education space is high needs. As we heard on Monday, the Government have overseen a 50% increase in spending on high needs since the 2019 election, which I very much welcome and support.

However, I am concerned. As the House has heard many times, early intervention is money well spent and the case for early intervention, early identification of need and early education is stronger than ever. In that context, it is deeply concerning that the only line in the departmental estimates that is clearly focused on childcare or the early years is a £52 million increase in resource DEL. That increase in spending on the early years is tiny in comparison to the overall increase in the Department’s budget, a rate of increase across the piece of just 1.4% when compared to the same line in the 2022-23 main estimate. That breaks down into an increase in early years funding for schools of £35 million, a rate of increase of just 1% and an increase of £17 million for early years funding through the families budget, a slightly more reassuring 14% annual increase.

Such numbers without context might sound very significant, but the context, as we are often reminded by the Front Bench, is that the Government spent nearly £20 billion on childcare and the early years over the last five years, and are currently spending around £5 billion a year across the various different Government Departments that support it. I do not claim to be an accountant. I do not claim to be the greatest living authority on the departmental estimates process and—pace the Prime Minister—I did not complete an A-level in mathematics, but I do know that an increase of £52 million on a budget of billions is not a big deal. In fact, the House of Commons Library’s very helpful briefing for this debate confirms that the Department for Education’s resource DEL for early years is being increased by just 1.4% from £3,781 million to £3,833 million. At a time when inflation is running at around 10%—even if we hit the Prime Minister’s laudable ambition of halving it we will be running above 5%—that does not feel like anything close to a real-terms increase.

In evidence to the Education Committee, the Institute for Fiscal Studies highlighted the problem. It submitted written evidence in November 2022, headed:

“Funding for the early years is likely to fall by 8% up to 2024 as a result of faster-than-expected cost rises”.

It set out that

“The early years sector in England received a significant uplift to its budget at the last Spending Review in 2021…but higher-than-expected inflation means even that increase will not compensate for rising costs. We estimate that childcare providers’ costs are likely to rise by 9% in total between this year (2022-23) and 2024-25. Judged against these rising costs, total funding for the free entitlement will be 8% lower in real terms in 2024-25 than it is this year.”

[Steve Brine (Winchester) (Con)]

I welcome my hon. Friend’s speech and I welcome his Select Committee conducting an inquiry into childcare and early education. We can talk about entitlement as much as we like, but if the settings are not there, we have a problem. The private voluntary independent sector is losing numbers. I have seen two closed in my constituency in the past six months. This is a problem. We have a supply side problem. Does he agree that achieving parity on business rates between the PVI sector and the maintained sector where an early years setting is in a school would help significantly with its in-year budget problem?

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend demonstrates his considerable knowledge and expertise in this space, and his all-party parliamentary group has gathered evidence from across the sector. I will come back to that point, because it is one of the many things we could be doing to help.

In fairness to Ministers in the Department, I know very well that they have been doing hand-to-hand combat with the Treasury year in, year out for more investment in every phase of education. In recent years, those battles have borne fruit, particularly for schools and for the high needs pupils in them. I also recall starting this year at the launch of the IFS’s very interesting report into education spending, which confirmed that over the last decade the early years has been the fastest growing area of Government spending in education and, unlike in the schools space where current increases in funding are making up for previous years of real-terms cuts, the early years budget has grown faster than any other phase of education in real terms under the Conservative Government.

By contrast, and before we hear too many speeches on Labour’s proposals for an all-singing, all-dancing £20 billion childcare offer, we should remember that it left a system with a single 15-hour offer and Department for Education spending on childcare and the early years at roughly a third of what it is today. That is the backdrop to the disappointing departmental estimate that underpins the debate.

The House will be aware, and as my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester mentioned, that I started my term as chair of the Education Committee with a call for an inquiry into childcare and the early years. I am very grateful to all the people, across parties, who elected me to that position and to all the members of the Committee who unanimously accepted that call. The inquiry is now well under way. We have heard loud and clear from the nurseries, childminders and the wider early years sector about the challenges they currently face—challenges my hon. Friend alluded to—the pressures they are feeling, and, as the IFS confirmed, the very real inflationary pressures being felt by the sector. We have heard time and again the case for more investment in this crucial sector. Although it is too early for me to pre-empt the findings or recommendations of our inquiry, I believe passionately that there is a strong case for more Government investment in this space.

[Margaret Greenwood (Wirral West) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting speech, and I commend him on his focus on the importance of early years education. Sarah Ronan of the Women’s Budget Group has said:

“Years of chronic underfunding have led to extortionate fees for parents, providers closing down and early years workers leaving the sector because of poor pay.”

The Government are providing insufficient funding to cover the existing 15 to 30 hours, as has been mentioned. The Women’s Budget Group is calling on the Government to address that by increasing investment in childcare by £1.75 billion. Obviously, it is about not only the welfare of children but enabling women to be in the workplace, because without affordable childcare, women cannot be in the workplace. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is really important that the Government listen to groups such as the Women’s Budget Group, which has a lot of expertise in this area, and consider this issue further?

[Mr Walker]

I want the Government to listen to many groups across the whole sector and see the case for investment. I will come later to the different elements of the case for investment, to which the hon. Lady rightly refers.

Childcare affordability is a crucial part of the argument. To date, our inquiry has heard about a perfect storm facing the nurseries and childminding sector, of parents struggling to pay the costs required to make the so-called “free hours” work, of rising employment costs and greater than ever competition for staff, and a high burden of bureaucracy. For the vast majority of providers run by the independent and voluntary sector, there is also the challenge of business rates, as my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester mentioned, which are increasing at an alarming rate, and of having to pay VAT on their investments when neither of those costs is felt by their direct competitors in school-based provision.

The National Day Nurseries Association has published figures that suggest that despite the very welcome increase in funded hours for parents, the Department—perhaps more accurately the Treasury—has knowingly underfunded the free hours so that there is a clear and increasing burden on parents and on settings themselves to cross-subsidise the two-year-old and 15 and 30 hours offers. The Sutton Trust has pointed out that 75% of childcare providers said that funding provided per hour for the 30 hours entitlement did not meet their costs, forcing them to apply charges to better-off families, including extras such as nappies, sunscreen and lunch. They say that that undermines the intention of the 30-hour policy as a free entitlement.

We have heard concerns from parents that the myriad different offers and support systems across early years are confusing, and from providers that the use of “free hours” terminology causes conflict with their customers. The reality is that these are subsidised hours, for which the state bears only a share of the cost burden. We have heard concerning statistics about the underspend in both the Department for Work and Pensions and the Treasury schemes to support childcare, because the need for up-front payments out of net income deter both parents on universal credit and those who should be benefiting from tax-free childcare from using the Government schemes. That is both part of the problem and, in my view, part of the solution. There is money that the Treasury has already approved to support childcare in the early years that is not getting spent. That money needs to be put to work to support the very real needs of parents and children.

That brings me to the fundamental point about the case for investment. The Prime Minister rightly said that education is the closest thing to a magic bullet that we have. Investing in education is a good thing and something that I have dedicated most of my time on the Back Benches to supporting. Early intervention usually pays dividends, and that is especially true of education. Many Members across the House, mostly notably my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), have repeatedly made the case for investment in the first 1,000 days of children’s lives. They have pointed to the strong scientific evidence that investment in this period has more impact on the way minds develop than any other.

The Nuffield Foundation has said that there is a strong case for additional investment in the early years, as a “foundational stage” of early development. It states:

“Given that lifelong inequalities have their roots in early childhood, this would be investment in social and individual well-being in the long term.”

An interesting research summary of “The Lifecycle Benefits of an Influential Early Childhood Program” by the Heckman Equation, states:

“Every dollar spent on high-quality, birth-to-five programs for disadvantaged children delivers a 13% per annum return on investment.”

Others have pointed to the huge productivity gains to be made from providing childcare that supports parents, particularly mothers, to continue in or return to work.

On International Women’s Day we should recognise the substantial benefits of closing the gender pay gap and allowing more women to realise their full potential, focusing not only on participation levels but on the quality of participation in the workforce. According to a PwC report published in March 2021 on women in work:

“There are large economic benefits to increasing the number of women in work.”

It estimated that the UK could gain £48 billion per annum from

“increasing female labour force participation rates to match those of the South West – consistent top regional performer for female participation in the UK index.”

A report by CBI Economics and the Recruitment & Employment Confederation from July 2022 entitled “Overcoming shortages - How to create a sustainable labour market” stated that if unaddressed, labour and skills shortages could see the economy lose £30 billion to £39 billion annually. Gingerbread has said:

“Successive research that we have undertaken pinpoints the cost of childcare as the biggest barrier to single parents in finding and staying in work as well as in progressing in their careers.”

Sometimes, including in the evidence provided to our inquiry, it has been suggested that there is some conflict between the two objectives. In reality, investment in the early years and in childcare should be a win-win. It should be good for the children, who are better stimulated, supported and prepared for education, and better for parents, who know that they can engage in work with confidence, knowing that their children are getting that stimulation in a safe setting that meets their needs. A recent report by the Centre for Progressive Policy think-tank has suggested that the economy stands to gain a staggering £38 billion, or 1% of GDP, if a fully effective childcare system could support more women to continue in careers and reap the benefits of returning to work. Others, such as Onward, have pointed to the clear desire of parents to have access to affordable and flexible childcare, and the benefits of both parents being able to deploy help from the Government effectively.

As Schools Minister, I often heard concerns from primary schools about the challenges of children arriving in schools less school-ready than they had been previously, and the greater range of measures and extra support needed to prepare them for life at school. Having children stimulated by excellent early years provision would address that challenge far more effectively and in a more timely manner than interventions or catch-up funding spent in the school years. In the noble quest of ensuring that more children leave primary school able to read, write and do maths, investment in the early years when they learn basic communication—their letters and numbers—should be a no-brainer.

Laura Barbour of the Sutton Trust told the Select Committee:

“In primary schools, 93% said that they recognised that time spent in an early years setting prior to attending primary school made a significant difference when they arrived in school, particularly for children from more disadvantaged families.”

[Steve Brine]

My hon. Friend is making such an important point, which is one of the reasons why the all-party group that I lead is called “on childcare and early education.” It is important that we flatten the distinction in taxation terms between early years settings and early years carried out in school. The people who run those settings—I declare an interest because my wife works in one—are early years educators. All too often society does not see them as that. I know that the Minister does, as have all previous Ministers, but all too often the discourse is about just childcare. It is not—it is early education.

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I am glad that he has declared his family connection in that respect. We should all value the contribution of the early years and the people who work in what we might describe as childcare but is early education, early simulation and support of children. The steps that the Princess of Wales has taken to draw attention to the importance of the sector are very welcome.

[Dame Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

I have to pick up the term “early educator” because the reality is that most children start nursery when they are about six months to eight months old. It is simply wrong to call it early education—what those tiny babies need is a loving, nurturing environment. To call it early education is just the wrong terminology and sends the wrong message. What they need is love and attention. For babies who come from chaotic homes, very often that is their route to secure secondary attachment to somebody. I find that term very misleading, and I wish that we would not always use it.

[Mr Walker]

I recognise my right hon. Friend’s point. That is part of the dilemma of covering this as an issue from nought to five. The earliest years are not necessarily about education—certainly not in any formal sense—but about stimulation and support. My argument is that the changes that the right support and the right stimulation unlock in young brains and the progress that it allows children to make pay enormous dividends in the education system further down the road.

[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

I absolutely love this important debate. What the country and the sector want is parental choice. Many parents are telling me that they do not have enough options because settings have closed or are too expensive. As my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) says, very young children are often better placed with their mother or father or with a childminder, nanny or au pair. There should be a range of options, but in recent years the options have steadily declined. Parental choice, underpinned by quality, is exactly what we should be hoping to achieve.

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend has been a great champion for parental choice; I know that she has worked with Onward and others to make the case for it. That is a really important part of the argument, and I look forward to engaging with it as the Education Committee inquiry progresses.

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that a beneficial but often overlooked by-product is that people can become better parents as a result of meeting other parents? Being a young parent can be a very scary experience, especially without having had younger siblings. Beyond the benefits for children, it can be very beneficial for parents to share experiences and have conversations with other parents and with the people who run facilities.

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend, on whose Select Committee—the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee—I am happy to serve, is absolutely right. I have learned a huge amount as a result of having children in childcare and early years settings and talking to the brilliant people who look after them. It is absolutely true that the people who work in this space provide that support. I also think that the Government’s family hubs intervention will be very welcome, particularly if there is outreach and support in the community.

When we take into account the stimulation for young minds, the benefits for parents and the impact on schools, the case for investment in early years becomes a win-win-win—and that is not all. We all know about the rising tide of demand for specialist and high needs support; the Minister was very frank about it in her statement on Monday. We all know that the early identification of need is vital to children’s life chances. Picking up challenges such as autism, speech and language difficulties and hearing or visual impairments early in a child’s life enormously increases their chances of managing their condition, getting the right specialist support in place and being able to engage with mainstream education.

If the Treasury ever wants to reduce the high needs deficits that beset our local authority budgets and simultaneously unleash the potential of more young people with special needs, it needs to understand that investment in early years and in the professions that can support, identify and meet needs in the early years is a must. Investment in the early years and childcare should therefore be a win to the power of four. There can be few sectors of the economy in which there is such obvious and compelling payback.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is quite right to use the word “investment” in this context. Has he ever come across the Tangelo Park project in the United States, which has fascinated me for many years? A local philanthropist took over a neighbourhood in Florida that was plagued by crime and low achievement—what one would refer to as a rough neighbourhood. He made two offers to the population: he said that he would pay for universal, high-quality pre-school childcare and that anybody who got into college would get it free. Obviously people normally have to pay for college there, so that created an incentive. The project has been going for 20 years and has completely transformed the neighbourhood, which has become prosperous, crime-free and a lovely place to live. If we are interested in regeneration and levelling up across everything we do, investment is about not just the individual child and their family, but the area in which they live and their community’s sense of aspiration and purpose.

[Mr Walker]

My right hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We had a very interesting debate on the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill about childcare as an infrastructural issue, which I think reflected those benefits. I agree that we need social entrepreneurs to invest and play a role in this space. The private, voluntary and independent sector, which currently dominates provision, is so vital. It is important for us to work with the sector and support it rather than placing it under the pressures that unfortunately we are seeing today.

This is a debate about departmental estimates, but I am first to recognise that not all spending on childcare and early years comes or needs to come from the Department for Education’s budget. Within that budget, however, we have seen welcome commitments to review and increase the local spending on funded hours. I am proud of this Government’s record of delivering both the targeted two-year-old offer for disadvantaged children and the 30 free hours for some working parents.

Evidence given to the Education Committee makes it all too clear, however, that those welcome steps are coming under real pressure from rising costs. Helen Donohoe of PACEY, the Professional Association for Childcare and Early Years, told us:

“The number of childminders has halved in 20 years. We project that by 2035 we will have only about 1,000 childminders left in the country. That is from 60,000 20 years ago”.

Dr Grenier, a nursery school headteacher, told us that

“roughly 10% of nursery schools have closed in the last 10 years and more are due to close soon.”

Kara Jewell, a nursery director, told us:

“In 2003 when I registered as a childminder our funding rate was £3.02 per hour. It is now set to go to £4.69, so our funding rate has gone up 55.3% in 20 years while the minimum wage has risen by 131.56%.”

Emma Gardner, who is quality manager for early years and childcare at Spring by Action for Children, told us:

“I certainly think that funded places in settings that take funded children will reduce dramatically because it is just not sustainable.”

Much of the potential for real investment in this space comes through the Treasury’s so-called tax-free childcare offer and the Department for Work and Pensions’ substantial contribution through universal credit. However, our Committee has heard that neither is working as effectively as it should, and that both need reform to meet the needs of parents today. The Early Years Alliance has suggested to our Committee that the tax-free childcare policy should be stopped and that the theoretical billions set aside for it should be invested in meeting the full costs of the so-called free hours. We have heard from others that the money could be better invested in extending the scope of the subsidised offers from three and four-year-olds down to one and two-year-olds.

Against that, it is worth bearing in mind that the tax-free childcare offer is currently the only part of the system that offers parents any support for children under two or over four, so cutting it off completely would come at the expense of many who use it. I also think that it is worth exploring the true potential of actual tax-free childcare. We could make it much more attractive for parents by allowing childcare costs to be claimed against taxation for the household, as many European countries do, rather than offering a 20% subsidy on cash placed in an account from post-tax income.

There are other ways for the Treasury to help the sector that I believe are worthy of immediate consideration. It could remove business rates from the PVI sector, which provides approximately 80% of childcare in this country. It could remove the unfair burden of VAT, which holds back investment. I know that such moves would come at a cost and that the Chancellor has a hugely difficult challenge in balancing the books after all the challenges of the pandemic, but I plead that he consider the huge benefit of supporting investment in this space and the enormous upsides of better stimulated children and of more parents returning to work.

If such reforms prove a bridge too far, I hope that the Chancellor will look urgently at the massive increases in rates facing many in the sector. The NDNA told our Committee:

“Business rate property revaluation from April 2023 has seen providers report bill increases of 40-50%”.

I received clear evidence of that last week from a passionate early years advocate in my constituency who has been made an MBE for her services to the sector. She is despairing at the proposed increase of 35% in the rates for her outstanding-rated Worcester provision, which is compounded by the fact that the local funding rate has increased by just 1% for two-year-olds and 5% for three and four-year-olds while the national living wage on which many of her staff are working has increased by 9.2%.

I will conclude my speech not by pre-empting the findings of our Committee’s inquiry further than I have done already, but by quoting directly from my constituent. In a recent letter to me, Alice Bennett MBE—the founder of the Worcester Early Years Centre and the recipient of an honour in recognition of her outstanding work in the early years sector—wrote:

“I appeal to you and your Government once again for urgent reform in this nation’s early years sector. We are facing the most challenging time in decades with settings closing and talented staff leaving in droves…We all know that 90% of a child’s brain development happens before the age of 5. The research and evidence for this is utterly convincing.”

She described investing in the sector as

“morally and ethically the right way forward, thereby ensuring that every child can realise their rights and entitlements to develop their full potential and to thrive and enjoy a meaningful existence in this world. Our sector is indeed very dedicated and hardworking but we cannot continue to work for peanuts and be subject to such punitive taxation. Our lifetime legacies of outstanding and irreplaceable nurseries will be forced to close without some form of sensible revision and financial interaction.”

There is a real case for responding to that call for help.

On International Women’s Day, we should celebrate the enormous contribution to this sector of female entrepreneurs—people who have invested a lifetime of learning and labour in supporting children’s development.

I believe that we have a Prime Minister and a Chancellor who recognise the case for education and early intervention, and I know that we have a Children’s Minister who is passionate about the value of childcare and early education. I am hopeful that next time we debate the departmental estimates, they will have enabled the Department of Education to deliver a sustained uplift in investment in early years, and to build on the Government’s overall record in this regard.

--- Later in debate ---

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to see you back in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker.

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom), but it was slightly less of a pleasure when she reminded me of the pain of childbirth and all those sleepless nights. My children are now four and eight. She said she was freaking out potential mothers, but she was freaking me out, too, by making me relive some of that trauma. I thank her for that.

I also thank the right hon. Lady for her bravery in speaking out about her experiences at Barclays. Thankfully, most employers have moved on, and many employers now see it as a competitive advantage to keep working mothers and fathers in their workforce, but there is still far too much discrimination and pressure, so I thank her for sharing her story.

I thank the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) for securing this important debate. He and a number of Conservative Members have been pretty consistent on this issue, and it is important that we have men as allies in this debate. We heard from the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire about various women, including herself—I also think about Jo Swinson when she was in government—who led the way on many of these issues. It is great that women did that, but men need to champion it too. As we heard, men’s role as fathers is just as important as women’s role as mothers. I am heartened to see men making that case.

I have said it before and I will say it again, but I am standing here today only because I have a husband who took the hit to his career when we had our children. I had a senior role in business before I became an MP, and I could not have become an MP, with a one-year-old and a five-year-old, without him being at home doing a lot of the childcare, the washing and all the domestic duties. I thank the men, and I ask them to continue championing this cause alongside us.

This is an estimates day debate, so we are here to discuss Government spending on childcare and early years. To be honest, it is incredibly difficult to disagree with anything the hon. Member for Worcester said. We are on the same page, and at times it felt as if he was reading parts of my speech, so I apologise for the repetition.

I hope that Treasury Ministers and officials, as well as the Minister for children, are listening carefully, because Members on both sides of the House are making the same point. The view of the Liberal Democrats is that the Government are not spending enough on childcare and early years, plain and simple. They are not spending enough to give all children, particularly those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, the high-quality early years education they deserve.

The Government are also not spending enough to make childcare genuinely affordable when parents decide the time is right to go back to work. The point has been made about the importance of choice. As I have demonstrated with my own example, every family are unique and need to have a range of options to suit their personal circumstances. The current system does not make that possible.

The Government are not spending enough to ensure that providers are able to stay in business, so that parents can find a place for their child. We see the impact on children, parents and providers, and I have some statistics to back up that point. Before the pandemic, children in reception on free school meals were, on average, 4.6 months behind their peers, and that gap has widened since 2016. As has already been said, early years is where investment can make the biggest difference to children’s life chances.

We know that a typical couple in the UK have to spend, on average, about 29% of their wage on childcare, which compares with 19% in the US, 15% in Canada and less than 10% in France, Germany, Sweden and Japan, according to the OECD. A year ago, a survey by Pregnant Then Screwed and Mumsnet found that for most parents of young children, childcare now costs the same as or more than their rent or mortgage payments. The right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire talked about £50 a day for a tip-top nursery, but I can tell her that in south-west London people are looking at £100 a day, if not more, for a tip-top nursery. Frankly, this is unaffordable and people are spending more on childcare than on their rent or mortgage payments. Some people’s mortgages increased as a result of the mini-Budget we had back in November, but I am not sure that was the solution the Government were looking for to address the disparity.

The other issue we face relates to childcare providers, as more than 10,000 of them closed last year, with a net reduction overall of 4,000. I wish to pay tribute to June O’Sullivan, from the London Early Years Foundation, who has been doing a lot of work on this issue. A lot of providers have gone under in more disadvantaged areas. As a result of the LEYF’s social enterprise model, it is able to invest in provision and settings in more disadvantaged areas—doing so, in essence, by subsidising from where it runs nurseries in more affluent areas, including my own. I visited one of its nurseries in Teddington, which is run for employees of the National Physical Laboratory in my constituency, to hear about how the LEYF is cross-subsidising to enable all parents, whatever their background, to access good, high-quality childcare.

On International Women’s Day, it is worth emphasising that the lack of affordable childcare hits women the hardest, as we have heard. The proportion of mothers in full-time work drops dramatically when their child turns one, falling from 49% to 31%, and it does not recover until their youngest is 14. On average, women’s earnings take a 40% hit when they have their first child and never recover, whereas men’s earnings take barely a hit at all—I will not tell my husband that! According to the Department for Education’s own survey, 53% of non-working mothers with children under five would prefer to go to work if they could find convenient, flexible, reliable, affordable, good-quality childcare.

I want to say a couple of words about single parents, because they are often overlooked in this debate and I have heard from single parents in my constituency. One of them said to me, “Look, staying at home is not even an option for me. I’ve got to go out to work. The costs are crippling.” I heard from another constituent who is on a very good salary and does not live an extravagant lifestyle. She is a single mother of twin two-year-olds, so she has two children whose childcare she has to pay for. She is on a good salary and lives in a two-bedroom home, but after all her living costs, before childcare, she has only £250 a month left to spare. So her childcare costs of more than £2,000 a month are having to come out of her savings. She appreciates that many other people are in a far worse position; at least she has some savings to pay for it, so that she can continue to work. However, until such time as her children go to school, she will be coughing up a further £75,000 in childcare costs—it is just astonishing. This issue is having an impact on people right across the income scale, because the current system is in a mess and is inadequate.

As we heard eloquently from the hon. Member for Worcester, the Government are massively underfunding the free hours entitlement. As he said, it is not free; it is subsidised. My son came out of childcare just last August or September, so I can tell the House that I was massively topping up the free hours I was getting. All sorts of jiggery-pokery with the invoices was done, because childminders and nurseries are told not to show that they are charging for those free hours, because they are not technically meant to, but everybody knows it goes on. Again, it is okay for me to have to pay for that, but, unfortunately, many people from much more disadvantaged backgrounds cannot pay for that top-up in care. The Department’s own data show that the average rate paid in respect of three and four-year-olds in 2020-21 was £4.89 per hour, which was less than two thirds of the Government’s own estimate that that provision cost on average £7.49 per hour. As has been said, in London the cost is even higher.

We have heard already that the take-up of the Government’s tax-free childcare offer is just 40%, and more than 750,000 eligible families across the UK did not benefit from it in 2021-22. So we definitely need—

[Mr Robin Walker]

At the risk of encouraging the hon. Lady to further think we agree on everything, may I ask whether she thinks it extraordinary that, even out of that relatively low take-up, about half the people opening an account for tax-free childcare are then not using it? That shows the huge challenge of the clunkiness of the current system.

[Munira Wilson]

I could not agree more with the hon. Gentleman on that. Embarrassingly, I have to confess that even I did not understand or appreciate what was available to me—I was not that well educated on that. When I got elected to this place in 2019, I could no longer get childcare vouchers from my former employer, which is what I had before, and so for many months I did not benefit at all from the tax-free allowance. I then realised that I could open up this account. I did not know that for my eldest child, who is now at school, I could use it to pay for wraparound care; I thought it only applied until my children started school. I confess that I did not know this, so I am sure that many parents out there just do not know what is on offer to them. We need a much better public information campaign about what is on offer. The other point to make on how the system is not working is that the maximum childcare support in universal credit has been frozen since 2016, which means that it covers fewer and fewer hours for those low-income families.

The hon. Gentleman delicately pointed out that early years provision has been somewhat overlooked by the Treasury in some of the recent funding settlements for the Department for Education. Let me put it slightly more starkly: based on what was announced in the autumn statement in 2022, setting the core schools funding aside, the rest of the Department’s day-to-day spending, which includes the early years, is set to be cut by £500 million, or 2.3%, in real terms over the next two years. If that means a cut for early years provision, as logic would dictate it does, that would be disastrous and short-sighted. I hope that the Minister will specifically address that point about the budget for early years provision in the next few years.

The Liberal Democrats have set out a clear plan for childcare that is flexible, affordable and fair. We believe the Government should expand the offer of free, high-quality childcare for all children aged two to four, not just in term time, but year round. Crucially, the Government should also raise the rates paid to providers to match the actual costs they face. The Government also need to plug that gap between the end of parental leave and the start of free childcare, which leaves many parents without the choice or control to which we have alluded.

As others have said, investing in our children’s early education is one of the best investments a society can make, and we need to see it as exactly that—it is an investment. Childcare is an essential part of our economic infrastructure. For many parents, it is as important and crucial for getting to work as railways and road. Employers, finally, are seeing that and making the case, and I congratulate the CBI and other employers’ organisations that are making that case. I hope that if the Treasury will not listen to me, it will listen to Conservative Members, to those employers’ organisations and, crucially, to parents in all our constituencies, across the country. It is time the Government started treating childcare and early years as crucial infrastructure and investment in our children, and funding it properly. I really hope that next week we hear something substantive from the Chancellor on this issue.

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[Siobhan Baillie (Stroud) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson); having heard about her experience with four children, I take my hat off to her. I did do a little bit of preparation for this speech today as I was haring down the road, late for my daughter’s nursery. In proper slummy mummy style, I saw it was snowing and raining, so I wrapped her in a carrier bag, gave her a broken umbrella and started running—and we were still late. At one point I looked at her and thought, “God, you’ve got gunk in your eyes, they’re going to turn me away at the door and I’ve got a Select Committee,” but it turned out to be porridge from her sister—God knows how it got in her eye.

I tell that story to make people laugh, but also because the chaos of little children and children as they are getting into school is real life. It is reality and, no matter where we come from, what our education is or what our job is, it is really hard graft. Many families are pulling in grandparents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, using child nurseries, childminders, nannies and au pairs—it is a real patchwork. We should be open to many different options to support families in all their weird and wonderful different set-ups.

Everyone knows I am a proper pest on childcare. I started campaigning on this issue way before I had my own children, because I saw clearly that it was very serious. It is not just a women’s issue, much as I would love to be able to say it is on International Women’s Day; it is an economic issue, a health issue and a mental health issue. It affects businesses, particularly the ability to recruit, because while we have a high participation of females in the workforce in this country, they are not working at full tilt in many respects—many because of childcare and many because of the cost of childcare.

One little thing that is not talked about very often is that the transition to parenthood for couples— married, not married or whatever—is one of the hardest times of anybody’s life. If there are additional childcare stresses, chaos, nonsense and costs, we could see parents breaking up because of all that pressure, and we know the impact of family breakdowns on society, on the country and particularly on children. That needs to change, and it is really important that we are focusing on it.

I am a huge fan of my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker)—I hang on his coat-tails and on his every word on this subject. I am grateful that his Select Committee is producing a report, because I think the Walker reforms, as they come forward, will be quite pivotal in what the Government may do.

On a political point, I get a bit fed up with the Opposition talking about under-investment and saying that everything is absolutely dire. Let us look at the Labour party’s record in government—I know that that was a long time ago, but it is not our fault that it has not won any elections—when investment in childcare and early years was about a third of what it is now. We are spending £5 billion to £6 billion of taxpayers’ money on childcare support. I am one of the biggest champions for change, but it is wrong to say that this Conservative Government have not invested in childcare; it is right to say that we should use that money a little differently and consider the schemes.

We have eight schemes at the moment. We know that they have various degrees of success and that there are bureaucratic nightmares in some respects, so there are definitely changes to be made, but I want to get to the point where we have more parental choice, absolute stellar quality across the sector, and a sector that is loved and respected for its experts. Regardless of how they work in the early years workforce, they are experts and we charge them with looking after the most precious things in our lives, so I want the childcare and early years sectors to be loved and put on a pedestal, exactly as we do with teachers. At the moment, that is not the case, and that is part and parcel of why attention and funding do not go to that area.

I have not just been carping and sniping from the sidelines. I have put some effort in and worked with those at the fantastic think-tank Onward, who are the most brilliant super-brains. We came up with the “First Steps: Fixing Childcare” report. I will run through its six headline recommendations.

We want to get to a point where we are empowering parents through a new system of childcare credits. That deals very much with choice and ensuring that any state support can be used in a more bespoke way. At the moment, some state subsidies cannot be used for a childminder who is not Ofsted-registered, for example. That is wrong. We need to ensure that if parents are comfortable with quality and safety, and safety standards are met, they can use state support in any way that they want.

We would like to investigate the front-loading of child benefit. Our understanding is that the first 1,001 days are the most important in a child’s life, and all the evidence is there—it is 40 years old—so let us look at some different models. They might not work, but I think that it is important that we model that because there may be some unintended consequences. Disadvantaged families have told me that they would be worried about that change. We would have to model that, but I think it is worth having a think through whether child benefit could be changed.

I would like to see a reform of parental leave by abolishing separate maternity and parental leave in favour of a single parental leave scheme. Parents would have a shared entitlement of about 12 months. Again, we can look at the research and consider the unintended consequences, but that is something that we could get to.

We could expand family hubs. As we heard, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) has done an amazing amount of work on that. Family hubs are not just like Sure Start centres. They deal with the period before birth, when women are pregnant, all the way through to late teens and into adulthood, and beyond for children with special educational needs and disabilities. My nephew has Down’s syndrome, and he will have support until he is 25. The family hub will be the perfect place. That is quite different from the previous offer from previous Governments.

I have great fondness for the Sure Start centres, but I think that it is absolutely wrong to say that every single one of them was performing brilliantly. Having spoken to people in Sure Start centres and thought about this as a councillor, I know that a lot of the centres were not doing outreach, so the same parents came around and around from the very early years. Let us be honest about and learn from the challenges, and make changes so that family hubs work well. Someone told me recently that there were more Sure Start centres than McDonald’s in the country. I have not checked that, but there are a lot of centres, and we should be able to champion them and keep them there if that is what the local area wants, but we should also consider family hubs.

I want to see some prioritisation of childminders and childminding agencies—I could talk about this for a very long time. At the moment, we have lost about 50% of our childminders through a lot of heavy-handed regulation, not necessarily from our Government but over a long period. They are often women who have a lot to add to the workforce as well as providing childminding services. We should be able to stimulate the childminder market, particularly through childminding agencies. As other hon. Members have mentioned, there is an inequity in the fact that private childcare settings have to pay business rates, but state settings do not. That inequity needs to be ironed out and, ideally, knocked out.

Again, I think we should look at the training and education of the early years workforce, because they are absolutely wonderful people. As a lawyer, I had to do continuing professional development. We want to make sure that that is baked into the system, and that the early years workforce are respected for that CPD if they are doing it.

[Mr Robin Walker]

I realise that I have banged on a lot in this debate, but on my hon. Friend’s point about training and CPD, one of the really good things we were able to do during my time at the DFE was invest in national professional qualifications for the teaching workforce. There are NPQs for the early years workforce, but the challenge is that those qualifications are focused on those parts of the workforce who work in schools. Would it not be great if, as part of the investment in this area, the Government were able to widen the reach of those NPQs to people who work in the private and voluntary sector within the early years workforce?

[Siobhan Baillie]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. We need to be able to focus on training and look at all the options, because the workforce are really keen on CPD. It is often quite a vocational profession: people grow up wanting to be childminders, often because they love kids. I mean, I come to this place for a rest—I could not do it. I have massive respect for that workforce, because I could not do what they do. Those people are in the job for a really good reason, but they often fall out of it because the pay is really low and there is not that ongoing professionalisation and earning of qualifications, or the building up of skills.

I am grateful to the DWP Select Committee, particularly the right hon. Member for East Ham (Sir Stephen Timms), because we have carried out a full investigation of the childcare element of universal credit. That has been really helpful, because we have discovered through evidence that the up-front payments are causing huge problems for parents on universal credit. Basically, what is happening is that every new term, parents are begging and borrowing to pay for that term’s childcare, and then they get 85% of that money back through universal credit. That is a really good offer, but families are getting into debt to make those up-front payments—not just once, but every single term—and then the money comes back through universal credit in dribs and drabs. It does not come back with a label saying, “This is for you to repay your childcare bill.”

That approach is causing real trouble, and as we have heard from other hon. Members, the cap has not been uprated. It is a really good offer from the Government and the DWP under universal credit, but only 13% of families are taking it up because it is a complete mess. I appreciate that it is not the responsibility of the Minister’s Department, but the fact that universal credit childcare claimants are not using this system, or they are using it and the money is paid all over the place, is having an impact on the childcare sector, which is directly under the Minister’s control. Again, I am really grateful to the whole of the DWP Committee for looking at that issue.

As we can see, this is not all about money: some of it is about regulation, safety and quality. Parental choice is high up there, but there are things we can do that are—to use an awful phrase—low-hanging fruit. I urge the Government to get things done. I have been putting a lot of pressure on the DFE, the DWP, No. 10 and the Treasury, particularly ahead of next week’s fiscal event, and I am also grateful to all the national newspapers that keep covering this area; The Sun, in particular, is very interested in the universal credit childcare issue. The support that it as well as the whole childcare sector in my constituency of Stroud has provided has been incredible. As all Opposition Members know—as the whole House knows—this issue is coming up on doorsteps. It is something that needs to be addressed, so the fact that we are looking very closely at funding is important.

I have had to be really hard-headed about this issue, trying to find solutions. I would absolutely love to do what some parties are doing: go around saying that we can provide universally free childcare from nine months to 11 years. I would love to be able to make that offer and say that that is going to happen very quickly, because parents are obviously very desperate at the moment to see change, but I do not think that would be the right thing to do. The hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) and I had an exchange on this topic before, when I asked how much that policy is likely to cost. I know that the Labour party has not costed it yet, because it is working on other policies.

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[Mr Robin Walker]

I thank the Minister for that response and for setting out some of the areas in this space beyond the departmental estimates in which the Government are investing. I think we have had great consensus across the House on the need for and the benefit of more investment in early years and childcare. There is recognition of some of the steps that the Government have already taken, and recognition also of the enormous opportunities if we can go further.

I do not have time to pay tribute to everyone who has spoken, but the hon. Member for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi) spoke about a business owner working for less than minimum wage. Sadly, that is not a unique circumstance for us to come across.

The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) was kind enough to refer to me as an ally. I assure her that I will not always be one in debate, but she has contributed powerfully to this debate. I thank her for her support, and that of many of her colleagues, on this issue.

The hon. Member for Hemsworth (Jon Trickett) quoted the same thing as me from the IFS about the current cost pressures facing the sector and the fact that it is not seeing real-terms increases. However, he neglected to quote the figure pointing out the real-terms increases in early years funding over the last decade, and that the actual funding is roughly treble the level that it was when Labour left office.

[Jon Trickett]

rose—

[Mr Walker]

And, no, I am not going to give way to him on that.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) made a fantastic speech, bringing the expertise of his immense experience in local government to this Chamber.

The Minister has heard from across the House on this issue. I hope that she will carry that message to the Treasury, and that we will see progress on this area in short order.

Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54).

House of Commons Commission

Resolved,

That Mrs Sharon Hodgson be appointed to the House of Commons Commission in place of Mr Nicholas Brown in pursuance of the House of Commons (Administration) Act 1978, as amended. —(Jacob Young.)

Public aCCOUNTS Commission

Resolved,

That Mrs Sharon Hodgson be appointed and that Mr Nicholas Brown be discharged as a member of the Public Accounts Commission under section 2(2)(c) of the National Audit Act 1983.—(Jacob Young.)

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Nigel Evans)]

I will now suspend the sitting until 7 pm, when we will take all the remaining business, including the petitions. The bells will ring a couple of minutes before the sitting resumes.

Autism and ADHD Assessments

Robin Walker Excerpts

Monday 6th February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Bambos Charalambous]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. We need education in society, and the acceptance of people with ADHD and autism, to ensure that people with those neurodiverse conditions are able to flourish and live to their full potential.

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

That is twice that the hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater) has intervened and I have agreed with what she said. As Chair of the Select Committee on Education, I am passionate about ensuring that we have the provision to address children’s needs. One challenge with the current delays in diagnosis is that although local authorities have the statutory duty to measure where provision is needed and to provide places accordingly, if children are not getting the diagnoses, they do not have the statistics. One thing that we can perhaps do with this debate is encourage faster diagnosis so that we can help to meet that need and ensure that, where specialist support is needed, it is provided .

[Bambos Charalambous]

The hon. Member is absolutely right: faster diagnosis is needed to ensure that the resources go to those who need the support the most. I very much look forward to the publication of the special educational needs and disabilities paper, because it might be a game changer if it delivers.

The inadequate services available for ADHD are another key barrier. As more people seek referrals for ADHD, there just is not the service capacity to match the demand. This is also an issue with staffing levels with regard both to people who can assess ADHD and to the support that is given after an assessment has been made, because there is a need to recruit people with those skills.

People are waiting years for an ADHD diagnosis, as access to services and treatment in the UK is limited and inconsistent. Indeed, according to survey data published in the ADHD Foundation’s “Born to Be ADHD” report, more than a third of adults and children diagnosed with ADHD had to visit their GP at least three times before being referred to a specialist, with 28% waiting two or more years before receiving a diagnosis. In advance of today’s debate, the Petitions Committee carried out a survey and found that most people who responded to the petition had had to wait more than a year for an assessment of ADHD or autism.

The impact of the delays cannot be overstated. The long-term effects of untreated ADHD are documented and include increased rates of other health problems, poor social functioning and antisocial behaviour. For example, those with ADHD are twice as likely not to take up full-time employment. It is also estimated that 24% of the prison population has ADHD, so intervention and diagnosis of ADHD would clearly improve the life chances of people with ADHD who fall into the criminal justice system.

Another problem is the inconsistency—what has been described as a postcode lottery—in support for people with ADHD. Where someone lives is critical in determining how long they are likely to wait to be referred.

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[Mr Robin Walker]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. She will recognise that we are launching an inquiry into persistent absence from school. Does she share my experience that so many children are away from school because their parents do not feel that they are getting the support that they need? In many cases, clearer, earlier diagnosis and getting the right support in place would help us to solve that problem and help to make sure those children get the right support in the safest place for them to be.

[Mrs Drummond]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I am also asking for a register of home-schooled children so that we can look into that and identify them quickly.

We need support for autistic children and autistic people generally so that society does not lose their potential and value, which would be much missed.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Health and Social Care (Maria Caulfield)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Angela. I take this opportunity to thank my hon. Friend the Member for Carshalton and Wallington (Elliot Colburn) for introducing this important debate, and I thank the wider Petitions Committee. I also echo the words of the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Tooting (Dr Allin-Khan), in thanking those in the Public Gallery who have listened to the debate.

This debate is the second on this issue; we had one on ADHD specifically in Westminster Hall last week, secured by my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey). One of the key points made in that debate was about the lack of data collection on ADHD, and we have heard from many Members this afternoon about the impact of that. Although the data is there, it is not pooled together at a regional or national level, and I gave a commitment in that debate that we would look at a data dashboard so that, for ADHD, we can start to piece together who is waiting, where and for what.

I thank all the Members who have taken part in this debate. The fact that we have heard from more than 15 right hon. and hon. Members from different parts of the country and different political parties shows the sheer scale of the problem. I thank everyone for the tone of the debate and for raising these serious issues so well.

Public awareness of autism and ADHD has grown over the past decade, and that is really welcome. The National Autistic Society estimated that 99.5% of the public is now aware of autism. We have a wide range of people to thank for that, from public figures who are increasingly open in the media about their experience, to advocates such as the petitioners, who have helped to bring this debate to this Chamber, and right hon. and hon. Members, who keep neurodiversity firmly on the parliamentary radar and high up the priority list.

The more conversations we have, the more people are empowered to recognise that they or a loved one could be autistic or have ADHD. While this is positive, the debate has been focused on the challenges people face. As I said last week, I am not going to duck away and pretend that there are not significant problems with diagnosis, assessment and getting help and support for ADHD and autism. My own postbag as a constituency MP in Lewes reflects much of what has been said about not just waiting times for referrals but difficulties getting EHCPs—and about the high refusal rate, which we did not hear a huge amount about this afternoon. It might be my particular area, but we have a high number of tribunals in my part of the country. Around 90% of the cases are successful at tribunal, which tells me that there is a problem with parents having to fight tooth and nail to get plans in place.

We have heard about the impact of not getting the help and support that is needed. Early intervention and support avoids a child, young person or adult going into a crisis where even more intensive support is needed and in which damage is done during vital years of their life. That is particularly the case for young people, who should be in school getting educational support but cannot be because they do not have the help and support they need.

My hon. Friends the Members for Dewsbury (Mark Eastwood) and for Darlington (Peter Gibson) talked about whether there is enough funding. That is an interesting debate. Funding is going in like never before, including over £74 million to the autism strategy. Specifically on autism diagnosis, £2.5 million has gone in in the last year to improve autism diagnostic pathways, but it is about how that money is spent and whether it is making a difference. We are putting in more funding, because the issue is significant.

For too many people, the path to diagnosis is too long. There is a great deal of frustration from patients and professionals alike. NICE has a recommendation that autism assessments should be done within 13 weeks of referral and we know that in many cases that recommendation is not being met. For ADHD there are no recommended waiting times for diagnosis, and we are committed to looking at that specifically. NICE sets out for ADHD who should make a diagnosis and the criteria that should be followed. In the absence of a physical test for diagnosis, it can be challenging, especially when other conditions are at play that may overlap and mask symptoms. However, that does not mean we should accept the current long waiting times as the norm.

As many have said this afternoon, we have over 125,000 people waiting with a referral for suspected autism who have not yet received a diagnosis. Only 8.5% of referrals are within the 13-week wait, which is completely unacceptable. We have heard that there are challenges in Wales, as there are in England, and I am absolutely happy to work with colleagues from all the devolved nations to improve assessment, diagnosis and services across the board. However, there are opportunities coming through and a number of colleagues, including my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury (Laura Farris), mentioned some of the pilot studies.

NHS England has developed a framework that is transforming learning from autism and ADHD pilot schemes into scalable action, which will improve support and care for people across the country. Last year, part of the £13 million autism funding enabled 72 pilot tests for improvements in diagnostic pathways, and these pilots are now helping NHS England to develop a national framework on autism that will improve assessment across the country for people of all ages. I am happy to send colleagues the details of those pilot studies, the initial findings and their potential scope as we roll out them out further.

We now expect integrated care boards, which were set up in July of last year, to lead the charge on how pathways can be best delivered in local areas. The guidance will provide signposting at each stage of the assessment process, helping to map out a clear route for diagnosis. We now expect every integrated care board to have an executive lead for learning disabilities and autism, and there was talk in the debate about having a national lead. Actually, we want leads at every single local integrated care board to be the lead person to whom MPs can go if assessments are not being done on time, to hold local services to account, to compare best practice and to make sure it is happening in every part of the country. We are putting in the investment needed to meet the demand, because further investment will be needed. This year, we have committed an extra £2.5 million to the scheme, which will help roll it out further.

Many Members have talked about CAMHS. Although autism and ADHD are not mental illnesses, we know that people with such conditions are often more at risk of mental illnesses, including anxiety and depression. One of the key things that is making a real difference for young people is the introduction of mental health support teams in schools. The shadow Minister touched on that earlier, and we currently have 287 mental health support teams offering support to about 4,700 schools and colleges around the country. That is making a difference by supporting young people with mental health issues, but it is also about identifying whether they could have an ADHD or autism diagnosis and getting them into the system much more quickly.

[Mr Robin Walker]

I welcome the expansion of those teams and the fact that we have more mental health support in schools, but does the Minister recognise that one of the big challenges, particularly with children waiting a long time for diagnosis, is children who are out of school and who are remote from the system, where parents do not feel that their needs are being met and children can wait a very long time for an EHCP? Does she agree that the system as a whole would benefit enormously from faster diagnosis to address that problem?

[Maria Caulfield]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend. The mental health teams will support children in schools so that, we hope, we can get in at an earlier stage and children are not excluded in the future. For too long, appeals from parents for assessments and diagnosis have gone unheard. I talked about my own constituency, where tribunals are very frequent, which means that children escalate, get into crisis and are excluded far more often than they should be. The teams will make a real difference by signposting for the children and getting them assessed much more quickly, and we will continue the investment to roll out support more widely. Last year, we invested £79 million to give around 22,500 more children and young people access to community services, which will make a long-term difference.

The pilot in Bradford was mentioned. We are investing in identification in educational settings and committing £600,000 to expand an autism early identification pilot to at least 100 schools over the next five years. I am keen to ramp that up further and faster if we can. Again, positive early findings from that pilot have seen staff reporting that they are better able to identify and support those children.

A number of Members mentioned the interworking between health and education—I admit that it has not been great up until now. We are working to improve that. I hear from teachers who take up the heavy lifting of supporting children and their parents and they often feel that healthcare does not do its bit in terms of getting assessments done quickly. That is why we are working jointly on the SEND review, for which the Green Paper was published last year. We are hoping to update colleagues imminently on the implementation of that. It will make a strategic difference with getting people assessed, diagnosed and supported as quickly as possible. That review is on top of our national autism strategy, which was published last year. We are working up the guidance that will implement that strategy on the ground to improve access to services that people expect.

I hope that I have outlined some of the work that has been done to manage demand, cut waiting times and deliver meaningful change for both autistic people and those with ADHD. I am the first to admit that we are not where we want to be, and that there is a lot of work to be done. With health and education working together, the SEND review, and our autism strategy, as well as by collecting data so that we know what services are where, setting the standards we expect to be met and working with local integrated care boards, we can ensure we improve the experience for everyone.

I will touch on a final point, raised by the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier), which was that ADHD is under-diagnosed in women and girls. She is absolutely right, and that is because the symptoms and signs are very different in girls as opposed to boys and men. We are looking at that in the women’s health strategy. We see a number of young women taking their own lives because they have not been diagnosed in time and given the support they need. That is a priority area for the Government.

I thank colleagues for a very constructive debate. I hope I am not here again next year, and that we see the improvements we are determined to make. I am encouraged, but I realise that it has to feel different for parents, children, young people and adults who are waiting for an assessment and the care they need to improve their experience of living with autism and ADHD.

BBC Local Radio

Robin Walker Excerpts

Thursday 8th December 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in a debate with so much cross-party agreement. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) on securing it and the Backbench Business Committee on granting it. I was very happy to put my name to the petition to the Committee calling for this debate, because this issue matters in all our constituencies.

I began today talking to Andrew Easton on the breakfast show on BBC Hereford and Worcester about a national issue, as it happens, but one with relevance in my constituency. All of us, as politicians, need to engage with local radio. I recently ended a career on the Front Bench and returned to the Back Benches, and one of the pleasures of doing that is being able to pick up some of the causes I championed previously. I remember in a debate in 2011, along with the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), championing the case for local BBC and making some of these same arguments. In that case, we did win some of the argument, and the BBC changed its mind about some of the proposed cuts and kept our local radio stronger. I hope that this debate will mean we can do that again.

As a Minister, I experienced the value of BBC local radio scrutiny in every part of the country, not just my constituency. I had to do so-called regional rounds and speak to the local BBC in different parts of the country where different issues would come up with an extremely well-informed approach. I remember being really tested by BBC Cumbria about issues of rural remoteness, and I remember challenging interviews with BBC Three Counties Radio. Having to think, as a Minister, about all the different populations that we are serving and that the BBC is serving is immensely important. That genuine localism, which the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) spoke so passionately about, is vital.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Wokingham (John Redwood) mentioned certain local government reorganisations that the Conservative party tried back in the 1970s. It is a running joke in my family, because my late father was the Minister responsible for implementing some of those. They were deeply unpopular and controversial, and most of them have unravelled over time, because people’s genuine local identities overcame the centralising instincts of Government. The BBC should listen to the lived experience of what happened with those great reforms of the 1970s and the fact that we have returned to a more local approach and the devolution that the hon. Member for York Central spoke about.

For my constituents in Worcester, that is vital, because we have seen with various regional initiatives over the years the understandable dominance of the population centre in Birmingham up the road of the west midlands. I do not necessarily begrudge that, because it is where the most people are, but the priorities of the conurbation are not the priorities of someone from Worcestershire or Herefordshire. That is similar to Durham—I remember being dispatched on a Department for Education visit where my briefing told me that I was going to Newcastle upon Tyne, which I queried and said, “Are you sure about that?”. It turned out that the school I was going to was actually in County Durham, a rural area where people would not have been happy to be told that they were part of Newcastle upon Tyne.

That sense of proper local identity really matters and BBC local radio does it well. We have voices on the radio that sound like the voices of our constituents—the voices that people know—so I thank the team at BBC Hereford & Worcester for the incredibly valuable public service that they provide. It should be about public service. The right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington quoted the line about it being one of the “crown jewels” of public service broadcasting and I feel passionately that only the local BBC can do that within the service.

When we have these debates about priorities, I wonder whether television drama is a good use of a huge proportion of the BBC’s budget in terms of public service, given that it is an increasingly competitive space. My right hon. Friend the Member for Maldon (Sir John Whittingdale) made the point about the importance of the BBC providing unique opportunities and I am not sure that it should be putting such a huge part of its budget into an increasingly competitive landscape. I would rather that the small fraction of its budget that it puts into local radio was protected and, preferably, enhanced.

Several hon. Members have mentioned the covid crisis, and we all know the enormous value of BBC local radio during that time. In my patch, we have frequently faced debilitating floods; Worcester falls victim to floods too often. During periods of huge disruption, BBC local radio is vital to many local people. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead made the point about school closures, which is one issue that we have faced as a result of floods over the years. People will not be able to get that vital local knowledge and local input—the scale and the level of detail that tells them when a primary school has been affected by floods and needs to close early—on a regional level.

That local knowledge does not stop being vital at 2 pm, so the idea that we can have local radio just for the morning is for the birds. It is about democratic scrutiny: we as Members of Parliament will all have been asked to go on the breakfast show and on drivetime to follow up the news bulletins. Although the local news bulletins are being protected, we follow them up with detailed discussions about local issues on drivetime, so to lose those programmes would be a huge mistake.

[John Redwood]

Is it not important that local radio journalists go to the council meetings, which are not normally before 2 pm?

[Mr Walker]

My right hon. Friend makes a crucial point. Of course, our local councils are a vital part of local democracy. Without local radio journalists covering and attending those meetings into the evening, we will not have the quality of democratic debate and discourse that we can and should have in this country.

I was struck by the point of the right hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington about the BBC chasing a younger audience with its move to digital. We have to ask why, because that younger audience is much more savvy and focused on a wide range of media, and does not necessarily rely on local radio in the same way that the older audience does. It is not just about the older audience, however—although we have heard from many hon. Members on both sides of the House about the importance of local radio to the elderly and isolated, which is right—people who drive for a living also value what local radio does. It gives detailed information about road closures that it would not be possible to get at regional level and that commercial stations can rarely provide. Reaching the audience that local radio reaches—the millions of people up and down the country who benefit from and rely on it—is important.

A good thing about the BBC’s proposals is that they talk about investing in investigative journalism, which all hon. Members would support. If that investigative journalism is taking place at a local level, however, it needs an outlet and regular opportunities to report and feed into programmes.

[Sir Mike Penning]

My hon. Friend is making an exceptionally good point. One problem with the redundancies is that those who have not lost their jobs will no longer be local reporters; they will be regional reporters. Some of the award-winning reporters in our constituencies and on our local radio will be smothered around the country and we will lose that expertise. I do not believe that that is what the BBC is looking for.

[Mr Walker]

I entirely agree, and I would also say that investigative reporting needs to be done a local level in our communities. My hon. Friend the Member for Wyre Forest (Mark Garnier), who has just had to step out of the Chamber, recently had a debate about nitrous oxide misuse, and that really important issue was highlighted by a local journalist working for BBC Hereford & Worcester, based on stories that emerged locally.

At Education questions a week or so ago, I raised the case of Rhys, a boy from Worcestershire who has been unable to get a place in a special school and was not able to get a local placement. Such cases are brought up by the high-quality journalism taking place in our BBC local radio. The coverage we have had of the situation at the Worcester Warriors, which has been very worrying for many of my constituents—not just on the sport side, which I am glad to say the BBC wants to protect, but on what was going on behind the scenes and the business story of what went wrong at a premiership rugby club that has been driven into administration—could not have happened without the brilliant investigate work of Felicity Kvesic from BBC Hereford & Worcester.

For all these reasons, I think the BBC needs to rethink these proposals. I am very grateful for the constructive way in which the NUJ has been engaging on this—I think we have all had a useful briefing from it. It has shown that it agrees with parts of what is being proposed, but it disagrees with the fundamental move against localism. For local identity and for the vital public service that this provides, I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to keep on pressing the BBC on these issues and to get it to rethink.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anna Firth]

I absolutely agree with my right hon. Friend, who puts it brilliantly. Our local journalists really know how our community feels. I pay tribute to them, because it takes time and hard work to get that understanding. The way they handled the situation last year was brilliant.

It is not just about covering sad events. BBC Essex’s “Drivetime” show is incredibly practical: it has very helpfully kept my constituents up to date with the dreadful problems on our roads when Just Stop Oil has been causing chaos.

Local radio also celebrates our community heroes. I have always been a big supporter of local media, and not just radio—our local papers do the same thing. It is so valuable. People who do so much for our community deserve to be celebrated. We have already heard about the Make a Difference awards, which BBC Essex arranges every year, but I want to give another example.

We have a brilliant disability campaigner in Southend West called Jill Allen-King, who has done so much over so many decades for blind people and people with sight impediments and the like. She got a Pride of Britain lifetime achievement award this year, but the local radio made a big play of going to her house without letting her know and presenting her with another tribute and another award, because it has covered her work over so many years. It was not asked to do it. It rang me to talk about it. That is just another example of how it goes above and beyond. Similarly, with the Music Man Project, which we are trying to get a Christmas No. 1 with this year, BBC Essex is joining us and helping every step of the way.

Of course, I cannot talk about BBC Essex without mentioning its coverage of Southend’s local football club. Southend United have a huge following, but their matches are not shown on television, so the only way people who cannot go to the matches can hear how their team are getting on is through BBC Essex. One of my constituents, a lovely lady called Annie Maxted, is a big Southend United fan. I met her at our famous centenarians’ tea party this year—she is about 101. She came with me to watch the match, and she absolutely loved it because she never gets the chance to go and watch; she always has to listen on BBC Essex. That entertainment, which makes a real difference to quality of life, will be lost if these changes go ahead.

[Mr Robin Walker]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Does she agree that, even if the BBC says it will keep sports programming, the deep connections with and understanding of local clubs that reporters have cannot be protected if the number of local journalists is reduced? We have to take with a pinch of salt some of the commitments that have been made to protect sporting coverage. If programmes do not have those strong local connections, they will not be able to follow sports teams as effectively.

[Anna Firth]

No, they will not. In Southend, we will not get dedicated coverage, so there is no guarantee that our local football team will be covered on a regional basis. My hon. Friend makes an important point: it is because local media are so embedded in our communities that their voices are so well received and so comforting. It is because of their local connection that they tackle loneliness and provide comfort to our residents. The statistics bear that out: more than 2 million people tune in to BBC local radio and to no other BBC station.

According to the BBC’s own listener figures, the majority of the audience for BBC local radio are over 50, with 20% between 55 and 65, and 35% aged over 65. It is the elderly population we have been talking about who really appreciate local radio. That is so important in Southend West, where more than a fifth of people are over 65, and 8% of the people I represent are over 80—a significantly higher proportion than the national average. BBC Essex is a lifeline for them, providing that local, comforting voice in their homes.

Every Sunday between 10 am and 2 pm, BBC Essex journalists go around the county providing cryptic clues to where they are for listeners to solve. The programme is called BBC Essex Quest, and I know from talking to my constituents that it is hugely popular. It is a Sunday ritual for those who are housebound and who may be lonely. That is one of the reasons I was so disappointed by the recent announcements. If the changes go ahead, we will lose Essex Quest, because we will not have that local weekend coverage—we will only have local coverage between 6 am and 6 pm on weekdays—and that will be a real loss to my constituents.

We hear a great deal about the BBC moving its news content online. Of course I see the argument for that, but we must bear in mind—I urge the BBC to consider this—that only 35% of over-75s go online for their news content. The 65% who do not are exactly the people we have been talking about today, who obtain their news from their local radio stations. I do not want to go into any great detail about the arguments for and against the BBC’s increasing its online content, competing directly with the commercial sector at the expense of the hard-working taxpayer, but I do want the BBC to consider the needs of my elderly and vulnerable constituents.

The BBC was founded on the principles of informing, educating and entertaining people, and BBC local radio is the epitome of that. My constituents need a local radio station that is relevant to their lives, and I urge BBC Essex to commit itself to continuing to provide the comprehensive local radio station that they love and deserve.

Early Years Childcare: Staff-Child Ratios

Robin Walker Excerpts

Monday 14th November 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Harris.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) on leading the debate, and the family on showing great bravery in coming forward to champion this issue in the way they have. The circumstances of any death of that nature are deeply concerning and must of course be investigated properly.

I agree with one of the things the hon. Lady said in her opening speech: a functioning early years system is fundamental to our society and economy. I agree profoundly with that. In my time as Schools Minister, I saw the increasing awareness among schools of the importance of the early years support that children were getting, whether in nurseries or school-based settings, and the concern in our primary sector about school readiness, often driven by the circumstances of some of those children who had not had the opportunity to engage with early years provision or to attend nursery. Getting that right is crucial.

The hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North and my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) both made the point about the UK having some of the highest costs for childcare. In that context, I wonder whether the putative figure—even if we accept that £40 per week is right—would make a substantial difference to the overall position. I wholly agree with the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North about one-to-one attention and careful risk management—the careful assessment of risks taken in play. All of those are arguments for having the right ratios. They are also arguments for having better trained staff and for making sure that we reward investment in the professionalisation of childcare, professional development and pathways for progression in early years settings.

I was looking, as my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) mentioned—there is a Select Committee election under way—at some of the past reports by the Education Committee. In its report on tackling disadvantage in early years it discussed a lack of clarity on progression routes and apprenticeships for the sector, and challenged the Government to do more in that space. It talked about the lack of a workforce strategy for early years. I recognise that the Government have invested more in professional development for early years since the report was published, but there is more that can be done and we need to continue to look at that.

I know from speaking to early years professionals in my constituency—there are some brilliant people who work in that space, including Alice Bennett, who runs the Worcester Early Years Centre and started off in a fantastic farm-based early years setting just outside my patch in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for West Worcestershire (Harriett Baldwin)—that they have a passion for driving continuous improvement in their workforce. As we have heard, in an environment in which early years has to compete with local supermarkets raising wages and becoming more competitive by offering flexible hours, retaining those great professionals is a key challenge, and we must make sure that we can reward the early years workforce appropriately. That is vital.

We have heard a lot about different ratios in different countries. I accept part of the argument made by the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North that we should not compare apples with pears. It is important to compare people with similar qualification levels. I remember attending the international summit on the teaching profession and being grilled by many international colleagues about the ratios in England compared with other countries. The general consensus of Education Ministers from other countries was that ours were on the low end. It is important that we do the research to look at the qualification levels that are required and how we get this right.

Part of the Labour Government’s original idea for devolution was that we should be able to experiment with different approaches in different parts of the UK, and we should be able to learn from that. I take the point that if Scotland does this with greater assurance and higher qualification levels, we need to look at that before we change the numbers. We should learn from what takes place in devolved parts of the United Kingdom. We should also learn from the approaches taken by our fellow English-speaking countries such as Ireland, Australia and others. We should look at the evidence from those countries.

The Government have invested more in childcare overall, which is welcome. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has suggested that spending on three hours of childcare has doubled since 2009, rising from £1.7 billion to £3.5 billion in real terms. That spending and investment is welcome, but I am concerned about the extent to which that reaches the people who need it most. Responding to the Education Committee’s report in April 2019, the Government said that 72% of eligible two-year-olds were taking up the two-year-old offer, and that that proportion had risen from 58%. That is welcome, but it still means that 28% of the eligible cohort—some of the people most in need of extra support—are not getting it.

There is a disjunction between our two-year-old offer, which is designed to support people most in need of catching up, and the offer for three-year-olds and four-year-olds, which is designed to support people so that they have the best chance of entering the workplace. I understand the history of how that came about and the fact that those initiatives were introduced for different reasons, but if we were starting from scratch we would not design a system with that disjunction. We would design a system to support children and parents with the challenges of childcare. It is important that we take a long, hard look at that, and I hope that, whoever wins the race to become Chair of the Education Committee, it will look at those issues.

Again, it is timely that the Select Committee should look at the wider issue of childcare. I certainly look forward to responding to the letter from my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester. He made a good point about the lack of socialisation of children in lockdown. I know this from my own daughter, who lived at home with us throughout lockdown. After her first day of nursery, she came back and said, “Mummy, daddy, I don’t like children”. It suddenly occurred to us that she literally had not engaged with any children her own age for a year at the age of two; that is extraordinary. It took her a bit of time, but I am glad to report that she now gets on very well with her peers at school. But this is an area where extra support is needed.

One of my concerns—this is something that I have heard constantly from primary school heads and teachers—is about the speech and language capabilities of children entering primary school. I note that the National Deaf Children’s Society and Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists have recently called for more investment in the specialist early years workforce to ensure that we get the right support for those children.

As the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North mentioned, it is particularly important to identify children who have special needs and ensure that they get that early support. The education system as a whole would save enormously from identifying need and making sure that the right supports and therapies are there at the earliest stage. That proper early intervention, which many Members have spoken about over time, makes a difference.

I wholly agree with the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) about an inverted pyramid of funding in the education system. The amount that we spend goes up as children go through the education system, but the returns on that investment are actually greater the earlier the investment is made. We need to keep looking at that when we look at the funding formula, to ensure that it works properly. I do not entirely share my hon. Friend’s views on the area cost adjustment, because I come from a part of the country that tends to lose out as a result of such formula adjustments, but I recognise his point.

We need to look at the pay of early years professionals to ensure we reward their increasing levels of qualifications. We must also take a long, hard look at what we are trying to do through the tax-free childcare offer. In theory, this is a great offer. It is a huge amount of money that is potentially available to people, but they are not taking it up. They have consistently not taken it up in sufficient numbers to justify it. I sometimes worry that this is a great wheeze for the Treasury. If there is a large amount of money going into childcare but it is not spent, that does not benefit either the system, the childcare advisers or the parents for whom it is intended. The figures I have from His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, which were picked up in a recent report from the Institute of Chartered Accountants, were that less than 22% of eligible families are taking up the tax-free childcare for which they are eligible. I hope that the new Minister, who is a great thinker and will do a brilliant job in this role, is able to challenge her friends at the Treasury on that, to ensure that the money does flow through into the childcare sector.

I am inclined to agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud that it is right that the Government should ask the question about ratios, but we have heard in this debate that there is pretty heavy evidence that the answer may not be changing ratios. It may be looking at other ways to support the sector and to make it more affordable, and at the role that the Government can play in that. I say to the Minister: ask the question but listen to the evidence. Listen to the evidence from the professionals and the people working in early years. Let us make this work for the whole country, for our economy and, most of all, for the children.

Worcester Warriors Rugby Club

Robin Walker Excerpts

Thursday 22nd September 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)]

It is a great honour to secure this debate, on an issue that is very dear to my heart. In recent weeks, Warriors fans have grown accustomed to the odd delay, and I apologise to all those who may have tuned in at 5 pm or 5.30 pm, but I hope I am able to evoke their concerns during the course of the debate. I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Pudsey (Stuart Andrew) for taking up his role, and look forward to his response. I am also grateful to the Clerks in the Table Office for accommodating me at the first possible opportunity after the period of mourning. Sadly, this debate is all too urgent and timely.

Worcester Warriors is a rugby club that has been at the heart of our county and community for decades, and follows in the footsteps of the Worcester rugby football club, who have played rugby union in Worcester for over 150 years. In the era of professional rugby, which roughly coincides with my adult lifetime, the club has been based at Sixways, and throughout my adult life I have been a supporter. The first game of professional rugby I ever watched was in Worcester; the club was then in North Midlands division 2, and although never a player myself, I have worn the club colours of gold and blue ever since. When I gave Worcester rugby shirts to my two nephews, then aged four and eight, they described them as their Uncle Robin suits, as they had so often seen me wearing mine. As is the case for so many other local folk, the club has provided a forum for intergenerational bonding, an arena for local pride, and a gathering space for special events.

The rise and rise of Worcester, who subsequently became the Warriors, was no accident, but the result of the vision and drive of one man: Worcester’s most successful 20th century entrepreneur and philanthropist, the late, great Cecil Duckworth. It is not possible to overstate Cecil’s contribution to our city. The boiler he first made in his garage became the prototype of the modern combi boiler and the basis for Worcester Heat Systems, now known as Worcester Bosch, the biggest private sector employer in my constituency. His endowment of the Duckworth Worcestershire Trust continues to make an enormous contribution to our local environment, and his generous support for the Acorns Children’s Hospice made its Worcester hospice a reality.

Cecil’s greatest and most prominent local legacy, however, was the rise of the Warriors. I was privileged to know Cecil and his family long before I became Worcester’s MP, and to be able to watch rugby at Sixways with him. I recall watching a pre-season friendly between Worcester and Oxford University while I was a student there, and learning that even great figures such as Cecil and his opposite number at the university rugby team, who happened to be a former head of the civil service and distinguished member of the other place, were capable of colourful language when the referee’s decision went against their team. I celebrated with him an astonishing six successive league wins and promotions as, with his support, the Warriors—as they became in 2002—moved all the way up from North Midlands division 2 to National league 1, the league just beneath the rugby premiership. I well remember the ecstatic feeling when our team, unbeaten after 26 wins in 26 matches, first won promotion to the top flight in the 2003-04 season.

Like so many fans, I experienced the pain of relegation in 2009, followed by joy at our return to the top flight in my first year as Worcester’s MP. All of this was masterminded by Cecil and his passion to see the club not just achieve, but cement, its position at the top of English rugby. When I first attended Sixways, there was one stand with a capacity of around 2,000; today we have a 12,000 capacity stadium, which is not only one of the best-equipped professional rugby stadiums in the country but a venue for key local cultural events, from concerts to the trooping of the Mercian Regiment’s colour. Quite rightly, a bust of Cecil adorns the Warriors’ stadium, and he was named life president of the club before his sad death from cancer in 2020.

While some might say that the Warriors is just a sports club, we in Worcester know it is much more than that. So many fans have spoken out about what the club means to them, and the staff and heads of department, as well as the players, have shown a spirit of togetherness in the toughest of times of which Cecil himself would be proud. I do not have time to echo all the sentiments of fans in this short debate, but so many have expressed what the clubs mean to them movingly and with real passion. I commend to the House looking at #together, #WeAreWarriors and #SaveOurWarriors on social media.

The club is also home to one of the most effective and successful community foundations in the rugby world—this is a key part of Cecil’s vision—which reaches more than 15,000 deprived and vulnerable people across the west midlands, championing accessible rugby, delivering innovative and inspiring lessons in schools, including special schools and alternative provision, using the power of rugby to build confidence and unlock opportunity. I have lost count of the number of times I have been downstairs in this place to congratulate the foundation on winning awards at the premier rugby community awards. Sadly, all this is now at risk.

The current owners of the club have brought it to the brink of financial collapse, and for all that they have claimed this is the impact of the pandemic, they have failed to maintain the trust of their employees, keep their promises to local stakeholders or set out clear plans to reassure their many creditors. Their background in property development and the various complex transactions through which they have manoeuvred parts of the club and its land have raised serious doubts about their genuine commitment to keeping professional rugby at Sixways.

The news that on 17 August the owners had been served with a winding up notice by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs led dozens of my constituents to contact me with their concerns about the future of the club. On 26 August, I convened a meeting of local MPs and council leaders from all the three south Worcestershire councils and the county to discuss the concerns about any possibility of development land being separated from the club, and the risks to the viability of the stadium and the team. We agreed a joint statement. Crucially, included in this were the leaders of Wychavon District Council, the planning authority and Worcestershire County Council, with its responsibilities for economic development. It read:

“We will do all we can to retain professional, elite rugby at Sixways and protect the extraordinary legacy of the late Cecil Duckworth and his family.

We jointly call on the current Worcester Warriors owners to act in the best interests of the club, the players, the staff, the fans and the community served by the club, including the Warriors Community Foundation. We think it is essential that the club and all of its property assets remain linked.

While we recognise that there are significant opportunities for development at the Sixways site, we believe that these need to be utilised for the purpose of sustaining the rugby club and the wider ambitions of the local sporting community.

We are all very clear that we are prepared to work supportively with potential investors to find a positive outcome for the future of Worcester Warriors.”

Since that statement was published, I am grateful to have had messages of support from Worcester’s Labour mayor, city councillors, the supporters’ trust and the president of the amateur side, WRFC—Worcester Rugby Football Club. I am also grateful for the close attention that has been paid to this situation by the Rugby Football Union, Premiership Rugby Limited and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport over recent weeks and particularly for the patience of the current Secretary of State with the bombardment of messages I have been sending her ever since her appointment. Her predecessor set out to me that the sole focus of the Department has been in trying to protect the club and the future of professional rugby at Sixways—amen to that. Following our statement, local MPs were invited to meet the current owners and hear their plans; we accepted assurances that they were negotiating to sell the whole of the club together and that whatever the formal structures in place around the land, there was no intent to separate or sell of parts of it to the detriment of the club. We were told that the club was in negotiations with a number of parties and that payroll would certainly be made the following week.

The following week, the owners failed to make payroll. Staff were not paid at all on the day their wages were due and players did not receive their pay on time. That triggered players at the club to serve 14 days’ notice that their contracts had been breached, posing an existential threat to the continuation of the team and professional rugby at Sixways. On the same day, the mobile phones of the management at the club stopped working as the bills had not been paid and cars were taken from players because the leases had not been maintained. Academy players were reportedly made homeless as they lost access to their accommodation.

In the days of confusion and deep concern that followed, the players were eventually paid—late and sometimes irregularly. But together, selflessly, they decided to withdraw their notice and return to being in contract. The staff; 200 of whom are permanent full-time staff, with a further 200 part-time, were offered 65% of their wages, with the rest to follow once a deal had been secured. That has not so far been forthcoming, and I am told there are still a number of staff who have received no pay at all. It was at this stage that the five Worcestershire MPs who were free to do so put out our joint statement calling for the club to be taken into administration—I know all six of us were there in spirit. The owners fired back an angry release that stressed all the risks of administration and stated that they had had no offers of help from MPs or councils prior to our statement. The latter, I have to say, is simply a provable lie.

The owners’ case against administration was fourfold: that it would reduce the value of the club’s P share—its share of proceeds from premiership television and marketing rights—due to a call option being available to the PRL to buy it back in the event of administration; that it would leave local creditors out of pocket; that it would lead to automatic relegation from the premiership; and that it would leave season ticket holders without the value of their tickets.

Each one of those assertions is challengeable. From my own conversations with both PRL and the RFU, I know that neither the triggering of a call option on the P share, nor relegation should be considered a certainty. I urge them to do all they can in the event of an orderly administration to enable Warriors to stay in the premiership, with a points deduction if necessary, and to ensure that any new management and investors taking the club on have access to its P share. There is no reason why an administrator or new investor should not be able to honour season tickets, and local suppliers who from bitter experience have no trust in the current owners to pay their bills may stand a greater chance of recouping some of what they are owed if we have an orderly process rather than continued uncertainty and disorder.

Since that time, I am afraid that the situation off the pitch has not improved. Players have gone above and beyond to turn out and play for the club, despite the problems with their pay. Staff have moved heaven and earth to ensure that games can go ahead, meeting the challenges set by the RFU and PRL, even after wi-fi and internal emails went down, and with no support from their directors and owners. That Worcester Warriors players have scored tries against London Irish, Exeter Chiefs and Gloucester is a remarkable achievement in these most difficult circumstances. The solidarity that has been shown by each of those clubs reflects the desire of all rugby clubs to see the Warriors survive. That the University of Worcester Warriors—the ladies’ team—actually won its Allianz cup fixture against Harlequins is truly spectacular. The heroic efforts of underpaid or unpaid staff have been praised by fans of clubs across the country, but those efforts are barely acknowledged by the current owners. Instead, we have had reports of staff facing disciplinary action for daring to point out the string of broken promises that have been made to them, and of key people being mysteriously unavailable when legal or insurance documentation needed to be signed. Through all of this, the team, under the tutelage of Steve Diamond, have maintained a spirit of unity that is admirable in the extreme.

The owners told local MPs last week that they were on the brink of a deal to sell 85% of the club’s equity and that there would be new money to repay staff the proportion of wages owing and to secure all the commitments to the premiership before the end of the week. They promised staff and fans an announcement within 48 hours of the match on Sunday. Neither of those promises has been kept. Staff, fans and players are left with the lingering doubt that the owners might prefer the club to default on its rugby commitments so that expulsion from the premiership makes it easier to focus on developing the property assets away from the rugby. Such an outcome would risk making not only the Warriors but the Community Foundation, the academy, the amateur Worcester rugby football club and the Worcester Raiders football club homeless. It would be a disaster for sport in our county and a huge blow, which neither I nor my fellow Worcestershire MPs are prepared to accept.

Even after staff went above and beyond again to secure this weekend’s matches, another deadline has understandably been set by the rugby authorities for Monday. I know that staff, players and the exhausted heads of department at the club will do all they can to meet it, but I cannot be certain that they will be able to do so without the support of directors or new finance.

[Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making a fantastic case for the importance of rugby in his city and in my city of Gloucester. May I just share with him the solidarity that everybody at Kingsholm and Gloucester Rugby feels for his club? We want to see the Warriors back on great form, and we want to see these financial problems resolved. He has our full support in Gloucester.

[Mr Walker]

I am extremely grateful to my hon. Friend. As the son of a former Gloucester player, I was very proud and impressed when Gloucester offered free tickets to the game the other day to Worcester Warriors staff and the players who were not playing. That was a great gesture of solidarity, and it was enormously appreciated.

If the protestations of the current owners are true—that they have the best interests of the club at heart—surely, even at this stage, they should be calling in the administrators. However, while any doubt persists about their motivation, I urge DCMS, as the largest creditor and the Department responsible for safeguarding the interests of sport, to step in and to do so before Monday. I know of at least two significant interested parties—one is the party with whom the owners claimed to be about to strike a deal last week—who have said that they are interested in stepping in with new finance to support the club, but only through a process of administration. I say to my right hon. Friend the Minister that that now seems the only way forward.

Before my right hon. Friend responds, I want to address two further points that have been brought to my attention by the press. First, there is the suggestion from one creditor of the club that Sport England has somehow unwittingly assisted in the separation of assets from the club or made it easier for property to be alienated from it. I hope my right hon. Friend can assure me that that is not the case. In doing so, I would urge him not simply to reiterate that there was already a formal separation of the stadium from other land before the Sport England loan was negotiated. We all know that, but it is not the point. The concern is that the new lease negotiated at Sport England’s behest changed the terms on which the rugby trading company held use of the stadium, and reduced its access to non-rugby income and the proceeds of any events other than those related to the game itself. The accounts show that, prior to this, the book value of the lease held by the trading company was £16 million.

Can my right hon. Friend confirm that that book value still sits with the club and the assets over which DCMS has a call? If not, I hope he can reassure me that any process of administration will take into account all uses of public funding, and that where any of it has been used to pay property debt or secure other assets for the owners or their holding companies—MQ Property Ltd, Sixways Property Ltd and Bond Group Property Ltd—these can be brought into scope of any administration process. I do not believe for a moment that Sport England or anyone at the Department wished to reduce the income available to a sports club, but it is vital that we ensure that no inadvertent harm is done through the complex processes that the club has gone through under departmental supervision.

Finally, and most damningly in the eyes of most Worcester folk, is the report in today’s Daily Mail that the owners borrowed money from the family of the late Cecil Duckworth and have failed to repay it. I cannot stress enough how upsetting and appalling that is. One senior player has described the suggestion as “heart- breaking.” What is also striking, having now discussed the matter with Beatrice—Cecil’s widow—is that the money was borrowed in January 2020, before any impact of the pandemic and long before the owners admitted to the current financial woes of the club, with the express intention of making payroll. Within a few years of taking control of the club and after one of their original investors pulled out, they went to the great founder and benefactor of the Warrior’s success and borrowed half a million pounds. Since his death, they have refused to communicate with his widow or her lawyers to give an update as to the status of this debt or to confirm when and how it might be repaid.

The owners have asserted that half of the money is not owed, as a promise was made on the basis of a handshake for Cecil to cover the costs of employing the then manager of the club, Alan Solomons. Although there is no documentary evidence to back that claim, the family have accepted that they will not contest it. Even after this, there has been no further engagement with the Duckworth family on the remaining money. I cannot express in parliamentary terms my personal revulsion at the way in which those charged with protecting Cecil Duckworth’s legacy have behaved and seemingly continue to behave. I am told that the loan does not appear anywhere in the published accounts of the club or the holding companies, which prompts questions as to how they are meeting their legal responsibilities as directors and what other undeclared debts they may have taken on. It is no wonder one potential buyer has this week called for administration to include

“a forensic investigation of financial activities”.

My request to the Minister is simple. Two weeks ago, I and my fellow Worcestershire colleagues spoke out with one voice to call on DCMS to step in and take the Warriors into administration, in order to secure its future. That call is now more urgent than ever. Nothing in the experience of the past two weeks has given us any greater confidence that the current directors can or will deliver. The patience of staff, players and fans is being stretched beyond endurance.

Investors are waiting in the wings with serious offers backed by serious local business people and serious rugby folk to take the club out of administration and set it on a secure footing. Securing their support is vital. I urge the RFU and PRL to continue to show the forbearance and understanding that they have shown to date and to listen to the calls from across the rugby world that a way be found to allow the Warriors to continue to play in the top flight.

I urge DCMS to delay no further and to trigger formally a process of administration to secure the club and all the property assets associated with it before Monday’s deadline. I urge them to ensure that there are directors in charge of the Warriors who are fit and proper. In short, Minister, please #SaveOurWarriors.

Northern Ireland Economy and Innovation: Government Support

Robin Walker Excerpts

Tuesday 29th October 2019 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr Robin Walker)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Cheryl, and I join many other Members in congratulating the hon. Member for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly) on a superb speech and on having secured this debate—third time lucky. I was disappointed when previous debates were postponed, and am delighted that we have had the opportunity to have this debate today and hear some excellent speeches.

The hon. Lady rightly spoke about Northern Ireland’s proud industrial history and its bright, optimistic future as part of the UK. I strongly believe in upholding the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom—a family of four nations that are safer, stronger and more prosperous together. Northern Ireland benefits from being part of the world’s sixth-largest economy. Being part of the UK allows the 66 million people living across the four nations to work together to create jobs and opportunities.

As we have heard from many hon. Members, the Northern Ireland economy is strong, with an economic performance that sits alongside the growth of the wider UK economy. Employment is at a near-record high and unemployment is at a near-record low. The UK Government are serious in their commitment to grow the economy and to support innovation in Northern Ireland and across the whole UK.

I will set out some details of the UK Government’s investment in the Northern Ireland economy. We are delivering on our commitment for an ambitious set of city and growth deals across Northern Ireland. Since the funding announcement for the first city deal for Northern Ireland, the Belfast regions city deal, at the autumn Budget 2018, the total regional economic investment from the UK Government has exceeded £600 million. That commitment was reinforced by the Prime Minister’s announcement that £163 million has been allocated to complete the deals for the causeway coast and glens and the mid, south and west regions of Northern Ireland.

The UK Government have announced funding for all 11 council areas in Northern Ireland. That investment will significantly boost economic activity and attract private sector investment. The proposals are an example of what can be achieved when politicians of all backgrounds, local businesses, community leaders, academia and local government stakeholders come together to shape the economic future for their local areas and Northern Ireland as a whole.

[Stephen Pound]

The Minister is making an extremely powerful point. There are occasions when the Government can stand by and simply encourage—when they do not have to finance initiatives. Will he give credit to Thales, which I mentioned earlier, which has set up the primary engineer and secondary engineer leaders awards for Northern Ireland? That does not cost the Government anything, but provides an incentive for people in primary and secondary education in Northern Ireland to achieve awards in engineering.

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Gentleman draws attention to what the private sector can do to support apprenticeships and programmes of that sort, which of course I welcome. I also look forward to seeing the nine digital and innovation business cases from the Belfast region city deal come to fruition next year.

We are of course aware of the challenges faced by some of Northern Ireland’s iconic businesses in recent years, notably Harland and Wolff and Wrightbus. These have been very difficult times for their workforces, the families and the local communities. As the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley) kindly paid tribute to, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has engaged continuously with the efforts that local hon. Members in both constituencies—the hon. Member for North Antrim and the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson)—have championed to bring in new investors to support those two iconic names. I join the hon. Member for North Antrim in saying that I hope those investors will deliver tens of thousands of opportunities. I believe that hydrogen-powered buses and green infrastructure can play a crucial part in achieving the UK’s aim of achieving decarbonisation, and show how Northern Ireland can continue to lead the way. So I want to see those businesses succeed.

[Ian Paisley]

The way for the Minister to succeed in that is to ensure that the Government here put money into hydro tech and allow hydro companies to produce the resource. He must see the way ahead as not just battery power but hydro power.

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Gentleman makes his bid strongly, as I would expect. I will ensure that that is passed on to the Treasury and other relevant Government Departments. Indeed, we have heard a number of bids during the debate, not all of which I can necessarily answer. Obviously, however, there are a number of opportunities coming to deal with some of those things.

People in Northern Ireland also benefit from the changes that people throughout UK enjoy that have been delivered by the Government, including an increase in the national living wage that benefits about 75,000 workers, and a fuel duty freeze for the ninth successive year that saves the average driver a cumulative £1,000 compared with under the pre-2010 escalator. Following the terrible fire in Bank Buildings, owned by Primark, in August 2018, the UK Government provided £2 million to support the recovery and regeneration of Belfast city centre in the constituency of the hon. Member for Belfast South. I am pleased that much of the city centre has been rebuilt and has reopened after that fire.

As the hon. Lady mentioned, the UK Government announced a £675 million future high streets fund to support local areas in England to develop and fund plans to make high streets fit for the future. As high streets funding and business rates are devolved, the Barnett formula was applied to Northern Ireland in the usual way, as she noted. It is for the Department of Finance and Northern Ireland civil service permanent secretaries to determine how that money should be spent.

I join the hon. Lady in wishing that we had a restored Executive and in encouraging all the politicians in Northern Ireland to come together to bring the Assembly back, so that decisions can be taken on those issues and they can move forward. Hon. Members may be aware that the Government introduced the Northern Ireland Budget Bill today, which is required to place the Northern Ireland budget, presented in February 2018, on a legal footing. Delivering that legislation demonstrates the UK Government’s commitment to providing good governance for the people of Northern Ireland in the continued absence of the Northern Ireland Executive, but of course, we all want the Executive to be restored.

Businesses in Northern Ireland can benefit from UK Government initiatives, including the British Business Bank, which has supported more than 1,200 small and medium-sized enterprises in Northern Ireland with £80 million since November 2014. In the last year, more than 1,000 loans, valued at £7.3 million, have been granted to Northern Ireland businesses. Northern Ireland businesses also have access to UK Export Finance, which has provided nearly £33 million of support for exporters in Northern Ireland. I absolutely commend the collaborative efforts of Invest NI and the UK Department for International Trade to support Northern Ireland exporters to trade across the globe and to attract investment into Northern Ireland. I join the hon. Lady in paying tribute to the work of Alastair Hamilton and in wishing his successor every success in the years to come.

As the hon. Lady will recall, the UK Government’s Board of Trade met in her Belfast constituency earlier this year, which was the first time it had met in Northern Ireland in its 400-year history. The global success of Northern Ireland firms was celebrated, with several Northern Ireland companies receiving their well-deserved Board of Trade awards.

Our prosperity and ability to build a strong economy depends on how we encourage innovation, develop high-quality jobs and skills, and support businesses throughout the UK to thrive and grow. Innovative businesses across Northern Ireland are a huge part of its success, including Armstrong Medical, which I had the pleasure of visiting at a Causeway chamber of commerce business roundtable recently.

As we have heard, Northern Ireland has globally admired universities and research institutions, such as Queen’s University Belfast and Ulster University, because we have nurtured our intellectual powerhouses with public investment. The industrial strategy challenge fund supports innovation UK-wide and has allocated £12 million in Northern Ireland to date, including specific investments in Queen’s University Belfast.

Several hon. Members have touched on the controversies about EU exit. I do not have time to respond in detail to all those points, but I will say that we need to be absolutely clear that Northern Ireland leaves the EU with the UK, and we need to make sure that trade between us continues unfettered. The hon. Member for Belfast South made the point very well about the enormous importance of the UK internal market, which we absolutely want to protect. Northern Ireland continues to be a top destination for inward investment, and we will work with Invest NI to ensure that that continues.

I recognise the hon. Lady’s comment that shared prosperity is shared opportunity. She made the case extremely well on behalf of Northern Ireland business, and I commend her for her efforts.

Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019 Section 3(5)

Robin Walker Excerpts

Wednesday 16th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr Robin Walker)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Report pursuant to section 3(5) of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019, which was laid before this House on Monday 14 October.

On 9 October, the Secretary of State published a report updating information on progress on Executive formation, transparency of political donations, higher education and a Derry university, presumption of non-prosecution, troubles prosecution guidance, and the abortion law review. It is the second report published on those issues in line with our obligations under the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019.

I believe that the shadow Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd), has raised some concerns with the Leader of the House about the availability of the report. I apologise for any confusion, but I can confirm that it was available online on gov.uk on 9 October. Copies of the report were also available from the Vote Office on 14 October, the first day on which the House sat following its publication.

Let me first take this opportunity to welcome the inclusion of the Bill on historical institutional abuse in the Queen’s Speech. I was personally very pleased to note its inclusion, having heard the poignant testimonies of victims and survivors shared by Members on both sides of the House. I look forward to working with colleagues across the House to ensure that the Bill is passed, so that we can begin to see redress for the victims of this awful legacy.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

The Minister will be aware that victims of historical institutional abuse in Northern Ireland were very disappointed on Monday when the Bill to provide them with compensation did not feature in the Queen’s Speech itself, but was tucked away on page 113 of the background briefing notes. However, in fairness to the Minister, victims’ spirits will be lifted today by the First Reading of that essential Bill in the House of Lords. For the benefit of the victims, will the Minister outline the timetable for the completion of the legislation in the House of Lords and in this place?

[Mr Walker]

I think we can all welcome the fact that the Bill is being introduced and is moving forward. I am afraid that I do not have the full details of the timetable, but I will seek to consult colleagues in the Lords and, perhaps, write to the hon. Lady. I join her in paying tribute to the victims groups, about whom we have heard a great deal from Members throughout the House, and who have waited so patiently for redress and worked so constructively with those involved in the Hart inquiry, and with officials and politicians.

Let me now turn to the talks. The House should be in no doubt of the strength of our resolve to get Stormont back up and running. In the weeks since the first report was published, the Secretary of State has intensified his work with the Northern Ireland parties—particularly the two largest parties—to seek solutions to the remaining issues, which include rights, language and identity. He has continued to work closely with the Tánaiste, in accordance with the three-stranded approach, and the British and Irish Governments share the view that there remains an opportunity in the coming days to reach an accommodation. Indeed, the Secretary of State is not here in person to open the debate because he has decided to stay on in Northern Ireland tonight to continue to engage with the parties this evening.

The people of Northern Ireland have gone for more than 1,000 days without an Executive and Assembly, and I, along with colleagues throughout the House, do not want that stagnation to continue. Northern Ireland needs effective decision making, and its people deserve progress on key issues, including many that have been raised in the published reports.

[Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)]

The last time there were official cross-party talks was in July. We are now literally five days away from the Bill becoming an Act, and the provisions on abortion and same-sex marriage being extended as equal rights to Northern Ireland. What could it possibly be in the next couple of days that has suddenly renewed the Government’s vigour and their desire to reopen the talks, and to offer the idea that the abortion law for the people in Northern Ireland could be suspended when there is a Brexit deal to be done? Will the Minister update us on what has happened to change things now, of all times?

[Mr Walker]

I do not accept that characterisation. The Government have always been clear that we want to see devolved Government restored and that this deadline set out in the Act of the 21st would be when legislation would have to be brought forward if the Executive were not in place. Of course it is right that we are engaging with the parties—as I suspect any Government of any colour would be doing—to try to restore the Executive and Assembly, and we should continue to do that right up to the deadline.

As the hon. Lady notes, the current period for Executive formation expires on Monday, 21 October, and in the event that the institutions have not been restored, we will be required to extend the Act by statutory instrument. On this, I want to be absolutely clear with the political parties in Northern Ireland: this would not be a good outcome. Northern Ireland needs political decision making. The Assembly has had over two and a half years to reach a compromise and get Stormont back up and running, and the people of Northern Ireland are sick and tired of continued delay.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

I understand why the Secretary of State is not with us tonight, but can the Minister confirm that there is no part of this country of ours that will be more affected by either a deal on Brexit or, worse, no deal on Brexit? The Secretary of State committed to come to the House and give a clear indication of what powers he would need to take in the event of any outcome of Brexit. We have not yet seen this before the House. Can the Minister guarantee that at a very early stage we will see what legislation is necessary to ensure that we have an orderly exit with a deal and, even more importantly, without a deal?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Walker]

It is absolutely clear, and my Secretary of State has been clear, that in the event of no deal there would need to be further powers for Ministers to take action, but of course the hon. Gentleman will agree that we do not want to be in that situation. We want to have a deal, and I think we are all hopeful that in the coming days we might be able to have moved forward in debating that.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

The Minister will be aware of Baroness O’Loan’s call to re-engage with the Assembly and recall the Assembly, which my party fully supports, but will he accept and acknowledge tonight that there is one party that is holding back the formation of the Assembly again: Sinn Féin?

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Gentleman makes his point clearly. It is not for me to assign blame between parties; it is for me to call on all parties to ensure that not only an Assembly but a power-sharing Executive can be restored and say that agreement needs to be reached to achieve that.

As colleagues across the House are also aware, should no Executive be formed before the 21 October deadline set out in the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019, this Government are under a statutory duty to change the law in Northern Ireland on access to abortion services, to introduce same-sex marriage and opposite-sex civil partnerships, and to introduce a new victims payments scheme. While every effort is being made to restore an Executive, I must also take appropriate steps to ensure that the Government are able to meet our obligations should an Executive not be formed within the statutory deadline. That is why we launched an awareness campaign last week to ensure that people know how the potential changes to the law may affect them; further information will continue to be provided over the coming weeks if the duties come into effect.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (LD)]

rose—

[Mr Walker]

I am going to go into more detail on abortion but am happy to give way to the hon. Lady.

[Dr Wollaston]

As the Minister knows, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom where women do not have access to safe abortion in the place where they live, and they are really looking forward to a change in the law. The Government have set out that they are talking to Church groups; can the Minister set out which women’s organisations the Government have been talking to in advance of this very important and much longed-for change in the law?

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Lady makes an important point. I can assure her that we have been engaging with a range of organisations, including human rights organisations, women’s organisations and campaigns—[Interruption.] I would perhaps have to write to her with more detail.

Turning to the issue of abortion, one has only to look at the passionate and sincere demonstrations in recent weeks on both sides of this issue to appreciate that it remains a highly sensitive matter in Northern Ireland. I understand that there are many people in Northern Ireland who may, as the hon. Lady says, welcome the change. There are also many who would not. I would prefer, as would the Government, that the Northern Ireland Assembly was considering reforms of Northern Ireland’s abortion law. This is, as I have noted, a highly sensitive devolved issue and as such it would be best addressed by Northern Ireland’s locally elected and locally accountable political representatives.

[Jess Phillips (Birmingham, Yardley) (Lab)]

The Minister has stated that he would prefer it if the Northern Ireland Executive dealt with this issue, and he seems very much to be focusing on abortion. Does he feel the same way about the same-sex marriage provisions?

[Mr Walker]

On both issues, it is clear that we will take action should the deadline be reached, but I think that both issues would be best addressed by the Northern Ireland Assembly taking responsibility itself and delivering on the requirements. I support the right to same-sex marriage and have voted for it consistently, but I would prefer that locally elected representatives were able to deliver it in the most suitable way, no doubt arguing about it passionately and with conviction on all sides.

[Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) (Lab)]

Can the Minister indicate what he feels might happen in March 2020, should the Assembly not be up and running?

[Mr Walker]

In March 2020, should the Assembly not be up and running, the regulations that we are required to bring forward under the Act would come into effect. I will go into more detail on those requirements in a moment.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend clarify whether it is the re-formation of the Assembly or the re-formation of the Executive that is required according to the legislation that we passed in this place?

[Mr Walker]

I think it is both. The Executive will be required for the Assembly to be in place and to work effectively.

There can be a Northern Ireland solution to this issue, but for that to materialise Northern Ireland needs the Assembly and Executive back in the coming days. In the absence of a restored Assembly and Executive, the Secretary of State has taken steps to ensure that the Government are ready to fulfil their obligations. As part of the information campaign, my Department has worked closely with the Department of Health and Social Care and published guidance for healthcare professionals to provide clarity on the new state of the law and their duties and responsibilities. The guidance sets out changes in the law in this area, should they come into effect from 22 October 2019, until a new regulatory framework is in place by the end of March.

The immediate changes are the repeal of sections 58 and 59 of the Offences Against the Person Act 1861 in Northern Ireland, meaning that no criminal charges can be brought under that Act against women and girls who have an abortion or against qualified healthcare professionals or others who provide and assist in an abortion. There will also be a moratorium on current and future criminal investigations and prosecutions. The Government then have a duty to introduce a new legal framework to come into force from 31 March 2020. It is worth noting that, during this interim period from 22 October until the new legal framework comes into place on 31 March, other relevant laws relating to the termination of pregnancy will remain in place. That includes section 25(1) of the Criminal Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 1945, which makes it a criminal offence for anyone to assist or wilfully act

“to destroy the life of a child then capable of being born alive”,

except where the purpose is to preserve the life of the mother in good faith.

From 22 October, women resident in Northern Ireland can continue to access services in England and will now have all their travel and, where needed, accommodation costs met by the UK Government. Healthcare professionals will be able lawfully to refer patients to services in England by providing the details of the central booking service or directing them to information on gov.uk.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

Does the Minister accept that offering women the opportunity to go abroad or to travel to have an abortion is not the same as enabling them to have one at home by recognising their rights under the conventions? Does he accept that simply to say, “We will not prosecute” is not enough?

[Mr Walker]

Broadly, yes—I do accept that, but I also accept that the legislation allowed for this interim period so that the right guidance could be put into place to ensure that when services become available they are operating under the right framework.

It is expected that access to abortion services will not be routinely available in Northern Ireland until the new legal framework is in place after March 2020. The guidance notes that, if healthcare professionals choose to offer an abortion service to women during the interim period within the bounds of the relevant law, they should do so in line with their professional competence and guidance from their professional body. The guidance also notes the state of play relating to conscientious objection and what to do in cases in which patients have purchased abortion pills online. We are continuing to work at pace to be ready to continue to take forward all the necessary work to be able to implement new regulations by 31 March 2020 if there is no restored Executive by the deadline. Make no mistake: we will change the law on these issues if there is no Executive within the deadline.

My Department is therefore preparing to launch a consultation on changes to the law, on access to abortion services, and on the scheme for a victims payment once the 21 October deadline passes.

[Stella Creasy]

The Act is exceptionally clear that it is solely the Executive being reformed, not the Assembly, that would be the trigger. It is also very clear that this is not dependent on the Assembly being in place post 22 October. For the avoidance of doubt, will the Minister tell the House whether the legislation that we passed in July this year will be amended by this Government if the Assembly is up and running after 22 October to give the Assembly the power to set these laws, or is he going to do what the Act, which this House passed overwhelmingly, asks him to do by March 2020?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Walker]

I am slightly confused by the hon. Lady’s intervention, because I think I have been absolutely clear that we will do what the law requires in this respect. We are not intending to amend it. What I am saying, though, is that, if the Executive and Assembly were to be up and running before the deadline, those requirements would not apply. The requirements very specifically, as she said, require the Executive to be in place.

[Stella Creasy]

For the avoidance of doubt, the Act makes no mention of the role of the Assembly if it is reconstituted once the 21 October trigger passes. Will the Minister tell the House that he intends to amend the legislation that we passed in this House about the provision of regulation by March 2020 if the Assembly is back in place? Surely the Assembly Members need to know whether the Government are expecting them to step in if the Assembly is reconstituted, because that is not what the Act says.

[Mr Walker]

The Act is clear on the requirements on the Government to act in the event that the Executive have not been reconstituted.

[Emma Little Pengelly (Belfast South) (DUP)]

For the purposes of clarity, it may be useful to note that termination of pregnancy and abortion is a devolved matter, so if the Assembly is restored that will rightly fall back to the Assembly. A devolved Assembly of the United Kingdom can amend or change the law regardless because these are devolved powers under the constitutional settlement of the United Kingdom. I am sure that the Minister agrees that legal clarity can be obtained on that issue if some Members remain confused or in doubt about it.

[Mr Walker]

Yes, I would agree with the hon. Lady and her intervention. I want to give other Members the chance to speak in this debate, so I will touch briefly on the other sections covered in the publication.

[Chi Onwurah (Newcastle upon Tyne Central) (Lab)]

Further to the previous discussion, the Minister will be aware that the UN said that the UK was effectively torturing the women of Northern Ireland by not enabling them to secure an abortion if they had a fatal foetal abnormality or were pregnant due to rape or incest. Will the Minister commit that that torture will be stopped by March 2020 at the latest?

[Mr Walker]

I have been absolutely clear that we will bring forward this legislation. Clearly, if the Executive were restored, it would be for them to take action on this matter, but we are talking about a matter of days. We are taking forward the necessary steps to ensure that we can put the regulations into place, as the hon. Lady says, by March 2020.

[Mrs Miller]

Will my hon. Friend give way one more time?

[Mr Walker]

I have taken many interventions on this issue, so if my right hon. Friend will forgive me, I will try to make some progress.

Alongside substantive updates on Executive formation in the abortion law review, reports were published on transparency of political donations, higher education and a Derry/Londonderry university, presumption of non-prosecution, and troubles prosecution guidance. The section of the report on transparency of political donations states:

“The regime in place for political donations and loans is specific to Northern Ireland and reflects circumstances that are unique to Northern Ireland parties and their donors. The current law maintains anonymity concerning most donations and loans made before 2017.

The legislative framework provides that greater transparency may be introduced in respect of donations or loans made after 1 January 2014, however, in considering the merits of doing so the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland would wish to be satisfied that it creates no risk of intimidation.

The current legislative arrangements are based on broad consensus among the Northern Ireland parties and moves towards changing the law on donations before July 2017 will require a similar level of Northern Ireland consensus. There is a broader long-standing convention that changes to legislation directly affecting political parties are not made without wider discussion and consultation between parties and the Government.”

Higher education and a Derry university are a devolved matter, which once again underscores the importance of getting Stormont back up and running. The decision on the business case for Ulster University’s proposed Northern Ireland graduate-entry medical school for the Magee campus is, therefore, a matter for Northern Ireland Ministers in a restored Northern Ireland Executive. The Government remain open to considering the eligibility of contributing inclusive future funding towards the capital costs of the project. However, that, too, will be dependent on a restoration of the Executive.

On the presumption of non-prosecution, the report published on 4 September set out the current position on the investigation of troubles-related deaths and the steps being taken to develop an improved system for dealing with the legacy of the troubles. Since then there have been no significant updates on which to report.

Again, on troubles prosecution guidance, the report of 4 September set out the current position with regard to the relevant elements of policing and the justice system in Northern Ireland and the steps the Government are taking to improve the current system for investigating the past in Northern Ireland. Since then there have been no significant updates on which to report.

I hope I have made my position clear: I want to see Stormont back up and running. The Secretary of State is doing everything in his power to achieve that objective, and I hope the parties will do the same and commit to reaching an accommodation on restoring the institutions at the earliest opportunity.

[Tony Lloyd (Rochdale) (Lab)]

I begin by asking the Minister to respond to this debate. Many important questions have been asked and will be asked in this debate, and he was not able to respond to the questions raised in our debate on the previous report.

[Mr Robin Walker]

I was timed out by other speeches in our previous debate but, if the Chair is happy to make time, I would be happy to provide a closing statement.

[Tony Lloyd]

That is important, because the House will address some substantive issues tonight and we need answers.

The Minister rightly said it is now over 1,000 days since the Stormont Assembly and the Stormont Executive last functioned, which is outrageous. It is almost unrecognisable in terms of modern democratic governance.

If not for other factors, I would be talking tonight about the failure of the political system to reform the education of our young people in Northern Ireland. I would be talking about the failure to reform the health service, and the fact that the Bengoa report is now receding dramatically in the rear-view mirror of life. That is, quite frankly, tragic because it is letting down patients, as the health service in Northern Ireland now sees increasing waiting lists and other things that are unacceptable.

Mental health provision in Northern Ireland is grossly inadequate. If there is one statistic that ought to frighten Members on both sides of the House, it is that more people have died since the troubles through suicide than died during the troubles—that figure is dramatic but true. It is immeasurably sad, and we ought to dwell on that. It is a failure of politicians of all stripes in Northern Ireland.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robin Walker]

We have heard thoughtful and at times vociferous contributions from Members in all parts of the House. It is clear that, while there are very disparate views on the issue of abortion, the House wants the Northern Ireland Executive to be restored in the shortest possible order. I think everyone who has spoken today has spoken in favour of that.

Let me, however, make clear to the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy) that the Government have no intention of amending the legislation. She spoke about the Executive and the Assembly. She was right to say that the legislation refers to the restoration of the Executive, and the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson) was also right to say that an Assembly needs to be in place for the Executive to be restored. It is clear that if that happens on 21 October, the Government’s requirement under the Act to legislate on these matters will fall away, and it will be for the Assembly and the Executive to take matters forward. If it does not happen, the Government will act as they are required to do by the legislation. I hope that that gives the hon. Lady some reassurance following the concerns that she has raised.

[Emma Little Pengelly]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Walker]

I am happy to give way to the hon. Lady, but I will not be able to give way many times, as there are a number of issues that I want to address.

[Emma Little Pengelly]

Although we did not gain much insight into the speech of the hon. Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), I have just read a tweet from her alleging that there is some sort of conspiracy, that the Democratic Unionist party made an agreement with the Government, and that that is why this is not going to happen. Would the Minister like to take the opportunity to make categorically clear that that is not the case, that this is a sensitive subject that we all want to get right, given the mess that we are in because regulations are having to be made and there is not enough time in which to do that, and that we should all treat this issue with the utmost seriousness and without this type of nonsense?

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Lady is right to say that this is a sensitive matter, and we should all seek to get it right. Let me make clear that we will take the action that is required by the law, and that means that more guidance will be published. We have already published guidance for healthcare professionals—on 7 October—to confirm the new state of the law during the interim period and their responsibilities. The guidance was published on gov.uk and circulated via the royal medical colleges. It also contains information for healthcare professionals in Northern Ireland about the funded abortion services in England that are available to women from Northern Ireland under the existing UK Government scheme. The healthcare professionals will be able to refer women to the service if the requirements of the Act come into force on 22 October.

The hon. Member for Rochdale (Tony Lloyd) asked about information on service provision. It is already available, and more information will be made available as we move forward with the process. The hon. Gentleman also asked an important question about the Secretary of State returning to the House. I can confirm that, as and when any extension of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act was considered or as and when any other powers were sought, the Secretary of State would need to come to the House in order to deal with that.

[Maria Caulfield]

rose—

[Mr Walker]

I will give way, but this is probably the last time that I shall do so.

[Maria Caulfield]

When the issue of historical institutional abuse was raised during debate on the Bill that became the Act, the Secretary of State promised that there would be legislation, and it was mentioned in the Queen’s Speech. Has the Minister any idea of the date when that legislation will be introduced? It will affect thousands of people in Northern Ireland.

[Mr Walker]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. As we heard from the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) at the beginning of the debate, the legislation is already proceeding in the House of Lords, but I have undertaken to write giving more details about the timetable, and I am happy to repeat that undertaking.

Concerns have been raised about supposed backstreet abortions. We should be very clear that repealing criminal offences specifically relating to procuring abortion does not repeal other relevant criminal laws that exist to protect individuals. Medical procedures are carefully regulated and have to be carried out, as has been noted, on regulated premises with appropriate quality and care oversight. The guidance we published should help to support that.

The repeal of sections 58 and 59 of the Offences against the Person Act 1861 means that women who take pills without prescription and medical supervision will be able to seek assistance and proper aftercare treatment without fear of prosecution. It will remain an offence under medicines legislation to sell or supply abortion pills online without a prescription. It is also an offence to carry out an abortion where the child is capable of being born alive except where it is necessary to save the woman’s life.

As I said in my opening remarks, we will enhance the travel scheme to enable more women to access services free of charge in England and Wales. The point was made that this is not an ideal situation—it is not a situation that anyone wants to persist—and that is why, in answer to the question asked by the hon. Member for Belfast East, services will be available under the framework after March 2020, as required by the law. That is an issue we intend to address. I would say, however, that we believe that the net effect will be to reduce the number of women who might otherwise seek a termination without adequate and appropriate medical assistance; I think Members across the House will welcome that.

[Gavin Robinson]

rose—

[Mr Walker]

I will not be able to answer all the hon. Gentleman’s questions, but I undertake to write to him after this debate and to try to come back with more details on that front.

The hon. Gentleman also raised the important issue of veterans, and I am certainly happy to respond on that. We are clear that the current system for dealing with the past is not working well for anyone, and we want to see more progress on this issue. The Government remain fully committed to finding a solution for dealing with the legacy of the troubles that works for everyone, and that means a solution that meets the needs of victims and survivors, ensures that members of the armed forces and the police are treated fairly, and complies with the UK’s domestic and international legal obligations.

The Prime Minister has said he wants absolutely to protect the armed forces covenant and protect our veterans, and I absolutely support him in that, and my Secretary of State has undertaken to work with the new Office for Veterans’ Affairs to ensure that we can do that in the appropriate way.

As the report notes on the sensitive issue of abortion, if the duty comes into effect on 22 October, relevant criminal law will be repealed and a criminal moratorium will come into effect, but services are unlikely to be widely available given the policy and delivery considerations required in the following months to implement the new framework, and we are going to work at pace to ensure that the appropriate measures, including publication of further guidance and communications, are brought into effect. I absolutely commit to engaging with women’s groups in the process of the consultation period, and with the medical professionals at the forefront of this issue, making sure we get it absolutely right.

It is important that we move forward in a sensitive manner on these issues. It is clear that the time for the Executive to take this into their own hands and for the parties in Northern Ireland to shape this process is running out; only a matter of days are left for them to be able to step up and influence that process. I come back to a point that was made by the hon. Member for Cumbernauld, Kilsyth and Kirkintilloch East (Stuart C. McDonald): greater challenges have been overcome in the past by the parties in Northern Ireland being prepared to work together. I would ask them to rise to that challenge, as the House has so clearly demanded today, and to ensure that we have an Executive in place in the shortest possible order.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Report pursuant to section 3(5) of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation etc) Act 2019, which was laid before this House on Monday 14 October.

Northern Ireland

Robin Walker Excerpts

Monday 7th October 2019 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr Robin Walker)]

I beg to move,

That the draft Northern Ireland (Ministerial Appointment Functions) (No. 2) Regulations 2019, which were laid before this House on 11 July 2019, be approved.

May I say, Madam Deputy Speaker, what a pleasure it is to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) at the Dispatch Box? He was a superb Parliamentary Private Secretary and a superb Whip, and he is already showing that he is a natural at the Dispatch Box.

This statutory instrument will allow for certain critical appointments to be made under the terms of the Northern Ireland (Executive Formation and Exercise of Functions) Act 2018. I am very glad that we have been able to bring it forward today. I know that Northern Ireland Members have been calling for it to be brought forward for some time.

[Lady Hermon (North Down) (Ind)]

I should just like to put on the record my enormous gratitude to the Minister, a very fine Minister and a great addition to the Northern Ireland Office, for making sure that this very important statutory instrument has been brought before the House today. As he will know, because I have scolded about it, the unlawful prorogation of Parliament by the Prime Minister on Monday 9 September meant that this statutory instrument, which was due to be debated in this Chamber on 10 September, did not get addressed. I am therefore enormously grateful to the Minister for ensuring it is here today, earlier than anticipated. It had been thought that it might have been delayed even more to 21 October. Thank you to the Minister.

[Mr Walker]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for making that point. She raised it on a number of occasions and we have been very keen to bring this statutory instrument forward at the first opportunity.

[Gavin Robinson (Belfast East) (DUP)]

The Minister knows we are well known for looking forward rather than backwards, but the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) is right that the statutory instrument had been scheduled for 21 October. I thank the Minister for all that he did to ensure the provisions were brought forward to this evening. As a former member of the Bar Library of Northern Ireland—I have raised this point with him—we will be able to proceed with Queen’s Counsel appointments in Northern Ireland, something the profession has been looking forward to for some time. Individuals have had a tap on the shoulder. This is an important step to progress their professional development and appoint them to the positions they rightly deserve.

[Mr Walker]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. He has been forthright in pressing for this to be brought forward. I am glad we are able to do so today. He says that he is looking forward rather than backward. I want to set out some context in my opening remarks, so he will have to excuse me if I look briefly backward before focusing on what the statutory instrument achieves.

The Government are committed to the Belfast agreement. At its heart is a devolved power-sharing Executive Government, and restoring that Executive remains our priority. Northern Ireland needs the fully functioning political institutions of the Belfast agreement and its successors. That being said, in the absence of devolved Government, the UK Government continue to have a responsibility to ensure good governance and that public confidence is maintained in Northern Ireland.

In November of last year, primary legislation was brought forward, which among other measures addressed the need for urgent appointments to be made to a number of bodies. The initial phase of appointments under the Act enabled: the reconstitution of the Northern Ireland Policing Board, which continues to fulfil its important functions, including the recent recruitment of a new chief constable; the replacement of the outgoing chair and board members of the Probation Board for Northern Ireland; and the appointment of a new police ombudsman for Northern Ireland.

Under the 2018 Act, the Secretary of State also gave a commitment to make further appointments that may arise in the absence of an Executive. A statutory instrument was subsequently approved by the House in February 2019, which added six additional offices to the 2018 Act. As a result of that piece of legislation, critical public appointments were made in Northern Ireland, including that of the Commissioner for Children and Young People, the Attorney General for Northern Ireland and appointments to the Northern Ireland Housing Executive. The Government maintain that it is important, while prioritising the restoration of the Executive, to ensure the maintenance of good governance and public confidence in Northern Ireland. The appointments made to date under the provisions of the 2018 Act have contributed to that.

This new statutory instrument specifies further critical offices to be added to the Act, allowing for appointments to be made that will continue to safeguard the quality and delivery of public services in Northern Ireland. In preparing this instrument, my officials have worked closely with the Northern Ireland civil service to identify those critical appointments that will arise between now and the end of the year. The instrument would add to the list in section 5 of the Act, thereby enabling the Secretary of State, as the relevant UK Minister, to exercise Northern Ireland Ministers’ appointment functions in relation to the following offices: the board of the Northern Ireland Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment; the board of the Consumer Council for Northern Ireland; the board of the Northern Ireland Transport Holding Company, or Translink as it is formally known; the Drainage Council for Northern Ireland; the Agricultural Wages Board for Northern Ireland; the board of National Museums Northern Ireland; the Northern Ireland Historic Buildings Council; and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. Those are the bodies that the Northern Ireland civil service has put forward as the most critical at this time.

As has been raised, the instrument would enable the Lord Chancellor to make Queen’s Counsel appointments, a matter whose urgency has been raised a number of times in this House by the hon. Member for Belfast East (Gavin Robinson), the hon. Member for North Down (Lady Hermon) and the hon. Member for Belfast South (Emma Little Pengelly). These are important offices for which the exercise of appointment functions in the coming months is vital for the continued good governance of Northern Ireland. I commend the regulations to the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Robin Walker]

I thank the House for what has been a sensible and consensual debate on this statutory instrument. It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound), who described the debate as bittersweet. I think that we all recognise that concern. It is somewhat bittersweet to be welcomed by him to the Dispatch Box after three years, although perhaps people were fed up with hearing from me as a Minister at the Department for Exiting the European Union and are pleased to hear from me in a new capacity.

The right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Sir Jeffrey M. Donaldson) said that he welcomed the instrument but not the basis of it. I absolutely recognise that. I think that we would all rather that these appointments were made by a properly constituted Executive and supported by a properly constituted Assembly. These are important offices, as we have heard from Northern Irish Members. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) neatly illustrated when he talked about people turning the wheels, these are offices that are necessary for the functioning of government. The other place has already approved this statutory instrument. So long as this House approves the motion today, we can get on with making these important appointments.

The hon. Member for Ealing North (Stephen Pound) asked about the process of consultation. All these appointments are ones that have been recommended by the Northern Ireland civil service, which will of course engage in appropriate consultation. I can also reassure him that the Commissioner for Public Appointments will continue to regulate all these appointments, which will ensure an important check.

The people of Northern Ireland deserve strong political leadership from locally elected, accountable devolved Government. Achieving that and delivering a positive outcome from the talks remains our absolute priority. Northern Ireland has made huge progress in recent years. While the UK Government will do all that is necessary to ensure that good governance and public confidence is maintained in Northern Ireland, we can achieve even more with a devolved Government and legislature that unlocks all the potential that Northern Ireland has to offer. We remain focused on achieving that outcome. As we have heard again today, it is an outcome that we all want to see. I commend the order to the House.

Question put and agreed to.