Children Not in School: National Register and Support

Debate between Roger Gale and Steve Double

Tuesday 23rd January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Steve Double (St Austell and Newquay) (Con)]

I am pleased to make a contribution to this debate. The subject of school absence and levels of school attendance is a particular challenge we are facing at the moment in Cornwall, where rates of school absence are significantly higher than the national average. We have seen around an 8.5% level of absence in recent years, when the national average is about 7.4%. Nationally, about 24% of pupils are persistently absent, but in Cornwall that figure is almost 35%. I think that there are particular reasons why we are seeing that in Cornwall. We have seen a large number of people move to Cornwall in recent times, certainly since the pandemic, and many of them are coming because of the lifestyle Cornwall has to offer and the choices available to them when they move to Cornwall.

I have a number of concerns about how the situation that we are facing is being handled. For many years I have been concerned at what I see as the state encroaching on the role of parents, and that seems to be happening more and more. I was concerned about this long before I came to this House, and it does not seem to be stopping. I believe firmly that the primary responsibility for the welfare and raising of children has to lie with parents, and although the state can support parents and help them in that role, it should not seek to take over that role.

I was pleased to hear the Minister confirm at the Dispatch Box that the Government’s position is that they will always support the right of parents who wish to home educate their children to do so. That is absolutely the right position to take. Many parents choose to home educate their children for very positive reasons, and I have to say that some of the most mature, articulate, intelligent and well-rounded children I have ever met in my life have been home educated. However, many parents now regrettably find themselves having to home educate their children not because that is what they believe is right for their children but because they feel forced into that situation. They cannot find the right school environment and support for their children, who might have particular challenges such as autism or a mental health condition.

One particular factor that I think is driving this issue is the attendance targets. The overbearing, heavy-handed approach that many schools are taking to attendance targets is leaving no flexibility for children who are facing particular challenges, and parents are being threatened with fines for not bringing their children to school. I have even had one parent show me letters from their GP saying that their child was suffering with a mental health challenge and would therefore not be able to attend school regularly, but the school still fined the parent for that child not being in school regularly.

This whole drive to reach the attendance target seems to be the only thing that matters, with no flexibility and no allowance being made for the condition or circumstances that a family or child find themselves in, and this is creating tension and breaking down the relationship between the school and the parents at the very time that those parents need support from the school. I ask the Minister whether we can look at that situation. I know that the Government’s official position is that headteachers have discretion and flexibility, but I am afraid that that message has not got through to Ofsted, which I am told still regularly marks down schools that fail to reach the 95% attendance target even when the headteacher can demonstrate sensible reasons why certain children have not been able to attend school.

The Minister knows from his previous time in the Department that I have never agreed with fining parents when their children miss school. I believe it is a very un-Conservative thing to do. At least let us take away that threat of fining parents when there are legitimate reasons why their child has not been able to attend school. I could give him a long list. My office is now contacted almost every week by parents who are withdrawing their children from school because they want to avoid the fine when their children are not able to attend regularly, even with very good reason.

I have no more time, but will the Minister please look at this situation and how these targets are driving what I believe is counterproductive behaviour by schools? It is not the teachers’ fault, as I think it is coming from policy and from Ofsted.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order.

Public Services in Cornwall: Funding

Debate between Roger Gale and Steve Double

Monday 15th January 2024 Commons Chamber

[Steve Double]

I see the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) wishes to intervene and I will happily give way.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. I trust the hon. Gentleman will adhere to the subject of the debate.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Sir Roger Gale)]

Order. Nice try, but this is an intervention not a speech.

[Steve Double]

The hon. Member makes a good point, which I will probably come to later. Cornwall has a great deal in common with what gets called the Celtic fringe of the United Kingdom. To pick up on his point about working together, there is a group of local authorities called Britain’s Leading Edge, which represents areas on the coastal fringe of England that work together, because we recognise that the challenges that coastal areas face have some similarities across the country. Clearly there is a lot in common that we can share.

Having said that, our coastline in Cornwall is unique. We are almost an island. I know that we enjoy a bit of banter with Devon from time to time, but they are our only mainland neighbour, which impacts the delivery of services. Counties in the middle of England are surrounded by other local authorities, police forces, fire services and health services that they can share resources with. If there is a particular challenge in one area, it can draw on services from the surrounding counties to help it with that specific incident. We do not have that in Cornwall. In most of Cornwall, we have to provide our own resilience because there is no one else nearby to come and help. I am not sure that that is always understood by Government. It certainly does not seem to get reflected in the funding allocation.

We have the longest coastline in Cornwall: 422 miles. I have not walked all of it yet, but I have walked a great deal of it over the years. We have literally hundreds of small coastal communities. Nowhere in Cornwall is more than 25 miles from the sea, and the vast majority of people live an awful lot closer to it than that. It is just common sense that when delivering a public service in a coastal community, there is not as big a population to deliver that service to, and there is not as much land for people to live on. More sites are therefore needed. By definition, we need more schools, health facilities, police stations and fire stations because we have a smaller area for the station or facility to service. That means that it costs more to deliver services in a coastal area such as Cornwall. I have tried to make that point throughout my time in this place, but I am not sure that the particular challenge that Cornwall faces in delivering services because of our geography and being a narrow peninsula really gets appreciated. It is certainly not reflected in the funding formula.

We are not just a coastal area but a rural one. Cornwall Council is the second biggest by land mass of any local authority in the country—1,375 square miles—yet we have a relatively small population of just over half a million people. We have no towns with a population of more than 25,000. In fact, nearly half of all people who live in Cornwall live in communities of fewer than 3,000. That rurality and sparsity presents real challenges for delivering services because of the additional travelling that has to take place. Our police and fire engines have to travel further to reach those communities.

School travel is a very big challenge in Cornwall. With such large areas to cover, pupils with special educational needs in particular have to travel much further to get to the facilities that we have. We face a huge challenge in adult social care, partly because of the rurality and being a long, narrow peninsular, and the distance that domiciliary care workers have to travel to reach those who need their services.

About 10 years ago, we thought that we had won a big victory on funding for rural services within local government. After a great deal of pressure and arguing from MPs with rural constituencies, the Government introduced the rural services delivery grant. That was really the first time that the emphasis under the Labour Government—when most of the money went into urban and densely populated areas, because they seemed to think that those were the only places in which deprivation took place—had been corrected, with an acknowledgment that rural areas have particular needs and particular costs in delivering those services.

Unfortunately, although we won the argument in principle, when it came to allocating money, it was dampened down and we did not get as much as we should have. In the past 10 years, we have never fully put that right. I suggest to the Government that we really ought to look at that. With the current proposed local government settlement, I know that many rural authorities will face huge challenges. Cornwall is certainly one of them. One way that we could correct that is by increasing the rural services delivery grant to the level it really should be at, rather than the dampened-down level.

We have also been promised a review of police funding in rural areas, but it has not yet happened. Sadly, during that time the gap for Cornwall has actually become bigger. We were 9p per person below the average; we have now dropped to 10p per person below the average for funding. There is therefore a real need to bring forward the review of police funding and ensure that Cornwall gets the funding that it needs. The two factors of being a coastal community and being a rural community really put pressure on the delivery of our services in Cornwall. That needs to be reflected when it comes to funding.

The other element that I will mention is, again, something that I have talked about numerous times: the impact of tourism on Cornwall. Tourism is really important to the Cornish economy, and we welcome it. Typically, 5 million people a year come to Cornwall on holiday. In the UK, we are second only to London in terms of the number of visitors that we welcome every year. To put the impact of that in perspective, I am privileged to represent the town of Newquay, Cornwall’s premier tourist destination, which has a population of about 24,000. In July and August, we have 200,000 people in any given week in Cornwall, so there is eight times the population when tourists come in the peak season.

The pressure that that puts on our infrastructure and services cannot be overestimated. We particularly feel it in the pressure on the NHS. We often say in Cornwall that we have two winters every year in terms of pressure on the NHS. At this time of year, the NHS is under pressure just about everywhere because of seasonal viruses and the impact that cold weather has on people, so there is great pressure on the NHS in Cornwall at this time of year. Then in the summer, when all the tourists come, our NHS is also under huge pressure because of the sheer numbers of people who are there. While most hospitals and NHS services around the country typically have a bit of respite in the summer because all their residents go on holiday, they all come to Cornwall, so we have to pick up the pressure. I do not think that gets reflected particularly in the funding.

The demand on our ambulance services in the summer is also significant. I acknowledge that a lot of work has been done in recent years through the 111 service and Pharmacy First, which we piloted in Cornwall, to get people to think a bit more smartly about where to go to get NHS treatment and advice, rather than turning up at Treliske or trying to see one of our local GPs. That has certainly helped, but there is no way of avoiding the pressure that the NHS in Cornwall faces every summer because of the tourists. Our police face huge pressures in the summer. Crime goes up, and there are more road traffic accidents and cases of antisocial behaviour, all of which the police need to respond to, but that is not reflected in our funding.

Another area, which I recently talked about in a debate, is the impact of tourism on our housing supply and the number of Airbnbs, which push prices up beyond the reach of many people. That means that we struggle to recruit the people we need for our public services because they cannot afford to buy a house to live there. When we talk to NHS managers in Cornwall in particular, they repeatedly say that housing is one of the biggest reasons why they often struggle to recruit the doctors and nurses they need, because they cannot find anywhere to live. The impact that tourism has on our housing market is equally significant.

The final factor I want to mention is our demographics. Cornwall has a rapidly ageing population. Our number of elderly people is 6% higher than the UK average, and the number of over-70s in Cornwall has gone up by 52% in recent years. Some of that is just because everyone is getting older, but it is also because people see Cornwall as a great place to retire to. Again, I do not blame them—I want to retire in Cornwall; it is a great place to retire—but that number of people of retirement age moving to Cornwall puts huge pressure on our health and social care services.

The inverse of that is that we do not have enough people of working age willing to work in the health and social care sector to provide the services they need, so the impact of our demographics is significant. This financial year, Cornwall Council will spend over £250 million on providing adult social care. That is one third of its revenue budget just on social care, and that will only increase as the years go by. We need that to be reflected in the funding settlements we are provided with.

Each of those factors—our geography, the impact of tourism, and the impact of an ageing population—in and of themselves would present significant challenges to Cornwall. The combined effect of those factors is that public services in Cornwall face a unique set of challenges, and nowhere else in the UK faces them to the degree that we do. I want to make the case that, because of that unique combination of pressures and challenges, we need to look again at the funding that Cornwall receives and make a special case for Cornwall.

The Government have already acknowledged that Cornwall is a special place that requires special treatment. We referred earlier to the fact that the Cornish have been recognised as a national minority and receive protected status as a national minority. In 2014, the Council of Europe recognised the Cornish in that way, and the UK Government have acknowledged that. Actually, the UK Government said that they give the Cornish people the same recognition as the Scots, the Welsh and the Irish within the United Kingdom. That is very welcome, but it does not seem to have any impact on Government policy when it comes to funding. If we are going to say that Cornwall is a special place and that the Cornish are a specially recognised and protected people, that should have an impact on the way that Cornwall receives its funding.

Cornwall was the first county to receive a devolution deal back in 2015. Again, the Government at that time recognised the particular uniqueness of Cornwall. That devolution deal was recently upgraded with a new devolution deal. I am personally disappointed that we did not manage to get a level 3 deal, which would have given Cornwall a great deal more and certainly would have shifted the focus much more on to Cornwall. I am disappointed that we did not secure that, but we have had a new level 2 deal. That, again, is the recognition that the Government have given to Cornwall.

The other way the Government have recognised the challenges that Cornwall faces, particularly with regard to our economy, is through the shared prosperity fund, which replaced the European regional development fund. Cornwall received £137 million—far more than any other part of the UK—through the shared prosperity fund. That shows that the Government recognise the particular challenges we face in Cornwall, especially in growing our economy and upskilling our people, and it has been hugely welcome.

We are in the middle of the current round and projects in my constituency have received significant funding, such as essential infrastructure work at the harbour at Charlestown, one of our historical sites. Newquay has also received funding to support its tourism industry and extend the season, which will really help the economy there. We have found that the shared prosperity scheme is much easier to allocate and to access than the old ERDF programmes, which were hugely bureaucratic and always required matched funding. The shared prosperity fund money that has been provided to Cornwall has been very welcome and is doing a lot of good.

However, I want to raise with the Minister the fact that the current round runs out in 2025. That will come around very quickly, so we need to start the conversation and understand what the process will be for the allocation of the next round of shared prosperity funding. I hope the Minister will be able to confirm that, in the allocation of that funding in the next round, the Government will continue to recognise the specific challenges that Cornwall faces and continue to support the Cornish economy as they have done over the last few years.

The unique combination of challenges we face in Cornwall, and the fact that the Government already recognise Cornwall in a number of ways as being special and having particular challenges, now need to be reflected in the way our public services are funded—particularly our health service, education, local government and the police. We need the true cost of delivering those services in Cornwall to be reflected in the amount of money we receive. I hope the Minister has got the message that we have particular challenges in Cornwall and that the Government will reflect on those points, continue the conversations with MPs from Cornwall and look again to ensure that Cornwall gets the funding it needs, so that the people of Cornwall can get the public services they deserve.