Educational Poverty: Children in Residential Care

Baroness Winterton of Doncaster Excerpts

Thursday 14th July 2022 Commons Chamber

Select Committee statement

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Robert Halfon will speak for up to 10 minutes, during which no interventions may be taken. At the conclusion of his statement, I will call Members to put questions on the subject of the statement and call Robert Halfon to respond to these in turn. I emphasise that questions should be directed to the Select Committee Chair, not the relevant Minister. Any interventions should be in the form of questions and should be brief. Front Benchers may also take part in questioning.

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[Ian Mearns (Gateshead) (Lab)]

It was a privilege to serve on the Education Committee and to produce this report. I could not agree more with the Chair about the recommendations. It is important that the Government look at those and react positively to them, because we are letting down children in our care system. When I was a local authority councillor, chaired the education committee and was the lead member for children’s services in Gateshead, I took very seriously my role as corporate parent. But it is not just the local authority that is the corporate parent. This House, the Government and the Department for Education are also part of the corporate parenting system and should be taking their responsibilities very seriously. When I see the statistics, outlined in the report, that 41% of care leavers aged 19 to 21 are not in education, employment or training, and that only 2% of those aged 16 to 18 are able to take up an apprenticeship, I feel ashamed of what the governance of this country is doing to the children in our care.

It is important that we do something about this barrier to apprenticeships. Paying youngsters who are living independently after coming out of care £4.81 an hour while they learn on an apprenticeship is just not satisfactory—they literally cannot do it.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

Order. I just want to emphasise that contributions should be in the form of questions to the Chair of the Committee.

[Ian Mearns]

It was a rhetorical question, Madam Deputy Speaker.

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[Robert Halfon]

I thank the Opposition spokesman for her question. To be fair, I do not think everything the Government have done is bad: they have done some very good things for vulnerable children, and it is important to mention that. My job as a Select Committee Chair, as well as that of my colleagues, is to provide challenge on some of the things that need to be improved.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, with his Man from Del Monte suit, made the point that there had been a lot of reviews and reports about this issue, and that we need action. Obviously, there will be a new Prime Minister in the next few weeks, but I very much hope that whoever takes the post of Education Secretary looks seriously at the MacAlister review and adopts many of its important proposals. I also hope that they look seriously at our report on educational outcomes and the educational poverty that too many children in care face, and respond to our recommendations as soon as possible and enact some of them sooner rather than later. We have waited long enough, and children in care need help and support. As I said in my statement, they should be given the chance to climb the educational ladder of opportunity along with everyone else, and it is wrong that we have not even brought them to that ladder to help them climb up.

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee for his statement, and for answering the questions in such detail.