Oral Answers to Questions

Rupa Huq Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

My hon. Friend raises an important point. We take young people’s mental health very seriously, which is why we recently published the Green Paper on mental health for children and young people. We will fund and place in every school a designated mental health lead, supported by mental health support units, which we are rolling out to trailblazer areas as we speak. That is how my hon. Friend’s local schools will be able to access those funds.

[Dr Rupa Huq (Ealing Central and Acton) (Lab)]

15. What assessment he has made of the effect of the Government’s policy on funded childcare on the financial viability of childcare settings.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)]

We plan to spend £3.5 billion this year to deliver our funded early-years entitlements. We recognise the need to keep our evidence base on costs up to date, and continue to monitor the provider market closely through a range of regular and one-off research projects.

[Dr Huq]

According to the Sutton Trust, 1,000 children’s centres have closed over the past decade. Now, West Twyford children’s centre, which is a small centre in an isolated area, cannot continue under the current funding arrangements. That will leave the 295 families it helped last year, 123 of which are among the 30% most deprived families in the country, in the lurch. Will the Minister come with me, along with headteacher Rachel Martin, to see the great work that the centre does—it is not very far from here—and can we thrash out a way forward from this unsatisfactory situation? The area has had local government cuts of 64%. We need to spare these vital centres the axe.

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I will happily meet the hon. Lady, and even join her, if my diary permits, to have a look at that work. I have seen many local authorities throughout the country deliver outreach programmes to the most disadvantaged families, who actually do not necessarily tend to come into bricks-and-mortar buildings. There are models that deliver a better outcome for those families than just investing in bricks and mortar.