Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 8th November 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I rise to speak in response to the Gracious Speech, and it is a pleasure to follow so many excellent speeches, particularly that of my hon. Friend the Member for Batley and Spen (Kim Leadbeater). There have been so many speeches from the Opposition Benches, and not very many from the Government Benches. Interestingly, some of those on the Government Benches were not particularly supportive of the Gracious Speech.

This King’s Speech fails to undo the damage of 13 long years of Conservative rule inflicted on this country and most of its people. There are any number of topics that I could have chosen to speak on to illustrate the damage that the Government have done to my constituents’ lives and hopes, and how the Gracious Speech has failed those constituents. However, I have time to cover only one topic: housing. The topic on the Order Paper for today’s debate is opportunity, but we know that opportunity is only possible if someone has a safe, secure and truly affordable home.

Politicians often use the term “housing crisis”, but we are seeing multiple housing crises. There is a crisis in the private rented sector, a crisis for leaseholders—in fact, a crisis for most mortgage holders—a crisis for those entangled with shared ownership, a crisis among housing associations, and a crisis for those with no home and no hope of having a home. There is also a crisis in home building, with far too few homes being built.

What do we see in the King’s Speech to tackle that multi-headed hydra on housing? A ban on no-fault evictions, first promised in 2019, and a weak, watered-down version of leasehold reform. The party of Macmillan, which once built hundreds of thousands of homes for our heroes, has been reduced to banning tents. The once-grand Conservative party has been reduced to declaring war on tent fabric. How does the housing crisis look to my constituents in Hounslow, Isleworth, Osterley, Brentford and Chiswick—those in what we euphemistically call “housing stress”?

I will start with homelessness and homeless families. All the schools in my constituency have a number of homeless children. Can the Education Secretary imagine the impact that has on children and their parents? First, being homeless means having no settled future; not knowing when children will start a new school, or whether they will need to be pulled out just as they have made friends or move on before their next set of key exams. It means no space to do homework for those in overcrowded conditions. It means mothers living in one or two rooms in a big shared house wondering whether it is safe to leave the baby or the toddler alone while going to the toilet or to the kitchen. It means families with three or four children living in a one-bedroom flat or bunking up with friends or relatives, and children sleeping on sofas and sitting on buses for hours to get to and from school.

The housing crisis is a poison; one that is touching so many in west London who are priced out of even being able to rent a home, let alone buy one. Ending no-fault evictions will not help my constituents who do not have a tenancy, or those who do but whose landlord is selling up. How can one expect one’s children to grow up healthy when there is mould in every single corner of one’s home? How can someone look after their own wellbeing when the threat of eviction is hanging over their head and no landlord will rent them a home because they do not earn at least £60,000? The monthly rent for a one-bedroom flat in even the cheapest part of my constituency is £2,000—more than many of my constituents earn. No wonder home ownership is but a distant dream.

We need a multi-pronged approach with a proper programme of house building and a sweeping set of reforms to the current systems, especially in regard to leasehold—perhaps I should call it “fleecehold,” as many of my constituents do. It is a “feudal” practice—not my word, but that of the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities—that has left many of my constituents trapped in a serf-like position. He promised me in the Chamber that he would grasp the issue and used rather emotive language about “Applying a vice-like” pressure, yet it appears that his grip has soon weakened. I am sure that the developers and freeholders are relieved about that.

I will give just some examples of the impact on my constituents. One constituent had a 300% increase in building insurance costs despite no change in the building. Another constituent had service charges doubling in a block even though the lifts have been left broken and the intercom out of action. A constituent was unable to move with their partner and children to a bigger home because of a quirk of the Help to Buy system. I could go on. Those problems all stem from the huge flaws in the leasehold system—huge flaws that the Government’s modest set of tiny, limited changes does not start to address.

The shadow of the building safety crisis still hangs over many of my constituents. It has been six years since more than 70 people died in the Grenfell fire, and more than a decade since six people died in the Lakanal House fire. Constituents—mine and others across the country—are still waiting for vital building safety work to begin, despite it being promised months ago for their blocks. Many are not even eligible for support, because their building is less than 12 metres high.

The Government have once again failed leaseholders with the crumbs on offer. No more leasehold houses to be built—big deal. Developers should never have started building leasehold houses in the first place. I am pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Greenwich and Woolwich (Matthew Pennycook) has said what a Labour Government will do: ban the sale of new leasehold flats as well as houses, and fix the mess in the leasehold system to ensure that existing leaseholders can move to commonhold. Commonhold must become the default for flats and render leasehold obsolete, and freehold must be the norm for new houses. Labour would enact the recommendation of the Law Commission’s report. We will do what this Government have failed to do.

The Government’s failure to fix our broken leasehold system is part of a much wider problem: a failure to understand the housing crisis across this country. Once again, the Prime Minister is out of touch with the crisis in the country. This King’s Speech should end the myth that the Conservatives are the party of home ownership. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner) said, the Prime Minister caved in to the demands of his own Back Benchers and got rid of housing targets. He caved in to pressure from freeholders and dropped real leasehold reform. He caved in to the pressure from private landlords and watered down rental reform—a watered down Government, with a watered down King’s Speech.

Safety of School Buildings

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I support the motion, which stands in the names of my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson) and the Leader of the Opposition. It is interesting to follow the hon. Member for West Bromwich West (Shaun Bailey). May I just correct him by saying that PFI was started by the Conservative Major Government?

As pupils, parents and teachers were preparing for a new school term last week and this week, they were met with horrifying news that threw into question whether their schools were safe to go into. Headteachers were left scrambling around over the weekend to arrange new sites and portacabins, or, worse, telling parents that their children were not to come into school this week.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

rose—

[Ruth Cadbury]

I will not give way, as I know there are quite a few people to speak.

Schools have been rushing to book surveys to find out whether they have RAAC. This is a week when parents should be filled with joy and excitement about a new year, taking photos of their year 7s in their new uniform, not worrying about how to find holiday childcare for another week—or two weeks, who knows?

This situation did not happen by accident. Conservative Members like to pretend that the past 13 years were a fever dream, but this crisis stems primarily from the decision made in 2010 to cancel Labour’s Building Schools for the Future scheme. It was a massive and historic programme of investment. That investment would have benefited schools in my constituency and across England: schools that had RAAC; schools that have asbestos; and schools that had had little serious investment over the previous 18 years of Conservative government prior to 1997. In 2010, the Conservatives cancelled that programme because they do not know the value of investment or the role of public services, and did not care about the condition of our schools. The Prime Minister is so out of touch with the country that he struggles to use a contactless card machine. What hope do we have that he might really understand UK state schools?

When the Prime Minister was Chancellor, he made the decision to block extra funding to the Department for Education—funding that would have gone towards fixing, repairing and improving our school estate. One of the most senior civil servants in that Department even admitted that funding for school buildings was blocked because the Government wanted to push more towards free schools. For example, that involved paying £11.25 million of taxpayers’ money—way overpaying—for a former sports facility on old metropolitan open land in Osterley. Once again, the Conservative ideology trumps value for money and public safety.

We live in a country where ambulances do not turn up, the police have to be ordered to investigate crime and school buildings now face collapse. Thirteen long years of Conservative rule have utterly ruined our public services. There is no more fitting legacy than the fact that the public realm is literally collapsing in front of us. The letter I received from the DFE on Monday says that

“there is nothing more important than the safety of children, young people, and staff in education settings”.

Even if that were the view of officials within the DFE, it clearly was not the view of the Prime Minister, who was Chancellor in 2021 when the Government knew about this problem—indeed, there had been warnings long before that. If the Government really thought that there was nothing more important than the safety of children, young people and staff in education settings, why are schools collapsing and why are children being told to say at home this week?

Hon. Members have a choice today: they can vote with Labour and give parents the right to know who is responsible for this mess, or they can vote to conceal the true scale of the crisis and the Prime Minister’s failure to keep our children safe.

Pupil Roll Numbers and School Closures: London

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 7th June 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under you, Mr Hollobone, and to follow such excellent speeches, particularly from my constituency neighbour, the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Sarah Olney). I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) for bringing us this debate. I thank the hon. Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), who I worked with during my relatively short career as lead member for education; he has had a long and distinguished career, both in Hillingdon and at the Local Government Association, and his expertise has really added to the debate. I also thank London Councils and Hounslow’s school organisation and access to education department for their briefings.

This is an incredibly important issue for schools, especially as they have faced so many challenges both pre and post covid. Having recently met a group of secondary school headteachers in Hounslow, I know only too well the issues they face. The top issues that they brought to me were school staff leaving in record numbers, the difficulty of recruiting new staff, especially maths teachers, and the difficulty of retaining experienced staff to go up the management ladder in education. They also addressed the lack of specialist support for children with SEND and the huge funding black hole. Those issues, especially the funding challenges, are the direct impact of 13 years of Conservative rule. Just recently, the chair of a board of governors and a large number of parents from just one primary school wrote to me about the impact of funding cuts on them. They make a difficult job even harder for our schools and their staff.

On school closures and pupil numbers, Hounslow borough is seeing a decrease of over 5% in year 7s, and a 10% decline in reception recruitment is expected over the next three years. There has been a particularly strong decline in primary places. Hounslow is having to cut the size of many local schools. It is taking out 25 classes and 850 places over the last, current and next school year.

Before I cover the impact that those issues will have, it is worth considering what is causing the decline. As others have said, the main cause is the housing crisis across London. More and more families are having to move out of London. I was recently contacted by an NHS worker who was unable to find someone from whom she could rent a home locally. She has two young children. She learned that the landlords of the few flats she could afford were not prepared to rent to a family with young children; that is just one example of a London-wide crisis. Working people with young children who can just about get on the housing ladder can do so only outside London, so if they can move out of London, they do. Not only schools but the NHS and businesses have told me that they are struggling to find staff who can afford to live in our city. It is in that context that we are seeing such a decline in school places, and in the number of children on school rolls, across London.

This debate is as much about the housing crisis as it is about schools, but there is another issue raised with me by heads and others: their concern for the increased number of children—we do not know how many—who may still be in London but are not registered in any schools. While many of them may well be being home-educated quite well by their parents, there could be many others who are not. The Government and local authorities have no way of knowing who or where those children are, or how many of them there are. I would like to know what plans the Government have to address that concern.

I will move on to the impact that this contraction in numbers has on our schools. It makes it harder for local authorities to plan school places, particularly as voluntary-aided academies and free schools sit outside the schools organisation system. I look forward to hearing how the Government aim to address that anomaly. As others have said so eloquently, the uncertainty around school numbers puts schools under even greater financial pressure, over and above what they face anyway.

I will also raise another challenge faced by schools in Hounslow and across London, which is the sheer number of in-year applications. That started especially with the generosity with which local families opened up their homes to families fleeing Ukraine, but in our case, the numbers are also affected by Home Office decisions to stand up local hotels as accommodation for asylum seekers; I think we had 11 such hotels in Hounslow at the last count. Then there is the other challenge—the other side of the coin: when those hotels are stood down and emptied by the Home Office, usually with a week or two’s notice, those children disappear from our area.

Hounslow received 4,500 in-year school applications last year. It is incredibly difficult for schools to plan when those applications have to be managed under the published admission number system and census system. We are talking about children from Ukraine, Afghanistan and Syria, and asylum seekers from all over the world. Many of those children have additional needs. While schools are providing support, it comes at a cost that they are not compensated for. Not only is there the lack of English language skills—schools need to get those children up to speed quickly on their spoken, written and listened-to English—but there is need for SEND support. Many of the children are suffering from trauma. Sometimes students—even secondary students—arrive in school mid-year, mid-school career, having never been in formal education. My second question is: will the Minister address the in-year challenge for all local authority officers, and the fact that non-maintained schools are outside the systems? I hope that the Government are listening, and will support schools, students and parents in addressing those challenges.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Schools (Nick Gibb)]

It is a pleasure to participate in yet another debate that you are chairing, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for Vauxhall (Florence Eshalomi) on securing a debate on this important subject, and for opening it so clearly.

I am aware of the recent report by London Councils on managing surplus places, which highlights the key challenges facing London boroughs. Since the baby boom at the turn of the millennium, we have seen substantial growth in pupil numbers. The Government responded to that by supporting the creation of almost 1.2 million new school places since 2010. In addition to our investment in the free schools programme, the Government have committed over £14 billion of capital grant funding to support local authorities in building new mainstream school places between 2011 and 2026. It is the largest investment in school capacity in at least two generations, and includes £3.5 billion for London alone.

I can recall many debates on the “Today” programme with my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), back when he represented the Local Government Association, about whether there were enough school places in London; it was almost an annual event for us—and here we are today. As we have seen, population trends do change. In London, the number of young people is falling faster than elsewhere. This is for several reasons, including decreasing birth rates, changes in international migration patterns since the UK’s exit from the EU, and more families relocating outside of London since the pandemic, as my hon. Friend explained so well.

The Government recognise the crucial role that local authorities play in planning local services for their community and championing the interests of children. Local authorities are legally responsible for ensuring that there are enough school places in their area. It is for local authorities, working with academy trusts and other local partners, to balance the supply and demand of school places in line with changing demographics. They have done so for many years. The uncertainty regarding future demographic changes means it is even more prudent for local authorities to remain flexible.

[Ruth Cadbury]

I am grateful for the Minister’s remarks about the role of local authorities. Will he admit that the free schools programme over the last 10 or so years made it very difficult for local authorities to plan school numbers? Back then, during a time of growth, we desperately needed a mixed, non-faith school between Chiswick and Hounslow for the whole of the Isleworth and Brentford area, yet the resources were taken by a free faith school, and a large proportion of its catchment came from a long distance away. Had the local authority been able to broker that decision, we might have had a more locally approached solution. Now we have declining numbers, and I am raising the contrary issue.

[Nick Gibb]

I understand the point the hon. Member is making, but free schools have been crucial in raising standards in our school system. The issue was not just numbers, but what we could do to deliver standards. I can think of a school in the constituency of the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) that opened in 2018 and was in January judged as outstanding. These are important factors to take into account. This is about quality as well as numbers.

Some spare capacity should be retained in the system to manage shifting demand, provide for parental choice and support the effective management of the admissions system. Local factors should be carefully assessed, along with considerations of quality, diversity and accessibility of local provision, and the forecast demand for places, in determining the most appropriate approach in each area. Local authorities are well placed to do that. They have seen periods of decline, bulges and shifts in local patterns before, and have shown they are adept at managing them.

The Department expects local authorities to work collaboratively with their partners to ensure that they are managing the local school estate efficiently and reducing or re-purposing high levels of spare capacity, to avoid undermining the educational offer or financial viability of schools in their area. I know that local authorities, together with trusts, are already considering a range of options for the reutilisation of space. That includes, for example, co-locating nursery provision, as well as options for reconfiguration, including via remodelling, amalgamations and closures where this is the best course of action. Lambeth has rightly been proactive in addressing this issue and is consulting on reducing the capacity of eight primary schools.

The Department continues to engage with local authorities on a regular basis to discuss their plans and potential solutions. One solution is the support and benefits obtained from being part of a strong and established multi-academy trust. The Department believes that all schools should be in strong families of schools, benefiting from the resilience that that brings and the support of the best in the group. That is why, over time, the Department would like all schools to be in a strong multi-academy trusts. By centralising operational and administrative functions, schools within a MAT can save time and money, which can be reinvested directly into areas that have the greatest impact.

The hon. Member for Vauxhall referred to housing issues, as did a number of other Members, including the hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ruth Cadbury), who has just intervened. The provision of affordable housing is part of the Government’s plan to build more homes and provide aspiring homeowners with a step on to the housing ladder. Our £11.5 billion affordable homes programme will deliver thousands of affordable homes for both rent and to buy across the country. For London, £4 billion has been allocated, to deliver much-needed affordable and social housing in the capital. Since 2010, we have delivered over 632,000 new affordable homes, including over 440,000 affordable homes for rent, of which over 162,000 are for social rent. In fact, more than a fifth of overall delivery between April 2010 and March 2022 was in London, with over 89,000 homes for rent.

Childcare: Affordability and Availability

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the affordability and availability of childcare.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies, and we hope that Sir Christopher, who was due to chair this debate, is okay. I sought this debate because we face a crisis in childcare. I have heard from nursery providers, parents, national experts and my local council about the scale of the crisis, which I doubt even Government Members will try to deny.

The universal availability of good-quality, affordable childcare really matters: it matters in the early years, it matters at the start and end of the school day, and it matters at half-term and in holidays. Why? It matters to children and to their development, because it helps them to learn social skills and how to interact with those around them. Yet, according to the Sutton Trust, too many children are now starting school without these basic skills, and more of those children are at schools with the most deprived intakes.

Adequate and affordable childcare enables parents—mothers, in particular—to return to work and to work full time, yet many mothers, regardless of what they earn, are deciding to delay going back to work, or have to work part time, because of the affordability crisis or the lack of availability locally.

This crisis must surely also add to the gender pay gap. Groups such as Pregnant Then Screwed have been tireless campaigners on the issue, and over the past week I have heard from many women about it. Sadly, I am not able to quote them all, but I will share some of their experiences. Katerina, a teacher, said:

“As an educator, it’s mind-boggling that my monthly take-home earnings barely meet our childcare costs. We are forgoing many other purchases and necessities, and have no plans for the future.”

Steph said:

“The cost of nursery would be two thirds of my take-home salary. This is not financially sustainable, especially with the increase in bills.”

She also said:

“The possibility of equality is dangled in front of us, only to be systematically taken away.”

Ellie messaged me to say that the cost of childcare is preventing her from working more than three days a week and from having further children.

The unaffordability of childcare is driving a bulldozer through the last 100 years of progress on women playing an equal part in the workplace and in our economy. I want today’s debate to be a chance for the voices of those women to be heard.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Lady for bringing forward this debate, and I apologise that I cannot be here for the whole of it. In Northern Ireland, a full-time childcare place is £170 a week, which equates to £680 a month or £8,000 a year. For a working family with two children, we are talking about an extortionate amount of money. These families are often forced to rely on grandparents or to cut their hours accordingly. Does the hon. Lady agree it is time for the Government and the Minister to look at the cost of childcare not just in England but across the UK and to take the steps necessary to ensure that working parents can afford childcare without being plunged into poverty?

[Ruth Cadbury]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that excellent point. This is a universal issue across the UK and affects people at all income levels and in all areas.

I recently spoke to a friend who has a young baby and who is planning her return to work, having struggled to find a nursery place. She told me that Sweden, where her brother lives, pays £100 per month per child for a nursery place. However, across England, childminders are packing up and nurseries are closing or cutting places.

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

I thank the hon. Lady, my constituency neighbour, for giving way, and I congratulate her on securing this extremely important debate. On the supply of childcare, does she share my concern that Ofsted figures show that 10,000 childcare providers closed last year alone and that there was a net reduction of 4,000 overall? Analysis by the London Early Years Foundation shows that many of those providers are in disproportionately poorer areas, where people cannot afford to pay for childcare.

[Ruth Cadbury]

By highlighting those shocking Ofsted figures my neighbour from Twickenham has powerfully expanded on the point I was making.

The Minister will no doubt describe the various Government support mechanisms for childcare, but they are not working. Government per-place funding for funded places is falling further and further behind the cost to providers. Providers in less well-off areas are struggling because they cannot rely on fees to top up their income. That means that places are hit even harder—yet another example of the Government levelling down.

Then there are the estimated 15% to 20% of children with special educational needs, who face further inequality due to the lack of specialist childcare. As documented by Coram, there is inadequate funding for SEN childcare. A survey by the Early Years Alliance found that 92% of childcare providers have to fund additional support for children with special educational needs and disabilities out of their own pockets.

[Yvonne Fovargue in the Chair]

On the challenges that childcare providers face, I met local early years leaders in my constituency in November. They told me that, although the pandemic had affected their viability, the cost of living and the funding crisis are having an even bigger impact and are doing even more damage. Their food costs are up 40%, their energy costs have more than doubled, even after Government support, and their business rates are up—a triple whammy. Those cost increases have not been met by an increase in the funding rate for so-called free places. Providers cannot afford to keep passing on the increasing cost of delivering high-quality childcare and education to parents. The Government need to see the huge cost to parents and the huge cost to providers as two sides of the same coin. It is creating a perfect storm, which is causing a crisis.

This crisis is not the fault of the childcare providers, who are working tirelessly up and down the country. It has been fuelled by 13 long years of a Conservative Government who have failed to act.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for bringing this important debate to Westminster Hall. I want to pick up her point about covid. Last year, research on the impact of the covid pandemic on early childhood education and care revealed that considerably more children from ethnic minority and disadvantaged backgrounds have missed out on formal early learning. It will surprise no one that, as a result, the inequality gap has widened, and the attainment gap is also likely to widen. Does my hon. Friend agree that, if we want this trend to be reversed—and I think everyone across the House does—the Government need to focus on ensuring that disadvantaged children have equity of access to quality early years education?

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: the inequality in the provision that does exist means there are stark differences within different communities and between families in different situations. The poorest and most disadvantaged children are the ones who need good-quality childcare from day one, as soon as they leave their parents. They need it more than anyone.

In low-income areas, providers are even less able to cross-subsidise free hours with fees, so there is a disproportionate loss of places in those areas. The poorest families are ineligible for the free 30 hours, and those families who are eligible face barriers to participation.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

This is a hugely important debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member on securing it. In Scotland, we have the same issue in deprived areas. Recent figures uncovered by the Liberal Democrats show that only 43% of families who are entitled to the free childcare for two-year-olds are taking it up, specifically because of the problems she mentions. Should we be doing more to make families aware of the support available to them and of how they can get it, as well as improving that support?

[Ruth Cadbury]

The hon. Member makes an excellent point and anticipates what I was going to say. The provision for two-year-olds, which is specifically there for the most disadvantaged, is complex and difficult to apply for, so it is underused. The families who need it most are not getting it, so I thank the hon. Member for that point.

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

There is a simple problem here. For some families, having childcare is the difference between being able to work or not. What should those families do with a child that is perhaps between the ages of six months and two years when there is no support at all? A six-month-old baby could be left in a cupboard at work, I guess, if that is the logic behind this. By the time they are one year old and they are crawling and walking around, that is not feasible, yet the subsidies kick in only at two years old. It makes no sense at all.

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. I could not take my babies around to meetings and so on after about four months. At that point, I needed either not to attend and not to go to work or to make sure that they had childcare.

Research in this week’s Guardian shows that there are fewer places in less affluent parts of the country. The settings are also more likely to be lower quality.

If I might add to my hon. Friend’s point, one woman wrote to me saying that she is a high earner and that when she got pregnant she worked out she could just about afford to go back to work—until she discovered she was expecting twins. Because of the cost between six months and the two or three years when funded provision comes in, which would help her a bit, she was in a desperate state.

The cost to parents and providers is rising, the funding for the free entitlement does not cover providers’ costs, and the current system of Government support is complex and leaves many gaps. There is also a quality gap affecting less well-off areas and poorer families. This crisis has been fuelled by 13 long years of this Government not acting. Before I finish, I want to ask the Minister a few questions.

[Dr Dan Poulter (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a good speech and some fair points, particularly about the difficulty people from poorer backgrounds have in accessing childcare. If we look at costs internationally, the cost of childcare in the UK is among the highest—if not, the highest—in Europe and by many international comparators. The Government often talk about wanting to get people economically active and back into work, but unless we sort this issue out and people are properly supported to have access to childcare, many people will not be able to afford to work and may have to forgo their careers to take the most economically viable option: looking after their children at home.

[Ruth Cadbury]

Yes. The hon. Member makes an excellent point. Depending on how it is measured, the UK has the third highest or the highest childcare costs to parents in the OECD countries. I ask the Department and the Treasury to look at how and why different Governments do things differently. In particular, the Canadian Government have recognised the economic benefit of properly organised and funded childcare.

Here are my questions to the Minister. Do the Government understand the importance of good-quality, affordable childcare? Do they know the difference it makes to education outcomes, women remaining in the workforce, inequality, the cost of living and the economy? We are not sure whether the Government are considering extending the free childcare option to one and two-year-olds, so we look forward to hearing what the Minister says on that. If they do, will that scheme and the current ones be adequately funded to cover the cost of provision? Will any extension include funding the reopening of settings that have closed and reskilling the workforce, as the current staff and managers will have moved on to other jobs, as they are already doing?

In conclusion, it is clear that the childcare system is broken. For many parents, the current provision is neither affordable nor available. The Government do not always like international comparisons, but they have to be made. I look forward to hearing from my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who I know will set out in further detail the difference a Labour Government will make. We desperately need a change, because the current system is broken, and parents, providers and children are having to live with the consequences. Back in November, more than 15,000 people took part in the “March of the Mummies”. Surely they should not have to march again this November. Surely we can see some action, rather than yet more dither and delay.

[Yvonne Fovargue (in the Chair)]

I remind hon. Members that they should bob if they wish to be called. I call Justin Tomlinson.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Cadbury]

I thank you again, Ms Fovargue, and I appreciate that you and Mr Davies have stepped into the Chair at short notice. We wish all the best to Sir Christopher and hope he is okay. I would like to finish by thanking the many people and organisations that have helped me and others in this debate with facts, research and the views of their members and others, which have contributed to our speeches: the Early Years Alliance, Coram, Women’s Budget Group, Pregnant Then Screwed, Marie Curie and Mumsnet. I also appreciate Angela Doidge-Nelson at Hounslow Council and the group of nursery managers in my constituency who have been so supportive of me and who have opened my eyes to the challenges in the sector ever since I was first elected. We have had a great number of excellent, thoughtful, insightful and factual speeches from many Members, many of whom were speaking of their own experiences. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ilford South (Sam Tarry) reminded us, many Members—mothers and fathers—have had children while Members of Parliament. I was a councillor and took my babies to council meetings.

I also want to acknowledge and appreciate childminders, as the hon. Member for Upper Bann (Carla Lockhart) did. My childminder is sadly no longer with us, as she died a few years ago. She was a rock to our family—the grandma around the corner, because my son’s grandparents were not local. We cannot forget childminders, and it is very worrying to hear that childminders are walking away from the profession at an even greater rate than nurseries are closing.

I still look forward to hearing from the Minister, in more detail, the answers to some of the questions raised today—particularly an acknowledgment that full funding, for any free places, must be there, because, otherwise, the system is imbalanced. We want to hear about what the Department and the Government are doing about the underspend that appears to be there. That is actually there because too many disadvantaged and low-income families are not applying. Why is that? We need to understand why that is, and we need the Government to address the complexity in the system, because otherwise too many children and parents will not benefit from it.

Question put and agreed to. 

Resolved,  

That this House has considered the affordability and availability of childcare.

Crisis in Iran

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Tuesday 25th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I congratulate my hon. Friend, because there will be people watching this urgent question and hearing what we are saying, whether among the diaspora or in Iran, and I am sure it gives them a great deal of strength and courage to know the strength of feeling in this place. The protests also send a clear message that the Iranian people are not satisfied with the path their Government have taken, and we urge Iran to listen to its own people, to respect the right to peaceful assembly, to lift all restrictions, to stop unfairly detaining protesters and, most importantly, to ensure that women can play an equal role in society.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

In the Minister’s response to my hon. Friend the Member for Caerphilly (Wayne David), she talked about sanctions against the elites, who often do not suffer the impact of broad-brush sanctions. What discussions has the Minister had with her counterparts in the Department for Education about removing study visas from the families of regime members, living here far from the restrictions in Iran, and particularly those imposed on women?

[Gillian Keegan]

I want to make clear that in addition to the sanctions recently imposed on 10 October, there are almost 300 sanctions on various activities, people and organisations within Iran. We continue to keep those under review, but I cannot comment on any potential future actions that may be taken.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2022 Commons Chamber

[Holly Lynch (Halifax) (Lab)]

18. What assessment his Department has made of the impact of inflation on school budgets.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

19. What assessment his Department has made of the impact of inflation on school budgets.

[The Minister for School Standards (Mr Robin Walker)]

This year core school funding increased by £4 billion, which is a 7% per pupil boost in cash terms. I recognise the pressure that rising inflation has created. We are constantly considering what further support we can provide schools to reduce their costs, and any additional support will sit alongside our range of school resource management tools, to help schools save on regular purchases and reduce non-teaching costs.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Walker]

It is important that we invest to support schools. That is why we are putting in a £4 billion—7%—increase in the funding of schools. The Department also helps schools to get best value from their resources through a range of resource management tools. Those include recommended deals for energy, and support for schools in switching and entering new energy contracts. I encourage schools to engage with that programme, and of course we all want to ensure that those important priorities for schools can be addressed.

[Ruth Cadbury]

Schools are telling us that standstill funding, inflation and rising energy costs mean that they are having to limit the numbers of healthy options in schools meals. The Government agree with Labour that good healthy school meals are essential for children to thrive, especially as for more and more children the school dinner is their only hot meal. The Minister for Children and Families said about school meals that it was up to schools to “manage their own” individual budgets. Is that the best the Government can serve up?

[Mr Walker]

Our increases in school funding have been front-loaded to get money to schools rapidly, so this year core schools funding is increasing by £4 billion—a 7% cash boost per pupil. Our national formula also targets that funding towards areas of deprivation. It includes an FSM factor, which means that all pupils on free school meals will attract additional funding. The total amount allocated through deprivation factors in the national formula is increasing by £225 million, or 6.7%, in the next year, compared with last year.

Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I will just make a bit more headway, then I will take the hon. Lady’s intervention with pleasure.

To improve the lives and outcomes of children with a social worker, we need to make fundamental changes to the current system. I look forward to seeing the recommendations from the independent review of children’s social care—the MacAlister review—which will be published in the coming weeks. It is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve outcomes for children and families. This Government are acutely aware of how important childcare is to both children and their mums and dads. In each of the past three years we have spent in excess of £3.5 billion a year on our early education entitlements, and we will continue to support families with their childcare costs. At the spending review last October we announced additional funding for early years entitlements worth £160 million in 2022-23, £180 million in 2023-24 and £170 million in 2024-25 compared with the 2021-22 financial year.

Providing quality childcare is vital for children to develop from the earliest opportunity, but there is another point to all this. We know that women are the most likely to shoulder high childcare costs. The aim of the Government’s universal credit childcare offer is to support parents for whom paid childcare is a barrier to work to overcome that barrier. This works alongside tax-free childcare, helping parents return to work and making sure it pays to work. For every £8 that parents pay into their childcare account, we add £2, up to a maximum of £2,000, in top-up per year for each child up to the age of 11, and up to £4,000 per disabled child until they are 17. Overall, the Government have spent more than £4 billion on childcare each year for the past five years in the United Kingdom through childcare offers led by the Department for Education, tax-free childcare and employer-supported childcare. Addressing the issue means that women can, if they wish, go back to their careers. That is fair to them and it is good for business and the economy.

Our long-term economic success will turn on our ability to nurture and utilise talent, including that of new mothers. Human potential—human capital—is the most important resource on earth. To steal a phrase from my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), the Chair of the Education Committee, we are determined to build a skills-rich economy. We are committed to delivering those skills through massive investment in and reforms to skills and further education provision.

We have already embarked on revolutionising the post-16 education sector, transforming apprenticeships, driving up quality and better meeting the skills needs of employers through more flexible training models. We have launched T-levels, boosting access to high-quality technical education for thousands of young people, and, of course, creating our skilled workforce of the future. I pledge to the House that I will make T-levels as famous as A-levels—watch this space. In the previous parliamentary Session, we successfully passed the Skills and Post-16 Education Act 2022 to do just that. That Act, alongside our wider reforms, including an additional £3.8 billion investment in skills over this Parliament, rightly places employers at the heart of the skills system, supporting our ambition for everyone to be able to access the training that they need to move into highly skilled jobs. There is, of course, a crucial role for our universities in making sure that our country remains the best place in which to grow up and, given the link to future earnings and opportunities, to grow old.

We will bring forward further legislation through a higher education reform Bill to ensure that our post-18 education system promotes real social mobility, is financially sustainable and will support people to get the skills they need to meet their career aspirations and help grow the economy.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for what he is saying, but will the Bill address the injustice that Muslim students face? At the moment, they cannot access student loans. Suitable loans were promised by David Cameron in 2014, and they are still waiting. Will he address that?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I made that pledge to the Education Committee a few weeks ago. We are looking at how we deliver on that.

As I was saying, we will introduce further legislation through the higher education reform Bill to ensure that our post-18 education system promotes real social mobility and, as the hon. Lady has just said, is financially sustainable.

Alongside that, we are meeting our manifesto commitment to challenge any restriction of lawful speech and academic freedom. The Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Bill will strengthen existing freedom of speech duties and will directly address gaps within the law, including the lack of a clear enforcement mechanism.

For both universities and technical education, one of the most important policies that we are implementing as part of the Skills and Post-16 Education Act is the paradigm shifting lifelong loan entitlement. A new and flexible skills system, it will provide people with an entitlement equivalent to four years of post-18 education, to be used over their lifetime in modules or as a whole, and is worth £37,000 in today’s money. We are writing a new chapter—no, we are writing a new book in skills education. The entitlement will give people the ability to train, retrain and upskill in response to changes in skills needs and employment patterns. In a dynamic economy in which sectors can be crushed and reborn in double time, that has to be our priority.

The world is different now from how it was when I entered the world of work and business. It is different now compared with when I became an MP 12 years ago. We must not only keep up with a changing world but lead the change, and the Queen’s Speech lays out how we will do that. As I said at the start of my speech, we are focused on delivering against the ambitious targets that we have set ourselves across skills, schools and families, and on holding ourselves to account against them. The sharing of our plans and performance data is a key lever to drive rapid improvement through the complex systems we oversee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook), and it was interesting, too, because that Bournville retirement village would not have been possible had it not been for the endowment of the Bournville Village Trust, which was set up by my forebears before the welfare state and enabled the cost of the land and so on not to have to be covered. Most areas in this country do not have such an asset, which is why the Government need to support such provision.

If the Government really want to make Britain the best place to grow up in and provide the opportunities referred to by the Secretary of State for Education, they have to do far more than the thin gruel dished up in the Queen’s Speech last week. I am not sure that many of my constituents who are at school, college or university see much to celebrate in the Queen’s Speech. Schools in Labour-led Hounslow are all good or outstanding, but that is a challenge after a lost decade of underfunding. In our borough’s schools alone, £17 million has been lost—or £500 per pupil. Parents and teachers are trying to fill the gap from their own pockets, but fewer can afford the money as the cost of living bites ever deeper. Now we read that there is a risk to life because of disrepair in too many school buildings, which cannot be fixed with income from school fetes. School buildings need a properly funded commitment from Government, like the Labour Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme.

On covid catch-up funding, the Government have ignored the recommendations of Sir Kevan Collins, whom they appointed. He said that £15 billion was needed, but the Government agreed to spent only a fraction of that. Labour’s children’s recovery plan would fund significant and targeted extra investment for our young people who missed out most during the lockdowns.

Teachers’ morale has to be addressed. Teaching is already challenging and over the past decade teachers have had to take on more responsibilities as staffing levels are cut to respond to the annual budget round and yet more central Government edicts. During the pandemic, teachers and school heads, who were at the frontline, told me that they felt let down and ignored by this Government, with announcements made on the spur of the moment and the Government lurching from one fiasco to another. At the same time, welfare, mental health and special needs support is still being cut, despite warm words from the Government. Teachers and school staff were on the frontline during the pandemic but have been left behind by this Government, so it is no surprise that seven out of 10 teachers have considered leaving the profession in the last year. The Government need to wake up to the huge amount of anger and distrust that they have created among school staff. Investing in school staff and school buildings means investing in children’s learning and development, and in their future. Labour has a funded plan to invest in school staff, to enable all teachers and leadership teams to continue to access continuing professional development.

Students have been all but ignored by this Government. Practically the only time we hear Ministers talking about universities or students is when they want to create a distraction or a row. Perhaps if the Government talked to students and higher education staff, and actually listened, they would know that students are already struggling with the cost of living, with rising rents, energy bills and food costs. Many students in my constituency tell me that they have to work full time to fund themselves through university, supposedly on full-time courses. I have heard from 16 and 17-year-olds who are terrified that they will not be able to go to university because of the costs. So much for social mobility.

In conclusion, this Queen’s Speech is the proof that, after 12 years in power, the Government have no ambition or determination to fix the problems in the education system that they have created. On school funding, we hear “Computer says no” from the Chancellor. There is no plan to support school staff and leadership teams with adequate pay or proper mental health support, and certainly little sign of a coherent and evidenced schools policy. There is no plan to support students, just a carefully hidden rise in student loan interest payments in the last Budget and, as I said earlier, nothing for Muslim students who are unable to take out student loans.

Labour would take a different path—a better path. Families in my constituency would have a Government who were on their side, with a plan to tackle the cost of living crisis with a windfall tax on oil and gas producers; a Government with an ambitious catch-up plan for education, as described by my hon. Friend the Member for Houghton and Sunderland South (Bridget Phillipson). That is how we will make Britain the best place to grow up.

Free Period Product Scheme for Schools

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Wednesday 15th December 2021 Westminster Hall

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

Before we begin, I remind hon. Members that they are expected to wear face coverings when not speaking in the debate. This is in line with current Government and House of Commons Commission guidance. I remind Members that they are asked by the House to have a covid lateral flow test twice a week if coming on to the parliamentary estate. This can be done either at the testing centre in the House or at home. Please give each other and members of staff space when seated and when entering and leaving the room. I call Ruth Cadbury to move the motion and then the Minister to respond. There will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up, as is the convention for 30-minute debates.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Free Period Product Scheme for Schools.

Thank you, Ms Rees. Is the loop on? I could not hear you very well because the loop was not on. As you probably will not be speaking too much, I hope I will cope.

[Christina Rees (in the Chair)]

We will sort that out now. I do apologise.

[Ruth Cadbury]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Rees. The debate concerns the Government’s free period product scheme, where period products are available in English schools. As Chair of the all-party parliamentary group on period equality, I again bring a debate. Until recently, we found the pages of Hansard rather bare when it came to menstrual health. I believe the word tampon was first used in this place in the 1980s, in relation to an incident involving a customs officer. However, we have made progress since I joined this place in 2015 and in more recent years, when I brought a debate last year.

I welcome the chance today to talk about the Government’s scheme for schools and colleges in England. I will start by describing in a few words what it means to come on a period when in school. The Minister will realise that it has been rather a long time since that happened to me. Not all of these words apply to me, but they are common emotions and feelings for youngsters in school: unexpected, messy, embarrassing, shameful, bad back pain, headaches, PMT, stress and unexplained strong emotions and, overall, bloody.

When I applied for the debate, we did not know whether the Government would extend the scheme or whether there would be any changes or tweaks to it. We were very pleased on 26 November, when we received the welcome news that the Government would extend the scheme for 2022. There was a sigh of relief from students, teachers and parents across the country.

The precursor to the current Government scheme was the red box project, organised and delivered nationally by volunteers. Like many MPs, I worked with our local organiser who ran the Hounslow red box, led by Yeliz Kazim. She worked tirelessly, like many across the country, to get red boxes into schools, so that students could easily access free period products. I learned from Yeliz that it was not only period products that young people were asking for via their teachers. Yeliz also supplied spare underwear, tights and deodorant in the boxes she supplied. She had started to work with other organisations, such as youth clubs and council and community settings, to ensure that period products were available free in other settings.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I have always supported this campaign. I know that in Northern Ireland, the local Education Minister is considering the matter, off the back of a debate in the Northern Ireland Assembly last week. There is an eagerness for local councils to play their part. My own, Ards and North Down Borough Council, is part of that. I commend the hon. Lady, and let her know that there is a willingness and interest for this to happen in Northern Ireland in the way she is indicating.

[Ruth Cadbury]

It is welcome to hear about what is happening in Northern Ireland. I will later describe legislation that has been passed in the Scottish Parliament as well.

As many groups and charities, such as Bloody Good Period, have rightly said, that important work should not fall to the kindness of charity. Thanks to the tireless work of activists such as Amika George and of groups such as Free Periods, the school scheme was introduced after much lobbying and campaigning.

Although we have made much progress in improving how we talk about period poverty and menstrual health, I am aware that some people still question why we need the scheme. People incorrectly assume that tampons and pads are cheap, that women might need only one a day or that they are easy to get—but certainly, when pupils are supposed to be in school, it is not easy to go out to the shops, even if there is a shop nearby.

Period poverty causes pupils to miss schooling. A report by phs found that one in 14 girls said that

“they have missed schools as they could not afford or access period products.”

A report published in July found that period poverty got worse in the last year as the cost of living, loss of work and so on hit many families. It also found that 35% of teenage girls said that they had taken time off school because of their period, which was a 7% increase on 2019. Some of that will have been due to period pains or PMT, but poverty is a contributing factor. In that survey, 11% said that they had stayed off school because they could not afford period products—that figure was only 2% in the 2019 survey. The problem of poverty in accessing period products is getting worse and is affecting children’s ability to attend and remain in school.

Plan International UK, in its October report, estimated that nearly 2 million girls in the UK missed school at some point because of their period. It warned that there is a “toxic trio” of issues fuelling period poverty: first, the lack of proper education about periods; secondly, the stigma and shame around menstruation; and thirdly, the cost of the products. We have moved on since the distant days of my schooling, but we can do much more.

On stigma and shame, when I talk about the issue I tried to avoid the word “sanitary”, because it implies that having a period is a dirty or unbecoming act, which of course it is not. Great work is being done to tackle the stigma around periods in sport, which has an impact on many students. The Blood, Sweat and No Fears campaign raises awareness around sport and features powerful testimony from many elite athletes.

Young people, not just girls, need to learn and be able to talk about periods, which are a natural function and not something shameful. Too many mothers, teachers and other adults do not talk about periods and feel that they need to hide the facts, and too many young women feel shamed when they are on their period.

There is also the issue of cost. In the past few months, I have heard from many families locally how difficult it has been to make ends meet with the £20-a-week cut in universal credit, inflation, loss of work or a cut in hours, rising rents and rising fuel prices. The cost of buying period products for those who need them in the household adds to that—they cannot get away from that cost.

The Government’s period product scheme has a part to play in the awareness of periods, stigma and education. Having those products available, talking about them and advertising them in the school community is part of that and why they are needed. It provides an opportunity to talk about periods among boys and girls, which is important. The main advantage of the scheme, however, is that it can make a significant difference to addressing period poverty.

On the scheme, we welcome the fact that the Government have taken over from the Red Box Project, a charity and a voluntarily run scheme. I want as many schools as possible to sign up for the Government’s scheme. I welcome the latest figures that show that more than 70% of secondary schools have signed up, but 24% have not. The lower sign-up rate of 41% among primary schools is concerning, however. We know that many pupils could be having their first period in primary school: as the years go on, menstruation is starting at an earlier age, so these products are absolutely essential. The higher level of ignorance—if you like—in primary schools makes it even more important to have these products available in those schools, even though only a small percentage of their students need them.

[Jim Shannon]

The hon. Lady is making an excellent speech. Again, to give an example from Northern Ireland, these products are available through school nurses in the schools. Whenever pupils go to ask for them, I think they need to be able to ask someone who understands.

[Ruth Cadbury]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point. We need to make this easy and accessible, so that everybody knows who they can go to and that they can talk in privacy, because it is not just, “Could I have three pads please, miss?” It is about the staff member being open to having a conversation if needed, particularly with youngsters who have only just started having periods.

The other concern is the regional variations in the uptake of this scheme. From 2020, it appears that the north-east has an uptake of only 44%, compared with 50% in London. Although MPs can and do play a role in encouraging schools to sign up—that is something that we in the all-party parliamentary group do—I appreciate that our powers are not limitless, and we can only go so far in encouraging schools locally to sign up. I have heard feedback that some schools in more affluent areas think that they do not need to sign up to the scheme. Schools with lower numbers of students on the pupil premium were less likely to sign up, but that does not help those students who do need the service, and anyway, this is not just about affordability: there is a shame issue. We still hear of girls being unable to ask their mothers for the money to buy pads or tampons, or not knowing what to do or where to get them, so that is another reason why all schools should have these products available. I urge every school to sign up to this scheme and ensure that all pupils can access free products. We do not deny schools the chance to distribute free condoms on the basis of the school being in an affluent area, so I very much hope that all schools sign up.

What can the Government do to address these uptake levels, in addition to what they have already done? First, they can make it as straightforward and easy as possible for schools to access and operate this scheme. School staff have faced a huge strain from covid-19, and even before the virus hit, they had enough on their plate. If the Government could make it easier by making this scheme an opt-out one, rather than opt-in, that would really help. The other issue is communication: take-up is encouraged through occasional emails from the Department and some pieces on social media, but more could be done, including in those areas where sign-up rates have been lower. The APPG is happy to assist the Department in doing so.

The second issue I want to address is that of the products available in the scheme. Schools can currently order and receive products from Public Health England depending on their budget, and I understand that as some products are more expensive, schools naturally spend their budget on cheaper items if they get a bigger quantity. However, as with nappies, we know that the cheaper the product, the less useful it is. I remember that from my days—I will not go into detail; Members do not want to know. Actually, they do want to know, because they need to know that the cheaper product lasts less long and creates more mess.

We should also consider allowing a greater range of products—such as we had in the original Red Box scheme in Hounslow, based on feedback from young people and teachers—such as tights, pants, deodorants and so on. I would also welcome more use of reusable products, which of course are expensive, such as mooncups and even washable pads. Washable pads are really simple to make, but because they are still a minority product, as it were, they are expensive to buy. If they were available through the scheme, it would save young people the costs of buying single-use products every month, not to mention the environmental impact that single-use products have.

There is also the question of the scheme’s long-term future. Both this year and last, we have had to wait until late in the year to find out if the scheme was going to be continued or if it was going to be scaled down. I am sure it would provide schools and colleges with much-needed certainty if the scheme could be put on a more secure footing, and we did not face this cliff edge every year.

Finally, I hope that the Government do not think of this as a tick-box way of tackling period inequality—that, because of this scheme, the issue is solved. It is much more complex than that. The toxic trio of low awareness, discrimination and cost needs a more ambitious programme. I am proud of the amazing work of Monica Lennon, the Labour MSP in the Scottish Parliament, who fought for so long to see the pioneering Period Products (Free Provision) Scotland Bill pass into law. In the end, it was passed unanimously. It is a global first, as it mandates local authorities to provide free period products, which means that the roll-out will extend beyond schools and into places such as town halls, leisure centres, community settings and other public sites. This is the type of bold and ambitious policy that will make a huge difference to so many young people—and not just young people.

We know that period inequality does not just impact pupils. The poverty issue affects migrants, refugees and many marginalised people. Whenever I buy something for a food box or donate things to asylum seekers living on £8 a week, I always include period products. The scheme is a welcome and much-needed step to ensure that all of society is tackling period poverty. I have some questions for the Minister—I can give him my sheet of paper if it helps. Will the Government look at making this an opt-out rather than an opt-in scheme for schools? Will the Minister tell us what is being done to improve the take-up rate generally and in certain regions? Will the Government improve communications with schools about the scheme? Will they look at the products available in the scheme, so that they can be expanded to include pants, tights and other multi-use products? Will they look at putting the scheme on a more permanent or long-term footing? Will the Minister look at adjusting the scheme so that regional and local inequalities are addressed, such as by using pupil premium numbers? Will the Government look at the Act in Scotland and consider what more can be done to tackle period inequality?

Parliament and Government have become much better at talking about, and raising awareness of, menstrual health, and we are making progress. None the less, the figures over the past year show that period poverty is getting worse and that the impact on schooling is getting greater. We cannot afford to continue with a business-as-usual model. We need a bigger and better approach to ensure that no student misses school because of period inequality.

--- Later in debate ---

[Will Quince]

The hon. Gentleman is right, and all the points he raises are fair and accurate. We work closely, particularly at official level, with devolved Administrations to develop schemes of this nature, to make sure that, as much as possible, there is some synergy. In September this year, Northern Ireland launched a three-year pilot scheme to address period poverty in schools, which we very much welcome. I suppose it is telling that all Governments across our United Kingdom are aligned on this issue. We recognise this need. I have to pay credit to the hon. Lady and the APPG for driving this agenda.

We are absolutely clear that organisations should have products available should learners need them. Many schools and colleges have benefited from charities over recent years, as the hon. Lady rightly points out, and we very much thank those charities for their support. Schools and colleges do not have to use the national scheme to purchase products. If they prefer to use an alternative route, they can of course do so, although costs are only met through the use of the Department’s scheme. With that in mind, our supplier, phs, will proactively contact organisations that have accessed the scheme so far. Organisations that have already ordered products should continue to use their existing account and log-in details. Schools will potentially be listening to the debate, so I refer them to phs’s contact details and more information about the scheme being clearly set out in guidance on gov.uk.

The hon. Member for Brentford and Isleworth rightly referenced take-up. Since the period product scheme launched in January 2020, it has been fantastic to see how many schools and colleges have used it. Importantly, the scheme remained in operation throughout the partial school and college closures as a result of the pandemic in 2020 and 2021. We had fantastic examples of organisations ensuring that young people continued to receive that support, even when they were learning from home. The hon. Lady referenced these figures, and it is really encouraging that 76% of secondary schools and 79% of colleges ordered products from the scheme during 2020. We continue to encourage those who have not yet accessed the scheme to do so. It is really important that they do, and that they recognise that that support is there. We intend to publish updated statistics from the scheme early next year. Although I cannot say much about that, I hope, I think and am confident and optimistic that the hon. Lady will be pleased when those new figures are published. She rightly raises the take-up of primary schools. I take up her offer to meet at a later date to discuss some of her ideas to improve that.

The hon. Lady also rightly referenced the environment. We continually monitor the ways in which we can make our scheme and others like it more environmentally friendly, such as by setting a minimum order value based on the organisation’s budget—for an average secondary school, that is about £1,500—in order to limit deliveries and reduce traffic and all those things. Importantly, we continue to include a range of sustainable and environmentally friendly products for schools and colleges to select, as I think the hon. Lady would hope. Our supplier reports that, over the past few months—I suspect driven in part by COP26—orders for environmentally friendly products increased significantly in the weeks up to and after COP26.

The hon. Lady rightly pushed me on range. Range is important, and she has raised the issue with me in private. I am looking very closely at additional period products, such as period pants, that we could potentially include in the product range for 2022. There are limitations as to exactly what we can include in the current contract, but I certainly commit to the hon. Lady that I will take this issue away and explore what further products we could include in the scheme.

[Ruth Cadbury]

Many of the reusable products, such as period pants and period pads, are made by very small SMEs. That is a different kettle of fish for the Department from having a single big contract with a major supplier. I hope the Minister will consider that opportunity, even though it might be an administrative burden of a different type for the Department.

[Will Quince]

I certainly will do that. One advantage of working with phs is that it has that capability and national reach, as well as the ability to procure at a local level.

The hon. Lady rightly touched on stigma and taboo, which I mentioned earlier. I think we do need to talk about periods. A vital element of the scheme’s success is ensuring that learners are aware that period products are available when they need them in their school or college. It can be challenging for some schools and colleges to communicate about this, especially if teachers and students find it difficult to talk openly about periods. Periods are a natural process, but too often they are treated as a taboo subject. I remember what it was like when I was a pupil at school: they were very much something that was not talked about.

We are taking action to tackle that through the new health education curriculum, which became compulsory for state-funded schools in England in 2020. Our statutory guidance insists that both boys and girls should be taught the key facts about the menstrual cycle, including what is an average period, the range of period products, and the implications for emotional and physical health. We have developed a “changing adolescent body” teacher training module, which will very much help in that regard. I desperately want teachers to feel confident in talking to students about this issue to tackle the stigma around menstruation.

Beyond the health education curriculum content, we have statutory guidance that directs schools to make adequate and sensitive arrangements to help ensure that girls prepare for and manage periods, including through requests for period products. I think that will make a real difference. Our user insight shows that even small changes, such as using the term “period products”—I have been very careful to use it, as did the hon. Lady—as opposed to “sanitary products”, help to shift the conversation away from any suggestion that periods are in some way unhygienic, which of course they are not; they are an entirely natural process.

I will touch briefly on ordering and distribution. This is a matter that mostly affects girls. Fundamentally, no girls should miss out on their education because of their period. Our scheme helps young people to go about their daily lives without getting caught out. It is not just about period poverty; it is about not being caught out. That is not just about pupils; it is also about teachers, who sometimes come on their periods unexpectedly, forget to bring products in with them or cannot afford the products they need. We have the online portal, but I am keen to work with the hon. Lady on how we can improve the process and ensure that more schools access this provision.

I am conscious that there are lots more questions and I would like to answer them. I am very happy to meet the hon. Lady at a later date to do so. This issue mostly affects women and girls, but it is important that we are all comfortable discussing it. I want more people in this House and in schools and colleges up and down the country to discuss this issue, so that it is not a taboo and so that we take the stigma out of it. My message to girls and young women up and down the country is this: please do not ever miss out on your education because of your period. Make sure your school or college signs up to our period products scheme, and that you are able to make the most of the continuation of this fantastic scheme. I conclude by thanking the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for their contributions, and wishing all within the House a very merry Christmas.

Education Return and Awarding Qualifications in 2021

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

The point my hon. Friend raises is incredibly important, because we must ensure that those youngsters, and people of all ages doing those technical and vocational qualifications who need the ability to demonstrate their professional competency, are able to do so. So it is absolutely vital that we open up our college system and open up our training providers to ensure that they can continue to progress.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab) [V]]

Following on from the question from the hon. Member for North Devon (Selaine Saxby), FE colleges such as West Thames have had years of underfunding, yet they work hard to ensure that young people get the skills they need. September’s new students will have had almost two years of disrupted learning and limited time in school, so can the Secretary of State tell the House what additional support the Government are making available for FE colleges?

[Gavin Williamson]

This was an important part of the £700 million extra funding that we have made available, making sure there is funding for FE colleges to be able to deliver and expand the tutoring and catch-up programmes they already have, but this is against a backdrop of increasing funding for our amazing further education colleges that we value so highly.

Skills for Jobs White Paper

Ruth Cadbury Excerpts

Thursday 21st January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I will take this opportunity to thank my right hon. Friend for his work in enabling us to proceed with this skills for jobs White Paper. Without his commitment and dedication, including the odd skirmish with the Treasury, we would not have made the progress we have made with the institutes of technology, which are already starting to transform young people’s lives, and of course with T-levels.

On where we want to go, we really want business organisations to work with colleges, putting this on a statutory footing, very much like what we see in Germany, Switzerland and the Netherlands, where they can co-design the qualifications they need and match the job needs of the local community. That will bring those businesses and the business sector into the heart of those colleges, ensuring that we drive employment and the right set of skills.

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab) [V]]

West Thames College in Isleworth has a strong reputation, long developed, for providing courses across the range, including basic skills and English as a second language, but also locally specific courses developed in conjunction with employers, such as in aviation, hospitality and media. With so many people in my constituency losing their jobs at Heathrow and its supply chain, courses will have to re-orientate and colleges will have to provide retraining in other sectors. For people whose jobs will not come back for many years to come, will the training and retraining be available for colleges such as West Thames College, and will they be available to students on universal credit?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Rosie Winterton)]

We must have shorter questions.