Education and Training (Welfare of Children) Bill

Steve Reed Excerpts

Friday 13th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Mary Kelly Foy) on bringing forward the Bill. She has not been in the House for very long, so it is good to see her already using her presence here to make a difference. To be promoting legislation after only a few weeks is quite an achievement and augurs well for the rest of her parliamentary career.

I also congratulate my hon. Friend on identifying such a significant loophole in the existing legislation, and on devoting her considerable energies to seeking to close it. As other Members have said, it is clearly not equitable that legislation on safeguarding does not apply equally to all providers, and that therefore young people who are entering post-16 education or training will get varying legal protections depending on where they are studying. It is clearly not acceptable for that situation to continue.

The Bill will close that loophole by extending the legal duty to all publicly funded providers of post-16 education and training, and it will directly impose the same legal safeguarding duties on all 16-to-19 academies and other publicly funded providers of education and training. That is the right thing to do. This is a small but significant piece of legislation. It closes a loophole. Opposition Members support it and are grateful to my hon. Friend for bringing it forward. I look forward to the Minister offering the Government’s support, so that the legislation can get on to the statute book.

Self-defence Training in Schools

Steve Reed Excerpts

Thursday 12th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, as always, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (James Gray) on securing this important debate, particularly on behalf of the family of his constituent Ellie Gould, who was so horrifically murdered in such tragic circumstances. It is also a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger), who always has interesting things to say about the role of communities in tackling some of the problems that we are looking at, which go deeper than the specifics of the case in question.

Perhaps I can also add my congratulations and tributes to Ellie Gould’s schoolfriends. They took the initiative to launch a petition, which I understand has gathered more than 10,000 signatures so far. That is a considerable achievement and shows a determination on their part not to let their friend’s murder simply be forgotten, but to use it to try to drive some positive change, as part of her legacy.

In particular they are calling for self-defence training in schools, through one or two PE lessons a year being devoted to that purpose. I share the view that it is best to encourage and not prescribe, but I think we all, on both sides of the Chamber, should encourage more teaching of self-defence to young people, because of the many threats they face. Those are not just physical; they face threats online as well, from new forms of cyber-bullying that can be damaging to a young person’s health and wellbeing, and through associations that can also put them in severe physical danger. We should be doing more to educate young people about how to keep safe in every context, but I certainly see a place for physical self-defence training as a part of that. I urge the Government to look at whatever lessons can be learned from the murder of Ellie Gould and applied more widely to keep other young people safe in future.

It occurs to me that there is an interesting link between the issue that we are discussing and some of the forms of community-led social prescribing that I have seen in my constituency—I know that they are happening beyond it. People with expertise or experience come together in community spaces, such as community halls, or faith organisations, and give support, through volunteering, to other members of the community, so that it does not necessarily need to cost anything and if it costs something it is not much at all.

Plenty of people would be prepared to give their time to support young people to keep themselves safe, and to train them in the skills and expertise they would need to defend themselves in a difficult situation. It would be a positive move if the Government were to support some of that. In some cases there would be a funding requirement, and I have long regretted the scale of cuts in funding for voluntary and community organisations. However, I hope that, with the new focus on investment in the Budget this week, there may be an opportunity to look again at some of those decisions, and the way they have cut communities’ capacity to self-organise and take action for themselves. I suspect, from what I have heard in the Chamber, that there would be support on both sides for such a move.

[James Gray]

The hon. Gentleman has reminded me of something that I meant to say, which is that of course the self-defence training need not necessarily happen in school. It could be schools getting together in a community. In many areas there would be schools that could combine for that. Alternatively, a Rotary club or voluntary organisations in the community could come together to provide such training. I am grateful for the suggestion.

[Steve Reed]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that comment. He made some important points earlier about prevention, on which we should perhaps focus for a moment. I certainly agree that we need better PSHE lessons. Giving young people a better understanding of what constitutes a healthy or an unhealthy relationship equips them to know when they need to back off—particularly when there is coercive or controlling behaviour, which is what normally precedes the kind of violence that Ellie Gould so tragically experienced.

I also think—I am not suggesting that what happened to Ellie is attributable to this—that there is an awful lot of unrecognised mental ill health in our communities, particularly among young people. It is driven partly by many of the stresses that they experience through online bullying, for instance, which we perhaps did not experience, but it is also driven by trauma in early childhood, and the withdrawal of some of the services that might have been available through family support or early intervention to support young people to cope with the trauma as they grow up, and not to allow it to grow into a mental health crisis, which can happen in many cases.

I say that because I think that very few children, if any, are born bad; circumstances turn them bad. We must then deal with the consequences of that, if we do not try to tackle the circumstances that cause the damage in the first place. There is a strong case for early intervention and support for families and young people, particularly when they have experienced trauma, to prevent them later doing the kinds of horrific things that can lead to tragedy in far too many circumstances.

The hon. Member for North Wiltshire talked about the need for a legacy from Ellie Gould, and it seems to me that perhaps the best thing we could contribute, on a cross-party basis, would be to make sure that what happened to her cannot happen to anyone else ever again. I take this opportunity to pay tribute again to her family and friends for the campaign that they have launched, and I look forward to a positive response from the Minister.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Reed Excerpts

Monday 2nd March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

The London Borough of Wandsworth will receive £47.8 million in high-needs funding in the next year, which is an increase of 8.6%. The performance of local areas in producing education, health and care plans is variable, but some 30 areas do get more than 90% of plans done within the 20-week period which, I note, is a reduction from the 26-week period under the previous Labour Government. Performance does vary across the country. Where it is not good enough, we support and challenge local areas to improve.

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the Minister apologise for her Government’s imposition of such irresponsibly severe cuts that the Care Quality Commission has now found that one third of all services for special needs children have significant failings? After 10 years of this kind of failure, what is her plan to sort this national crisis out?

[Vicky Ford]

As I have just said, there has been an increase of £780 million in additional high-needs funding next year, which is a 12% increase. Performance does vary, but we know that only because of the joint Oftsted-CQC inspections that this Government introduced. The reports do not give a pass-fail judgment, and many of them show strength. Furthermore, when they have been re-inspected following the work of the Government, six of the 17 councils have made sufficient progress in every area.

Equality of Funding: Post-16 Education

Steve Reed Excerpts

Tuesday 25th February 2020 Westminster Hall

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Davies. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Lloyd Russell-Moyle) on securing this important debate. The neglect of further education over many decades, but in particular since 2010, is a critical issue that is not given enough attention in this place, so I thank Members on all sides who have made excellent contributions to the debate.

As some said during the debate, if global Britain is to have any meaning at all, we cannot keep underfunding further education. The latest figures available show that OECD countries spend, on average, 8% more on vocational programmes than academic ones, while the UK spends 11% less. FE funding has been cut to the bone, with spending this year similar in real terms to levels in 1991, nearly 30 years ago. We are falling behind, which damages young people’s futures and our economy in a way that affects every one of us.

The DFE’s own report into the FE sector, which was published this month, lays bare the scale of the problem. It says that courses and apprenticeships continue to be reduced or lost, class sizes and teachers’ workloads are increasing, while jobs are being cut and wages held down in a way that makes it difficult to retain staff or recruit new staff. One sixth-form college leader put it like this:

“If we do not receive additional funding in real terms…we will fail financially.”

They went on:

“Our aim is for this college not to be in the half of SFCs that fail first in the hope that, once half have gone…something will have to be done.”

How irresponsible that the Government have reduced our sixth-form colleges to this appalling state.

FE colleges complain that severe underfunding means much of what they can offer has become—in their own words—

“out of date and not relevant to what is current in the workplace.”

I ask the Minister, can we allow our FE colleges to fall so far behind that they are unable to equip their students for the world of work?

I regularly speak to leaders at Croydon College, which many of my younger constituents attend. They are distraught at how self-defeating and short term the Government’s approach to FE has been. Many young people growing up in places like Croydon fail to achieve their full potential at school, often because of challenging circumstances in the home that hold them back. Later on, they want to return to education and gain the basic qualifications they missed out on, in subjects such as English and maths, so they can get a better job, make themselves more employable and make a bigger contribution to society. It is inexplicable that this Government have chosen to close down these opportunities and leave young people to fail, when a little more investment at this crucial stage would pay dividends, not just to the young person affected, but to the public purse as they get jobs, earn more and pay taxes.

We should pay tribute to the Education Select Committee for its recent report into FE. The Committee was unable to discern overarching strategic objectives or funding prioritisation behind the Government’s policy announcements. It could not find evidence that the Government’s funding decisions were aligned with real-world costs. Instead of the blinkered short-termism that currently defines the Government’s approach to spending, the Committee called for a 10-year plan for education funding, so schools and colleges can plan strategically in the future. I hope the Minister will abandon the failure that has characterised this Government’s approach to further education and embrace a fresh approach that will equip the UK to compete globally.

Will the Minister confirm that per-pupil funding will rise, in real terms, every year of this Parliament? Will adult education and apprenticeship spending be maintained in real terms, in addition to the announced spending increase on education for 16 to 18-year-olds? When does she expect to raise the rate for funding education for 16, 17 and 18-year-olds to the £4,760 a year that the Sixth Form Colleges Association says is required and that Members on all sides have called for? When will she level up funding for 16 to 18-year-olds with funding for those under-16, and abolish the VAT on FE learning?

The high-skills economy that Britain needs to compete globally must draw on all routes through education, whether that is academic, technical or vocational. By failing to recognise and properly fund education, this Government are letting down Britain’s young people, and failing to equip Britain to succeed in an increasingly competitive world. After a decade of failure, I hope today’s debate will mark a turning point. It is time to raise the rate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Reed Excerpts

Monday 20th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

Absolutely. I believe that the system needs to be child-focused. My hon. Friend will have noted that in my letter to local authorities last week, I highlighted other forms of permanence, including kinship care and special guardianships in particular. However, let us not forget that 41% of children with a placement order have not been placed in an adoption setting within 18 months. This is not acceptable and I am determined to bust the myths around adoption, including regarding race and religion, so that we can help those children into permanent, stable homes as quickly as possible.

[Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

Too many children in the care system are being placed in unregulated hostels, as we have heard, without the support that they need to keep safe. Lance Scott Walker was killed aged 18 when we was placed with a young person with schizophrenia who chased him out of a window and stabbed him to death. In another hostel, a young person on bail for murder was placed with a victim of child trafficking, who he got involved in drug dealing. We know that children are at risk right now. We do not need to wait for a review to find that out, so when will the Government properly regulate all housing where vulnerable children and young people are placed?

[Michelle Donelan]

This is something that we are committed to getting right, and I am working with Ofsted, local authorities and the Children’s Commissioner to tackle it. While there is and always will be a place for semi-independent living within our system, I cannot imagine a circumstance where that is acceptable for under-16s. Currently, all local authorities must ensure that their placements are suitable, and my right hon. Friend the Education Secretary recently wrote to all local authorities about that. To be clear, unregistered settings where care is provided are illegal and Ofsted conducted over 150 investigations of those last year.

Education

Steve Reed Excerpts

Wednesday 25th September 2019 Ministerial Corrections

The following is an extract from Questions to the Secretary of State for Education on 9 September 2019.

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the new Minister to her post. As she will know, children with special needs rely on help with speech and language and on counselling support, but the Children’s Commissioner has published research showing that the severe underfunding of those services is seriously damaging children’s lives and futures. Even after the spending review and the additional funding to which the Minister has referred, we still face a £1 billion shortfall in special educational needs services by 2021. Given that the Government could so easily find £1 billion to bribe the Democratic Unionist party, will the Minister agree, here and now, to find the same amount to fully fund the services that the country’s most vulnerable children so desperately need?

[Mrs Badenoch]

I met the Children’s Commissioner last week, and discussed this issue among many others. We welcome her report. However, I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Government are spending £7 billion on special educational needs, and are adding an additional £700 million. That is part of the extra £14 billion that we are spending over three years, and I think that it is to be welcomed.

[Official Report, 9 September 2019, Vol. 664, c. 485.]

Letter of correction from the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mrs Badenoch).

An error has been identified in the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed).

The correct answer should have been:

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Reed Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I welcome the new Minister to her post. As she will know, children with special needs rely on help with speech and language and on counselling support, but the Children’s Commissioner has published research showing that the severe underfunding of those services is seriously damaging children’s lives and futures. Even after the spending review and the additional funding to which the Minister has referred, we still face a £1 billion shortfall in special educational needs services by 2021. Given that the Government could so easily find £1 billion to bribe the Democratic Unionist party, will the Minister agree, here and now, to find the same amount to fully fund the services that the country’s most vulnerable children so desperately need?

[Mrs Badenoch]

I met the Children’s Commissioner last week, and discussed this issue among many others. We welcome her report. However, I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Government are spending £7 billion on special educational needs, and are adding an additional £700 million. That is part of the extra £14 billion that we are spending over three years, and I think that it is to be welcomed.[Official Report, 25 September 2019, Vol. 664, c. 7MC.]

Children’s Future Food Report

Steve Reed Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is my first appearance at the Dispatch Box as Labour’s children and families spokesperson, and I am glad that it is in a debate on such an important issue. It is shocking and unacceptable that child hunger still exists in our country to this extent. I would like to take this opportunity, if I may, to thank our previous spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell- Buck), for her work in this role. She brought her experience as a social worker to the position, and she made a significant contribution to our manifesto in the general election.

I am grateful to all Members who have spoken in the debate. From my own party, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) drew on his vast experience and powerfully highlighted the extent of child hunger, the damage it does to children and the link to welfare reform and benefit cuts. He called on the Government to act. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) reminded us how widespread holiday hunger has become for children from low-income families, particularly over the last decade. She shared some powerful and moving examples from our own experience. My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) emphasised the importance of listening to children talk about their experiences. She asked the Minister a series of direct questions, which I hope he heard when the Whips were not distracting him. We look forward to his answers.

Members of both Houses and from all sides of the political debate have contributed to this important report, and I would like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West and the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) on co-chairing the inquiry, as well as the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), my hon. Friends the Members for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas) and for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, and my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North and for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), who served on the committee. I must, in particular, thank the 15 young food ambassadors who also gave their assistance and their experience.

The committee’s work now joins a body of important literature that highlights the shocking levels of poverty in our country. One hungry child is one too many, but UNICEF estimates that 2.5 million British children live in households where food is not always securely available, and the Trussell Trust points out that more than 500,000 emergency food parcels went to children alone last year. It is staggering that that can be happening here, in one of the richest countries in the world.

Food insecurity blights children’s immediate and future lives. It can trigger mental health problems, and it can damage a child’s physical health. It can lead to obesity and restricted growth, and it can retard healthy development. It affects children’s school attendance as well as their ability to learn. Ask any teacher, and they will tell you that a hungry child cannot concentrate in class. In a BBC report on child poverty last year, one headteacher described their pupils as having grey skin. Another described the unhealthy pallor of the students in their school. Something is going badly wrong in our society if we are allowing this to happen to so many of our children. A society that loves and cares for its children does not let them go hungry, especially not to this extent.

The report reinforces the importance of the early years of a child’s life, particularly the first 1,000 days. Those early years have a defining impact on a child’s development, affecting everything from educational achievement to economic security to health. The report states:

“The food, energy and nutrients which children eat during this period determine how well they grow, how well they do at school and are also a good predictor of long-term health.”

I invite the Minister to tell the House what has happened to the Government’s review of the first 1,001 critical days—an excellent initiative commissioned by the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), the former Leader of the House. The Department’s approach to early years has been lacklustre to say the least. A thousand Sure Start centres have been closed since 2010. As the Minister knows, they were places where young mums could receive advice and support on breastfeeding, healthy nutrition and their child’s critical early development.

The report highlights how free school meal provision is inconsistent, and it expresses concern about how the free school meals policy works, including worries that the allowance is not always enough to buy a meal. As my right hon. and hon. Friends have said this afternoon, it is important to find out how much money is not spent and what happens to it, so that it can be redirected to support the children for whom it was originally intended. One way of tackling child hunger would be to introduce universal free school meals for all primary school children, paid for by removing the VAT exemption on private school fees, as proposed in Labour’s manifesto. The outgoing Prime Minister is somewhat belatedly talking about increasing education funding, so perhaps the Minister can start today by matching Labour’s commitment on free school meals.

As Members have mentioned, several months have passed since the inquiry published the final report. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East held a Westminster Hall debate on 8 May to discuss its findings and recommendations. During the debate, the Minister stated that he had asked his team in the Department to work with the Food Foundation to look into setting up a working group. I am sure that Members across the House would appreciate an update from the Minister on how that working group is proceeding. Members will also want to know whether the Government intend to involve the inquiry’s young food ambassadors in future work, and what the Government intend to do with the five key asks of the #Right2Food charter.

Since the publication of the Food Foundation’s report, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, has published the UN’s findings on poverty in our country. That report exposes the cold reality of poverty in Britain today. It reinforces the findings of the Food Foundation, observing that children are showing up at school with empty stomachs and that schools are collecting food and sending it home because teachers know that their students will otherwise go hungry. Teachers, the report states, are not equipped to ensure that their students have clean clothes and food to eat, not least because many teachers rely on food banks themselves. The UN also predicted that, without urgent change, 40% of British children will be living in poverty by 2021. What a damning indictment it is of this Government that they are allowing that to happen in one of the richest countries in the world.

[Jim Shannon]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise the good work done by faith groups? Their physical and financial contribution enables food to go directly to those who need it most. They play an important role.

[Mr Reed]

I absolutely acknowledge the amazing work done by faith groups, but many other parts of civil society, such as charities and other community organisations, are also stepping in to alleviate child hunger that, frankly, should not exist in the first place.

One hungry child is one too many, but 2.5 million British children regularly go hungry. The Food Foundation report shames this Government, but it is also a wake-up call, and it must lead to action.

Children and Young People: Restrictive Intervention

Steve Reed Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on securing this important debate, and on the powerful case that he made. I am sure the whole House would pay tribute to him for the progress that he has led in improving conditions for people with mental ill health over many years. Personally, I thank him for the support and advice that he so generously gave me during the passage of Seni’s law last year.

The use of restraint and excessive force is one of the most pressing issues for children who have experience of secure mental health units. Restraint is humiliating and degrading for children, as it is for adults. It can undermine their recovery and can make the child’s mental health condition worse.

There have been too many tragic incidents where children and young people have been seriously injured—even killed—because of excessive restraint. Seni’s law came about in response to the horrific death of my constituent, Seni Lewis. Seni, who was just 21 years old, died following severe and prolonged face-down restraint in a seclusion unit in a mental health hospital, when up to 11 police officers took it in turns to pin him face-down on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his head and his legs in shackles. That triggered a heart attack, which put him into a coma, and he was left to die all alone in a room, tied up face-down on the floor. Seni’s tragic story is just one of too many deaths and scandals, including Winterbourne View, Southern Health, St Andrews and many others that Members will be familiar with.

It is shocking that children are more likely to be restrained than adults. According to the leading mental health charity Young Minds, children under the age of 20 are four times more likely than adults to be restrained face-down, three times more likely to be tranquilised and twice as likely to be put in handcuffs or leg braces. Although children are less likely than adults to be secluded, it is surely unacceptable that any child with mental ill health is ever locked up all alone in a seclusion room.

I was grateful for the huge support from across the House for Seni’s law, which became an Act of Parliament last year. It introduced some important principles into law that now need to be extended to protect all people with mental ill health, including children, in every setting, not just mental health units, to which that piece of legislation applied. Those principles are intended to reduce the use of restraint, so that it is only ever used as a very last resort and face-down restraint is never used at all.

The mental health system needs to be fully transparent. There is wide regional variation in the use of restraint against children, but we do not know why, and data is not available for us to interrogate. The campaigning charity Agenda reports that in some mental health trusts, three quarters of children are restrained, while in others it is none at all. If some trusts can completely avoid the use of restraint against children, why can every trust not do so? We need a standardised national system for recording the use of restraint, so that we can compare like with like, identify best practice and ensure that it is shared, and allow us and other observers to fully interrogate and scrutinise the system to ensure that it is supporting and not harming some of the most vulnerable children in our society.

Half of all girls with mental ill health have experienced some form of abuse, either physical or sexual, that affected their mental health. The use of restraint against them—especially being pinned face down on the floor by men—reawakens the horrific abuse that made them ill in the first place, which can mean that they leave care with worse mental ill health than they arrived with. That surely cannot be acceptable.

The second important principle is accountability. All mental health settings need a policy in place for restraint reduction, with appropriate training to ensure that restraint is avoided whenever possible. They need a named senior person who is publicly accountable for how restraint is used, so that there is clarity about who is ultimately responsible for what happens in that setting.

Despite Government attempts to discourage it, the most dangerous form of restraint—face down on the floor—was used against children more than 2,500 times in the most recent year for which data is available, yet that form of restraint is not supposed to happen at all. The current system clearly is not working. The deaths, injuries and psychological damage that excessive restraint causes to children must stop. I hope the Government will ensure that the important principles enshrined in Seni’s law and the important work undertaken by Sir Simon Wessely’s mental health review are used to protect every child who experiences mental ill health.

Oral Answers to Questions

Steve Reed Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her support for the national funding formula. It is a fair funding formula that gives priority to disadvantage and to low prior attainment. For too long, too many parts of the country have been underfunded, and this will remedy that.

[Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab)]

20. How will the new national funding formula help students at Paxton Primary Academy in Thornton Heath, which is now in its third year in portakabins piled up in the back yard of a rugby club? Because work still has not started on its permanent school, it is now looking at its fourth, and possibly even fifth, year in portakabins. It is unacceptable that this should continue. Will the Minister meet me and parents to discuss how to resolve the situation?

[Mr Gibb]

Yes, I am happy to meet the hon. Gentleman. Ninety-six per cent. of schools in temporary accommodation have a permanent site, and in the vast majority of cases they are on temporary sites for just one year. These are exceptional circumstances where it is more than four years.