Sure Start Children’s Centres

Steve Rotheram Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Steve Rotheram (Liverpool, Walton) (Lab)]

I am delighted to follow my hon. Friends the Members for Liverpool, Wavertree (Luciana Berger) and for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) in speaking in this important debate. The fact that three Labour MPs representing Liverpool constituencies have contributed shows the depth of feeling in our city about the issue under discussion.

In a move designed to detoxify the Tory brand and cultivate cuddly, compassionate Conservatism—allegedly big on children and the family—the current Prime Minister told Tory acolytes back in 2009:

“Sure Start will stay, and we’ll improve it.”

Actions speak louder than words, however. Eighteen months and one election later, 250 children’s centres are due to close nationwide and some 2,000 will be forced to reduce their services. Sure Start as we know it looks set neither to “stay” nor “improve”. This is another example of Cleggism, if one was needed: saying one thing, but doing another.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Steve Rotheram]

No, not just yet.

It is glaringly obvious that the Government do not understand the holistic nature of the Sure Start children’s centres—their qualitative as well as their quantitative value. Yes, they are about providing a co-ordinated range of practical facilities and services, but, equally importantly, they are also about offering social and emotional encouragement and support, often to parents living in some of the most disaffected, marginalised and hard-to-reach communities in the land.

Sure Start children’s centres do not cater only for the most disadvantaged—whom our Cabinet of multi-millionaires clearly finds so tiresome. They also support hard-working low and middle-income families. Ministers would do well to remember that. Isolation, chaos and dysfunction are both causes and symptoms of family deprivation and marginalisation, and are not the preserve of the least well-off.

I fully acknowledge that the children’s centre programme, which is still in its infancy, is far from perfect. The quality of provision is sometimes patchy, there is room for standardisation and improvement, and although all the indications are good, it is much too early to evaluate the benefits fully.

[Claire Perry]

First, may I apologise for joining the debate late? I was attending a Justice Committee meeting.

I agree with the hon. Gentleman about the need for these centres, but Wiltshire has had a 25% cut in its revenue support grant yet not a single centre is closing—and no library is closing either, so why is Liverpool choosing to shut its centres? This is a matter for the local council, not central Government.

[Steve Rotheram]

You just don’t get it, do you? I do not know what the settlement is in your area. [Interruption.] Well, let me tell you that the total settlement in Liverpool is—

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

Order. Members must address each other through the Chair.

[Steve Rotheram]

I apologise, Mr Deputy Speaker. To address the hon. Lady’s point, Liverpool is the most deprived area in the country—I have said that before in the Chamber—and it is facing the biggest cuts not just in the policy area under discussion, but in all areas. I invite both the hon. Lady and the Secretary of State for Education to come and see my constituency. It is not only in the most deprived area in the country; it is one of the most deprived constituencies in the most deprived area in the country.

[Stephen Twigg]

As my hon. Friend has said, Liverpool is the authority with the greatest need. Does he agree that Liverpool city council is to be commended for focusing its cuts first and foremost on back-office functions, halving the number of senior managers, cutting the chief executive’s pay and reducing bureaucracy, yet even after that it has had to make service cuts?

[Steve Rotheram]

I thank my hon. Friend and fellow Liverpool Member of Parliament for the points he makes. I should perhaps put on record the fact that until May I am still a Liverpool city councillor, so I understand the difficult decisions those councillors are having to make. This is an open book: anybody can come to Liverpool and have a look at the situation we face—councillors’ unenviable task of going through the budget and trying to decide which services to cut.

We are often told by Government Members that we are “deficit deniers”. That is the mantra that everybody uses when they come to the Dispatch Box—the Prime Minister did it again today. If they do not think we should be cutting children’s centres or any other service in Liverpool, they should tell us what they think we should be cutting. It is their Government who have slashed funding to our city right across the board. We have been hit the hardest, yet we are the most deprived. [Interruption.] What was that? I am sorry, Mr Deputy Speaker, I thought somebody on the Government Back Benches said something.

[Luciana Berger]

rose—

[Luciana Berger]

Did my hon. Friend see the report on BBC news only the other evening in which an independent efficiency expert, Colm Reilly from PA Consulting, singled out Liverpool city council for the work it had done to make £70 million of efficiency savings so far, with £30 million to come in the next couple of months? He said that, despite all these efficiency savings, there was no way that Liverpool city council could protect the front line.

[Steve Rotheram]

My hon. Friend is of course right, and Colm Reilly was not the only one to say that. The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government praised Liverpool city council for its efforts to come up with a budget, given the circumstances it finds itself in.

As I said, the indications are good, but it is much too early fully to evaluate all the benefits of Sure Start. That is precisely why we should be giving it a fair chance to bed in, rather than hobbling it before it has barely taken off.

[Bill Esterson]

I add my own congratulations to Liverpool city council for the way in which it has tackled the almost impossible task of managing the budget and protecting Sure Start and other key preventive services. I use this opportunity to call on Sefton council, which has its budget meeting tomorrow night, to follow Liverpool’s lead in protecting Sure Start and other vital services.

[Steve Rotheram]

As we have heard, the Government and certain Members just do not get any of this, but actually, Liverpool city council does get it. It is much maligned of late by the Con-Dems, of course, but, no thanks to the coalition, and despite an 18% cut to its early intervention grant, from which Sure Start funding must now be drawn, it has managed to secure the future of 22 of its centres and will work hard through its consultation process to find ways of avoiding the closure of the four that are threatened, which my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby referred to earlier.

However, this is no vindication of the Government’s approach, as unfortunately, service reductions are inevitable. City-wide, under-fives and their families will suffer as a consequence and, needless to say, Liverpool city council has been forced by the Government into the iniquitous position of having to take from Peter to give to Paul. Shuffling reduced resources has inevitably meant that protecting children’s centres has come at the price of other vital services.

I am particularly concerned about the broader, vaguer proposal tucked away in the coalition agreement to introduce payment by results into the Sure Start equation. Market forces bring with them risks, competition and inconsistency. People such as the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock) may disagree, but in my book there is no place for any of those in the delivery of services to children and young families.

All this would of course be all well and good if the Government could present a reasoned, evidence-based case for change, but as usual they cannot. In fact, in their arrogance they appear to have gone out of their way stubbornly to ignore popular opinion and expert advice, proffered well in advance of their budget deliberations.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

The evidence that we need to change the system of accountability is available, both from the National Audit Office and from Durham university, whose team analysed primary schools and the young people attending them over seven or eight years. It found that the readiness for school of young people from the poorest families was not improving, despite all the expenditure by the previous Government. Therefore, moving to payment by results, so that local authorities and children’s centre staff are absolutely focused on transforming the life chances of children, is precisely what we need to be doing, and I think the hon. Gentleman should think again.

[Steve Rotheram]

What a bizarre argument. Saying that an area such as Liverpool, which is among the most deprived, is having its money reduced and that that will somehow result in improved services to the groups that the hon. Gentleman is talking about is bizarre. As we have heard, almost a year ago the Children, Schools and Families Committee, as the Select Committee was known then, published a progress report on Sure Start children’s centres, having conducted a lengthy inquiry involving dozens of expert witnesses and practitioners—apparently, Jamie Oliver was the only one to turn down this fantastic opportunity. The Committee’s analysis was rigorous and measured, and it was firmly rooted in common sense and fairness. Three of its recommendations are worth highlighting again today.

First, the Committee warned that any reduction of funding

“would undermine the programme to an unacceptable degree and jeopardise the long-term gains from early intervention… we would not wish authorities to be bequeathed an underfunded statutory duty.”

[Mr Sheerman]

May I help my hon. Friend, because he has just taken an intervention from the Chairman of the current Select Committee? I have read the Government’s response to our original response and it states:

“We are aware that Durham University published a report recently which suggested that Government investment in Sure Start had not delivered improvements in early language and numeracy development. We do not share that view—the 2010 Foundation Stage Profile results showed that the proportion of young children achieving a good level of development had increased by 4 percentage points compared to 2009”.

We must therefore balance what the Government actually said against what some people think they said.

[Steve Rotheram]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right to make that point.

Secondly, the Committee urged the Government to give the programme time to bear fruit, given that even the oldest tranche of centres was only about six years old at that stage. The Committee said:

“It would be catastrophic if Children’s Centres were not afforded long-term policy stability and security of funding while evaluation is ongoing.”

Thirdly, the Committee categorically urged against the removal of ring-fencing, saying:

“We consider that it would be unwise to remove the ring-fence around Children’s Centres funding in the short or medium term; putting Centres at the mercy of local vicissitudes would risk radically different models and levels of service developing across the country, with differences out of proportion to the variation in community needs.”

Some Tory Members served on that Committee, so this was a cross-party report.

[Bill Esterson]

I received a letter from the chair of the governors at the St William of York Catholic primary school. They also manage the Thornton children’s centre in Crosby and they tell me that they have seen a marked improvement in the school readiness of the children who attend the centre and whose families use it compared with that of those who do not. That kind of evidence is as important as what is in the Select Committee report or elsewhere. It puts the record straight in respect of what the Chairman of the Select Committee said.

[Steve Rotheram]

Of course evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, is always a useful tool.

The Government’s response to the Committee’s recommendations was to rush headlong into decisions, to cut funding and to remove the said ring-fencing. In short, the response was to dismiss entirely the logical, considered advice of those best placed to offer it, who included some of their own Members. I know that the Prime Minister is not a man for detail, but you know a policy is truly shambolic when even the Prime Minister fluffs his own case and defence. On 9 February, he arrogantly told the House: “On Sure Start, the budget is going up from £2,212 million to £2,297 million. The budget is going up. That is what is happening,” but that was downright wrong. Not only did he confuse the Sure Start budget with the broader early intervention grant in which it is being subsumed, but he used 2012-13 figures. The EIG is being cut this year by 11%—down from £2,482 million to £2,212 million. So the numbers were out, the dates were out and the argument was out. What hope for our children in the face of such cavalier amateurism?

The key to Sure Start programmes lies in the name, but thanks to the coalition’s cynically calculated decision to pass a poisoned chalice on to local authorities in the guise of localism, millions of babies and toddlers are now set to miss out on the sure start in life they might otherwise have enjoyed. I truly wonder how the Ministers responsible—fathers all—can sleep soundly at night.