Oral Answers to Questions
Tim Loughton Excerpts(12 years, 6 months ago)
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Caroline Nokes (Romsey and Southampton North) (Con)
7. What assessment he has made of the effects of the withdrawal of bursary funding on PGCE students who commenced their courses in September.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
All PGCE students can apply for the same student support as undergraduate students, including maintenance loans and means-tested grants. As an additional recruitment incentive, the Department pays bursaries. These are adjusted regularly according to the size of the pool of potential teachers and the demand from schools for new teachers. For certain subjects we have therefore removed the bursaries for 2011-12. Other subjects, including maths, foreign languages and sciences, attract bursaries of up to £9,000.
Caroline Nokes
Can the Minister tell the House how the changes to the bursaries have affected recruitment to initial teacher training courses this year?
Tim Loughton
The hon. Lady is right. We will have recruitment numbers to courses in November, when the Training and Development Agency for Schools has completed its census of training providers. That will include the figures for initial teacher training, but it looks as though we will have high numbers of quality applicants in all subjects. The latest evidence suggests that this will be another strong year for recruitment, and that we are on course for the best year ever in the recruitment of physics and chemistry trainees in particular.
Richard Graham (Gloucester) (Con)
8. What progress he has made on extending support for children with special educational needs.
Patrick Mercer (Newark) (Con)
11. What recent assessment he has made of the funding of faith schools; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
No separate assessment has been made of faith school funding. The only distinction in funding between faith schools and other maintained schools and academies is in the contribution to capital-funded projects made by voluntary-aided schools.
Patrick Mercer
I am grateful for the Minister’s reply. I am sure that he will join me in congratulating the al-Karam Muslim school in Eaton in my constituency on its extraordinary achievement. Will he be kind enough to give me an idea of what we might do further to help not just that school, but the Everyday Champions school in Newark?
Tim Loughton
I am delighted to pass on my good wishes to those schools that have done well in my hon. Friend’s constituency. It contains no fewer than 17 schools with a religious character which have done well. I am aware that the Everyday Champions organisation applied for a free school but was unsuccessful, and I think that he has been copied in on the reasons why, but we will continue to encourage those faith schools that offer a particularly excellent education for the many children whom they now look after.
Valerie Vaz (Walsall South) (Lab)
12. What plans he has for the future of music education in schools.
Michael Fallon (Sevenoaks) (Con)
17. Whether academies are able to move in-service training days to dates outside term time.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
Academies are able to allocate time for teachers’ learning and development, including training days, at the most suitable time for the academy and its staff, including outside an academy’s published term time.
Michael Fallon
Given the inconvenience to some parents when in-service training days are simply tacked on to the half-term holiday, does my hon. Friend agree that the evolution of academies and free schools provides an opportunity to see how we can better match the training needs of teachers to the school year?
Tim Loughton
My hon. Friend makes a very good point. Of course, one advantage of academies is the flexibility that they can offer in training their teaching staff. Of course, that is also an advantage for the pupils and their parents, who may have to make arrangements for child care when training days are taken during term time. That flexibility is available to academies, and I hope that it will benefit everybody.
Mr Douglas Carswell (Clacton) (Con)
T1. If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.
Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)
T7. In light of the recent UK adoption rate figures, will my hon. Friend set out what steps the Government are taking to continue to encourage prospective adopting parents to come forward to be assessed? Those in Erewash and throughout the UK could provide much-needed homes for looked-after children.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
My hon. Friend makes a very good point, and she knows that the Government are absolutely committed to improving the lot of looked-after children in this country and getting more of those for whom it is appropriate into adoption. We need to get the message across loud and clear that people who want to do the noble deed of coming forward and showing an interest in adoption should be welcomed with open arms at the town hall door and given every encouragement, rather than the “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” attitude that has prevailed in too many places up to now. We will make that change.
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
Further to that question, will the Minister update the House on plans to introduce savings accounts for looked-after children?
Tim Loughton
The right hon. Gentleman and I had a conversation on this matter recently when I was on my way from Leeds airport, and I hope to be able to update the House on it shortly, because we are committed to the scheme. Sorting out the practical details has been a complete nightmare, but we are now close to doing so and I hope that he will welcome the good news that will be coming soon.
Julian Sturdy (York Outer) (Con)
T8. I am sure that the Education team will be delighted to hear that the highly acclaimed Manor Church of England school in my constituency has experienced a smooth transition to academy status. Now, however, it is moving into its second year as an academy, and it has raised concerns about the delayed allocation of its annual budget. Is the Secretary of State aware of these issues, and will he be addressing them before the next round of budget allocations?
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
I was very pleased that the Government continued the capital funding for myplace, and the Fuse has now opened in my constituency, but we are very concerned about revenue funding to ensure that we are not simply left with a beautiful empty building. Can the Government offer any advice or assistance that would help to make a difference to some of the most disadvantaged young people in my community?
Tim Loughton
The hon. Lady is right to highlight myplace, and I was delighted that we were able to find £124 million for the building of some 63 myplace centres. I want them to be the hub of communities up and down the country. If there are particular problems with her myplace, she should speak to the Big Lottery Fund, which manages the scheme on our behalf. We will be putting forward our policy in “Positive for Youth” later in the autumn, which will set out how we can bring in new, mixed sources of revenue that I hope will help myplace centres and other youth provision.
Jack Lopresti (Filton and Bradley Stoke) (Con)
My right hon. Friend will be aware that his Department has received a bid from Patchway community college in my constituency for investment under the Government’s priority schools building programme. Given that the school was overlooked by the previous Government’s Building Schools for the Future programme, will he look seriously at Patchway’s deserving bid? I must tell the House that one of my children still goes to that school.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
How many children do not have access to a breakfast club or an after-school club place because of the removal of extended school funding?
Tim Loughton
I was delighted to attend in Leeds recently the Magic Breakfast charity, which has done fantastic work. It is a social enterprise that has worked its brilliant magic on schools up and down the country to make sure that kids get a healthy breakfast. We want to see more of that through organisations such as Magic Breakfast. I would hope that the hon. Lady supported such organisations.
Joseph Johnson (Orpington) (Con)
There is a strong feeling in Bromley, which is in the vanguard of the academies movement, that the proposed formula for the top-slicing of LACSEG—local authority central spend equivalent grant—unfairly penalises very efficient local authorities. Will the Secretary of State agree to a meeting to discuss this concern?
Careers Service (Young People)
Tim Loughton Excerpts(12 years, 8 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
First, I agree with the shadow Minister that we have had a lively, good-humoured and balanced debate this evening, even if it has lacked the sagacity and flair of my hon. Friend the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning. I am sure that we all wish him well in his recovery.
I must repeat that the Secretary of State is not here this evening because, heeding the shadow Secretary of State’s advice, he is not hiding his head in an ivory tower; he is out meeting 100 excellent head teachers who have gone to see him to talk about weighty matters—five times the number of Labour Members who bothered to come to the Chamber to listen to the shadow Secretary of State when he opened the Labour party’s debate in this Opposition day earlier this evening, so let us get things into perspective.
We heard the same old script. Whether it is “Groundhog Day”, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), a wind-up gramophone—a phrase used by my hon. Friend the Minister—or an over-heated iPod, the shadow Secretary of State and the hon. Members for Halton (Derek Twigg), who is not here, and for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) came out with the same old stuff: where is the money? They should tell us where the money went. Where did the money go? Why did we have such an inheritance, which meant that difficult decisions had to be made? Why has face-to-face advice become such a totemic issue? If it was such a be-all and end-all that it had to be guaranteed, why did the previous Labour Government, in 13 years of running the careers service, never offer that guarantee? Why has it become so totemic now?
It was an understatement par excellence by the shadow Secretary of State when he said that the previous system was not perfect. He is dead right that it was not perfect. Labour Members left a system where youth unemployment had risen from 664,000 to 924,000 on their watch and where the number of NEETs aged between 15 and 19 rose from 8% to 8.8% when it was falling in other OECD countries. They left far too many of our young people without the basic literacy and numeracy skills that they need to get any career going at all.
Labour Members trotted out the same old platitudes and clichés. The right hon. Member for Leigh (Andy Burnham) said that we are interested only in the elites. If pioneering a pupil premium for the most disadvantaged young people from the most disadvantaged estates in this country is an elite, call me elitist. If giving special treatment to those children in care who suffer appalling outcomes after 13 years of Labour Government is elite, call me elitist. If it is elitist to offer 250,000 additional apprenticeships and 80,000 more work experience places and to ensure that we will raise the participation age, despite the financial pressures at the moment, call me an elitist. Our view of elitism is to ensure that every child in this country gets a fair crack of the whip and a fair opportunity to get a decent career—something that got worse under the previous Government.
The hon. Member for Darlington (Mrs Chapman)—the successor to Alan Milburn, who came up in just about every speech that we heard—gave us the most unparalleled outpouring of stereotypes that I have ever heard in 14 years in the House: the feminine qualifications of cake decorating and the colour of cars. She talked about social mobility and said, “If Labour is about anything, it is about social mobility.” Why, then, after 13 years of Labour, at key stage 4 did 68.5% of non-free-school-meal pupils achieve five or more A to C grade GCSEs or the equivalent, compared with only 30.9% of free-school-meal pupils? Why did only 8% of free-school-meal pupils take the E-bac, with 4% achieving it, as against 24% of non-FSM pupils? Why, at age 18, are 29% of young people who have claimed free school meals not in employment, education or training? That is more than double the rate for those who had not claimed free school meals, for whom the figure is 13%. If that is social mobility under Labour, I do not want any of it. It is up to this Government to do something about social mobility, which Labour talked and talked about but delivered in reverse.
The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), whom I respect greatly as a former Chair of the Select Committee, said that in his day technology alone would certainly not have solved the problem. Of course it would not; technology has moved on enormously in the past 10 or 20 years. Who, 20 years ago, would have envisaged ringing up NHS Direct to get medical advice, or using computer programs to get mental health advice? It is horses for courses. He talks about localism; what localism means for us is leaving it up to the expertise in the schools—the professionals, teachers and heads—to decide whether careers advice should be given face to face, over the internet, over the phone, or even by retaining Connexions. [Interruption.] If Labour Members listen, they will learn something, I hope. I have four minutes to try to get them to learn something, but they are in denial about where the money went, about where the £200 million exclusively to guarantee face-to-face interviews will come from, and about social mobility, when they know that it went the wrong way under Labour.
I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) for the work he has done on the subject, and for his report. He is interested not in numbers, but in quality. He says that there has been a proliferation of courses and qualifications, and he is absolutely right. That is why we are ensuring a concentration on good-quality, core subjects that people can understand—subjects in which employers want the people whom they take on to have qualifications.
My hon. Friend the Member for South West Norfolk (Elizabeth Truss), in another excellent and typically thoughtful speech, said that we need pupils to have a core general education. We need real subjects for real jobs. Teachers, who did not feature much in the contributions of Opposition Members, have a crucial role in inspiring young people in the classroom. In the same way, people from industry—engineers, business men and women, scientists, doctors—who were mentioned by several hon. Members, have a crucial role to play in coming into classrooms and giving their face-to-face advice, and experience of what it is like to go into their career.
The hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) gave some very good examples of good practice in his constituency. He talked about an industry day, when real people come in and share their real-life experiences to inspire others. We are talking about people who have lived those experiences, trained for those experiences, and are making a living from them. All that can happen under the new system; it is up to the schools to decide, because we trust the schools. We trust the teachers and head teachers to make the right decisions on the ground, locally, for the children whom they teach, and to have an interest in what those children go on to do.
My hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma) talked about “Groundhog Day”; he got it absolutely right. You would not believe it from the opening speech, or from other contributions from Labour Members, but there was never a golden age of careers advice. It was as if things had suddenly gone down the plug-hole after the election. The hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) talked about the youth service, as she often does; she has expertise in the subject.
Ms Rosie Winterton (Doncaster Central) (Lab)
claimed to move the closure (Standing Order No. 36).
Question put forthwith, That the Question be now put.
Question agreed to.
Main Question accordingly put.
Munro Review of Child Protection
Tim Loughton Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
On 10 June 2010, I informed the house that the Government was commissioning the Munro review of child protection. This was the very first review established in the Department for Education, underlining the enormous priority this Government place on getting child protection right.
From the start, we wanted the Munro review of child protection to be different. That is why, unlike its predecessors, it was not commissioned as an immediate response to a specific crisis. That is why Professor Munro’s final report—published in May—recommended that regulation and prescription are reduced rather than increased. And, most importantly of all, that is why it focused on the child, rather than the system.
I am extremely grateful to Professor Munro for undertaking a wide-ranging and in-depth review. I am also grateful to all the organisations in the sector, the child protection work force and the wider public, including children and young people themselves, who contributed to the review. Their experience, insights and expertise have helped make her final report so well informed, and so widely welcomed.
Just as Professor Munro conducted her review openly and collaboratively, the Government have worked with the sector to develop the Government’s response. An implementation working group, drawing on expertise from local authority children’s services, the social work profession, the police and, in particular, education and the health service, advised on the Government’s response to Professor Munro’s recommendations.
The Government commend Professor Munro’s thorough analysis of the issues and accepts her fundamental argument that the child protection system has lost its focus on the thing that matters most: the views and experience of children themselves. We believe we need to move towards a child protection system with less central prescription and interference, where we place greater trust and responsibility in skilled professionals at the front line.
The Government’s response is not a one-off set of recommended solutions to be imposed from the centre. Rather it is the start of a shift in mindset and relationship between central Government, local agencies and front-line professionals, working in partnership. Change will evolve and best practice will develop based on experience, innovation and evidence. Our aim will be to create the conditions for sustained, long-term reform which enables and inspires professionals to do their best for vulnerable children and their families.
Professor Munro will continue to advise the Government and will undertake an interim assessment of progress in spring 2012. I have placed copies of the Government’s response in the Libraries of both Houses.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tim Loughton Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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Fiona O'Donnell (East Lothian) (Lab)
1. When he plans to issue his transition plan for the careers service.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
The Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning—who is here with us in spirit, if not in body today—committed during an Education Bill debate to hold a summit for interested parties to focus on issues of transition to the new arrangements for young people’s careers guidance. That summit is to take place this Friday. Following the event, we will set out key milestones for the transition period up to September 2012 to support local authorities’ transition planning. We will also look to share examples of the models being developed at the local level, and the material will be made available on the Local Government Association’s communities of practice website.
Fiona O'Donnell
We know that this Government are fond of pauses, but it is eight months since the Minister announced the end of Connexions and the start of the new all-age career service. In the meantime, parents and practitioners have been left with no help to support young people in assessing their options or planning for their futures, so will Casper the Ghost Minister take this opportunity to provide detailed guidance, eight months after it was promised, on how the transitional arrangements and the new service will work?
Tim Loughton
I am impressed by the hon. Lady’s affection for Connexions, which does not exist in Scotland anyway. She will have just four more days to wait until after the summit that was promised and discussed in Committee, when my hon. Friend the Minister will lay out our plans in detail, with plenty of time for the transitions to come into effect.
Charlotte Leslie (Bristol North West) (Con)
Will the Minister update us on the Government’s plans to introduce performance measures that highlight the progress in attainment not only of those on the five A*-to-C boundary, but of those not achieving that level?
Tim Loughton
I am not entirely sure of the connection with the transition plans for careers services.
Tim Loughton
There is an odd connection, as the hon. Gentleman says. Last week my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State set out the plans for raising the threshold, which is surely a much more realistic and aspirational target than the rather poor compromise that we have had up to now.
Mr Iain Wright (Hartlepool) (Lab)
I am not surprised that the Minister in charge of the careers service does not want to show his face in this place—it has not done his own career any good—but I am pleased that our man in Havana is with us today. This whole episode has been handled absolutely shambolically, but will the Minister now at least confirm, even at this late stage, that despite the lack of a transition plan eight months on from the announcement, face-to-face quality advice and guidance from a careers professional will be provided to all children, and that no one will be left out?
Tim Loughton
As a question, that was close, but no cigar. However, just last week the hon. Gentleman was referring to my hon. Friend the Minister as his friend, and he will appreciate more than many the immense amount of work that he has put in to ensure that the arrangements are absolutely right. Let us remember that it was the hon. Gentleman’s former friend, the right hon. Alan Milburn, who panned the former Connexions service as being patchy and inefficient. We want to ensure that we do not make those sorts of mistakes and that we get it right for our many young people in future.
Stephen Lloyd (Eastbourne) (LD)
2. What assessment he has made of the effects of the decision not to include religious education in the English baccalaureate.
Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)
4. What representations he has received on the report “Out of Mind, Out of Sight” issued by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
The CEOP thematic assessment has been widely welcomed as an important contribution to the tackling of child sexual exploitation. As available data are limited, the report does not provide a complete picture of this horrific abuse, but it does help us to understand much better the scale, nature and complexity of the issues that we are facing. As the hon. Lady knows, the Government are working with national and local partners to develop a comprehensive action plan, which we will publish this autumn.
Ann Coffey
The CEOP report says that sexually exploited children frequently go missing or run away, but, the Children’s Society report “Make Runaways Safe”, which was published today, says that two thirds of runaway children are not reported missing. One of its most disturbing findings is that most runaway children do not seek help because they do not feel that there is anyone whom they can trust. When drawing up his action plan, will the Minister take full account of the findings of both those reports?
Tim Loughton
I pay tribute to the hon. Lady again for the immense amount of work that she has done. She and I recently took part in a debate on the subject in Westminster Hall. She is right to draw attention to the strong link between runaway children and sexual exploitation, and that will certainly feature in the action plan we are drawing up. The Children’s Society report, which was published today, makes even more harrowing reading and reminds us of the urgency of the task. According to the report, children as young as eight are subjected to sexual exploitation, which is completely unacceptable.
Pamela Nash (Airdrie and Shotts) (Lab)
5. On how many days annually on average schools were closed owing to strike action between (a) 1979 and 1997 and (b) 1997 and 2010; and what assessment he has made of the likely trends in days lost to such action in the next four years.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
6. What recent representations he has received on the benefits of year-round youth services.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
I discuss youth services regularly with a wide range of stakeholders, particularly young people. The Government acknowledge the value of year-round services when they are of high quality, but too many are of variable quality, insufficiently targeted on those most in need, and not open to a range of providers. Through the early intervention grant we are encouraging local authorities to improve services by making better use of the voluntary sector, increasing the involvement of local businesses, and ensuring that disadvantaged young people receive early help.
Stella Creasy
On 4 May, the Minister told the Select Committee on Education that he was concerned about the “bang for your buck” in the provision of universal youth services. The Committee’s report on youth services shows that the national citizen service, as currently constructed, does not provide value for money. What action is the Minister taking to prevent himself from being hauled before the Public Accounts Committee for wasting valuable resources that should go to our young people?
Tim Loughton
I noticed that the term “value for money” tripped rather awkwardly from the hon. Lady’s lips. The Select Committee report was about services beyond the school day for young people aged between 13 and 25, yet the press release focused almost solely on the national citizens service, which is for 16-year-olds. We are running pilots this year. The purpose of pilots is to see how things work, and in this case to ensure we get value for money and the biggest bang for our buck so that as many of our 16-year-olds as possible will benefit from this wonderful scheme in years to come. I hope the hon. Lady will visit one of the schemes in her area.
Dan Rogerson (North Cornwall) (LD)
The Minister rightly pointed out that provision has been different in that the service has been non-statutory. What consideration has he given to the idea of objectives being proposed that it would be hoped commissioners would take up, so that young people across the country would be able to engage with the process and there could be some minimum standards?
Tim Loughton
I take on board my hon. Friend’s point. Youth service provision is very patchy across the country and needs to be modernised, and some youth services departments do not take on board what local people actually need. Above all, we must ensure that we involve all the relevant sectors and people—the voluntary and business sectors, youth workers and, most importantly, young people themselves, who are often not included in consultations on the services we provide for them. I am determined that under my watch that will be a thing of the past.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
The Minister says he thinks value for money is important and stresses the importance of the voluntary sector in providing youth services, but the Select Committee on Education report makes it absolutely clear that voluntary service organisations are already playing a very significant part in youth service provision and tells the Government that they need to acknowledge what is happening on the ground and act now. Will the Minister speak up for our young people and explain what he is going to do about the crisis in youth service provision, with local authorities right across the country making swingeing cuts?
Tim Loughton
Unlike the previous Government, who rather demonised young people, this Government will speak up for young people wherever we can. That is why the comprehensive youth policy we are putting together will be called “positive for youth.” It will include contributions from the voluntary sector, the business sector, the youth worker sector and young people themselves. Our very successful summit at the QEII centre in March was a springboard for probably the most comprehensive youth policy that any Government will produce. I look forward to the hon. Gentleman reading that report when it comes out in the autumn.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
7. How many schools in England are attended entirely by Traveller children.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
8. What recent representations he has received on face-to-face careers advice.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
The careers guidance provisions in clauses 26 and 27 of the Education Bill have been extensively debated and will be subjected to further scrutiny in the House of Lords. A wide range of stakeholders submitted evidence to inform the passage of the Education Bill through Parliament.
Ministers frequently respond to correspondence relating to the delivery of careers guidance. The subject has been raised in discussions with a number of interested parties including representatives from the careers sector, the Association of School and College Leaders and the Association of Colleges.
Kate Green
Careers advice and guidance will have to be provided in schools, but my understanding is that no inspection regime will be in force to ensure they do so. How will we know that schools facing scarcity of resources will provide impartial and high-quality advice?
Tim Loughton
The most important way we will discover how well the new system will work is not through measuring inputs, but through measuring outcomes. Ofsted will therefore have a role in looking at the destinations of young people leaving school, and that will be part of the performance measures we are currently discussing, which will be in place for 2012.
Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark) (LD)
It is obvious from information around the country that the young people who most need face-to-face careers guidance are those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, where they do not receive that support at home. As Ministers consider how to deal with the Education Bill in the Lords and this guidance, will they reflect on the fact that specific advice that would lead to face-to-face careers guidance would be hugely valued, particularly in the most disadvantaged schools and areas?
Tim Loughton
My right hon. Friend makes a very important point and, as I say, those considerations will form part of the summit that my colleague is holding this Friday. He makes the point that every child is different, and we need to ensure that we provide tailor-made careers advice that is suitable and appropriate for the child. The new arrangements will give schools far greater flexibility to make sure that they are delivering what works to the children they know best.
Mr Gordon Marsden (Blackpool South) (Lab)
The Minister talks about outputs, but the reality is that we cannot look at them unless there is some input in the first place. People at my local schools in Blackpool are distraught that the Department has taken away the dedicated £200 million that was supposed to go into providing face-to-face guidance. How does he expect proper provision to be delivered if he is not investing any money in the first place?
Tim Loughton
The hon. Gentleman will recall that funding for schools has been greatly protected, and now, by taking away the ring fences, we are making sure that schools can deliver the most appropriate, best-quality careers advice for the children they know best. That used to happen when I was at school under a Mr Herbert, although one could say that my ending up as a Member of Parliament does not suggest the best careers advice.
Eric Ollerenshaw (Lancaster and Fleetwood) (Con)
9. What assessment he has made of the way in which the pupil premium is being spent in (a) Lancaster and Fleetwood constituency and (b) England.
Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)
17. Whether young people being raised by kinship carers will be eligible for the bursary scheme which will replace education maintenance allowance.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
The short answer is probably. The long answer is that under the arrangements for the 16 to 19 bursary fund, the most vulnerable young people—young people in care, care leavers, those on income support, and disabled young people in receipt of both employment support allowance and disability living allowance—will receive bursaries of £1,200 a year. Young people being raised by kinship carers may fall into this category, depending on the nature of the placement, and may also receive support from the discretionary funding.
Kerry McCarthy
I am disappointed that the Minister cannot give a more specific response. These carers have stepped up to the plate, often when children have been abandoned or orphaned, and often at great financial and personal cost to themselves. I urge him to listen to organisations such as Kinship Care Alliance and, if the Government are as family-friendly as he will no doubt tell us they are in answering the question, look at families that do not fit the nuclear model and perhaps live in chaotic circumstances, but who still need help?
Tim Loughton
I absolutely agree with the hon. Lady that kinship carers do a fantastic job, and we want more of them to step up to do it and be supported in that, but it depends on the nature of the placement and whether it is formal or informal. If it is informal, those children and young people will be able to apply for discretionary funding and could end up getting more than they would have done under the old EMA arrangements. We have taken those considerations into account.
Mrs Helen Grant (Maidstone and The Weald) (Con)
18. What steps he is taking to promote family-friendly policies.
Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)
When do Ministers expect to come to a conclusion with the devolved Administrations on the replacement for the child trust fund for looked-after children, which was promised by the Chancellor of the Exchequer some months ago but which, as far as I can see, is still yet to reach its final stages?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
I can assure the right hon. Gentleman that over the past few weeks a lot of discussions have been going on between the Treasury, ourselves, some of the charities involved and hon. Members who have made these proposals. There are a number of practical problems that we have to overcome to make sure that we get the most cost-effective scheme that has the biggest impact for those who most need it, but I can assure him that it is going to happen.
Matthew Hancock (West Suffolk) (Con)
T8. May I commend strongly to the Secretary of State the proposal for a free school at Breckland school in Brandon—a middle school that was set for closure under the previous Administration? If that happened, there would be no post-11 education in Brandon, but if it gets the go-ahead as a free school there will be education all the way up to 16. That will have a massively positive impact on the community, and I hope that he will commend it.
Young Runaways (Sexual Exploitation)
Tim Loughton Excerpts(12 years, 10 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
I welcome our Chair—he appears to have lost some hair since the beginning of the debate. We have had a very good debate with well-informed contributions, a great consensus about the importance of the matter and a determination to pick up the baton and ensure that we bring about effective action.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), not just on her excellent in-depth and well-informed speech—one would expect it to be so—but on the enormous amount of work she has been doing on the subject, raising its profile in this place and beyond, including in the national media, well beyond the confines of her constituency. I am sure that she, too would pay tribute to the work of Helen Southworth, her predecessor in the all-party group on child protection, who started that work. The hon. Lady is genuinely passionate about making a different to the lives of young runaways, as am I, and I am particularly concerned about the preponderance of children in the care system who fall into these dangers, and I have been working on the issue for some time. I hope that we can continue that work and step it up a gear in the future. I am very grateful to the hon. Lady for her constructive arguments, and for her communications on this and related subjects.
I will respond to the hon. Lady’s detailed points about data collection, and about the roles of local authorities and local safeguarding children boards in particular, in a few minutes, and I will also pick up as many as possible of the points made by other Members before I make what is a fairly lengthy speech but which I might have time to get through.
I want to say at the outset that I absolutely share the hon. Lady’s view that young runaways and missing children are a very vulnerable group of people who desperately need and deserve our protection. As she has said, the figures are alarming, with an estimated 100,000 children going missing every year—and that is just the ones we know about. That is one child under the age of 16 every 10 minutes, one in five of whom is likely to be at serious risk of being hurt or harmed by sleeping rough or staying with someone they have just met. The figures are stark. The experiences and alarming figures that the hon. Lady draws on from her own constituency are perhaps a result of her local children’s services department and the police being more savvy about the problem and therefore better at detecting it, thus artificially inflating the figures. I do not underestimate the importance of the problem in her constituency but, as she knows, I spent a week there on the front line with social workers last year, and I know that they are aware of the problem and are determined to do something about it.
We also know that young runaways are often affected by other problems, and surveys have suggested that about one third of them have reported problems with substance misuse or involvement in crime, and we have heard about other difficulties, including mental health issues and domestic violence. Although many missing children fortunately return safely, many suffer harm and exploitation while they are missing and some, of course, never return. Once they are on the streets, children can find themselves with few options and no one safe to turn to, leaving them very vulnerable to exploitation by those who would harm them or seek to gain from their misfortune. In some cases—too many cases—that includes sexual exploitation, the profile of which, I am very pleased to say, has been raised.
As the hon. Lady points out, there is a strong link between children going missing and children suffering from sexual exploitation, and I can confirm, as she requested that I do, that the Government’s action plan on sexual exploitation will take full account of that linkage. As she indicated, the connection works in both directions: children who go missing are at risk of sexual exploitation and children who are being exploited are more likely to run away from home or care. That is a Catch-22 situation, which the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) also mentioned, and I absolutely agree that that is the case. Ever since the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire) and I really tried to take a grip of this subject earlier in the year, I have been very clear that the problem is much bigger than we appreciate. The more work we do, the more alarmed people will be by the scale of the problem and by how widespread it is.
My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray) said that the problem was not exclusively urban, but existed in market towns and rural areas, as she knows from her own experience—I have met with her and her local police. The problem is also classless, affecting many middle-class, apparently stable families, with children running away from home for all sorts of reasons. We must open our eyes to the extent and range of the problem.
Understanding what young people in such situations go through is absolutely essential to learning lessons and improving our responses to the problem in future. The hon. Member for Stockport has arranged for the all-party group for runaway and missing children and adults to meet later today to hear the voices of former young runaways. I will attend that meeting, as will the hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins). I was going to say that I am looking forward to hearing young people’s stories, but that is not quite the phrase to use, given how harrowing such stories are. It is important, however, to hear those real-life experiences.
I will now take up a few of the points made, before returning to my substantive speech. The hon. Member for Stockport made a telling point when she said that removing the protection of parents or carers is part of the grooming process—she is absolutely right. I pay tribute to the BBC and the “Eastenders” programme for the storyline run a few months ago—very harrowing, realistic and “in your face”, involving the character Whitney Dean and how she was enticed away from her family by someone who she thought cared for her but in fact was exploiting her, benefiting and profiting in a most nasty way from her misfortune. The wedge driven between her and what stability she might have had with family and friends was key to the exploitation taking place.
The hon. Lady also mentioned the importance of interviews with returning runaways. Absolutely—we need to know the reasons why they run away because, hopefully, we can then support that particular home, family or care establishment, as well as learn lessons for other children and young people in a similar situation.
The right hon. Member for Delyn (Mr Hanson) asked a substantial range of questions, all pertinent and many born of his considerable experience, not least as police Minister in the previous Government. His point about cross-border and cross-departmental considerations was fair. I am the lead Minister on the subject in the Westminster Government, liaising particularly closely with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup, as well as with the Department of Health and beyond.
This crime, however, does not respect borders and I am aware of some unjoined-up gaps in our links with the devolved parts of the United Kingdom, which I aim to plug. Once we have a grip on the action plan that we are developing and will publish later this year, I will also have conversations with colleagues in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. The problem also goes beyond the borders of the United Kingdom. I am only too well aware of problems we had in West Sussex, with young girls being brought in as unaccompanied asylum seekers from west Africa—Nigeria and Sierra Leone, in particular—only to be trafficked out of the country and ending up in the sex trade in north Italy.
Mr Hanson
May I ask that, as part of the development of the action plan, the Minister formally consults with the Scottish Parliament, the Welsh Assembly and the Northern Ireland Assembly before publication, to see if there are areas in which joined-up government can operate effectively to tackle the issue?
Tim Loughton
I think that is essential. In the same way, the inter-ministerial group on trafficking, which the Minister for Immigration chairs and on which I represent the Department for Education, has provided links. Our meetings have included counterparts from the other parts of the United Kingdom, physically and by video conference. Such discussions are essential, and officials are already having them, but I want to have them at a ministerial level as well, and that input is needed for the action plan. That is absolutely right. Of course, organisations such as the NSPCC and ChildLine, which we have funded, are UK-wide as well. It is important that we learn from that experience throughout the UK, too.
The right hon. Gentleman also asked about funding and how the new arrangements from 1 July would work. I am not the relevant Home Office Minister, but some of the services that CEOP will provide in the future are currently provided by the National Policing Improvement Agency missing persons bureau, and associated funds will therefore be reallocated from the NPIA to CEOP to reflect those new responsibilities. The new set-up will add to the provision of educational resources and training for the police, supporting police operations through targeted research and analysis, providing operational support for forces dealing with missing children by extending the CEOP one-stop shop to include online missing children resources, and ensuring that co-ordination arrangements and capability are in place to manage complex or high-profile missing children cases.
A lot of preparation has gone into this work, and as the hon. Member for Stockport saw on her visit, CEOP is very well placed to deal with these issues. It has very competent people, including Peter Davies at its head, who really understand this problem and are very keen to take it on.
The hon. Member for Upper Bann (David Simpson) mentioned the action plan—the fact that it needs to be a plan that results in action. The right hon. Member for Delyn cast a slightly difficult googly about how I would assess whether it had worked or not. Good guidance was published as part of “Working Together to Safeguard Children” back in 2009. The problem was that there was not an associated action plan. It is a very good piece of guidance—on a shelf, in a manual. I am absolutely determined in this area, as in many other areas of child protection, that we should not just write something down but pick it up and run with it and ensure that everyone is doing their bit towards it. That is why, through the Munro review and associated activity, I want to ensure that all the players in this are being monitored and are contributing, to make sure that the action plan produces results. That is essential.
We do need to get the statistics right. I think that it was the hon. Member for South Antrim (Dr McCrea) who made the point that I am thinking of in this regard. All colleagues present from Northern Ireland contributed and all made very good points, so I apologise if I get confused about which hon. Member made which point. With regard to the problems in relation to data, several hon. Members—I will come on to this in more detail—have slightly confused apples and pears. The data count different things. We have referred to different aspects of the data. They are not comparable, as they are different. The nationally collected data are specific to children missing from care for over 24 hours and do not include, for example, repeat disappearances by the same child, whereas local data do and may include children who have only just gone missing. There is no attempt to cover up, but we do have different sets of data. That reinforces to me the need to ensure that we know which sort of data we are applying to which problem. That is a problem, and one of the things that must come out of the action plan is all of us knowing where we are coming from on that.
I think that the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned the problems with residential homes. Of course, only a small proportion of children in care are in residential homes, but we do need to do much better in terms of how they liaise with local police in particular. I know that from personal experience. I think that in Worthing, which is partly in my constituency, there are now no fewer than 10 independent children’s homes, and there have been a lot of problems with children running away and the police getting involved.
Many points were made about data collection, and CEOP was also mentioned by the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones), who is no longer here. It is very good to see the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) here again, contributing in a debate on children’s issues, as she and I did for many years in opposition. She made a lot of well informed and sensible points. She was right to start by saying that the politician’s job is never finished. We have to keep at this. It is not just a question of producing the booklet, producing the glossy brochure, producing the action plan and ticking the boxes. We have to keep people’s feet to the fire—one of my hon. Friends would always use that phrase. Practice is patchy, and I want to ensure that every local authority and agency is working to the standard of the best and using the same rulebook and manual so that we all know what we are talking about and the precise problem that we are trying to tackle.
I mentioned the problem of recognition of data. Part of the difficulty is lack of recognition of the problem, so that it is not a priority in certain areas. That must stop.
The hon. Lady mentioned another point that she and others have made before, about the duty to co-operate. We could have a whole debate just on that subject—and indeed that debate is happening on the Education Bill currently going through Parliament. However, under other education legislation—I think, from memory, the Education Act 1996 and the Education Act 2002—schools of all types have a duty to safeguard, watch, maintain and promote the welfare of the children in them. Schools are an important part of local safeguarding children boards. I want the groups in question to come together not because they must, but because they want to in the best interests of the children they are responsible for, and because they can get the best results by sitting at the same table, and acting and talking together.
On the hon. Lady’s other point about children over the age of 18, the transition issue is a particular one for children in care, those with learning difficulties and those who are just not grown up enough, who are more likely to be exploited. With children in care, of course, “staying put” pilots are going on. They are a good thing, and will inform the process by which we can better look after children who happen to hit their 18th birthday; their problems and vulnerability do not suddenly disappear when they become adult. The hon. Lady makes a good point again, but it is a problem across the piece.
I shall return to my speech and try to whizz through it in the remaining nine minutes, Mr Havard. I want to say a little about how the Government’s approach to the problem of runaways and missing children will pan out. Most missing children cases are dealt with well at local level by police forces, who see such cases as a clear priority. However, the Government recognise that there is a case for national capability to add value by ensuring that police are trained and equipped with the right understanding to identify and respond when children go missing. That is why the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup, announced last month that from 1 July the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre would assume national responsibility for missing children’s services. I was very pleased to hear the hon. Member for Stockport welcome that. As I mentioned, she visited CEOP recently, and I am sure that she will have been as impressed by its work as I was on my recent visit.
Making CEOP responsible for missing children’s services is an extremely important development. It means that for the first time in this country there will be a dedicated team of experts at national level focused solely on missing children issues. The fact that that capability will exist within CEOP means that they can bring their considerable child protection expertise to bear on this problem. However, of course, as the hon. Lady made clear, the problem of young runaways, and missing children more generally, is not something that the police or CEOP can solve alone. There must be a multi-agency, partnership approach, involving local authority children’s services, the police and the important charity and local voluntary sector—as well as, of course, families and parents. Local safeguarding children boards have a key role to play in co-ordinating and ensuring the effectiveness of the work of their members. That needs to cover raising awareness to try to prevent child sexual exploitation taking place—because, as the hon. Lady observed, prevention is better than cure—but also responding to it when it does.
Before going further, I should perhaps respond to the hon. Lady’s points about the collection and evaluation of data, building on the reference that I made just now. Knowing the extent of the problem is an important step in being able to address it. The hon. Lady referred to the differences between my Department’s statistics on children missing from care and local police data. The fact is that those statistics will be different because different things are being counted. In addition—the hon. Lady alluded to this—many children are reported missing from care as soon as their absence is noted, and, fortunately, are located within 24 hours. The Department’s figures record only children who are missing from their placements for more than 24 hours. Of course, that is not to say that any of them may not be a risk to themselves or others during the period that they are absent.
To complicate the matter still further, the local authority that is responsible for a particular child’s care is the one that reports their absence in the statistics of the Department for Education. The fact that an authority is shown as having only a small number of missing children is not the same as saying that only that number went missing from care in that authority, because some authorities have many looked-after children placed from other authorities within their boundaries. That is a particular problem in Kent. The result is that if a child from, say, Southwark, goes missing from a care placement in Kent and is reported to the Kent police, the child will appear under Southwark and not Kent in the Department’s data. There are thus some problems; but we need to sort that out to make sure we know exactly the extent of the problem.
I appreciate that those technical considerations do not make it easy to form a clear and consistent picture of the extent of the problem. However, it is not a question of either the police data or the Department’s statistics being wrong. They are just counting different things. The important thing is that local police forces and local authorities work together to form the clearest possible picture of the number of young runaways and missing children in their area, whether from care or from home. That data is not collected centrally.
The hon. Lady also expressed concern about some local authorities not adhering to the “Statutory guidance on children who run away or go missing from home or care”. I can tell her that my Department is currently reviewing a range of guidance with the aim of reducing unnecessary bureaucracy. We will look at the guidance she mentioned as part of that wider review. We want—as I know she wants—guidance to be easily accessible and, most importantly, helpful for schools, local authorities and children’s services.
On the specific issue of child sexual exploitation, we know that the great majority of missing children incidents are repeat cases, with the same children going missing— running away from, or towards, something. Such children are vulnerable. They face serious risks while they are missing, and we know that there are clear links with child sexual exploitation. As I have said before, the sexual exploitation of children is a truly appalling crime, which can of course affect children whether or not they have ever run away from home. It is an extremely serious form of child sexual abuse. The sorts of experiences to which some children and young people are subjected are unspeakably shocking, involving rape, severe sexual assault and, often, chilling intimidation. We have heard of many such cases from hon. Members who have spoken today. Anyone perpetrating such crimes must be brought to justice. I am glad to say there have been some high-profile cases recently—some still going on—where that sort of justice is being brought to bear. However, as I have said, it is the tip of the iceberg.
The victims of sexual exploitation—and their families—need understanding and support. Support may be needed over many years, involving a range of expertise from across the statutory and voluntary sectors. Let us be in no doubt: the victims of such sexual exploitation are vulnerable children. As with any other vulnerable children, all our instincts should be to protect and support them.
The hon. Lady referred to Barnardo’s “Puppet on a string” report, as did other hon. Members. I want to place on the record my praise for Barnardo’s hard-hitting report. It made it uncomfortably clear to us that child sexual exploitation is a much bigger problem than many people ever imagined. It is not exclusive to any single culture, community, race or religion. It happens in all areas of the country. Stereotyping offenders or victims is quite simply a red herring and unhelpful. It is important, therefore, that every local authority and every local safeguarding children board in town and country, city and rural areas, assumes that sexual exploitation is a problem in their area and that they take action to address it.
The hon. Lady referred to research by the university of Bedfordshire, early findings from which suggest that many local authorities are not following the “Safeguarding children and young people from sexual exploitation” statutory guidance, which was issued in 2009. I know that many professionals are, like her, concerned that some local authority areas have yet to develop a satisfactory response to child sexual exploitation. I share that concern; it must improve.
As lead Minister, I have been urgently considering, within Government and working with national and local partners, what further action needs to be taken to safeguard children and young people from sexual exploitation. In April, I chaired a round-table meeting with senior representatives from a range of organisations. At that meeting, we identified a wide range of issues to be addressed, from awareness-raising and understanding to effective prevention and early detection, the challenges of securing prosecutions and the need to support victims and their families. We are committed to working with partners to develop over the summer an action plan to safeguard children and young people from sexual exploitation. The hon. Lady said that she welcomed this work and I am grateful for her support, which I am sure will be ongoing.
We are still in the early stages of developing the action plan so I cannot announce details today. However, I can say that it will build on existing guidance and our developing understanding of this dreadful abuse, including through local agencies’ work around the country. It will include work on effective prevention strategies, identifying those at risk of sexual exploitation, supporting victims and taking robust action against perpetrators. A key element of the action plan will be ensuring that the wide range of work currently taking place on child sexual exploitation is complementary and comprehensive. The action plan will take account of CEOP’s thematic assessment of on-street grooming, which will be published shortly. It will also reflect the recently announced two-year enquiry into child sexual exploitation to begin later this year, which will be conducted by the office of the Children’s Commissioner.
There is also the university of Bedfordshire two-year research project, which I just mentioned, funded by Comic Relief—a worthwhile use of its funds—and due to be published in October, on preventing the sexual exploitation of children and young people. I expect there to be a good deal of learning in each of those projects, and in others taking place around the country, such as the Safe and Sound project in Derby—I pay tribute to Sheila Taylor MBE who is now chairman of the National Working Group on sexual exploitation—Barnardo’s 22 sexual exploitation services, and the work being carried out by the Coalition for the Removal of Pimping.
Underpinning much of this is the Munro review of child protection on which we had a very good debate in the House only the other week, in which the hon. Lady took part. I was pleased that Professor Munro specifically mentioned in her report the issue of child sexual exploitation, and the important role of local safeguarding children boards. The report stresses the importance of re-focusing the child protection system on the needs and experiences of children and young people. Professor Munro’s fundamental analysis is that the system has become too focused on compliance with unnecessary rules and procedures, and professionals have spent less time actually helping—
Mr Dai Havard (in the Chair)
Order. That was breathless, Minister, if not breathtaking. I am sure that you will write with any important information that has not been covered. We will now move on to the next debate.
Munro Report
Tim Loughton Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered the Munro Report and its implications for child protection.
I am delighted to have the opportunity to lead the debate, as well as by the number of hon. Members who wish to speak in it. I would like to set out my stall, and although I am supposed to make a winding-up speech, I am keen that we hear from Back Benchers, so I shall keep that to a minimum.
Today is significant for two reasons. First, this is the only Government-led debate on child protection in Government time that I can recall in my 14 years in the House. The debate is therefore long overdue and it reflects the importance that I and my fellow Ministers attach to child protection. It is an enormous privilege to lead the debate and I look forward to what I am sure will be a constructive discussion, as I know that hon. Members on both sides of the House hold passionate and well-informed views about the subject.
The second significance is that this week is the first anniversary of the launch of the Munro review of child protection. Hon. Members will remember that this was the first review that was established by the Department for Education. It was launched on 10 June 2010, and that underlined the fact that getting child protection right is an enormous priority for the Government. I know we all share that as a priority, so let me pass on my thanks to all hon. Members, leading organisations in the sector, the child protection work force and the wider public, including children and young people themselves, who contributed in some way to Professor Munro’s report. Their experience, insights and expertise have helped make it a well-informed and widely welcomed report.
We should not forget that the vast majority of our children enjoy a safe and happy childhood, but even now too many still do not. Some of their names are sadly familiar—Victoria Climbié, Peter Connelly and Khyra Ishaq—but many more are not. Whether we hear about a case in the media or it goes unnoticed by the public, there is always an individual tragedy at its centre. It is those individual tragedies that have so often been the triggers for different reviews and inquiries on child protection over many years. Every one of those reviews has resulted in calls for action, and in response legislation has been passed, rulebooks have been expanded, more procedures and processes have been introduced and structures have been restructured.
However, the fundamental problems have not gone away. Despite the very best of intentions, our hard-working, dedicated social workers, foster carers and other front-line professionals are too often still unable to make the difference that they want and need to make for vulnerable children and families. Day in, day out, they are up against a system that too often simply does not help them to do their best for children.
From the start we wanted the Munro review of child protection to be different. That is why, unlike its predecessors, it was commissioned not as a knee-jerk response to a specific tragedy that had hit the headlines; that is why it is recommending that regulation and prescription are reduced rather than increased—it is not just another case of adding a few hundred more pages to the “Working Together” guidance; and, most importantly, that is why the review has focused on the child rather than the system. Professor Munro’s final report, “A child centred-system”, is wide ranging. It looks not only at the problems, but at the underlying environment that allows, and sometimes inadvertently encourages, such problems to occur. The review takes an holistic approach to child protection and bases its proposals on evidence and experience.
The report has been widely welcomed, as I said. The College of Social Work welcomed it as a “huge step forward”. Nushra Mansuri of the British Association of Social Workers described it as
“Music to the profession’s ears”.
The Children’s Commissioner praised its emphasis on the child’s right to protection. I am delighted that it has been welcomed as a breath of fresh air for all those hard-working professionals involved in child protection.
For that success, I have first and foremost to thank Professor Eileen Munro for her expert insight and analysis and the open and collaborative approach she has taken to the review over the past 12 months. I also pay tribute to the reference group that supported her so closely: Melanie Adegbite, District Judge Nick Crichton, Marion Davis, Avril Head, Professor Corinne May-Chahal, Lucy Sofocleous, Dr Sheila Shribman, Daniel Defoe, Professor Sue White, Martin Narey and the great many officials from the Department for Education and beyond who worked tirelessly over the past 12 months. I know that Professor Munro has hugely valued the support, expertise and different perspectives of all members of the reference group.
The report builds on previous reforms and the work of eminent experts such as Lord Laming, and I pay tribute also to the enormous contribution he has made in this area over so many years. This really is not about criticising previous, well-intentioned efforts to improve the system, but about making the time and space to understand why those efforts did not always work as well as they were intended to and should have done, learning from that to bring about long-term, sustainable reform in the future.
Eleven years, three months and 17 days since the tragic death of Victoria Climbié I still find myself asking whether the ever more complex systems that were created have actually made children safer now than they were then. Has the enormous additional amount of legislation, regulation and guidance made that much of a difference where it really matters? I fear that the answer may be no. Has, in fact, the child protection system in this country become rather more about protecting the system than about protecting the children whom the professionals went into their professions to protect? That is why it is now of the utmost importance that we restore public confidence in child protection, and restore confidence in the social worker profession and others—not least through those professions themselves.
The Munro review report seeks to do exactly that. Its fundamental analysis is that the system has become too focused on compliance and procedures and has lost its focus on the needs and experience of children themselves. That interest has occurred not just since the election, however; we started the process when, in opposition, I chaired a commission on children’s social workers and we produced the “No More Blame Game” report back in 2007, with contributions from all parties, followed by our policy paper “Back to the Front Line”, produced before last year’s election.
Professor Munro makes 15 recommendations for reform. She makes it clear—and I agree—that they need to be looked at in the round, because they are interrelated and impact on the system as a whole. I shall go through them briefly, and in doing so I start by noting that this is an excellent report with which I find little to disagree.
The first recommendation is to revise the statutory guidance “Working Together to Safeguard Children”, and the framework for the assessment of children in need and their families to distinguish essential rules from guidance that informs professional judgment, because, although we need rules it is important that they are the right ones.
The second recommendation is that the inspection framework examines the effectiveness of the contributions of all local services—including health, education, police, probation and the justice system—to the protection of children.
The third recommendation is that the inspection framework examines the child’s journey from needing to receiving help, explores how the rights, wishes, feelings and experiences of children and young people inform and shape the provision of services, and looks at the effectiveness of the help provided to children, young people and their families. Too often, do we not hear that, actually, nobody really listened to the child at the centre of a case? We need inspection to look across all the relevant agencies and to focus on the things that really matter: outcomes for children and young people.
The fourth recommendation is that local authorities and their partners use a combination of nationally collected and locally published performance information to help benchmark performance, to facilitate improvement and to promote accountability. It is crucial that performance information is not treated as an unambiguous measure of good or bad performance, as performance indicators tend to be, because it is important that performance data are used intelligently to drive improvement in practice.
The fifth recommendation is that the existing statutory requirement for local safeguarding children boards to produce and publish an annual report for the local children’s trust board are amended to require its submission instead to the chief executive and the leader of the council.
The sixth recommendation is that “Working Together to Safeguard Children” is amended to state that, when monitoring and evaluating local arrangements, LSCBs should, taking account of local need, include an assessment of the effectiveness of the help being provided to children and families, and the effectiveness of multi-agency training to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and young people. Local safeguarding children boards play a vital role, and I see a much enhanced future for them as the linchpin of how we get this right.
The seventh recommendation is that local authorities give due consideration to protecting the discrete roles and responsibilities of a director of children’s services and a lead member for children’s services before allocating any additional functions to individuals occupying such roles. We know that that is an important concern, and it has come up in the House recently.
The eighth recommendation is that the Government work jointly with the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, the Royal College of General Practitioners, local authorities and others to research the impact of health reorganisation on effective partnership arrangements and the ability to provide effective help for children who are suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm. I shall discuss that point further, but the implementation board, which will put forward these reforms, is heavily weighted—over-weighted in fact—towards health, and it is important that it should be.
The ninth recommendation is that LSCBs use systems methodology when undertaking serious case reviews with accredited, skilled and independent reviewers and have a stronger focus on disseminating learning nationally. Ofsted’s evaluation of SCRs should end, because serious case reviews need to be about learning rather than about processes or the story of a case; they need to be about supporting analysis, beyond identifying what happened, in order to explain why it happened. They should not be all about blaming people, because blaming individuals for errors and mistakes is unhelpful and counter-productive. Rather than having a blame culture where people try to conceal mistakes, surely it is better for people to work together to identify errors early so that they can be managed or minimised, often through the redesign of local systems. That is not to say that people should go without any repercussions when things have gone wrong, but simply wagging the finger of blame has clouded our judgment too much in the past. The name of the report that we produced in 2007—“No More Blame Game”—is as appropriate now as it was then.
Meg Munn (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab/Co-op)
I feel that I should apologise for interrupting the Minister, because he is giving a very good exposition of what is in the report. However, will he deal at this point with the issue of Ofsted not looking at serious case reviews in future? I find that slightly puzzling, and I do not understand the basis for it. In my view, Ofsted’s role is not allocating blame but assessing whether it is an adequate case review that properly describes what went on.
Tim Loughton
The hon. Lady makes a good point. I have had reservations for some time about the way in which serious case reviews are produced, read and inspected. This area was clearly highlighted in the report, and the implementation group will need to do a lot more work to see how we get to where we want to be. Ofsted itself will say that evaluating serious case reviews is not the best use of its time and resources.
In the past, we have seen questionable gradings of some serious case reviews. We should be using serious case reviews as serious learning tools. Before the baby Peter case, I did not realise that serious case reviews were not available in their full form to every other director of children’s services and other such relevant people around the country so that they could read what had happened in a certain case in a certain authority, say, “Gosh, hold on a minute—could that happen here?”, and be alert to the problems that had happened elsewhere to see whether they needed to do things locally to ensure that they did not happen there. However, serious case reviews in their full form are available only to a very small number of people.
There have been question marks over the consistency of the quality of serious case reviews, who is commissioned to carry them out, who is controlling the quality of the people producing them, and, above all, who is bringing together the learning expertise and learning points to see whether they have generic applications for people up and down the country. That is not happening as a result of the way in which Ofsted does it, with the very best of intentions. We need to get to a place where a serious case review is not about learning from things that went wrong in a particular case but learning from things that went wrong in the system and applying that to the system elsewhere. We also need to ensure that the people producing serious case reviews produce things of a sufficiently high quality. We have a lot of work to do because the current situation is not sustainable and serious case reviews are not producing what we need them to produce.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
Does the Minister accept that we have a media who are obsessed with the blame game? They will attack social workers for not intervening soon enough, and perhaps the following day attack them for wrecking families and breaking up family units.
Tim Loughton
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. He might have heard me say on many previous occasions that social workers, and other professionals, are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. Certain newspapers will carry headlines saying, “Those terrible, incompetent social workers were to blame—they should have intervened earlier and taken that child into care.” Two weeks later, they are saying that those terrible, incompetent social workers are too busy snatching children from good, decent, middle-class families and should be ashamed of it. Social workers cannot win. To get a better system we have to restore the confidence of the public in our child protection system. A key part of that is to get the media to understand more what the job of child protection is all about, and not to be so swift to wag the finger of blame but to help in the explanation and understanding of what went wrong and look to want to bring about solutions jointly, because that is in all our best interests. We are not in that position yet. Things are improving, but we have a long way to go.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
In the report, Professor Munro expresses how concerned people in the profession are about the Minister’s decision to make overviews of serious case reviews available, rather than simply the executive summaries. Many people feel that that reduces the capacity of such reviews to aid learning because it makes people more defensive. It seems that the priority is wrong. I will expand on my views with regard to Ofsted later. Does the Minister accept the concerns of Professor Munro and others who fed into the review about the negative consequences of making the overviews of serious case reviews widely known?
Tim Loughton
I do not think that the hon. Gentleman is entirely right. Actually, Professor Munro supports the publication of full serious case reviews. She would much rather support the publication of a better form of serious case review, which is what we need to get to.
Professor Munro made the right decision to make serious case reviews open and accessible subject to three criteria: first, that the anonymity of the characters involved is maintained; secondly, that there is appropriate redaction where information would intrude on private details; and, thirdly, that it will not go ahead if a case can be made that publication in full would be detrimental to the welfare of a surviving child or sibling. With those considerations, I think it is absolutely right that we should all have access to those reports as a learning exercise.
If the hon. Gentleman is saying, as others have, that people might be less prepared to co-operate with such reviews, he is wrong, because it is in all our interests to ensure that the fullest information possible is in the public domain so that it can be assessed and the lessons learned. The people who will benefit most from the publication in full of serious case review overview reports are social workers, for the very reason set out by the hon. Member for Alyn and Deeside (Mark Tami), who is no longer here: when there is a tragic incident, it is always the social workers what done it. When one reads the full details, one finds that in some cases the police were not too clever or perhaps there were serious shortcomings with the GP, the school or various other agencies. However, it is always social workers who are on the front line. It is only by seeing the full picture that one can get an understanding of what was the weak link in the chain or where the co-operation between agencies that is needed did not happen properly. I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman’s analysis.
Already, a lot of learning has come from the serious case reviews that have been published in full in Haringey and on the Khyra Ishaq case in Birmingham. All serious case reviews published after 10 June 2010—we have not had one yet—are obliged to follow the new publication process.
Tim Loughton
My hon. Friend has great expertise in family law and in this matter, and she is absolutely right. Serious case reviews should reveal not just the failures and the bad things, but good practice so that we can learn from where things went right. Of course, we only ever read about the stories that go wrong in the papers. The media are not interested in the plane that lands safely. People do not really understand social work. It is easily caricatured, and that happens even in the soap operas that we see on our screens. Our report in 2007 made the not entirely flippant suggestion that there should be a soap based on social workers to give the public a better understanding of the exceedingly complicated job that they do. Day in and day out, they have to exercise the judgment of Solomon in deciding whether children should be taken into care or left with the family.
Jim Shannon
May I remind the Minister that these are devolved matters in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland? Learning, experience and good value have been mentioned. Does he intend to make the devolved Administrations in the Assemblies in Wales and Northern Ireland and the Parliament in Scotland aware of the 15 recommendations in the Munro report? I think it is good to exchange information for the benefit of parts of the United Kingdom that might not have experienced what has happened in England and Wales.
Tim Loughton
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. There has been some correspondence between Professor Munro and the devolved Assemblies, and I have been trying for some time to meet my counterpart in Northern Ireland to go through such matters with him or her, whoever it was on either side of the elections. I am keen to go and hold conversations with our counterparts in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland so that they can hear what we are doing, but also so that I can hear what they are doing. There are different ways of working in those areas.
Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Lab)
Like the Minister, and I think everyone here, I welcome the Munro report. The hon. Member for Maidstone and The Weald (Mrs Grant) made a point about the status of social workers, how they appear in public and how the newspapers denigrate them. There is also the problem of young social workers who are just out of university and newly trained and qualified having enormous difficulty in getting their first job, because they lack experience. Particularly in areas of inner-city Britain such as the one that I represent, there is great difficulty in retaining social workers because of housing difficulties and because of the enormous pressure and case loads that they face in fast-changing, high-turnover communities. It is not surprising that many do not stay on. I am sure the Minister is well aware that that turnover debilitates the entire service.
Tim Loughton
I agree, and we could have a debate just about the list of matters that the hon. Gentleman mentions, most of which are covered in the Munro report. The social work profession in this country has an awful lot of good people who do not get recognised and some poor people who need to be weeded out. In the past, people have felt frustrated and undermined, and the media onslaught against them has been completely demoralising. They have therefore left their jobs or taken early retirement, because the pressure has been too much for them. Who would want to go into a job like that, after all the publicity about baby P and other cases? Who would want to put themselves in the firing line by taking a job in which they try to do their best, but blame is pointed at them because they happen to be a social worker, even though they might be doing a good job?
We have problems at both ends. We need to retain and encourage good social workers and ensure that they can do their job as efficiently as possible, and we also need to ensure that the people coming into the profession—there has been a big rise in applications for social work degrees recently—are the right people. They need to have the necessary calibre and dedication and be there for the right reasons, and we need them to stay the course. That is part of the work that the Social Work Reform Board is doing and part of the reason why the College of Social Work is so important. Having a chief social worker, which is the 15th recommendation in the report, will help to raise the game. It will raise the profile and status of the profession, and it will give people in it the feeling of being valued. Those are important matters.
Tim Loughton
I will give way to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and then to my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), but after that I would quite like to make some progress; otherwise nobody else will get in.
Jim Shannon
The Minister will be glad to know that the new Minister in Northern Ireland is a colleague from my party, and that the new Northern Ireland Ministers have hit the ground running. I assume the situation is the same in Scotland and Wales. I am sure that he will find an open door from the Minister in Northern Ireland, and probably from those elsewhere in the UK.
Tim Loughton
I am grateful. I am planning a visit to Belfast next month, and if the hon. Gentleman’s colleague would like to meet me, I would be delighted.
Mr Graham Stuart
When the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families looked into the training of social workers in the last Parliament, it found that they could find themselves dealing with the most acute and difficult children’s cases having had placements in their training that did not involve children’s social work at all. They went from having no experience at all to the front line. Has the Minister been able to do anything about that yet, and if not will he tell the House what he will do about it?
Tim Loughton
The Chairman of the Select Committee on Education again makes a very good point and he has a good deal of expertise in this matter. It is completely self-defeating for newly recruited social workers to be turfed in at the deep end on tier 3 or 4 cases—serious cases—with little experience or expertise. How demoralising is that, let alone the danger it poses for the vulnerable children who need to have the appropriate level of support?
A number of things need to be done and they are being done. We need to ensure that we have the right calibre of people coming out of universities with degrees in social work. In the first year after their qualification, they should be given on-the-job guidance and training, preferably by people with great expertise. They should be eased into jobs at an appropriate rate in appropriate circumstances. My hon. Friend raises a very important point. Virtually every week I speak to social workers and visit children’s services departments—I make a point of seeing social workers on the front line—but I have met too many who are given challenges for which they are not appropriately equipped at that stage.
I should like to make progress now because I am keen for other hon. Members to contribute and I have a few more points to make. I got up to recommendation 10—I do not know why recommendation 9 brought about the pause that it did. Recommendation 10 is that the Government should place a duty on local authorities and statutory partners to secure the sufficient provision of local early help services for children, young people and families. That is very appropriate to the early intervention work that the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) has been doing for the Department.
Recommendation 11 is that the social work reform board’s professional capabilities framework should incorporate the capabilities necessary for child and family social work. That is precisely the point that the Chairman of the Education Committee just raised. That framework should explicitly inform social work qualification training, postgraduate professional development and performance appraisal.
Recommendation 12 is that employers and higher education institutions should work together so that social work students are prepared for the challenges of child protection work, including through better quality placements.
Recommendation 13 is that local authorities and their partners should start an ongoing process to review and redesign the ways in which child and family social work is delivered.
Recommendation 14—I am almost there without taking another intervention—is that local authorities should designate a principal child and family social worker who can report the views and experiences of the front line to all levels of management. I have too often seen good social workers, who have built up good reputations and who are really good hands-on, get promoted, become managers and get stuck behind a desk. In that way, we lose front-line expertise. Some models, such as the one in Hackney, mean that people can gain seniority within their profession but not lose contact with people at the sharp end and the families that they entered the profession to help.
The 15th and final recommendation is that a chief social worker should be created to advise the Government and to bring the voice of the profession to policy. That was discussed recently in relation to the Health and Social Care Bill, and it was a recommendation of my report back in 2007.
Tim Loughton
The hon. Lady is absolutely right. The first priority—this is the most desirable outcome for any family who find themselves on the child protection radar of a children’s services department, and who become a social worker’s focus of attention—is keeping that family together. We should ensure that where possible, the child can be kept with that family. The phrase “fostering a family”, which has been used before, means ensuring that parents have the parenting skills and that it is safe for the child to stay with them. Only when leaving a child with a family is deemed unsafe should we consider taking them into care. Of course, the work done in the Department for Education and the Department for Work and Pensions—the projects that deal with families with multiple problems—aims to ensure that parents have the tools and the confidence to parent properly. In too many families in this country, there is a serious problem with the standard of parenting. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) made that point very clearly in the report that he produced for the Department for Education.
Bill Esterson
I apologise for being late—I was on the Finance (No. 3) Bill Committee, which has just finished.
The Minister’s last point—on whether a family should be kept together and at what stage a child is taken into care—gets to the nub of child protection issues. I hope he agrees that the threshold for making, and the timing of, such decisions bears constant review and analysis.
Tim Loughton
The hon. Gentleman is right. An understandable result of what happened with baby P is that social workers have become more risk averse. If it is a marginal decision, they might take the child into care just in case, whereas if they have the time, space and appropriate tools and applications to deal with that family, it might be possible to keep it together rather than break it up.
I have set out Professor Munro’s recommendations for reform. Rightly, they address every aspect of the system. Rightly, they place the child at the centre. And rightly, they have as a basic principle the importance of placing trust in skilled professionals at the front line. It is of course the case that there are vulnerable children outside the immediate child protection system, and we need to improve radically how they are supported and make sure that they have a voice.
One of the main groups of such vulnerable children, for which I have responsibility, is of course children in care. With more than 64,000 children in care at the moment, we need to improve all aspects of their lives, including placement stability, education, health and the transition to adulthood, which are all priorities for Government and the wider sector. If we get Munro’s proposals right, there will be benefits for all those involved in children’s social care, not just those at the acute end of child protection.
From 1 April, we introduced a new statutory framework for looked-after children, which is far more streamlined, coherent and clear about the “must dos” for local authorities. In particular, we have brought together the care planning regulations and guidance into one volume, which should ultimately help councils put together better care plans. Less is often more. We have also strengthened the role of independent reviewing officers so they can challenge poor care plans, and make sure children’s voices are at the heart of all reviews. We have given clear steers in the revised fostering guidance about how local authorities should support foster carers and children better. The revised transition guidance makes it clear that young people should leave care only when they are ready and have a strong support package in place.
I have also written to every local authority about foster carers being encouraged to treat foster children in their care no differently from their own children. In March, I launched the foster carers’ charter, which sets out clear principles for the support that should be available, what foster carers can expect and what foster children can expect of their carers.
I also launched earlier this year the Tell Tim website so that carers and, in particular, children and young people in care can let me—as the Minister responsible—know directly what they think is working well, what improvements they think need to be made or what is going wrong. I have also set up reference groups so that I can hear from foster children, care leavers, adopted children and children living in residential homes. Just this week, I met my regular group of young people who have left the care system, who recount their often moving and relevant experiences of what is going wrong in the system. We could all learn a lot if we spent more time with the children who are still being failed because, through no fault of their own, they have become part of the care system.
As hon. Members will be aware, some children and young people—including young runaways—become victims of sexual exploitation. The report published by Barnardo’s in January, “Puppet on a String”, highlighted the scale and severity of this horrific abuse. I pay tribute to Barnardo’s work and expertise in this area and I especially congratulate Anne Marie Carrie for hitting the ground running in her first few months at the helm of Barnardo’s.
The Government are determined to do everything possible to stamp out this abuse and safeguard vulnerable children and young people. Recent events brought to light in the midlands through Operation Retriever and the other ongoing police investigations underline the extent of this insidious abuse. As the lead Minister in this area, I have been urgently considering, with my colleagues at the Home Office, Barnardo’s and other national and local partners, what further action should be taken. The Government are now committed to working with partners to develop over the summer an action plan to safeguard children and young people from sexual exploitation. This will build on existing guidance and our developing understanding of this dreadful abuse, including through local agencies’ work around the country. It will include work on effective prevention strategies, identifying those at risk of sexual exploitation, supporting victims, and taking robust action against perpetrators.
Another area where excessive central prescription has had unintended consequences, leading to risk aversion rather than risk management, is in vetting and barring. The Government believe that children will be better protected if we move away from unnecessary and top-down bureaucracy towards more responsible decision making at a local level. It is vital to balance the need to protect the vulnerable against the need to respect individuals’ freedoms, and not to create a system that imposes unnecessary burdens on individuals or organisations. That is why the Government undertook a review of the barring and criminal records regimes in order to scale them back to common-sense levels. We need to get away from a system that has unintentionally driven a further wedge between children growing up and well-meaning adults who come forward genuinely to offer their time to volunteer and to work with young people. They have been deterred from doing so by all the regulation.
I spoke earlier about the action we were taking to improve the lives and prospects of children in care. For many of those children, adoption will be the most appropriate outcome, which is why in February I issued new guidance with a call to arms to local authorities to re-energise their efforts on adoption and improve front-line practice. This refreshed and improved statutory guidance will be an important element in the Government’s programme of reform aimed at supporting adoption agencies in removing barriers to adoption, reducing delay and continually improving their adoption services.
Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
Does my hon. Friend agree that it is essential, when adoption is the best answer, for it to take place before the baby is two in order to give that child the greatest chance of bonding with the new family?
Tim Loughton
My hon. Friend, who has great expertise particularly in dealing with young children and in the whole area of attachment, knows how important it is that a child growing up is able from an early age to bond with, and develop an attachment to, parents or carers. We know from all the statistics that young children who are unable to grow up safely with their own parents benefit from adoption, where appropriate, at an early stage. If we can find them an appropriate adoptive placement, their chances of growing up as normally and conventionally as if they were with their own parents are greatly heightened, and they will have a better chance of catching up with their peers who are lucky enough to be able to grow up with their parents, so she is absolutely right.
Meg Munn
I welcome the tone that the Minister is taking in this debate. On adoption, may I ask him equally to adopt another approach—if that is not too many adoptions? It is enormously difficult to make the decision to place a child for adoption. It is a lifelong decision, and it is as important not to rush into it inappropriately as it is to make the decision to go for adoption. In reality, some of the biggest problems derive from other matters in the process, whether decision making in local authorities or decision making in the courts. I urge the Minister to consider those issues as well.
Tim Loughton
The hon. Lady is right and will know that we have been doing a lot of work on adoption. I have set up a ministerial advisory group with all sorts of people, and we have issued new guidance, as I said earlier. We need to balance timeliness with appropriateness to ensure that where it is clear—it is not always so—that an adoptive placement is the best way forward and in the best interests of the child, we get on with it.
There are, I have to say, some people who, usually because of excessive addiction to drugs and alcohol and a complete failure to rehabilitate, will never be able safely to bring up children in their care. I have sat in family courts and seen parents—usually single mothers— have their ninth, 10th or 11th child taken into the care system. If that parent’s situation has not improved, can we be sure that it will ever improve? Need we take that risk, and wait years while a child is kept in an abusive situation? Again, those decisions require the judgment of Solomon, which is why I will shortly be holding a round-table meeting with a group of judges from the family court, directors of children services and chairmen of adoption panels to consider how we can make the adoption process better, more efficient, more robust and fairer; to ensure that we are making the right decisions for the too many children who are left in the system and could benefit from adoption; and to ensure that we are not taking into adoption children for whom it is not appropriate. I know that there are concerns there as well.
Finally, we need to remember in our policies the particular needs of vulnerable young people and the fact that they have the same right to enjoy the rich experiences of growing up, the transition to adulthood and becoming valuable members of society as those lucky enough to be part of safe, loving and stable birth families of their own. I recognise that it is vital for the sensible policy put forward by Professor Munro to be backed up by proper investment. As my hon. Friends will be aware, the Government have already announced some funding to support work force development, but the real cost is the cost of failure. The current system needs fixing. Because it needs fixing, huge amounts of resource are wasted. One local authority that has been working with Professor Munro and the review team as a “journey authority” calculated that around 50% of its children’s social care workers’ time is wasted in nugatory activity that does not add to the quality of service or outcomes, which is something that the authority is now starting to recoup—a resounding endorsement of the need to eliminate unnecessary red tape if ever there was one.
Few things are more important than helping and protecting vulnerable children and young people. In our first year in government, we have shown in the wide range of actions that we have taken—on child protection, children in care, adoption, fostering and dealing with the sexual exploitation of children—that we are deeply committed to tackling these issues, and I am determined to ensure that we make progress. Sadly, we need to recognise that despite Government reforms and the hard work of professionals, tragedies will still happen. There are individuals who will harm children. We cannot eliminate that risk, but we can all work to help to reduce and manage it—indeed, we all have a duty to do so. Society is right to expect professionals to take responsibility and make the best judgments that they can in the best interests of children. Those judgments will not always be the right ones, but they need to have been made for the right reasons and on the best possible evidence.
This Government believe that we need to move towards a child protection system with less central prescription and interference, and in which we place greater trust and responsibility in skilled professionals on the front line. Professor Munro has provided us with a thorough analysis of the issues. It is now for the Government, working with the sector, to help to bring about sustainable reform. That is why I have established an implementation working group, drawing in expertise from local authority children’s services, the social work profession, education, police and the health service, to work with the Government to develop a response to Professor Munro’s recommendations by the summer recess. We are today publishing on the Department for Education website the first account of the group’s deliberations, which started at the end of last month.
Tim Loughton
Before I reach the final line of my speech, I will give way to my hon. Friend.
Mr Stuart
I am delighted to hear that those other agencies are represented on the implementation group. Will my hon. Friend say a little more about the group’s remit and how we can ensure that other Departments integrate with it, so that it is not just the social work profession that looks to respond to the Munro review?
Tim Loughton
The Chairman of the Select Committee on Education makes a good point. The people serving on the group, whose names are published on the website, have been chosen not because they are the great and the good—although I am sure many of them are great and some of them are good—but because they are experienced practitioners with expertise in their particular areas. For example, we have on the group the chief safeguarding expert from the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, and a safeguarding expert from the NHS Confederation. We also have the Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Guildford (Anne Milton), who is the Minister responsible for public health, a senior headmistress of a secondary school, a senior headmistress of a primary school, a senior police officer with a long record in child protection, a real social worker from the front line, along with a Labour councillor from an authority with a good track record in child protection, and so on.
This is absolutely about getting all the right parts of the jigsaw together and trying to produce a system that, by working together from the same song sheet and with the same priorities and the Government’s backing, produces an environment that ensures that we can keep more of our children safer. Today’s debate—even though I have taken up rather too much of it, and more than I had intended—will help to inform the implementation group’s response. I very much look forward to my hon. Friends’ contributions this afternoon.
Tim Loughton
I did not expect there to be time for a proper summing up, but as there is, I will make the most of it.
This has been an excellent debate—well measured and exceedingly well informed—with the House at its best, and certainly its most earnest. Indeed, the implementation working group on the Munro report could have been formed of the hon. Members in the Chamber who have contributed today. We have two adoptive fathers who revealed themselves as such in their contributions. We also have two family law barristers, one of whom—my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson)—grew up with 90 foster children, because of the amazing contribution of his parents, as well as having adopted siblings.
We have two former social workers, who also happen to be the chairs of the all-party parliamentary groups on runaway and missing children and adults, and on child protection. They have always brought enormous expertise to the House on those matters. We have crossed swords, and also often agreed, in many Committees on many pieces of legislation over the years. We also have one former lead member for children’s services in a council, even if he was “only a shopkeeper”. Of course, Churchill said that we were a nation of shopkeepers, so my hon. Friend should not undersell himself in that way. My only regret is that we will never hear his fourth point. We know about the missing fourth man—
Craig Whittaker
My fourth point was about the chairmanship of the local safeguarding children boards. There are still 23 authorities in the UK that have the director of children’s services as the chair of their board. Will the Minister ensure that in future the role of the chair is independent?
Tim Loughton
What an excellent fourth point that was! It was well worth waiting for. When we were in opposition we said that the chairs of local safeguarding children boards should be independent. I think that the boards should include lead members and perhaps directors of children’s services, in whatever role, but they should be independently chaired. If LSCBs are to make progress and have more teeth and more importance, that will be an even more important factor in the future. I am glad that my hon. Friend managed to get his fourth point in.
So, we have one shopkeeper turned lead member of children’s services. We also have one head of a very successful children’s charity who has enormous expertise in attachment. We have a Member who I think used his first Adjournment debate to discuss adoption, including some cases in his constituency. We have another new Member who has taken up the cudgels on behalf of constituents who are concerned about abuses of adoption. And we have one conspiracy theorist. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming); we disagree on many aspects of this issue, but he is assiduous and he rightly acknowledged that we had given him as much information as possible. We disagree on the interpretation of that information and we will continue to do so, but he has certainly got his teeth into this subject.
We have had an excellent debate. I do not have time to refer to every point that has been raised, but the personal experience that has been brought to bear today does the House credit. There has been overwhelming support for the principle, the thrust and the exhaustive nature of the Munro review. The hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) said that it was well researched and the result of extensive consultation. She also said that too much of what social workers have to do may be technically correct but inexpert in its findings.
The hon. Member for Chesterfield (Toby Perkins) made some excellent points. I thank him for his welcome for the report, and we look forward to working with Members on both sides of the House on carrying forward its recommendations. This is an evidence-based review, and I want to see Government policy guided by evidence, and by things that work and actually improve the outcomes for children at the sharp end. My hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich pointed out that this is not rocket science, and asked why it had not been done before.
The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) mentioned the very good work of the social work taskforce and the social work reform board. We acknowledge that that work was undertaken under the previous Government. When we set up the Munro review, the first thing I said was that it was not intended to take the place of or to rubbish the work that had gone before; it was to complement that work. The first person Eileen Munro went to see was Moira Gibb, the head of the reform board. Members of the reform board have worked on the review and are now working in the implementation group.
The hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson) mentioned the mixed destinations of siblings who are taken into adoption or care. That is a really important point, and I want to do a lot more work on it. I have heard too many horrific stories of families being broken up. At a time when they cannot rely on the stability and familiarity of their birth parents, it is crucial that they should have the familiarity of contact with their siblings when they desperately need some kind of anchor. My hon. Friend the Member for Erewash (Jessica Lee) has had great experience of children in the care system, and she told the House that the incidence of mental health issues and homelessness was absolutely appalling.
I thank everyone in the Chamber for an excellent debate. We are absolutely determined to carry forward the recommendations of the Munro review. Today’s debate will help to inform our response, and I look forward to receiving the help of all hon. Members to ensure that we get this right. I am up for that challenge, as are the House and the Government, and we are going to make this work.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered the Munro Report and its implications for child protection.
Education and Youth Council
Tim Loughton Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
Education Council
I represented the UK at the Education Council. The Council was preceded by a ministerial breakfast on the subject of adult learning. During this I set out UK policy on our skills strategy, reforms to the national careers service, and the forthcoming Government consultation on informal adult learning.
Early school leaving
The Council agreed a recommendation on policies to reduce early school leaving by qualified majority. The UK voted against the recommendation as it was inconsistent with our national approach. While we understand and accept the importance of reducing early school leaving in the context of the Europe 2020 strategy, we have concerns with the policy approach suggested in the recommendation. For example, some of the language on “modularisation of courses” and “individualised learning approaches” sits uncomfortably with our strong belief that it is for teachers to decide the educational styles that best suit their students’ needs. Commissioner Vassiliou later noted that
“in response to the UK points, Early School leaving cannot be solved by education alone”.
A ministerial debate on this subject focused on prevention policies to combat early school leaving with particular emphasis on children from a socio-economically disadvantaged background, including the Roma. Member states were asked about national mechanisms for evaluating these policies, and the role of the EU in this area. I and a number of other member states noted that quality education, literacy and high attainment were key to combating early school leaving. I also noted that teachers had a key role to play and that pupil attainment was central to this issue, alongside clear measures of accountability. The presidency stated that a summary of this discussion would be presented to the June European Council.
Early childhood education and care
The Council adopted conclusions on early childhood education and care. The conclusions invite member states to analyse and evaluate existing early childhood services in terms of availability, affordability and quality. They also invite the Commission to support member states in exchanging good policies and practices and to broaden the evidence base in this field.
Promoting the educational mobility of young people
A Council recommendation on promoting the educational mobility of young people was also agreed. The recommendation suggests a number of measures including: improving information and guidance on educational mobility opportunities, improving language teaching and exchanges between schools, reducing administrative burdens linked to organising educational experiences abroad, and improving procedures for validation and recognition of educational outcomes following the period abroad.
Italy abstained in the vote to agree the recommendation over concerns about referring to a monitoring system proposed by the Commission, known as the “mobility scoreboard”. A study into the feasibility of such a scoreboard is yet to be carried out.
Youth Council
The UK deputy permanent representative Andy Lebrecht represented the UK at the Youth Council.
Effective participation of young people in democratic life
The Council adopted a resolution on encouraging new and effective forms of participation of all young people in democratic life. The UK is strongly in favour of youth participation and I will host a representative young people’s advisory group that will scrutinise and provide feedback on emerging policy proposals.
Structured dialogue with young people on youth employment
The Council adopted a resolution on structured dialogue with young people and the EU Institutions on youth employment. The resolution recommends various changes to the structured dialogue with young people. This includes political follow-up of the results, greater participation by disadvantaged youth and improved working methods that provide a meaningful process for young people.
Voluntary activities
Ministers also debated voluntary activities of young people and their contribution to the development of local communities. National initiatives mentioned included subsidies for youth organisations and national citizenship programmes (in Italy, France, and the UK, where national citizen service will have its pilot this summer).
Emergency Life Skills
Tim Loughton Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Bolton West (Julie Hilling) on securing the debate. She alluded to the recent Committee stage of the Education Bill, and I have read her comments in Committee, as well as in the early-day motion and at Education Question Time. In today’s debate, she has again emphasised the importance of teaching emergency life support skills to children. She has form, for which she is to be praised. Likewise, the interventions in debate by my hon. Friend the Member for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson) have shown his great interest. I praise them both; the subject is important.
Last night, at the end of the annual general meeting of my local hospital league of friends, we had a presentation by one of the hospital heart specialists. He talked about what a difference the hospital equipment financed by the friends would make, and about the huge improvement in the survival rates of people who suffer a heart attack, because of being to deal with them at the scene of their heart attack and getting them to heart specialist hospitals much more quickly, with the availability of stents, clot-busting drugs and everything else. He recounted an emergency case he had had just yesterday: the time between someone coming through the hospital door and being given a stent was 14 minutes, fantastically within the golden hour that is so important.
Survival rates have improved enormously, but the more we can do at every stage of the process—recognising the problem, getting someone to hospital and making sure they get treatment straight away—is important in achieving further improvements in the survival rates of the many people who still have heart attacks. The subject is important.
In the hon. Lady’s work with the Select Committee on Education, she has drawn attention to some of the excellent work done by schools, such as Smithills in her constituency, which she mentioned, and by programmes such as Heartstart, run by the British Heart Foundation, and others run by organisations including the St John Ambulance. I pay tribute to both those organisations. I did an infant first aid course with St John Ambulance in my constituency some time ago, and it was an eye-opener, showing me how little I knew until I did it. The more such courses are made available, and the more people take them, the better for everyone. The hon. Lady and others are raising their profile, which is important.
I was vice-chairman of the all-party parliamentary group for cardiac risk in the young, which is another important subject that people know little about. Every week, several young, fit, healthy teenagers were dropping down dead for seemingly inexplicable reasons linked to a genetic heart condition about which they had no knowledge. The charity CRY successfully raised the profile of the problem, urging testing if relationship links increase the potential, and spreading the availability of testing. That is another important way of preventing such avoidable deaths, which cause great distress and, out of the blue, completely disrupt families.
Such initiatives not only enrich education but, as the hon. Lady said, help to engage pupils and equip them with the basic first aid skills of which all citizens should have knowledge. Regardless of whether someone is in school, there should be greater awareness and confidence, such as she gained herself, in how to administer first aid at all sorts of levels, most importantly because it can help to save lives. Things can happen anywhere, to anyone, however fit they might appear.
The hon. Lady mentioned “Casualty”; no debate on health seems to be complete without such a reference, and people can actually learn quite a bit from it, as long as they learn the right stuff. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to raise the profile of the issue, although I am not sure whether the Seattle tourist board will compliment her on marketing that fine American city as the best place to have a heart attack—but she did her bit. I applaud all those involved in this area, as well as the campaigning of the hon. Lady and others.
Whether we think about swimming and physical education, or more broadly about the curriculum, it is important that we do everything we can to ensure that life-saving and first aid skills are part of what is taught in our schools. But, I fear, I must once more disappoint the hon. Lady and her supporters. I read about her proposed amendment to the Education Bill, in which she raised the issue; she alluded to the wives of Henry VIII then, too, and the Minister of State, my hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton, said in response that had Anne Boleyn known a little more about her husband, she might not have lost her own life—an interesting response. I will not go over that debate again.
We do not believe, however, that learning emergency life skills has to be a statutory part of the national curriculum. We do not take issue with the principle or with raising the profile, and we agree that awareness for more people, in particular children, is a good thing; our problem is making it a statutory part of the national curriculum. In recent years, the national curriculum has been bent out of shape, as it has been overloaded with too many subjects and too much content, often with the best of intentions but with damaging results. At the same time, there has been too much prescription, not only about what should be taught but how it should be taught.
The Government want to restore the national curriculum to its original purpose: a core base of essential knowledge that pupils need to succeed, and which stands comparison with what pupils in various age groups learn in the nations with the best-performing education systems in the world. We want to ensure that schools have greater freedom and flexibility to teach so as to encourage more innovation and inspire pupils. Those were the express aims of the national curriculum review, which we launched in January. The review team received almost 6,000 responses to the call for evidence—the most for any education consultation—including a number of representations about the teaching of emergency life skills. I received a number of letters from my constituents on the subject, as I am sure the hon. Lady did.
I cannot pre-empt the review itself, but one of the most important objectives set by Professor Tim Oates, who is leading the review team, is to ensure that the right balance can be struck between the core national curriculum and the wider school curriculum. In all likelihood, the smaller statutory content will take up less teaching time, leaving more time for the activities, topics and subjects, including emergency life skills, that we know are also important in preparing a student for the wider world. As the hon. Lady mentioned, many schools already manage to deliver such things imaginatively and effectively, in a way that best engages their pupils.
Recent findings from the British Heart Foundation demonstrate that many parents, children and teachers want young people to learn life-saving skills at school. The non-statutory programmes of study for personal, social and health education already include teaching young people how to recognise and follow health and safety procedures, ways of reducing risk and minimising harm in risky situations, and how to use emergency and basic first aid. The internal review of PSHE that we will undertake alongside the national curriculum review will look carefully at how we can improve the quality of teaching and at how external organisations such as the British Heart Foundation can support schools to do so. That and other healthy-living issues may be delivered by outside specialist bodies in a more imaginative way that will engage kids in school so that they do not feel that it is just another lesson. I am a big fan of bringing in outside bodies to teach in a different way—outside the box and often outside the classroom.
Equally, we know that it takes only a few hours every year for pupils to learn basic resuscitation skills. I do not know whether that is 0.2% of the national curriculum time, as the hon. Member for Bolton West said, but I acknowledge that it is a small part. There would thus be plenty of room in the school day for other important subjects and activities, such as learning about healthy eating, taking part in competitive team sport, and working on projects with local businesses. Such things are important and enjoyable for pupils but, most importantly, it is for schools and teachers to decide what to teach and when to teach it. The Government believe in the professional judgment of head teachers and teachers, and we are giving them the space to exercise that judgment, and to provide a broad and enriched curriculum for their pupils.
Julie Hilling
I am not clear how much steer the Government are likely to give to head teachers and schools about the importance of emergency life skills. As the Minister says, under PSHE, or whatever we want to call it, an enormous range of subjects may be taught—drugs, alcohol, sex and so on. Emergency life skills are a fundamental issue of citizenship, and involve not just individuals, but society. Are the Government prepared to give head teachers a steer and to say that they should consider teaching such skills?
Tim Loughton
I take the hon. Lady’s point, and I think she is hearing me loud and clear. My view, which is shared by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, is that it is good if more people and pupils learn about health and life-saving skills. There are good examples of that happening in schools already, regardless of what is in the curriculum, and of schools engaging and training their pupils. When that is done, pupils enjoy it, and it is a good way of engaging them in something that is useful beyond the confines of the school. I praise all schools that are doing that, and encourage them to do more, but I also encourage more schools to take it up. We are trying to free up time in the curriculum to enable them to do what they think will most benefit their pupils. Clearly, life-saving skills are way up at the top of the priorities.
The hon. Lady knows from our previous conversations that the Government’s approach is to be less prescriptive, but to encourage schools to do such things because they are right and will benefit their pupils, the community and society at large. The problem is that in opposition and now in government e-mails, letters or comments are sent to me every day saying that X, Y or Z should be a statutory part of the national curriculum. If we took just a fraction of those suggestions on board, something would have to give. The national curriculum is already completely overloaded, and my response to all those suggestions, however worthwhile, as life-saving skills clearly are, is to ask what should be taken out of the national curriculum or diluted to make space. That is the problem.
Justin Tomlinson
I thank my hon. Friend for his positive comments. I have often been guilty of sending in requests, and I understand what he said about being inundated, but surely there is no greater or more important skill to equip a young person with than the ability to save someone’s life. I am sure that replacing one cross-country run a year would be welcomed across the board.
Tim Loughton
I sympathise with my hon. Friend’s suggestion, and I want schools to implement it, but not because an edict from Ministers says that it should be part of the national curriculum so that they think, “Where can we fit that in?” I want them to do so because it is a good thing to do, and a good way of engaging young people who might be more difficult to engage. The subject might be a good way of enticing their interest in the classroom.
During the consultation, we received proposals that the compulsory part of the national curriculum should include chess, knitting and pet care, which I am sure are all worth while. I am sure that my hon. Friend and the hon. Lady would argue that they should not have the same priority as life-saving skills, but people argue that a whole load of things should be a priority. I want schools, and heads and teachers who know their children, to have the freedom to deliver the subjects that they believe are most important and that children will most relate to and benefit from. That is what the Government are trying to do.
Julie Hilling
I thank the Minister for giving way yet again. He is being very generous. The Government will prescribe some parts of the national curriculum. They will prescribe the core. The hon. Member for North Swindon and I are saying that emergency life-support skills should be part of that very small core, because they are about the future, saving lives, and being a good citizen, which are all crucial. Chess, knitting and so on may be good subjects to teach, but life-saving skills are vital and could transform the United Kingdom. I do not understand why that cannot be one of the subjects in the small prescribed core.
Tim Loughton
The hon. Lady has answered her own question. I entirely agree about the importance of the subject, but we are trying to make the national curriculum tighter and more concise with a smaller range of subjects, giving more freedom to teachers to take on that subject, which I agree is a priority. We want a slimmer curriculum, and we do not want to add more subjects to it. However important the subject, it would add to the national curriculum.
There can be no more important training than that which allows someone to save the life of another who is injured, ill or otherwise in danger, and we must do all we can to ensure that children learn the basic skills that they might need in case of emergency. We all agree on that, but the best way is not through the academic base of knowledge that the national curriculum contains, but through the broader curriculum. Just because the skills are not specified in the national curriculum does not mean they will not and should not be taught, or that the Government are downplaying or undervaluing them. The reverse is true. I implore all schools to ensure that their pupils develop the personal and social skills they need to become responsible citizens, and to lead healthy and safe lives, and that includes being able to encourage and enable others to lead healthy and safe lives.
Justin Tomlinson
On the specific point about outside organisations, such as the British Heart Foundation, surely the Government could play a role in providing information so that schools can access it. When I visit my schools, they agree that it is a good scheme to take up, but do not necessarily know how to do so. Perhaps the Government could be proactive in encouraging that.
Tim Loughton
That is the point that I intended to end on. It is a fair and practical solution. We are not proposing to make the subject, along with pet care, knitting, chess and thousands of other helpful suggestions, part of the core national curriculum, but there are other things we can do. The hon. Member for Bolton West asked me to look at other ways of promoting the subject, and we will do so, for example, by asking individual MPs and Ministers to go into schools and ask what they are doing to teach first aid, and whether they are part of a local appeal to install a defibrillator in the town centre, and are ensuring that their children know how to use it. We can also send strong messages in our work on the PSHE review.
I think the hon. Lady suspected that we would not be able to deliver her request today, but that in no way downplays the importance of the issue that she has rightly and usefully raised. There are many other ways of promoting the subject to ensure that we have a far better educated and engaged population in our schools who will take on those skills because they want to, because it is the right thing to do, and because they will all benefit.
Oral Answers to Questions
Tim Loughton Excerpts(12 years, 11 months ago)
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Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
9. What steps he is taking to increase the rate at which children are adopted.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
The Government and I are very concerned that adoption has lost momentum in recent years, and that is why we have launched a programme of reform. This has included setting up a ministerial advisory group, writing to directors of children’s services and lead members, publishing revised guidance, and launching an adoption data pack to support and challenge local authorities. We are also funding two voluntary sector projects to improve adoption practices and helping to promote adoption through National Adoption Week.
Mark Pawsey
I thank the Minister for his answer and his support for the great work done by adoptive parents, and I welcome the Government’s work to increase adoption. He will be aware, however, of concerns about the security of the personal information of adoptive parents. Does he accept that without appropriate safeguards, parents may be discouraged from adopting? Will he take this opportunity to assure me and others that he is taking all possible steps to ensure that adopters’ personal information is properly protected?
Tim Loughton
I echo my hon. Friend’s support for the fantastic dedication of prospective adopters and people who take on that great responsibility. I know of his great interest in this area. He is absolutely right. I do not want to see anything that stands in the way of people coming forward and offering themselves to give safe adoptive placements to vulnerable children. He has raised this issue with me before in an Adjournment debate. I give him an undertaking that we will see if there are any problems in this area that are undermining the system.
Caroline Dinenage (Gosport) (Con)
10. What plans he has for the future of citizenship teaching in schools.
David Wright (Telford) (Lab)
16. What recent assessment he has made of the merits of local authorities having a director of children’s services; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
A working group of representatives from the Department for Education and key stakeholders from the local government sector was set up earlier this year to consider the role of directors of children’s services. The group is developing a range of options. Of course, Professor Munro also considered the matter in conducting her review of child protection, published last week, and I plan to consider her recommendation alongside the options appraisal that is being drawn up by the working group.
David Wright
Is it not of crucial importance that every top-tier local authority has a director of children’s services? Children’s safety has to be a priority right across the House and the country. Why are Telford Conservatives opposing the appointment of a director of children’s services in Telford and Wrekin council, of which we have just taken control with a whopping majority?
Tim Loughton
I am sure my hon. Friend the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning will be delighted to meet the new leader of the hon. Gentleman’s council, as well, at some stage in the future.
I remind the hon. Gentleman that the recommendations of the Munro report will be considered with the working group that we have already established, as we decide on the best way forward in delivering children’s services in local authorities. We will ensure that children are given the very best protection, which we know we need to improve.
Mr Peter Bone (Wellingborough) (Con)
If there are to be directors of children’s services, should not one of their roles be to identify and protect children who have been victims of human trafficking, which is not done at present?
Tim Loughton
I want to raise the profile of the whole issue of the trafficking of children and the sexual exploitation of children—another important issue, on which we are working closely with Barnardo’s and stakeholders—and to ensure that we have much better inter-agency working. In Professor Munro’s recommendations, local safeguarding children boards have a key role to play. That might be considered alongside what the director of children’s services does in any case.
Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)
The Opposition welcome Professor Eileen Munro’s report, and specifically her recommendation that the role of director of children’s services is protected. We recently surveyed every director of children’s services in England, more than 80% of whom said that the ability to safeguard children in their area would be reduced by cuts to police, mental health services or primary care. Does the Minister acknowledge the worries of those directors of children’s services that cuts to those services will impact on the ability of councils to safeguard their children, and what is he doing to represent those views to his ministerial colleagues?
Tim Loughton
If the hon. Gentleman has read the Munro report, he will know that she identifies as the biggest enemy to protecting children better the bureaucracy that has gone into the system, whereby social workers at the sharp end with other key agencies and professionals spend up to 80% of their time in front of computer screens, complying with processes rather than getting out into the field and dealing with the vulnerable families and children whom they went into the profession to protect. That is what we want to happen in future, and I hope it will happen as we take forward the Munro review, in the best interests of protecting the vulnerable children who are not nearly safe enough now.
Nic Dakin (Scunthorpe) (Lab)
17. How much funding will be available through the 16-to-19 bursary fund in the 2011-12 academic year for students starting their courses in September 2011 after allocation of the amount guaranteed for vulnerable groups.
Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)
T5. Under the Protection of Freedoms Bill, an individual who is barred from working with children can volunteer in the classroom. The school will not be notified that that person has been barred by the independent safeguarding authority. Many parents are worried about this development. Is the Minister?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for that point. We are working on a number of scenarios to ensure that people who are not entitled to work should not be there. However, it is up to everybody to be vigilant—not least the head of a school—and to take appropriate references on the background of the person concerned. I would much rather have a system with a common-sense and proportionate approach which does not drive out adults who willingly want to give up their time to work with young people and make them into better members of our community, and not wrap them in cotton wool.
Mr Dominic Raab (Esher and Walton) (Con)
T9. A survey for the Prince’s Trust shows that one in five children from deprived homes believes that they will end up in “dead-end jobs”. Does the Minister agree that this highlights the importance of implementing the Wolf review, and in particular recommendation 7, which says that the lowest-attaining learners should focus on English and maths, backed up by practical work experience?
Munro Review of Child Protection
Tim Loughton Excerpts(13 years ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)
Few things are more important than helping and protecting vulnerable children and young people. I am reminded daily of the immense dedication of professionals and their unstinting efforts to keep children and young people safe. Despite this, the system is not working as well as it should. That is why, in June last year, the Secretary of State for Education, asked Professor Eileen Munro to conduct a wide-ranging independent review to improve child protection.
Professor Munro was asked to set out the obstacles preventing improvements and the steps required to improve child protection, including giving consideration to how effectively children’s social workers and professionals in other agencies work together. I am pleased to announce that today, following her first two reports, Professor Munro has published the final report of her review, “A child-centred system”. Copies have been laid before the House.
Professor Munro has carried out a wide-ranging and in-depth review. Her report makes 15 recommendations and signals a shift from previous reforms that, while well intentioned, resulted in a tick-box culture and a loss of focus on the needs of the child.
I welcome Professor Munro’s thorough analysis of the issues. It is important that we consider carefully, with professionals themselves, how best to respond to her proposals to bring about the long-term reform needed.
I am therefore establishing an implementation working group drawing together key individuals from the social work profession, local government, health, police, education and the voluntary sector. The Government will work closely with this group, whose membership I will announce shortly, to develop a full response to Professor Munro’s recommendations before the summer recess.
I am very grateful to Professor Munro for all the hard work, professionalism and expertise she has shown in delivering this review and to the many professionals and members of the public, including children and young people themselves, who have contributed to it.