Support for Children and Families: Covid-19

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I will be uncharacteristically brief, Sir Christopher. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) for securing a debate on the subject. We have heard so much about the impact of covid on jobs, schools, universities, businesses, the hospitality sector and the NHS. Children—particularly young children—and families are the forgotten element in the whole covid crisis. It is important that we talk about them today, and about the mental health impact on not just school-age children, but parents, for all the reasons my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) mentioned. There has been huge upheaval due to the extra childcare required and the unpredictability of schools.

There is a lack of support networks for new parents in particular. Some 350,000 babies were born during lockdown. Many of them have not seen other babies. Mums have not been able to take babies to the normal post-natal classes and baby groups that they would usually take them to, so we are now seeing examples of babies recoiling when they meet other babies, because they are not used to other human beings like them. They have not had the support network of extended family members; for a new parent, a new mum—particularly a new single mum—that has been a huge challenge. We need to think not just about the catch-up we need for school-age children—the Children’s Commissioner has calculated this week that we have lost 575 million school days since lockdown—but about catch-up for very young children, and babies and infants in particular.

In last week’s debate, I flagged up the importance of health visitors. Before lockdown, we had lost 30% of health visitors. A great triumph of the coalition Government was to create 4,200 additional health visitors. We are virtually back to the numbers we inherited in 2010. Health visitors have had face-to-face contact only with new parents in vulnerable families, but there are over 106,000 children under the age of one living in households in this country where parents suffer from domestic violence, substance abuse or serious mental health issues. These children need those health visitors eyeballing them, providing health support and acting as an early warning system.

I recommend reading the “Babies in Lockdown” report, which was jointly published over the summer by the Parent-Infant Foundation, which I have been proud to chair for the last six years, Home-Start—a fantastic charity—and Best Beginnings. Their report found that 68% of the 5,500 parents interviewed felt that the changes brought about by covid-19 were affecting their unborn baby or young child. Over two thirds of respondents said that overall, their ability to cope with pregnancy or care for their baby had been affected by covid-19, and many families on lower incomes from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities and young parents have been hit harder by the pandemic. This can only have widened the already deep inequalities in the early experiences and life chances of children.

The report therefore recommends that we increase specialised parent-infant relationship teams around the UK, of which there are only 30 at the moment. These teams bring together a range of highly skilled professionals to support and strengthen the important relationships between babies and their parents or carers. The report also recommends a parent-infant premium, which would provide local commissioners with new funding targeted at improving incomes for the most vulnerable children. We need children in schools to catch up, but if we do not help babies and pre-school children catch up, the problem will be even worse when they get to school; that is why this report and this debate are so important.

Education Settings: Autumn Opening

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

We have set up a wide-ranging system of support for schools to access through the Edenred scheme. If there are exceptional circumstances where there are no local supermarkets included in the Edenred scheme that a school can access, we are able to look at how we can support the school and reimburse their costs if there are no alternatives.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I reiterate the many calls from Members today and from our heads that they really need clear, unambiguous and timely guidance. Linked to that, is not one of the biggest scandals of recent months how few children on education, health and care plans have been accepted back into school, even when their parents want them to go? For that cohort, catch-up will be crucial, particularly to regularise being back in a school environment after six months out of it. The Secretary of State talked about tutors. Will he also consider the idea that I put forward—to use the cohort of students who are deferring going to university, so that they can come into schools to work alongside those children and give them intensive mentoring, not just academically but to get them back in the habit of being in school and learning again?

[Gavin Williamson]

As my hon. Friend is probably aware, in the first guidance that we issued on school closures, we highlighted that children with EHC plans would have continued access to schools all the way through this. I would be happy to organise a meeting between him and the Education Endowment Foundation, which is working with us to stand up our tutoring programme and looking at a whole range of options to mobilise that.

Children and Young Persons

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare two interests: first, that in the register; and secondly, given that these regulations go back to 2002, I think that, for the entire time, I was either the shadow Children’s Minister or the Children’s Minister and responsible for making some of these regulations. I am doubly interested in them today.

I am not going to vote against these regulations, but this is the opportunity for some serious questions to be answered. It is unfortunate that, these regulations having been laid before Parliament on 23 April, they came into effect on 24 April. Normal conventions about the 21-day rule simply did not happen, and this is the first time that this House has had the opportunity to scrutinise what are very important regulations.

There are serious question marks, as the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) mentioned, about the consultation that went into this. The Children’s Commissioner was not consulted, and she has made further comments today to say that she has serious concerns about this. The British Association of Social Workers was not consulted. The Association of Directors of Children’s Services was not consulted. The Local Government Association was not consulted. Apparently not even Ofsted was consulted before these regulations became a fait accompli.

There is also the question mark about why the regulations were—

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

rose—

[Tim Loughton]

I will not give way because we are short of time. I am sure the hon. Lady will get in later.

There are also question marks about why we had to do this in England but apparently similar moves have not been planned in Scotland or Wales. The Minister might want to comment on that. It would be useful to know what input went into these regulations and why they were chosen to be relaxed or extended in the way they were.

I am not against emergency legislation in these unprecedented circumstances. We are absolutely going to have to adapt across the board; we have become used to that. But this is a particularly sensitive area of policy dealing with some of our most vulnerable children, who are not in a position to provide the challenge and scrutiny that would be readily available in other areas. We have heard, through the commencement of the Domestic Abuse Bill, that there has been a spike in domestic abuse. We have heard from the NSPCC and others about an increase in reporting of suspected child abuse. It is when children are more vulnerable that we need to make sure that the checks and balances are absolutely there and working. There are also the fears about the impact of county lines gangs using the pandemic as a recruitment tool.

So across a whole range of areas, we should be concerned that the service is there to do what it desperately needs to do, particularly at this time. If we look through these regulations, we see that too often the phrases “as soon as is reasonably practicable” and “best endeavours” come up, covering a multitude of sins.

I just want to know the thinking behind the introduction of these regulations. Was it because we were expecting a high incidence of social worker absences? We have had seven weeks of these regulations in practice, so the Minister might be able to give us some examples of what has happened over that time. We need to know how the Government are monitoring this. Was it a capacity issue that led to the regulations? What are the current vacancy rates? Was it a reprioritisation issue, and if so, on the basis of what risk assessment? What has the reprioritisation of those social worker resources, and so on, actually gone to? As a result of what has happened, how many new child vulnerability hotspots are springing up, particularly for the 85% of vulnerable children who have not been in school, as the Chairman of the Education Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), has pointed out? That was a really useful way of putting them on the radar; teachers were often the early warning sign that something was going wrong at home on a safeguarding issue. They could then pass that information on to social workers and others.

I want to touch briefly on the 10 areas. First, on section 28 and the regulations about visits—which I think I overhauled back in 2010—these are now to take place “as soon as is reasonably practicable”. I am not going to delude myself that it all was working perfectly before. The purpose of the Munro review reforms, which were brought in from 2010, was to get away from some of the arbitrary timescales and from being ruled just by a rulebook, rather than by the expertise of experienced and well trained social workers as well. With only a small number of children in school, those social worker visits are even more important, so if they are not happening practically, why not? Is this a resource issue? Are they happening virtually, and are those virtual visits effective? How are social workers teaming up with teachers trying to teach remotely, with the police and with others to ensure that they are monitoring those children in households with a safeguarding question mark particularly closely?

Secondly, the six-monthly independent review of childcare is important, but that is usually down to the independent reviewing officers. What are the IROs actually doing at the moment? Why can they not carry on as before? Thirdly, I am particularly concerned about adoption panels. Adoption was one of the big campaigns of the coalition Government, and I am proud of my part in getting adoptions up to a peak of 5,360 in 2015. However, adoptions went back down again last year and we are now back down almost to the levels before we started the overhaul of adoption regulations, at around 3,500, so we need more adopters to come forward. We need more children to be adopted. Who is doing that important work in the absence of adoption panels? If social workers are too busy doing things elsewhere, or if there are not enough of them because of the pandemic, who is approving those adopters to come forward? Does the Minister fear that we are going to see a further big decrease in the amount of adoptions happening? How many prospective adopters are coming forward but are unable to be processed and trained? Who is doing the training to ensure that they can take on those really important roles as adoptive parents?

The same goes for fostering panels. It is likely that we will see a big surge in people coming forward to offer foster placements, given the likely job losses that will come out of the pandemic. That is a fact of life in recessions. We need to ensure that local authorities are up and running and able to take on those foster placements and to train people and assess them properly to ensure that they are suitable to take on those children who desperately need a home.

Another area I am really concerned about is the dropping of senior officer approval for out-of-care placement. This has been a scandal for too many years. Over half of children are placed out of their area, against all the regulations. It makes it so much more difficult to look at their progress when we have to monitor them from afar, and they are often placed in cheap property in coastal resorts, particularly on the Kent coast. That has been a case in point. It is really important that when a child is placed out of area, it is as a result of proper scrutiny and a decision made at director level. That is a reform that I brought in. I am really concerned about who is now going to be responsible for that.

Skipping through a few of the other points, senior officer approval for the really important fostering for adoption placements has also been dropped.

I am also concerned about the dropping of Ofsted inspection frequencies, and in any case it seems as though Ofsted will not be doing any inspections until next year. That is really worrying. We need Ofsted inspections for new listings—new care homes—where we desperately need that capacity. We need to prioritise them looking at homes that are deemed to require improvement or that are inadequate to make sure they are not continuing to offer a poor service or that they have improved and therefore can take on more children again. We need to do that because we have serious capacity problem.

I understand the suspicion of others that this is a back-door measure to complete the work from the 2016 Bill. I led a delegation of very experienced noble Lords to see the then Secretary of State, Justine Greening—it was a large part of the reason the regulations were dropped, I am glad to say—so I do not want them reintroduced through this route, and I would like to hear it from the Minister that the measures are only temporary and will not be extended beyond September other than in exceptional circumstances. I would like her to show how they are being monitored where that is actually not required at the moment.

I repeat my invitation to the Minister. The all-party group on children, which I chair, is meeting the children’s charities and others in July to assess how children are faring during the coronavirus pandemic, and it would be great if she could come and give an account of why the regulations are still required and how they are impacting on children. I understand why they were necessary; I do not understand why they were introduced in the way they were. We would all understand better if we had an account of the experience during the seven weeks they have been in operation and some guarantees that the welfare of some of our most vulnerable children is not being compromised and will not be compromised for a week longer than it needs to under the current conditions.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Education Settings: Wider Opening

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I join the hon. Lady in passing on my deep condolences to the families, schools and communities who have lost loved ones, as she highlighted at the start of her question. We will continue to work with teachers’ unions, as well as school representative organisations, as we look to expand the number of children who are able to attend primary schools and have more pupils attending schools, including those in years 10 and 12 and further education colleges, who start next week, the week commencing 15 June.

As we welcome more children into the classroom, with more children having the opportunity to learn in different year groups, we will see the real benefit of children being with their teachers and friends once more. The hon. Lady is right to highlight the fact that we have limitations. The limit of 15 children per class obviously limits the ability to have as many year groups in school as we would like, but as that is changed, we will have the ability to slowly and cautiously move forward and welcome more children back to school when it is the right time.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Every two months represent more than 1% of a child’s childhood. Come September, many children will have been out of school for almost six months, and we fear that it may be even longer. The impact on those from the most deprived backgrounds will be considerable. Will the Secretary of State look at catch-up schemes over the summer, perhaps using National Citizen Service youth workers who have been stood down from the summer programme? Over the next year, will he look at mobilising the many students who are now delaying going to university and will find it hard to travel or get a job, by getting them to work alongside some of these children in a national mentoring scheme modelled on the charity City Year, for example?

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We are certainly looking at this, but we are looking at something much wider and more long-term, because we do not believe that purely looking at the summer period is enough to assist children to get the catch-up that they truly need.

Educational Settings

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

May I just advise the House that I expect to run this statement until about 6.45 pm?

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Several heads have contacted me to say that they wanted their schools to remain open at all costs, so this will be a great upheaval for them, but I respect that schools are being kept open for certain people. What is crucial is where the definition of “key workers” comes in, so may I stress that giving some discretion to heads is essential, as is whether school premises can remain open for outside groups that use their facilities? Inevitably, informal childcare groups and arrangements will spring up and there are safeguarding considerations in that regard. So will the Department make sure guidance is given so that workers who continue to go to work and are able to have childcare arrangements are doing it in the safest way for them and for their children?

Early Years Family Support

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

It is a great privilege to follow the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western). I, too, worship at the altar of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom). She is the great authority on this subject and I pay tribute to her. I also pay limited tribute to the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), given I am no longer her favourite ex-Children’s Minister—but there we go. [Laughter.] You can go off people.

It is interesting that at the same time as we started this debate there was a debate in Westminster Hall on children’s mental health. In the many years I have been in this place, subjects such as children’s mental health rarely got on to the Order Paper. It is a sign of huge progress that it is now much more common for us to talk about them—and with a great deal of experience and consensus. It is long overdue. We are starting to appreciate the huge strategic importance of doing much more, much better, much earlier for our children. Some of us have been banging on about that for many years in this place, and it is great to see many other headbangers joining us. It is becoming almost common parlance.

[Wera Hobhouse]

rose—

[Lucy Powell]

rose—

[Tim Loughton]

Hold on a minute. I will give way first to the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) and then to the hon. Member for Manchester Central.

[Wera Hobhouse]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. Does he agree that the whole body of knowledge about adverse childhood experiences should be shared even more widely in the House, because it makes so much sense when we are discussing, for instance, the Prison Service or the probation service? Every service should be informed about trauma. Once we understand adverse childhood experiences, it all seems to make sense.

[Tim Loughton]

I think that the hon. Lady is right. I shall come on to the way in which it is all joined up. “Adverse childhood experience” has become more common parlance now. Essentially, it goes back to attachment and all the stuff that Bowlby was talking about, often as a lone voice, many decades ago. However, it is true that we can now relate it to many of the challenges that we see as individual MPs and the Government see, in relation to antisocial behaviour, mental health conditions, and all the issues that have been referred to my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire and others.

I will now give way, very enthusiastically, to the hon. Member for Manchester Central.

[Lucy Powell]

I am grateful to my friend, because he has given me an opportunity to do what I did not do earlier—which was hugely remiss of me, because it was in my notes—and express my huge respect for his leadership and all the work that he does on Sure Start, children’s services and education in the all-party parliamentary group for families in the early years. I thank him for that. He is, of course, absolutely one of my favourite Members on the opposite Benches, and he will long remain so, even if I am no longer one of his.

[Tim Loughton]

I am completely recharged and relieved by that. The hon. Lady is my absolute favourite Member of Parliament for Manchester Central, and many things besides. But this debate is getting far too consensual, so I shall return to the points that I was trying to make.

The phrase “1,000 days”—or, for those whose glass is half full, “1,001 days”—is almost becoming common parlance as well, and it needs to. It needs to be almost a brand. People need to understand that those 1,001-ish days of life from conception to the age of two are the period that will have the most impact on a child’s future life. If we do not invest in the right support then, the cost of picking up the pieces later will be so much greater, both financially and, as I think everyone here recognises, socially.

I should declare an interest, in that I chair PIP UK—the Parent Infant Partnership—which was set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire. I became chairman of the trustees, and am proud still to be so. Our most recent report is “Rare Jewels”. I pay tribute to Sally Hogg, who works for PIP and who did a great deal of research on the scarcity of parent and infant mental health specialist support. That was a false economy.

I shall now be slightly unconventional, and talk about the motion. The motion is about the inter-ministerial group, and I want to talk about some of the experiences of that group. As I found during my few years as a Minister, joined-up government is a complete myth. What the group almost uniquely did, because of the vim and force of my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire, was bring together key Ministers from half a dozen key Departments to try to create joined-up solutions. A child’s mental health, and those early years affecting the child and his or her parents, are not just the preserve of the Department for Education and of children’s social care. They touch on the work of so many other Departments

I am glad that my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller) is still here. She will remember that some years ago, when I was the Children’s Minister and Sarah Teather was also an Education Minister, we tried to put together the early intervention fund, which was largely intended to bring together different interests with a pooled budget so that we could work together on smarter solutions. However, that did not really fit the way in which the civil service worked.

We struggled for some months to pull together a plan that would involve various other Departments, and we were being frustrated at every turn; so we formed a pizza club, well before my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire was on the scene. My then colleague Sarah Teather and I rang other colleagues—Housing Ministers, Health Ministers and others. I think that my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke was then a Minister in the Department for Work and Pensions. We got together in “The Adjournment” restaurant, had a pizza, agreed what we wanted to do, and all went back to our Departments in the following days and told our civil servants what we wanted to do. The response was “Well, I’m sorry but that’s not the way we do things around here, Minister”, to which our response was “Tough, we’re now doing it.” That was the only way we could actually get through an important joined-up policy because the system just did not work. I do not think things have improved much at all.

Another innovation I set up then was the Youth Action Group. Again, there were problems and I tried to youth-proof all Government policy, which is something I still bang on about. There were many problems that transcended different Departments, and yet if there was a problem, it would go from one Department to another in a vicious triangle, as it were. So I got together six major charities led by The Prince’s Trust and Barnardo’s. I co-chaired it and, at one stage, I think we had nine Ministers from nine different Departments. Invariably most of those Ministers would turn up to those meetings and the children’s charities and youth charities would bring particular problems to us. One problem was about housing benefit for looked-after children who were care leavers, which was the responsibility of the Department for Education for care, the Department for Communities and Local Government—whatever it was called in those days—for housing and the Department for Work and Pensions for benefits. We got the three Ministers together with the three lead officials and said, “Here’s the problem; can you please take it away and solve it and come back with a solution that the children and youth workers can then take away?” Alas, that group no longer exists, but we need far more of that sort of rationale and mentality in Government. The inter-ministerial group showed how it could be done, and it is so important that the work continues. I hope that the recommendations that have been made are taken up and run with.

We need a Minister for early years children and families at Cabinet level. It should not just be left to civil servants to people those committees when what we need is a co-ordinated ministerial response. This needs to be led by a high-profile Minister who has the clout, enthusiasm and drive to bring all the relevant Departments together and come up with a cross-departmental solution. I am afraid that we are still a long way from that in common practice, and that is partly what is wrong with Government and with our civil service. So that is my main plea.

On the investment equation, I am not going to repeat everything that has been said, but we know that healthy social and emotional development in the first 1,001 days means that individuals are more likely to have improved mental and physical health outcomes from cradle to grave and children will start school with the language, social and emotional skills they need to play and explore and learn. Children and young people will also be better able to understand and manage their emotions and behaviours, leading to less risky and antisocial behaviours and the costs that these bring to individuals and society, and they will have the skills they need to form trusting, healthy relationships—something we heard about in the Chamber earlier. If they had that, we would not have to spend such a lot of time teaching it to them at school because it would come naturally, and they would know what a proper quality, trusting relationship actually is. And if they know, they are much more likely to be able to hand it on and nurture their own children as they become parents in the future.

The cost of getting this wrong is huge. Some years ago—although it is still as true and important today—the Maternal Mental Health Alliance calculated the cost of getting perinatal mental health care wrong for the one in six women who will have some form of perinatal mental illness. The cost of that was £8.1 billion each and every year, and the cost of child neglect in this country is £15 billion each and every year; so £23.1 billion is the price of getting it wrong. A fraction of that spent on early intervention—well-targeted, well-timed, well-positioned by well-qualified and trained professionals—could save so much personal grief and so much financial and social grief later on.

It is not rocket science, as I constantly say; it is technically neuroscience, but it really is something we should have been doing so many years ago. The troubled families programme is the model here, and it is essential that the troubled families programme is not just retained, but expanded in the comprehensive spending review. I have always said that we need a pre-troubled families programme, because in the troubled families programme we are dealing with the symptoms of getting it wrong earlier. If we prevented those symptoms in the first place, working in those very early years, so that we have a well-balanced parent or parents with well-balanced children, they are more likely to arrive at school eager and able to learn and be contributing members of society. That is so vital. Some 28% of mothers with mental health problems report having difficulties bonding with their child. Research suggests that this initial dysfunction in the mother-baby relationship affects the child’s development by impairing the baby’s psychomotor and socio-emotional development.

Postnatal depression has also been linked with depression in fathers, and with higher rates of family breakdown. We forget the impact on fathers of not knowing how to deal with a mum—a partner—who all of a sudden has some form of postnatal mental illness. A lot of fathers are affected by this. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for St Austell and Newquay (Steve Double), who chairs the all-party parliamentary group on fatherhood, is going to talk about this. It is essential that we look at all parents, when both parents are on the scene, and give support to the family as a whole.

[Mrs Miller]

I well remember working with my hon. Friend and I remember his huge commitment in this area. If there are now more debates and discussions about child mental health, a lot of that is down to him. I should like to highlight a report that the Select Committee is doing on men’s mental health. Does he agree that the NHS needs to think long and hard about the way in which men can access mental health services? We are receiving evidence that the way in which these services are delivered is almost highly feminised, making it difficult for men to access them.

[Tim Loughton]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right. There is still this myth that it is not manly to admit to having some form of mental illness. I hope that we are getting away from the stigma of that, but we still have far to go in encouraging people. Hon. Members in this place who have come forward with their own very painful experiences have done a huge service by providing role models, as have celebrities in sport and showbusiness, and by showing that there is nothing unmanly or abnormal about coming forward when they have an illness that happens to be a mental illness, just as they would come forward if they had a physical illness. Why should there be any difference? However, we need to make it easier for men to cross that threshold in the first place. We need to ensure that they can come and talk to somebody and get checked out.

I am not going to go into the whole children’s centre argument. That is an important issue but this is not just about the bricks and mortar. However, one of my criticisms is that those places need to be much more dad-friendly, and much more imaginatively used. I have opened many children’s centres in my time, and I have seen some great ones that have football clubs on Saturday afternoons when the children’s centre is too often closed because it is a nine-to-five, Monday to Friday institution. Dads bring their kids and they play football together, then they do computers and reading with their kids afterwards. That is great bonding and co-educational time as well. Again, this is not rocket science. We need to make those places more welcoming for dads, and we need to put them in places that young fathers inhabit.

The killer statistic that I always use is that if a 15 or 16-year-old child in school has some form of depression, there is a 99% likelihood that their mother suffered from some form of mental illness during pregnancy or soon afterwards. The correlation is that close, and if we do nothing to help the mother at that early stage, we will certainly see the consequences later on. It is great that the Prime Minister has flagged up mental illness, and it is great that so much more will be happening with additional funding—not enough, but there will be additional funding—for mental health services in schools, but we need to do all this before school as well so that kids are less susceptible to mental illness problems, given all the pressures that they will face as they go through their school years. We need a much more joined-up approach.

Research by the Children’s Commissioner shows that 8,300 babies under the age of one in England currently live in a household where domestic violence, alcohol or drug dependency and severe mental illness are all present. That is a very worrying amount. That is why the Domestic Abuse Bill, which was at last introduced today, is very important, but we need to look at the impact on children as well as the impact on parents, because that trauma will be long-lasting. We tend to look at the immediate victim of domestic violence without looking at the collateral damage that it also causes. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire mentioned the horrific statistic of something like one third of domestic violence starting during pregnancy.

I will come to a conclusion shortly, Mr Deputy Speaker, although you do not look too impatient, so I might go on a bit. To join up Departments, it is crucial to have key players who are wedded and committed to the issue and who want to work to achieve solutions. Domestic violence is dealt with in the Home Office. Child sexual exploitation is now dealt with in the Home Office. There is an impact on housing, which is dealt with in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. There is an impact on justice as well. The consequences of social media—now dealt with by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport—have an impact on children’s mental health. I used to deal with most of those things in one Department when I was Children’s Minister, but they have now been dispersed across Government, and we have to bring them back together.

I will finish on the role of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and public health. Health visitors are a huge resource. One of the great achievements of the Cameron Government—I was part of the discussions in the shadow Health team when we came up with the idea—was the huge expansion of the health visitor programme. Based on the research we did in the Netherlands with the Kraamzorg programme, which showed the impact that health visitors can have at an early stage when they have good, strong engagement with new mums and dads, there was a commitment in the 2010 manifesto to increase the number of health visitors to a figure of, I think, some 4,200. By 2015, that figure had just about been achieved. Alas, since then, things have gone into reverse.

I pay tribute particularly to Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, head of the Institute of Health Visiting, who has had a major input into the work that my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire has already mentioned and the all-party parliamentary group that I chair. As the IHV recently noted, England is now at risk of sleepwalking into the loss of the health visiting service as we know it, unless urgent action is taken to address the current threats it faces. There are ongoing cuts to the public health grant, a 26% reduction in NHS- employed health visitors since 2015 and an unwarranted variation in the quality of services commissioned for families based on where they live rather than the level of need. As the IHV says, investing in the earliest years saves money in the long run and ensures that every child is supported to achieve the best start in life, yet the cuts to services in England persist at a time when inequalities are widening and infant mortality is increasing.

Health visitors are the trusted face on the doorstep. Whereas social workers are often treated with scepticism and fear when they knock on the door, the health visitor is usually welcomed over the threshold, particularly by new parents. He or she is an early warning system of some deficiency in parenting, as well as for safeguarding. It is absolutely essential that we build those numbers back up before we lose too many more of those experienced health visitors, working out of children centres or wherever—hot desking even, with social workers, with the district nurses and other welfare officers—so that they can detect and signpost families to the relevant services. They really are absolutely invaluable. Since the switch in responsibility from the NHS to local authorities—this is no detriment to local government—there has been a lack of experience in how those sorts of services are run, and therefore the issue is not treated as a priority. It is a priority and we need to get back to that.

Finally, I reiterate the recommendations made in the “Building Great Britons” report that the all-party parliamentary group produced in 2015. It was about having a joined-up Government approach to the 1,001 days; about every local authority drawing up its local plan and working with all the local agencies on how to deliver that plan for the 1,001 days, within a five-year term at least; and about having a monitoring system, which I based on the adoption scorecards that we brought in back in 2012, so that there is no place to hide and everyone has to be transparent about how they are progressing towards producing those services, compared with other parts of the country.

The solutions were in that report. We all know what needs to be done. My right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire led the way in bringing together the relevant parties and Departments to show how it could be done. Now we need to do it.

Department for Education

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 1st July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), a fellow member of the Home Affairs Committee. May I endorse her last point about children coming from Europe and assessments? However, there is a bigger issue about asylum-seeking children, who often have family connections over here. Certainly from my experience—having visited Greece, in particular, along with my right hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Nicky Morgan)—a delay is often caused by social worker assessments for the fitness of whatever accommodation those children may be coming to in the UK taking quite a long time to undertake. In the meantime, they are kept in refugee camps and in unsuitable conditions overseas. That is just another aspect of social workers, who do of course come under the Department for Education, being problematic.

School funding is the most important issue in my constituency, and in the constituencies of all hon. Members who represent West Sussex and other counties like ours that have been historically poorly funded. We are seeing the cumulative effects of many years of underfunding, to the extent that, as I have said in every debate in which I have spoken over the years, the tank is now empty. The capacity to make further savings or cuts elsewhere simply does not exist. All those savings—all that fat—went a long time ago.

We were obviously grateful for the additional £28 million that West Sussex was given, but we went from being the worst funded shire authority for schools to about the seventh worst, which means that we are still in the bottom decile. The Minister for School Standards will know from his own West Sussex constituency that the new fair funding formula is only a work in progress.

Last week’s Department for Education report referred to the fact that children in schools in coastal areas achieve several grades lower than other children, certainly at GCSE level. My constituents therefore suffer from the double whammy of being in one of the lowest funded local authorities for schools, and the serious challenge to schools in pockets of deprivation, often in coastal areas, of which there are many on the south coast as well as in other parts of the country.

I therefore ask the Minister to look again at the suggestion that I made last year—I wrote it again in my letter of 12 September to the Secretary of State—to consider a coastal schools challenge fund to examine plugging that gap in the outcomes for children in coastal constituencies. The London Challenge, which the Labour Government set up in 2003, went a long way towards plugging the gap between outcomes in London and in other parts of the country. However, it is now a problem that there is such a large gap between schools in London and those in West Sussex and other shire counties.

[Sir Nicholas Soames]

My hon. Friend has been a fantastic champion for West Sussex schools. I endorse his suggestion for a challenge fund. It is an extremely good idea and I hope that it makes some progress. He and I have sat in endless meetings with the Secretary of State and others, and he knows that the funding situation is not confined to the coastal district and that it is just as serious further inland.

[Tim Loughton]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right that the situation is not just confined to coastal areas. However, the problem is that there tend to be more deprived communities in coastal areas around the country. Seemingly affluent shire counties such as West Sussex disguise pockets of deprivation. We have high special educational needs in many of our schools and we need to focus more on bringing the funding up to at least the average in the rest of the country to give those children a better chance.

I have spoken in numerous debates on the problems that schools in my constituency face. I wrote my notorious eight-page letter to the Secretary of State last year after I had summoned all the heads of all the schools in my constituency and all the chairs of governors and asked them to tell me not what they thought might happen and their fears, but what was actually happening now. That included the reduction in teaching assistants and the fact that, with 90% of school budgets in many cases being spent on staffing, any cut means that non-staffing expenditure on, for example, maintenance and buying new computers, does not happen, and real reductions mean fewer staff, or, as happens in many cases, less qualified staff being taken on to replace experienced staff who have left to take others job, retired or gone on maternity leave.

I was particularly concerned about the cuts to counselling services in schools. As the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston said, we need a much more joined-up approach to that. I welcome the Prime Minister’s commitment to additional funding to deal with mental health needs in schools, with mental health first aiders and training for teachers and others, but we need to do so much more before children get to school. As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on conception to age 2 and the 1001 critical days campaign—I should also declare my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests—I stress that the biggest impact on a child’s brain happens in the first 1,000 days between conception and age two. That is when a child forms attachments to a parent and the brain grows exponentially. If there is not a good attachment with a parent—if the parent does not have good mental health—that child will be at a disadvantage when they get to school. It is a truism, but if we consider a 15 or 16-year-old who suffers from depression, as is now common in our schools, there is a 99% likelihood that their mother suffered from some form of mental illness during pregnancy or soon afterwards. We need to do so much more preventively earlier so that fewer children experience the mental health pressures to which too many succumb in our schools, with all the challenges that they face.

I want everything I have said in previous debates on schools funding to be taken as read. However, today’s debate is on education estimates and we neglect the fact that education funding includes provision for children’s social care. Although more than three quarters of the Department’s budget goes on day-to-day school funding, this year, some £9.1 billion will go into children’s social care through local authorities.

Children’s social care is in a state of crisis. I want to spend a few minutes dealing with that subject. Before doing so, I endorse the comments of the Chairman of the Education Committee on the problems that face further education. I know about that from colleges in my constituency and I endorse his frequent calls for a 10-year education plan to allow teachers and lecturers to plan ahead in the same way as the national health service.

There have been so many reports in recent months. The all-party parliamentary group on children, which I chair, produced “Storing Up Trouble”, which gave an alarming account of huge variations in the experiences of children coming into the care system, or not reaching the threshold for coming into the care system. In Blackpool, 166 in 10,000 children are likely in to end up in care, whereas the figure for Richmond is only 28 in every 10,000. There are differences in deprivation between Blackpool and Richmond, but by a factor of seven? The Department is not properly assimilating that sort of information and data, which our report revealed. That is one ask from our report.

There have been several reports, for example, by Action for Children, the Children’s Society and the Education Policy Institute. The Children’s Commissioner for England recently found that England now spends nearly half of its entire children’s services budget on the 75,000 children in the care system, leaving the other half for the remaining 11.7 million. The Children’s Commissioner will produce a further report at the end of this week, identifying the percentage of children in need, constituency by constituency, and asking why we are not doing more to focus on those children at an early, preventive stage.

The evidence is there. Local authorities say that they face a shortfall of at least £2 billion by 2020 in children’s social care. We have a recent record of the number of children in care at the moment. There are other issues around the funded 30-hour childcare entitlement, of which I am a big supporter. However, many of my independent providers tell me that the remuneration they get is not nearly enough to cover the cost. There is a danger of losing places, and the least well off, who most need them, will not be able to access places for their children.

I have concerns about social worker recruitment. Despite the Munro report and everything we did for the social work profession some eight or nine years ago, too many social workers are being driven out of the profession early. I also make a plea for the troubled families programme, which has its origins partly in the Department for Education. It was one of the Cameron Government’s most successful initiatives. It was about joining up the different Departments because, in a family with problems, the problems are not limited to mental health, physical health or school truancy. It is usually a combination of those and they need to be dealt with holistically. When the funding comes to an end in 2020, it is absolutely essential that the project is continued. I would like to see a pre-troubled families programme to deal with families much earlier on—from, as I said, perinatal mental illness stage onwards—so that they are less likely to express those symptoms, which then cost us so much as a society. Child neglect in this country costs £15 billion a year. Perinatal mental health problems cost some £8.1 billion a year. We are spending £23.1 billion a year on getting it wrong and dealing with the problem. That money could be used much more effectively earlier on.

My final point is to ask what has happened to the inter-departmental ministerial group, which was being chaired by the former Leader of the House, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom). That was a great initiative which brought together Ministers from six different Departments, including the Children’s Minister from the Department for Education and the Chief Secretary to Treasury, who will be conducting the comprehensive spending review. It is all about having a joined-up approach and pooling funding to make sure we put investment in to support families where they need it early on to see them through those challenging early years. That work is groundbreaking and it is absolutely essential that it continues. Perhaps the Minister can update us on where it has got to. It is essential that it is a major component of the comprehensive spending review, so that we stop wasting money dealing with the symptoms of failure and start investing upstream to prevent the huge social problems that bring about huge financial problems. If we get that right, it will be better for all our children and young people.

We need more money for our schools. I am glad that all the leadership candidates and the Prime Minister recognise that, but please do not forget children’s social care. If we do, the problems of dealing with children with problems when they arrive at school will be far higher and far more challenging than if we sorted them out before they are even born.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

I am aware of the pressures that schools are under, and I am very happy to come to Durham. I went to university there and would be happy to make a nostalgic trip back. I meet two or three times a week with groups of headteachers brought here by Government Members as well as Opposition Members to discuss these issues. I am fully aware of the pressures that schools are under as a result of the increased costs they face from national insurance and other issues. We take these issues seriously and will take forward a well-configured spending review as we enter the next spending review period.

We are committed to directing this school funding where it is needed most. This is why, since April last year, we have started to distribute funding to schools through the new national funding formula. The formula is a fairer way to distribute school funding because each area’s allocation takes into account the individual needs and characteristics of its schools and pupils, not accidents of geography or history—not, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow put it, on the basis of a postcode lottery.

Schools are already benefiting from the gains delivered by the national funding formula, which provides every local authority with more money for every pupil in every school, while allocating the biggest increases to the schools that have been most underfunded. This year, the most historically underfunded schools will attract increases of up to 6% compared with 2017-18. My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) raised concerns about the historical unfairness of funding in West Sussex, of which, of course, I am well aware. As he will know, the new national funding formula has sought to address that unfairness. That is why it was introduced, why schools in his constituency are attracting 5.5% more per-pupil funding in 2019 than they did in 2017-18, and why West Sussex as a whole has received a £33.5 million increase since that period.

[Tim Loughton]

As I said earlier, the extra funding is welcome, but it takes us from the bottom of the last decile to the top. A moment ago, my right hon. Friend mentioned a balanced approach. Will he at least make some mention of children’s social care? So far he has not mentioned it once, although it is the issue on which I focused most of my speech.

[Nick Gibb]

I hope to deal with that issue in due course. However, when we are putting together a league table of local authorities, if we ensure that the funding system is fair, the funding will reflect the level of prosperity of a particular local authority area. Someone has to be at the top and someone has to be at the bottom of a league table showing funding per authority. However, our national funding formula system is fair, because it allocates three quarters of the funds on the basis of the same figure for every pupil and the rest on the basis of the needs of those pupils, which I think is absolutely right. The principles of the formula attracted widespread support when we consulted on it.

Our commitment to helping all children to reach their full potential applies just as strongly to children with special educational needs and disabilities, and we know that schools share that commitment. We have therefore reformed the funding system to take particular account of children and young people with additional needs. We recognise the concerns that have been expressed about the costs of high-needs provision, an issue raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham. We have increased overall funding allocations to local authorities year on year, and high-needs funding will be £6.3 billion this year, up from £5 billion in 2013. That includes the £250 million that we announced in December 2018 for high-needs funding. However, we understand the real, systemic increase in pressure, and it will be a priority for us in the forthcoming spending review.

We also want to ensure that the funding system for those children and young people works effectively, so that money reaches the right places at the right time. That was raised by the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle. In May we launched a call for evidence to gather the information necessary to make improvements where they are needed, so that the financial arrangements help headteachers to provide for pupils with special educational needs. We have paid particular attention to the operation and use of mainstream schools’ notional special educational needs budget of up to £6,000, which was an issue of concern to my hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield.

My hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham, a former children’s Minister, raised the issue of children’s social care. I said that I would come to it, and this is the point at which I have done so. All children, no matter where they live, should have access to the support that they need to keep them safe, provide them with a stable and nurturing home, and enable them to overcome challenges to achieve their potential. The Government are committed to improving outcomes for children who need help and protection. Our children’s social care reform programme is working to deliver a highly capable, highly skilled social workforce, high-performing services everywhere, and a national system of excellent and innovative practice. We recognise that local authorities are delivering children’s services in a challenging environment, and are having to take on those challenges.

We are making big steps in relation to our schoolteacher workforce. We have provided more than half a billion pounds through a new teachers’ pay grant of £187 million last year and £321 million this year, and we remain committed to attracting even more world-class teachers. We also continue to focus rigorously on the curriculum to ensure that children are prepared for adult life. We have reformed GCSEs and have introduced the EBacc, which encourages the uptake of subjects that provide a sound basis for a variety of careers for those over 16. Since our reforms began in 2010, entry levels for EBacc science have increased dramatically, from 63% in 2010 to 95% in 2018.

The Government have achieved a huge amount since 2010. There are 1.9 million more children in good or outstanding schools, the attainment gap between rich and poor pupils has shrunk by 10%, a record proportion of disadvantaged students are going to university, and we are developing a truly world-class technical education system through T-levels and high-quality apprenticeships. However, there is still much work to be done, and as we look to future funding settlements beyond 2020, we must ensure that the momentum does not slip.

Question deferred (Standing Order No. 54(4)).

Murders in Northamptonshire: Serious Case Reviews

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 10th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I think—I hope—I have been clear in saying that I recognise there are funding pressures on children’s services. I am working with the director of children’s services and the sector as a whole in preparation for the spending review. However, to simply characterise this as a funding issue would be misleading. We have to do both things. We have to have a whole-system approach. We are learning from the best—Leeds, North Yorkshire and Hertfordshire—and scaling those models from those three local authorities to 20. We also have to look at the workforce, and by introducing the national accreditation assessment process and Social Work England we begin to deliver a system that really does work to protect the most vulnerable children and families in our society.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I speak as a former Minister who changed the rules so that SCRs are published. The regulations are clear that if publication would compromise the welfare of a surviving child or sibling, they should be kept confidential. From reading these serious case reviews, I feel that there is a profound sense of déjà vu when they talk about the lack of joined-up working and the lack of information, showing lost opportunities. Last year, the Minister announced that he was going to change serious case reviews and the local safeguarding children’s boards who commission them. They will be replaced by team safeguarding partners, which consist of local authorities, clinical commissioning groups and the police. The only agency that seems to have rung the alarm bells in this case was the schools attended by the siblings of the victims. Why are schools and education not part of those essential team partners in the new format?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

My hon. Friend is absolutely passionate about work in this area. Schools and other local partners are involved and engaged, but the purpose of the legislation was to make sure that health, police and social services work together. However, he raises an important point about how we can make sure that schools are much more involved.

School Funding

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 25th April 2019 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

There is a real sense of déjà vu about this debate. My hon. Friend the Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) had a debate on 24 October, as she said, and there was an estimates day debate on 26 February and then another debate on 4 March, after the big petition. Like my hon. Friend, I spoke in all those debates, but the situation remains the same, so I pay tribute to her perseverance. I also pay tribute to all our teachers for the huge challenge that they face. Hopefully, they are currently busy nurturing our pupils, not neutering them, as my hon. Friend suggested earlier.

I shall pick up where I left off: the last time around in Westminster Hall, I was rudely interrupted after just four minutes of speaking. I had generously given way to interventions, only for the scorers not to credit me with the extra injury time. I am happy to take interventions this time, if the scorers are awake. At that time, I described the funding crisis in schools as a national emergency; alas, nothing has changed. West Sussex was at the bottom of the fourth quartile for funding; after the changes to the national funding formula, we are still in the bottom quartile. That is why, of the 25,222 responses to the consultation on the fair funding formula, no less than 9% were representations from West Sussex. Although I cannot speak for the Minister, who is also a West Sussex MP, I can, then, speak for my hon. Friend the Member for Worthing West (Sir Peter Bottomley) and other West Sussex MPs.

As I have said before, I went to see all the headteachers—I got them all together—and all the chairs of governors in my constituency so that they could give me real-life examples of the funding challenges facing them now. They did not give scare stories or tell me about prospective challenges, but told me about what they are facing now. As a result of that, I wrote an eight-page letter to the Secretary of State to set out many of the problems, to which I shall refer in a moment.

First, let me mention two new things. I was recently asked to go and see some nursery school providers in my constituency. I thought I was meeting two or three, but 50 turned up. There are serious problems with how the 30 hours’ funded childcare—it is not free but funded—is being reimbursed to independent nurseries. Some 81% of children in non-domestic settings are in independent nurseries, of which 90% say that the reimbursement does not cover the full costs of that provision. Many are at risk of having to turn away some of the most deprived families. Nursery closures were up 66% in the past year and 5,000 places have been lost. It is a false economy not to fund important pre-school settings properly.

Secondly, the Minister might want to comment on the future of the pupil premium in the light of a report from the Sutton Trust. Will we make sure that the pupil premium is part of the new funding round? There are concerns that increasingly the pupil premium is being used, particularly in the more deprived schools, to plug gaps in the school budget, rather than to fund the pupils who specifically need it.

[Robert Halfon]

My hon. Friend was a brilliant children’s Minister and knows an enormous amount about this subject. He mentioned the pupil premium; does he agree that how it is used should be much more accountable? The Government need to look into whether it is working and how the money is being spent, because it should be spent on the most disadvantaged pupils.

[Tim Loughton]

That is absolutely right. Before my right hon. Friend became its Chair, the Education Committee did a report and found out that the pupil premium was not going to those pupils for whom it was absolutely intended, and for whom it was absolutely essential to make sure that they could close the gap with the children who did not qualify for it.

Another issue that I wish to raise with the Minister again—I did not get a proper reply the previous time—is the justification for schools having to fund out of their own budget the 2% pay rise in salaries this year. That is a significant hit on our schools. In February, the Government said in their paper on school costs that schools could be far more efficient and save a lot of money if they had better procurement methods, but the trouble is that in many of my local schools the staffing budget now accounts for something like 90% of the school budget. The savings the Government describe can be made only against soft costs, which are going up by 2% because of the salary award. I really do want an explanation of how the Department expects schools to pick up the bill for that additional 2% out of school funding, given all the other competing challenges they have.

Let me refer to a few of the points that came out of my roundtable meetings in my constituency. Shortfalls are being clawed back by reducing staffing costs, which in some cases account for 90% of a school’s budget, as I said. In one medium-sized primary school, teaching assistant support has been reduced by more than 200 hours. The school has reduced its budget for continuing personal development training for staff, and its inclusion co-ordinator has not been replaced.

At a junior school, the professional development budget, which in previous years was between £3,500 and £5,000, is now zero. The extended curriculum budget, which was between £19,000 and £20,000 in previous years, is now £500. The learning resources budget, which was up to £120,000, is now just £35,000.

At a medium-sized primary school in my constituency, high-level teaching assistants are being used to cover classes so that the school can cut supply-staff costs. The school is unable to pay overtime. Counselling levels have fallen, which I am particularly concerned about. We know about the support that school-age children need because of the pressures on mental health from social media, peer pressure and other things. If we do not have that in-school support, it will be a false economy because the children involved will not be able or prepared to take advantage of their education.

There are real problems in special schools. This year, there will be at least nine more pupils at one special school in my constituency than there were in the previous year, but there will be no additional teaching staff. These are specialist schools with high-demand pupils getting no more teaching staff to help to look after them.

A secondary academy in my constituency has had to narrow the curriculum on offer to cut costs. The school is unable to meet the demand for counselling—there is currently a four-month waiting list. A small primary school is reducing swimming lessons and music lessons. All these are real-life examples of the effect of this funding now. It is essential that the comprehensive spending review this year does something about this situation urgently.

--- Later in debate ---

[Scott Mann (North Cornwall) (Con)]

Meur ras, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair today.

Investment in education is one of my priorities for North Cornwall and of special interest to me personally as a champion of social mobility. North Cornwall is a prime example of an area that has been historically overlooked compared with urban areas by Governments of all colours over the past 50 years, to the detriment of the life chances of children and young people who grow up in that beautiful part of the country.

The London challenge policy saw a huge investment in urban areas in 2003. Although it is difficult to isolate the impact of the policy, it is undeniable that attainment levels went up when the overall funding packages were introduced in those areas. The policy saw a budget of £40 million a year for London, Greater Manchester and the Black Country at its peak. My issue is that the children of Lanivet, Launceston and Bodmin could and should have had the same resources at the same time, and would have benefited from the uplift.

I mention the London challenge because despite the policy coming to an end there is still a huge disparity between education investment in urban and in rural areas. Cornwall is part of a group of 42 local authorities that have historically received some of the lowest allocations for primary and secondary pupils across the country. I am taking part in this debate on behalf of some of the headteachers who have spoken to me about their concerns.

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend makes a very important point about the London challenge. It was a very successful investment, but its legacy is the huge gap in per capita funding for pupils in our constituencies. Does he agree that coastal constituencies such as his and mine, where there are pockets of deprivation, need a similar scheme to recognise the deprivation alongside the advantage, just as happened in London, but in a different way?

School Funding

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Much like Elizabeth Taylor’s latest husband said, it is difficult to bring something new to a debate that we have had so many times. There is a real sense of déjà vu, and the number of Members present shows the extent of the problem up and down the country.

Having spoken in just about every other debate on this subject for some time, I want to bring one new thing to the debate today, which is that the forthcoming recommended 2% pay increase for teachers is going to have a serious effect on the already fragile budgets of many of our schools. Last year, 1% was to be funded by schools, with the rest largely funded by central Government; this year, responsibility for funding the full 2% will fall on schools, whose budgets are already highly stretched. When I tabled a question to the Minister, asking what sustainability criteria had been taken into account, I was sent a circular that said:

“we know there is considerable scope for schools to improve their efficiency and use of resources…our”—

the Department for Education’s—

“high-level analysis indicates that if the 25% of schools spending the highest amounts on each category of non-staff expenditure were instead spending at the level of the rest, this could save over £1 billion that could be spent on improving teaching.”

The problem is that over many years, certainly in West Sussex and in my constituency, schools have taken all their surplus expenditure out of the system. In some cases, they are now spending over 90% of their budget on staffing, which leaves a tiny pot from which those schools can supposedly take further savings to pay for that increase. That is going to be a problem. Running schools, or paying for pupils in our schools, has not got any cheaper since last year.

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Tim Loughton]

I will give way very quickly, if I get an extra minute.

[Mr Bailey]

On the issue of pressure on teacher’s pay, I have had a communication from a headteacher in my constituency about the upcoming 40% increase in teachers’ pension contributions. Teachers in my constituency are absolutely desperate, because they do not know how they are going to fund those contributions within the existing levels of teaching grant and budget support.

[Tim Loughton]

Indeed; I mentioned just one aspect of the further upcoming expenditure and pressure. I will not take any more interventions, because I do not seem to have got an extra minute for that one, so that was probably a mistake.

Last year, I got together all the chairs of governors from all the schools in my constituency to tell me, in real-life terms, what impact the funding pressures were having on their schools. I did a similar exercise with all the headteachers. A lot of national figures and a lot of misinformation have been thrown at us from all sides, and some of the campaigns in our constituencies have been highly politicised. Simply because I put a DFE press release on my website, one head of a secondary school in my constituency wrote to all the parents of the children in his school castigating me, despite my having been in every single debate on this subject and having stood side by side with parents, teachers and others to get fairer funding. Politicising those campaigns does not help. If we are going to get a better deal, we need to work together with heads, parents and governors, as I have been trying to do.

Rather than all sorts of misinformation, I got hard information and I wrote an eight-page letter, which I am happy to give to all hon. Members, about the impacts that funding pressures are having on our schools. Shortfalls are being clawed back by reducing staffing costs, which in some cases account for 90% of a school’s budget. Senior leadership teams are covering classes. Extracurricular activities and trips are being culled, and certain subjects are being taken off the curriculum altogether. In one school, teaching assistant support has been reduced by over 200 hours. Higher level teaching assistants are being used to cover classes so that school cuts’ effects on supply staff are lessened, and I am afraid that in some cases, quality is being compromised. Just today, I got an email from the head of a primary school in my constituency, which said:

“We have a long waiting list of children who benefit from work with a therapist (who works here two days a week), she has had a great deal of success with children with social and emotional needs; we are not sure if we can maintain her hours. The danger is that some of these children who could and would have been able to engage and flourish in education and society will end up costing society a great deal more than the adequate funding of their needs in school”

because they are missing out.

This is a national emergency. In West Sussex, it has been an emergency for some years. We need to have fair funding now; it is a false economy for our children if we do not.