Conception to Age 2: The First 1001 Days

Debate between Tim Loughton and Barry Sheerman

Thursday 17th December 2015 Commons Chamber

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

Old Whip’s habits die hard, but we accept the overtures of the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen).

I beg to move,

That this House calls on the Government to consider the adoption of the recommendations in the cross-party manifesto entitled The 1001 Critical Days, the importance of the conception to age two period.

In this my seventh contribution of the day, let me wish you a happy Christmas, Madam Deputy Speaker, when it eventually starts. I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving us this important debate, particularly as it is so close to the launch of this excellent manifesto, which I will also be promoting today. I know that every single Member in this Chamber and beyond has been sent a copy of it. I am also grateful to those Members who have stayed for the final debate on the last day before the Christmas recess.

It is perhaps appropriate that the final debate should be about babies and conception to age two just eight days before we celebrate the birth of one particular baby, albeit the subject of an immaculate conception and in which the confusion over paternity, a somewhat unprepared and astounded mother and inadequate birthing facilities could have given rise in normal circumstances to some attachment dysfunction problems.

It is good to see the Minister for Community and Social Care here. I know that his door is well and truly open to what we have been promoting. It is particularly good to see my old great friend the Minister of State in the Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom). I wish to pay tribute to her. Effectively, she conceived this whole manifesto, gestated it and gave birth to it, and has done so much to champion the cause of early years attachment and perinatal mental health in this House and for many years before she came to this House. She continues to combine her advocacy with her new day job in DECC. She championed “The 1001 Critical Days” manifesto, which is now three years old and which was relaunched this week with more support and recognition than ever before.

On Monday, no fewer than 200 people came to the House of Commons Terrace to support this manifesto. Those present included academics, senior practitioners in paediatric and mental health, commissioners, voluntary organisations and politicians of all parties. It is particularly gratifying that the manifesto has now been sponsored by Members from eight different parties across the House. There really is a genuine cross-party consensus to promote this manifesto.

There has been big progress since the manifesto was launched in 2012 and promoted in the party conferences in 2013. The manifesto is now becoming part of the mainstream. It was supported at its launch and continues to be supported by the WAVE Trust—I pay particular tribute to George Hosking and all the work that he has done well before our time in the House—the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, and PIP, the parent and infant partnership charity. I declare an interest as the chairman of the trustees.

PIP is putting the “The 1001 Critical Days” manifesto into practical action through children’s centres around the country and changing the mindsets of commissioners. Our projects started in Oxford with OxPIP. We now have NorPIP in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire, projects in Enfield and Liverpool, and others in Brighton, Croydon and Newcastle coming online in the near future. We want to spread that network across the whole country.

It is crucial to change mindsets in relation to how we intervene early and reconfigure our health—particularly mental health—services, education and children’s social care services to intervene earlier to prevent the causes of poor mental health for mother and baby from leading to indisputable life disadvantages that become mired in a vicious cycle of intergenerational underachievement. The alternative is that we continue to firefight the symptoms at great cost to our society both financially and, more importantly, socially.

The Government have made good progress, largely through the troubled families programme, in acknowledging that if we recognise the problems of dysfunctional families early and intervene with intensive focus and joined-up support we can often get those families back on track and convert them to balanced, contributing members of society, rather than a huge challenge to it and drain on it. I am proud to have been involved with that work when it was started in the Department for Education in my time as a Minister there.

But we need to go further, with what I have termed a “pre-troubled families programme”. That is, in effect, what the “The 1001 Critical Days” manifesto is about, and this is why. Last year the Maternal Mental Health Alliance, so ably led by Dr Alain Gregoire, produced a report which estimated that the cost of perinatal mental illness at more than £8 billion for each one-year cohort of births in the United Kingdom. That is equivalent to a cost of almost £10,000 for every single British birth. Nearly three quarters of this cost relates to adverse impacts on the child, rather than the mother. Perinatal mental health problems are very common, affecting up to 20% of women at some point during and after pregnancy, yet about half of all cases of perinatal depression and anxiety go undetected and many of those which are detected fail to receive evidence-based forms of treatment.

As the Minister well knows, the current provision of services is patchy at best, with significant variations in coverage and quality around the country. Most alarmingly, just 3% of clinical commissioning groups in England have a strategy for commissioning perinatal mental health services and a large majority still have no plans to develop one. I am sure that with the new Minister’s laser-like focus and zeal, and the fact that NHS England has adopted perinatal mental health as a priority, this will start to change soon.

Why does this matter? Apart from the obvious major public health epidemic going largely under-appreciated at its extreme, the statistics are alarming. Just last week a report by the maternal research group MBRRACE, analysing maternal deaths between 2011 and 2013, found that one in four of those deaths between six weeks and one year after giving birth were linked to mental health issues, one in seven were a result of suicide, and mental health problems were instrumental in the deaths of one in 11 new mothers within the first six weeks after giving birth. At this extreme the figures are shocking, but they are also largely preventable with better and early detection and intervention, yet 40% of those women who committed suicide in that timescale would not have been able to access any specialist perinatal mental health care in their areas.

For those who lived through pregnancy and the early years of a baby with a mental illness, the impact on that child can be considerable. Another major negative impact might be substance abuse, poor parenting skills—often inherited as a result of a young mum being poorly parented herself—and being exposed to domestic violence. Incredibly, more than a third of domestic violence cases begin in pregnancy. This is a statistic that many of us would find hard to believe. Sadly, these negative influences are all too prevalent among new parents. Those is by no means a problem limited to those from poorer backgrounds. Parents unable to form a strong attachment with a new baby come from all parts of society, and we need a multifaceted approach for detection and intervention at all levels.

Children need nurturing from the earliest age. From birth to age 18 months, it has been calculated that connections in the brain are created at a rate of a million per second. The earliest experiences shape a baby’s brain development, literally, and have a lifelong impact on that baby’s mental and emotional health.

A pregnant mother suffering from stress can sometimes pass on to her unborn baby the message that the world will be dangerous, and the child might struggle with many social and emotional problems as a result; their responses to experiences of fear or tension have been set to danger and high alert. That will also occur at any time during the first 1001 days when a baby is exposed to overwhelming stress from any cause within the family, such as parental mental illness, maltreatment or exposure to domestic violence.

Attachment is the name given to the bond that a baby makes with his or her care givers or parents. There is long-standing evidence that a baby’s social and emotional development is affected by his or her attachment to his or her parents. As the chief medical officer, Sally Davies, puts it in her foreword endorsing “The 1001 Critical Days”:

“The early years of life are a crucial period of change; alongside adolescence this is a key moment for brain development. As our understanding of the science of development improves, it becomes clearer and clearer how the events that happen to children and babies lead to structural changes that have life-long ramifications. Science is helping us to understand how love and nurture by caring adults is hard wired into the brains of children.”

The all-party group for conception to age two—the first 1001 days, which I have the privilege of chairing, produced a report in February called “Building Great Britons”. That, too, was sent to every hon. Member and it complemented “The 1001 Critical Days”. The report calculated the cost of child neglect to be some £15 billion each and every year. When combined with perinatal mental illness, that makes a cost of more than £23 billion every year for getting it wrong for our youngest children and their parents. That is equivalent to two thirds of the annual defence budget.

In concentrating on perinatal mental illness in young mums, it is also important to stress how a child benefits most from forming strong and empathetic attachments with both parents. We should not forget that 39% of first-time fathers also experience high levels of distress during a child’s first year. We need a strong whole-family approach, and it is especially important to get that strong attachment with fathers in the second year of a child’s life as well.

Another big problem in this country is that it has been calculated that 1 million children suffer from the type of problems—attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, conduct disorder and so on—that are clearly increased by antenatal depression, anxiety and stress. Yet the cost of appropriate and timely intervention and support has been calculated at a fraction of the annual cost of failure. It equates to roughly £1.3 million per annum for an average clinical commissioning group with a budget of around £500 million.

The “Building Great Britons” report calculated that preventing these adverse childhood experiences could reduce hard drug use later in life by 59%, incarceration by 53%, violence by 51%, and unplanned teen pregnancies by 38%. It is not rocket science—technically, it is neuroscience. More and more people are coming to realise that this is an investment that we cannot afford not to make.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. He and I have worked on children’s issues for a very long time. This is a brilliant initiative. As we are listening to his brilliant analysis, we have to consider whether we have the right skills in the communities. Are we training people the right way? Are we depending too much on people with PhDs in educational psychology, rather than on trained people based in GP surgeries who can identify problems and support families at an early stage?

[Tim Loughton]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his support. He has been working on this stuff for even longer than I have and has great experience. We need to ensure that we are training the people who know about this stuff, appreciate its importance and know how to communicate with other professionals to have a joined-up approach. There is too much silo thinking going on. When Minister and shadow Minister, I saw families who seemed to be having all sorts of different professionals going in and out of the house but no joined-up approach to bring it all together and make the difference that the family needed.

We also need those professionals to be able to work with the parents, and to be able to communicate and empathise with them, because ultimately it is the parents who will have the biggest influence on the children. They need to be guided and supported. The state needs to take over only in extreme circumstances in which children might be at harm. We need to do more to ensure that parents know what good parenting looks like and are able to do it.

That is why “The 1001 Critical Days” manifesto is so important. It is not simply a political wish list; it has been endorsed by a very wide cross-section of children’s organisations, charities, practitioners, and academic and professional bodies, including the royal colleges of paediatrics and child health, midwives, psychiatrists, obstetricians and gynaecologists, and general practitioners; the NSPCC; Bliss; the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships; and the Centre for Social Justice. The Institute of Health Visiting said:

“As far as health visitors are concerned, the 1001 Critical Days Manifesto may yet prove to be one of the most important developments of the new millennium. It has created a long overdue focus on the essential first days of life when the blue print for an individual’s future health and wellbeing is laid down.”

I will not go into great detail about what the manifesto calls for, because every hon. Member has received a copy. In essence, it is about allowing vulnerable families to access specialist services; working closely together to share vital data between the different agencies I have spoken about; and making sure that every woman with past or present serious mental illness should have access to a consultant perinatal psychiatrist and specialist support in relation to mother-infant interaction, as required and in accordance with existing National Institute for Health and Care Excellence guidelines.

The manifesto has a truly holistic approach involving many Government Departments and agencies at a national level and a local level. In essence, it is about changing mindsets so that that should be the approach we ordinarily have and take for granted, because it is the right one. The aim is that “The 1001 Critical Days” becomes a recognised term with a recognised programme being delivered across every community, focused on children’s centres. I know that the Minister is already on board with this aim, and I urge him to promote and champion its adoption to his colleagues across Government. I commend the motion to the House.

National Citizen Service

Debate between Tim Loughton and Barry Sheerman

Wednesday 16th July 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mr Sheerman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman. I shall point us to the direction I want to go in. There is complacency about our democracy. From studying history, we know that when we become complacent about our history and learning its lessons, problems emerge—extremist politics of various kinds. If there is a vacuum, there is a danger, historically, that something will fill it.

Perhaps we do not have anything like the extremes of left or right that we had in the Europe in the 1930s, which Michael Oakeshott wrote so vividly about at that time, but we have a serious problem of engagement, and we also have much higher migration than we used to. It is true—it would be nonsense for Opposition Members to deny and not address this fact—that many people come to this country. They want to learn about the country, be good citizens and be absorbed into the culture of this country, and they get very few opportunities to learn.

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

I absolutely share the hon. Gentleman’s ambition. As one of the architects of the National Citizen Service, which I thought he was talking about, I wonder whether he acknowledges that the NCS, which this year will, hopefully, take 90,000 kids through its programme, has a much higher proportion of children from free school meals and deprived backgrounds, and from black and minority ethnic backgrounds, and is providing just that degree of social mix? There can be a kid from Eton on one end of a rope and a kid from the youth justice system, from east London, on the other end, and, as I have seen with my own eyes, they are entirely reliant on each other. In other circumstances, they would never have come together, and that is what is being achieved.

[Mr Sheerman]

This is becoming embarrassing, Mr Caton. There are all these Members from across the House whom I have become accustomed to working with closely on various issues. I agree with that point, too.

I come to the nub of what I am saying. I am not criticising the existing service, but we are a bit complacent, in that we think it is enough. I do not think that it is enough. I go to many university campuses and talk to students. Everyone thinks that if people enter higher education, if they go to college, they learn something about this country, but all the evidence is that very often they do not. They might go to study physics, architecture, design or foreign languages, but my experience is that, even in the higher education sector, very little time is spent talking about the culture and nature of this country, the nature of democracy and the nature of a parliamentary democracy in particular.

What also worries me is that when, as Chair of the former Select Committee on Education and Skills, I looked at the way in which citizenship was taught in schools, I found that it was not very good at all. We visited many schools, and too often that was the situation with citizenship, despite all the brave efforts of my right hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Mr Blunkett) and all the other efforts that were made. What we found on the ground was the old story of the PE teacher who does not have a heavy timetable being asked to teach citizenship. There was no training, no back-up and no real curriculum. We found that it was very lacking.

The one exception—the one bright star—was the Blue school in Bath and Wells. It had innovated and created the Learning to Lead campaign. We were so keen on the Learning to Lead campaign that I persuaded the Edge Foundation to give it £100,000, and I believe that it is now in nearly 150 schools. It really works, because it changes and suffuses the nature of the school and teaches people about how democracy works.

Cyber-bullying

Debate between Tim Loughton and Barry Sheerman

Tuesday 3rd December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

And of course, as Members of Parliament, we know all too well that, for members of the press—not too many are present in the Press Gallery today—such activities are often part of their job description.

The internet affects everybody’s lives. It is un-cool, as we have heard, not to be on the internet or not to have the latest internet-enabled mobile device. Research by the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has shown that almost 40% of our young people are affected by cyber-bullying. A survey by Nominet, which has done a lot of work in this area, showed that 65% of young people have experienced online bullying, or “trolling”, or know somebody else who has. For ChildLine, which is part of the NSPCC, bullying is the second most important issue, accounting for more than 10% of the counselling sessions arising out of the referrals it receives.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The hon. Gentleman and I have worked on many children’s issues together, and he will remember that the commission on stalking on which we worked found that this terrible use of the internet was destroying people’s lives. Is it not good news that we quickly got the law changed on stalking? People said that it could not be stopped, but we proved that it could be. Now, that same commission is being re-formed to look at cyber-bullying, I hope with the same success.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Gentleman is right. A recent debate in this place showed what can be done when we put our minds to it and listen to people who have solutions, rather than always listening to those who focus on the problems.

The Department for Education’s own research shows that 30% of secondary school-aged children have been deliberately targeted, threatened or humiliated by abuse on mobile phones or the internet. Cyber-bullying is an even more cowardly form of what we might have known as playground bullying, because it often hides behind anonymity, done by people in the comfort of their own bedroom. However, the psychological effects can be every bit as damaging as physical, face-to-face bullying, and such bullying has the capacity to be spread cancer-like among a much wider body of peers, at the press of a button. It can undermine a young person’s confidence and self-esteem, at a time when they are still finding their own identity. It can lead to depression, truancy, self-harm and even suicide; to a fear of returning to school to face one’s friends, who may be the authors of some of this cyber-bullying; and to a feeling of being permanently unsafe.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Gentleman is right. It takes an extraordinary mentality to want to use the fantastic technology of the internet to abuse and, ultimately, to cause harm and even death. This is perhaps similar to those people who invent computer viruses and get a kick out of causing huge inconvenience and misery to large numbers of people.

I have been a bit gloomy so far, but I want to end by mentioning a few of the good things. Good progress has been made. The work of the Prime Minister and the Government internationally with the FBI on promoting filters and using greater powers to remove harmful images from the internet is very welcome. The profile of the problem has certainly been raised, which is also welcome. We now have better guidance on e-safety in schools, although my complaint is that that focuses too much on the mechanics of the technology and not enough on the ethics of what is good and not good and what cannot be trusted on the internet.

The Department for Education has awarded £4 million-worth of grants to BeatBullying, the Diana Award, Kidscape and the National Children’s Bureau, all of which are excellent organisations doing some really good practical stuff, but it is a drop in the ocean when we consider how many hundreds of millions of people are using social media. The Education Act 2011 gives teachers greater powers to search for and delete inappropriate images on electronic devices, which is welcome, as is the fact that Ofsted should now be inspecting behaviour as part of its assessment of schools and looking closely at the effectiveness of internal policies to prevent bullying and cyber-bullying. I also welcome the additional funding to enable the Internet Watch Foundation to use its new powers to take down inappropriate sites.

There is more that we need to do, however. We need to empower parents and pupils. We need to ensure that schools not only educate the kids but invite the parents in so that they can learn what the kids have learnt, so that they know what to look out for when they go back home. This is just like healthy eating: schools are very good at giving kids healthier meals and telling them about healthy eating, only to let them go home and be stuffed full of pies by parents who do not have the right attitude. We also need more in-your-face guidance from the Government, through the Department for Education and the Home Office, about the real dangers of what is going on.

[Mr Sheerman]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that it is always possible to recognise a school that has a big question mark hanging over it when its head teacher says, “My responsibility ends at the school gate”? It could never end there in relation to bullying, because the bullies used to hang out on the street outside. Bullying of that kind, and bullying on the internet, must be tackled by head teachers managing their schools properly.

Child Protection

Debate between Tim Loughton and Barry Sheerman

Thursday 12th September 2013 Commons Chamber

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

I beg to move,

That this House has considered child protection in the UK.

I am grateful to the Backbench Business Committee for giving Members the opportunity to debate this important subject. As a precautionary measure, I declare my related interests as in the register.

As I have said on many occasions, opportunities to debate and air issues of child protection or of children generally are frustratingly rare, as I found in opposition and as Minister with responsibility for these matters, so today’s debate is welcome. It is particularly important because child protection and child abuse, in its different forms, have probably never had a higher profile, and have never triggered such a response and awareness among the public at large, which is probably the one compensation of the whole sordid Jimmy Savile affair. That is why, a year on from Savile, I and other hon. Members requested a debate on child protection.

The extraordinary turn of events started to unravel almost a year ago when the media heralded a modest but game-changing ITV documentary—produced by Mark Williams-Thomas, to whom I pay tribute for what he has set in motion as a result—which first tentatively suggested that Jimmy Savile had abused teenage girls as young as 13. It seemed incredible that the semi-beatified, spangly shell-suited former Bevin boy, “Top of the Pops” doyen, children’s TV icon and multi-charity philanthropist had so successfully hidden his alter ego as a serious sexual predator, and a pretty prolific and grubby one at that. The rest, of course, is history. The initial Guardian headline about some 10 female victims having come forward was one of its more glaring underestimates. The number of victims was then upgraded to some 300, some of them possibly as young as nine years old, and the figure is now in excess of 600. The ramifications for the BBC, for the rest of the establishment and for the public profile of child abuse, however, have been huge. It is worth briefly reviewing what has come to light over the past year.

There has been Operation Yewtree, which concentrated on the Savile case—600 people have come forward as having been abused by Jimmy Savile over a 60-year period. There are records of people who said that they were turned away when they reported abuse suffered at his hands. Six former police officers admitted that they were aware of Savile’s behaviour, with extensive evidence of cover-ups and withholding of information leading to abuse continuing over such a long period, including against children, teenage fans and kids in hospitals and care homes. We have seen the recent conviction of Stuart Hall for assaults spanning some 18 years on at least 13 girls, and a panoply of assorted comedians, publicists, entertainers, soap stars and childhood icons at various stages of arrest, investigation or facing court. Senior heads have rolled at the BBC, and its inquiry is said to have cost the licence fee payer in excess of £10 million already.

Operation Pallial has investigated the original claims of historical abuse at children’s homes in north Wales going back to the ’60s, ’70s, ’80s and ’90s. There has been a review by Mrs Justice Macur of the terms of the Waterhouse inquiry into the abuse of children in care in Gwynedd and Clwyd council areas. Operation Fernbank was established to focus on claims of sexual abuse and the grooming of children involving parties for men at the former Elm guest house in south-west London in the ’70s and ’80s. Operation Fernbridge has been launched as a result of allegations arising from Operation Fernbank. The Independent revealed on 9 June that seven officers are pursuing more than 300 lines of inquiry.

There are a number of inquiries involving children being abused in schools. Operation Flamborough is investigating alleged assaults on girls with learning difficulties at a Hampshire boarding school. At Carlekemp in North Berwick, a feeder primary school to Fort Augustus Abbey Catholic school has been linked to abuse allegations, as has Fort Augustus Abbey itself. There have been abuse allegations in relation to Kesgrave Hall school, near Ipswich. At Chetham’s music school in Manchester, a former director of music and his wife were found guilty of indecently assaulting Frances Andrade, who, tragically, was driven to take her own life after being subjected to harsh cross-examination during the trial, having been labelled a fantasist and attention seeker and advised not to seek counselling during the trial. There have been allegations of sexual abuse in many other music schools, including the Yehudi Menuhin school in Surrey, and schools in Edinburgh and Somerset. But it does not stop there.

In the diocese of Chichester, in my part of the country, retired priests have been charged with sexual offences. The diocese has had four inquiries into child abuse in the past four years, including a formal visitation from the Archbishop of Canterbury and a report written by the noble Baroness Elizabeth Butler-Sloss. The General Synod voted on 7 July this year to issue an unreserved historic apology from the Church of England to victims of clerical sex abuse. We have seen countless examples of child sexual exploitation cases: Operation Retriever; the extraordinary case in Rochdale where 47 girls were identified as victims of child sexual exploitation; the case in Rotherham; Operation Bullfinch in Oxford—there is still more to run on that one; and Operation Chalice, in which seven men were jailed following a police investigation into child sexual exploitation involving young white girls in Telford.

Of course, there were the recent tragic killings of April Jones at the hands of 46-year-old Mark Bridger, and of Tia Sharp at the hands of her grandmother’s boyfriend, Stuart Hazell, which were linked to downloading abuse images of children. The case of Daniel Pelka, who was killed and tortured in an incredibly cruel way, came to court in the last few months: a defenceless four-year-old child was systematically tortured, yet this was on the radar of local authority services. Next week, the Coventry safeguarding children board will undertake a serious case review, during which I think we will hear some familiar stories—a case of déjà vu for those of us who have been around the block so many times with this sort of cruelty. Of course, there was also the serious case review of the Birmingham nursery case.

I make no apology for what is a grim reading list, involving cases that have been instigated, reopened, proceeded with through the courts or investigated in just the last year, since the Jimmy Savile case hit and maintained the headlines for so many months.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will the hon. Gentleman also include for the record a dreadful case that touches all of us in the House: that of baby Peter, which drew our attention to the need for a systematic, cross-services approach to child protection?

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right, and we could have taken up this entire debate with the history of some of these cases. And these are only the high-profile cases that we know about and read about. They are only a small sample of what has actually been going on; many more have not reached the headlines or even the courts.

Away from the high-profile stories that make the media headlines, the wider figures show that our various child protection agencies have never been busier. The National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children reports that referrals to ChildLine about sexual abuse were nearly twice as high in June and July of this year as in the same period last year, pre-Savile. There have been 2.4 million visits to the ChildLine website in the last year—an increase of some 28% on the previous year. The NSPCC estimates that more than 50,000 children in the UK are known to be at risk of abuse. It calculates that last year, a total of 2,900 rapes or attempted rapes of children under the age of 13 were recorded; that is eight per day. Indeed, 32%—almost a third—of all sexual crimes in this country are against children under the age of 16.

[Tim Loughton]

I agree with the hon. Lady, who knows a great deal about this issue, having been a practitioner in the field; indeed, she and I have worked together through the all-party group on child protection. We need to be wiser to the professions in which paedophiles and potential paedophiles will inveigle themselves. At the same time, however, training and awareness in some of these professions—an issue I shall return to—have improved enormously, although not enough, yet, and the inspection regime has improved. In too many cases, we were inspecting the wrong thing. I hope that joint agency inspections, which we were promised but which have been put on hold, will still happen, so that we have that cross-disciplinary eye: police looking at children’s services, children’s services looking at education, education looking at health services.

Too often, there was a silo approach to inspection, which took up a great deal of the time of professionals who would rather spend it looking after the families, and not enough dissemination of information. The best way to bring that about is better multi-agency training, which we have not been good at. That is beginning to happen, however. For example, we have multi-agency safeguarding hubs, through which different agencies are co-located—sitting next to each other in the same room, looking at the same intelligence, discussing cases and coming up with a much better informed and sharper action plan. All those things are improvements, but the point the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) makes is a valid one.

I know that many Members want to contribute to the debate, but there is a bit more I want to say. With the list I have given goes a looming public apprehension about whether we really have cracked child protection, buffeted by almost weekly revelations of the latest scandal involving abuse at the hands of a bishop, a music teacher, a taxi driver or a soap star. To some extent, it matters not whether the perpetrator is dead or alive, or how long ago his alleged misdemeanours took place. The higher profile given by the media to cases linked to celebrities has, however, been deeply unhelpful, as it detracts from the reality that the main perpetrators are common criminals in ordinary jobs.

Of course, the fact that so many cases are now coming to court, however belatedly, is a sign of some success, in that offenders are now being pursued better by police. Victims are being heeded more loudly and sympathetically, prosecutions are sticking and the perpetrators are being made to pay.

However, are our children safer now than they were 50 years ago, when Savile and others started to ply their trade? Have we just replaced celebrity abuse of star-struck teenagers while the establishment turned a blind eye with systematic abuse to order by organised gangs, be they Pakistani-British—high-profile cases of which we have seen—or of whatever culture? Are internet groomers and the recent Oxford and Rochdale abusers just a modern-day version of Savile, armed with mobile phone technology but without shell suits and the lure of the “green room”? In that sense, given the reach of technology as a key tool of the abusers, do they not pose a much more widespread threat now than ever before?

I think that those of us in the know here today can say that children are safer now than back in the 1960s, but that is a tough sell to the public at large. But if that is the case, when did things actually get better? When did child protection come of age and society at large recognise its significance? When did we equip our agencies sufficiently to question the “It’s just Jimmy” mentality and start turning over some rather grubby stones? Was the landmark Children Act 1989 the turning point? Was it the shocking revelations concerning the north Wales care homes, which have of course come full circle, as we now know that the whole story was not properly revealed? It is to answer these questions that I and others have been calling for some time for an overarching inquiry into the whole sordid history of child abuse in this country, going back to the 1960s and traversing the Children Act, into what I call the legitimate legislation tsunami post-Victoria Climbié. Such an inquiry must involve a commission, led by respected figures from the law, lawmakers, social services and children’s charities. It must set out to provide the holistic assurance that has been so sapped by the plethora of at one time weekly inquiries and reviews set up by the Home Office, the BBC, the Department of Health and numerous others, and it must go everywhere.

Such an inquiry must address four main issues. What exactly happened, and why, over all those years? When did things start getting better, and how? Have all practical steps been taken to give victims the confidence to come forward, and for the police to pursue vigorously any remaining offenders? Perhaps most important of all, have all our major institutions that have significant dealings with children and young people instituted child protection policies and practices that are fit for purpose in 2013 to deal with modern-day technology and savvy perpetrators?

[Mr Sheerman]

The hon. Gentleman is being very generous in giving way. May I just put in a caveat? There was a time when a kind of press feeding frenzy went on. Something went very wrong with some of the investigations, a lot of innocent people who had worked with children were falsely accused—for whatever reason—and many good professionals’ lives were destroyed. Please can we make sure that, whatever we do now, we do not start that sort of thing again?

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Gentleman is right, which is why I referred to what happened with celebrities, which was a sort of feeding frenzy and succeeded in masking the multitude of real crimes—not that the former were not real crimes—that were going on among ordinary people. That is why we need an overarching inquiry to look holistically at what went wrong, what appeared to go wrong, what was a symptom of media frenzy, and who the victims were and are. Most important, we need to give some satisfaction and confidence to the public at large that somebody is looking at this issue properly, and that there is evidence that their children are safer now—despite everything that has come out—than 10, 20 or 30 years ago. I do not think that an unreasonable ask. The former Prime Minister of Australia established a similar royal commission into historic child abuse in November 2012, to look into institutional responses to allegations of sexual abuse in Australia, particularly linked with the Catholic Church. IT has been done it there, and there is a good case for doing it here.

Safeguarding Children

Debate between Tim Loughton and Barry Sheerman

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

Let me first say what a contrast to the previous debate this has been—calm and measured, and about important things that are affecting our constituents and vulnerable children around the country but do not get the airing that they should.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) on using an opportunity such as this, as I always did in opposition, to try to flag up these really important issues, which are not terribly fashionable in the press or among some of our colleagues but are absolutely crucial to many of our most vulnerable citizens. It is absolutely right that we should do that. The hon. Gentleman raised, in a very measured way, a lot of important matters, most of which I covered in my two-hour grilling in front of the Education Select Committee yesterday, and many of which I will cover in my comments today. Let me pick up just a few of his points. I do not want to speak at length, because other people want to contribute to the debate and that is very important.

I very much appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s comments about Eileen Monro’s report, which was excellent. She had the time and space to come up with some very well-considered proposals instead of giving a knee-jerk reaction to the latest tragedy that had happened. Her report was universally well received. It is a great joy to me to be able to put into practice everything that she recommended. Some of the recommendations are a bit more problematic than others, and with some, just as she took time to consider them, we will take time to come up with the precise nature of the solutions.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the chief social worker. Before this debate, the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), and I interviewed the four short-listed candidates; in fact, I gather that they interviewed us. There have been some very high-calibre candidates and we hope to be able to appoint that person shortly. I want them working alongside me and the Health Department as soon as possible. That key recommendation from Monro will make a big difference.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the family drug and alcohol court, which Nick Crichton runs. I have sat in it on many occasions. It is fantastic and a really smart way of dealing with very problematic cases. I want to see more of that rolled out. My own authority is looking at a joint venture with Brighton in east Sussex to see whether we can bring it to our part of the country, and there are other examples.

The hon. Gentleman hit the nail on the head when he praised Munro for wanting a child-centred system. The review was entitled, “The Child’s Journey”. We are all here not to make sure that the system works better or that processes are followed more efficiently, but to make sure that the qualitative outcomes—the impact that the system is having on children who need to be helped, safeguarded and put in a safe place—are improved. We often forgot that in the past, which has been one of the weaknesses.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned training. One of my continuous pushes is on continuous professional development, which he mentioned as well. It is crucial, which is why we put £80 million into social work reform in 2011-12, and why we have some good new social workers coming forward from other walks of life, as well as through training in our universities. We put £23 million into the local social work improvement fund in 2010-11 to support improvement on the front line. We have 3,700 newly qualified or first or second-year social workers who have joined the professional development programme. There are 400 extremely high-calibre people. I have met many of them. I am handing out awards to many of them from the Step Up to Social Work programme.

There is a great deal going on. Safeguarding children is not a partisan issue, but something that we all want to achieve, so I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s acknowledgement that a real momentum is building in efforts to make our children safer—although never completely safe. It is unrealistic, as Professor Munro pointed out, to suggest that we can remove risk and make every child absolutely safe. It would be complacent to think so. Our job in government and the job of those in opposition working with all the professionals around the country is to make children as safe as we possibly can.

[Mr Sheerman]

rose—

[Tim Loughton]

I give way to the former Chairman of the Select Committee.

[Mr Sheerman]

The Minister knows of my interest in the subject and I do not want to upset the apple cart or the bipartisan nature of the debate, but this is not the first such debate that the Secretary of State has not attended. There is a crisis facing children. All the evidence that we have received over the past months suggests that many vulnerable children are in a dreadful situation in our country. We need the leadership of the Secretary of State, to show that he is interested in children’s issues as well as in broader schools and education issues.

[Tim Loughton]

The Secretary of State is hugely engaged in the issue. I have been around the block a little longer than he has. Having been shadow Minister with responsibility for children, having dealt with safeguarding since 2003 and having been appointed to this position, I perhaps have a little more experience of the subject. When the current Secretary of State took up his position as shadow Secretary of State, his interest and his knowledge of serious case reviews on some safeguarding issues was extraordinary. He has driven the programme and enabled me and others to carry forward the proposals from Munro and others in the way we have. I remind the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) that the very first review that was established in the Department for Education under the new Secretary of State was the Munro review on child safeguarding. It was nothing to do with schools or education; it was on child safeguarding. That speaks volumes.

Further Education Lecturers

Debate between Tim Loughton and Barry Sheerman

Wednesday 19th January 2011 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton]

I am not aware that a full-blown interim report has been presented to Ministers. I am aware that there have been preliminary discussions between Professor Wolf and Ministers about her initial findings. I do not think that an exact date has been set for publication so far, but when my hon. Friend has the meeting with the Minister with responsibility for schools I am sure he will be able to elaborate further on the exact details.

[Mr Sheerman]

When Professor Wolf, who used to be on the Skills Commission with us, was appointed by the Secretary of State, was she told that half way through her report, the rug of the EMA was going to be pulled from under her feet, or was she oblivious to that fact?

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

I hear what my hon. Friend has said. Those comments might have been as appropriate in the previous debate in this Chamber, which involved the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning, who is a Minister in both my Department and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, but I have heard what he has said and will pass those comments on along with all the comments from hon. Members this afternoon.

I am confident that the decisions that we will take in the light of Professor Wolf’s review will result in a more logical position than we have at present—we all readily acknowledge that—which will continue to improve the quality of the school teaching work force, allow schools to make the best use of teachers with experience and expertise from outside the classroom and is fair to all those who play a role in the education of young people.

May I reiterate my gratitude to my hon. Friend the Chair of the Select Committee for the balanced, measured and informed way in which he put his comments? I undertake to pass on the points that both hon. Members have made and to urge my hon. Friend the Minister with responsibility for schools, in his greatly uncluttered diary, to find time to have a more detailed meeting with them.

[Mr Sheerman]

I remind the Minister that tens of thousands of young people who are 14 years old are presently being taught—not all week, but two or three days a week—in the FE sector. Studio schools, the first of which has opened in Huddersfield, will also be taking young people working in a work environment from the age of 14. It is a fact that 14-year-olds are being taught by highly qualified staff in the FE sector.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Gentleman can be duly contented that I am suitably reminded of the points that he has made and that I will pass them on to my hon. Friends as well. I thank him for his contribution.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Tim Loughton and Barry Sheerman

Monday 12th July 2010 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

I am only too well aware of many of the discrepancies in the system that prevailed for far too many years under the previous Government. I am aware that Hexham middle school in my hon. Friend’s constituency has raised concerns about problems in tackling rural deprivation and sparsity of population that have not been dealt with in the past. That is one area that we will be looking at, and the pupil premium will be a priority in ensuring that we recognise deprivation and have effective measures to deal with it.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

14. What steps he is taking to ensure availability of continuing professional development for teachers.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tim Loughton]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I was expecting some interest in Hexham from the Opposition, but clearly there is none.

I agree with the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) that the quality of teachers and professional development is important. International evidence shows that teachers learn from observing good teachers, and this happens best in schools. That is why the Government are committed to encouraging schools to demonstrate a strong culture of continuing professional development, with teachers leading their own development and that of others, and sharing effective practice within and between schools. That is why we are currently reviewing our policies and existing activities to ensure that they focus on that vision.

[Mr Sheerman]

Is the hon. Gentleman aware that teachers are finding it much more difficult to get out of the classroom to go to good CPD sessions, particularly in places such as the science learning centres in York and elsewhere, because of the way in which the “rarely cover” provision is being interpreted as part of the work force agreement? Not only is CPD suffering; so are kids’ visits to out-of-school facilities.

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point. I am aware of the limiting factors of “rarely cover”, which is an area that we will look at in our assessment of the problems facing teachers in getting continuing professional development. Having to pay supply teachers can be an obstacle to getting CPD, which is why this Government want to free up school pay and conditions and give greater powers back to heads to ensure that they can devise the best methods for ensuring that their teachers get the best continuous professional development and training.