Health and Social Care Committee

Debate between Tim Loughton and Paul Williams

Thursday 28th February 2019 Westminster Hall

[Dr Williams]

I thank the hon. Lady for those questions. One of the Committee’s early reports of this session was about childhood obesity. We made specific recommendations in that report that we have not necessarily repeated in this one.

We saw many wonderful things in Blackpool. We did not learn about the specific service to which the hon. Lady refers, but we did learn that many services have come under a lot of financial pressure. Even though there was some Big Lottery investment for transformation, services still needed to be cut, which sounds counterintuitive.

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

I declare an interest as the chair of the all-party parliamentary group for conception to age two—first 1,001 days, which is slightly more long-term than the first 1,000 days of life, but not nearly as ambitious as the first 1,000 years of life, to which the right hon. Member for Exeter (Mr Bradshaw) erroneously referred. I am also the chairman of the charity Parent Infant Partnership UK. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Stockton South (Dr Williams) for referring to Sally Hogg, one of our staff members, and Beckie Lang, our chief executive, who gave evidence.

I welcome the report, and particularly the ambitious way that the hon. Gentleman has described it as the “second revolution” in early years services. He is absolutely dedicated to the whole subject, which is so important, and which many of us have been banging on about for some time. I have two questions. First, a slight disappointment is the shortage of space given to the case for investment. The hon. Gentleman knows as well as I do that, as we said in our all-party group report, “Building Great Britons”, the cost of child neglect is £15 billion a year, and the cost of maternal perinatal mental illness is £8.1 billion; that is £23 billion each year that we are spending on getting it wrong. Does he agree that we need to make the case that investment in this area will save substantial amounts financially and, more importantly, socially? The Treasury needs to understand that it is a serious investment case for the future.

Secondly, I approve of what the report says about locally delivered and joined-up services—a point that we put forward in our report, too. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is also a case, which we have made in the past, that that should be time-dated? Certainly, it should not take more than five years for every local area to have a united, joined-up, coherent and co-ordinated strategy for delivering this. It also needs to be measured, just as adoption scorecards were used at the Department for Education to measure the quality of the service delivery, so that it is not just a tick-box exercise. If we can get those two things right, the quality of the delivery will be much greater.

[Dr Williams]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his advice and input at the start of the inquiry, and for the work that he has done as the chair of the all-party group, which is about the first 1,001 days—what is a day between friends? The economic case is exceptionally strong, and I am sure that the Minister has heard him make it eloquently. We all need to work together to make sure that we put the case to the Treasury. Ultimately, those spending decisions will have to be made in the comprehensive spending review; that feels like an opportune time.

The hon. Gentleman suggested that we ensure that there is a timeframe, that the commitment is not open-ended, and that local authorities have plans within a short time. We learned in our inquiry that local authorities are often left to just get on with it. The Committee felt that there was a need for much more central control and measurement, and for more accountability by central Government.