Children from Low-Income Families: Education Support

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

It is pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. First, I would like to say a big thank you to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) for securing this important debate and for his tireless work in Parliament to raise the issues facing children and young people. He made a powerful speech about the Government’s neglect of poor children in Slough and the impact on headteachers. The quote from the Slough headteacher, who said that communication is ill thought out, resonated with me because it is echoed by a lot of teachers in my constituency. The Slough parent who said that she feels let down by the Government reflected something that I have heard over and over again from parents in my constituency.

I thank all our colleagues who have taken part in the debate and spoken up for children from low-income families in their constituencies. The hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) spoke movingly about the shocking inequality and poverty among children in her constituency, and how poverty is limiting the life chances of her young constituents. That also applies to my constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that parents simply want their children to do their best, and to do what is best for their children in life. However, that is very difficult to do.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) spoke in her passionate speech about the shocking 37% of her young constituents who live in poverty. If the odds are against people from the start, it is hard to do well in life, and it is hard for parents to ensure that their children do well in life. My hon. Friend was right to point out the enormous increase in the attainment gap for disadvantaged children in her constituency, and across the country. It is commendable, but in equal measure shameful, that organisations such as Luton Learning Link have had to step in, because that should be the job of the Government.

Perhaps the most shocking betrayal of children from lower-income families is the stealth cut to the pupil premium that the Government have pushed through. By moving the date for calculating the pupil premium back from January to October, the Government have cut funding for more than 100,000 children who qualified for free school meals in between, and that is shocking. The Department for Education’s own calculations show that that will mean schools losing out on £90 million of funding, with those in the most deprived areas being hit the hardest.

To put it in simple terms, the Government have directly withdrawn money that is intended to support disadvantaged children, who, as we have heard from contributions across the Floor today, have struggled most during the pandemic and who most need the support. That comes after a decade of Conservative Governments which have implemented a real cut of 9% to school budgets, not to mention slashing funding for local authorities, which has led to the decimation of services that children rely on to progress with education, among other things.

The Government’s woeful education recovery package will do little to address the funding gaps that have arisen as a result of those shameful choices, and the National Audit Office is concerned that even their national tutoring programme is not reaching enough pupils on free school meals.

The huge rise in eligibility for free school meals, which now totals 420,000 children since the start of the pandemic, shows that many more children are living with hardship and relying on the hot meal they get at school each day. The truth is that children cannot learn if they are hungry, yet Ministers have had to be shamed time and again into delivering food support to children at home, and making that available during the summer holidays in the pandemic.

All of us in the Chamber remember the shameful scenes of woefully inadequate food parcels being delivered to children who qualified for free school meals back in January. Unbelievably, the Government are set to repeat their mistakes by offering only 16 days of food support over the entire six-week summer holiday, with no guarantee that it will be given to every child who qualifies for free school meals. Ministers do not even appear to be listening to Labour’s repeated calls to offer all children breakfast clubs before school.

Children who qualify for free school meals are far less likely to have access to a laptop or internet connection, effectively preventing them from learning remotely when they cannot go to school. Despite over a million children not having the digital access they needed at the start of the pandemic, the Department for Education delivered just 600,000 laptops by Christmas. Government schemes ensured that only between a third and half of those who needed a laptop got one. Ministers slashed laptop allocations for self-isolating pupils by about 80% in October. As of January, one in five parents still reported not having access to enough digital devices for children to learn remotely—a shocking statistic.

This is not picking over ancient history. School absences have quadrupled this month. Last week, a shocking one in 20 pupils were forced to miss school for coronavirus-related reasons. Many of those are now at home unable to learn because this still has not been sorted. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for her truly inspirational work over the past year and a half to highlight the digital poverty that many children on free school meals have been living in. My hon. Friend has relentlessly brought it up time and again, and my only hope is that the Government are listening to her.

I will briefly mention the Government’s chronic underfunding of early years education over the last decade. Secret documents, unearthed through FOIs by the Early Years Alliance, show that that was done deliberately in the knowledge that it would drive up childcare costs for parents, drive down the quality of education for young children, and destabilise the early years sector. We have already lost 2,500 nurseries, childminders and other early years providers in the first five months of this year. Research by the Sutton Trust shows that providers in the most deprived areas have been most likely to face financial difficulties in the pandemic, and be threatened with permanent closure—10% to 15% higher than in the most affluent areas.

Children from all socioeconomic backgrounds have faced huge challenges in the pandemic, whether trying to learn without the structure of a classroom for much of the year, or facing the mental health challenges of isolation. It is all too often the case that when problems arise, or a crisis such as coronavirus engulfs us, children from lower-income families fare the worst, whether through hunger, difficulties with digital access and access to tutoring, and all the other issues that colleagues have repeatedly and passionately pointed out.

The impact on educational outcomes is there to see. According to the Sutton Trust, more than half the teachers at the least affluent state schools reported lower standards of work during school closures, compared with 40% at more affluent ones, and 30% at private schools. The attainment gap had stopped closing before covid, after a decade of Conservative Governments, but is now set to widen without bold action straight away.

Labour’s £15 billion children’s recovery plan would reverse the stealth cut to pupil premium funding, double it for children in transitional years and more than quadruple the early years pupil premium, give more funding to schools to support tutoring for all children who need it, provide breakfast clubs for every child and deliver free school meals in full in holidays during the pandemic. Those measures would make a big difference to disadvantaged children in my constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn, and across the country. We have not heard anything remotely close to that level of ambition from the Government, whose catch-up proposals will support fewer than one in 10 children. It is no wonder that Sir Kevan Collins felt he had to resign over this.

I finish by asking Minster directly why she thinks the Government’s own education recovery chief decided to resign. Has she reflected on whether the Government need to rethink their approach to supporting children from lower-income families in the light of that vote of no confidence?

--- Later in debate ---

[Vicky Ford]

A few other Members mentioned free school meals, including the hon. Members for Leicester East and for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq). This Government have extended the eligibility for free school meals more than any other Government for the past 50 years. It is this Government who introduced universal free school meals and expanded free school meals to those in further education. During the pandemic, we also widened the provision to many children who normally have no recourse to public funds. The Government have also provided funding to local authorities during the pandemic to ensure that the hardest-hit families are supported with food and essentials through the covid local support grants. That has even supported them during the school holidays. Those grants have been extended through the coming holiday at a cost of more than £100 million.

I want to get back to the point that the hon. Member for Slough made about Slough. Slough children’s services have been enormously challenging for many years. The Department for Education has provided significant investment in children’s services in Slough—nearly an extra £7 million over the past two years. As the hon. Gentleman knows, it transferred the ownership of Slough Children First, the trust, to Slough Borough Council in April. I call on him to get behind the relationship between the trust and the local authority. I, as Minister, have signed off millions of pounds to give that support to Slough children. He should work with the trust to put Slough children first in his constituency.

[Tulip Siddiq]

The Minister is boasting about free school meals and how much the Government have done. Will she admit that her Government were forced, kicking and screaming, to extend free school meals because Marcus Rashford and the Labour party shamed them nationally, which is why they felt they had no choice but to extend free school meals? They resisted that until the very last minute.

[Vicky Ford]

The hon. Lady has said this again and again, and it is simply not true. Let us look at the facts, okay? This Government, when I became the Minister for children, and over the past 10 years, had already extended free school meals to more children than any other Government during the past 50 years. We set up the national voucher scheme during this pandemic—a thing that had never been done before—to make sure that, when schools were closed to most children, they could still access food at home.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

It sounds as if amazing work is going on at Gusford Primary School. That has been underpinned by the £3.5 million in funding available to charities and organisations such as the Diana Award. A number of organisations are currently bidding. I am afraid that I am not in a position to confirm which have been successful, but I understand that the Diana Award is one of those that has been bidding for the next tranche of funding.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

Last week, the Early Years Alliance revealed secret Government documents that exposed that Ministers have been knowingly underfunding childcare, childminders and nurseries for years now, knowing full well that that would mean increased childcare costs for parents and lower-quality early education. Bearing in mind that in this year alone there has been a net loss of 2,500 childcare facilities in England, will the Minister apologise for covering this up? Will she explain to the House how she plans to rectify the very serious problem of underfunding in early education?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Vicky Ford)]

I do wish sometimes that my opposite number would stop scaremongering. We have put unprecedented investment in childcare over the past decade: more than £3.5 billion in each of the past three years. There are always a number of reasons why providers come and go from the register, including mergers and acquisitions. The key thing is whether or not there are sufficient places for children. We monitor the market very closely, and we are continuing to see that there are not a significant number of parents who are unable to secure a childcare place this term or since early years sectors reopened in June.

Support for Children Entitled to Free School Meals

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq, for the first time. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) for securing this important debate, and for her powerful speeches today and at the debate on Monday. She is right that it is a national outrage that our country is so unequal, with an economic system so broken that so many parents are forced to rely on inadequate support from the state to feed their children, despite their best efforts.

I really regret the fact that not a single Conservative MP has chosen to speak in today’s debates. Yet, a few years ago, this very same room was packed with Conservative Members who wanted to defend Donald Trump’s right to a state visit. With over half a million children qualifying for free school meals since March last year, a debate on this support has never been more important. Free school meals are often the only hot meal that some children get all day, and they are a lifeline for many families who are struggling to make ends meet, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) set out so clearly, drawing on her experience as a teacher in a previous life. The huge rise in free school meals eligibility is therefore very significant and further evidence of how devastating covid-19 has been for family budgets.

There was a very real and growing problem with child poverty in this country before the pandemic, and we have seen today the new, shocking statistic that more than one in five Londoners in working households live in poverty. We also heard powerful testimony from my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) about the huge increase in food parcels delivered by the Trussell Trust in this pandemic. The fact that more than 2 million children have now been pushed into food insecurity and that hundreds of thousands have been forced to skip meals in the pandemic has really shone a light on the need to ensure that proper free school meal support is delivered to all children who need it all year round.

However, that realisation, which has been obvious to pretty much everybody, particularly after Marcus Rashford’s powerful campaigns, has not come as easily to Government Ministers. I am sad to say that they have had to be dragged kicking and screaming time and again to do the right thing. I do not take any pleasure from this, but the Prime Minister’s right-hand man told us today that his boss decided to “pick a fight” with Marcus Rashford over free school meals rather than take action to feed hungry children in a pandemic.

What did the Government do? They initially refused to extend free school meals over last summer, when millions were being forced to apply for unemployment benefits. They whipped Conservative MPs to vote against providing free school meals over the October 2020 half- term through to Easter this year. They presided over a moment of national shame in January, when utterly woeful food parcels, which were near-identical to the Government’s own guidance, were given out, and then they voted against Labour’s motion to ensure that families get the full value of that support.

Just contrast us with Wales, where families have known from the start of the pandemic, and many months ahead of time, that the full value of free school meals would be available in every upcoming school holiday, and that is now guaranteed until Easter 2022. That is the leadership that we should have seen from the Prime Minister, who instead picked a fight with a premier league footballer. It astonishes me that, after all that failure and the uncertainty that the Government have put families through, they have still not learned the lessons and are still refusing to guarantee free school meals in the upcoming summer holidays.

I know that the Minister will point to the holiday activities and food programme, but the Government’s guidance on that scheme says that councils should provide just 16 days’ of food support over the entire six-week summer holiday. It does not say that that support should be guaranteed. The Local Government Association has said that

“the scheme is unlikely to see all eligible children participate and will not be suitable for everyone.”

I am extremely concerned that many children will miss out on that if they do not do the activities, and that there will be a postcode lottery in support. That is especially concerning in the light of the deep cuts to local government budgets, the impact of which my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) spelled out so clearly in her powerful speech.

The failure to deliver free school meals is not the only way in which the Government have let down children who qualify for this support. Children on free school meals are less likely to have digital devices and internet connectivity than their peers, and there has been a failure to rectify that for home learning during school closures and self-isolation. Ministers have missed every single target for delivering laptops. Their schemes ensured that only a third to a half of those who needed one got one, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for her contribution, and her tireless campaigning for children on free school meals to get digital support.

Most recently, and perhaps most shockingly, the Government implemented a stealth cut to the pupil premium by excluding anyone who became eligible for free school meals since October last year from the calculation of how much more to give schools. Labour analysis of freedom of information data shows that more than 115,000 children will miss out on over £133 million of support as a result. There is no end to the ways that this Government are prepared to sideline the needs of some of the most disadvantaged children in the country.

I have a series of questions for the Minister. Why did the Prime Minister pick a fight with Marcus Rashford over free school meals? Why on earth are the Government implementing a cut to the pupil premium in the middle of a pandemic? Why will they not simply guarantee that all children who qualify will be able to get free school meals over the summer holiday? Why are the Government refusing to consider Labour’s suggestion of allowing families to get cash payments for this support? Are they still planning to withdraw free school meals support from children who have no recourse to public funds at some point? Finally, what steps are they taking to support children who do not qualify for free school meals but who, none the less, face food insecurity?

The point was made several times in the debate that, in a country as rich as ours, we should not need free school meals. At the very least, children should not be as reliant on them as they are right now. Sadly, they are a necessity because 4.3 million children in the UK live in poverty. For far too many people, work does not pay enough to live on. The Government spent 10 years gutting the social security system, and our economy is built on insecurity and inequality. All those things are getting worse as a direct result of policy choices over the last decade. We need to start making different choices as we emerge from the pandemic.

The Government need to show the moral courage and leadership required to eradicate child poverty and ensure that no child goes hungry. That starts with the Government learning the lessons from mistakes that led to children having to skip meals in the pandemic. I hope we will hear some humility from the Minister when she addresses our arguments. I look forward to her answering all the questions posed throughout the debate.

Child Food Poverty

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for moving the motion, and the more than 1 million people who signed the petition to end child poverty, including 3,000 of my constituents in Hampstead and Kilburn. I also thank colleagues who have contributed to the debate. Our country owes a huge debt of gratitude to Marcus Rashford MBE, whose powerful advocacy has pushed the issue to the forefront of our political debate and forced Ministers to confront it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) pointed out. Many more children would have gone hungry last summer and Christmas if it were not for his efforts.

We know that the Prime Minister enjoys stretching the truth from time to time, but one of the most maddening claims that he has ever made was that no child would go hungry during the pandemic. As we have heard today, that could not be further from the reality, with 200,000 children forced to skip meals in the early months of covid-19. Some 2.3 million children live in households that experienced food insecurity this winter, and more families than ever are having to rely on food banks to feed their children. As my hon. Friends the Members for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) and for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) said, no child should go hungry in a country as rich as ours. But they are, and in increasing numbers.

Although we should focus on making sure that hungry children are fed, we need to understand that this food poverty is a result of poverty itself, which has been rising dramatically since 2010. Some 4.3 million children were in poverty at the start of the pandemic—up 500,000 from five years earlier. In that period, child poverty rose in every region in England, with shocking high rises in the north-east, where an astonishing 37% of all children were in poverty at the start of last year, as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) pointed out so powerfully. In practice, that means that many more parents are struggling to put food on the table—despite their best efforts—with all the dreadful consequences that brings for the child’s health, wellbeing, development and education, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) outlined.

The truth is that rising levels of child poverty are a direct result of policy choices over the last decade, which we knew would eventually lead to this outcome. As my hon. Friends the Members for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) and for Bradford West (Naz Shah) said, this is a political choice. Both Members powerfully made the case for food security for children in their constituencies. Since 2010, the Government have slashed the social security system to ribbons. Universal credit was designed in a way that punishes ordinary families, with its five-week wait, two-child limit and other design flaws. They have presided over an economy where wages have been stagnant while housing costs soared. The predictable result is that communities all over the country have been forced to set up food banks, the use of which has skyrocketed in recent years.

If we continue along the current course, the Resolution Foundation projects that three-quarters of a million children could be added to the already swelling ranks of those living in poverty by 2024. That must be avoided at all costs, but there is no sign that a change of approach is coming. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) pointed out, having failed to uplift legacy benefits, including disability support, the Chancellor still will not confirm that he has scrapped the plan to cut universal credit from October this year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North argued so powerfully, it is shocking that we have no shortage of food in this country, only a shortage of money to buy it. We will never be able to abolish child poverty without tackling the root causes of poverty, but there is a lot more that the Government could do to get food to hungry children.

I turn to the points in the petition. I am delighted that Marcus Rashford and others have been able to secure an uplift in the value of Healthy Start vouchers. At present, hundreds and thousands of eligible families are missing out on the vouchers, and Ministers have a responsibility to ensure that the support gets to those who need it. The same goes for free school meals. Clearly, the Government need to do more to ensure that those who do not qualify for free school meals can get the food support they need. Labour wants to replace universal credit with a fair and compassionate system that delivers support to those who need it. The hardship of the pandemic has exposed the need to ensure that all children can get free school meals during the holidays, although Ministers have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to accept that and do the right thing.

Although I welcome the countless U-turns that the Government have made in the face of public pressure, their holiday activities and food programme in its current form offers only 16 days of food support over the summer, and will not guarantee that all children who qualify can access it. They need to rethink. I hope the Minister will rethink and give a proper guarantee of support in the pandemic.

Making sure that no child goes hungry should be our national mission, not an unfounded boast bandied about by the Prime Minister as a smokescreen for the fact that so many children are skipping meals and relying on food banks. Our children need fewer warm words and more warm meals. That will require far better and more compassionate leadership on issues such as free school meals, as well as a Government who are serious about tackling the root causes of the hardship and financial insecurity that families face. I hope, for the sake of our children and generations to come, that we get that very soon. I would like to hear what the Minister has to say about the petition.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I think we are all very much looking forward to welcoming all university students back, and we very much expect to be seeing that as part of the next step. I would like to thank universities for the work they have been doing to ensure that universities are covid-secure, including extensive testing of students in universities and the greater availability of the home testing kits that we have been able to deliver on. We will continue to work with Universities UK, the Russell Group and the whole sector to ensure that students are able to return to university safely at the earliest possible moment and that we are able to welcome a new cohort of students in September.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

More and more children are relying on free school meals because of the pandemic. The Government’s holiday activities and food programme tells local councils to provide just 16 days’ worth of food support over a six-week summer holiday period, so could I ask the Minister: what does she expect children to eat the rest of the time?

[Vicky Ford]

This Government have extended free school meals to more groups of children than any other Government over the past half a century. We have spent almost half a billion pounds on vouchers so that children had access to food when schools were closed during lockdown. We have spent £270 million through local authorities on making sure that children, including pre-school children, could get access to food and essentials. We have this massive holiday activities and food programme running all across the country—not only food, but fun and friendships. I just wish the Labour party would get behind this fantastic initiative, go and see what it is giving our children, see what they get out of it and the benefits of it, and say well done to everybody involved.

Special Educational Needs

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) for initiating this important debate. He was completely right to say that children with SEND have been forgotten, left behind and overlooked, and that their parents have had to fight at every single stage of the process to get their needs met. It is shocking that some children in Slough have had to wait up to two years for a diagnosis. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) made similar points about his area and about how the system has completely failed parents, with appalling social services infrastructure and, in effect, a two-tier system for those who can afford it.

I want to take the opportunity offered by this debate to pay tribute to the fantastic staff at Swiss Cottage School and Manor School in Brent. Both are specialist schools in my constituency and have done phenomenal work in supporting children with SEND. The shadow Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), and I had the privilege of speaking to the headteachers of those schools and other special schools across the country in a virtual roundtable earlier this year. Many of the headteachers pointed out to me that much of the digital support that schools have been given, such as laptops, is not even appropriately tailored for the needs of children with SEND.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) also explained how he had heard many concerns about resources when he met headteachers in his region. My hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) made powerful arguments about the devastating impact of coronavirus on the funding situation for special schools. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) also made a powerful speech about the impact of the pandemic on these services. I hope that the Minister, who has always had an open door with me, will respond positively to his request for a meeting.

As a mother of two young children, I know just how tough this pandemic and school closures have been on young people and their parents, but I simply cannot imagine how much harder it has been for those who have had their specialist support withdrawn. At the height of the third lockdown, just 16% of children with EHCPs were getting all the support set out in their plan, according to research by the Disabled Children’s Partnership. Some 21% of parents said that their children were not getting any support set out in their EHCP. Remember that this is support to which the children are legally entitled, and which all too often represents a compromise that is below the level of support they actually need.

That is just children who have already secured EHCPs. Getting an appropriate EHCP in good time has unfortunately become a postcode lottery, after a decade of cuts to local government that have been felt unevenly across the country, not to mention the impact of the relaxations on timescales misguidedly introduced last April for assessing EHCPs. My hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) spoke movingly about the huge problem in getting EHCPs, drawing on her own experience of looking after a child with SEND. I appreciate her taking the time to contribute to this important debate.

As horrifying as some of the statistics are, the results are scarier. Half of the children with SEND have seen their conditions worsen this past year. I will focus specifically on the impact of loss of access to such therapies as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, and physiotherapy, which a shocking 70% have been unable to do in recent months. Dan told us about his daughter Elisa, who has cerebral palsy. Elisa relies on regular physiotherapy from her education, health and care plan to manage her condition. Sadly, she missed out on that support for a year during the pandemic and her condition has worsened. My constituent Elisa has dystonia, a very uncomfortable condition where muscles contract uncontrollably. She can no longer use her wheelchair due to the worsening dystonia.

Then there is Suziie, my constituent who cares for her nephew, aged 11, who has a complex series of physical and neurological disabilities. During the pandemic, her nephew has been isolated from other children and has lost access to vital series and therapies that he needs to manage his condition. Awfully, he is now regressing and has lost vital abilities in communication and other essential life skills. He needs sensory rooms and hydrotherapy in his covid-19 recovery plan, and Suziie needs additional respite care.

Those heartbreaking cases tell a story about what has happened during the pandemic: a loss of support and declining health and social outcomes for children with SEND. As has been mentioned in the debate, the Women and Equalities Committee concludes that the Government’s catch-up package will not be enough to tackle the disproportionate impacts on children with SEND. It is all very well issuing guidance saying that they will be a priority, but unless that is followed up with targeted funding there is no guarantee that they will get the support that they desperately need.

I have previously criticised Ministers for treating children as an afterthought in the pandemic, but I believe that those with SEND have been completely left behind. That is certainly how parents feel when I speak to them. However, not all politicians have forgotten about these children. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) highlighted the important work that Councillor Javed Hussain and other Luton councillors are doing on local autism hubs and park upgrades, bringing benefits for those who use wheelchairs. We should be learning from them.

Although lessons must be learned from the failures that my colleagues have outlined, I want to look to the future. We need proper support for EHCP provision to be restored in full. We need a plan from Ministers to clear the backlog of assessments and health appointments. There must be a proper co-ordinated catch-up plan that goes beyond the Government’s narrow ideas about educational catch-up. We have to have targeted support for children with SEND to make up for months of lost development in communication, social skills and wellbeing.

Rather than downgrading the legal duties to children with SEND, as the Government did at the start of the pandemic, the SEND review should be an opportunity to upgrade the resources that local authorities have to deliver support, and to listen directly to families about how services can be reshaped so that they operate in the best interests of our young people.

Children and Young Persons

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab) [V]]

I thank the Minister for setting out the details of these regulations. Although the UK’s departure from the European Union was perhaps the most contentious issue of our generation and an outcome that I am on the record as having fought very hard indeed to prevent, these regulations are a non-contentious consequence of that departure, and the Minister will be glad to know that we will not oppose them.

As the Minister set out, these regulations are intended to ensure the proper functioning of UK law in relation to adoption and teacher misconduct now that article 3 of the e-commerce directive, or the country of origin principle, has ceased to apply in the UK, having left the transition period. They give force to the termination of the agreement with EEA states around digital trade by information society services or online service providers.

In the light of changes to our relationship with the EU, it is necessary to remove the country of origin principle from the 2005 e-commerce directive regulations in so far as they affect matters in scope of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 relating to the proper arrangement and advertisement of adoption services. Similarly, the Education Act 2002 must be amended to remove the same principle from the offence of publishing information in breach of reporting restrictions around allegations of teacher misconduct involving pupils. With the e-commerce directive no longer effective in the UK, it is right and proper that online service providers that commit offences under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 and the Education Act 2002 are liable for prosecution in the UK, and that teachers, children and parents are afforded the necessary legal protections. We welcome the Government’s reaffirmation of this, along with the principle that the state has the authority to arrange and oversee adoptions.

The draft regulations were first laid in June 2019 for the purposes of addressing deficiencies in our laws that would arise from leaving the EU without a deal. As much as I wanted and campaigned for the UK to remain inside the EU, a Brexit deal was always preferable to no deal, and I am glad that these regulations have at least been brought under the former scenario, rather than the latter. However, it would have been even better if the deal had not been secured at the last possible moment, with details published just a handful of days before the end of the transition period on 31 December 2020 and MPs recalled to vote on the deal the day before new year’s eve. In this context, it is extremely important that online service providers and people affected by their services are not negatively impacted by changes such as the removal of the e-commerce directive and the introduction of a new regime in digital trade as a result of the Government’s incompetence, having left it so late to complete their Brexit negotiations and release details of the new arrangements.

Online service providers must be given clear information, guidance and time to understand new law and to make any arrangements to comply with it. It is important in this case, as the regulations that we are discussing relate to upholding the legal protections afforded to children and birth parents with respect to arranging and advertising adoptions, and to teachers with respect to their rights where allegations of an offence are made by, or on behalf of, a pupil.

Although there is no change of policy as a direct result of these regulations, I would none the less like to ask the Minister a series of questions. First, what steps have the Government taken to ensure that EEA-based online service providers operating in the areas here are aware of their new obligations under UK law? Similarly, what actions have been taken to ensure that providers that are UK-based but provide services in an EEA country understand that they must follow that country’s laws with respect to any services provided there? Secondly, what powers exist to enforce teacher misconduct reporting restrictions and adoption advertising prohibitions in a situation where information is published in breach of these rules by a UK-based online service provider in an EEA state? Must the teachers, children and birth parents affected rely solely on the EEA state’s laws, or are other legal protections available? Finally, what assessment have the Government made of the effectiveness of the regulation of online service providers when it comes to the arrangement of adoptions, and publishing offences in the field of adoption and education, in particular when those offences are committed outside the UK? I thank the Minister in advance for her consideration of my points and questions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Monday 1st March 2021 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

This Government are committed to supporting the early years, and we will be spending about £3.6 billion on early years funding this year, but to provide extra safety, we are rolling out home test kits for all those in nurseries and pre-schools—the staff in nurseries and pre-schools—from 22 March.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab) [V]]

Social distancing is impossible in early years settings and special schools, where staff often provide close contact care, and it has been a nightmare for them to operate at high capacity in lockdown, with many staff off sick or self-isolating. Vaccinating school staff over half-term and prioritising key workers such as early years staff, once the most vulnerable have been jabbed, would have relieved this pressure, protected staff and helped to keep children learning, so why did the Government miss this open goal?

[Vicky Ford]

The top priority for vaccines must be to protect those most at risk of dying or being hospitalised by this hideous disease. It also involves protecting those who are caring for those most at risk. That could include, for example, a carer of a clinically extremely vulnerable child, but it would not necessarily include everyone who is working in an early years setting.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2021 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

We have already announced in the spending review that we will put additional funding into early years entitlements in the next financial year. That will allow us to increase the hourly funding rates for all local authorities by at least 8p an hour for two-year-olds, and by 6p an hour for three and four-year-olds; of course, those in areas of higher disadvantage get higher amounts of money. That will pay for a rate increase that is higher than the cost nurseries may face from the uplift to the national living wage in April.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab) [V]]

Ministers are telling everyone to stay at home, yet early years providers are being told to stay open for as many children as possible or lose funding. This month’s funding changes mean that nurseries, pre-schools and childminders will be punished financially for having lower demand than usual, or for limiting their opening during lockdown, and 19,000 providers could close by summer as a result. Is that a price the Minister is willing to pay, or does she think those warning about this are wrong?

Nurseries and Early Years Settings

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Thursday 3rd December 2020 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine), the right hon. Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) and my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Erdington (Jack Dromey) for securing this important debate and for being officers of the all-party parliamentary group for childcare and early education. I was proud to be the first chair of the APPG when it started three years ago, and I have just about forgiven the hon. Member for Winchester for upstaging me at every opportunity as the new chair, because the APPG has gone from strength to strength. It has played a vital role in the pandemic and I thank its members for all the work they have done.

There have been some really important contributions in the debate today from all sides. It has been a very sophisticated debate, which is not always the case in politics. Not only did I learn a lot, but I was reminded how important the early years sector is for our country, for our economy, and for women—a point that was made by the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker) and others. I will highlight some of the contributions that will stay with me.

My right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) spoke powerfully about how fragile the sector is. I think everyone recognises that it has been very fragile since long before this pandemic hit. I have first-hand knowledge of that, both from having small children of my own and because of all of the work I have done in my constituency with early years providers. He also spoke passionately about how the group-based providers are at threat of closure. That has certainly been my experience as well, and we need to take some dramatic action if we want to stop that threat of closure. I pay tribute to Sheringham Nursery School, which is in my right hon. Friend’s patch, and the work it does to help families who have children with special educational needs. I know Sheringham well, and my family friends have benefited greatly from it, so I join him in paying tribute to it. I understand how anxious its staff are feeling about what is happening during the pandemic.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen), who told me that she had to leave before the end of the debate, spoke passionately about her constituency, and about the role of early years providers in this pandemic and their exclusion from covid funding. That is one of the things I will be picking up on in this debate, because I feel very strongly that those providers have been left behind during the pandemic. She spoke about the baby groups, which were a lifeline for both of us. We both have first-hand experience of them. Their significance is often overlooked, but they are important for those who have a small child and have not been in that situation before. I see some Members nodding; such groups were probably important for them as well.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) talked about maintained nurseries and Hart Hill Nursery School in her constituency. She highlighted not just the educational benefits of those nurseries, but the health benefits—I have seen that at first hand—and the safe environment they provide for all our young children. The hon. Member for Wycombe spoke about lower taxes if we invest in education. That is probably not the first thing I would go to, but investment in early education is something I passionately believe in, and I believe that Members who have spoken today have made some very powerful cases for how important that investment is.

My hon. Friend also talked about the necessity of long-term planning for maintained nurseries and the long-term funding settlement, both of which I agree with. I know that the Minister’s door is open to me when it comes to discussing policies, which I really appreciate. I hope she also meets with my hon. Friends the Members for Luton North and for Luton South. I think we can agree that they have made a powerful case for their area today, and I hope the Minister will find some time to engage with them and listen to them about what is going on in their area.

One of the things I wanted to talk about is the lack of support for early years providers and all the things they have missed out on due to not being schools. Back in March, as everyone knows, childcare providers were asked to stay open for vulnerable children and the children of key workers. They were assured that they would be able to access the furlough scheme in full, even when they received local authority funding. But just three days before the scheme opened, that position was reversed, forcing providers to tear up their plans and suffer huge losses. Ever since then, early years providers have been overlooked for support, and I wanted to highlight just some of the struggles they have had to put up with during this pandemic.

For a start, early years providers have never been able to claim any of the funding for the additional costs of making their settings covid-secure that schools have been able to claim, which strikes me as ridiculous considering that when we go into a nursery, we see small children running around everywhere. I am not quite sure why they did not qualify for that.

[Rachel Hopkins]

On that point about nursery schools not receiving additional funding for covid security, for the very reason that little ones do not know how to socially distance, Park Hill Nursery School has had to divide up its classrooms. It has created a new classroom in its library area to maintain smaller groups in order to deal with that, which puts added pressure on staffing.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I absolutely agree with my hon. Friend, and I have seen exactly what she is describing at first hand in my son’s nursery.

I am also worried that nurseries with rateable values of over £15,000 were not allowed to access the larger covid grants for retail hospitality or leisure businesses. I hope the Minister will look into that. The Chancellor agreed to give nurseries business rates relief only after intense lobbying from all sides, but, sadly, that support is due to come to an end in April next year, and maintained nursery schools, which have been mentioned repeatedly in this debate, are not able to access it. Many part-time or recently started childminders have been excluded from help through the self-employment income support scheme, and the early years providers did not qualify for the £1 billion covid catch-up funding. Last week, they were excluded from the covid workforce fund to help with the cost of staff absences, despite huge staff pressures.

In essence, throughout this crisis, early years providers have been asked to take on the responsibilities of schools but the liabilities of businesses, and with nowhere near the same level of financial support that has been given to other businesses. Of course I welcome the £44 million increase in new childcare funding in the spending review, but I do not feel it is enough to plug the gap, which stood at £662 million last year. It will only come in April, by which time many providers will certainly have closed. A chain of three nurseries in Essex I spoke to recently spent £6.10 per hour providing a Government-funded childcare place, yet only got £4.32 per hour from the Government to do so, so the 6p per hour increase to funding in the spending review is a drop in the ocean.

I want to work constructively with the Government because the early years sector is important. I also give credit where it is due. One positive step was the Government’s commitment to funding providers at pre-covid occupancy levels, both when they were forced to closed to most children from March to June, and in the autumn term when it was clear that childcare demand would be suppressed by fear of covid, furlough, job losses and working from home. That prediction was correct: occupancy in early years settings is currently just above 60% of normal term-time levels. However, although there is no reason to think demand will not continue to be low for some time, the Government are planning to go back to funding providers based on current occupancy from January. I realise it may sound like a technical point, but that will be devastating for over a quarter of providers, according to a recent survey by the Early Years Alliance.

One could argue that that made sense when the Chancellor was planning to withdraw the furlough scheme and get everyone back to work from October, but it does not make sense to extend the furlough and impose lockdown and severe restrictions while pretending that everything is back to normal for childcare, just because the Government do not want to foot the bill. I ask the Minster to take heed of this. It is hard to estimate the overall impact on the sector, but to take the example of the small nursery chain in Essex I mentioned, the owner estimates that the chain would have lost £12,000 of income this autumn term if funding was based on the current, reduced occupancy, and expects the shortfall to be much bigger in the spring term when funding is set to be calculated as the Government intend.

Mass closure of childcare settings would be devastating for over 300,00 people working in early years, the majority of them women, which is a point already made by hon. Members. Childcare workers are paid badly anyway—I am sure people are aware of that—with one in eight receiving less than £5 an hour. We should be working to tackle low pay and improve career progression in the sector. We have duty to make sure we do not bring about the demise of these jobs by slashing funding.

To remind everyone, this debate is about the future of nurseries and early years settings. The reality is that without better support, and a new approach, thousands of them may not have a future at all. Most hon. Members have made that point today. Survey after survey shows that the early years sector is on the brink of collapse. One in six providers expect to close by Christmas, rising to one in four in the most deprived areas. Recent research from the Department for Education shows around half of all nurseries, pre-schools and childminders were unlikely to be sustainable for more than a year. These are shocking statistics, and I hope the Minister will take account of this. There has been a net loss of 14,000 childcare providers in the last five years as a result of the chronic underfunding of early years entitlements. We could lose at least that many again within this year if fears are not allayed, and action is not taken immediately. I ask the Minister to consider how devastating this would be for working families who rely on childcare, and the young children whose life chances are shaped by the power of early education—that point has been made over and over again—not to mention the impact on our economy and recovery if working parents are forced to stay at home. The brilliant early years workforce will suffer large-scale redundancies.

[David Simmonds]

It is a technical point, rather than a political one, but does the hon. Lady agree that one of the ways that we could address this challenge is by taking the funding cycle through which early years receives its resources out of the same funding cycle where it sits with schools, as there is always a powerful incentive for schools forums to ensure that resources are underspent, in order that they may be redistributed to other causes in the local area? Instead, we should have a much more flexible, local and sustainable means of directing the same money, so that these issues can be addressed.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I agree with the hon. Member that we should have a flexible funding settlement, but I also think that we need to change our approach and attitude to early years settings, because we often see them as looking after children but not quite providing education. It is as much a cultural and attitudinal change as it is a funding change, so I somewhat agree with the hon. Member. We now have an opportunity to look at the childcare sector in this country as a whole, because the pandemic has shone such a bright light on the very big failures in the childcare system due to the lack of funding and the rules around early years settings, and also because they do not qualify for funding in the same way that schools do. I agree with him—that is what I am trying to say, in a very long-winded way.

I will end with a plea to the Government: please do not ignore the cries for help from a sector as important as early years. I urge the Minister, who I said has an open-door policy when it comes to discussions and constructive criticism, to rethink the plan to slash early entitlement funding from January—that is very soon—to give the early years sector the targeted support that it so badly needs, and to commit to working across the House to give our fantastic nurseries, pre-schools and childminders a sustainable future. I really feel that early years providers are an essential part of the social and economic fabric of our country. Therefore, to coin a phrase, let us build back better from the pandemic, rather than let this vital infrastructure come tumbling down when we need it most.