Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life

Lord Addington Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

I am sorry that the noble Lord’s experience was that Sure Start funding was not guaranteed over a long enough period. It certainly was not guaranteed after 2010, was it? That was the problem in the last 14 years.

But to take up the noble Lord’s point about how you ensure that these centres bring together a whole range of services, we are establishing these best start family hubs, building on the lessons of Sure Start. But it will be very important that, in doing that, we bring together parenting, healthcare and education support services to ensure that all babies, children and families have access to both early intervention and the support that they need throughout children’s lives. Alongside that, it will be important to bring together professionals not only from health and education but also working with nurseries, childminders, schools, health services, libraries and local voluntary and community groups and connected to other local services such as relationship support, housing and job support. It is by bringing those services together in an easily accessible way—either in a physical building or through the development of the digital access to best start advice, which we are also working on—that we believe that our expansion could reach an estimated 500,000 children.

[Lord Addington (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It is good to have the whole thing read out; it gives you some context. As pages 4 and 6 of the Statement mention, we are talking about parents reading to children—and, before that, the Minister spoke about how good an advantage it is if you do all the right things. We then talk about SEN. To go back to nurse, in my case, I am dyslexic, and 70% of the dyslexics in the country are unidentified. It tends to have a downward spiral effect on your income and earnings. What are we doing to make sure that libraries and assistive technology are used to get children used to the idea that books are good things? You cannot rely on all parents doing this. Will we, for instance, make sure that libraries are available and that they have access to the new technology? Before I sit down, I had better remind the House that I am chairman of Microlink PC, which is an assisted tech company.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

As well as the announcements that we have made around the best start family service—which will, as I suggested, link in to libraries, for example, and other important local facilities—we were able to announce today that 2026 will be a National Year of Reading. There will be a whole range of activities linking with local libraries, led by the National Literacy Trust, to encourage more reading, both at a very early age and with a focus on children who might not otherwise be able to access reading. Alongside what I talked about in terms of the additional support that we are providing to early years workers and training on identifying special educational needs—as well as the stronger practice hubs that help with advice about how to support children perhaps with particular needs and help to develop reading and maths understanding, for example—that begins to be, and is, a strong package to ensure that we are both picking up children with particular needs around reading and promoting a love of reading among all children and their parents.