Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Monday 9th September 2019 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I always recall that when my hon. Friend and I were first elected to the House we, as constituency neighbours, campaigned very hard to get a better funding settlement for Staffordshire, but also for all schools across the country. We are working on the capital settlement, and we will be working with the Treasury to bring forward announcements in the not-too-distant future.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

For pupils on free school meals, buying water at lunchtime can cost up to 80p of their allowance, which is often more than the fruit juices and milkshakes available. Does the Secretary of State agree that free water should be available, with cups and bottles, for all pupils in all our schools?

[Gavin Williamson]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. No child should ever be expected to pay for water, and no school should ever deny a child access to fresh water. It is a legal requirement for all schools to make water available. If she would be kind enough to forward details of where water is not available, we will be sure to follow it up.

Early Years Family Support

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Tuesday 16th July 2019 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful for your guidance, Mr Deputy Speaker.

Those who go on to become abusers in 20 years’ time will all too often be vulnerable babies who are themselves being abused today. The question that really matters is how we even start to tackle this issue.

Having had my own brief experience of post-natal depression, I can certainly attest to how difficult it can be to cope as a new parent. Colleagues might have heard me speak before about my own memory of sitting in my kitchen with a crying baby, in the middle of winter, with snow on the ground outside, looked at through dirty windows, feeling totally unable to call a window cleaner or even just to make a cup of tea. That feeling of helplessness and hopelessness is a vivid memory—and it is now 23 years on.

This is not my sob story, though: I was lucky enough to have a great husband, a strong network of support and a job to go back to, which snapped me out of it, but, thinking back, it could have been so much worse. Many parents who are struggling to cope are dealing with that reality each and every day. I really do understand how debilitating depression is and how unexpected and horrible the feelings are.

It was when my mum, herself a trained midwife and therapist, asked me to go along and help with a charity she was working with—the Oxford Parent Infant Project —that I realised just how vital secure attachment in those first years really is. After 10 years as chairman and a trustee of OXPIP, I went on to set up NorPIP, the Northamptonshire Parent Infant Partnership, into which my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) was dragged—although not kicking and screaming; she was delighted. I then set up PIPUK, the fabulous national charity that is setting up PIPs throughout the country to provide specialised parent-infant relationship support, including parent-infant psychotherapy, to families and their babies. PIPUK’s aim is not only to address the immediate problems in the relationship between the baby and their parent, but to support a more positive and secure attachment for the long term.

I brought my passion for early years with me to Westminster when I was elected in 2010. I have since met so many brilliant people in the world of infant and maternal mental health, some of whom are present in the Chamber today, and many more of whom are following proceedings on TV. So many people have generously given their time and expertise. In 2011, with support from colleagues from every political party currently represented in Parliament, I launched “The 1001 Critical Days” manifesto, which called for a rethink of how we approach early years intervention at a policy level.

I particularly recognise the early commitment of the right hon. Members for North Norfolk and for Birkenhead (Frank Field), and of the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas), in getting the work off the ground. I pay special tribute to the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) for her dedication to the “The 1001 Critical Days” campaign. She and I promised each other years ago that we would remain committed to achieving real and long-lasting positive change. I am delighted that she is present. We can definitely achieve much through cross-party collaboration for the greater good, and this work is the perfect example of it.

“The 1001 Critical Days” campaign has received the support of more than 100 different organisations, including the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, Barnardo’s, Best Beginnings, the Royal College of Midwives, the Royal College of General Practitioners and the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. There are just too many esteemed charities, royal colleges and foundations for me to list here. I also had the pleasure of working closely with Dame Tessa Jowell on her interest in bringing early years support into the UNICEF millennium development goals.

With cross-party colleagues, we set up the all-party group for conception to age two. I wish to mention the hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson), with whom I very much enjoyed working on the all-party parliamentary Sure Start group.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I am very grateful to the right hon. Lady for giving way. I just wanted to commend her on her work at OXPIP and PIPUK, which she mentioned a moment or so ago; I visited myself to see the work being done. It is really quite outstanding to see what can be achieved. I also thank her for mentioning a number of us, as she has done so generously.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. It has been a great experience. When I became City Minister, I was so sorry to learn that I had to drop all trusteeships and the all-party groups overnight. I cannot thank my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) enough—I have known him for the many years since we were at university together—for picking up the ball and continuing to drive these important issues forward to this day with his amazing dedication, focus and care.

Let me fast-forward through my more recent roles as Energy Minister, Environment Secretary and Leader of the House. On the face of it, there was little scope for me to continue the push on early years, but with the continued collaboration between the right hon. and hon. Members whom I have mentioned and many others, the excellent work has continued, culminating in the Prime Minister herself committing to support the early years agenda and asking me to set up the IMG in the summer of 2018.

The IMG itself comprised my hon. Friends the Members for Louth and Horncastle (Victoria Atkins), for North Swindon (Justin Tomlinson), for Richmond (Yorks) (Rishi Sunak), for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi) and for Thurrock (Jackie Doyle-Price). I pay real tribute to all of them for their hard work on the group, as well as to the dedicated civil servants who supported us. Our remit was to consider the individual, the family and the wider societal risk factors that affect child development in the conception-to-age-two period and the long-term impacts, as well as the issues with central and local government’s approach.

The Prime Minister had asked the IMG to make recommendations to the relevant Secretaries of State that would support local areas in improving the co-ordination of early years services and in spending their current funding more effectively and more efficiently. I am so grateful to the Prime Minister for her continued support for, and interest in, the IMG, which my ministerial colleagues and I felt demonstrated the high priority being placed on that work.

I was delighted to be told that the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill, has already prepared a cross-Whitehall civil service team to take our recommendations forward once signed off by the various Departments. We met as a ministerial group several times and undertook a great many visits to learn from examples of best practice right around the country. We visited Manchester children’s centres, the Lambeth Early Action Partnership, a parent-baby drop-in group in Peterborough and an outreach group in Devon. We held roundtables with charities and families, including parents within the civil service. We had consultations on Mumsnet and spoke to so many passionate and dedicated people working within the sector who want to make a clear difference for parents and babies. It was a wonderful and thoroughly rewarding experience. Out of those visits, meetings and consultations, we quickly began to identify a number of common issues that clearly need attention.

First and foremost is the postcode lottery across the country of the availability of perinatal mental health and specialised parent-infant relationship support, particularly around parent-infant psychotherapy services. In some areas, the provision is fantastic, but in others it is almost entirely non-existent. We heard from parents and professionals wanting health visitors to provide greater levels of support to new parents and their babies, particularly where parents are struggling to form a secure bond, with better levels of breastfeeding support and post-partum care. We also had detailed evidence of the need for greater support for dads, greater support for same-sex parents, better availability for couple counselling and for targeted services for new parents, such as debt and housing advice.

One particular issue that we identified was the need for greater support for non-English-speaking parents. The incredible work of children’s centres was highlighted everywhere we visited, and there is no doubt that parents and professionals want to see family-centred spaces such as these protected. There is a great amount of need out there, and it is clear that we have the opportunity to bring about a huge step change in how we deliver early years family support right across the country, if we seize on the recommendations of the inter-ministerial group.

What did we recommend? First and most importantly, getting the 1,001 critical days right can put children on course for good social, economic and physical outcomes later in life. Getting it wrong creates inequalities and significant costs later for Government and society. Secondly, better focus on both universal and targeted services needs to be a priority in this period.

I will not go into all the key recommendations because Mr Deputy Speaker is looking impatient, but I will mention some of them. First, using the wealth of research and evidence taken by the IMG, Departments should work together to create a clear and cohesive Government vision for the 1,001 critical days. That should be published in the autumn after the spending review. Local authorities should be invited to set out their own service models that work for their local communities, and should be properly measured on that.

Children’s Future Food Report

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Thursday 27th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) for securing this very important debate, and for his excellent and passionate speech. I am thrilled to be following my very good friend, my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth). It has been an honour to work with her over the last few years on an issue that we are both so very passionate about. I remember that when I met her, as a brand-new MP, she said she would focus on this issue more than on any other, and she has been true to her word. I know the children in her constituency are all the better for it, as are those across the country, because she is not just doing this for the children in her constituency, but fighting for all children.

I, too, want to thank the young people who participated in this inquiry, and I congratulate them on doing so. We have heard some moving testimonies about what those children told us. Without their hard work, bravery and determination, we would not have had such a groundbreaking report; it would just have been another report written about children by adults. Listening to those young food ambassadors was eye-opening—and eye-watering—for everyone, including those of us who think we are more seasoned to some of these issues. Finally, I thank everyone involved in the inquiry, with special thanks to the Food Foundation, and to Lindsay Graham, whose idea was the genesis of the inquiry.

As co-chair of the children’s future food inquiry—along with the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), who is not in her place, sadly—I have spoken many times about the shocking things that we heard from the food ambassadors about their experiences of hunger and food insecurity. I am pleased that other Members have shared some of those examples in detail. Today, I will focus on issues that I did not mention when we had the Westminster Hall debate on this issue last month, so I will mainly focus on holiday hunger and breakfast clubs.

First, I would like to hold the Minister to account on some of the things he said in response to that debate. [Interruption.] I think he is a little bit distracted, so perhaps I should wait until he is listening, so he knows what I am going to ask him. Minister, hello! [Interruption.] Wonderful. I know the Minister was distracted by his Whip, but I will be asking him some direct questions, and it would not be fair on him if I did not give him a chance to listen to those questions. I was referring to the debate we had in Westminster Hall, to which he responded, and I am going to reiterate some of those responses and ask him to comment on them further.

As hon. Members will know, the young food ambassadors put together the #Right2Food charter, to outline their demands on Government, and the committee made up of MPs, peers and charities calls on the Government to establish an independent food watchdog that will examine the cost of the policies in the charter. During the Westminster Hall debate on this issue, the Minister said that he had asked his team

“to work with the Food Foundation to look into setting up a working group”.—[Official Report, 8 May 2019; Vol. 659, c. 312WH.]

Can the Minister please provide a progress report on that commitment? Will he also please restate his commitment to continue listening to and working with the young food ambassadors themselves? The Minister also said that the free school meals allowance will be looked at in the spending review, so can he reaffirm this commitment? Can he give the House an insight on when the spending review is estimated to take place under the new Prime Minister? That may be a little more difficult, but he might have a bit of an idea.

As the chair of the all-party group on school food, I am very interested in this issue, as is my hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), who is a vice-chair of that all-party group. Unfortunately, she was not able to be in her place today either, due to commitments elsewhere in the House. However, she has asked me to put on record her support for a radical change in how we do school food.

As we heard in the closing remarks of my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, today we have a report from Feeding Britain, and the excellent academics from Northumbria University, led by Professor Greta Defeyter who is in the Public Gallery today. The report found that in just one year, £88.3 million allocated to local authorities to provide free school meals for eligible children disappeared. The issue was first brought to my attention a number of years ago, and I have tried to get to the bottom of it through Children North East, which is an excellent anti-poverty charity from my region. It raised the issue with me because children had raised it with them. Where does that money go? Who benefits from it? Certainly not the children for whom it is intended.

The young food ambassador spoke to the Minister about that issue directly. Has the Minister had time to consider it further? I am sure he agrees that children should have access to the full benefits they are entitled to and that are intended for them, not for whoever else is managing to pocket the money. He promised that he would write to all schools, and earlier this month he did just that and set out the schools’ responsibilities on food, especially free drinking water. I thank him for that. We all hope that the letter will have had an effect on schools and that we will see immediate changes, especially free water.

It is not only during school time that children go hungry or do not have access to healthy food. Many children up and down the country will be counting down the days to the summer holidays, but for many parents and guardians, those holidays bring not joy but dread. Children who usually receive free school meals do not have access to them when the school gates shut, which is for a total of 170 days per year. Holidays can be an expensive time for all families, especially those who are trying to make their food stretch.

The summer holiday is thought to contribute to many weeks’ worth of learning loss. Professor Greta Defeyter has done studies into that, and it has been academically proven. Many teachers report the effects of that learning loss when the school term begins again after the summer. Andrew McCreery, a youth worker in Portadown, told the Committee that when they asked children to bring a packed lunch for the holiday programmes they were running, 10% to 15% of children brought no lunch, and those who did often brought in bread, cold microwave chips, biscuits, or even an empty lunchbox. That is why I was proud to play a small part by campaigning, lobbying for and securing the holiday hunger provision pilots, and I am pleased they are going ahead again this year.

My hon. Friends the Members for Swansea East (Carolyn Harris), for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck), and for Stoke-on-Trent North do amazing work in their local communities over the summer holidays to ensure that children and families are fed. Because of them, thousands of children who would otherwise go hungry are fed every day in the summer holidays. My right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead has also done that over many years, and they should all be proud of their work. I will try to replicate that and learn from best practice across Sunderland next summer. However, such work should not be down to my hon. Friends, or to the local authorities, charities or communities that step in to do what I believe to be the Government’s job. Will the Minister look at creating a holiday provision framework across the UK, to ensure that those children and families who need it can be fed healthy food over the school holidays?

I move to breakfast clubs, and once again I thank the Minister for giving up some of his valuable time when I met Carmel McConnell from Magic Breakfast and David Holmes from Family Action. I know he was busy, but he gave some of his time to speak to them, which they both appreciated, as did I. Carmel McConnell and David Holmes are doing excellent work, and they currently feed 280,000 school children each day through the national school breakfast programme. However, that funding is scheduled to come to an end in March 2020. This week, the Minister said that funding would be decided in the upcoming spending review—this comes back to his crystal ball.

Is the Minister able to provide any reassurance to children in schools that the funding for the national school breakfast programme will continue beyond March 2020? The programme is a lifeline for children, parents, families and teachers, who see the immediate benefit of a child having breakfast before they start their school day with regard to their learning and, ultimately, their health and long-term outcomes. There can be no better measure to help to close the gap we all talk about than making sure children are not hungry and are able to learn.

Last year, I visited Surrey Square Primary School with my hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Neil Coyle) to see the excellent work the school does in feeding, clothing and caring for children and their families. It is an excellent school and I encourage the Minister to visit if he wants to see a local school that does everything so well. It looks after everyone, all children and families, but especially those with no recourse to public funds. Will the Minister please ensure that children whose families have no recourse to public funds are not forgotten when we design policies for school food? No child, no matter what their family situation, should go hungry in our schools. He may be aware—it was raised in the report—that those children are not entitled to free school meals. They have no recourse to public funds and they are not even entitled to a free school meal unless the school decides to feed them anyway. A lot of schools do. Unfortunately, children across the country are going hungry for lots of reasons and I know the Minister knows he needs to address that.

Having spoken to the young food ambassadors, I know that the Minister is very aware of how important this issue is to them, their peers and their families. The Minister has committed to formally responding to the report in the autumn term, and I thank him for that commitment. I hope he is still a Minister then. If he is able to commit to anything further today, before the summer holidays—before any reshuffle—I know that the young food ambassadors would really appreciate it.

Finally, I would like to welcome today’s launch of the national food strategy, led by Henry Dimbleby. I worked closely with Henry on the excellent school food plan and that work has continued. Cross-departmental considerations on food security and safety are a welcome step towards ensuring that everyone, including children, has access to healthy and affordable food. I very much look forward to working with Henry on this new endeavour.

This has been an excellent debate. I look forward to hearing those who have yet to speak, and to a positive and decisive response from the Minister.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadhim Zahawi]

I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for that point. I intend to address that matter later in my remarks.

Finally, my letter highlighted the range of resources and guidance that is available for schools, including on meeting the mandatory school food standards and supporting children on free school meals, and curriculum resources for schools to help children to lead healthier lives. The Government have recently taken significant action to ensure that all children can access healthy food at school and beyond.

[Mrs Hodgson]

On the Minister’s point about ensuring that schools deliver the healthy food required under standards set out in the school food plan, will the Minister ensure that Ofsted is suitably tooled up and equipped with the most knowledgeable staff, so that when they go into schools to do their inspection, no school will be rated as outstanding unless its food delivery and the food given to children is outstanding?

[Nadhim Zahawi]

The hon. Lady makes her point powerfully, as she has done in the past. She is right—we have to look at every lever available to make sure that we nudge school leaders towards the best behaviour in delivering healthy food.

In 2018, our holiday activities and food programme awarded £2 million to holiday club providers to deliver free healthy food and enriching activities to about 18,000 children across the country, as was mentioned earlier. Following the success of this first year, we have more than quadrupled the funding for the summer of 2019. As my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton mentioned, we are working with 11 organisations in 11 local authorities across the country—I am happy to write to her about those organisations. Both the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North and the right hon. Member for Birkenhead said that they were disappointed that there had not been a successful bid from their constituencies for a holiday activities and food co-ordinator. I am sure they will appreciate that there has been a lot of interest in the programme from organisations, but my team is happy to talk to bidders who want more detail and feedback on their bids so that we can keep pushing forward in this area.

I am also proud of my Department’s breakfast clubs programme. We are investing up to £26 million to set up or improve 1,700 breakfast clubs in schools in the most disadvantaged areas of the country, with the clear aim that those clubs stay sustainable over the longer term. The clubs ensure that children start the day with a nutritious breakfast. Such breakfasts not only bring a health benefit, but help children to concentrate and learn in school. I have visited one of these breakfast clubs, and one positive outcome from it was a rise in school attendance, with the fact that parents brought in their children early delivering much better attendance numbers. The children and teachers whom I visited were overwhelmingly positive about the benefits of such clubs.

We also remain committed to ensuring that the most disadvantaged children receive a healthy lunch at school. Last year, more than 1 million disadvantaged children were eligible for and claimed a free school meal, and that important provision has recently been expanded in three significant ways. First, in 2014, we introduced free meals in further education colleges. Secondly, in the same year, we also introduced universal free school meals to all infant children in state-funded schools. Thirdly, under our revised criteria for free school meals, which were introduced last April, we estimate that more children will benefit from free meals by 2022 compared with under the previous benefit system. In fact, numbers released today show that 1.3 million children are benefiting from free school meals.[Official Report, 2 July 2019, Vol. 662, c. 9MC.]

On the point made earlier by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead, one recommendation in the inquiry’s report was that any unspent free meal allowance should be carried over for pupils to use on subsequent days. Schools absolutely have the freedom to do this if their local arrangements allow for it—indeed, Carmel Education Trust in the north-east has adopted the practice. The right hon. Gentleman has raised an important point, however, and we should look into the matter to see how we can get all schools to adopt a similar practice, if they can. I should highlight that free school meals are of course intended as a benefit in kind, rather than as a cash benefit, but I am sure that the right hon. Gentleman understands that better than I do. Our critical interest is that schools meet their legal requirements to provide free and healthy meals to eligible children every day.

My Department is responsible for setting the mandatory school food standards, which have been mentioned. They require schools to serve children healthy and nutritious food. The standards restrict foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar—both you and I, Mr Deputy Speaker, could benefit from fewer foods that are high in fat, salt and sugar. We are currently in the process of updating the standards, working with Public Health England to deliver a bold reduction in the sugar content of school meals. This is part of a wider Government plan to tackle childhood obesity. Sadly, as was mentioned in the Westminster Hall debate, the other side of the coin with regard to children going without food is obesity among the most disadvantaged families and their children.

Sure Start: IFS Report

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Wednesday 5th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

I point out to the hon. Gentleman that correlation and causation are not the same thing. The IFS report, which we have very much welcomed, is cautious in making that distinction. The important thing is that we can build children’s Sure Start centres in his constituency, which, as he says, is very rural, but what has always mattered to me—I am a former Public Health Minister—is this: what about the families who do not go there?

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

On the eve of the election in 2010, David Cameron, who became Prime Minister, promised that Sure Start would be safe in his hands, yet here we are nine years later and over 1,000 Sure Start centres have closed, the rest have been hollowed out and two thirds of the budget has gone, and still the IFS has said that they are doing some powerful work with the poorest in our communities. Like me, does the Minister wonder what amazing achievements there could have been from these centres if they had not been decimated and savagely cut in the way that they were?

[Anne Milton]

The hon. Lady has always been a champion of early years in all the work that she has done. It is not just the budget spent on Sure Start centres that matters; it is the budget coming in, and the visits from health visitors, which are so crucial—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady is shaking her head. It is not just that budget. As the report makes clear, we are the highest spender in Europe. What matters is the universal offer and making sure that we target the support to those who need it most and possibly to families who are not attending the centres—what about them?

Children’s Future Food Inquiry

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Wednesday 8th May 2019 Westminster Hall

[Andrew Selous (South West Bedfordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) on her speech and on bringing this important subject before the House of Commons. She is absolutely right to do so, because the Food Foundation, among others, has pointed out that public policy has in effect withdrawn from the food sector over the past 20 years or so. That is not right, because the area is important and we need to do better in many parts of it.

At the very start of life, as we know from the report, the UK has one of the lowest breastfeeding rates in the world. Mothers’ milk, or formula milk, is the most important food that children get to start with. As a man, I feel particularly passionate about defending the rights of breastfeeding mothers to feed in public or at work—women should not be shut away. We are moving on, but we still have to challenge one or two people who do not stand up for mothers who want to breastfeed.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for raising that point. I am sure he was in the House, as I was, when the Equality Act 2010 was passed. The Act made it lawful to breastfeed wherever bottle feeding a child was allowed. Is he as disappointed as I am that the Act still has not been enforced properly?

[Andrew Selous]

Yes, I am. We need to go further. If any employers are not giving mothers breaks at work to breastfeed, they should change their practice. The hon. Lady is right to raise that issue.

As children’s lives go on, the problem gets worse. When children start primary school, 10% are obese, but when they leave at the age of 11, 20% are obese. A quarter of all children starting primary school are overweight or obese, yet one third are when they leave. Cancer Research UK and others have said that, based on present trends, half all children in the UK are set to be overweight or obese by 2020.

Sadly, obese children are five times more likely to remain obese as adults, and therefore more likely to have diabetes, cancer, heart or liver conditions, or perhaps mental health conditions associated with those issues. There are 3.1 million people with diabetes. That has gone up from 2.4 million in 2010. Every week in this country we amputate around 170 lower limbs due to diabetes. That is 9,000 a year. People are having their feet or lower legs cut off because their diabetes has got so bad. That should shame us; it is an appalling state of affairs, and the number has gone up from 7,200 amputations in 2010. The trajectory is getting worse.

Our food sector is not working in the way it should. We know from the work of the Food Foundation and others that unhealthy food is on average three times cheaper than healthy food. Let me put that the other way around: healthy food is three times more expensive than unhealthy food. That is simply not good enough. People in poverty and those with low incomes will buy what they can afford. If they are forced to buy unhealthy food, children set off on the wrong trajectory, which is why being obese and overweight is a huge social justice issue. For the first time in our nation’s history, the poorest are the most overweight and obese. That should set red lights flashing across Whitehall that our food policy is not working.

In most constituencies, fast food outlets, many of which unfortunately do not sell the healthy food they should, average about a quarter of all places to buy food. The figure varies from only 7% in the Isles of Scilly to 39% in Blackburn with Darwen, where nearly four in 10 food outlets are fast food outlets, selling primarily unhealthy food.

The UK does badly internationally, too. I am grateful for the research from the Guy’s and St Thomas’ Charity in its report “Bite Size”, which came out a couple of months ago. It compared London with capital cities around the world for childhood obesity rates. It is not a happy story. In Paris, 5% of children are obese; in Hong Kong, it is 7%; in Sydney, it is 10%; in Tokyo, it is 12%; in New York, it is 21%; and in London, it is 22%. We are worse than New York for childhood obesity, and more than four times worse than Paris, which is just the other side of the channel.

There is a particularly European dimension to the problem. I will not talk about Brexit, but about what is happening with food policy in Europe. I am grateful to the Food Foundation for its “Broken Plate” report, which came out a couple of months ago. In that, a lady called Kathleen Kerridge wrote:

“Across mainland Europe, cheap foods are healthy choices. It’s sensible that a kilo of tomatoes should be cheaper than a kilo of sausages. In the UK, however, the opposite is true”—

or it is often true. Why is that the case? She goes on to state:

“I would like to see the UK take note of the European model. I think with food education and more affordable fresh produce, we could turn the tide for the poorest households and see us all eating ‘well’.”

I have considerable issues with the food industry in this country. I commend the work of the Obesity Health Alliance in calling for the 9 pm watershed and for restrictions on multi-buy promotions, both of which the Government are consulting on. That is excellent, but we need to get through the consultation and take action. As the Obesity Health Alliance says, these are serious and important issues.

Let me give praise where praise is due. One supermarket in Europe is doing the right thing—the Dutch retail chain Marqt, which operates 16 stores in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, The Hague and Haarlem in the Netherlands. It has become the first chain in the Netherlands to ban the marketing of unhealthy foods to children. Its chief executive Joost Leeflang said:

“Marqt helps consumers choose products that are produced with respect for people, animals and environment and this includes helping customers make healthier choices.”

He went on to say:

“Tempting children to choose unhealthy products doesn’t fit with how we want to help our customers.”

Mr Leeflang is a private sector entrepreneur running a business, and he is appealing to people’s better instincts—to parents to do the right thing for their children. Frankly, if he can do it, I want to lay down that challenge before the supermarkets and fast food outlets up and down this country. If it can happen in the Netherlands, it can happen here.

As a member of the Health Committee, I went to Amsterdam, where the deputy mayor, Eric van der Burg, a centre-right politician, has brought in a major, city-wide programme to deal with obesity. That meant having free water available in schools—the hon. Member for Bristol East is absolutely right about that. In fact, only water is allowed to be drunk in schools there. That meant educating the parents, helping low-income and immigrant communities to learn to cook properly and banning the advertising of unhealthy foods on the metro. It is a city-wide approach that is producing results, as is happening in Leeds—encouragingly, we learnt last week that the poorest children are starting to lose weight the fastest. There is hope that lessons from Amsterdam are coming over to the UK.

I hear what the hon. Lady says about people living in food poverty. We have to make sure that people have enough income to eat properly. We need what I would call prosperity with a purpose and inclusive growth—there is no point running a free market system that does not benefit the people working in it. That has to be part of what we are about; it is what I am about, and I know it is what the Minister is about in his role in Government.

There is more we can do. We could learn from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Programme in the United States, which gives vouchers for farmer’s markets in the USA. I have farmer’s markets in towns in my constituency, which often provide lower cost, healthy food. We need more of that. Let us look around the world and take best practice. Let us not just leave this issue to the free market alone. Let us encourage the people who are doing the right thing, such as Mr Leeflang in the Netherlands, and encourage UK retailers to follow his excellent example.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Rosindell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for securing this important and very timely debate, and for her excellent opening speech.

Two weeks ago, as we have heard, we launched the children’s future food inquiry and it was widely welcomed. A huge number of people attended the launch, including a number of us here, and the Minister, who everyone was pleased to see. I co-chaired the inquiry with the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), and my hon. Friends the Members for Bristol East and for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods) were members of the inquiry committee. The report is unique, because it is the first to include children and young people from low-income backgrounds—in fact, it is all about them and their voices.

The young food ambassadors were instrumental in the development of the report—so much so that we produced the children’s #Right2Food charter, which contains the voices of all the young people who contributed. They shared their experiences of food insecurity and hunger with such bravery, and ensured that not only their voices but those of their friends and peers who had experienced food insecurity were heard. They were so articulate in telling us about their experiences at home and school. They told us things that shocked even the most hardened and clued-up MPs on the inquiry committee; I think a number of us shed a few tears at those sessions.

I cannot mention all the things we heard during the inquiry, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East has already highlighted a number of them, so I will focus on three things that stood out: free school meals; the availability of free water, which we have already heard about; and the affordability and availability of food at home.

Hon. Members will know that I chair the all-party parliamentary group on school food. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham, who helped me set up that group 10 years ago, is one of its vice-chairs. We have campaigned for more than a decade with Members across the House to ensure that children have access to a hot and healthy meal during the school day. I am pleased that that campaign has developed to include provision for breakfast and meals throughout the school holidays for the poorest children.

I am very pleased by the Minister’s announcement overnight that the Government will provide £9.1 million this year for holiday activities and food, following last year’s £2 million. I was also pleased to see that two of the successful bids—those from Gateshead Council and StreetGames in Newcastle—were from the north-east. It will be really interesting to follow those programmes and see the difference that I know they will make to some of the most disadvantaged children across the country.

However, I want to focus on the provision of free school meals. As we know, on average, free school meal pupils receive around £2.30 a day. That rate was introduced in 2014 and has not increased since, so pupils have to stretch their allowance further each year to get a meal. However, the young food ambassadors told us that, more often than not, the cheapest food on the menu is the unhealthiest food. As the hon. Member for South West Bedfordshire (Andrew Selous) said, we see the same in wider society with supermarkets and takeaways, for example.

One young ambassador told us that she would usually get a sausage roll, chips and beans, because that was all she could afford on her free school meal allowance that would actually keep her full. She was looking for fullness, not healthiness. The Minister will know that that is not the best example of a nutritious meal for a young person who is growing up and preparing for an afternoon of lessons. It is fine once in a while, but we do not really want a child to be eating that day in, day out just because it keeps them full. Will the Minister therefore have cross-departmental discussions with his colleagues to ensure that, especially in schools, the cheapest food is not the unhealthiest food on the menu, so pupils on free school meals have the opportunity to eat the same healthy food as their peers, even if some healthy items have to be provided at a loss? The situation in schools must be different from the situation in the supermarkets.

We also heard that schools did not value lunch time as part of the day but saw it as an inconvenience to be rushed and got over with. Unfortunately, for thousands of children, the only meal they get each day is the one they eat at school. That is not right, but we know it is the case, so school meals should not be rushed or dismissed. However, the young ambassadors told us that they sometimes had their lunch time as late as 1pm. That is an excruciating time for someone who has gone to school hungry to wait—even we cannot always wait until 1pm—and makes it impossible for them to concentrate on lessons in the morning. It probably wastes the whole morning’s learning.

Most shockingly, we also heard that those very same pupils then had only a half-hour lunch break, a lot of which was spent queuing for food. If they had not finished their meal by the time the break was over, they were made to throw the remnants of their food in the bin. Imagine that—imagine having to throw some of the only meal that is available to you that day in the bin because you do not have time to eat it. It is just gut-wrenching.

One young ambassador also told us that pupils could be forced to take their detentions during their lunch break, further limiting the time they have to eat. Schools should not turn lunch time into a chore, something for pupils to dread or a time to punish pupils. Lunch time should be an integral part of the day—a time for children to get nourishment, to wind down and to spend time socialising with their friends. Let me be frank: children simply cannot learn if they are hungry and thirsty.

That takes me to my next point, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East eloquently raised—its absurdity has exercised a number of us. We must remember that children from low-income families who are on free school meals are not the kind of children who have fancy reusable water bottles that they can refill as and when. They may also be from chaotic homes and, as we heard, some of them are child carers who have many responsibilities before they get to school, so finding a bottle to fill will not be foremost in their mind. In fact, it was the consensus among the young ambassadors that, even if they did have a reusable water bottle, there were no facilities at school where they could fill it with fresh water. The Minister heard that for himself when he met the young ambassadors at the launch of the report. I know he was shocked by that and said it was against school standards, but that is the reality that those children face. Sadly, I am sure the situation is the same in other schools.

If a child manages to bring a water bottle to school, there is often nowhere to fill it, so they have to buy another bottle. As we heard, that can cost them up to 90p—a huge proportion of their £2.30 allowance for a free school meal, especially when they are battling with hunger. We were also told that, similarly to food, unhealthy drinks options such as juice and milkshakes are available and—guess what?—they are often cheaper than water, at 50p or 60p.

[Andrew Selous]

In the Netherlands, where the healthy food programme is called Jump-In, they allow only water in schools, they get parents on side, and they are very successful.

[Mrs Hodgson]

There is indeed a lot we can learn from other countries. My hon. Friend the Member for City of Durham and I visited Sweden at the start of our parliamentary careers, and that is what drove us to campaign to improve things here. In Sweden, not only was all the food free and healthy, but there were not millions of choices, so it was affordable to provide. The children all ate it, and there was water and milk on tap, totally free.

Clearly, there is a disparity in the messaging to pupils. They are told they have to eat healthily but they feel that a healthy diet is totally unaffordable for them. That brings me to my final point, which is about the availability of affordable food at home. Some 4.1 million children in the UK are growing up in poverty. That is a fact. That means that one in three children lives in a household that struggles to afford to buy enough healthy food to meet the official nutritional guidelines. Those families would have to spend 42% of their disposable income after housing to be able to consume a healthy diet. It is outrageous that a healthy diet is so far out of reach for millions of families. One young ambassador, who was a child carer, told the inquiry that food was so scarce at home that she rationed her food so her mum and siblings had enough to eat. I hope the Minister agrees that that is not a position any child should be put in.

Finally, will the Minister commit to setting up an independent food watchdog to look at these issues, to cost policies and to prevent children from going hungry? It is one of the five asks of the children’s #Right2Food charter contained in the report. I will not go into those asks, because my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East spoke about them in detail. As the report highlights, if we do not act now, we will lose an entire generation to food insecurity and hunger—and, in turn, obesity, because hunger and obesity are two sides of the same coin: malnutrition. I implore the Minister to act now to help future generations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Rosindell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy) for securing this important debate, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) for all the work she does. I want to acknowledge at the outset that she is a real champion of this issue.

Here we are again in this Chamber, talking about school food. However, this time it is wonderful that we have the children’s future food inquiry report. I thank Dame Emma Thompson and Lindsay Graham for the huge work they did on the inquiry, but I pay most tribute to the young people who talked to us and gave us the evidence. It was a hard listen for all of us—even for those of us who have worked on school food and children’s hunger for many years. We heard about their life experiences and about how, in many respects, the school system made things worse in terms of school food, when it could have offered a wonderful, nutritious experience for those young people. What they said was powerful; we are lucky to have those ambassadors.

School food has been an issue for me all my life because my mother was a school cook. Interestingly, I think we understood more about the importance of nutrition for learning 60 or 70 years ago than we appear to now as a society, which is dreadful. The issue was brought home to me when my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West and I visited Sweden in 2006. We were newly elected MPs and keen to get this issue on the agenda, and we were staggered by the way those in Sweden thought about school food. Young people came along in the morning. They got breakfast and lunch; it was provided free to them all. Their teachers sat down with them so that they learned social skills as well as having a nutritious meal.

Obviously, we were a bit shocked and said, “Oh, this is amazing.” They said, “How is it amazing? Children can’t learn when they are hungry.” Having a nutritious school meal in the middle of the day is just as important as having a desk, chair or anything else that we provide as part of the education system. We must take that on board—I hope the Minister is listening—because 13 years later we are still having to make the same arguments about the importance of a nutritious school meal, including breakfast and something later in the school day.

What is different at the moment is the context in which we are making this argument, because we know that hunger is rising in this country. Between 1 April 2018 and 31 March 2019, Durham County Council allocated almost 20,000 emergency food supplies from food banks, including almost 7,000 to children. That was just in Durham—it is a huge number. I raised the matter with the Prime Minister some weeks ago, because teachers in my constituency are reporting children coming to school who have had nothing to eat since they were at school the day before. Teachers are providing breakfast themselves, and the situation cannot continue. In the north-east, almost a quarter of families are living in poverty, which for a lot of them means poor housing conditions and poor health, including mental health. They might not live in an area where it is easy to access shops or affordable, good-quality food, so we must consider the whole picture.

Some things that came out of the children’s future food inquiry are worth emphasising, and my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East did a good job of that. For example, school lunch may be the only proper meal that a child receives, but what children eat during the day affects their concentration and performance at school. Entitlement to free school meals varies hugely across the UK, and thousands of extremely vulnerable children are excluded from accessing them because of their immigration status. I hope the Minister will consider that point.

As others have said, the free school meal allocation, at around £2.30, is not enough to enable children to buy a hot lunch, particularly if they have to buy water as well. I am glad that issue has been well aired this morning, because it is a disgrace that children at school in this country have to spend up to £1 to buy water at lunchtime. Private water companies must take that on board. The money might add to their profits, but what it is doing to children is outrageous. We also found that free school meals still carry a stigma, often because of the way they are organised. We have the technology for that not to be the case, so why do schools still do it? Perhaps we should think about how to rename free school meals.

Meal times are not valued as part of the school day, and they should be. We heard story after story of young people who simply do not have enough time to purchase a proper school meal at lunchtime, or time to eat it, as that often competes with other things they need to do. Young people also want a say in what type of food is delivered at school—that was more about cultural preferences than them wanting pizza and chips all the time, and they recognised the importance of having a proper meal.

One reason we are still here making the argument again and again for universal free school meals is the naysayers, and we will have to take them on if we want to make progress—Amanda Platell’s recent article in the Daily Mail is a good example. People say we have high levels of childhood obesity in this country, so we cannot have hungry children. As my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West said, however, those are two sides of the same coin. A lot of children from poorer backgrounds are not able to access good-quality food, and we therefore have a huge obesity crisis.

The last time we debated this issue in Westminster Hall, I and others were told that it was an abrogation of parental responsibility, because it is the responsibility of parents to feed their children properly at school. Practically, it is quite difficult for parents to give children a hot meal during the day, and we should think about education more generally as a societal responsibility.

[Mrs Hodgson]

People might say, “They can send children in with a packed lunch,” but as my hon. Friend knows, only 1% of packed lunches were found by a report on school food to be as healthy as the food provided within schools. It is almost impossible for parents to send in that healthy food.

[Dr Blackman-Woods]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point.

There was a universal free school meals pilot for two years in County Durham, and it transformed behaviour in school. It was incredibly important for the children to learn those social skills, and attainment levels across the school were improved in a short time. The evidence is there. I hope the Minister will look at it and think about providing universal free school meals. It is great that additional money is going to address holiday hunger, but none of that is coming to County Durham, which is the poorest county in the country. Will the Minister consider that issue?

What children have asked for in the charter is modest, and I hope not only that the Minister will consider implementing it, but that he will have higher ambitions in terms of properly serving the needs of our young people.

Further Education Funding

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd April 2019 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for Gloucester (Richard Graham) for having secured this important debate. I pay tribute to all the local colleges in the north-east and especially Sunderland College—I regularly meet its representatives, who do such a great job with ever-decreasing budgets.

Between 2010-11 and 2017-18, spending on further education and skills fell by £3.3 billion in real terms. At the same time, employers are reporting another rise in the number of vacancies they are facing as a result of skills shortages. To bridge the skills gap, further education needs investment. However, over the past 10 years colleges have had to deal with an average funding cut of 30%, while at the same time costs have risen dramatically. Funding for adult education has been cut by 62% since 2010.

[Derek Twigg (Halton) (Lab)]

I am fortunate to have a good college, Riverside College, in my constituency. However, one thing that concerns me about the cuts and the impact of the funding problems with colleges is that adult education, which my hon. Friend just touched on, is a second chance for many people who may not have done well at school. They have another opportunity through further education to do better. We need more support for that.

[Mrs Hodgson]

Absolutely. In the past 10 years, we have seen enrolments for adult education drop from 5.1 million to 1.9 million. Funding for students aged 16 to 18 has also been cut by 8% in real terms since 2010. The current base for 16-to-18 education is just £4,000 a year, as it has been since 2013, with no increase.

[Dr David Drew (Stroud) (Lab/Co-op)]

One simple thing that could be done today would be to fund 18-year-olds at the same rate as 17-year-olds. It is absolutely wrong that they get less funding than children a year younger than them. Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Mrs Hodgson]

I absolutely agree. We also found that the budget did not increase when education became compulsory until 18. It just does not reflect the current cost of high-quality courses, including the new T-levels, as we heard from a Government Member.

I do not know whether the Minister wrote to everyone, but I got a letter from her last week, in which she said:

“A strong FE sector is essential to ensuring everyone in our society, whatever their background, has the opportunity to succeed…At its core this means colleges need strong leadership and must be financially sustainable and resilient, so that they can invest in learning and respond to changing demands.”

Given that acknowledgement from the Minister that FE must be financially sustainable and resilient, can she please justify her Department’s constant budget-slashing of FE?

As we all know, education is the key to a bright future. We must ensure that everyone, no matter their age, has the opportunity to learn and develop new skills. The only way we can achieve that is for the Government to invest. I hope they are listening, and I hope the Treasury is watching, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wolverhampton North East (Emma Reynolds) said. People in Sunderland and across the country deserve better than the current funding model.

School Funding

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Monday 4th March 2019 Westminster Hall

[Thelma Walker]

I completely agree. From having spoken to many headteachers in my constituency, and around the country, I know that they now say that they have made it work, and made it work. They are now crossing red lines, and can no longer deliver proper provision for the children in their schools.

Colne Valley secondary schools should not have a total annual shortfall of more than £1,360,000, and primary schools a total of more than £1,720,000. It is not difficult to see how rising pupil numbers and reductions in funding are putting schools in a terrible position.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

I reinforce my hon. Friend’s point about headteachers being at the end of their tether. One of my constituents, who is an officer for the National Association of Headteachers, and who happens to be in the Gallery, organised a very useful meeting for me with headteachers from across my constituency. Like my hon. Friend, a number of them have been in the teaching profession for decades. Several of them also said that under no previous Government had they seen anything like such large cuts. Does she agree, and has she heard the same from her headteachers?

[Thelma Walker]

I absolutely concur. I can speak personally about that. Under the last Labour Government, I had a headship for two schools and had a school with a Sure Start centre, which was funded adequately and making a real difference to the quality of children’s and families’ lives. I can speak personally about the investment from the previous Labour Government.

At my latest meeting with Colne Valley headteachers, I was told that funding issues have led to cuts in staffing and resources, and difficulties in SEND provision. I know that that is the case for headteachers up and down the country. The cuts have also limited opportunities for learning in schools. A recent report by the Fabian Society found that there has been a dramatic decline in arts provision in primary schools, and that it is of a poorer quality than in 2010.

It is the same for modern foreign languages. Analysis from the BBC shows a drop in the number of pupils taking a GCSE language course of between 30% and 50%. The Sixth Form Colleges Association revealed that 50% of schools and colleges have dropped courses in modern foreign languages because of funding pressures, with A-levels in German, French and Spanish the main casualties. The hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) spoke about equipping schoolchildren for being the future workforce. A decline in the number of young people taking modern foreign languages will have a negative impact on that.

The funding cuts not only put an unnecessary and unwelcome amount of pressure on professionals; they take away from what should be a broad and balanced curriculum. The Government need to listen to professionals—on issues in the system, and on the types of learning and environment that benefit children and the level of resources that it will take to deliver them. Decisions should be responsive to what is happening, and should not trivialise concerns, offering only “little extras” here and there. I know that the people supporting the campaign better to fund our schools, colleges and sixth forms will keep going. I hope that today’s debate reassures them that they have allies in this place who are listening and who will stand with them.

--- Later in debate ---

[Laura Smith (Crewe and Nantwich) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship in this incredibly important debate, Sir David. I am proud that nearly two years on since local parents, children, support staff, teachers, headteachers, Fair Funding For All Schools, the Labour party and I protested in Nantwich town centre and marched in our thousands on the streets of Sandbach, my constituency is still demanding answers to the crisis the Government and 10 years of austerity have inflicted on our education system. We still come in the top 10 constituencies in the country for responding to this petition, and I thank every single person who took the time to do so.

Since being elected, I have spoken many times about the funding crisis that has gripped our schools. I speak as an ex-teacher, an educational campaigner, a parent and now as a Member of Parliament and as vice-chair of the f40 group, which represents the worst-funded authorities in the country. Today I speak on behalf of all of those brave professionals who continue to stick their head above the parapet and speak honestly about life in schools. In Crewe and Nantwich, they constantly hear the misleading claim that this Government are providing more money for schools than ever before, but they know full well that they have faced real-terms cuts on a massive scale. After all, 100% of schools in my constituency have experienced such cuts. They do an amazing job at trying to deliver the best experience they can for the children and families that attend, but it is becoming an impossible task.

I regularly meet head teachers in my area, both as a collective and as individuals. Without exception, they relay the same message: they cannot shave any more meat off the bones of their budgets. They are demoralised and devastated, and they feel let down, because teachers believe that every child matters—that is a fundamental idea that should unite everybody in this place whenever we discuss education. It is the belief that every child matters that inspired me to go into teaching.

I want to focus specifically on the issue of SEND provision. It is not only the first topic mentioned by the majority of headteachers, but shows that somewhere along the line this Government lost the belief that every child matters. The f40 campaign states that the funding currently available is not enough to deliver education for the modern world. All SEND in schools has increased dramatically in recent years, including the low levels of SEN. Schools are dealing with those higher levels, an increase in pupil numbers and the increase in the cost of running a school, while their budgets have been slashed in real terms.

[Mrs Hodgson]

On the issue of SEND, I want to mention the importance of teaching assistants. UNISON, which is represented in the Gallery by its regional director in the north-east, recognises their importance. My daughter is a newly qualified teacher in her first year of teaching and has said that she has a number of children in her class with special educational needs, yet she has only one teaching assistant for a few hours. Does my hon. Friend recognise how detrimental this is to those children?

[Laura Smith]

I am very pleased to hear that my hon. Friend’s daughter is going into the profession. I cannot speak highly enough of the talents of the teaching assistants and support staff who work in schools. They are desperately needed, and we do not want to see anybody losing teaching assistants.

Just this morning, a headteacher who knew that we were having this debate got in touch with me, saying:

“At my school, budget cuts along with having to fund the first £6k for SEN pupils has forced us into a deficit budget (the first ever) and consequently into a whole school restructure situation which has left us unable to fund any general classroom support. I have had to make redundancies which has curtailed our ability to provide the broad and varied curriculum that OFSTED are now demanding. We are only able to offer teaching assistant support to pupils with EHCP’s. I have also had to cut allowances to dedicated and hardworking teachers (who have always gone the extra mile for pupils at my school) leaving them undervalued and demotivated after years of exemplary service which has kept our school one of the most consistent and respected schools in our town.”

The head continued:

“I am only asking for enough money to effectively run a school in the 21st century that supports the needs of ALL pupils not just SEN and deprived children. After all shouldn’t education offer fairness of opportunity to all?”

Minister, I am sick of empty words. I am sick of the fact that so many of my friends in the profession feel crushed. I am sick of those dedicated professionals reporting to me that their mental health is suffering and that they may leave the profession they love. I am sick of the lousy pay that they are expected to work for, while the work piles on. Most of all, I am sick of the Government’s abject disregard for the education of the many children in this country who do not attend a fee- paying school. As a parent, I am sick of the fact that those who care for and nurture my children are so demoralised. I am furious that future generations are being let down so catastrophically. Test results and attainment are a small part of what makes a successful school.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Monday 4th February 2019 Commons Chamber

[Anne Milton]

I know that my hon. Friend has campaigned very hard for West Notts College, and the Skills Funding Agency and the Further Education Commissioner’s office are working very closely with it. What matters now is that West Notts College has the opportunity to do well what it should do, which is offer excellent further education to local people.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

The excellent school food plan recommended in 2013 that Ofsted inspectors should consider the way a school promotes healthy lifestyles. We have had two childhood obesity reports that talk about Ofsted evaluating how schools support children to keep themselves healthy, yet there is no mention of that in the Ofsted inspection framework. Will the Minister commit today to implementing an Ofsted-led healthy rating scheme as soon as possible?

Deaf Children’s Services

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Thursday 13th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the House for making BSL interpreters available to help people to follow today’s debate. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) not only for securing this important debate on deaf children’s services, but for his sterling work chairing the all-party parliamentary group on deafness. I also thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have spoken.

Many of us, I hope, will have fond memories of school, but we probably take for granted the fact that being able to hear facilitated our learning and socialisation during that time. We are living in an era when advances in technology and teaching mean that deaf children need not be isolated. Nor should they be missing out on this vital part of learning and interaction, but the tragedy of this debate is that they are.

That failure can be laid at the Government’s door. A toxic combination of Government-imposed local authority cuts, education cuts, the shambolic roll-out of SEND reforms and unfettered off-rolling have led to what the National Deaf Children’s Society rightly refers to as “stolen futures”. Local authority spending on services for children and young people has fallen in real terms by almost £1 billion since 2012, with a £3 billion shortfall predicted by 2025. Just last year, the APPG for children found that 89% of directors of children’s services were struggling to fulfil their statutory duties towards children in need of support.

In that environment, it is no surprise, as my hon. Friend the Member for Poplar and Limehouse noted in his opening remarks, that over one third of local authorities in England plan to cut £4 million from their budgets for education support for deaf children this year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mike Hill) rightly said, all that will do is exacerbate current issues.

The recent steps to ring-fence SEND funding represent an inflexible policy, where strict rules mean that only 0.5% of a school’s overall budget can be transferred to the high-needs block. The policy is also not working, as evidenced by the 27 authorities that have appealed, asking that it be relaxed to meet their local need. Interestingly, the majority of successful appeals have all been in Conservative-led authorities—I sincerely hope the Minister is not playing politics with deaf children’s services and education.

The £50 million announced earlier this year to help local authorities create new places or improved facilities for SEND pupils is also nowhere near good enough. Not only is it not new money, but it is a one-off cash injection, not the sustainable funding that people are crying out for.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

Up in the north-east, my hon. Friend and I are in neighbouring constituencies, so I am sure she will be aware of the situation in Sunderland. We have 236 deaf children in Sunderland, yet the local authority has had its budget to provide the services for those children cut by 10%. Does she agree that, at a time when we see an increase in the number of deaf children and when deaf children are to be supported up to age 25 through the reforms to SEND, which is good, we should be seeing more money put in to support these children, rather than cuts?

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

The SEND reforms are a topic I will refer to later in my speech, but my hon. Friend leads me aptly to my next point. When funding and support are denied in cases such as the ones we are talking about today, education is also denied.

In his response, the Minister will likely refer to the funding given to the National Sensory Impairment Partnership and other bodies, but that money does not address the falling number of teachers of the deaf. Having British Sign Language-trained teachers is vital to deaf children, a point that was well made by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham South (Lilian Greenwood), but some areas have only one specialist teacher per 100 students. I was sorry to hear from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that that scarcity of teachers is the same in Northern Ireland, although I should say to him that I always follow every single word he says, and I love listening to his speeches.

None of that should come as any shock, since our schools are facing the first real-terms funding cuts in 20 years, with £2.8 billion cut from their budgets since 2015. As always in these austere times, specialist provision is the first to go. Bamburgh School is a specialist school in my constituency, which is now in the unenviable position of having to pay out of an existing budget for its existing teachers to learn BSL level 1 on a 30-week course, which will take the school into a deficit. On top of that, these dedicated teachers are completing the course in what little free time they have. However, their equally dedicated headteacher, Peter Nord, told me that he has a duty to the children he teaches, who, without BSL, would not get the full learning experience they deserve.

Not every deaf child or school will have a head and teachers as dedicated as we have at Bamburgh or the Elmfield School for Deaf Children in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones). I wonder what will happen to those children. I appreciate that a review of the SEND workforce in schools is under way, but a report commissioned by the Department and published over two and a half years ago has already identified a drastic shortage of deaf teachers. Instead of yet another review to give the appearance of doing something, can the Minister please advise us when there might be a response to the review that was done nearly three years ago, and what the timescales are for the current ongoing review?

The decrease in support is taking place against the backdrop of an increasing number of children requiring it. In just the last year, the number of deaf children increased by 11%. Earlier this year, it was shown that the attainment gap between deaf children and hearing children has widened—the figures were ably shared with us by my hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Liz Twist).

Sadly, Government neglect of deaf children continues throughout their education, with post-16 funding bearing no resemblance at all to the number of deaf pupils without an EHC plan. Just last year, it was revealed that some county councils in England charge 16 to 19-year-old SEND students £1,500 a year for their transport. Since 2015, students have been required to pay a £200 contribution towards the cost of certain essential equipment that used to be covered by the disabled students’ allowance.

Parents have told me that support often only comes with an EHC plan, yet we have heard that most deaf children do not have such plans. Those who do, as outlined by the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), have to fight, and suffer the exhaustion of taking on, the might of their local authorities. A recent damning report by the local government and social care ombudsman found that children and young people were missing out on provision, with health often a missing factor.

As we heard, 80% of deaf children and young people are not on EHC plans and rely on SEND support from their local authorities, which authorities struggle to provide following savage cuts that have resulted in up to 40,000 deaf children in England having no support at all. Deaf children and young people also remain stubbornly over-represented in alternative provision and exclusion figures. Schools, headteachers, support staff and parents work tirelessly every day under ever-challenging circumstances to give our deaf children the very best education, which they deserve. The Minister should be doing the same, and I look forward to his letting us know his plans.

I will end with a quick quote from Thomas Bailey, a 16-year-old pupil from Bamburgh School in South Shields. He sums up far better than I or anybody here could the damaging impact of the Government’s policies:

“Being deaf makes me feel depressed and very frustrated. Having no support in school is very mean. When I don’t have support, I don’t have that person to repeat and break down that information for me and to sign important key words, so I am not able to learn the same as other children in class. I feel left out. Improving equipment would make the sound easier and clearer for me to hear, but having no equipment makes everything very quiet and unclear. This means I’m not getting any important information, leaving me feeling annoyed and again left out. My life and learning becomes a blank.”

The Minister should know that, unless he takes urgent action, the despair and emptiness so well articulated by Thomas will continue to be felt by more and more deaf children across our country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Sharon Hodgson Excerpts

Monday 25th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)]

6. Whether he plans to include mandatory teaching on cold water shock as part of compulsory swimming and water lessons.

[Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)]

14. Whether he plans to include mandatory teaching on cold water shock as part of compulsory swimming and water lessons.

[The Minister for School Standards (Nick Gibb)]

In the new national curriculum, which we introduced in 2014, maintained primary schools are required to teach swimming and water safety. Pupils are required to be taught how to swim competently, confidently and proficiently over a distance of at least 25 metres, covering a range of strokes. It also requires pupils to be taught to perform self-rescue in different water-based situations.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nick Gibb]

We were all very sorry to hear about the tragic death of Michael Scaife, who drowned while trying to save a friend. The Government take swimming and water safety very seriously, which is why we improved the national curriculum and why we support the National Water Safety Forum’s national drowning prevention strategy. The group the hon. Gentleman refers to published its report in July 2016. We then established an implementation group and the Government are currently reviewing the recommendations that came out of that report.

[Mrs Hodgson]

The children’s Minister—the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi)—was the founder and the first chair of the all-party group on water safety and drowning prevention. Like me, he had constituents who tragically lost their lives, which was why the group was set up. Ross Irwin in my constituency drowned in Christmas 2016 and two schoolgirls drowned a couple of years previously in the same river, the River Wear. So I know this is an issue very close to the Minister’s heart and a number of colleagues from across the House have had constituents dying in such circumstances. Given that almost a third of all pupils leaving primary school are unable to swim and do not have basic water safety skills, will the Minister make it his personal ambition to ensure that every child leaves school knowing the dangers of open water and cold water shock, as well as knowing how to swim?

[Nick Gibb]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady for the work that she has been doing over several years to ensure that children are better informed about the dangers of water and how to be safe in and around it. I thank her for her campaigns and that of the father of Ross Irwin, to whom I also pay tribute. Thanks to the Royal Life Saving Society and Sunderland City Council, there are now improved water safety measures in place at the Fatfield riverside on the River Wear. We take these issues very seriously, which is why we improved the curriculum and why this Government asked an independent group of experts from across the swimming sector to submit an independent report, setting out how we can improve swimming and the swimming curriculum in our schools.