Education
Steve Reed Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the new Minister to her post. As she will know, children with special needs rely on help with speech and language and on counselling support, but the Children’s Commissioner has published research showing that the severe underfunding of those services is seriously damaging children’s lives and futures. Even after the spending review and the additional funding to which the Minister has referred, we still face a £1 billion shortfall in special educational needs services by 2021. Given that the Government could so easily find £1 billion to bribe the Democratic Unionist party, will the Minister agree, here and now, to find the same amount to fully fund the services that the country’s most vulnerable children so desperately need?
Mrs Badenoch
I met the Children’s Commissioner last week, and discussed this issue among many others. We welcome her report. However, I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Government are spending £7 billion on special educational needs, and are adding an additional £700 million. That is part of the extra £14 billion that we are spending over three years, and I think that it is to be welcomed.
[Official Report, 9 September 2019, Vol. 664, c. 485.]
Letter of correction from the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Mrs Badenoch).
An error has been identified in the answer I gave to the hon. Member for Croydon North (Mr Reed).
The correct answer should have been:
Oral Answers to Questions
Steve Reed Excerpts(4 years, 7 months ago)
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Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)
I welcome the new Minister to her post. As she will know, children with special needs rely on help with speech and language and on counselling support, but the Children’s Commissioner has published research showing that the severe underfunding of those services is seriously damaging children’s lives and futures. Even after the spending review and the additional funding to which the Minister has referred, we still face a £1 billion shortfall in special educational needs services by 2021. Given that the Government could so easily find £1 billion to bribe the Democratic Unionist party, will the Minister agree, here and now, to find the same amount to fully fund the services that the country’s most vulnerable children so desperately need?
Mrs Badenoch
I met the Children’s Commissioner last week, and discussed this issue among many others. We welcome her report. However, I remind the hon. Gentleman that the Government are spending £7 billion on special educational needs, and are adding an additional £700 million. That is part of the extra £14 billion that we are spending over three years, and I think that it is to be welcomed.[Official Report, 25 September 2019, Vol. 664, c. 7MC.]
Children’s Future Food Report
Steve Reed Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)
This is my first appearance at the Dispatch Box as Labour’s children and families spokesperson, and I am glad that it is in a debate on such an important issue. It is shocking and unacceptable that child hunger still exists in our country to this extent. I would like to take this opportunity, if I may, to thank our previous spokesperson, my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell- Buck), for her work in this role. She brought her experience as a social worker to the position, and she made a significant contribution to our manifesto in the general election.
I am grateful to all Members who have spoken in the debate. From my own party, my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) drew on his vast experience and powerfully highlighted the extent of child hunger, the damage it does to children and the link to welfare reform and benefit cuts. He called on the Government to act. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Ruth Smeeth) reminded us how widespread holiday hunger has become for children from low-income families, particularly over the last decade. She shared some powerful and moving examples from our own experience. My hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) emphasised the importance of listening to children talk about their experiences. She asked the Minister a series of direct questions, which I hope he heard when the Whips were not distracting him. We look forward to his answers.
Members of both Houses and from all sides of the political debate have contributed to this important report, and I would like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West and the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) on co-chairing the inquiry, as well as the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Anne-Marie Trevelyan), my hon. Friends the Members for Wrexham (Ian C. Lucas) and for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, and my hon. Friends the Members for Stoke-on-Trent North and for City of Durham (Dr Blackman-Woods), who served on the committee. I must, in particular, thank the 15 young food ambassadors who also gave their assistance and their experience.
The committee’s work now joins a body of important literature that highlights the shocking levels of poverty in our country. One hungry child is one too many, but UNICEF estimates that 2.5 million British children live in households where food is not always securely available, and the Trussell Trust points out that more than 500,000 emergency food parcels went to children alone last year. It is staggering that that can be happening here, in one of the richest countries in the world.
Food insecurity blights children’s immediate and future lives. It can trigger mental health problems, and it can damage a child’s physical health. It can lead to obesity and restricted growth, and it can retard healthy development. It affects children’s school attendance as well as their ability to learn. Ask any teacher, and they will tell you that a hungry child cannot concentrate in class. In a BBC report on child poverty last year, one headteacher described their pupils as having grey skin. Another described the unhealthy pallor of the students in their school. Something is going badly wrong in our society if we are allowing this to happen to so many of our children. A society that loves and cares for its children does not let them go hungry, especially not to this extent.
The report reinforces the importance of the early years of a child’s life, particularly the first 1,000 days. Those early years have a defining impact on a child’s development, affecting everything from educational achievement to economic security to health. The report states:
“The food, energy and nutrients which children eat during this period determine how well they grow, how well they do at school and are also a good predictor of long-term health.”
I invite the Minister to tell the House what has happened to the Government’s review of the first 1,001 critical days—an excellent initiative commissioned by the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), the former Leader of the House. The Department’s approach to early years has been lacklustre to say the least. A thousand Sure Start centres have been closed since 2010. As the Minister knows, they were places where young mums could receive advice and support on breastfeeding, healthy nutrition and their child’s critical early development.
The report highlights how free school meal provision is inconsistent, and it expresses concern about how the free school meals policy works, including worries that the allowance is not always enough to buy a meal. As my right hon. and hon. Friends have said this afternoon, it is important to find out how much money is not spent and what happens to it, so that it can be redirected to support the children for whom it was originally intended. One way of tackling child hunger would be to introduce universal free school meals for all primary school children, paid for by removing the VAT exemption on private school fees, as proposed in Labour’s manifesto. The outgoing Prime Minister is somewhat belatedly talking about increasing education funding, so perhaps the Minister can start today by matching Labour’s commitment on free school meals.
As Members have mentioned, several months have passed since the inquiry published the final report. My hon. Friend the Member for Bristol East held a Westminster Hall debate on 8 May to discuss its findings and recommendations. During the debate, the Minister stated that he had asked his team in the Department to work with the Food Foundation to look into setting up a working group. I am sure that Members across the House would appreciate an update from the Minister on how that working group is proceeding. Members will also want to know whether the Government intend to involve the inquiry’s young food ambassadors in future work, and what the Government intend to do with the five key asks of the #Right2Food charter.
Since the publication of the Food Foundation’s report, the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, has published the UN’s findings on poverty in our country. That report exposes the cold reality of poverty in Britain today. It reinforces the findings of the Food Foundation, observing that children are showing up at school with empty stomachs and that schools are collecting food and sending it home because teachers know that their students will otherwise go hungry. Teachers, the report states, are not equipped to ensure that their students have clean clothes and food to eat, not least because many teachers rely on food banks themselves. The UN also predicted that, without urgent change, 40% of British children will be living in poverty by 2021. What a damning indictment it is of this Government that they are allowing that to happen in one of the richest countries in the world.
Jim Shannon
Does the hon. Gentleman recognise the good work done by faith groups? Their physical and financial contribution enables food to go directly to those who need it most. They play an important role.
Mr Reed
I absolutely acknowledge the amazing work done by faith groups, but many other parts of civil society, such as charities and other community organisations, are also stepping in to alleviate child hunger that, frankly, should not exist in the first place.
One hungry child is one too many, but 2.5 million British children regularly go hungry. The Food Foundation report shames this Government, but it is also a wake-up call, and it must lead to action.
Children and Young People: Restrictive Intervention
Steve Reed Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Mr Steve Reed (Croydon North) (Lab/Co-op)
I congratulate the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) on securing this important debate, and on the powerful case that he made. I am sure the whole House would pay tribute to him for the progress that he has led in improving conditions for people with mental ill health over many years. Personally, I thank him for the support and advice that he so generously gave me during the passage of Seni’s law last year.
The use of restraint and excessive force is one of the most pressing issues for children who have experience of secure mental health units. Restraint is humiliating and degrading for children, as it is for adults. It can undermine their recovery and can make the child’s mental health condition worse.
There have been too many tragic incidents where children and young people have been seriously injured—even killed—because of excessive restraint. Seni’s law came about in response to the horrific death of my constituent, Seni Lewis. Seni, who was just 21 years old, died following severe and prolonged face-down restraint in a seclusion unit in a mental health hospital, when up to 11 police officers took it in turns to pin him face-down on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his head and his legs in shackles. That triggered a heart attack, which put him into a coma, and he was left to die all alone in a room, tied up face-down on the floor. Seni’s tragic story is just one of too many deaths and scandals, including Winterbourne View, Southern Health, St Andrews and many others that Members will be familiar with.
It is shocking that children are more likely to be restrained than adults. According to the leading mental health charity Young Minds, children under the age of 20 are four times more likely than adults to be restrained face-down, three times more likely to be tranquilised and twice as likely to be put in handcuffs or leg braces. Although children are less likely than adults to be secluded, it is surely unacceptable that any child with mental ill health is ever locked up all alone in a seclusion room.
I was grateful for the huge support from across the House for Seni’s law, which became an Act of Parliament last year. It introduced some important principles into law that now need to be extended to protect all people with mental ill health, including children, in every setting, not just mental health units, to which that piece of legislation applied. Those principles are intended to reduce the use of restraint, so that it is only ever used as a very last resort and face-down restraint is never used at all.
The mental health system needs to be fully transparent. There is wide regional variation in the use of restraint against children, but we do not know why, and data is not available for us to interrogate. The campaigning charity Agenda reports that in some mental health trusts, three quarters of children are restrained, while in others it is none at all. If some trusts can completely avoid the use of restraint against children, why can every trust not do so? We need a standardised national system for recording the use of restraint, so that we can compare like with like, identify best practice and ensure that it is shared, and allow us and other observers to fully interrogate and scrutinise the system to ensure that it is supporting and not harming some of the most vulnerable children in our society.
Half of all girls with mental ill health have experienced some form of abuse, either physical or sexual, that affected their mental health. The use of restraint against them—especially being pinned face down on the floor by men—reawakens the horrific abuse that made them ill in the first place, which can mean that they leave care with worse mental ill health than they arrived with. That surely cannot be acceptable.
The second important principle is accountability. All mental health settings need a policy in place for restraint reduction, with appropriate training to ensure that restraint is avoided whenever possible. They need a named senior person who is publicly accountable for how restraint is used, so that there is clarity about who is ultimately responsible for what happens in that setting.
Despite Government attempts to discourage it, the most dangerous form of restraint—face down on the floor—was used against children more than 2,500 times in the most recent year for which data is available, yet that form of restraint is not supposed to happen at all. The current system clearly is not working. The deaths, injuries and psychological damage that excessive restraint causes to children must stop. I hope the Government will ensure that the important principles enshrined in Seni’s law and the important work undertaken by Sir Simon Wessely’s mental health review are used to protect every child who experiences mental ill health.