Children’s Social Care: Enduring Relationships Strategy

Debate between Gavin Williamson and Josh MacAlister

Thursday 4th June 2026 Commons Chamber

[Josh MacAlister]

I thank my hon. Friend for her question, and I am delighted to extend my congratulations to Councillor Ali and the whole team at Luton, which is one of the pathfinder local authorities for the Families First programme and the changes we are trying to make. As a result of that programme, local authorities are focusing more on earlier and intensive support for families, which is keeping more families safely together. It also means that we are able to act more sharply and decisively when there are child protection concerns—those two things need to go together.

[Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for the work he has done. It was a pleasure to work with him when I was at the Department for Education, and it is great to see the development of his findings and the effort that has been put into them.

The Minister raised the important issue of kinship care and the extra support going to local authorities. My one slight concern is that we might start to see a real divergence in the level of support offered to kinship carers in different local authority areas. Could the Minister expand a little bit on how he will take action to ensure there is not too great a divergence?

[Josh MacAlister]

I thank the right hon. Member for his question, and for giving me the job of doing the independent review of children’s social care in the first place; I would like to think he made a good decision, but time will tell.

The problem is that at the moment, the provision of support with kinship care is very uneven across the country, and it is quite hard to tell the variation in the rates of support that are offered from place to place. The same is true for allowances and fees for foster carers, so there is something to be done about transparency in the existing system. However, the kinship zones programme, which includes the allowance pilot—it has been supported by colleagues in the Treasury to ensure that it does not impact on universal credit, and it is genuinely non-means-tested—means that we will have a good-quality impact evaluation to assess in seven different areas what impact that has overall on the flow of families. Sometimes that flow is rightly away from the fostering system—which puts children into care even though they are living with relatives—and keeps them in the right place, which is with the people who already love them, supported through an SGO or a kinship child arrangement order. I am hopeful of the findings from that evaluation. If they are positive, I will be doing everything I can to ensure that it gets support across Government.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Gavin Williamson and Josh MacAlister

Monday 1st December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Josh MacAlister]

I thank the hon. Member for this timely question, following the Budget last week, when the Government made the welcome decision to change the apprenticeship system by fully funding apprenticeships for small and medium-sized enterprises, which will open up opportunities for many more. The latest data shows that under this Government, apprenticeship starts, progression and completion are up, up, up.

[Sir Gavin Williamson (Stone, Great Wyrley and Penkridge) (Con)]

5. What steps her Department is taking to help prevent Chinese influence in universities.