Kinship Carers

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 18th October 2022 Westminster Hall

[Munira Wilson]

Absolutely. There was a recent survey by the charity Kinship that showed the financial stress that many kinship carers found themselves under. The cost of living pressures that everyone faces are felt particularly acutely by kinship carers, who often find themselves looking after an additional member of their family without additional financial support. That survey showed that some kinship carers are struggling to pay their mortgage and even to put food on the table.

As I was saying, Kim had to remortgage her house, and accept financial help from friends and family, to afford the legal costs of applying for a special guardianship order. That was despite the fact that, as I have already mentioned, it was the family court judge who had made the suggestion of applying for the order. Kim’s granddaughter had a lot of mental health needs, and needed a lot of emotional and development support, but social services were very slow to provide that support. It was only after about a year that Kim was finally granted funding for some attachment therapy for her granddaughter through the adoption support fund. When I have talked to Kim about her situation, she described at length the damage that her granddaughter would sometimes cause to possessions in the house and to the house itself, and she would physically attack Kim and her husband, because of this attachment disorder. However, Kim had to fight to get support for therapy for that child. Kim says:

“On a personal level, we’ve had to give up our roles as grandparents and become her parents. We have done so gladly, but there are moments when we do grieve for those lost roles that we will never get back. Our grand-daughter is in our care until she turns 18 and we will be in our early and mid-seventies—not what we expected as we headed towards our older years.”

The sad irony is that Kim is actually one of the lucky ones, because her granddaughter was classified as “previously looked after”, so she was eligible for far more support, such as the adoption support fund money that funded the therapy, and pupil premium plus. That is much more than many other kinship carers receive.

Kim’s grandchild is one of perhaps more than 160,000 children across England and Wales who are cared for by someone who already knows and loves them. The numbers are quite sketchy. That is partly to do with the poor definitions, which I will touch on later, and the fact that we do not count how many people are in these sorts of arrangements.

We know that those who end up being looked after by somebody they know and love, as opposed to going into foster care or being cared for by someone they do not know, have equal or better mental health, education or employment chances than those children looked after by unrelated foster carers. Indeed, a child is over two and a half times more likely to live in three or more placement settings if they are in foster care than if they are in kinship care. The What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care found that kinship care placements are 2.6 times more likely to be permanent than unrelated foster care arrangements. Additionally, most people prefer kinship care to living with unrelated foster carers.

Despite the fact that we hear all of those statistics, which show better outcomes for children looked after by people who know them, kinship care is the Cinderella service of our social care system. It is less well understood than foster care, despite there being double the number of children in kinship care than there are in foster care. Kinship carers also receive only a fraction of the support received by foster carers or adoptive parents. That is why I introduced my Kinship Care Bill in July, which calls for kinship carers to be provided with three types of support, to put them on a par with the support that foster carers and adoptive carers receive. It proposes that kinship carers are provided with a weekly allowance, at the same level as the allowance for foster carers; it would give kinship carers the right to paid leave when a child starts living with them; and it would provide extra educational support for children in kinship care, by giving them pupil premium funding, and priority for their first choice of school, as which looked-after receive.

Earlier this year, I had an encouraging but brief discussion with the Minister’s predecessor, the hon. Member for Colchester, when he was Children’s Minister. During that brief conversation, he suggested that while the Government were broadly supportive of providing greater support to kinship carers, Ministers had two main concerns. The first was who should be regarded as a kinship carer—the definition issue that I pointed out—and the second was how the Department for Education could possibly persuade the Treasury to make the extra money available to pay for it. Sadly, the events of the past few weeks will probably ensure that that second part is a lot harder for the Minister to achieve.

The independent review of children’s social care recommends making weekly allowances and paid employment leave available to carers with either a special guardianship order or a child arrangements order where the child would otherwise be in care. That would begin to provide a definition of who should get some additional support; it would be a huge step forward, and I understand the logic of that approach. Kinship care arrangements with a legal order are less likely to deteriorate, with just one in 20 special guardianship orders dissolving before the child turns 18.

However, that narrow definition ignores the realities of most kinship care arrangements, where a close relative is phoned at short notice by the council warning that if they do not take the child now, they will go into local authority care. Those people do not have a legal order—at least initially—despite the council proposing the arrangement, yet they are then expected to cough up thousands of pounds of their own money to secure a special guardianship arrangement, as we heard in Kim’s story. The independent review of children’s social care noted that four in 10 families receive no help with the legal costs associated with becoming a kinship carer, spending on average more than £5,000. Moreover, denying support to close relatives using informal arrangements punishes families who have sorted out their situation themselves without getting the local authority involved at all.

The Government already have systems in place for identifying informal carers, which could be adapted. The Children Act 1989 provides a definition of privately fostered children: a person other than a close family member caring for a child for at least 28 days. Informal kinship carers are also exempt from the two-child limit on benefits if their social worker signs form IC1, so I encourage the Minister to reconsider the eligibility criteria for schemes such as pupil premium plus or the adoption support fund where support is only available to kinship children who were previously looked after by the local authority. Why is it that if a grandparent steps up when asked by the council to look after a child to prevent them going into care, they are then punished by the state for making that decision, whereas that child would have been entitled to extra support had they gone into care? It is a totally perverse incentive to allow the child to go into care in order to receive additional support.

Turning to the issue of financing support for kinship carers, my message to the Minister is this: the question is not whether her Department can afford to support kinship carers, but whether it can afford not to. The numbers speak for themselves. The independent review of children’s social care warns that on the current trajectory, more than 100,000 children will be in local authority care by 2032—a record high—and it will cost local authorities £5 billion more than it does now. On average, it costs £72,500 a year for a local authority to look after a child; by contrast, in 2021, it would have cost on average just shy of £37,000 to provide a child in kinship care with a social worker and a weekly allowance for their carers. Well-supported kinship care could therefore save the taxpayer over £35,000 per child a year. The Minister’s Department will be speaking to the Chancellor of the Exchequer about the efficiency savings—otherwise known as cuts—that it will have to make, and I suggest that preventing children who could otherwise be looked after by a kinship carer from going into care is a very good efficiency saving.

Tomorrow, Kinship is launching its national campaign, “The value of our love”, to highlight how it makes sense to invest in kinship care. It delivers better outcomes and experiences for children by keeping them within their loving families, and is good value for the public purse. During the cost of living emergency, that support is needed more than ever. As has already been pointed out, Kinship’s 2022 financial allowances survey found that four in 10 kinship carers could not afford household bills, and one in four were struggling to afford food for their family.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I thank the hon. Member for all the outstanding work that she has done on this issue with her Bill. It is important that the issue of support for kinship carers, including many in my constituency of Liverpool, West Derby, is discussed in the House today. Many families say that they feel invisible, undervalued, unimportant and ignored by the Government. Some 75% of kinship carers entered the cost of living crisis in severe financial hardship.

Important work is happening in Liverpool, with the kinship charter, which was developed with kinship families and has been finalised with local authorities so that they can adopt it. However, families urgently need change at a national Government level, so does the hon. Member agree that the Minister must make changes in law about the statutory duty, and provide the vital funding and support that kinship families need, so that we achieve the best possible outcome for families?

[Munira Wilson]

I congratulate Liverpool on the work that it is doing on this. I agree with the point that the hon. Member made on recognising kinship carers and providing them with additional support.

Returning to the Kinship financial allowances survey, it found that while seven in 10 special guardians received allowances, those were means tested, and fewer than one in 10 carers with no legal order received support. However, in more than two thirds of cases, those allowances were means tested and subject to regular reviews, unlike the allowances that foster carers receive. Kim’s story shows us that that really is precarious and depends on what the local authority is willing and able to fund. Given that local authority budgets have been cut to the bone, we need those national regulations and legislation in place to ensure that kinship carers get an equal amount of support, regardless of where they live.

Almost any kinship carer will say that it is a decision that they do not regret. One carer told the Parliamentary Taskforce on Kinship Care:

“The decision to become a kinship carer has cost me £180,000 plus in terms of pension benefits etc. I would do it again, my grandson is worth every penny.”

The independent review of children’s social care is due to receive a response by the end of this year. While I do not agree with everything in that review, its recommendations around kinship care could mark a step change in the support that we provide for kinship carers, and would recognise the value of the love and support that they give to children.

I urge the Minister not to miss this important opportunity to step up for the kinship carers who step up for children, sometimes in the most dire circumstances, at zero notice. The Government talk a lot about levelling up; it is about not just geography but different groups of people in society. They also talk about the importance of the family; there is no better example of how families really step up than when the chips are down and a child desperately needs that help.

Kinship carers have been overlooked for far too long, so I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity to provide us not just with words of encouragement but with some actions to follow, by responding to those recommendations from the independent review and indeed going beyond that. Every child, no matter their background, deserves the opportunity to flourish, and we know that those who had a troubled start in life are much more likely to flourish in kinship care than those who end up looked after by a foster carer.

Free School Meals: Eligibility

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 12th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

It should come as no surprise to anyone that I agree with my hon. Friend completely; indeed, I will echo some of his comments later in my speech.

Let us just consider the Government’s abysmal record throughout covid. First, we had the ridiculously chaotic voucher scheme being contracted out to a private company; then the Government tried to withdraw support in the half-term and Easter holidays; and then when it came to the summer holidays, Tory MPs voted to withdraw support for free school meals, only to have their votes overturned when footballer Marcus Rashford shamed the Prime Minster into a U-turn. That was followed by meagre food parcels containing—for 10 days—a loaf of bread, half a cucumber, one pepper, a few potatoes, a block of cheese, four pieces of fruit and some salty snacks.

The holiday activities and food programme was again hard fought for from 2017 onwards, but it was not until 2021 that the Government decided to roll the programme out. Even now, the overriding focus of the programme is on activities, with a vast amount of money being spent on admin, bureaucracy and communications. If it had not been for the crowdfunding of my big-hearted constituents in South Shields, alongside Feeding Britain, KEY2Life, the North East Combined Authority and Hospitality & Hope coming together over those summers, children in South Shields would have gone without.

My fully costed school breakfast Bill would have seen nearly 2 million children start the day with full stomachs. Instead, the Government introduced a scheme that provides support to only 2,500 out of the 8,700 schools they have identified as eligible. Hungry children never have been and never will be a priority for the Government. If the political will was there, they would listen to the myriad voices from charities, organisations, faith groups, Opposition MPs, a few Members on their own side and Henry Dimbleby, who they appointed to lead the national food strategy. They are all pleading with the Government to at least expand free school meal eligibility to all families receiving universal credit or equivalent benefits. That would mean that a further 1.3 million children living in poverty would at least get a free school meal, and would also be eligible for the holiday food programmes.

According to the Child Poverty Action Group, that expansion would cost the Government an additional £550 million a year. The Minister knows as well as I do that that is small in terms of Government spending. Just look at the billions wasted on faulty personal protective equipment and gifted to Tory friends and donors for inadequate contracts throughout the pandemic, as well as the billions written off in covid fraud.

Furthermore, alongside that reform, the Government could introduce an automatic registration scheme for free school meals. At present, more than 200,000 children miss out because of the overly bureaucratic nature of the registration process. Those measures should then be followed by a move to universal free school meals for all children, as in Labour-led Wales, because no child should ever feel stigmatised or singled out.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate, and for the incredible work she has done campaigning on this issue for many years. Does she agree that the bureaucracy and means testing for free school meals only increases stigma and also means that many children fall through the cracks and go hungry? Does she agree that the Government should look at providing universal free school breakfasts and lunches for all children in schools as a matter of urgency? The difference that investment would make to the education and lives of children in Liverpool, West Derby and beyond cannot be stressed enough. I have made that point to the Minister.

[Mrs Lewell-Buck]

I thank my hon. Friend for the work he is doing on his Right to Food campaign, and all the work he does in his patch raising money for local food banks. He is right that there is another factor: means testing costs more. Universality is cheaper, and that is where the Government should be heading.

The hungry children are the children of key workers. Those key workers are working for their poverty. They are the key workers who kept us going and cared for our loved ones throughout the pandemic—they risked their lives for us. What chance do those children have when the newly appointed Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Bassetlaw (Brendan Clarke-Smith), along with his colleagues, voted during the pandemic to deny children free school meals in the holidays, and has said he believes that free school meals amount to “nationalising children”? He also went on to add that it was simply not true that people cannot afford to buy food on a regular basis, saying

“If you keep saying to people that you’re going to give stuff away, then you’re going to have an increase I’m afraid”.

I have a feeling that in his response the Minister will regale us with details of the cost of living support packages that the Government have put in place through previous support grants. The reality is that they are all one-offs; they are piecemeal, they are sticking plasters and they do little to address the root causes of child poverty. It should be to the utter shame of every MP in this Government that in a country as rich as ours, children are going to bed hungry and waking up hungry. I look forward to the Minister letting us know in his response what he intends to do to remedy that, because our children need and deserve better.

--- Later in debate ---

[Will Quince]

I hear what the hon. Lady says. I have always said to her that I continue to keep eligibility under review for the reasons she has mentioned. We could have a separate debate on the root causes of poverty, and I could talk about the work undertaken in my previous role by the Department for Work and Pensions over the past two and a half years to support people and empower them into work, but that is a debate for another day.

I shall focus on free school meals in particular, although I will touch on universal credit because the protections in place as we roll it out are important. All children eligible for a free school meal at the point at which the threshold was introduced and all those who become eligible as universal credit is rolled out will continue to receive free school meals, even if their household circumstances change dramatically. For example, if those circumstances improve and move them above the earnings threshold, they will not lose that eligibility, which they otherwise would. Even after protections end, if they are still in school, those children will continue to be protected until the end of their phase of education, whether primary or secondary.

Let me turn specifically to the points that the hon. Member for South Shields made about the universal credit threshold. Free school meal eligibility has long been governed by an earnings threshold. That was the same under the legacy benefits system under the previous Government. In April 2018, we updated our eligibility criteria to include the earnings threshold of £7,400 for families on universal credit. That was forecast at the time to increase the number of eligible pupils when compared with the legacy benefits system. That was a direct comparison, and it was designed to increase the number.

It is absolutely right that our provision is aimed at supporting the most disadvantaged—those out of work or on the lowest incomes. The current household earnings threshold is a bit misleading: we put it at £7,400, but that does not include benefit receipt, which means that total household income could be considerably higher than that while someone is receiving a free meal.

[Ian Byrne]

Where are we now in society? Come September or October, we will see further rises in the cost of heating a home. We have seen exponential price rises, as prices have moved massively and become totally unaffordable. Is it not time for the Minister to acknowledge that so many people who are above the threshold for universal credit are struggling, and to look to other nations in Europe that have implemented universal free school meals for data on the advancement of and the benefits to those societies, both economic and educational? I name Norway and Portugal.

[Will Quince]

I hear what the hon. Gentleman says, and I will continue to look at European and other comparators, and at eligibility.

In relation to what the hon. Gentleman—and, indeed, the hon. Member for South Shields—proposes as an in-work and out-of-work benefit, it is important to reference the fact of those on universal credit having that £7,400 earnings threshold. There will be people whose income exceeds £40,000 a year. I know there are people struggling across the country, even on what many would consider a reasonable income, because there is an inflationary shock for many people, and they have outgoings that reflect their earnings.

I will come to that, but while it is right that those families continue to receive a small amount of universal credit, which tapers as their earnings increase, not least to encourage and incentivise work, we have to recognise more broadly—notwithstanding the current inflationary pressures and cost of living pressures—that these are not the most disadvantaged households, which we want to target, or arguably should target, with support in this specific way.

That does not mean we should not be helping those people with specific, targeted support in other ways, which I will come to, but extending free school meal eligibility to all families on universal credit would, without question, carry a significant financial cost—one that I think would be much higher than that which the hon. Member for South Shields has referenced, although we can discuss that another day. It would quickly run into billions of pounds over a spending review and result in around half of all pupils becoming eligible for a free meal, which would have substantial knock-on effects for the affordability of linked provision—for example, the pupil premium, which is linked to eligibility for free school meals.

Having said all that, I understand and appreciate—I have a constituency myself and I speak with people every weekend—that many families are finding it tough, given the global inflationary pressures that affect the cost of living. The question is whether a permanent change to the eligibility criteria for free school meals is the right thing to do now—whether it is affordable and sufficiently targeted, and whether it could be delivered quickly enough if we wanted to operationalise it. My answer to all those points at the moment is no. As I say, the Government understand the pressures people face with the cost of living. These are global challenges, and that is why the Government are providing over £15 billion of further support, targeted particularly at those with the greatest need. We should not forget that this package is in addition to the over £22 billion that was announced previously, with Government support for the cost of living over the course of this year totalling over £37 billion.

Foster Carers

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.

I start by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for securing this vital debate on the foster care system. I reiterate much of what she said. Although Members in the main Chamber have rightly been debating the very serious issue of whether the Prime Minister is fit for office, it is equally important that other serious issues of the day are not forgotten, and there are few matters more important than the impending foster care crisis.

As a councillor, I served on Gateshead Council’s adoption panel, which is closely linked to the foster care panel, so I have some knowledge of the foster care system. First of all, I must say that I have an enormous amount of respect for foster carers and, having been a carer myself, of a daughter with severe disabilities, I particularly thank those foster carers who look after and care for children with additional needs.

Like all carers, foster carers fulfil a role on behalf of the state, offering children a safe home, and often providing them with a nurturing environment and a surrogate family. At times it can be challenging, but when it is supported properly, it is a role that is deeply rewarding, giving foster carers the knowledge that they have made a real difference in the lives of the children they welcome into their home.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for securing this debate today. I also thank and pay tribute to all the wonderful foster families in my constituency of Liverpool, West Derby, and indeed beyond.

Does my hon. Friend agree that fostering can bring much fulfilment to the lives of all involved? I say that with total confidence after speaking to my good friend Kevin, who has become a foster carer, with his family. He said that it was indeed positively life-changing.

[Mary Kelly Foy]

I could not agree more, and I am sure my hon. Friend will join me in thanking Kevin and the foster carers here today, and indeed the Members here who have been foster carers themselves, as well as foster carers up and down the country. Given the importance of foster carers and the difference they make to society, the data on the number of foster carers makes for difficult reading and lays bare the scale of the impending crisis. Simply put, there are not enough foster carers to meet the demand.

There are two main reasons behind the shortage. The first is the rising number of children entering care. We have touched on some of the reasons for that today. A 2021 report by the Social Market Foundation found that, based on an average of 2.9% year-on-year growth in the number of children requiring foster care over the last five years, the number of children in need of care could rise by 33% by 2030. Combined with that is the equally pressing issue of the number of foster carers leaving the system, with 30% of deregistrations taking place within the first two years of approval for foster care. Those issues are as significant in County Durham as they are in local authorities across England, and we now face a huge deficit in foster carers.

Research by the Social Market Foundation suggests that more than 63,000 new foster carers need to be recruited in England by 2026 to meet the demand of the rising numbers of children entering care and to replace the foster carers leaving the system. Estimates suggest that fewer than 40,000 new foster families will be recruited in that time, leaving a recruitment deficit of around 25,000 foster care families. I truly worry that we are sleepwalking towards a foster care crisis.

With those issues in mind, it is clear to me that much more needs to be done to improve the recruitment of new foster carers as well as retain existing ones. Although there is much that can realistically be done, I want to state my support for two measures in particular. On the issue of recruitment, it is worth noting that there is not necessarily a lack of interest. In 2021, 160,000 individuals inquired about fostering, yet only around 2,200 were approved as foster carers. It is important that we recognise that not everyone who withdraws from the fostering process does so because they are disqualified. Many do so because personal circumstances make them temporarily unsuited to the role, yet they remain open to foster caring. We cannot allow those people to believe that they are unwanted by the system. We should make it clear to them that the door is not closed to them. It would therefore be useful if the Government could work to develop mechanisms for keeping in touch, with the permission of those involved, with those who inquire about becoming foster carers.

On the issue of retention, we should all be concerned by the fact that a third of former foster carers aged 18 to 54 cited a lack of training and support as the reason they stopped fostering. At the minute, the quality of the training provided to foster carers lacks consistency, and often fails to prepare people for the specific challenges of the children who will be placed in their care. It is therefore important that the existing training process is improved, both during the assessment period and throughout people’s time as foster carers. The training and support must be tailored to the needs of the children in their care so that foster carers feel valued and supported by the system and not forgotten about.

To finish, I want to reiterate my concern that the Government are sleepwalking into a crisis in foster care. People get into foster care for many reasons, but chief among them is a desire to provide a safe and nurturing environment for vulnerable children. Yet instead of that desire being nurtured by the authorities, foster carers are too often met with a lack of support and are weighed down by the challenges of the role. If we do not treat this problem with the severity it deserves and take steps to tackle the issues now, it is the most vulnerable children in society who will suffer the most.

Budget Resolutions

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). Unsurprisingly, I have a slightly less rose-tinted take on last week’s Budget than Conservative Members. I see a Budget constructed by a Government who do not care about the hardships that the 15 million people and rising in poverty face.

This Budget comes from a multimillionaire Chancellor with a personal housing portfolio so large that he could potentially solve the country’s housing crisis. To him, the word “hardship” means not having a pool in his country mansion, something that he took decisive action to fix over the summer. Unfortunately, he failed to take similar decisive action for the nation in the Budget. He did not fix the issues facing millions: insecure work, an insufficient welfare safety net, low pay, a lack of safe and affordable housing and rising utility bills. They are fuelling the huge inequalities that we see in 2021.

Let us look at what the Budget means for my constituents. The average state pension is £8,000 a year, which is the lowest in the industrialised world. With the suspension of the triple lock, it is expected to rise by 3.1% from April 2022—an increase that is wiped out by inflation. The Government have refused to honour the triple lock, and the old adage “Never trust a Tory” will ring true for many pensioners.

A 1.25% increase in national insurance from April will remove between £16.7 billion and £18.2 billion a year from household budgets. The universal credit cut will leave 4.4 million families worse off by £4 billion a year, and there is still no justice for the people receiving legacy benefits who were denied the £20 uplift. The people who can least afford it will bear the brunt of the Budget while the bankers receive £4 billion in tax cuts.

My city of Liverpool continues to suffer from £500 million of cuts since 2010, which the Budget does nothing to address. Tory austerity has caused real misery in my city. A £2 million empty trinket thrown to tee up a hollow PR exercise by the Minister for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport means nothing to the many in my city who see it for what it is and who remember what the coalition Government started in 2010.

Professor Ian Sinha, a paediatrician from the fantastic Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in my constituency, points out that a train journey of 15 minutes on Merseyrail through our city region represents a 15-year difference in life expectancy. That encapsulates the inequality and its consequences that we saw even more starkly in the teeth of a pandemic. The Budget does nothing to fix them.

There are no long-term funding promises to help to combat those inequalities; indeed, further austerity is being forced through by the Government, with another £33 million of savage cuts mooted in Liverpool. Austerity is a Tory decision and a political choice that keeps people in poverty—and poverty kills. More than ever, post covid, we need the ability to invest in our infrastructure and in our social care, mental health and domestic abuse services to rebuild our communities. To tackle the health and social economic inequalities we face, we need council housing, Sure Start centres, libraries, leisure centres and education facilities fit for the 21st century, not further austerity. We need a real levelling-up, not weasel words.

Why did the Chancellor, in his much-lauded levelling up agenda, not choose a different path? Lord Prem Sikka, my good friend in the other place, has outlined an alternative vision. By taxing capital gains at the same rate as earned income, some £17 billion a year could be raised. By extending the 12% rate of national insurance to incomes above £50,000, £14 billion could be raised. Of course, a wealth tax could also raise up to £304 billion over five years. What a difference a Chancellor who followed that ideology would make to so many lives and to the future generations of our nation.

Last Saturday marked five years of Fans Supporting Foodbanks collecting food outside football stadiums in communities across the UK.

A fan who donates religiously asked me to pass on this message to the Chancellor:

“Seeing as he likes quoting the Beatles, how about this from the great John Lennon? Imagine a country where no child goes hungry. Imagine a country without food banks. Imagine a country with fairness at its heart, not inequality. Imagine a country governed for the many, not the few.”

Investing in Children and Young People

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to pupils, parents, teachers and support staff in Liverpool, West Derby for their efforts during this difficult period and for the support they give our communities. The pandemic has seen the growth of existing inequalities that children and young people face, caused by a decade of austerity and Government cuts to vital services.

The Government have clearly learned nothing from the past year, as we can see in the lack of funding for millions of working-class children who have suffered through no fault of their own. The Government’s plans for education recovery, announced last week, are inadequate, incomplete and frankly immoral. The £1.5 billion offered is way below the £15 billion that Kevan Collins, the former education recovery commissioner, judged was needed. No doubt he walked away from his position because he had listened to the teachers, trade unions and parents and understood the gravity of the situation and the inequality it would cause the next generation of working-class children.

The Government have continued to ignore the opinions of the people who devote their lives to trying to deliver the education that the children in our communities deserve. In England, the Government’s pledge amounts to just £50 per pupil per year for education recovery—one fiftieth of what the Netherlands is delivering and one tenth of what was recommended by their own commissioner. We can spend £37 billion on a failed privatised track and trace system, but we cannot invest in our children’s future? Shameful! The inadequacy of that £1.5 billion will not affect the children of Eton, but it will impact the children at Lister Junior School in my constituency for years to come.

Let us touch on the Government’s record and the impact it has had on communities like mine in Liverpool, West Derby. Some 4.3 million children are living in poverty, including 34% of the children in my constituency —children left without digital devices and without free school meals in the middle of the pandemic because of the failure of the Government’s food voucher scheme delivered by Edenred, with teachers delivering food parcels and schools setting up food banks. Yes, you heard that right—schools setting up food banks. Maybe the Minister can join the National Education Union and support the Right2Food campaign, which calls for universal free school meals for every child in this country.

There is an attainment gap of 9.3 months for primary pupils and 22 months for secondary school pupils in Liverpool. The Government have forgotten about kinship care throughout the pandemic, but figures show that a third needed access to digital equipment that was never offered and half now believe that their children need additional support to catch up on education. There has been an increase in the number of children with mental health conditions, with NHS data now showing that one in six young people in England were experiencing such a condition in 2020. Youth services were on the brink of absolute collapse due to Government cuts. In Liverpool, 86% of spending was cut between 2011 and 2020—it is unforgivable.

As I finish, my question to the Minister is simple: in the light of everything that I have just outlined, why do the Government treat the working-class kids of this country so appallingly?

Child Food Poverty

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab) [V]]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for introducing the petition to the House.

Today we are debating the need to end child poverty, how we have reached this point and how we can fix it, because of the efforts of a footballer from Manchester who experienced poverty growing up and never forgot. I pay tribute to Marcus Rashford for his transformative work, which has put child poverty right at the top of the political agenda and which has resonated with and united people across the country. In Liverpool, West Derby, 6,487 children live in poverty—a heartbreaking 34%. That figure, which is from the Child Poverty Action Group, represents the level before the pandemic, and the effects of the virus and attempts to control it have hit the poorest hardest in terms of jobs and income. The picture is likely to be even worse now.

As parliamentarians, we must act, and we must push for systemic change. The Government must tackle the root causes of food poverty, such as the current system of universal credit and legacy benefits, which we know provides nowhere near enough support for families to afford food, and which has built-in delays that leave people with no means of support for weeks on end. We must tackle the current system that led to the Government initially denying children free school meals during the holidays—a system that has still not fully met the asks of the petition, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North outlined in her speech.

Part of that systemic change includes putting our “right to food” submission into the national food strategy, and then into legislation, so that the Government are obliged by law to ensure nobody goes hungry, and so that they are never able to deny children their right to food again. We should guarantee universal free school meals, including a breakfast and a lunch, for every child in this country. Universal provision would avoid the bureaucracy and stigma of means testing our school-age children and would help all to achieve their full potential.

As I have said, we need systemic change in order to achieve the end of child food poverty. The great Nelson Mandela said:

“Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”

The time for sticking plasters is over, and the Government must listen to the voices of the 4.3 million children in poverty. That is when the heartbreaking figures will shame the Government.

Special Educational Needs

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) for securing this hugely important debate.

The covid-19 pandemic has further exacerbated many issues that already existed in the Government’s system of support for children and young people with SEND—issues that families, campaigners and workers have been raising repeatedly with Ministers for many years. Covid has shone a stark light on the inequalities in society. For those children, young people and their families the inequality already faced was amplified.

Along with the injustice of inequality, another theme that is hardwired into the issues raised during the pandemic is the indifference to the seriousness of the situation shown by the Department for Education. Support during the pandemic from the Government and from the Department for Education, as the APPG for SEND summarised in its recent report, did not do enough to support children and young people with SEND. Our most vulnerable children were failed, and schools and families left to pick up the pieces.

Issues have been raised with me by Autism in Motion, a fantastic, committed, parent-led organisation in my constituency of West Derby, that provides support, advice and guidance for families in our community. I do not have time to do justice to their range of concerns in this debate, but I would welcome a meeting with the Minister to go through them in more detail.

Issues include a lack of funding and support from the Government for schools and services for children who have fallen through the gaps, such as children with SEND in mainstream schools who need that extra funding and support to thrive and maximise their educational attainment; a lack of funding for the comprehensive training needed for all teachers and school staff nationally; and the lengthy wait for vital services during covid-19, made worse by the hollowing out of NHS and local authority services through austerity and spending cuts over the past decade. We have seen how austerity measures have decimated our public services when we have needed them most during the pandemic.

I am lucky to have six SEND schools in Liverpool West Derby, which have been remarkable during the pandemic. I pay tribute to the staff. I have met with the heads throughout the period, and the following finding in the APPG’s report captures perfectly what I was told:

“The government guidance for special schools and alternative provision was frequently published later than guidance for mainstream schools. This led settings and young people with SEND to be seen as, and feel like, an ‘afterthought’.”

On behalf of my constituents and many families in Liverpool West Derby, I hope the Minister will today be able to answer these questions. What can be put in place for parents of children and young people who do not have an EHC plan and may have slipped through the net in terms of the support that is needed? Many children and young people cannot be catered for remotely and families have struggled during the last year. How will increased needs resulting from that be addressed and what support will the Minister’s Department provide? Furthermore, what plans will be put in place to assess the needs that will emerge as a result of the disruption to SEND children’s education, mental health and wellbeing caused by the lockdown?

Finally, do the Government have any plans to ensure that the views of children and young people with SEND and their families are heard at this stage in the pandemic? And if they do, what mechanisms will be employed locally, regionally and nationally to capture those views?

Education: Return in January

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the wonderful work that educators, teachers and support staff have done in providing the Rolls-Royce education that we want all children to benefit from. We have already published considerable guidance and support for schools as they roll out mass testing; we have also published information about the funding that they can receive, so that they can properly budget and provision for the type of support that they need to roll out that mass testing. With respect to the—I hope—small number of schools that have particular problems in establishing a testing regime, the armed forces have kindly stepped forward, along with Ofsted, to provide and establish support in the exceptional circumstances in which schools and colleges are having real problems.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab) [V]]

I thank the Secretary of State for his kind words about the educators and teachers in Liverpool, who have done such an outstanding job.

Hundreds of thousands of working-class children educated in the state system are facing exams in complete despair. The inequality of opportunity for those children is due to the ineptitude of the Government’s response, including a lack of resource allocation and a complete failure to listen to teachers’ concerns. Will the Secretary of State meet me and headteachers in Liverpool, West Derby as soon as possible to discuss the resources and measures that are urgently needed from the Government?

Free School Meals

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to Marcus Rashford for his incredible campaigning on this issue, which meant that 1.3 million children were able to receive meals over the summer. The unbelievable prospect of a Manchester United player having his name sung on my beloved Spion Kop at Anfield would now not be beyond the realms of possibility. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) for her School Breakfast Bill and her tireless efforts to get it through Parliament.

The crisis of food insecurity is having a devastating impact in my community. In August, 2.3 million children were living in households that experienced food insecurity. In Liverpool, West Derby, figures show that even before the covid-19 pandemic 37% of children were living in poverty. If the Government do not provide free school meals over the school holidays, 4,155 children in Liverpool, West Derby will be at risk of going hungry in the middle of winter and in the middle of a pandemic.

As someone who received free school meals as a child and who serves as a school governor in one of the most impoverished wards in the country, I can say from first-hand experience that the difference that passing this motion would make to struggling families cannot be quantified in sheer monetary terms. The mental pressures of worrying about whether your child will have a hot meal a day should not be experienced by any citizen in our nation.

The fact that we have to hold this debate today, and that we have to ask the Government for such a vital provision as free school meals, is quite frankly shocking given the scale of food insecurity in this country right now. Ensuring that millions of our fellow citizens do not go hungry is the Government’s moral duty, and it should be a legal right. As I did in my Westminster Hall debate this morning, I call on the Government to introduce the right to food into UK legislation. That would oblige the Government to make sure that people do not ever go hungry and would mean that measures such as the five-week universal credit delay or the refusal to provide free school meals would be subject to legal challenge. The Prime Minister would not be able to refuse to provide meals to children living in poverty.

I will end by urging the Minister to think again and to support this motion.