Sure Start Children’s Centres

Karl Turner Excerpts

Wednesday 2nd March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Luciana Berger]

The grants to children, which are not allocated to schools, are being cut by 35% in Liverpool by the Government. [Interruption.]

[Karl Turner (Kingston upon Hull East) (Lab)]

By the Government, not the council. It is no good Conservative Members shaking their heads.

[Luciana Berger]

Let me get back to my point about back-office costs. How much can be saved in back-office costs from a Sure Start centre that has a part-time co-ordinator and one receptionist? I asked that question because of the heartbreak and concern that this matter is causing parents and grandparents in my constituency, and I want to share the strength of their feelings with the House. I have received many letters and e-mails in recent days, as I am sure other right hon. and hon. Members have. These are the voices of the communities who do not feel that they are “all in this together”, and the voices of parents who feel that they have been singled out for attack.

Wendy told me:

“I was devastated to hear that my local children’s Sure Start centre at Woolton and Childwall is in the pipeline for closure. As a new mum I have found the centre to be extremely supportive and a vital service for the community. The staff have always been brilliant and extremely informative. It is also a great opportunity to meet other parents.”

Kate said:

“Sure Start have responded well to the local needs. They recognised the presence of a number of families with twins locally, and promptly provided specific twin baby classes and a multiple birth support group. It is hard to express how important these groups are. As a family with twins, you are excluded from some other activities (e.g. swimming) and simply struggle to take your babies to anything that is not well set up to cope with twins. And yet, as a mother at home with multiples, your need to get out and stimulate the kids is even greater. Our local Sure Start centre is a haven for us!”

Helen wrote:

“The children’s centres are important in our communities and help to give our children the best possible start in life”;

and Emma wrote:

“the staff at Church and Mossley Hill Sure Start are some of the most skilled and committed I have ever met (and I have more than 10 years’ experience working in education). Church and Mossley Hill Sure Start is an over-subscribed, thriving hub of support for parents and babies in south Liverpool…Church & Mossley Hill Sure Start has already built up strong and lasting links in the short time that it has been running.”

My inbox and letter bag have been swamped by many more messages like those.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Slaughter]

If the hon. Gentleman bears with me, I am sure that he will get the point that I am coming to, but, in essence, because the money is not ring-fenced, my local authority has voluntarily chosen, in the face of what it says is a 13% cut from the Government, to make a 45% cut in the first year. That came about in the following way, which bears some analysis.

[Karl Turner]

It seems that the temptation for Government Members is to say that councils are making decisions for political effect, but that is simply not true. My Lib Dem local authority settled its budget last Thursday, and the cut to Sure Start children’s centres was huge—something like more than 50%. That was certainly not done for political effect, because as a Lib Dem council it was already very concerned about the prospect of annihilation at the May elections.

[Mr Slaughter]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, but I shall now try to make some progress.

On or about 27 December—a time when we are all assiduously reading Government and council documents—my local authority published a report on family support, indicating what funding would be available over the next financial year. The report addressed Sure Start—not directly, but obliquely—first by rubbishing Sure Start provision, saying that although the centres were

“clearly popular with families, and seem likely to have some preventive impact, we have much less clear evidence about the degree of impact this has—including on the ultimate number of children falling into child protection”,

and that

“early studies showed no clear evidence of impact on early school results”.

That might come as a surprise to Members on both sides of the House, given that we heard my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, Wavertree earlier quoting the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister—certainly before the election—expressing their strong support for Sure Start. However, those rather vague and grudging comments were used as the basis for reducing Sure Start funding by over 50%, with the council report saying:

“However, it is not likely under this scenario that LBHF could continue to directly fund more than 6 Children’s centre teams. In any case we would no longer seek to directly run centres”,

adding that it aimed

“to maintain some provision at most centres, through small amounts of pump-priming funding.”

In the financial section of the report, however, no money whatever was provided for such pump priming; money was provided simply to keep the remaining six centres open.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, by the time report came to committee and was due to be dealt with on 10 January, there was what might be called “a row on the town” in that a large number of people were concerned about it and turned up at the meeting. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson) was one of them, so she might want to comment further in her own speech. At that meeting, the authority, faced with great popular disapproval, told people that they had misunderstood the position as no centres were going to be closed, and had misunderstood that the decision had already been taken as consultation was about to be launched. That is what we were told. That would have sounded quite good, save for the fact that the report was then passed in its entirety, including the 50% cut to the budget. We were in the peculiar position of being told one thing when a decision had been taken that was entirely contrary to it. The situation became even more complicated when, later in the same week and rushed out in response to public demand and other factors, a consultation paper was published, with an extra £19,000 slipped in, which turned out to be the pump-priming money—the £19,000 that was going to the Sure Start centres under threat of closure.

Leaving aside the fact that this was shambolic, chaotic and no way to run anything, let alone a local authority, we need to reflect on the reasons for this process of decision making. There were three. The first was connected to public relations. By putting £19,000 into centres that previously had no money at all, the authority could say to the general public and the media, who by this time were taking a strong interest in the issue, that it was not closing the Sure Start centres. Secondly, the consultation was done quite successfully, but it confused the parents and users of those centres, who were told that the centres were not closing but staying open as a result of this £19,000. Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, somebody had bothered to look at the regulations, so a scrutiny report was published at the same time, making the observation:

“Local authorities have duties under the Childcare Act 2006 to consult before opening, closing or significantly changing children’s centres, and to secure sufficient provision to meet local need”.

The authority realised that it would be subject to judicial review if the consultation process did not happen. I suspect that it will still be subject to judicial review because consulting after the decision has been made is not the best option.