Oral Answers to Questions

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Monday 29th October 2012 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

May I congratulate my hon. Friend on his election to the Education Committee? He is a distinguished historian and a long-time campaigner for improved access to rigorous academic subjects for all students. He is absolutely right to say that we inherited a frankly inequitable situation, and I hope that we can work across the House to resolve it.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

The whole nation has been shocked by the allegations of child abuse surrounding Jimmy Savile, but Labour Members are also deeply concerned by the similarities with recent cases such as the one in Rochdale, where power relationships were exploited and cries for help were ignored. It has become clear that the BBC is just one of many organisations with questions to answer, so will the Secretary of State back our calls for a public inquiry, in order to gain justice for the victims and to ensure that in future young people are both empowered to speak out and listened to when they do so?

[Michael Gove]

I do not think that any of us should seek, for any moment and in any way, to relativise the seriousness of the charges that the hon. Lady raises. The BBC certainly has some issues to investigate, and two inquiries are being undertaken there. Separately, the Deputy Children’s Commissioner has been conducting her own inquiry into the exploitation of young people by groups and gangs. I want to make sure that we can consider each of those reports, but I rule nothing out.

Higher and Further Education

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Tuesday 11th September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Shabana Mahmood]

If the hon. Gentleman’s party took on board our £6k proposal, there would be an even more progressive system for future generations of students.

Cost is the real problem. The Centre for Economic Performance recently surveyed 12,000 teenagers and found that all the indications are that the hike in fees in late 2010 increased the perception that going to university is simply too expensive. That perception was significantly higher in comprehensive schools, compared with independent and selective state schools, and among children eligible for free school meals. If these perceptions influence effort at school or behaviour post-16, they will increase future socio-economic inequality.

Mature students are one of the worst affected groups, as many more are choosing not to go to university this year. The Government failed to take into account the effects of their policies on that group, and we have seen an 11.3% drop in such applications, making them the biggest group affected. There are around 30,000 fewer older applicants this year than last year.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that, at a time when the Government are closing off opportunities for young people at every turn, with the axing of the future jobs fund, the abolition of the education maintenance allowance and youth unemployment now over 1 million, opening up these opportunities to young people from deprived backgrounds is more important than ever?

[Shabana Mahmood]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely powerful point. I agree with her comment and endorse it entirely.

Too often we in this House consider higher education issues through the prism of the 18-year-old undergraduate going to university for the first time. Although the experience of such undergraduates is of course incredibly important, we know from the figures that in 2009-10 more than a third of undergraduates entering university for the first time were 21 or older. The impact of the trebling of tuition fees on that group is particularly interesting, as their perspective and actual experience of debt and finance are very different. These are people who often have significant financial and family commitments, with mortgages to pay and child care costs. If they are making a decision to walk away from enhancing their skills by obtaining a degree, they are doing so on the basis of cost.

There is a much higher rate of withdrawals from the application process this year than last year—16% higher. At this stage, 13,138 students who are holding offers from universities have decided to withdraw from the process. That is an extremely worrying sign that students who had already made the decision to go to university are now being put off. Having attended open days, filled out applications and gone to interviews, they are now saying “No thanks.” Where will they end up? What are their prospects for the future given the record levels of youth unemployment and the ongoing recession?

Oral Answers to Questions

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Monday 3rd September 2012 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton]

My hon. Friend mentions a particularly horrific case that shocked the whole nation when it appeared in our headlines. It is very important that we raise the profile of this insidious force—which I am afraid is present in too many communities—and ensure a joined-up approach, involving the Home Office, police, local authorities and our schools, so that this is not happening beneath the radar and so that children are educated and know what to do to avoid such tragedies happening again.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

Although Ministers are right to focus attention on the sexual exploitation of children in care, such children continue to face many challenges in their lives. Today’s report by the all-party group on looked-after children and care leavers reveals that, shockingly, only 12% of children in care get five good GCSEs, despite efforts by two successive Governments to change that. Will he tell us why the important strategy on children in care, which was promised to us for this summer, has been delayed?

[Tim Loughton]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question, but she has failed to notice the fact that throughout the last year the Department for Education has announced a series of practical measures to help children in care in all sorts of destinations, to tackle the very scandal that her Government left of the huge gap of achievement in education between children in care through no fault of their own and their peer group. That is why, for example, every child in the care system automatically qualifies for the pupil premium. That is real, practical, tangible action, which her Government never took for those kids who need it most, and there are many more things still to come over the next few weeks and months.

Adoption

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Thursday 5th July 2012 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Benton. I very much welcome the debate. I place on the record my particular thanks to the hon. Member for South East Cornwall (Sheryll Murray), and to the Backbench Business Committee for working so hard to secure it. I share the view expressed by the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson): adoption is one of the most important subjects that we can debate in this place.

Adoption is also an area on which there is largely cross-party agreement. The previous Government increased the funding for adoption, set out new standards and introduced targets for adoption numbers. That led to an increase, but sadly, as many hon. Members said, that has not been sustained, and the system has at times fallen well short of what children deserve.

I am grateful to Martin Narey, whom I had the privilege and pleasure of working closely with when he ran the Barnardo’s children’s charity, for his thoughtful report on this issue and all the work that he has done since. I recognised the truth of much of what he said. I also recognise the characteristic energy with which he has gone about ensuring that this issue is at the centre of the children’s agenda. Therefore, I hope that if I express some concerns to the Minister in my response to the debate, he will take them in the constructive spirit in which they are intended.

The Minister and I agree that removing delay from the adoption system is important. Children have consistently said, for so many years, that there is too much waiting in the system. It has been consistently said in consultations over a decade that making the process quicker is their top priority. That has gone on far too long, and I am genuinely pleased that the Government are doing something about it.

Timing, though, as many hon. Members said, is not just about speed. It is not just about going faster or slower. Some things, such as paperwork and the courts system, need to be done or to function faster, but other things may well need to be done more slowly, in children’s interests. I was struck by one of the comments in the Children’s Rights Director’s report from 2006. One child said that they needed

“more time to say goodbye to everyone.”

Meeting children and listening to their views more recently, I have also heard such comments; they are echoed over and over down the years.

The Minister may remember the discussion group that he held, orchestrated by the children’s rights groups, about his adoption plan. The young people involved felt that sometimes the trial period with the adoptive parents was too short, and it was difficult to form a proper view, so although I echo the comments that have been made about timely placements, I emphasise timeliness, and not just speed. We cannot have speed at the expense of getting it right. I therefore ask the Minister to recognise that there is concern outside this place about the six-month target.

[Bill Esterson]

I agree with what my hon. Friend says about striking the right balance, in terms of speed. I have just one additional point on that. The process whereby prospective adopters learn what they need to know cannot be rushed. The hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson) made this point very well. It takes time and a lot of training to understand what adoption involves and to be ready to adopt. That certainly cannot be rushed, and it certainly needs proper resources.

[Lisa Nandy]

I agree. My hon. Friend knows better than most just how much it takes to do something so enormous—to welcome children into one’s own family or, on the other side, to join a new family and deal with all the confusion that that brings. I will talk about that some more, but in the meantime I thank my hon. Friend for his contributions to today’s debate.

I say to the Minister that there is real concern outside this place about what the six-month target may mean in practice. In addition, the Association of Directors of Children’s Services has spoken out in the strongest terms against the 12-month target; if councils do not hit it, they cannot be rated outstanding. It has been my experience over the last decade or so outside this place—I am sure that it has also been the Minister’s experience—that targets can and do produce perverse incentives if they are not constructed well, not monitored and not changed when they are shown to be too blunt or less intelligent than we would like. Can the Minister tell us how, if the Government press ahead with the six-month and 12-month targets, he will monitor that to ensure that it does not lead to perverse outcomes for children, as the hon. Member for South East Cornwall said?

Especially where siblings are concerned, there may be valid reasons for the process being slower. I understand that it is not always in children’s best interests to remain with their siblings. Nevertheless, the pain of such a separation can last for the rest of a child’s life. I have heard so many children talk about that over the years, and I am sure that the Minister has, too. They simply did not know what they had done to deserve it. We owe it to children to do everything that we can to keep siblings together, where that is in their best interests. Targets must not be allowed to prevent that.

Many children say that one of the crucial things about adoption placements is that they feel that they have an element of control over the placement. Many children—not all, but many—say that they want choice; they want some say on their new family. Every child is unique. Religion, race or culture might not matter at all to some; they might be very important to others. The Minister is striking a good balance on that issue, but it brings me back to the perennial problem of the need to increase the supply of potential adopters—a point talked about by many hon. Members—and especially the supply of potential adopters who can care for children who currently wait far too long for placements, such as children with disabilities. I, too, welcome the adoption gateway, but I share the concerns of the Local Government Association that in focusing more—and rightly so—on the prospective adoptive parents, we must be very careful not to lose sight of the needs and interests of the children.

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady agree that initiatives such as national adoption week, which have really taken off and have real momentum behind them, are a vital part of the drive towards prospective adopters being identified and being able to commence their journey, and thus are central to improving adoption rates in this country?

[Lisa Nandy]

The hon. Lady is right to highlight that. National adoption week plays an incredibly important role in raising awareness of adoption and flagging it up to potential families as something that they may not have considered before but may consider in the future. Of course, what happens to those potential parents next is also incredibly important, as I know she recognises.

[Dr Matthew Offord (Hendon) (Con)]

Although I take the point about adoption week, I would like to make the point that, as councillors are corporate parents of looked-after children, they have a specific responsibility, and their role is crucial in ensuring that adoptions happen quicker. I would like to see all local authorities and all councillors ensuring that every week is an adoption week.

[Lisa Nandy]

I welcome that intervention and would be interested to hear the Minister’s response to it. Like many other hon. Members here, I was a local authority councillor before I came to this place, and it caused me great concern that the extremely heavy duty placed on councillors as, in effect, the parents of children in the looked-after system is not well understood by the majority of councillors. We need urgent action to tackle that.

In the 2006 Children’s Rights Director’s report on children’s views of adoption, children said that the best thing about being adopted was joining a new family; the worst was leaving their old one. One child described adoption as

“a scary, sad and happy experience”.

That sums up better than I could, especially as I did not go through this process as a child, how confusing and difficult an experience adoption can be, even when it brings great excitement and joy.

I think that everyone now recognises that there is a pressing need for ongoing support—practical, emotional and sometimes financial—for adoptive parents. My hon. Friend the Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) and the hon. Member for Romsey and Southampton North (Caroline Nokes) talked about that very eloquently. I look forward to the Minister’s response on the issue. That support, not just for adoptive parents but for children, is essential to prevent adoption placement breakdown. Before the debate, Barnardo’s made the point that the support should be able to continue beyond three years, particularly where children are teenagers and going through many of the difficulties that the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich described. I am talking about children coming to terms with what has happened to them, sometimes long after the event, and deciding how they feel about it.

Children speak powerfully about the trauma of placements failing. Some children told the Children’s Rights Director that they felt that they were responsible for trying to make their adoptive placements work out. One child said:

“I felt that if anything went wrong it would be my fault”.

Sometimes we seriously underestimate the amount of responsibility that children take for the decisions that are made that affect them, so ongoing support could not be more important. I look forward to seeing more details of the adoption passport when they are announced. Perhaps the Minister can tell us whether that will be part of the announcements tomorrow. In the meantime, I agree with the Local Government Association that funding is an issue. It says that local authorities face cuts of up to 28% in social services budgets. If the adoption passport is not fully funded, it will remove funding from elsewhere in children’s services, which children can ill afford, especially given that the social worker is the critical person in the process.

It should be of deep concern to us all that when children are asked what the worst thing about being adopted is, many still say that it is their social worker. In all my recent meetings with children who have been through the care system, they have talked about social work turnover. It is often not a criticism of the individual, but a criticism of the amount of time that a social worker is able to give them, or of the fact that they have had two, three or four social workers in as many months. With budgets under pressure and higher case loads, that could be a real problem.

As we heard from many Members, children need time, information and a sense of control. They often need to be given information over and over again, because, as anyone who has ever worked with children knows, sometimes they are just not capable of taking it in, particularly information of this kind. Time is therefore precious, which brings me back to getting it right for children.

We need to consider adoption as part of the wider system. We know that adoptions are not always the right solution for children. There is no hierarchy of placement where children are concerned. I want to quote something from the Children’s Rights Director’s report, because it is so powerful:

“children have strongly told us that fostering is one thing, being adopted is quite another, your plans should be for which of these is best for you as an individual, and adoption shouldn’t be put forward for anyone just because councils want to get as many children adopted as possible.”

That is set against the backdrop of issues in fostering, including allowances and supply. According to the Fostering Network, a foster placement is needed every 22 minutes. Due to the shortage of foster families, almost two thirds of local authorities have had to split up siblings who are in care over the past year. Allowances to foster carers are not keeping pace with inflation, and, in some instances, are falling below the national minimum recommended by the Government. The Fostering Network says that the situation is particularly bad in Scotland, where the Government have set no minimum rate.

There is concern outside this place that progress on adoption is detracting from the pressure points elsewhere in the system. I am sure that the Minister agrees that there is no reason why that should be the case. We can, and should, look at the system as a whole. When will the Government publish the eagerly awaited plans, expected this summer, to improve the system for all looked-after children?

Finally, it is a glowing tribute to professionals and adoptive families that, when asked, so many children say that there is no worst thing about being adopted. One child said that knowing that they could stay for ever if they wanted to was the best thing about it. That so many front-line professionals are clearly getting it right should be a source of real encouragement to all of us, as we seek, collectively, to do better.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Monday 18th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

Yes, indeed. I had a meeting with my officials and discussed just that matter. It is, as my hon. Friend will know—because she has also been a champion of these matters—something that happens across the year in different volumes. There are peak periods for this, and we need to take action to take account of that and to use all agencies to offer the right kind of advice in those areas that are most vulnerable and to those young people who are most vulnerable.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

In the response to today’s report on children in care, Ministers made no mention of the 60% of trafficked children who routinely go missing. Will he respond to widespread concerns surrounding the move of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre into the National Crime Agency, described by CEOP’s former head as about saving face, not saving children, and ensure that child safeguarding is made an explicit strategic priority for the NCA so that the focus on these children is not lost?

[Mr Hayes]

The Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has responsibility for children, are having a meeting this afternoon on just those matters, to ensure that our response is co-ordinated in the way the hon. Lady describes. It is fair to say that there is an issue about the different claims about the number of children who go missing and the need for a more consistent approach to how those records are maintained. I hear what she says and it will no doubt help to inform the discussions that will take place this afternoon—because we do not hesitate on these matters—between the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary.

Safeguarding Children

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

This debate could not be more important, because it concerns those children who most need and deserve our support. Many of them are children for whom parental care has failed, and in some cases the state has also failed them. These children have no choice but to rely on us to protect them, which is one of the heaviest responsibilities placed on the Government. There is an urgency to the situation that marks it out further still. For a young child, just two months represents 1% of their childhood. If we get this wrong, that is time that they will never get back. Every moment counts.

Whether we succeed or fail for those children will depend almost entirely on the quality of relationships that they have with the people who are charged with protecting them. That is the central point that must be recognised and not get lost in the welcome reforms that the Government are pursuing.

We have heard about the pressure on front-line professionals, but while the spotlight in the Department often falls on education, authoritative voices such as the former Children’s Commissioner for England and the chair of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services have warned that the wider framework of support for children is being dismantled, with dangerous consequences for some of the children who can least afford to bear them.

Increasing overall resources is not an option, so Ministers must look carefully at their priorities. There are now more than twice as many staff employed in the Department’s free schools unit as in the safeguarding unit. Youth services, which were a lifeline for the most at-risk young people, are disappearing, while a national citizen service is being developed. That is an admirable scheme, but it is no replacement for ongoing support for the young people who need it most. For some of them, their youth worker is the consistent adult in their life, as the hon. Member for Bristol North West (Charlotte Leslie) outlined so compellingly. They really matter to children among their other priorities.

I had the opportunity to work with the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), before I came to this place, and I have scrutinised his work over the past two years as a member of the Education Committee. I am absolutely certain that he is passionate about his job and the need to listen to children, and he is right that we need to move away from a defensive culture in social work practice, trust professionals to use their instincts and encourage and enable them to be more proactive. However, I would fail in my duty to children if I did not address the real concerns that exist about the strain on the relationships that lie at the heart of effective child protection.

The professionals who make a vital difference to children at risk—their social workers, who do an impossible job day in, day out—are now dealing with unmanageable case loads, as the Minister’s own adviser, Professor Eileen Munro, has warned. The hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) talked about the difficulties inherent in the task of social work, and he was absolutely right to do so, but do Ministers know that polling suggests that one in six social workers now have more than 40 cases? Speaking as someone who spent nearly a decade working with some of the most vulnerable children in contact with the child protection system, that figure is of real concern to me, as it is to many other people.

More than half of social workers believe that their case loads are unmanageable, and the children’s rights director tells me that children themselves are now starting to voice their concerns about social work case loads. Will the Minister of State, the hon. Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), tell us urgently what she will do about that? If social work is the fourth emergency service, as the Under-Secretary said, greater flexibility on its own is not enough in the face of unprecedented demand.

The establishment of the social work college should help. It is based on the landmark recognition that relationships are everything in child protection, and that professional skills and judgment are worth their weight in gold and demand the same professional status in society as we accord doctors and other professionals. What progress has been made to resolve the disputes that have beset the foundation of the college?

Will the Minister of State respond to the concern that, one year on, there is still no chief social worker in post to stand up for the profession? I was grateful to the Under-Secretary for updating us on the fact that recruitment is currently under way, but can the Minister of State provide us with more details about how exactly the post will work and when somebody will begin the job?

I expect the Minister of State recognises why there has been such concern about delays in implementing the Munro review, and especially about the confusion over the impact that health reforms will have. There is a real danger that we will end up with more piecemeal reform, which is precisely the opposite of what is needed. Real strides forward were made in persuading agencies to work together to keep children safe after the tragic death of Victoria Climbié 12 years ago. This must not be the moment when it is allowed to unravel. Progress in child safeguarding is the last Government’s legacy, and many Labour Members can rightly be proud of it, but it can and should also be the current Government’s legacy. We will do everything we can to ensure that that is the case.

There is evidence that agencies are retreating into their core functions. I repeat the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) that in cutting out prescription, Ministers must be careful not to send front-line professionals whose daily work brings them into contact with children but is not restricted to them a dangerous signal that keeping children safe is not their responsibility.

Professionals need clarity, and it is our responsibility to provide it, so I invite the Minister to consider the impact of the shift of focus in the Department, which was formerly called the Department for Children, Schools and Families. The change of name that was not just symbolic; it was an important shift that provided results for children, which I have seen for myself. Its abandonment has left some children falling between Departments and teams, which too often focus on services rather than children. Ministers could never have intended this situation, which arose recently, but the Education Secretary learned from the Education Committee that another Department had started a trial that exposed children to ionising radiation against the wishes of the four Children’s Commissioners and the medical profession. He was not even aware of that, much less consulted.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) for his compelling speech, which showed what can happen when the system breaks down and goes wrong.

There is a real risk that we will have such a debate in a decade’s time in a context in which some children have fallen further behind and others are still at risk. A unique opportunity to reform the system will have been wasted. We can and must do better. In a decade, I would like to stand here—or preferably at the Government Dispatch Box—when no child is constrained by their background; when no child is left in abusive or neglected homes; when no child is ignored when they raise serious concerns; when no child believes that they cannot do better; and when no child is passed around from pillar to post around the care system, forced to recount their harrowing experiences to a succession of anonymous adults. In short, in 10 years’ time, no child’s life chances should be determined before they are born.

Members on both sides of the House share that vision, so I want to extend an offer to the Minister to build a shared consensus on children above politics, and to work together to create a comprehensive strategy to keep children safe—one that involves the care and child protection systems as a whole; one that gives front-line professionals the tools, clarity and skills they need, and the freedom to exercise them; and one that, above all, recognises that we are operating in a new reality, in which agencies are under pressure. If we are not careful, the sense of shared responsibility that has been built up over the previous decade will be lost when children need it most.

Perhaps uniquely in this area, the quality of relationships is sometimes more important than the system. It is the job of professionals to do the best they can for children—many of them up and down the country do so on a daily basis, often against the odds—but it is our job to create a system that values and recognises their work, to support those relationships, and to support children through them. This is more than just a debate; it is an opportunity to break a cycle that, despite efforts by hon. Members on both sides of the House, still condemns far too many children to a life that falls well short of what they deserve.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Monday 16th April 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hayes]

Absolutely. Third party organisations, notably the Prince’s Trust, do an extremely good job in providing such support and good quality information, opening up opportunities and giving people a sense of what they can achieve. I congratulate them and my hon. Friend for drawing their work to our attention.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

The Government recently started X-raying children whose age is in dispute, despite an overwhelming body of medical evidence that this practice is unethical, exposes children to harmful doses of radiation and is entirely ineffective in determining a child’s age. As the Minister responsible for safeguarding and the welfare of children, will he tell the House what he is doing to ensure that this appalling trial ceases with immediate effect?

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady is right to raise concerns. As she knows, this is led by the Home Office but which, because of our concern about safeguarding children, the Minister of State, Department for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Brent, Central (Sarah Teather) and I have held discussions with the Minister for Immigration. It is essential that we have proper checks and controls on people coming into this country, particularly for adults who are masquerading as children in order to come into this country, but that it should in no way be seen to be damaging to those people. We have to achieve that balance. My hon. Friend and I are determined that we do that with the Home Office.

Services for Young People

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Thursday 22nd March 2012 Westminster Hall

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

I am grateful that we are having the debate today and giving a bit more thought to youth services in the UK. I am glad to see young people in the Public Gallery, although I was watching them during the last speech and I am slightly concerned that they might not be nodding—I will looking for their reaction.

[John Robertson (in the Chair)]

Order. The hon. Lady is debating in the Chamber.

[Lisa Nandy]

I am acutely aware that in this place we often talk about young people, but we do not often talk to them. An important feature of our report was the fact that we heard a great deal from young people about the effect of youth services on them.

I spent nearly a decade in the voluntary sector before I came into the House of Commons, and I am a firm believer in the value of youth work and services, having seen for myself the dramatic transformation possible in many young people’s lives. In the Committee, we were glad to have the opportunity to give deeper thought to the value, structure and funding of youth work, and to how outcomes are measured. It has long struck me that the strength of the service is also a weakness—by its very nature, it is flexible, dynamic, youth led and localised, but that can create some of the problems discussed by the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) in his introductory speech. When we began to hear evidence, we had to consider what we meant by youth work, and it soon struck us that there was no definition of youth work or of the youth service, and no job description for youth workers. That is a strength, but it also creates problems.

Inevitably and unfortunately, we spent a great deal of time and energy during our inquiry looking at the effect of cuts, in particular to local authority budgets, and what that has meant for youth services. It emerged that the nature, scale and impact of the cuts have been dramatic and, in some areas, extremely stark. The 10.9% cut to the value of funds into the early intervention grant and the removal of ring-fencing for youth provision seem to have had dramatic effect. Local authorities understandably seem to be prioritising statutory and high-risk services such as child protection. It is easy to understand why, faced with such dramatic cuts, but it is extremely worrying when we consider the hon. Gentleman’s comments on early intervention and the need to prioritise particular groups of young people.

Concern and criticism were aired in evidence to our inquiry, from local authorities and charities. The chief executive of NCVYS—the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services—the former Children’s Commissioner, talked about what the cuts will mean for young people in the long term, if they fall through the net. What will that mean for their future life chances? The former commissioner, Al Aynsley-Green, called it “the end of hope”. I hope that that is not the case, but when the union Unite made a request under the Freedom of Information Act to a number of local authorities, it found that, on average, funding to youth services was down 12% in only one year. The reality of that for young people is stark indeed.

When the Minister gave evidence to the Select Committee, he said that although the Government would be prepared to intervene if local authorities were failing in their statutory duty to provide services, what local authorities spent their money on was largely a matter for them. Ministers, however, need to acknowledge the serious reality of what is happening out there throughout the country as a consequence of the huge cuts being made to local authority budgets. My own local authority, Wigan, has prioritised youth services. In the past three years—between 2008 and 2011—investment in youth work has gone up 4%, but the question is how long that high spend can be sustained, given that the local authority has suffered a £66 million cut and that many services are, therefore, inevitably disappearing, in particular because the cuts were front-loaded, giving us little time to prepare, plan or find alternatives or efficiencies.

Ministers told us that youth services should rely on different sources of funding and should not be overly reliant on the state. In reality, as the Committee’s report and the evidence we were given show, that was already the case. The vast majority of organisations we took evidence from got their funding from a variety of trusts, grants and charitable and public sources, as well as from statutory sources; indeed, one organisation—the Scout Association—was 100% non-funded by the state.

In my constituency, there is a good example of the partnership working that Ministers said they wanted to encourage. Wigan Youth Zone, which is opening in 2013, will provide a huge range of facilities for young people, including climbing walls, sports halls, cinemas, cafes, music rooms and training facilities. The focus is on helping young people to improve not only their softer skills, such as confidence and resilience, but the harder skills that they will need to find what work there is and do it.

The organisation will be 10% funded by the young people themselves, who will pay 50p a time to visit, although there will be additional help for those for whom that is too much. The organisation’s running costs will also be 40% funded by the local authority and 50% funded by the private sector and local fundraising initiatives, which the whole town has got behind. The board is chaired by Martin Ainscough, a local business man with a strong commitment to, and passion for, young people. He was inspired to contribute a significant proportion of the capital costs after visiting the Bolton lads and girls club and coming away feeling strongly that we should have similar provision in Wigan.

There are many such examples around the country, but there is a significant issue about the loss of statutory funding. In many places, alternative sources of funding are simply not available, because they are already being utilised. I strongly disagree with the Minister that spending £77 of statutory funding per young person is a large slug of public money, as he told us when he gave evidence to the Committee. This is really important, considering how much time young people spend outside the classroom and how few resources are spent on activities for young people outside the classroom.

It will be particularly hard for smaller charities to find alternative sources of funding. When I worked for the Children’s Society, we, like many other larger charities, had huge teams of fundraisers, whose job it was to look for sources of funding and to navigate complex regulations and processes to ensure that our funding applications were successful. Smaller charities will not be able to compete, and the Committee heard about many that had only one paid employee, who was trying to keep the whole thing going and whose real passion was working with young people, not filling in forms. It is not enough to say that organisations need to look for alternative sources of funding; they need help and, in particular, signposting from the Government if they are to do that.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

There are positives from having a more big-society approach to youth services. I was speaking to a youth worker from Hull the other day, and he said that he and his colleagues were working more closely with the voluntary sector, in a way he felt they should have been years ago. We should also not send out too negative a message about small charities. They can sometimes be vulnerable, and they are threatened, but they are resilient, and they have an ability to innovate and find ways through. One tends to overstate how desperate things will be, but small charities are good at levering in additional support.

[Lisa Nandy]

I take the point that those youth workers should have been working closely with the voluntary sector, but the point I am making is that such things are already happening up and down the country. People are innovative and they are seeking partnerships. In my constituency, people know each other, they work together and they have built relationships over a long period. I am saying not that those charities are not resourceful, energetic and passionate, but that we are stacking the odds against them, and we should give them more support.

Multiple funding streams can be a bureaucratic nightmare, even for large organisations. I say that as someone who, over 10 years in the voluntary sector, suffered the extreme pain of having to report regularly on such things and to demonstrate impacts and outcomes to funders. I filled in the forms, went to the meetings and prioritised that work, because it is important for funders to see what they are getting for their money, but what about smaller organisations with perhaps one member of staff? The Committee came across an organisation with one paid member of staff and 27 funders, which is not unusual, in my experience. What does that mean? It means 27 regular reports.

Such an arrangement also means that people never get the opportunity to catch their breath, because they constantly have to reinvent or repackage the service they offer. In my experience—I think it was shared by a lot of the organisations that gave evidence to us—funders are not keen to fund something that is not new; they generally want to fund something new, not the continuation of a service. As a result, charities are constantly repackaging and reinventing something they already know works. Removing statutory funding at an accelerated rate will therefore have a dramatic impact, which will be felt most by those organisations that are often closest to the ground and that are doing some dynamic and important work with young people.

In the light of all that, I very much welcome the national citizen service, but as an addition to existing youth services, not as an alternative. As we heard during our inquiry, youth services are a lifeline for some young people; they are a source of stability when there is no other source of stability. Many young people talked about the youth service or the youth club they accessed being a family or a home to them, and many had been accessing those services for years. I had a conversation with a young woman who had acted as a National Children’s Bureau mentor for a young man since he was nine years old—he is now 18. She said that, during all that time, she had been the only adult who had remained constant in his life. Everyone else—social workers, of whom there had been many, foster carers and parents—had come and gone, but she had been the one source of stability for that young man. We must not forget how important that is.

A girl called Chloe posted a comment on the inquiry site about her youth centre:

“It’s like a second home to some of us... I’ve been coming to this youth centre for two years now. I’d be lost without it”.

We heard that from so many young people. I am therefore concerned about the cost of the NCS—£37 million this year and £13 million the year before. It cannot be right to prioritise a six-week scheme for young people from different backgrounds, including more affluent ones, when youth services that are a lifeline to young people such as Chloe are disappearing up and down the country.

The hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness said the Committee was concerned by the cost of NCS, given what it is delivering, and I would associate myself with those remarks. The Committee visited Germany and saw some excellent youth services, but the cost of those services per person for 12 months was the same as the cost of the NCS per person for six weeks. I cannot understand why there is such a huge disparity, and I urge Ministers to look at the issue.

I want to question the Government’s vision on youth services. Over the past few years—this predates the coalition’s coming to power—we have seen the gradual prioritisation of targeted services over open-access services. What I am about to say might sound a little counter-intuitive, given that I have just made a strong case for ensuring that we reach young people from the most disadvantaged backgrounds and that we prioritise them above all others, but, as I have seen for myself, and as the Committee heard in a lot of evidence, open-access services work with many of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged young people, whom targeted services sometimes find it hard to get through their doors. They work precisely because there is no stigma around open-access services, and because a lot of young people who have been through various systems, including the care system and the criminal justice system, and who often have a deep distrust of services that label them and that are targeted at them, will go to open-access services when they will not go to targeted services. At a time when not enough funding is available, it concerns me that we will prioritise targeted services along with the NCS.

When young people from the backgrounds I described access open-access services, which do not necessarily have a label attached, staff can also identify the fact that those young people have problems, which goes back to the point about early intervention. The Committee heard strong evidence that such young people often go on a journey: they go to an open-access service, such as a youth club, and get talking to a member of staff. They build a relationship of trust, and it emerges that they have significant barriers to overcome. They are then referred to a targeted service and end up going full circle—coming back to the open-access service, having had the support they desperately needed. We need to be careful about prioritising targeted services, because the evidence that we heard shows that there is a need for open access and for targeted services that work.

The question of what works—the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness referred to it earlier—exercised the Committee. A witness to the inquiry described the measuring of outcomes as the Holy Grail, and I could not agree more. That can be difficult to do, and it is necessary to be incredibly careful, think about what is being measured and avoid setting up perverse incentives. With the increase in payment by results and targets under the previous Government, organisations cherry-picked the easiest cases and left the remainder, so resources were directed precisely where they were needed least. Often, the targets set for us in the voluntary sector, and for others, completely ignored the reality that many young people face.

In the youth justice system at the moment, for example, the Government are rolling out a system of payment by results, which is about trying to get young offenders into work as soon as they leave an institution. I applaud the focus on getting young people into structured work and giving them a reason to carry on, but the way those targets are set will be important. I worked at Centrepoint, the youth homelessness charity, for several years, and there were some young people for whom just getting out of bed and having breakfast every morning was a significant achievement that constituted real progress; it took months of work, support and encouragement from the staff. That is something we need to be careful about.

I am also quite concerned about measuring outcomes and the focus on payment by results. Constructing intelligent frameworks for what is measured and how that is done involves more than skill. When I worked for the Children’s Society, it constructed a well-being index, which took several years to complete, and while such frameworks can usefully be shared with other organisations—the Government have commissioned work on that, which I welcome—I also urge them to pay attention to the fact that it also takes time to collect and record information in a meaningful way. Many of the young people I worked with in the voluntary sector were sick and tired of being part of the system and of being asked questions, quizzed and grilled. It is important to find useful, meaningful, non-harmful ways to engage young people in the framework, and to get the right information from them, so that the process does not turn into a tick-box exercise.

We heard a lot of evidence that measuring soft outcomes was important, and I completely agree with that; confidence and resilience are examples. Often, causal links are too complicated. It is difficult to say, “This young person came to us and has gone on to commit crime. That is because we failed.” That would be to ignore every other thing going on in the young person’s life at the time. There are so many influences on young people, and it is difficult to measure the direct impact. I was encouraged by the focus on positives in the plan that the Government have produced. If outcome measures are constructed in a negative way, the focus on positives, which is so valuable to youth work, and which we should value and prize above all else, is lost.

Having read the Government’s plan for young people, I thought it was long on policy, which I welcomed, but short on vision. It did not seem to consider the future impact on young people of many of the things in question. The creation of the Department for Children, Schools and Families, instead of an education Department, was a significant step forward for children. It meant that, for once, all Departments had to work together to deliver for young people. Things were brought under one umbrella, with a strong Secretary of State who drove through improvements for young people. I saw that for myself, particularly in areas where children had traditionally been left outside the system. For example, refugee and migrant children came under the umbrella of the Children Act 1989 and the UN convention on the rights of the child for the first time as a direct consequence of the fact that the Department brought things together. If the Minister wants to consider the long-term future of young people and what the decisions we take will mean for them, he needs to look at youth work and immediate support and intervention, but he also needs to look closely at what his colleagues are doing in housing, pensions and care for the elderly—a host of things. Our failure, as a country, to tackle those things will affect young people for the rest of their lives.

A generation is growing up who are losing youth services and support, particularly for the most disadvantaged, but who also face the prospect of high unemployment, with a million young people out of work. They face depressed wages for the rest of their lives, and interrupted work patterns. They also face high debt if they manage to get through university, difficulty getting on the housing ladder and having to fund care for their elderly parents while paying hefty funds into their pension schemes and bringing up their children. The Minister needs to consider what he does for young people now, but needs also to look carefully at his colleagues’ failure to act. Otherwise, young people will feel the results for many years to come.

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[Pat Glass]

I take the hon. Gentleman’s point. Youth unemployment was not invented by the current Government, but it clearly has not been helped in the past two years.

[Lisa Nandy]

My hon. Friend is right to place the issue in the wider context. Does she agree that when youth unemployment rose in the mid-2000s, that was because there was an increase in labour supply—more young people were looking for the same number of jobs—whereas the skyrocketing of youth unemployment since the current Government came to power has been caused by a collapse in labour demand? The jobs simply are not there. The Minister needs to take that seriously.

[Pat Glass]

I agree. In my constituency at the moment, 12 young people are chasing every vacancy. However, I want to look back to what mass unemployment causes and to look at what we will face in the future. I see people in my constituency who do not work. Their parents did not work and in all probability their children will not work. They place no value on education. They see schools as convenient baby-sitting services when their children are younger, but have no interest in whether they attend school when they are older. They have no investment in the present and no hope in the future, and they certainly do not vote.

However, the situation was not always as I have described. In communities such as mine before the 1980s and the early ’90s, those people had work. They worked in steelworks, in mines and in all the industries surrounding those big beasts, but all that has gone and we have not put anything in place for them. The cycle of depression and waste is costing the country billions of pounds, and it starts with youth unemployment. Depressingly, I can see the cycle beginning again.

As a member of the Education Committee, I was therefore very keen that early on we should take a look at services for young people and particularly services targeted at vulnerable and challenging young people. As we have heard, the Select Committee examined those services, particularly in the context of rising 16-to-19 participation in education, and we found several issues that worried us greatly, not least the major cuts in youth services and careers services.

We made a number of sensible recommendations, based on the evidence that we heard. We did not think that the Government response was adequate. I hope that the Minister can make a better showing today. In response to the Government response, we highlighted our recommendations again. We are looking for an endorsement of the outcomes framework. I know how hard it is to focus Governments on outcomes. That is very difficult for Governments. I could entertain hon. Members all afternoon with accounts of the attempts that various Governments have made to focus on outcomes and that have gone wrong.

However, we think that it would be worth while for the Government to consider an endorsement of the outcomes framework. We have recommended that the Government set out the grounds on which they will judge a local authority to have failed to provide sufficient services for young people and the ways in which Ministers will act to secure improvement, so that it is clear across the piece, for local authorities and for young people, when local authorities have failed to deliver services and what Ministers will do to secure improvement.

We underlined our finding that some local authority youth services had already closed and urged Ministers to intervene before it was too late. We told the Government that it was not good enough to dismiss our estimate of public spending on youth services, which is based on their own figures, and demanded that they provide us with their own assessment of annual public spending on youth services for each of the 10 years before introduction of the early intervention grant, so that we and others can see clearly exactly what has been spent on young people’s services in the past, what is being spent now and what is being cut and where. We raised concerns—we have discussed this already—about the potential impact of charging for the national citizen service and the impact of the NCS on youth services generally.

Most of all, we highlighted the fact that services for young people—education funding, careers services, youth services and home to school and college transport services—were at risk. Indeed, some were disappearing before our eyes—some as a result of direct Government cuts and some indirectly, through cuts to local authority funding.

[Mr Clive Betts in the Chair]

Like the hon. Member for Grantham and Stamford (Nick Boles) and the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), I spent six weeks serving on the Committee considering the Bill that became the Education Act 2011. In fact, I think that we spent about eight weeks together; we entertained one another for eight weeks. The hon. Gentlemen will remember, as I do, that the Minister for Further Education, Skills and Lifelong Learning gave an undertaking when we made it clear to him that day that careers services were disappearing. He said that he would take action “imminently”. When we asked what “imminently” meant, he said that it would be when he left the room. However, despite his good intentions, what has happened on the ground is that careers services have disappeared.

I go into schools all the time. The responsibility has been transferred to schools, and when I ask schools what is happening with careers services, they tell me, “Oh, Miss So-and-so does it as part of PSHE”—personal, social, health and economic education—or that sixth formers have access to support when filling in UCAS forms. That is what careers services for young people in schools today have been reduced to. It is simply not good enough.

Youth services—both universal services and targeted services for vulnerable young people—have been cut or have disappeared. My hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) gave a very good description of how that is happening. There have been job losses in these services, with specialist, experienced, difficult-to-replace staff leaving. I have some experience of having to replace specialist staff after a specialist service has closed down, and it is not easy. Those people do not hang on the backs of doors; they are highly qualified, flexible and often mobile. They are hard to train and incredibly hard to replace.

Doug Nicholls, of the union Unite, has estimated that some 3,000 specialist youth service staff face losing their jobs and 20% of youth centres in England and Wales are closing down. My hon. Friend the Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck), when she sums up the debate, will give more details on it, but she has made this estimate:

“A massive £200 million worth of cuts will have been made to youth services by April this year hitting young people and damaging chances of getting the economy back on track.”

All that has happened not just because of the cuts in services, but because the ring fencing around these services has been removed. That has hit young people living in Tory and Liberal Democrat-run council areas the hardest. Research shows that 60% of Tory and Lib Dem councils are making significant cuts to their youth services, whereas Labour local authorities, which are often those facing the greatest cuts in their funding, are at least targeting that funding at those whom they consider most vulnerable and are seeking to protect services for young people. That means cuts to youth service centre hours and sometimes closures. Less help is being given to young people through useful activities that lead to work and training and away from negative influences leading to crime, alcohol and drug abuse and gang involvement.

In my constituency, the local YMCA in Consett, which does tremendous work, often with the least able and most challenging young people, is struggling to find funding. Billy Robson, who has run the YMCA for as long as I can remember, tells me that two years ago, he was confident that the YMCA could improve the life of even the most difficult and challenging young person. Nobody knows more about supporting young people than he does.

However, he tells me that he now feels unusually gloomy, particularly about the dwindling opportunities available to the large numbers of young people who are not in education, employment or training. There are a few jobs, but they are usually short-term and sometimes part-time factory jobs. Even then, 12 young people are queuing up for every vacancy. Billy tells me that it is soul-destroying listening to young people who cannot get work. Their sense of despondency goes deeper and deeper. He says that it is the biggest struggle that he has faced since the closure of British Steel in 1980. He wants to be upbeat for the sake of the young people, but when he has to pay off his own staff, on whom those young people depend, it is hard to be positive.

Over the past year, he has applied for about £1 million in funding from organisations such as the Northern Rock Foundation, Greggs and the National Offender Management Service, but has not been successful in any of those applications. He says that because local authority funds have been cut, charities are competing for available private sector money. The Prince’s Trust runs numerous fantastic programmes from the YMCA in Consett that support young people into training and hopefully employment, but the Prince’s Trust seems to be one of the few organisations that have any funding left.

The Government, at a sweep, abolished the education maintenance allowance, which did more to improve 16-plus participation and narrow the gap between the richest and poorest students than any other scheme that I saw in my 25 years in education. To justify abolishing EMA, the Government relied for their evidence on one report, commissioned for a different purpose by a different Government, involving a group of young people, many of whom were ineligible for EMA on the ground of age. The author of that report, who gave evidence to our Committee, was clearly angry about how the Secretary of State had manipulated his figures and his report to justify abolishing EMA.

As a result, 16-to-19 participation has fallen back to levels not seen in this country since the early 1990s. When I asked the Secretary of State about it, he told me that participation had not fallen at all colleges, only at some. It would be good to hear from the Minister exactly where participation by 16 to 19-year-olds has increased. I am not a betting person, but I am happy to bet next month’s salary that participation is up in the south and down in the north, up in the wealthy shires and down in the inner cities and up among the highest earners and down among poor people.

I turn to the Liberal Democrats’ famous flagship policy, the pupil premium. There are probably a couple of dozen education funding geeks around the country, and I am one of them. It was actually quite exciting once I got into it. I know that pupil premium money is not new; it is recycled money. For all its good intentions, it has been recycled from schools with concentrations of the poorest children and young people and siphoned off to richer parts of the country with fewer poor children.

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[Tim Loughton]

Young people would tell the hon. Lady—she did not answer my earlier question about whether she had met any young people from her constituency who had been on national citizen service—that they value being involved and having their views taken on board. Absolutely, they value having their questions and concerns answered. Whether or not young people get the answers that they want, they need to be taken seriously. Absolutely, we have tried to take on board young people’s views and give them ownership of this youth policy.

Positive for Youth is not a finished document that, as with so many other past Government reports, will go on a shelf and gather dust. It is an evolving, organic and living document that I want every young person in the country to wave in the face of the leader of their local council and the mayor at their town hall and say, “This is what Positive for Youth says should happen. We want it to happen here. How can we make it happen here? Why isn’t it happening here?” That is why a lot of things will evolve from it and why, in a year’s time, I will come back to Positive for Youth and do an audit of what has and has not been achieved. I will go back to those areas of weakness, and I will also flag up areas of strength where we can learn from best practice, which we are particularly bad at doing.

[Lisa Nandy]

Although the Minister is absolutely right not to be complacent about young people’s involvement, the Committee was very keen to ensure that we listened to young people, but that we did not take the young people to whom we spoke as necessarily representing others. They were representing themselves, and we found that incredibly valuable. If he is so keen to listen to young people, will he listen to the overwhelming anger and frustration that the abolition of education maintenance allowance caused and reinstate it with immediate effect?

[Tim Loughton]

We could have a debate about EMA—indeed, I have been part of such debates—but it is not part of the youth report. If the hon. Lady would like to talk about EMA, I will mention that, last night, I was with a group of young people who are in the care system and who have benefited disproportionately from the alternative to EMA—the higher education bursary. They will gain more under that bursary than they did under EMA. We could have that completely different argument, but I think you would rule us out of order, Mr Betts.

I want to try to address some of the points that the Select Committee Chairman raised, particularly the one about the statutory duty. We have published the consultation on what we will do about the statutory duty, and I have sent out very strong, clear signals regarding some of the disproportionate cuts that we have seen. As the hon. Member for Westminster North (Ms Buck) acknowledged, I have absolutely admitted that, in certain parts of the country, some councils are being short-sighted in treating youth services as soft targets. They are not taking a long-term view about the implications of such an approach.

We are consulting on what, practically, the statutory duty should mean. We have had it since 1996, but it has never been used. If we are to have such a duty, it must be meaningful and something that people will appreciate. However, a very important point comes out of Positive for Youth in relation to the fact that local authorities and others are part of the youth offer. To believe that youth services are provided by local authorities alone is a mistake. The youth offer includes, as several hon. Members have mentioned, a load of different organisations that involve local authorities, social enterprises, voluntary organisations, charities and private companies, yet we focus disproportionately on how much money local authorities invest in certain youth-orientated services. The bigger picture shows that the offer is much more mixed.

The best judges of whether or not young people get a good deal in their local area must surely be young people themselves. That is why a key part of the Positive for Youth strategy is the need for an effective and loud youth voice. I have asked every local authority in the country to identify a group of young people locally. They may be youth mayors, members of the UK Youth Parliament, youth cabinet members, none of those or even a combination of them. Such groups could be legitimately said to represent the voices and concerns of young people in their communities. They would be able to conduct an audit of the youth offer in their area and have it taken seriously, published on the local authority’s website or presented to a council meeting. We will collate those findings and flag up where certain local areas are doing well and where others are not. Surely, that is the best way to find out whether or not young people are getting a good deal and to do something about areas with a weakness.

The Committee Chairman also mentioned the outcomes framework. The further response that we gave to the Committee—we have done this in the past few months—stated that my Department is funding the Catalyst consortium

“to develop its outcomes framework with the ambition that it will become an ‘industry standard’ common language with which to measure and demonstrate the impact of provision.”

We have also been working with the Young Foundation, which is part of the Catalyst consortium, to develop the outcomes framework, which is a matrix of tools that will help youth organisations to demonstrate their impact on outcomes for young people.

The interesting problem with this work is how to prove a negative. This is something else that goes to the heart of what Positive for Youth is all about—it says it on the tin. Too often in the past, we have judged whether or not we are doing well for young people in terms of preventatives and negatives. We ask questions such as “How many young people have we prevented from going to youth offender institutions? How many teenage pregnancies have we prevented? How many young people are not in the youth justice system?” Those questions are all based on negatives and preventatives, so it is not surprising that they exacerbate the negative images of young people that the media too often present. I want to achieve—this is why we have asked the Catalyst consortium to consider the issue—an aspirational, positive measure of outcomes that assesses what we are doing for young people on the basis of what they achieve, their educational success and a version of the Prime Minister’s well-being index.

It is hugely difficult to put together something that is meaningful, measureable and practical, but I am determined to do that and to replace the negatives with something positive and aspirational. It will take a while to come up with something that does not just consist of words that are relatively meaningless.

The hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) made a number of points on a wide range of issues. It is a shame that she was not present when I gave evidence to the Committee on the national citizen service and on Positive for Youth. Had she been present, she would have received answers to some of the questions that she has asked today.

The hon. Lady was right to say that part of the problem with youth work is that there is no real job description for it. I know that one of the Committee’s frustrations was the failure of often well-established youth organisations to make a positive, strong case for what constitutes good youth work and a good youth worker. The sector does not do itself any favours. I have seen some fantastic youth workers making a huge difference to young people—often from disadvantaged backgrounds—throughout the country. I wish that we could bottle that work, define it and replicate it more.

That is why Positive for Youth is littered with case studies of youth organisations, local authorities and young people themselves doing some really good stuff in different parts of the country. I want to disseminate best practice and we also need to find a way to disseminate good youth work. I know that the Select Committee Chairman is as frustrated as I am that the Committee’s report did not suggest a blueprint for how to promote good youth work practice. The sector has received that message, which is why Fiona Blacke and the National Youth Agency are working on whether we should have a professional body of youth workers and on how we can increase the standing, gravitas and perceptions of youth workers.

The hon. Lady mentioned reliance on different sources of funding. During my evidence to the Committee—she was not present—I referred to a heavy reliance on “slugs of public money”. My point was not that there is too much or too little public money going to youth services, but that those services have relied disproportionately on public money in the past. A degree of reform in a range of other public services has resulted in a mixed economy of provision based on different revenue sources, but youth services are too often heavily reliant on money from local government, whether it comes via central Government or elsewhere. There is a whole range of other providers, but there is still a heavy reliance on public money, so when public finances are tight, youth services get hit disproportionately. Frankly, the situation has not changed dramatically since the Albemarle report 50 years ago, which effectively established youth services.

The hon. Lady gave a good example from her own constituency of the upcoming Wigan youth zone and the contribution of Martin Ainscough, whom I have met several times. He is a fantastic philanthropist and has put together a fantastic case, as have other members of the OnSide charity, which is responsible for four Myplace centres in the north-west. The charity’s genesis was in the Bolton lads and girls club, which is one of the best—if not the best—youth centres in the country, if not the world. Martin works with Dave Whelan, who is another benefactor of the project. It did not qualify for Myplace funding, because it submitted its bid after the funding round had finished, unlike the other four Myplace centres, most of which have opened—I opened one in Carlisle—and are doing some fantastic work. The Wigan example did not, therefore, get any national public money, but it is going ahead because of some contribution from the local authority and generous contributions from Martin Ainscough, Dave Whelan and other businesses.

Martin runs a private business, which, as the hon. Lady knows, is a big employer in Wigan and has been there for many years. He rightly sees himself as part of the local community and as having a corporate, social responsibility to it. He has identified a mutual benefit of a Myplace-style youth centre—I am hugely supportive of such centres and will come on to them in a moment—whereby his employees spend time volunteering to help out there. His employees’ sons and daughters will benefit from the centre’s facilities, and he may well end up employing some of them. He will help to provide training facilities. It is not just a place for youth leisure activities, but a meeting place for training and education, personal and social development, and all sorts of other things. That is being achieved regardless of the availability of a big pot of money from central Government funds. The model is hugely successful. The Myplace centres—which are based on the OnSide model—that will thrive most of all are those that become self-sustaining and encourage a host of other providers that use social enterprises, businesses and the voluntary sector to become self-sustaining, too. Wigan is a fantastic example of where it can work.

I am particularly keen on other forms of funding for youth organisations—I have been encouraged and we have some brokerage work to help with this—through the social investment bank. We have put some money into a consortium led by NCB and Business in the Community to act as a brokerage to encourage new sources of funding for youth organisations that are looking to promote such projects.

The hon. Lady also mentioned the problem of having 27 different sources of funding and having to account for them all, which is, of course, complete nonsense. That needs to be streamlined and we are streamlining the accountability frameworks. However, those 27 sources of funding may be, as with many projects I have visited, all from different public sources of finance—Department of Health, Home Office or Department for Education projects. Even if they were 100% funded, they would not be from one pot of money that requires one report, one accountability framework and one inspection a year, but 27 funds with potentially 27 reports. That is nonsense that we need to streamline, but it happens in the public sector just as much as it will happen if we have multiple sources of funding from private voluntary and social enterprise sectors, too.

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[Tim Loughton]

The Committee conducted an inquiry into the provision of services beyond the school/college day for young people, primarily those aged 13 to 25. That takes in a whole host of things, of which I mentioned Myplace, which cost £141 million—substantially more than the amount that has been spent, or will be spent for some years, on the NCS. I have told my hon. Friend that last year it cost some £13.5 million. The budget for this year, if we provide 30,000 places as we are looking to do, will be roughly triple that, but hopefully it will a bit less because we will get some economies of scale.

Depending on how we evolve the pilot—we are genuinely learning from it and adapting it by reference to all our partners with expertise in this regard—it may become a shorter experience in the summer, which would reduce the costs, or there may be different ways of doing it. To say that it will cost £300 million, or whatever, in a few years is entirely illusory, because I do not know how many people will be doing it.

There is a fundamental misconception here. The money is not coming from the Department for Education or from a youth budget and would not otherwise be going into youth services. The money for the national citizen service is going into youth services. This money is not being used to fund some army of central Government people; it is being provided by a host of youth organisations—the Prince’s Trust, the Football League Trust, Catch22, Groundwork and the National Youth Agency—doing youth work now. If that money were not going into the NCS through a direct funding stream from the Treasury, it would not be going into youth work. That is why I cannot understand why the Committee is not welcoming these growing resources going into a youth activity. One only has to speak to the people who have done such activity, read the surveys that we have conducted, and look at the serious work that is being done, to see its efficacy and that it is having a positive impact.

[Lisa Nandy]

The list of names that the Minister read sounded strangely familiar, because those organisations gave evidence to the Committee for our report, saying that the network of support for young people, which already exists and is so highly valued, is disintegrating in front of our eyes. I have to say that the Minister is starting to sound somewhat delusional, because we were overwhelmed with evidence from those organisations and young people, saying that they are losing much valued, highly regarded services now. In the time that he has left, out of respect to the young people who use those services, will the Minister tell us what he is going to do to stop that happening?

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady ignores the fact that a host of youth organisations has come forward to provide national citizen service places, because they think it is a good thing to do and think that they have the expertise. In particular, we are using a host of smaller providers with real expertise in engaging with more difficult-to-engage young people, including young people who have been in the youth justice system and young people from various black and minority ethnic communities, who are not necessarily easy to engage in some youth services. Those people value it.

I do not know whether the hon. Lady went to the NCS providers in her locality, but I ask her to speak to some of those young people and to come to some presentations, such as the ones we have done with them, and see the value that they place on it.

I cannot give hon. Members a figure for what NCS will ultimately cost when we go to full roll-out, and I do not know how soon roll-out will be or what it will be, but we will not compromise the quality of this service. An absolutely key point in that regard is the fact that it is a high-quality service that is, for the young people who go on it, a life-changing experience about personal and social development.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Monday 16th January 2012 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

I am sure we would all in any case have remembered the precise phrasing of what the Minister of State wrote in 1998, and I cannot imagine why he would suppose otherwise.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

Despite efforts to improve awareness, many trafficked children still wrongly believe that their trafficker is their friend. Given that the Minister has rejected the idea of guardianship for trafficked children, can he tell me who is able to instruct a child’s lawyer in cases where the child is too young, too confused, too traumatised or too afraid to do so themselves?

[Mr Hayes]

The hon. Lady will know that local authorities retain their responsibilities in this regard and, indeed, allocate a responsible person to deal with such children. I am aware of continuing doubts and problems concerning children being re-trafficked. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Wellingborough (Mr Bone)—he was too polite to mention this—wrote to the Secretary of State on this subject only a couple of days ago. We will look closely at bringing what the Department does into line with Home Office and local authority practice. We should not rest until this matter is addressed, and we will not rest until children are freed, victims are protected and those who trade in pain and persecution are made to suffer.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lisa Nandy Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I absolutely do not, given that the changes in 16 to 19-year-old funding do not affect colleges. They primarily affect schools, as schools are brought into correlation with colleges. The good news is that the very best colleges—those that are outstanding—are recording an increase in the number of students, and overall that is part of a very happy picture of rising participation.

[Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)]

23. What plans his Department has to allocate funding to the national citizen service beyond 2012.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

The pilots that have been run this year and will be run next year are funded through the Cabinet Office, and we will discuss with it and the Treasury how the scheme is then rolled out to the 60,000 and 90,000 places that we have forecast for subsequent years.

[Lisa Nandy]

A recent Education Committee report highlighted the alarming disappearance of youth services throughout the country. Does the Minister accept that replacing long-term youth services, which were particularly good for most disadvantaged children, with an eight-week programme does not constitute a strategic vision for young people? What will he say to those young people who feel absolutely betrayed by the decision that his Government have taken?

[Tim Loughton]

Of course the hon. Lady is completely wrong in her premise. The national citizen service, as I have just described, has been funded from a completely separate source from that of youth services—coming through local government and the Department for Education. She knows my concerns about how certain local authorities are treating youth services as a soft target for some of their cuts, and this Government will publish shortly our “Positive for Youth” policy, which will send out some very strong messages about the value of well-targeted, quality youth services run in partnership and under new models, because for too many years they were just not reformed under her Government.