Childcare Bill

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 29th October 2021 Commons Chamber

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) for bringing forward this Bill, and for working so closely on the Bill with me, the shadow Education team and Members across the House, including the hon. Member for Castle Point (Rebecca Harris). I think this is cross-party working at its best, especially on a topic that is so important and so often overlooked. He is truly a champion for working parents and for children whose life chances are going to be shaped by early education and early years education. I also thank all the organisations that have helped him with the Bill and worked so closely with us throughout the process, including the Nuffield Foundation, the Sutton Trust, the National Day Nurseries Association, the Centre for Research in Early Childhood, the Coram Family and Childcare Trust, and the Early Years Alliance.

I will go quickly through the parts of the Bill. First, the Bill addresses a discrepancy between the appeals system for the Government’s schemes for tax-free childcare and free childcare entitlements. The change will allow more disputes to be settled by agreements with HMRC rather than at tribunal, which will save parents time. Any MP with small children sitting in Parliament today, during half-term, will recognise the importance of time. It will save parents time, for anyone who is disputing the Bill, and it will also save taxpayers money. So it is simple fix for a discrete problem and we as a party will support the Bill.

Secondly, the Bill will begin to address the problem, which has been referenced a few times by Conservative Members, that not everyone who is eligible for childcare support is actually accessing it. A Sutton Trust report on the 30 hours free childcare scheme found that this problem came from a lack of awareness among parents and also supply-side issues such as poor availability and the affordability of childcare places in many parts of the country. The Bill would make Ministers look again at how we can promote childcare schemes more effectively so that all families who benefit from the support are able to access it.

It is also clear that the existing childcare support is not sufficient. That brings me to the third substantive part of the Bill, which is a review of the entire childcare system to ensure that it delivers high-quality, value-for-money early education that also enables parents to work. This must be our ultimate goal and I hope, as a Parliament, cross-party, we can work to achieve that. A recent Pregnant Then Screwed survey found that 95% of working parents think that the Government are not helping enough with the cost and availability of childcare. We know from recent research by the Sutton Trust that the 30 hours free childcare offer can often exclude the poorest children, because only 20% of families with earnings in the bottom third of the income distribution qualify.

In no way do I want to ruin the non-confrontational mood of Parliament today, which you have spoken of so highly, Mr Deputy Speaker, but it would be remiss of me to stand here and not mention the fact that the early years sector is currently struggling with a £660 million gap. I hope that we can find the time to review childcare schemes and how they are funded, if we are really serious about addressing early years education and making sure that children, no matter their background or where they were born, get to achieve success in life.

We welcome the Bill as a means of setting us on the path to a better, more sustainable childcare system—one that delivers the high-quality early years childcare that families need, without breaking the bank or the providers. I once again thank my hon. Friend the Member for Reading East for promoting this important Bill.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Holden]

She should be right hon. She raised a really important point in her tribute to early years teachers. A lot of my family, including both my grandmothers and my mum, were primary school teachers. Those involved in teaching our children and in early years education—particularly over the past 18 months, when so many across the country have faced challenging circumstances—need a shout-out from this place whenever possible.

My hon. Friend the Member for Beaconsfield (Joy Morrissey) raised a particularly important point on the cross-Government approach that is needed. This issue touches so many different areas. Members from all parts of the House have raised the issue of family hubs, which was brought out by my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) and my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom). That holistic approach, working with local government so that families have somewhere to go when in need, is very important. There is a broader requirement here, therefore, going a little further than just early-years childcare for two and three-year-olds: we need to look, too, at shared parental leave. At present far too few men are taking up opportunities to spend more time at home with their children, and perhaps a broader education drive is needed to push that, especially in early years. As more women are in higher-powered careers—a great thing for our country—we can perhaps share some of these responsibilities more broadly.

[Tulip Siddiq]

My office manager Oliver Denton Lieberman is today going off for a whole year on paternity leave. I want to applaud the fact that more men are doing so; it is good to recognise that.

[Mr Holden]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady’s office manager for doing that; it is great to see people leading by example. It has been good to see the Prime Minister taking some proper paternity leave as well in recent years, and Ministers, too. It is still at far too low a level, however, and I think the hon. Lady would agree that we need to promote this more broadly across the board.

The hon. Member for Reading East raised some interesting issues. We need to look at the ratios of staff to children. It seems to me to be iniquitous that for a four-year-old in early years education the ratio has to be 1:8, but for a four-year-old in a school it can be 1:30. Perhaps we can look at childcare more broadly to ensure that it is cost-efficient and can deliver for parents.

I also want to pick up on some of the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Loughborough (Jane Hunt). One of the great pieces of news in the Budget was the increase in per-hour spending per child. That will go even further if we address those ratios, and it will help improve pay levels in the sector as well. Many of the childcare organisations in my constituency have been telling me that is a real issue, as it is in other sectors such as social care. We want jobs in those sectors to be seen as high-skilled professions offering careers where people can not just work, but go on and succeed more broadly.

I welcome the cross-party approach of the hon. Member for Reading East; it is exactly the right way to proceed as we share a common view on this matter on both sides of the House, particularly with more parents being in employment. Credit is due to the Government over the last year and a half for the excellent support they have put into the economy to ensure that there are jobs and that vacancy rates are at record highs. Indeed, perhaps this great economic success makes the concerns raised by the hon. Gentleman even more pressing.

However, I agree with my Conservative colleagues that, rather than legislating for a review, the Government could perhaps take this forward without legislation being necessary. I leave that thought with the Minister.

Sustainability and Climate Change (National Curriculum)

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Wednesday 27th October 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I should just say that I am not the shadow Minister on this subject, but the shadow Schools Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Hove (Peter Kyle), is on a Bill Committee, which is why I am covering today. I want to thank him and the shadow Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), for their help in preparing for this debate. I will pass back any points made today, so hon. Members can rest assured that everyone’s comments have been heard and noted.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East (Nadia Whittome) for securing this important debate, which is also very timely, as everyone has mentioned. I pay tribute to her for the work she has done to highlight the importance of embedding climate change and sustainability in everything we do, including education, and for all the organisational work she has done for this campaign, not least bringing a delegation of young, bright people from the Teach the Future campaign to Parliament yesterday. I am delighted that some of them are in the Public Gallery: Scarlett, Stella, Tess, Yasmin and Charlie are very welcome to Parliament, but we also need them to educate us, as many Members have said during today’s debate.

My hon. Friend made many good points, but I particularly want to pick up on one of them, which was about how the education system is not preparing children for climate change. It is failing them, which is a damning verdict on the education system that we are living with, and of what the future holds for a lot of our children. I also want to take a minute to say that my hon. Friend may be generation Z, she may be the youngest Member of the House, and she only joined in 2019, but we can already see the impact of all the work she has undertaken. When Opposition Members start paying tribute to her for her work on the Environmental Audit Committee—that does not always happen in this House—we realise the strength of her capabilities, so I give her a huge “Well done” for having secured this important debate.

My fellow millennial Member, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Olivia Blake), talked about the importance of teaching not just young people, but adults as well, about climate change and sustainability. That point was echoed by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), who said that a lot of adults do not even know what we are talking about—I know that I could do a crash course on this topic as well.

Turning to the topic at hand, many Members from both sides of the House who spoke today talked about how we need to do more to embed climate change within the curriculum. When I go to my local schools, teachers and school leaders are already aware of that need, and some amazing work is going on around the country to engage with pupils about climate change. However, the onus cannot just be on them, which is another point that has been made in the debate. The Government, and we as politicians, have to help them.

One example of that is the Eco-Schools green flag programme, which many schools, nurseries and colleges are a part of. It consists of seven steps that education institutions can take to focus their communities of pupils and staff on the climate emergency, including putting environmental issues in learning plans and choosing texts in subjects such as English that will explore those issues. That work has been supported by education unions, who to their enormous credit have been pushing the Government to recognise that we are in a climate emergency, and that we have to pay more attention to it and put it at the top of our agenda. I pay tribute to the National Education Union, the National Union of Students and the University and College Union in particular for all their hard work on this issue, including promoting Climate Learning Month in the run-up to COP26, which as we all know starts next week.

There was a lot of talk about schools in this debate, and how they are being innovative in their teaching of environmental issues. From school veg patches that teach children about sustainability as well as healthy eating, to planting trees to mark achievements and celebrations, our schools are leading the way in creating a more sustainable, greener future. Our curriculum should empower that work, and we should be supporting those schools. The right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) talked about local gardening projects in schools in his constituency. I join him in paying tribute to Islington Council, which is doing an enormous amount of work on this, as well as the councils in my constituency, Brent and Camden Councils, which are doing similarly impressive work.

At the risk of this debate sounding like a north London takeover, I also pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent North (Barry Gardiner), who talked about taking a holistic approach to this issue. I wholeheartedly agree: we cannot just have a box-ticking exercise, but have to look at this properly and make sure there is an integrated way of teaching. I also pay tribute to him for his important work on the APPG for nature, which does not get recognised so much in this House, but is a crucial part of the work we do in Parliament.

If we are going to transform education, we must support our educators to do so. Embedding climate change within the curriculum will mean new training for teachers and teaching assistants. At Labour conference, the shadow Education Secretary, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston, announced that we would give all teachers a right to continuing professional development, with £210 million extra per year for CPD, which could certainly be used to deliver this kind of training. I would like the Minister to pick up on this issue and say whether that proposal is something his Government might consider.

However, we have to recognise that this is not just about the curriculum. We should be looking to make our school estate and all our school environments eco-friendly and fit for the future. That point was eloquently made by my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis), and my right hon. Friend the Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) also spoke about young people demanding that their school buildings be sustainable. If any Members have been to speak in schools, they will recognise young people’s passion about that.

What does concern me—I wonder whether the Minister will answer this—is that at a time when we need to be upgrading our school buildings as part of our national effort to get to net zero carbon emissions, since 2010 the capital spending on schools has been cut by 44%. That worries us. As my hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles (Rebecca Long Bailey) said, our education system must prepare children and young people for the jobs of the future, which will be shaped by our transition to net zero.

The Labour party has announced plans for 400,000 green jobs. It is essential that we equip young people to develop the skills for those employment opportunities as we go into the future. That cannot happen only in schools, but it does require climate education and green skills to be embedded in further and higher education. That is why we welcome the new report from the Association of Colleges, “The Green College Commitment”, which recognises the need to go much further to embed those skills across courses. Will the Minister consider that carefully?

The leader of the Labour party has described climate change as

“the biggest long term threat we face”,

and from this debate it sounds like many Members agree. Tackling climate change is at the heart of our agenda and our manifesto as we move forward. However, the reality is that those who are most affected by the impact of climate change are those who are going through schools, colleges, nursery and early years education right now. We must act more strongly if we are to stem the tide of climate decline and protect the younger generations from catastrophic consequences. I really hope that the warm words we are hearing from the Government are finally translated into tangible progress at COP26 next week.

My hon. Friend the Member for Salford and Eccles also spoke about the brutal cost that young people will bear. There is a harsh reality to that. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) talked about leaving something behind for his five grandchildren. That is how I feel about my children; I feel that we need to leave something of the planet behind, and to prepare our children and young people for the challenges of the future.

That is why embedding learning about climate change and sustainability into our curriculum and our education system is vital; that is why this debate is vital; that is why we must equip young people with the skills they need to work in the green industries of the future. Far more innovation is needed from the Government when it comes to education and skills. It is crucial if we, as a country, want to leave the world in a transition to net zero. I hope that the Minister has been listening to the many important points raised in this very good debate. I also hope that the Minister will meet my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham East, as she requested.

[Ms Nusrat Ghani (in the Chair)]

May I remind colleagues that for any messages that need to be shared with other Members, it is best to do so through the doorkeepers or the Parliamentary Private Secretaries rather than the Clerks.

Childcare

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Monday 13th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Roger. I would like to thank all my colleagues across the House who took the time to speak in today’s important debate. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), and little Pip, I want to begin by paying tribute to Joeli Brearley and everyone at Pregnant Then Screwed for starting this important petition and for the inspiring work that they have done to support women and parents in this country and to fight against gender inequalities.

On no issue is it more important to have dedicated campaigners like Joeli than on childcare, which is all too often ignored by politicians, despite it being a fundamental building block of our economy and our children’s development, as has been repeated several times in the debate. Its importance is highlighted by the fact that well over 100,000 people signed the petition, including 400 of my constituents in Hampstead and Kilburn.

In the Chamber last week I raised the Government’s own statistics, which show a loss of over 3,000 childcare providers in England in the first half of this year alone. This comes on top of a net loss of over 100,000 providers since 2015. I was very surprised that the Minister responded by claiming that there were no problems with sufficiency in the early years sector, given that a third of English councils do not have enough childcare places for parents working full time. My hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow raised this in her speech. I was surprised by the Minister’s remarks on childminders, which have now drawn much criticism, including from the chief executive of the Early Years Alliance, who commented:

“To hear the Children and Families Minister so casually dismiss the closure of thousands of childminders—and falsely imply that what they provide is just care, rather than education—is both insulting and infuriating.”

I do not want the outside world to think that that is how politicians in this place think when it comes to early education.

Every year, Coram Family and Childcare publishes a survey of childcare costs and availability, and every year it shows that there is a postcode lottery in childcare provision. All too often, the costs are soaring well above inflation. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) outlined her own experience of living through this postcode lottery and how much misery it has caused so many people in her constituency. A survey published before the debate by Pregnant Then Screwed found that a staggering 19 out of 20 working parents said the Government are not helping enough with childcare, with a third paying more for it than their rent or mortgage—again, a point that has been made over and over in the debate. That is because a full-time childcare place in the UK costs £14,000 a year. As my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow and for Putney constantly said, ours is one of the most expensive childcare systems in the whole world. That should make our heads hang in shame.

The sad truth about the eye-watering costs of childcare in this country is that it was a predictable result of the decision that the Government took to underfund the free childcare policy by a third in the last financial year alone. We know that because the Department for Education itself predicted it. Secret Government documents from 2015, uncovered by the Early Years Alliance, warned over and over again that failing to fully fund this policy would drive up costs for parents. Ministers pushed ahead regardless, which, as my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge (Ellie Reeves) said, left the sector with a £662-million annual funding gap even before covid hit.

As if that was not bad enough, there was almost no targeted support either for early years or for wraparound childcare providers during a pandemic that has seen their attendance levels and income plummet to the ground. Then came what early years analyst Ceeda calculated as a quarter of a billion pounds’ funding cut this spring term, due to the premature withdrawal of pre-covid funding levels. It is no wonder that 85% of childcare businesses expect to make a loss or break even this year, as research by the National Day Nurseries Association shows.

It is not just about statistics. There is a very real impact on families, who are struggling to make ends meet. My hon. Friend the Member for Pontypridd (Alex Davies-Jones) talked passionately about equal parenting, the pay penalty, proper flexible working, and how children are being priced out of education at the most important stage of their development. Not only are private fees for early years childcare well out of reach for many families, including those in Hampstead and Kilburn, but a recent Sutton Trust report confirmed that the eligibility for the 30 hours free childcare scheme excludes the poorest. Are these the policies we want to have in our country, where we exclude the poorest from accessing high quality childcare?

As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) pointed out, parents are being forced to cut hours and quit jobs because they cannot find or afford childcare. Of course, this affects women disproportionately. Three quarters of working mums were forced to cut working hours in the first lockdown due to a lack of childcare. In 2018, there were over 800,000 mothers who wanted to work, but could not for financial reasons.

[Jim Shannon]

The shadow Minister is making some very important points. Does she agree that it is not fair for the burden of childcare to fall upon the shoulders of grandparents, who do not have the physical ability to look after children in the way they probably did at one time? I believe that the onus is on the Government and the Minister to come back with a response that helps people.

[Tulip Siddiq]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I was listening to his speech very closely, because I was reflecting that there is no way I could have got through six years of being an MP without relying on my mother—who, by the way, turns 65 today. She is someone who helped me with my childcare, because my father is in a wheelchair; she was responsible for looking after the children when I did not get proper maternity leave from this place. I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Gentleman, and I hope that the Government will recognise the pressure that is put on grandparents. My mother is 65, but there are lots of grandparents who are a lot older and struggle physically to look after small children. I hope the Minister takes heed of what the hon. Gentleman has to say.

I also want to talk about childcare workers, 93% of whom are women, who are languishing on poverty pay after suffering years of real-terms pay cuts under Conservative Governments. As my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham West and Penge pointed out, the average wage in the sector is £7.42 per hour, and shamefully, one in 10 staff earn less than £5 an hour. These talented and dedicated workers are unsurprisingly leaving the sector as quickly as they can. It is clear to anyone who has direct experience of the childcare system in this country that there is something seriously wrong with it, and it could get a lot worse if nursery and childcare closures continue as they are at the moment. This petition should be a wake-up call for Ministers and the Government to rethink their approach to child- care funding.

That is why my Labour colleagues and I have been banging on about the need for targeted support to halt the collapse of the childcare sector. We are not being dramatic, and we are not scaremongering: this is the reality of the situation. Our childcare recovery plan also proposes a real, substantial hike in the early years pupil premium, from £302 per person per year to £1,345, as part of a £15 billion package to give every child new opportunities to learn, play and develop. I believe it is time to give childcare the attention and the funding it deserves, so that we can be a country that values children, parents and family and so that childcare becomes a part of the country’s infrastructure, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North so eloquently put it when she opened this important debate.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I would be absolutely delighted to meet my hon. Friend and colleagues on the all-party parliamentary group on sixth-form education. He will no doubt be aware that we have already been putting extra resources into 16-to-19 education. An additional £400 million was awarded in 2019. We recognise that it is important to invest in the quality of estate, which is why we are putting £1.5 billion into upgrading that estate.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

Earlier this year, in June, I stood at this Dispatch Box and confronted the Minister about the number of nurseries and childcare providers that were closing because of the Government’s inability to fund the early years sector properly. The Minister accused me of scaremongering. Since June, there has been a further loss of 500 childcare providers in the sector, which brings the net loss for this year alone to nearly 3,000. Will the Minister make up for dismissing the concerns of parents, children and carers by providing targeted funding for the early years sector from this Government?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Vicky Ford)]

The Ofsted data from March shows a 4% dip in the number of childcare providers since 31 August, which is a fall largely driven by childminders and carers, not nursery settings. Sufficiency is the key measure and we have not had any reports of sufficiency issues in early years settings since they reopened in June 2020. We put £3.5 billion into our early years entitlements because we care about childcare.

Children from Low-Income Families: Education Support

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Wednesday 30th June 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

It is pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. First, I would like to say a big thank you to my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) for securing this important debate and for his tireless work in Parliament to raise the issues facing children and young people. He made a powerful speech about the Government’s neglect of poor children in Slough and the impact on headteachers. The quote from the Slough headteacher, who said that communication is ill thought out, resonated with me because it is echoed by a lot of teachers in my constituency. The Slough parent who said that she feels let down by the Government reflected something that I have heard over and over again from parents in my constituency.

I thank all our colleagues who have taken part in the debate and spoken up for children from low-income families in their constituencies. The hon. Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) spoke movingly about the shocking inequality and poverty among children in her constituency, and how poverty is limiting the life chances of her young constituents. That also applies to my constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that parents simply want their children to do their best, and to do what is best for their children in life. However, that is very difficult to do.

My hon. Friend the Member for Luton South (Rachel Hopkins) spoke in her passionate speech about the shocking 37% of her young constituents who live in poverty. If the odds are against people from the start, it is hard to do well in life, and it is hard for parents to ensure that their children do well in life. My hon. Friend was right to point out the enormous increase in the attainment gap for disadvantaged children in her constituency, and across the country. It is commendable, but in equal measure shameful, that organisations such as Luton Learning Link have had to step in, because that should be the job of the Government.

Perhaps the most shocking betrayal of children from lower-income families is the stealth cut to the pupil premium that the Government have pushed through. By moving the date for calculating the pupil premium back from January to October, the Government have cut funding for more than 100,000 children who qualified for free school meals in between, and that is shocking. The Department for Education’s own calculations show that that will mean schools losing out on £90 million of funding, with those in the most deprived areas being hit the hardest.

To put it in simple terms, the Government have directly withdrawn money that is intended to support disadvantaged children, who, as we have heard from contributions across the Floor today, have struggled most during the pandemic and who most need the support. That comes after a decade of Conservative Governments which have implemented a real cut of 9% to school budgets, not to mention slashing funding for local authorities, which has led to the decimation of services that children rely on to progress with education, among other things.

The Government’s woeful education recovery package will do little to address the funding gaps that have arisen as a result of those shameful choices, and the National Audit Office is concerned that even their national tutoring programme is not reaching enough pupils on free school meals.

The huge rise in eligibility for free school meals, which now totals 420,000 children since the start of the pandemic, shows that many more children are living with hardship and relying on the hot meal they get at school each day. The truth is that children cannot learn if they are hungry, yet Ministers have had to be shamed time and again into delivering food support to children at home, and making that available during the summer holidays in the pandemic.

All of us in the Chamber remember the shameful scenes of woefully inadequate food parcels being delivered to children who qualified for free school meals back in January. Unbelievably, the Government are set to repeat their mistakes by offering only 16 days of food support over the entire six-week summer holiday, with no guarantee that it will be given to every child who qualifies for free school meals. Ministers do not even appear to be listening to Labour’s repeated calls to offer all children breakfast clubs before school.

Children who qualify for free school meals are far less likely to have access to a laptop or internet connection, effectively preventing them from learning remotely when they cannot go to school. Despite over a million children not having the digital access they needed at the start of the pandemic, the Department for Education delivered just 600,000 laptops by Christmas. Government schemes ensured that only between a third and half of those who needed a laptop got one. Ministers slashed laptop allocations for self-isolating pupils by about 80% in October. As of January, one in five parents still reported not having access to enough digital devices for children to learn remotely—a shocking statistic.

This is not picking over ancient history. School absences have quadrupled this month. Last week, a shocking one in 20 pupils were forced to miss school for coronavirus-related reasons. Many of those are now at home unable to learn because this still has not been sorted. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for her truly inspirational work over the past year and a half to highlight the digital poverty that many children on free school meals have been living in. My hon. Friend has relentlessly brought it up time and again, and my only hope is that the Government are listening to her.

I will briefly mention the Government’s chronic underfunding of early years education over the last decade. Secret documents, unearthed through FOIs by the Early Years Alliance, show that that was done deliberately in the knowledge that it would drive up childcare costs for parents, drive down the quality of education for young children, and destabilise the early years sector. We have already lost 2,500 nurseries, childminders and other early years providers in the first five months of this year. Research by the Sutton Trust shows that providers in the most deprived areas have been most likely to face financial difficulties in the pandemic, and be threatened with permanent closure—10% to 15% higher than in the most affluent areas.

Children from all socioeconomic backgrounds have faced huge challenges in the pandemic, whether trying to learn without the structure of a classroom for much of the year, or facing the mental health challenges of isolation. It is all too often the case that when problems arise, or a crisis such as coronavirus engulfs us, children from lower-income families fare the worst, whether through hunger, difficulties with digital access and access to tutoring, and all the other issues that colleagues have repeatedly and passionately pointed out.

The impact on educational outcomes is there to see. According to the Sutton Trust, more than half the teachers at the least affluent state schools reported lower standards of work during school closures, compared with 40% at more affluent ones, and 30% at private schools. The attainment gap had stopped closing before covid, after a decade of Conservative Governments, but is now set to widen without bold action straight away.

Labour’s £15 billion children’s recovery plan would reverse the stealth cut to pupil premium funding, double it for children in transitional years and more than quadruple the early years pupil premium, give more funding to schools to support tutoring for all children who need it, provide breakfast clubs for every child and deliver free school meals in full in holidays during the pandemic. Those measures would make a big difference to disadvantaged children in my constituency of Hampstead and Kilburn, and across the country. We have not heard anything remotely close to that level of ambition from the Government, whose catch-up proposals will support fewer than one in 10 children. It is no wonder that Sir Kevan Collins felt he had to resign over this.

I finish by asking Minster directly why she thinks the Government’s own education recovery chief decided to resign. Has she reflected on whether the Government need to rethink their approach to supporting children from lower-income families in the light of that vote of no confidence?

--- Later in debate ---

[Vicky Ford]

A few other Members mentioned free school meals, including the hon. Members for Leicester East and for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq). This Government have extended the eligibility for free school meals more than any other Government for the past 50 years. It is this Government who introduced universal free school meals and expanded free school meals to those in further education. During the pandemic, we also widened the provision to many children who normally have no recourse to public funds. The Government have also provided funding to local authorities during the pandemic to ensure that the hardest-hit families are supported with food and essentials through the covid local support grants. That has even supported them during the school holidays. Those grants have been extended through the coming holiday at a cost of more than £100 million.

I want to get back to the point that the hon. Member for Slough made about Slough. Slough children’s services have been enormously challenging for many years. The Department for Education has provided significant investment in children’s services in Slough—nearly an extra £7 million over the past two years. As the hon. Gentleman knows, it transferred the ownership of Slough Children First, the trust, to Slough Borough Council in April. I call on him to get behind the relationship between the trust and the local authority. I, as Minister, have signed off millions of pounds to give that support to Slough children. He should work with the trust to put Slough children first in his constituency.

[Tulip Siddiq]

The Minister is boasting about free school meals and how much the Government have done. Will she admit that her Government were forced, kicking and screaming, to extend free school meals because Marcus Rashford and the Labour party shamed them nationally, which is why they felt they had no choice but to extend free school meals? They resisted that until the very last minute.

[Vicky Ford]

The hon. Lady has said this again and again, and it is simply not true. Let us look at the facts, okay? This Government, when I became the Minister for children, and over the past 10 years, had already extended free school meals to more children than any other Government during the past 50 years. We set up the national voucher scheme during this pandemic—a thing that had never been done before—to make sure that, when schools were closed to most children, they could still access food at home.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Monday 21st June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

It sounds as if amazing work is going on at Gusford Primary School. That has been underpinned by the £3.5 million in funding available to charities and organisations such as the Diana Award. A number of organisations are currently bidding. I am afraid that I am not in a position to confirm which have been successful, but I understand that the Diana Award is one of those that has been bidding for the next tranche of funding.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

Last week, the Early Years Alliance revealed secret Government documents that exposed that Ministers have been knowingly underfunding childcare, childminders and nurseries for years now, knowing full well that that would mean increased childcare costs for parents and lower-quality early education. Bearing in mind that in this year alone there has been a net loss of 2,500 childcare facilities in England, will the Minister apologise for covering this up? Will she explain to the House how she plans to rectify the very serious problem of underfunding in early education?

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Vicky Ford)]

I do wish sometimes that my opposite number would stop scaremongering. We have put unprecedented investment in childcare over the past decade: more than £3.5 billion in each of the past three years. There are always a number of reasons why providers come and go from the register, including mergers and acquisitions. The key thing is whether or not there are sufficient places for children. We monitor the market very closely, and we are continuing to see that there are not a significant number of parents who are unable to secure a childcare place this term or since early years sectors reopened in June.

Support for Children Entitled to Free School Meals

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Wednesday 26th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq, for the first time. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) for securing this important debate, and for her powerful speeches today and at the debate on Monday. She is right that it is a national outrage that our country is so unequal, with an economic system so broken that so many parents are forced to rely on inadequate support from the state to feed their children, despite their best efforts.

I really regret the fact that not a single Conservative MP has chosen to speak in today’s debates. Yet, a few years ago, this very same room was packed with Conservative Members who wanted to defend Donald Trump’s right to a state visit. With over half a million children qualifying for free school meals since March last year, a debate on this support has never been more important. Free school meals are often the only hot meal that some children get all day, and they are a lifeline for many families who are struggling to make ends meet, as my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley East (Stephanie Peacock) set out so clearly, drawing on her experience as a teacher in a previous life. The huge rise in free school meals eligibility is therefore very significant and further evidence of how devastating covid-19 has been for family budgets.

There was a very real and growing problem with child poverty in this country before the pandemic, and we have seen today the new, shocking statistic that more than one in five Londoners in working households live in poverty. We also heard powerful testimony from my hon. Friend the Member for Leicester East (Claudia Webbe) about the huge increase in food parcels delivered by the Trussell Trust in this pandemic. The fact that more than 2 million children have now been pushed into food insecurity and that hundreds of thousands have been forced to skip meals in the pandemic has really shone a light on the need to ensure that proper free school meal support is delivered to all children who need it all year round.

However, that realisation, which has been obvious to pretty much everybody, particularly after Marcus Rashford’s powerful campaigns, has not come as easily to Government Ministers. I am sad to say that they have had to be dragged kicking and screaming time and again to do the right thing. I do not take any pleasure from this, but the Prime Minister’s right-hand man told us today that his boss decided to “pick a fight” with Marcus Rashford over free school meals rather than take action to feed hungry children in a pandemic.

What did the Government do? They initially refused to extend free school meals over last summer, when millions were being forced to apply for unemployment benefits. They whipped Conservative MPs to vote against providing free school meals over the October 2020 half- term through to Easter this year. They presided over a moment of national shame in January, when utterly woeful food parcels, which were near-identical to the Government’s own guidance, were given out, and then they voted against Labour’s motion to ensure that families get the full value of that support.

Just contrast us with Wales, where families have known from the start of the pandemic, and many months ahead of time, that the full value of free school meals would be available in every upcoming school holiday, and that is now guaranteed until Easter 2022. That is the leadership that we should have seen from the Prime Minister, who instead picked a fight with a premier league footballer. It astonishes me that, after all that failure and the uncertainty that the Government have put families through, they have still not learned the lessons and are still refusing to guarantee free school meals in the upcoming summer holidays.

I know that the Minister will point to the holiday activities and food programme, but the Government’s guidance on that scheme says that councils should provide just 16 days’ of food support over the entire six-week summer holiday. It does not say that that support should be guaranteed. The Local Government Association has said that

“the scheme is unlikely to see all eligible children participate and will not be suitable for everyone.”

I am extremely concerned that many children will miss out on that if they do not do the activities, and that there will be a postcode lottery in support. That is especially concerning in the light of the deep cuts to local government budgets, the impact of which my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) spelled out so clearly in her powerful speech.

The failure to deliver free school meals is not the only way in which the Government have let down children who qualify for this support. Children on free school meals are less likely to have digital devices and internet connectivity than their peers, and there has been a failure to rectify that for home learning during school closures and self-isolation. Ministers have missed every single target for delivering laptops. Their schemes ensured that only a third to a half of those who needed one got one, and I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Siobhain McDonagh) for her contribution, and her tireless campaigning for children on free school meals to get digital support.

Most recently, and perhaps most shockingly, the Government implemented a stealth cut to the pupil premium by excluding anyone who became eligible for free school meals since October last year from the calculation of how much more to give schools. Labour analysis of freedom of information data shows that more than 115,000 children will miss out on over £133 million of support as a result. There is no end to the ways that this Government are prepared to sideline the needs of some of the most disadvantaged children in the country.

I have a series of questions for the Minister. Why did the Prime Minister pick a fight with Marcus Rashford over free school meals? Why on earth are the Government implementing a cut to the pupil premium in the middle of a pandemic? Why will they not simply guarantee that all children who qualify will be able to get free school meals over the summer holiday? Why are the Government refusing to consider Labour’s suggestion of allowing families to get cash payments for this support? Are they still planning to withdraw free school meals support from children who have no recourse to public funds at some point? Finally, what steps are they taking to support children who do not qualify for free school meals but who, none the less, face food insecurity?

The point was made several times in the debate that, in a country as rich as ours, we should not need free school meals. At the very least, children should not be as reliant on them as they are right now. Sadly, they are a necessity because 4.3 million children in the UK live in poverty. For far too many people, work does not pay enough to live on. The Government spent 10 years gutting the social security system, and our economy is built on insecurity and inequality. All those things are getting worse as a direct result of policy choices over the last decade. We need to start making different choices as we emerge from the pandemic.

The Government need to show the moral courage and leadership required to eradicate child poverty and ensure that no child goes hungry. That starts with the Government learning the lessons from mistakes that led to children having to skip meals in the pandemic. I hope we will hear some humility from the Minister when she addresses our arguments. I look forward to her answering all the questions posed throughout the debate.

Child Food Poverty

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for moving the motion, and the more than 1 million people who signed the petition to end child poverty, including 3,000 of my constituents in Hampstead and Kilburn. I also thank colleagues who have contributed to the debate. Our country owes a huge debt of gratitude to Marcus Rashford MBE, whose powerful advocacy has pushed the issue to the forefront of our political debate and forced Ministers to confront it, as my hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) pointed out. Many more children would have gone hungry last summer and Christmas if it were not for his efforts.

We know that the Prime Minister enjoys stretching the truth from time to time, but one of the most maddening claims that he has ever made was that no child would go hungry during the pandemic. As we have heard today, that could not be further from the reality, with 200,000 children forced to skip meals in the early months of covid-19. Some 2.3 million children live in households that experienced food insecurity this winter, and more families than ever are having to rely on food banks to feed their children. As my hon. Friends the Members for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) and for Birkenhead (Mick Whitley) said, no child should go hungry in a country as rich as ours. But they are, and in increasing numbers.

Although we should focus on making sure that hungry children are fed, we need to understand that this food poverty is a result of poverty itself, which has been rising dramatically since 2010. Some 4.3 million children were in poverty at the start of the pandemic—up 500,000 from five years earlier. In that period, child poverty rose in every region in England, with shocking high rises in the north-east, where an astonishing 37% of all children were in poverty at the start of last year, as my hon. Friend the Member for Easington (Grahame Morris) pointed out so powerfully. In practice, that means that many more parents are struggling to put food on the table—despite their best efforts—with all the dreadful consequences that brings for the child’s health, wellbeing, development and education, as my right hon. Friend the Member for East Ham (Stephen Timms) outlined.

The truth is that rising levels of child poverty are a direct result of policy choices over the last decade, which we knew would eventually lead to this outcome. As my hon. Friends the Members for Hornsey and Wood Green (Catherine West) and for Bradford West (Naz Shah) said, this is a political choice. Both Members powerfully made the case for food security for children in their constituencies. Since 2010, the Government have slashed the social security system to ribbons. Universal credit was designed in a way that punishes ordinary families, with its five-week wait, two-child limit and other design flaws. They have presided over an economy where wages have been stagnant while housing costs soared. The predictable result is that communities all over the country have been forced to set up food banks, the use of which has skyrocketed in recent years.

If we continue along the current course, the Resolution Foundation projects that three-quarters of a million children could be added to the already swelling ranks of those living in poverty by 2024. That must be avoided at all costs, but there is no sign that a change of approach is coming. As my hon. Friend the Member for Cynon Valley (Beth Winter) pointed out, having failed to uplift legacy benefits, including disability support, the Chancellor still will not confirm that he has scrapped the plan to cut universal credit from October this year. As my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North argued so powerfully, it is shocking that we have no shortage of food in this country, only a shortage of money to buy it. We will never be able to abolish child poverty without tackling the root causes of poverty, but there is a lot more that the Government could do to get food to hungry children.

I turn to the points in the petition. I am delighted that Marcus Rashford and others have been able to secure an uplift in the value of Healthy Start vouchers. At present, hundreds and thousands of eligible families are missing out on the vouchers, and Ministers have a responsibility to ensure that the support gets to those who need it. The same goes for free school meals. Clearly, the Government need to do more to ensure that those who do not qualify for free school meals can get the food support they need. Labour wants to replace universal credit with a fair and compassionate system that delivers support to those who need it. The hardship of the pandemic has exposed the need to ensure that all children can get free school meals during the holidays, although Ministers have had to be dragged kicking and screaming to accept that and do the right thing.

Although I welcome the countless U-turns that the Government have made in the face of public pressure, their holiday activities and food programme in its current form offers only 16 days of food support over the summer, and will not guarantee that all children who qualify can access it. They need to rethink. I hope the Minister will rethink and give a proper guarantee of support in the pandemic.

Making sure that no child goes hungry should be our national mission, not an unfounded boast bandied about by the Prime Minister as a smokescreen for the fact that so many children are skipping meals and relying on food banks. Our children need fewer warm words and more warm meals. That will require far better and more compassionate leadership on issues such as free school meals, as well as a Government who are serious about tackling the root causes of the hardship and financial insecurity that families face. I hope, for the sake of our children and generations to come, that we get that very soon. I would like to hear what the Minister has to say about the petition.

Oral Answers to Questions

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Monday 26th April 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I think we are all very much looking forward to welcoming all university students back, and we very much expect to be seeing that as part of the next step. I would like to thank universities for the work they have been doing to ensure that universities are covid-secure, including extensive testing of students in universities and the greater availability of the home testing kits that we have been able to deliver on. We will continue to work with Universities UK, the Russell Group and the whole sector to ensure that students are able to return to university safely at the earliest possible moment and that we are able to welcome a new cohort of students in September.

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

More and more children are relying on free school meals because of the pandemic. The Government’s holiday activities and food programme tells local councils to provide just 16 days’ worth of food support over a six-week summer holiday period, so could I ask the Minister: what does she expect children to eat the rest of the time?

[Vicky Ford]

This Government have extended free school meals to more groups of children than any other Government over the past half a century. We have spent almost half a billion pounds on vouchers so that children had access to food when schools were closed during lockdown. We have spent £270 million through local authorities on making sure that children, including pre-school children, could get access to food and essentials. We have this massive holiday activities and food programme running all across the country—not only food, but fun and friendships. I just wish the Labour party would get behind this fantastic initiative, go and see what it is giving our children, see what they get out of it and the benefits of it, and say well done to everybody involved.

Special Educational Needs

Tulip Siddiq Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab) [V]]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I start by thanking my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) for initiating this important debate. He was completely right to say that children with SEND have been forgotten, left behind and overlooked, and that their parents have had to fight at every single stage of the process to get their needs met. It is shocking that some children in Slough have had to wait up to two years for a diagnosis. My hon. Friend the Member for Norwich South (Clive Lewis) made similar points about his area and about how the system has completely failed parents, with appalling social services infrastructure and, in effect, a two-tier system for those who can afford it.

I want to take the opportunity offered by this debate to pay tribute to the fantastic staff at Swiss Cottage School and Manor School in Brent. Both are specialist schools in my constituency and have done phenomenal work in supporting children with SEND. The shadow Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), and I had the privilege of speaking to the headteachers of those schools and other special schools across the country in a virtual roundtable earlier this year. Many of the headteachers pointed out to me that much of the digital support that schools have been given, such as laptops, is not even appropriately tailored for the needs of children with SEND.

My hon. Friend the Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Ian Byrne) also explained how he had heard many concerns about resources when he met headteachers in his region. My hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) made powerful arguments about the devastating impact of coronavirus on the funding situation for special schools. My hon. Friend the Member for Reading East (Matt Rodda) also made a powerful speech about the impact of the pandemic on these services. I hope that the Minister, who has always had an open door with me, will respond positively to his request for a meeting.

As a mother of two young children, I know just how tough this pandemic and school closures have been on young people and their parents, but I simply cannot imagine how much harder it has been for those who have had their specialist support withdrawn. At the height of the third lockdown, just 16% of children with EHCPs were getting all the support set out in their plan, according to research by the Disabled Children’s Partnership. Some 21% of parents said that their children were not getting any support set out in their EHCP. Remember that this is support to which the children are legally entitled, and which all too often represents a compromise that is below the level of support they actually need.

That is just children who have already secured EHCPs. Getting an appropriate EHCP in good time has unfortunately become a postcode lottery, after a decade of cuts to local government that have been felt unevenly across the country, not to mention the impact of the relaxations on timescales misguidedly introduced last April for assessing EHCPs. My hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) spoke movingly about the huge problem in getting EHCPs, drawing on her own experience of looking after a child with SEND. I appreciate her taking the time to contribute to this important debate.

As horrifying as some of the statistics are, the results are scarier. Half of the children with SEND have seen their conditions worsen this past year. I will focus specifically on the impact of loss of access to such therapies as speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, and physiotherapy, which a shocking 70% have been unable to do in recent months. Dan told us about his daughter Elisa, who has cerebral palsy. Elisa relies on regular physiotherapy from her education, health and care plan to manage her condition. Sadly, she missed out on that support for a year during the pandemic and her condition has worsened. My constituent Elisa has dystonia, a very uncomfortable condition where muscles contract uncontrollably. She can no longer use her wheelchair due to the worsening dystonia.

Then there is Suziie, my constituent who cares for her nephew, aged 11, who has a complex series of physical and neurological disabilities. During the pandemic, her nephew has been isolated from other children and has lost access to vital series and therapies that he needs to manage his condition. Awfully, he is now regressing and has lost vital abilities in communication and other essential life skills. He needs sensory rooms and hydrotherapy in his covid-19 recovery plan, and Suziie needs additional respite care.

Those heartbreaking cases tell a story about what has happened during the pandemic: a loss of support and declining health and social outcomes for children with SEND. As has been mentioned in the debate, the Women and Equalities Committee concludes that the Government’s catch-up package will not be enough to tackle the disproportionate impacts on children with SEND. It is all very well issuing guidance saying that they will be a priority, but unless that is followed up with targeted funding there is no guarantee that they will get the support that they desperately need.

I have previously criticised Ministers for treating children as an afterthought in the pandemic, but I believe that those with SEND have been completely left behind. That is certainly how parents feel when I speak to them. However, not all politicians have forgotten about these children. My hon. Friend the Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen) highlighted the important work that Councillor Javed Hussain and other Luton councillors are doing on local autism hubs and park upgrades, bringing benefits for those who use wheelchairs. We should be learning from them.

Although lessons must be learned from the failures that my colleagues have outlined, I want to look to the future. We need proper support for EHCP provision to be restored in full. We need a plan from Ministers to clear the backlog of assessments and health appointments. There must be a proper co-ordinated catch-up plan that goes beyond the Government’s narrow ideas about educational catch-up. We have to have targeted support for children with SEND to make up for months of lost development in communication, social skills and wellbeing.

Rather than downgrading the legal duties to children with SEND, as the Government did at the start of the pandemic, the SEND review should be an opportunity to upgrade the resources that local authorities have to deliver support, and to listen directly to families about how services can be reshaped so that they operate in the best interests of our young people.