Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life

14:53:00

I beg to move, That this House has considered the matter of giving every child the best start in life. This Government have a mission to break down the barriers to opportunity for children and young people, so that background does not determine a child’s future and successes. After 14 dark years under the Conservative party, we are restoring to our communities the hope that, in too many places and for too many families, simply faded away. What this Government inherited was a truly shameful legacy. The Conservatives had 14 years in government, and their record speaks for itself: 1,300 children’s centres closed or hollowed out, early years childcare costs spiralling way above the rate of inflation, and providers closing year on year. I know that Conservative Members, very few of whom are present, will bleat that in their manifesto they promised better, but the people of Britain judge politicians by what they deliver, not what they promise. At the heart of Labour’s ambition for a better Britain is bringing change to the first few years of every life, so that opportunity is not the privilege of a few but is common to us all. Children’s early years are crucial to their development, health and life chances, and it is there that we can make the biggest difference. On average, 40% of the overall gap between disadvantaged 16-year-olds and their peers has already emerged by the age of five. It is in those early years that so much of the inequality that today disfigures our society is entrenched. If we want to build the fairer and more equal society that Labour Members want to see, that is where we lay the foundations. If we want to see change—change for good—the transformation that we seek to bring must be part of a wider approach that covers every aspect of education and health, and every facet of opportunity. That is why the Government have published our vision for the future of early years. This landmark strategy, which will bring together early years and family services, and will put children’s first years at the heart of work to improve life chances, is backed by nearly £1.5 billion over the next three years to raise quality, close gaps and break down the barriers to opportunity for every child. “Giving every child the best start in life” sets out the first steps to delivering on our plan for change commitment for a record number of children to be ready to start school by 2028. We will make early education and childcare more accessible and affordable, improve quality in the early years and reception, and expand and strengthen family services. This builds on the progress that we are already making: funding new and expanded school-based nurseries across the country, funding new breakfast clubs in 750 early adopter schools and offering places to nearly 180,000 children, including 79,000 pupils from schools in the most deprived parts of the country. From September we will be rolling out 30 hours of funded childcare for working parents, saving eligible parents using their full entitlement an average of £7,500 a year. It should be the case that all parents who want it can obtain the high-quality early education and childcare that they need, yet four in 10 parents with children under five say that there are not enough places locally. Disadvantaged children and those with special educational needs and disabilities have the most to gain from high-quality early education, yet more affluent areas often have more places. We will improve the system, setting out a long-term vision for improving access to early years education and childcare to ensure that all families can benefit. We will create tens of thousands more places in new and expanded school-based nurseries, backed by more than £400 million of investment. We will roll out the expansion of funded childcare hours available to working parents, saving eligible families an average of £7,500 a year. We will work closely with local authorities to increase the take-up of the 15-hour entitlements, so that children from low-income families, those with SEND and those in care receive the support they need. As a result of the decisions made by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Government will soon be funding about 80% of the early education and childcare hours in England. Whenever the Government buy a service, they have an obligation to use that purchasing power in the public interest, to shape the market, improve standards, and support and develop the workforce. That is what Labour believes, and that is what we will do. We think we could do more to guarantee the benefits of that investment, and to ensure that they are realised where they are needed. We will look across the early education and childcare support provided by Departments to find ways in which to make it simpler, to improve access, and to increase the overall impact of Government spending on children and families. I have the privilege of being able to see at first hand the impact that our passionate early years staff have in many settings across the country during my regular visits. They have worked brilliantly to deliver for families at every stage of the expansion of Government-funded childcare, and they continue to do so ahead of September. Families know the difference that access to a place that meets their needs can make. That is why we are investing more than £9 billion in early education and childcare, and why a diverse and thriving early years sector with a brilliant and valued workforce is absolutely key. We will work with the early years sector to support brilliant settings to grow and spread their expertise, and that will include working alongside philanthropists and social investors to encourage new not-for-profit providers to open. We want early years careers to be ones that people are proud to start and that are rewarding to pursue. That means having more opportunities to gain qualifications, enter the workforce and build fulfilling careers. Childminders play an integral role in our early years landscape and are treasured by many families, which is why we will keep working with Jobcentre Plus to encourage people to become childminders. However, having listened to the sector, we will also make sure that childminders and other providers can be paid monthly for funded hours, making their income more stable. Alongside a strong market, we want to drive higher standards through a strengthened improvement and accountability system that supports and drives high-quality provision for settings and families. That includes funding for Ofsted to inspect settings more often and to inspect new settings within 18 months of opening. The early years workforce is at the heart of this Government’s mission to give every child the best start in life. We are making sure that a high-quality start transitions into starting school by making reception year a national priority for the regional improvement for standards and excellence—RISE—teams. We want high-quality evidence to underpin the training, support and development of people working in early years settings, from the baby room to the reception year. This will mean that passionate people can grow their skills and careers, and help every child to thrive. Together with educators and leaders, we will drive high and rising standards by working with providers and schools to equip to them with the tools, training and support that they need to meet every child’s needs. Alongside raising the standards of early years educators by introducing a professional register, we will increase the number of qualified early years teachers, and we aim to more than double the number of funded early years initial teacher training places by 2028. We will also offer financial incentives to attract and keep early years teachers in nurseries serving the most disadvantaged communities, so that every child, no matter where they live, can benefit from high-quality early education. The SEND system we inherited from the Conservative party has totally lost the confidence of families, and this Labour Government are absolutely committed to restoring that confidence. The last Conservative Education Secretary labelled the system that she left behind as “lose, lose, lose”, while current shadow Ministers say that they did not do enough on SEND and should hang their heads in shame. We agree—the difference is that we are doing something about it. We will make inclusive practice standard practice in the early years by embedding an inclusive approach in our workforce education, training and leadership opportunities, and by funding evidence-based programmes that are proven to improve children’s development. We will drive improvements in the quality of teaching in reception and ensure that schools have access to the right tools and tailored improvement, including by helping each parent to play their part and be confident in their child’s progress. This renewed vision for the early years goes hand in hand with a national approach to family services—one that brings together health, education and social care around the needs of families, children and babies. That is why I am proud that this Government have established Best Start family hubs that will be funded across all local authorities, building on the best of Sure Start, family hubs and Start for Life approaches.

The Minister mentioned family hubs, which I welcome, but he stated that they will be delivered by local authority area. In my area of Surrey, we are going through local government reorganisation. How will the roll-out be impacted by that reorganisation? Does he expect to roll out a plan over the next couple of years, and then to reorganise it after a new council has been created?

We are obviously working through the detail of our commitments as I speak, but I will certainly take his point back to the Department—I know that officials are working very closely with colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government. What is really powerful is the fact that we will roll out family hubs to every local authority in the country to make sure that they make a real difference to every child’s life. We are investing over £500 million to expand Best Start family hubs to every local authority in England, ensuring that wherever they live, families can access joined-up, high-quality support from pregnancy through to the early years. As part of this investment, we are providing dedicated funding to deliver evidence-based support for the home learning environment, with a particular focus on disadvantaged families and the quality of parent-child relationships. We want to support parents to create rich and nurturing home environments by encouraging them to chat, play and read more with their children, because we know that those everyday interactions are the building blocks of early development. In order to help meet our ambition for 75% of children to achieve a good level of development by the age of five, we will fund more evidence-based parenting and home learning programmes so that more families can access those services before their children start school. That will be supported by a new national Best Start digital service, linked to “My Children” on the NHS app, which will bring together the trusted advice and guidance that all parents need in one place, and link families to their local services. The Labour Government are committed to breaking down the barriers to opportunity, and the early years are where we do that most powerfully. Our ambition is clear: to make early years education the best it can be for children in all settings. This is the start of a decade of national renewal for families and the support that they receive. We will go further and faster to ensure that every child has the best start in life and the chance to achieve and to thrive.

I call the shadow Minister.

15:05:00

Everybody wants to give children the best start in life. That is why we increased spending per pupil in schools by 11% in real terms in the last Parliament, and why we doubled real-terms spending on the free entitlement for the early years. More importantly, it is why we pushed through difficult reforms to schools, which were often opposed by the Labour party. It is why we brought in the knowledge-rich curriculum, why we brought in stronger accountability, and why we pushed through the academies revolution and more parental choice. The Minister said that our record speaks for itself, and it does. Labour’s record speaks for itself as well. Between 2009 and 2022, England went from 21st to seventh in the programme for international student assessment league table for maths, while Wales—spending the same amount as before—went from 29th to 27th. [Interruption.] Labour MPs clearly do not like hearing this, but I am afraid I am going to carry on. In science, England went from 11th to ninth, while Wales—with same amount of money as before but run by Labour, with no reforms—slumped from 21st to 29th.

On that point, will the shadow Minister give way?

I am happy to take an intervention.

I thank the shadow Minister for taking my intervention; he is always very generous with his time. I will give him a friendly intervention. I was going to criticise the Conservatives for a lack of attendance in this debate, but he said the words “no reforms”, and I notice that there are no Reform MPs present for this important debate. When I spoke in the general election campaign about education and it was the turn of the Reform candidate in Harlow to give us his views on the party’s vision for education, he did not have an answer. Does the shadow Minister agree that we do not want the Reform party anywhere near education?

The hon. Gentleman is completely right, and it is not the first time—it is generally the case that no one from Reform is present. On this issue, I am afraid that Reform MPs are chronically absent, as we say in education. I will continue with my theme. The Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that the huge difference in performance, and the divergence in performance, between England and Wales cannot be explained by poverty rates or ethnicity. It is to do with the reforms that were not undertaken because of trade union pressure in Wales.

I agree that it is crucial to measure the progress of our children in key subjects to give them the best opportunities in life, but does the shadow Minister not accept, as I and many others do, that the climb up the international league tables was caused by restricting the breadth of the curriculum? That has come at the detriment of many opportunities for children over recent years.

I do not think that is true. Looking at the evidence pack produced by the Government’s curriculum review, it is clear that some of the arguments are overstated. It is true that we reversed the decline in the number of young people taking double and triple science; that had been falling for years, and it went back up again because there was more focus on science. It is true that there are a limited number of hours in the school day, but I do not accept that we had some sort of Gradgrindian educational agenda. There continues to be a broad and balanced agenda. If Labour Members want to say that much more time should be spent on a particular subject, they should at least be clear about where it will come from. Children in England were ranked the best in maths in the whole western world in the 2023 trends in international mathematics and science study, and they moved into the top five in the global rankings for science. What happened in Wales and Scotland? We do not know, as their Administrations removed themselves from those competitions because they do not like accountability. It is the same at all levels. Whereas we favoured parental choice and autonomy for schools, balanced by strong accountability, the current Government take a very different approach. The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, which is currently in the Lords, dilutes parental choice, and it gives local politicians more control over pupil numbers for the first time since 1988. The greater autonomy for schools that we brought in has been replaced by a tide of micromanagement of curriculum and staff, and the absurd situation where if someone wants to put up a bicycle shed they have to apply to the Secretary of State. On the other hand, the ultimate form of accountability—placing schools under new management via academy orders—is being slowed down and stopped, which has been criticised even by Labour MPs such as the hon. Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh). The Labour party’s attempts to mess around with Ofsted to please the trade unions have watered down accountability for parents and made things more complicated, but they have not made anybody happy; nobody is happy with what has been proposed in the end. The Government have axed all the forms of support that we were making available to schools for subjects from advanced physics to maths, Latin and advanced computing—they think they are elitist. They have also axed the behaviour hubs, even though there is clear evidence that they were working and schools that went through them were twice as likely to be good or outstanding afterwards. The reform agenda is just not there. At one point, the Government’s big answer was that they were going to employ 6,500 more teachers: they were going to increase VAT and employ all these extra teachers. The Chancellor said at the end of last year that every single penny of that VAT increase would go to education, but then, confusingly, the Prime Minister said that the money had been spent on social housing instead. It has been a long time since I studied formal logic, but we cannot spend every single penny on education and also spend that money on housing; we cannot spend it on two things. As it happens, we now know that actually there are not those extra teachers; there are 400 fewer teachers. We added 27,000 teachers under the last Government and under Labour there are 400 fewer teachers. At the point when the numbers came out showing that there were fewer teachers, the Government suddenly declared that primary school teachers do not count—that the fall of 2,900 in primary school teacher numbers did not count. Ministers implied that that had always been their intention—they said, “How dare you say that wasn’t our intention?”—but they announced this policy in a primary school, and they said they would hit their targets for early years through an increase in primary. Now they say, “Oh, numbers are falling in primary,” but numbers are falling by a lot less than when they made the pledge in the updated forecast. If we apply the same logic, half of secondary schools have falling numbers, so perhaps that will be the next way they try to monkey around with the numbers to pretend that the opposite is happening. I would not mind so much if we did not get these chirpy press releases from the Department saying, “We’re doing so well; we’ve got all these extra teachers.” There are fewer teachers—that is the bottom line in what has happened here.

I thank the shadow Minister for giving way again; he is being very generous with his time. I have to say, as a former teacher who left the profession because of the way we were treated by the previous Government, that I always feel a little bit gaslit by the Conservative party. I would just point out to him that during the previous Government’s time in office, a third of new teachers were leaving the profession within five years. Does he not recognise that the pressure put on teachers by the previous Government, the lack of support and the general lack of faith in teachers made a number of them leave, and we lost so much experience that it has been very difficult to get back?

There are several things to say about that. The first is that the overall number went up: the hon. Gentleman said that some were leaving, but the overall number went up by 27,000. He makes a good point about early career teachers and that is why we put in the early career framework, which I do think is a big improvement. It is not that there is nothing in what the hon. Gentleman said, but I do think it is funny for him to stand up and talk about gaslighting when the Government are pumping out glossy propaganda saying that there are more teachers, even though their own Department for Education website says that there are 400 fewer teachers. So do tell me all about gaslighting. My broader worry about the Government’s approach to giving every child the best start in life is that it misses the wood for the trees. Ministers like to talk about some of the small interventions they are making, such as the £33 million they are spending on breakfast clubs and the “best start in life” centres and the increases in spending there. But on the other side of the ledger, how is this being paid for? It is being paid for with a £25 billion increase in national insurance, and, unbelievably for a notionally social democratic Government, that national insurance increase is brutally targeted on the lowest income workers. It is incredible.

I thank the shadow Secretary of State for giving way—

Order. I should say that the hon. Member is a shadow Minister, before you give him with a promotion.

Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. May I ask the shadow Minister how his party would fund the investments in early years proposed by the new Government?

I am very grateful to be put right back in my box by Madam Deputy Speaker, and rightly so. I would not fund that by increasing taxes on low income workers by £25 billion. That means that someone who is earning £13,000 a year loses £500. It means someone earning £9,000 a year is losing 5% of their income. Ministers like to talk about the distributional impact of things like breakfast clubs and so on—they say 100,000 kids will be lifted out of poverty by something they are doing—but they will not produce any poverty analysis or any distributional analysis of the £25 billion. They are happy to talk endlessly about the distributional impacts of tiny measures, but not the £25 billion takeaway from low income working people in this country. I think it is astonishing—and I think a lot of Labour MPs will regret it later—that this is the way they have chosen to raise all this money. Let me ask a few specific questions while we are here. The Department for Education has confirmed to the specialist media that it does not hold any information on the number of children who will lose entitlement to free school meals as a result of the end of the universal credit transitional protection, yet it claims to be confident that it knows that the changes it is making will reduce child poverty by 100,000. How can the Department not know how many kids are going to be on free school meals yet be confident that it will have a positive effect? I ask the Minister to answer the question very simply: what proportion of pupils will be eligible for free school meals this year and in all future years across the forecast? How much will we be spending in real terms in each of those years? I like lots of things about the “best start in life” programme—it is a continuation of our family hubs programme—and I wonder whether the Minister could set out exactly how much will be spent on that programme in the ’26-27, ’27-28 and ’28-29 financial years. It is not a bad programme at all and we do not dislike it at all; the only thing that is not right is to pretend it is a completely new thing, when in fact it is a continuity of something that already existed. Something that is new that Ministers promised was two weeks of work experience for every child at secondary school. Can the Minister tell me how that pledge is going? It was made by the Prime Minister and was the big highlight of his ’21 conference speech. How many schools currently offer two weeks of work experience each year? Finally, I have a question of principle really. The Minister quite rightly talked about SEND, and we had an important report from the Education Policy Institute this morning about the overlap between SEND and school achievement, and the Government have said two things. We heard from a Health Minister that the Government want to see a smaller proportion of children in special schools, and we have heard from the Minister’s adviser on SEND that she thinks that they are having a conversation at the moment about not having education, health and care plans for children outside special schools, which covers about 300,000 children at the moment—60% of all children with an EHCP. Those are huge changes, but is it not the case that those two policy reforms are potentially in tension? If we tell people that they cannot get an EHCP outside a special school, more parents will want to go to the special school. Ministers have talked about there always being some kind of legal right to support for special needs, but what does that mean: if the support is not being delivered by an EHCP, how will it be delivered? I ask these questions because a lot of special needs parents are worried about that; they are concerned about what the Government are planning. Maybe they are wrong and maybe the Government have a brilliant plan on all this, and we are not against reform, but at the moment, there are big questions about the ideas that are now sloshing around in the public domain, worrying people. I encourage Ministers to move quickly to certainty on these questions so that people’s minds could be put at ease. To conclude, we are all in favour of giving each child the best start in life. We have a proud record, we made great progress, and we wish all the Government all the best, but we worry that they are too often missing the wood for the trees.

I call Chair of the Education Committee.

15:17:00

Giving every child the best possible start in life should be a driving mission of every Government. Investment in the early years and in a high-quality education for every child delivers among the highest returns of any area of public spending; they are literally building the foundations of a child’s life. Governments who get policy right in these areas reap benefits in health and wellbeing, in economic growth and in lower crisis-related costs. The previous Labour Government made huge strides in this area. The longitudinal studies now confirm that children who lived close to a Sure Start centre did better in their GCSEs, and that hospitalisation of children was reduced and so was the need for specialist support in education. But a year ago this Government inherited the legacy of a previous Government who had not prioritised the needs of children for 14 years. Sure Start had been largely dismantled and school and further education budgets cut, early years funding had not kept pace with inflation, key services like health visiting and midwifery were scaled back, and SEND provision and CAMHS—child and adolescent mental health services—were stretched to breaking point, with increasing numbers of children in the care system, who are all too often being failed. Our children have been buffeted by the multiple blows of austerity, Brexit, the covid-19 pandemic and the Liz Truss mini-Budget bearing down on public services that support children, young people and their families, resulting in more of childhood being left to chance, with existing disadvantages and barriers to opportunity remaining in place and being allowed to perpetuate. The Education Committee recently published our report on children’s social care. Children’s social care is a good place to start thinking about this Government’s opportunity mission, because it is where some of the most egregious barriers can be found—for the children whose families need the most support, those whose lives are scarred by abuse or neglect, and those for whom the state has both the gravest responsibility and a huge opportunity to make a difference. The independent review of children’s social care commissioned by the previous Government described the system they presided over as in need of a “total reset”. Spending on early help and support services—the preventive, nurturing support delivered by Sure Start centres, health visitors, community nurses and early years practitioners—has plummeted, while spending on crisis interventions, including out-of-area residential placements often at great cost, have spiralled. The number of children entering the care system has been rising, and perhaps most telling of all is that the outcomes for care-experienced people are absolutely dire. This failure is so significant that, if the Government are serious about tackling homelessness and about tackling the crisis in the criminal justice system, they must turn their attention to the plight of care-experienced people, who are so vastly over-represented in both those populations. They are far less likely to be in education, employment or training than their peers, and far more likely to have poor mental health.

Before coming to the Chamber, I attended a meeting of the all-party parliamentary group on care-experienced children and young people, where I learned that, in the 2023-24, over 15,000 children in care moved home, which is 34%, and nearly 5,500 in care moved school, which is 12%. Does the hon. Member agree with me that, as part of the Government’s strategy, we need to support children in care and minimise the disruption to their lives that we can control?

I thank the hon. Member very much for his intervention, and our report, which we published last week, says exactly that. We have a system of children’s social care that is under so much pressure that it all too often fails to put children at the centre of the services that are supposed to be delivered to give them more stability and security in life, and many things about that system urgently need to change. I welcome the Government’s commitment to invest in Best Start family hubs, providing better early help and support services in more areas of the country. We need investment that can tip the balance over time from crisis spending to spending on more preventive services that can deliver genuinely good outcomes for children. Our Committee’s report, which I was proud to launch last week, points to some of the further steps that are needed, including creating a national offer for care leavers, improving mental health support for looked-after children and addressing the practical barriers, such as housing, that currently prevent the effective recruitment of foster carers. On early years, the Government inherited the previous Administration’s commitment to expand funded hours of childcare, predominantly for working parents. This is a very challenging commitment to deliver. We know that quality early years education has the most potential to break down barriers to opportunity, yet the previous Government’s approach was designed to deliver more hours of care, without any specific focus on quality. The early years sector is fragile and fragmented, and providers continue to close. The expansion of school-based nurseries is a very welcome first step, but there is undoubtedly a tension between a funding system designed to support working parents and the early years sector’s ability to reduce the impacts of disadvantage for the poorest children. The Government must address this tension in the forthcoming child poverty strategy. Our Committee’s second big inquiry is on the system of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities. The SEND system is the single biggest crisis in the whole of the education system, routinely letting down children and families, putting professionals working with children in an impossible position, and driving more than half of local education authorities to the edge of bankruptcy. Children with SEND should be able to thrive in education, and education should equip them well for the next stage of life, yet for far too many children, the failure of the SEND system results in absence from school, poor mental health and low attainment. There have been many rumours about what the Government may do to reform the SEND system, and I must say that these rumours are really unhelpful and traumatising for families who already have far too much to contend with. My Committee will report after the summer recess, but I am clear that the Government should be setting out a clear process and plan for SEND reform, and that any reforms must engage parents and professionals and ensure clear and effective accountability mechanisms. I think the Government are right to start with increasing the inclusivity of mainstream schools, but if they are to do that effectively, there must be proper investment to resource mainstream schools to become more inclusive, with clear definitions of what an inclusive school is and strong accountability. Finally, a priority that runs through all these issues is tackling child poverty, which rose to shamefully high levels under the last Government and is perhaps the biggest barrier to opportunity of them all. I am delighted that the Government have announced an expansion of the eligibility criteria for free school meals to include all children whose families receive universal credit. As a local councillor in Southwark, I was proud when we introduced universal free school meals for primary children in 2010, and over many years we have seen the benefits of providing children with a nutritious hot meal. Universal free breakfast clubs will also make a big difference. Hungry children cannot learn, so together these measures will ensure that no child has to start the school day hungry, and that the children who need it most get a nutritious hot meal at lunch time. They will boost learning while also easing costs for parents. However, our Committee has recommended that the Government implement auto-enrolment, so that every child eligible to receive the new expanded free school meals offer receives it automatically and no child misses out.

One of the drivers of child poverty that has come through in my casework is the Child Maintenance Service’s lack of enforcement powers to hold to account parents who refuse their duties. Does the hon. Member agree with me that greater enforcement powers and greater scrutiny of the Child Maintenance Service are essential for reducing child poverty?

I agree with the hon. Gentleman. Over my 10 years in this place, I have seen how it has become harder and harder for families to get resources and accountability out of the Child Maintenance Service. I agree that there is further work to do in that space, and I am sure the Government are similarly aware of the challenges.

I thank the hon. Member for giving way, especially as she is making such a powerful speech. Yesterday, I went to an event with Health Equals, which has shown that where a child is born can lead to a 16-year discrepancy in life expectancy due to poverty. Does she agree that some form of legally binding poverty reduction target scheme could be put in place, as in Scotland, so that we can measure our progress?

I thank the hon. Member for his intervention, and it is devastating to hear about those disparities across the country. Recently, I was at a secondary school in a very deprived area of my constituency, and a teacher told me that she noticed at an event for those from across the whole of her academy trust that her children were smaller than children who went to schools in more affluent areas of the country. That is an intolerable disgrace. We expect the Government’s child poverty strategy to be ambitious and far reaching, and if it is to do so, it must have clear targets and there must be clear accountability in the strategy. I look forward to its publication, and my Committee, along with the Work and Pensions Committee, will play our part in scrutinising that important piece of work. I am heartened to see this Government putting children and young people at the heart of their priorities after 14 years during which they were an afterthought. There is much more to do, and my Committee will continue to play our part by scrutinising the Government and making evidence-based recommendations. I want to see a clear vision for children and young people with real ambition for every child, and a plan for all parts of our education and care system, so that we can start to see the promise, in this Government’s agenda, of transformed lives and life chances being delivered in every part of our country.

Mr Jogee, are you now finally comfortable in the Chamber? Before, you wanted to swap. [Interruption.] Marvellous. I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

15:28:00

I welcome this opportunity to talk about giving every child the best start in life. I suspect there are not many people in this Chamber who would disagree that every child, no matter their background or needs, deserves the very best start in life. It is our duty as elected representatives and policymakers to ensure that parents and carers have access to the help and support they need to ensure that every child gets that best start in life. The Best Start family hubs announced last week are very welcome and present a great opportunity for the Government to address the growing inequalities across our education system that were left behind by the previous Government. If resourced properly, the Best Start family hubs expansion could help to achieve many of the things that we on the Liberal Democrat Benches have been calling for, including: the early identification of special educational needs and disabilities; contact time with mental health practitioners; and access to nutritional advice. However, the Government’s ambitious aims must be matched with effective delivery. Children and families cannot afford for the Government to get this wrong, after many years under the Conservatives when early years provision really started to disintegrate. The strategy states that “high-quality early education and childcare boosts children’s life chances and enables parents to work”. I warmly welcome plans to invest in training and qualifications to raise the skill levels of the early years workforce, but I am afraid that the Government’s rhetoric does not quite meet the reality on the ground. The funding promised by the Conservative Government for their 30 hours childcare proposals fell far short of what it actually costs to deliver that provision, and I am afraid that Labour’s current proposals are also insufficient for nurseries. Labour’s ill-advised national insurance hike has not only hampered economic growth, but put hundreds of charitable and private nurseries at risk of collapse. Indeed, the Early Years Alliance reports that nearly one third of providers are at risk of permanent closure in the next year, and that four in 10 would reduce the number of funded places for three and four-year-olds. When coupled with damaging new guidance to local authorities on funding agreements, the Government risk expanding the childcare deserts left behind by the Conservative Government. What is the point of expanding early years entitlements for children if parents are not able to access them because providers are simply unable to fulfil them? With the expansion of childcare provision, keeping our children safe is paramount. I welcome confirmation last week that the frequency of Ofsted inspections of early years settings will increase and that work is being done to develop an effective approach to group inspections. However, as the Minister knows from some of our conversations, if we are to prevent tragedies, such as the case of baby Gigi Meehan in Cheadle and the recent shocking case in my own constituency that last month saw a nursery worker convicted of 21 counts of child cruelty at Twickenham Green nursery, Ministers must go further and they must go faster. The early years foundation framework urgently needs to be strengthened, and better guidance needs to be put in place for how we keep babies in particular safe in early years settings. That is particularly important as we see the expansion of childcare provision for the under-twos. I hope we will see clearer guidance on safe sleep practice, but also on the use of CCTV, which proved critical in the cases I cited, and on the regular review of that CCTV footage. The strategy points to a “golden thread of evidence-informed practice”, so I hope the Minister tell us whether she will work with health authorities and expert charities to co-ordinate national safe sleep standards for use in early years settings. We must ensure that that goes hand in hand with multi-agency safeguarding training. Giving children the best start in the early years also means giving parents genuine choice on whether to spend more time at home or go back to work full time. I am immensely proud that it was the Liberal Democrats in Government who introduced shared parental leave—yet, years later, take-up remains far too low because of low rates of statutory maternity and paternity pay, and shared parental leave pay. I am aware that the Government have started their review into parental leave and pay, which I warmly welcome. The Liberal Democrats have long called for statutory maternity and shared parental pay to be doubled to £350 a week, and for fathers to be entitled to a month of paternity leave, as well as a “use it or lose it” month of shared parental leave, because we know just how valuable the first months of a child’s life are and the importance of the involvement of both parents. I hope the Minister and his colleagues in the Department for Business and Trade will heed our calls. I also want to press him again on the strong economic and moral case for granting statutory paid leave for kinship carers, so many of whom are forced out of work when they take on caring responsibilities to provide a safe and stable home for children. We must acknowledge that despite all efforts, some children simply will not get the best start in life due to unimaginable trauma, which can mean that the only safe course of action is to separate them from their birth parents. It therefore falls to us collectively as corporate parents to ensure those children get the very best second chance at life. Family hubs must be more than signposting services; they should offer trusted relationships and trauma-informed practice embedded within staff training and service design as part of the Government’s commitment to rebuilding trust with families. Continuing on that theme, the adoption and special guardianship support fund, as many Members will know, provides funding for vital therapy to help the most vulnerable children to process their trauma. These sessions are not easy, with some children taking months to even step through the door, but it is vital that these children are given the space, time and support to relearn how to trust adults. Slashing the funding for each child from £5,000 to £3,000 means that many will stop their therapy sessions just as they get through the door and start to make progress. Not only is this incredibly frustrating for the adoptive parents and special guardians; it sadly compounds the child’s tragic belief that all adults do is let them down. Both the Minister who opened the debate and the Minister for Children and Families, who is sitting next to him on the Front Bench, know that I am determined to see the full £5,000 grant funding restored for every eligible child. I press the Minister again to go to the Treasury and demand the additional funds to meet the growth in demand for those grants so that the next generation can believe that there are adults, and even Governments, worth trusting. I have pointed out previously that halving the Department’s advertising and consultancy budget would enable the ASGSF to grow by 50% from £50 million to £75 million to meet that additional demand. Short of that, I urge the Minister not to leave parents, carers and children in limbo again by waiting until the last minute to announce whether the fund will continue next year. Instead, I hope that Ministers will commit to announcing the future of the fund by September, now that we have had the spending review, so that families and providers can plan and have certainty for the future. Finally, parents and carers have for far too long been subjected to an adversarial special educational needs system where they have had to fight tooth and nail to secure their children’s right to learn. A good education helps children to discover who they are and what they are good at, but sadly far too many have been denied the help they need. As the Chair of the Education Committee has pointed out, the rumours that have been swirling have left many families up and down the country deeply concerned. We met a number of those families in Parliament yesterday, and I know that the inboxes of Members across the House have been filled with worried emails on this matter. It is clear the system is broken and needs reform, but any change must have children at its heart, not a Treasury drive for savings by removing rights in a vacuum. I am glad to see that inclusive practice for children with SEND will be embedded in early years teaching; early identification is crucial in ensuring that children can get the help they need when they need it. However, it remains to be seen just what that help will be. The Government have failed continuously to communicate with those directly affected by their decisions, but they have the chance today to tell parents whether education, health and care plans will be removed from any child. I reiterate what my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) said to the Prime Minister last week, and what my right hon. Friend and I said in the letter we sent to the Education Secretary and the Prime Minister, in which we set out the Liberal Democrats’ five principles for SEND reform. We are very happy to work constructively with the Government on that reform, because we know that all these children—whether they have special needs and whatever their background—deserve the very best start in life.

15:38:00

Every child, no matter where they are born, deserves the very best start in life. The first 1,000 days of a child’s life are absolutely critical, paving the way for the rest of their lives. That time has a direct impact on how they perform in school and in their work life; it affects all their life stages. My first job after leaving Keele University 20 years ago was working for a local Sure Start centre in Stoke-on-Trent. I loved working there because I saw at first hand how those centres completely transformed the lives of families across Stoke-on-Trent and Kidsgrove. That is why the plans of this Labour Government to roll out family hubs across the country fill me with complete pride. Twenty years ago, so many parents were given the helping hand that they needed to give their kids a better start in life, and it was so devastating for me personally to watch how Conservative cuts absolutely decimated our local centres. The Conservative-led city council in Stoke-on-Trent gutted our centres by removing our most crucial preventive services. The council claimed that it did not actually close any centres, which was partly true, but it took out all the services that operated from the centres, effectively leaving empty buildings with no offer to the families in my local community. Long before I was involved in politics, it seemed obvious to me that those cuts would result in more kids living in poverty and more living in care. I went to meetings—not when I was involved in politics, but when I worked for the YMCA—and when I raised concerns, they were laughed off by Conservative and independent councillors who said that they knew best. But the facts on the ground said different. Stoke-on-Trent sadly now has among the highest numbers of children living in care anywhere in the country, and more children are living in poverty. This was completely avoidable; it was a political choice that the Conservatives made. As the children impacted by the cuts grew older, they were confronted by a new hurdle. They were hit by the massive cuts to youth services in our local community. Conservative austerity led to over 90% of the money being taken away from our local councils, which funded the youth clubs—the youth clubs that I went to when I was young, where I met friends and learned new hobbies. Those clubs were then no longer available for young people in our local communities.

I give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee).

I am very grateful to my constituency neighbour for giving way to me over my other constituency neighbour. My hon. Friend makes an important point about the vital role that county councils and local authorities can play in providing services to my constituents, his and those of my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Leigh Ingham). Will he join me in calling on Staffordshire county council to get its act together and deliver the services that our young people deserve?

I completely agree with that sentiment. My hon. Friend and I often discuss this issue, so I welcome his comments.

I am grateful to see so many Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent MPs in the Chamber today. I am especially pleased to be here today, because I have a group of brilliant young people from my own constituency of Stafford, Eccleshall and the villages participating in my first ever summer school; they are up in the Public Gallery. They have been learning about how Parliament works and how they can use their voices to make change happen. Does my hon. Friend agree that if we are serious about giving every child the best start in life, we need to ensure that that includes youth services and comprehensive citizenship education, where they are able to see the difference they can make?

I welcome and echo my hon. Friend’s comments. I have supported citizenship over many years—certainly from when I worked for the YMCA locally. The Conservatives unforgivably turned their backs on our children and young people when they needed our support the most. I am so proud to be a Labour MP, working alongside a Labour Government who are firmly on the side of children, young people and their families. We are beginning to see the righting of the past 14 years of wrongs. I have been to Milton and Greenways primary academies in my constituency and visited the breakfast clubs that are being rolled out. I have seen at first hand how the kids arrive tired and hungry, but then they start their day ready to learn and full of energy—no longer with hungry bellies. I am proud, too, that this Labour Government are extending free school meals. That will feed more than 6,700 children across Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove from next year. Being well fed means that children learn better, and it is also a critical step in lifting kids out of poverty—something on which I have focused my whole working career. I am so pleased also that Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove has one of the very first school-based nurseries, which is being rolled out at the brilliant Smallthorne primary academy. This will not only ease pressures on hard-working families who need a helping hand; it will help kids to prepare for the transition to school, and will help to close the development gap early on. This is exactly what a Labour Government are all about: supporting our kids and young people to thrive. I am proud to be playing my role in helping to transform the lives of families across my constituency of Stoke-on-Trent North and Kidsgrove.

I will now announce the results of today’s deferred Divisions. On the draft Enterprise Act 2002 (Definition of Newspaper) Order 2025, the Ayes were 334 and the Noes were 54, so the Ayes have it. On the Enterprise Act 2002 (Amendment of Section 58 Considerations) Order 2025 (S.I. 2025, No. 737), the Ayes were 333 and the Noes were 54, so the Ayes have it. [The Division lists are published at the end of today’s debates.]

15:45:00

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams); it has been a while since I have heard the words “Stoke-on-Trent North, Kidsgrove and Talke”, which used to be bellowed out by our former hon. Friend and his predecessor Jonathan Gullis, who was a great schools Minister—briefly—in a previous Government. I pay tribute to him and his memory—much lamented. I also pay tribute to David Johnston, another former Member, who was children’s Minister in the last Government and was responsible for many of the important reforms that my hon. Friend the Member for Harborough, Oadby and Wigston (Neil O’Brien) mentioned. I welcome this debate on what I think is a cross-party agenda. I recognise much of what the Minister said about the importance of early years and the sorts of interventions that the Government are talking about. I welcome the impending child poverty strategy, which is an important step forward for us. I want to make a simple and straightforward point. I have heard a lot in this afternoon’s debate about the importance of investment and support for the different professionals who support children and families. That is all absolutely right, and I agree that that is important. Nevertheless, surely the most important resource available to us to support children and young people is their families and the communities that they grow up in. I implore the Government to think very seriously in preparing their strategy to support the conditions for success in childhood, which is about not simply the public sector professionals, agencies and institutions that are available but the strength of the informal social institutions that children and young people grow up in. I welcome the Minister’s mention of the importance of social investment, philanthropy and civil society in providing support for children and young people. This is a big boast, but I can claim some credit for the announcement that the Chancellor made on Monday. She happened to be at a charity called AllChild in Wigan, which I claim credit for having founded—although that was not on the press release, I note. The charity began life as the West London Zone, which supports children and young people and which I started back in the early 2010s, having visited the Harlem Children’s Zone in New York with the then Secretary of State Michael Gove. The Harlem Children’s Zone is a tremendously successful project aiming at much of the agenda that we are debating this afternoon, including early identification of children at risk, the provision of intensive support for those children and their families on a community basis, and a place-based model for support for children and families in disadvantage. We set up the West London Zone with the help of significant philanthropy from Paul Marshall, noted philanthropist and founder of the Ark school chain, who said that we should start one here. We did it on a slightly different model from Harlem’s, which is a monolithic, single entity that provides all services for children and young people. The model we introduced in West London and is now being expanded across the country under the banner of AllChild. I pay tribute to the AllChild team, including Louisa Mitchell, who I got in early to deliver the project, because I would not have been very good at actually running it. Louisa has been a genius, and she is still running it now. This goes to the point I am trying to make: what Louisa did was recognise that in our communities there is an enormous array of really amazing resources in the form of local projects—large and small, formal and informal—that can help with the great task of bringing up a child as a village should. The mission of the project is to identify in schools—with the help of teachers and, crucially, by using the data available on attainment and attendance—those children who are likely to struggle later. Then it is about ensuring that they get the support that they need, and very much on a personalised basis. That support should come not just from the statutory system around the school—because that will never be adequate for the range of needs and different challenges that a population of children will have—but draw on the resources of the community. We started in west London, which obviously has lots of pockets of wealth but significant pockets of disadvantage as well. Even in those disadvantaged places, and certainly across the country—the project is working in Wigan and elsewhere now—we see tremendous institutions that can support children and young people. The challenge is to do so in a co-ordinated way. There is a huge opportunity not just to look to the state, schools, local authorities or health—even though bringing all those agencies together around children is important—but to think about the real resource we have, which is in our communities. We should put in place real support and resource for those foundations, whether faith groups, professional bodies of all sorts or community organisations.

Does the hon. Member agree that the foundation of early years starts in the home with parents and the mother’s antenatal and post-natal health, and that the Government should include in their strategy a review of current services and what support can be provided to improve children’s outcomes?

It is funny: I often find myself in agreement with the hon. Gentleman, which is great, and not what I expected when he was elected to this place. I was about to come to my final point: the importance of family life. I do not know to what extent that really is on the Government’s agenda when it comes to the child poverty strategy. There will obviously be lots of talk of families, maternal health and so on, but the crucial determinant of success for children is the quality of the relationships they grow up in. We know that from all the research done into children’s brain development. Human beings are unique among mammals in that we emerge very unformed: our brains are really blank as we emerge from the womb. The strength and health of our brains and our futures are laid down in those early years by the quality of the relationships we grow up with and experience. I know the Government recognise that because of their emphasis on early years, but the quality of the relationship in the home matters so much. I really hope that the Government will be brave enough to recognise the value of stability in the home and the value of two-parent families as a source of real strength. They are a protective factor and a predictor of success for children and young people. We should, of course, do all we can to support single-parent families—they are crucial and necessary and do amazing work, and we should give them all our support—but to tackle child poverty we must do more to support family formation and family stability. That means recognising the household as a unit. We are way too individualistic in our approach to public policy. We need to think about family health and family strength, and that means supporting couples. I welcome what the Government are trying to do, and I hope that there will be recognition of the importance of community and family life in the child poverty strategy.

15:52:00

Before I came into politics I spent about 20 years working in and with communities, a significant part of which was in early years, so this area is of real importance to me. Through the Sure Start programme, I helped set up a children’s centre and saw firsthand how early years provision lifts up families, supports parents and gives children the solid foundation they need. The centre that I worked with offered not just childcare but an essential early years services hub to benefit families. We know, and the evidence shows, that the impact of high-quality early years support lasts a lifetime. The earliest years of a child’s life are critical. The nurturing and love received in those early days can shape their chances for the future in school, in work and in life. Since 2010, however, we have seen a hollowing out of early years support. Sure Start centres closed in their hundreds and early years intervention services were cut to the bone. Our early years provision lost a significant amount of funding, as did many others in Sheffield, with £3 million of cuts city-wide. I became involved in the campaign to save early years, which argued that failing to invest in those services led to our paying a price in school achievement gaps, health inequalities and lost potential. We argued back then, when the cuts were made, that the cost of late intervention to communities and public services is higher than the cost of getting it right from the start. I therefore welcome the Government’s recent initiatives, such as the expansion of free school meals, free breakfast clubs and the recent £500 million investment into Best Start family hubs. It is important that we catch the problems earlier on, before they escalate, with evidence showing that when we invest earlier on, we reduce the long-term cost for the NHS, social care and the criminal justice system. It is important, however, that we see additional investment in existing family hubs, which have worked tirelessly to provide vital early years support despite years of funding cuts. It is also important that we keep the independent, voluntary and community sectors involved in discussion, as many participate in the delivery of early years services and family hubs in their communities. Investing in family hubs is not just good policy; it is the right thing to do. If we want to tackle child poverty and ensure every child can thrive, that is where we start, with families right at the heart of our communities.

15:55:00

The best start in life means a good education; good education means a good school; and a good school necessarily means a learning environment in which children can thrive. Tiverton high school in my constituency should not be an exception to that, but because of the decisions of successive Governments, it has been. I will focus my remarks on the plight of that school, and perhaps it will serve as a microcosm and an example to which other members may well relate in the communities they represent. Upon visiting Tiverton, one could be forgiven for being sucked into a sense of complacency, with the rolling hills and period buildings in and around the area. Yet hidden there are serious pockets of deprivation, economic and social poverty, and we can feel it. Tiverton high school has been promised a rebuild since 1999—yes, that is 26 years ago—but time after time, successive Administrations of different stripes did not deliver, reneging on those promises. Since my arrival in this place, I have pushed relentlessly to secure a concrete commitment on Tiverton high school’s rebuild. Indeed, I was filled with optimism because in November last year, the Department for Education confirmed Tiverton high school’s inclusion in the school rebuilding programme, with work set to commence as early as April 2025. Finally, it seemed that the Government had grasped the nettle. Finally, they had heeded the calls, for they had grown impossible to ignore. It was going to happen, I thought; perhaps this was it. The long-standing promises of a rebuild, which dissipated each time, have meant that Tivvy high, as we affectionately call it, saw routine maintenance and refurbishments fall by the wayside. A culture of “Keep calm and carry on” set in, with the anticipation that the cavalry, or the diggers, would arrive to get the rebuild underway. The 1970s sports hall is riddled with asbestos, rendering it entirely unusable for many months of the year and depriving students of essential physical education. To make matters worse, the school was built on a floodplain, which is a crucial detail that is blithely skipped over and which was not acknowledged in the pre-assessment conducted by the Department for Education. The Environment Agency has also reported the regular flooding of multiple school buildings to be a risk to life, particularly if someone is under five foot. That is utter madness in 21st-century Britain. The school is dilapidated and not an environment that is at all conducive to learning. Instead, such an environment leads pupils to feel unnurtured, thrown on to society’s scrapheap and simply forgotten about. What kind of message does that send to children? If the Department for Education rowed back on the promise of a rebuild, it would be not just a political misstep but would see a whole community shunned again. It would be a cruel volte-face. To be clear, we are talking about the hope of a community that has been strung along for a quarter of a century being reduced to a line in a ministerial briefing. They say that politics is the art of the grey, and I will not walk away empty handed on this. I am absolutely sure of that. After all these years, the community needs this pledge to be honoured.

15:59:00

It is a privilege to contribute to today’s debate on giving children the best possible start in life. As a father, this is an issue that matters deeply to me, not just politically but personally. We all understand that our experiences in our first years shape the adults we go on to become. The memories formed in those formative years, whether of joy and love or challenge and neglect, stay with us for life. They shape our confidence, our relationships and our view of the world. I am sure all of us in this Chamber have had the privilege of going into schools and speaking to children about what they want to be when they grow up. What a privilege that is, and what a responsibility it gives us to ensure that today’s children can dream just as big as we did, and feel just as supported in reaching those dreams. That is why it is vital that we do everything we can to make sure that every child, no matter their background, gets the same sense of possibility, the same support and the same opportunities to thrive. I know that I want that for my children. I am proud that this Labour Government are committed to rolling out Best Start family hubs. These hubs, along with the children’s centres that already exist such as the fantastic West Chadsmoor family centre in my constituency, provide vital wraparound support for families, offering everything from early education to parenting advice and mental health support. The announcement earlier this year of a new school-based nursery at Heath Hayes primary academy is another proud example of how we are supporting children in my towns and villages. As an adoptive parent and foster carer, I want to take a moment to speak directly to the needs of some of our most vulnerable children—those who grow up in the care system. In Staffordshire alone, the county council supports over 5,000 children, of whom 1,345 are in care. Because of the sadly increasing demand, the council has faced dramatic financial pressures, overspending by nearly £3.8 million, largely as a result of the costs of placing children in care. These figures underline the scale of the demand and the commitment needed to meet it. I am an evangelical advocate for fostering to adopt, also known as early permanence, and I should declare an interest because that is the path that I have taken in adopting my children. Fostering to adopt allows vulnerable children to move into stable, loving homes as soon as possible, avoiding the uncertainty and disruption that all too often characterise life in care. I would like to put on record my personal thanks to the Minister for Children and Families, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), for also being a strong advocate on this, and for giving her time to me today to discuss early permanence and support for fostered and adopted children. Evidence shows that early intervention, especially when speech and language support is provided before six months old, leads to lasting gains in expressive vocabulary, social and emotional development, and communication outcomes. Enrolment in support before three months, for example, delivers measurable gains in vocabulary at 18 to 24 months and even helps to close gaps with hearing peers by age five. Children in care are just as full of potential as any other child, but they need us in this place to fight a little harder for them, to make sure that they too, when asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?”, have the support they need around them to achieve whatever those dreams might be. Labour is delivering the biggest overhaul of legislation to protect children in a generation, because where others dither and kick political footballs, we on this side of the House will always act decisively to look after the most vulnerable.

Just before my hon. Friend comes to the end of his important remarks, I am sure the whole House will want to thank him and his family for leading by example, not just by showing care and compassion but by bringing that life experience to this place.

Thank you. I really appreciate that from my hon. Friend. I think that everybody who puts themselves forward to be an adopter or a foster carer does so with a huge amount of compassion. It is a journey that is often fraught with difficulty, and it certainly presents its challenges, but I think that all parenthood does. Sometimes we need to recognise that parents, no matter how they come to their parenthood, are doing an awful lot to make sure that the next generation thrives—which is, after all, why we are all here today. This Government are putting in place massive support for kinship carers, with £44 million invested in kinship and foster carers and a new kinship allowance being trialled to provide financial stability to those stepping up to care for children in their wider family. Our national kinship care ambassador is working with local authorities to improve support and permanence pathways, and that is very welcome. Together with the child poverty taskforce, which will report in the autumn, and the expansion of free school meals, these measures underpin our mission to lift 100,000 children out of poverty, because no child should go hungry into their classroom. By investing in family hubs where families in Cannock Chase and beyond can access wraparound support, by rolling out early intervention programmes that build children’s language and confidence from birth, and by prioritising early permanence and fostering to adopt for children in the care system, we can deliver on the promise of giving every child—not just some—the best possible start in life and the opportunity to make the most of their potential. Every child deserves love, stability and opportunity. Whether they dream of becoming a doctor, a teacher or even a Member of Parliament, it is our duty to ensure that those dreams are possible and to allow every child to make the most of their gifts and potential.

16:05:00

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this crucial debate. I welcome the announcements by the Secretary of State and the Government on the investment and the work they plan to do. We all agree that every child in this country—regardless of postcode, parent or circumstance—deserves the best possible start in life. That is not just a slogan; it is a moral duty and a political choice. It is the foundation for a fairer, stronger and more prosperous Britain, and a critical contributor to the Government’s growth mission. I am extremely grateful for the opportunities afforded to me when I was a child. I am the eldest of six. My mother was a homemaker, and my father worked in a factory. He then fell ill and was supported by the state. I had free school meals and free school uniforms, and I had the opportunity to go to university without incurring tens of thousands of pounds of debt. I wish for those same opportunities and more for every single child in our country going forward. Yet today, far too many children are being failed by a system that is stretched, fragmented and underfunded. We are the sixth largest economy in the world, and yet we have rising child poverty, overstretched early years services, and a widening attainment and life expectancy gap between the richest and the rest. It does not have to be this way—we can and must do better. If we are serious about giving every child the best start in life, we must start before birth. A child’s life chances are shaped long before they take their first breath. The health and wellbeing of pregnant women and new mothers is critical for not only safe delivery, but the emotional and physical development of the child. Yet, across the UK today, midwife staffing levels are dangerously low. Prenatal and post-natal support is patchy and inconsistent. There are real maternity service inequalities for ethnic minorities and in areas of deprivation, and maternal and health needs are too often ignored. I urge the Government to take a holistic view and review the current state of maternity services across our nation and regions, and to put in the required investment to equalise those services and make them fit for purpose. This is not just a health issue; it is a social justice issue because the poorest women, who are often at the highest risk of complications, are least likely to receive the care they need. Investment in maternal care is investment in stronger families, healthier babies and a better future for all. To continue where life continues—the early years—the science is clear, as has been mentioned by right hon. and hon. Members. A child’s brain develops faster from birth to five than at any other time. These years shape everything from health and happiness to educational success and economic opportunity, so why is it that access to high-quality early education is still a postcode lottery? Why are childcare workers, who do some of the most vital work in our society, paid less than supermarket staff? We must deliver universal high-quality childcare from the end of parental leave to the start of school, and I welcome the Government’s announcements and investment in this area. I fully support the Government’s plans to invest in the early years workforce, and we must make quality, not just quantity, a measure of success. Family is the first and foremost influence on a child’s life, yet support for families has been dismantled over the past 14 years. Health visitors have been cut and Sure Start centres closed, and too many parents have been left to struggle alone. I welcome the Government’s plans to rebuild—rebuild family hubs in every community, rebuild our health visiting service, and rebuild trust by giving parents real support and not judgment. Two of the biggest determinants of how well a child will do in life is where they are born and the income of their family. Across the UK, child poverty has been rising. According to the Child Poverty Action Group, 1.6 million children are now affected by the two-child benefit cap. That means 1.6 million children whose futures are being limited by a Government policy—not by anything they have done, or by anything their families have failed to do, but by a decision to deny them the support that they need to grow and thrive. In Dewsbury and Batley, over 11,800 children are growing up in poverty. More than half of them live in working households. Those families are doing everything asked of them—going to work and trying to save—but they are still unable to meet their children’s basic needs. One parent told me: “We live in a two-bed flat with three children. I have to cycle to work because travel costs would push us into deficit. An extra £50 a week would make a huge difference.” That £50 could mean a warm coat, a school trip or proper meals for a week. It could mean a child arriving in the classroom ready to learn, not hungry and anxious. What kind of country does that to its children? We say that we want every child to have the best start in life, but how can that happen if policies deliberately push them into hardship from birth? Reducing child poverty is not just a moral obligation; it is a smart investment. It leads to better health, better educational outcomes, higher future earnings and increased tax revenue. Children are not a cost to be capped; they are our country’s future. We must also tackle the mental health crisis affecting our children and young people. CAMHS, as we know and have heard many times in this Chamber, are overwhelmed. Children are waiting months, sometimes years, for help. We need in-school mental health support teams in every school. We need early intervention, not crisis firefighting. We must train staff across education and early years in trauma-informed practice. Let me move on to education. I was blessed with the opportunity to go to school and cannot remember ever going on an empty stomach. The work that my father did, and the support that the Government provided in welfare and benefits, ensured that I did not go to school hungry. I had free school meals and came home to a warm meal. That, I am sure, made a huge difference to what I have been able to achieve in life. Education should be the great leveller, but in reality the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers is growing, not shrinking. We must strengthen the pupil premium, restore funding for early literacy and numeracy, and, yes, expand free school meals to every primary pupil, because no child should learn on an empty stomach. I welcome the Government’s announcement on providing free school meals to every child whose family is on universal credit, but I gently encourage them to consider expanding that benefit so that it is universal. This is not about short-term fixes; it is about long-term nation building and solutions. It is about a country that invests in its youngest, supports its mothers and refuses to accept inequality as inevitable. When we give children the best start in life, we all benefit, through lower crime, better health, stronger communities and a more productive economy, so let us rise to the moment. Let us stop managing decline and start investing in potential. Let us give every child, in every corner of this country, the best start in life.

16:13:00

I commend the Government for their mission to give every child the best start in life. It is critical that all children, no matter where they are born, have every opportunity to achieve their potential. I must mention at this point the number of Staffordshire MPs who are here for the debate, which just shows the importance of this topic to the children in our county.

Inspired by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), does my hon. Friend agree that team Staffordshire hunt as a pack?

My hon. Friend is right that we hunt as a pack: when the three Stokie MPs get together with our Staffordshire colleagues, we make a formidable bunch, and I am very proud to be part of the team. I am incredibly proud to work for a Labour Government who are breaking down the barriers to opportunity, tackling child poverty and improving early years development through our plan for change. This is certainly a nationwide issue, but I wish to stress the critical importance of this mission in Stoke-on-Trent South and Stoke-on-Trent more widely. Our children were neglected time and again by the previous Government, and we now have some of the worst outcomes for childhood development, health and wellbeing in the country. Before I list the statistics, I want to point out that Stoke-on-Trent is also the best place in the country to live and that the people are fantastic. We have been let down and that is by no means the fault of the wonderful people of Stoke-on-Trent.

My hon. Friend is making an important point. My constituency of Stratford and Bow, in east London, was recently scored second best in the country on the Sutton Trust opportunity index, for opportunities for children to advance in life, and the neighbouring constituency, East Ham, scored top. London has severe inequalities in giving children the best start in life, but we also have opportunities. It is important that kids in Staffordshire get the same opportunities. That is why this Government are working to spread that opportunity far and wide, so that they all have the best possible start in life.

I commend my hon. Friend and her neighbour for those wonderful outcomes, although I am sure she still has issues in her constituency that we need to battle against. As I have said in the Chamber before, child poverty in some parts of my constituency is as high as 76%. In 2022-23, 13 children in every classroom of 30 were living in poverty in Stoke. Stoke-on-Trent has the highest rate of infant mortality in the country, and between 2019 and 2021, babies born in Stoke were nearly twice as likely to die before their first birthday than the national average. In addition, Stoke-on-Trent has the highest number of children in care per head of population in England, and our children face successive delays in early years development. In 2023, Stoke-on-Trent was in the bottom 10 of all English local authorities for the number of children with the “expected” level of literacy, communication and language, and numeracy skills by early years foundation stage. I know that these figures will shock many, but Stoke-on-Trent must be a priority region for tackling child poverty and our related missions. There are children in my constituency who start school unable to speak, use the toilet or brush their teeth, and there are children in our high schools who are still learning phonics, which should have been taught in primary school, as they are struggling with such severe delays in their development. Infant mortality, a topic that is very close to my heart, is explicitly linked to socioeconomic inequalities and persistent inequalities in health. As has been mentioned, the first thousand days of a child’s life are the most important. What happens during those days can, in many cases, predict a child’s entire life course. It is devastating that for so many children in our city their first few years are marked by deprivation, poor quality housing and incredibly low living standards. Labour Stoke-on-Trent city council is doing excellent work to support our children. It has made major improvements to children’s social care services, focusing on early help and new front-door arrangements, and the family matters programme is a multi-agency programme delivering prevention and support services to give our children the very best start in life. Local organisations, like Thrive at Five and Stoke Speaks Out, have also run incredible programmes to facilitate a thriving early years network in Stoke-on-Trent to improve children’s early development. However, our city council and our local services have had to work incredibly hard against a backdrop of successive cuts over the past 14 to 15 years that have decimated so many services and forced many to close altogether. Many of our holistic early intervention programmes, where families could get advice, health visitors supported families from pregnancy onwards, and staff could identify families in need and offer early support, have now closed their doors.

I am grateful to my constituency neighbour for her brilliant speech. Is not much of this issue about the history of our communities? These are industrial heartlands that were let down, left behind and forgotten for many, many years. We need not just joined-up thinking as we address these results, from the early years right through the journey to higher education and beyond, but joined-up results. That is how we will be able to deliver for communities in Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent and right across Staffordshire.

My hon. Friend quite rightly points out the complexities and histories of the issues that we face, which we need to solve with a holistic approach. In the absence of amazing services such as Sure Start, mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams), the predominant policy route has been to fund reactive services that reach families only at crisis point. Not only is that incredibly costly, but it results in so many children with developmental delays or safeguarding concerns going unnoticed until it is far too late. Early years services provide a lifeline to so many families; in their absence, inequalities have risen and our children have suffered. Stoke’s children deserve better. I am deeply grateful to the Minister, who is in her place and who has agreed to have a meeting with me to discuss the difficult problems that we wish to solve. The Government are absolutely working hard to address those. As I said, I am incredibly pleased that this Government are expanding the early years offer through the Best Start family hubs model. I am so grateful that the Government have committed to further support the family hub in Normacot, which the community has fought so hard to save, but families in Meir also deserve a Best Start family hub. Residents in Meir are proud of where they live, but they are aware of the challenges in their community, and they too deserve support. Children in Meir would benefit hugely from a centre in their neighbourhood. We know what works. We know that high-quality early years education and support networks for families can completely transform a child’s life chances. We know that early intervention is far more effective and affordable than trying to fix problems later down the line. We need policies that improve neonatal and post-natal health, provide parents with the knowledge and support to give their children the very best start and provide children with support to achieve their early learning and development goals. I am therefore so grateful for the expansion of early years support through the Best Start family hubs and our targets for early years development under the plan for change. This Government will bring about much-needed change for children across the country, and it is critical that that investment is received in Stoke-on-Trent South.

16:22:00

Although the Minister for Early Education is not in his place, I congratulate him on his speech and thank him for all his work, particularly on getting mental health support workers in our schools. As the Member of Parliament for Redditch and the villages, I see every day how vital the issue of child aspiration and opportunity is. I have seen the powerful impact that early support and investment can make on a child’s life, whether they are growing up in Winyates, Woodrow, Batchley or Matchborough or in villages such as Astwood Bank, Feckenham, Norton or Dodderhill. This week I have had the pleasure of meeting Rhys Elliot, a young boy in Harvington who is awaiting his GCSE results and has a clear aspiration and dream in his head of what he wants to be. I have also seen the other side, where children are held back not because they lack the talent or ambition, but simply because they did not get the same start as others. Why is it that in some schools, children speak confidently about becoming doctors, lawyers or engineers, while in others they cannot imagine a life outside the limits placed around them? This is not about ability: it is about opportunity, and opportunity starts early. That is why I commend the Government on expanding breakfast clubs, such as the one at St Stephen’s in my constituency, which are making a real difference. Having spent a morning with the children and parents, I truly appreciate the calm and nourishment that these clubs provide. They set children up for a positive start to their day and ease the pressures on hard-working families. That is why I also welcome the Government’s plans to increase the number of children in my constituency who will receive free school meals. I am pleased that Redditch will receive central funding for the first time to roll out Best Start family hubs across my constituency. The hubs will provide wide-ranging support for families, from parenting advice to early development services, offering a vital lifeline for many. They are a true successor to the legacy of Sure Start. When I listened to the Secretary of State talk about the roll-out earlier this week, I was struck that the Prime Minister came to my constituency on his final stop of the general election campaign. He gave his speech in a Sure Start centre that had been abandoned by the previous Government, in a constituency in one of the most socially and economically deprived areas in the west midlands that had been forgotten. I am delighted that this Government are taking action to reverse 14 years of decline. I am also happy to see investment making a difference locally. At Matchborough first school academy, funding is being used to convert unused classrooms into nursery spaces, providing high-quality early years places where they are most needed. That is exactly the kind of practical, place-based solution that helps to level the playing field from the very start. My constituency has also seen significant increases in SEN support for my county council—although there is so much more work to do in that area—and the benefits of mental health support workers entering our schools. However, we must go much further. In my day, I was taught in a class of nearly 40, in draughty temporary buildings. Those days should be behind us, but because of disastrous decisions such as the cancellation of the Building Schools for the Future programme, schools such as Ridgeway secondary school are facing the daunting challenge of having to raise millions of pounds to remain fit for purpose. I do not want to see that school—one of the most improved in the country—have tents and temporary buildings forced on it. That is not levelling up; it is letting down our children. I want to say something very clearly: I have never met a family in Redditch or the villages who wanted an easy ride. I have only ever met families who want a fair shot for their children, a level playing field, and the chance to give their kids the opportunities that they never had. That is why I found yesterday’s debate on the two-child limit so troubling. The official Opposition decided to make children a political wedge issue, condemning their parents for whatever reason or for whatever circumstances they might find themselves in, but that decision will only impact children. That is why I am so pleased that this week, we have seen the announcement of the better futures fund—a decision by this Government to invest in real, outcome-based delivery opportunities alongside the private sector, in order to lift children out of poverty. We cannot talk about giving every child the best start in life without confronting the reality of poverty in all its forms, including furniture poverty, which is something we do not talk nearly enough about. In my constituency, there are children who go to bed without a bed. Some do not have a desk to do their homework on or a table to eat at, and some do not have a cooker with which their parents can cook a nutritious meal. Despite working all the hours they possibly can, some parents still go without meals just to make ends meet. In his brief speech, the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) talked about families; I would like to put on record that not all families contain two parents. Families come in all different sizes, and we should be supporting all of them, regardless of whether it is two, one, three or four. This is not just about income—it is about dignity, stability and the very basics of a secure home environment, in which a child can sleep properly and study in peace.

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend’s comments about furniture poverty. In Stoke-on-Trent, we have Emmaus—it is based in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell)—which has a “beds for kids” project, because so many kids in Stoke-on-Trent do not even have a bed to sleep in at night. It is important that the issue of furniture poverty is picked up in Government policy.

I agree with my hon. Friend—furniture poverty is a stain on a society that we have failed. I totally understand the rights and responsibilities of individual parents and families, but when we know there is a problem, we should deal with it. Unfortunately, voluntary groups have taken on that challenge where the state has rolled back support. When we have the financial capacity, we should throw everything we have at reducing the number of children in poverty, because this is about their dreams. There can be no better investment than in the future of our children, and those of us who believe in social mobility and in the transformative power of education and aspiration must never sacrifice those principles on the altar of desperate attempts at political relevance. Rightly, we often debate passionately in this place how life begins and how it ends, but what about what happens in between? What about the lives that children are living now, those whose families are struggling to afford school shoes or skipping meals to make ends meet? I am glad that this Government are taking on those real challenges, and are refusing to adopt the Opposition’s mantra of condemning parents for their choices or the circumstances they find themselves in. If we are serious about giving every child the best start, we need more than warm words; we need investment, compassion, and a commitment to early years as a national priority. I am proud to be part of a Labour Government who have made that commitment in our first 12 months in office, because those first days, months and years are those in which futures are forged, and for which our responsibility as lawmakers and public servants is at its greatest.

16:29:00

It is a genuine pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore). He and I have worked together for the best part of a decade, and his commitment to seeing a real improvement in the lives of the children he represents is commendable. We should all take a leaf out of his book. Like many people in this place, I spend a lot of my time visiting primary schools. I meet the teachers, I am shown around the classrooms, and, being six foot four, I have to try not to take out a row of paintings or some bunting that is hanging across the room.

I am pleased to hear that my hon. Friend gets to visit lots of primary schools. During the debate I have heard about so many schools all over the country. However, the people of Bidwell West, in my constituency, are still waiting for a primary school. It was promised in plans and brochures when they were buying their new homes more than a decade ago, but it still has not arrived. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is so important for councils to work constructively with the Department for Education to ensure that these promised schools finally open?

How could I not agree? Those facilities in communities are what turn them from housing estates into homes, and turn the communities into something special. At this point, I should declare my interests. I am a governor of a special educational needs school in Stoke-on-Trent, and I chair the all-party parliamentary group on children’s literacy, which, with the Minister’s support, is running the national year of reading. I will get on to that later. When I visit primary schools and talk to the young people in reception and year 1 classes, and see those bright young faces, full of vim and vigour and expectations about what kind of life may lie ahead of them, I think about the statistics, which, as was ably explained by my hon. Friend and neighbour the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner), are quite stark. Stoke-on-Trent ranks—or did rank—142nd out of 151 for key stage 2 attainment. Although I accept some of the points made by the shadow Minister about the national increase in achievement across certain parts of the education sector, the last Government failed to reduce the attainment gap across the country, and there are still parts of the country, like Stoke-on-Trent, where that gap has not closed. Cities that are economically and socially challenged—I will not say “deprived”, because I do not like that word—have not seen the improvements that have been seen in other parts of the country. As a result, there are generations of young people whose futures have been essentially stunted because the opportunities available to them are hampered by the absence of the early education and investment that they should have received, which means that their later life attainment is also hampered. Every time I speak to primary school teachers or headteachers, and even some in secondary schools, the first thing they say to me is “It’s tough.” They say that because, as was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South, there are young people arriving at those schools who are unable to hold a pen or a fork, or are unable to articulate what they are thinking and feeling because their oracy simply is not good enough. That makes communication in early years education almost impossible to achieve. Children are arriving who are not appropriately potty-trained, which means that teaching staff are engaging in a basic level of parenting.

I thank my other constituency neighbour for giving way. Last week I held a headteachers’ forum at a school in my constituency that my hon. Friend knows well for various reasons. What was clear to me from that conversation—and I am grateful to all those who attended the forum—was that teachers are now undertaking a journey from educating to social work. One shared the story of a nine-year-old child who was not potty-trained, which meant that the teacher was required to help with changing and making the child clean and safe. The morale challenges that teachers face, coupled with the challenges that my hon. Friend has mentioned, illustrate the crisis that we face. That is why it is so important for the Minister’s work to extend not only to Stoke-on-Trent, but to Newcastle-under-Lyme as well.

When we have local government reorganisation, we will be one big happy family in north Staffordshire. Whether it is Stoke-on-Trent or Newcastle-under-Lyme, we will get there.

No, I will not give way a second time. My hon. Friend is correct, in that the teachers I speak to say that it is hard. They talk about the societal impacts that are affecting children, through no fault of those young people themselves—there is nothing they can do about it—and impeding their ability. It is the teachers, and also the teaching assistants and support staff, who are having to do the social work. They are helping parents to sort out access to benefit claims, and in some cases they are helping to arrange childcare for parents who are doing shift work. They are stepping into a void that, in some parts of the world, is filled by extended families. In other parts of the world, such tasks are carried out by statutory services. But as a result of cuts to support services, and of social workers having huge caseloads, they are simply unable to do that, so it all falls on people whose primary motivation in life is the education of our young people.

I thank my hon. Friend for mentioning the extra work that so many of our primary schools do. I particularly want to comment on the headteacher of Alexandra infants’ school in Normacot, Adele Lupton, who has for many years had a community room that is open to the community. She has worked so incredibly hard to support children in incredibly difficult circumstances, and has managed to keep her teams together. She is a shining example, as are so many of the wonderful headteachers in Stoke-on-Trent who fight to deliver the services that are so sadly lacking sometimes.

My hon. Friend has made the point excellently. Although she and I will talk passionately about the experiences that we see in our own city, I am sure that in every city like ours across the country—including, I would wager, Bradford, Madam Deputy Speaker—there are good teachers who go above and beyond to support local communities, and schools that act more as hubs for social support, community involvement and neighbourhood engagement than simply as places for young people to be educated. We are very fortunate in Stoke-on-Trent, because we already have some family hubs. I have two in my constituency. There is one at Bentilee, which does exceedingly good work, supported by Simon French and the Alpha Academies Trust, and Thrive at Five; multi-agency activity there is genuinely looking at the direct causes of the attainment issues and at what can be done practically to support families. We also have the hub at Thomas Boughey children’s centre. The family hubs model is not particularly revolutionary, because it replicates what happened with Sure Start. My daughter is now 14, and her mother and I had to access the Sure Start system when she was born. There were things that, as new parents in our mid-20s, we simply did not know. My family and hers both lived far away, and our network of support was really quite small, so we naturally turned to our Sure Start centre, which was based up the road in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee), who is no longer in his place—I have denied him the opportunity for another intervention. We walked into the Sure Start centre, spoke to a lovely woman and explained our problems, which were about latching and trying to understand routines. Unless people have someone who can sit them down and talk them through it, they do not really know what they are doing. As a new parent who did not really know what I was doing, my instinct was to think, “I’m probably doing it badly and wrong.” We went to the Sure Start centre, and it was lovely and welcoming. We sat down and had a conversation with somebody. We went through what we were worried about, and we were reassured that the anxiety we were experiencing as new, young parents was perfectly normal and in line with everybody else’s expectations and understanding. Somebody there was a lifeline for us, and we were signposted to a room down the corridor and told when we could pop by again and have another conversation with somebody who had a level of expertise and who could offer support. The model that we are now rerunning in Stoke-on-Trent has benefits. Looking at some of the data coming out of Bentilee in particular, we can see that there are improvements in the attainment levels of children starting school who have been through the programme, who have interacted with some of the schemes and who have accessed the maintained school nursery at the same site. I know the Minister will be aware of the importance of maintained nursery schools—those teacher-led facilities that really get to the crux of the problem in some of the communities that are the hardest to deal with. Alongside the family hub, I welcome all the work that the Government are doing in this area. There is a breakfast club at the Co-op Academy Grove school in Northwood. Mrs Carrigan and I were there one morning as it was starting, and I noticed not just that children were coming in to have a hot breakfast, which was reassuring and welcome, but that they were interacting and talking to each other. In fact, the staff told me that the most popular thing that the young boys do after they have their breakfast is to go and play with the playdough. They do not want to play electronic games; they want to build and model stuff. As a result, the staff are looking at setting up a science, technology, engineering and maths group, because they can see that that is where some of the young people want to go. Mrs Carrigan told me that the children were also more settled; because they have come into school slightly earlier, have had their breakfast and taken off their coats, when the day starts they are ready to start learning from the moment the bell goes, which means those vital minutes in the morning are used for teaching, not for trying to calm down a class of 30 children who are a little bit all over the place. We cannot underestimate how much those minutes accrue over the course of a year and how much time can be brought back for education purposes. Fundamentally, the challenges I face in Stoke-on-Trent, and that other Members have eloquently articulated in their own communities, stem from the fact that the attainment rate for the best start to life in places like Stoke-on-Trent is not as great as for children in other areas because of the poverty levels. Whether we call it furniture poverty, food poverty or child poverty—whatever we call it—it is poverty: young people growing up in households that simply do not have enough coming in to meet all their outgoings. The best start in life is not only an educational issue. I appreciate that this debate is being led by the Department for Education because that is where the policy area sits, but if we want to give a child a good start in life, they need a safe, warm home that is not draughty; they need somewhere where they have the space to grow, develop and learn; and they need secure play areas where they feel comfortable to socialise and interact with their peers. They also need access to good-quality dentists, as the huge levels of tooth decay in Stoke mean that children are missing school; access to those vital health services is crucial. Let me turn to the parenting aspect. Too many of my constituents tell me that they had a really bad experience at school, so they do not want to go back into school to get help, advice and support. For them, school was a moment of trauma—a time that they did not particularly enjoy—so being asked to go back to school, in some cases to see the same members of staff who taught them 20 years earlier, gives them the sense that they are being judged. We need to think much more holistically and about what levers we can pull, through Government and local government, to see our aspiration of improved outcomes for young people. Education is one of those levers, but we also have to make sure that parents can access good-quality support for their own health and mental health, and good-quality jobs so that they can afford to have a good work-life balance and to spend time with their children. We need to have a think about the way in which we establish networks for young people so that, as well as the formal education setting, they can access necessary social activities, whether through formal organisations like the scouts or through sporting clubs. There has to be an opportunity for young people to socialise in the way that they are happiest to do. Fundamentally—I know the Minister gets this because I have spoken to her about it—we have to think about the nuances for individual groups of young people, who need specific support. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) rightly pointed out that the removal of the adoption and special guardianship support fund is a particular challenge for a small but high-need group of young people. I have made my views on that known to the Minister, and I hope that her Department will look at what more can be done to support children growing up in kinship care arrangements, like I did, because they face specific challenges. This is not necessarily a poverty-related issue, but it is about accessing support services that allow them to live a fruitful childhood. Finally, on SEND, I am proud to be a governor of the Abbey Hill special school, which is in the constituency of my neighbour my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South. One of the biggest challenges we face relates to EHCPs and how to give young people a particularly good chance in life. Under section I, parents can identify the particular school they want their child to go to. I agree with the Government’s plan on this; if we can keep children who have additional needs—whether that be SEND or social, emotional, and mental health requirements—in the mainstream setting with the right help and the right support, we should do so. That frees up places for the children who need that specialist, bespoke support in special schools, to a level that means everyone is in the right place. We need to stop those mainly alternative providers, which are running huge profits, marketing their schools to children and families who are desperately in need of help and support, and saying to them, “Tell your local authority, under section I, that you want to go to this particular school”, because that means the money flows out. Hundreds of thousands of pounds are spent on alternative providers, normally outside of the area, and those providers get that money through marketing; they sell young people and their parents a dream of a particular type of education that they can access, regardless of the standard of that education.

I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman. We on the Liberal Democrat Benches tried to put forward an amendment to the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill to extend the profit cap that the Government have proposed for children’s social care homes run by private equity firms to the special schools creaming off profits from our local authorities and denying vulnerable children the education they need. However, I am afraid that Labour Members voted against it, so will he join me in convincing Ministers to think again while the other place is considering the Bill?

I would not say that the hon. Lady’s intervention was helpful to me, but she has made her point. The Government have been quite clear that we must look at how some alternative provision and specialist independent providers are making huge profits off the back of some of the most desperate and vulnerable children in our society, and at how local authorities need the tools to tackle that. In a new programme opening in my own city, one of the trusts that runs one of the special schools is looking to do mainstream work with some of the other trusts’ schools, but that is about getting trusts to work together. I do not remember her amendment, but I have absolute faith in the ministerial team—[Interruption.] I am sorry, but I cannot honestly say that I read everything that the Liberal Democrats produce. To move this forward slightly, I do know, and the hon. Lady will know, that the Government have been quite clear about the need to tackle the profiteering and price gouging happening in the sector. I am almost certain that the Minister will have a better answer for her than I can give her while I am speaking. That is obviously something we all agree on as a principle, and I am sure we can have a discussion another time about how we get there. However, in places such as Stoke, the higher needs budget is being blown because thousands of pounds are being taken by these glossy brochure schools that are making huge profits, and that does not give the young people in my city the best start in life. I think it gives them false hope. Finally, I would say to the Minister that the best start in life is about the first 1,001 days. I am very proud to chair the APPG on literacy, and I am really glad that the Department for Education has announced the year of reading. The bond of reading to your child is so important. Early years literacy, which also helps with oracy, means young people can start school with a set of skills that will help them thrive throughout their education. The other part of this that we need to think about is how we help parents who do not have a level of literacy necessary to start reading to their children. Again, all too often in my constituency I talk to parents who want to talk about literacy, but their confidence in their own literacy skills is such that they do not feel able to do that. It would be welcome if, as part of the National Year of Reading, the Department not only helped young people and children get more into reading and enjoying books—enjoying reading for pleasure, as opposed to having to read for work as most of us do—but ensured that parents were supported to improve their literacy in a way that allows them to interact with their children for longer as their own education progresses, I know that would be a huge benefit not just in my constituency but across the whole country.

16:48:00

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), although I feel I am breaking a run of excellent speeches from the Staffordshire massive. I very much welcome this debate on giving every child the best start in life. I think one thing we can agree on across all the Benches is that that is not just the title of the debate, but a moral duty. It is the measure of a Government’s values, and it is also the foundation of a thriving and fair society. In my constituency of Southampton Itchen, the unfortunate truth is that too many children are still being held back—not by the lack of potential, but by the lack of opportunity. It is high time that that changed, and I am proud to be part of a Labour Government who are making that change happen. My constituency is in the much vaunted London and the south-east, which we usually hear about for its wealth and prosperity, but the reality is often different in Thornhill and Weston, where one child in every three is growing up in poverty. That is not the picture of wealth that we are often lumped in with. Many children arrive at school already behind in language, health or emotional development. There are dedicated teachers and early years professionals who do everything they can. I pay tribute to all those I have met and worked with over a number of years, first as a councillor and then in the past year as an MP visiting schools. I do not face the same height challenge as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central when visiting those schools—indeed, in some secondary schools the pupils are taller than me these days. Dedicated teachers and professionals—I know colleagues across the Chamber will also be meeting them—are working against a legacy of underfunding and fragmentation of services. That is why I welcome the Labour Government’s plan for change and our focus on a number of policies that will help to give every child the best start in life. They include: expanding high-quality early years education; the new nursery places for children aged two to four; and the schools-based nurseries in my constituency launched at St Mary’s Church of England primary school and at Valentine primary school. I am grateful to see policies like the rolling out of free breakfast clubs in every primary school. The pilots established at St John’s primary and nursery school and St Patrick’s Catholic primary school are hugely welcome. I have visited and helped to serve breakfasts to the children. I have seen the benefits they are already enjoying of a solid start to the day. Yes, that is through the food, but also through socialising, being with their friends and getting ready to learn.

My hon. Friend is making an excellent point. As a fellow southern MP, I share his concern about the importance of explaining that there is real poverty across the south of England, as well as in many other parts of the country. He makes a point about the breakfast clubs, which are outstanding and he is right to say how valuable they are on a number of fronts. We have two in Reading. My fellow Reading MPs and I are very proud of them and we look forward to seeing more soon.

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and I wish him every success in his constituency with the pilot breakfast clubs. We have all welcomed in the last week a restoring—let us be honest—of Sure Start-style family hubs which will provide wraparound support for parents. From the hubs I have seen in my constituency over recent years—I know that work will build back up again—the potential for mental health support, childcare advice, toy libraries and work support are all there in those places.

My hon. Friend is setting out, in a very eloquent way, the amazing work of the Labour Government. I am proud—I hope he agrees—of the previous Labour Government’s achievements in setting up and rolling out Sure Start. Independent research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed what amazing outcomes children had later in life, with higher GCSE scores, reduced hospital admissions, improved physical health, the early identification of special needs, maternal employment and better mental health outcomes. I hope we will see the same from the new Best Start family hubs, too.

My hon. Friend paints the picture of the crowning glory of the previous Labour Government, in the Sure Start centres, not just because they were a nice feelgood thing but because of the strong evidence of the benefits they brought. What a disgrace that year after year the Conservatives cut council budgets and shut those very centres. Despite Tory austerity that hit Southampton hard—we lost 60% of our Government grant at Southampton city council—we made the often tough decision financially but the right decision in purpose, to keep those buildings open across the city, because they were crucial centres of support for local families. I cannot pretend that the range of services offered in those centres was the same as it was a quarter of a century ago when the previous Labour Government set them up under our admired and much-missed colleague, Tessa Jowell, but those buildings still served a purpose. That meant that when the Conservative Government, having shut so many Sure Start centres, experienced an amazing epiphany—a revelation that, actually, they were a really good idea—and reinvented them under the badge of family hubs, our former Sure Start centres were there and ready to be built back up again. I would gently remind the shadow Minister that the family hubs, while welcome, were not new, either. In the lost years between those Conservative budget cuts to children’s services and their later U-turn, far too many families in my constituency and across the country were left without those crucial services. The Government are also investing in school improvement, particularly in areas with long-standing underachievement and where attainment gaps have remained stubborn. My view is that the upcoming curriculum and assessment review is a huge opportunity to introduce a refreshed and inspiring curriculum with manageable assessments, rather than over-assessment and high-stakes exams, and links to exciting training opportunities in the reality of jobs in the 21st century economy into the future. As other hon. Members have said, the special educational needs and disabilities system is absolutely broken. I commend the Chair of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), who is no longer in her place, for leading our Committee’s inquiry on this subject. As I am sure is the case for other Members, I hear a lot from constituents in surgeries and through my inbox about situations that are in many cases avoidable, and which we must certainly work hard to avoid in the future, with children’s needs not being met because of a system that needs to be fundamentally rebuilt, described by its own architects as “lose, lose, lose”. A reformed SEND system must give every child the support they need to access school and ensure they are not excluded from the potential for success in life that every single child deserves and is capable of. Numerous schools have fantastic and innovative practices going on, including Bitterne Park secondary school, which I visited last week, which is establishing a variety of units, specialist rooms and particular provisions within the mainstream, working towards a truly inclusive school. In reforming the SEND system—I do not underestimate or envy the task of my hon. Friends on the Front Bench here—I have asked Ministers to consider how we can scale up the good practice in many of our constituencies to end the postcode lottery and guarantee consistency across our country. These are the kinds of policies that have been announced—these are the building blocks of a much better future for children in my constituency and across the country. If we are serious about change, we must not only welcome and consolidate the significant changes this Government are making, but commit to continual improvement. In the wind-up, I ask the Minister to address the Government’s commitment to prioritising areas like Southampton Itchen. As I have said, we may be located in the south—often assumed wrongly to be a magnet for wealth—but child poverty is entrenched and multi-generational. We must not have a blind spot to need that is based on geographical assumptions. Will Ministers ensure that our new Best Start family hubs are truly integrated with schools, NHS services and local councils so that they do not simply replicate past silos? Will Ministers also guarantee long-term funding? I think I know the answer, but it is always worth asking. Long-term funding that goes beyond a single Parliament—the Prime Minister has spoken for a long time now about a decade of national renewal—is not just desirable, but absolutely necessary. We need investment that ensures change is deep, not just fast. Will Ministers have regard to support for the families that children are growing up in? We have heard from hon. Members about better parental leave. I commend the work of The Dad Shift, among others, in raising awareness of that issue. Will Ministers also ensure that they look well down the line to not just the early years, which are a crucial foundation, but the years ahead? We must ensure that our children and young people who grow up in care have long-lasting support to thrive in life, guaranteed by meaningful and strong corporate parenting responsibilities in our public services and a national care leaver offer to close the attainment gap experienced by those who are care experienced, even up to support into training or university. In closing, children growing up in Southampton Itchen can be hopeful about the building blocks that are going in under this Labour Government. However, they do not want or need just charity; they need a chance—a chance to thrive in life. If we get this right, and I believe that we are absolutely setting out in the right direction, we will change not just individual lives, but the future of whole communities. Therefore, when we are giving every child the best start in life, that has to mean in every single postcode in this country.

17:00:00

We understand on this side of the House that the wealth of our country does not lie in the bank accounts of casino capitalists or the title deeds of billionaires. It lies in nature, with each chalk stream and ancient woodland a national inheritance to be cherished; it lies in the bonds of community that held strong even through the years of politically imposed austerity; and, perhaps most importantly, it lies in our young people—in their talents and their hopes that shape our collective future. The benefits of a Labour Government have been most pronounced when translating into policy the belief that, for Britain to succeed, we must give all young people, whatever their background, the opportunity to fulfil their true potential. I welcome the fact that Hormead Church of England first and nursery school in my constituency is among the first to benefit from our breakfast club programme. Together with the expansion of free school meals, these policies go some way to ensuring that no child’s learning or health is held back by hunger. Just as central to early years development is the vital importance of every child having decent housing. We need to take a holistic approach to health, welfare and education, which recognises that a secure and stable home is the foundation for everything else in life. Currently, there are 164,000 children in temporary accommodation across the country—a record high. This means families in overcrowded conditions, children forced to travel long journeys to school and a situation which, all too often, is anything but temporary. I welcome the Government’s £39 billion funding announcement for the affordable homes programme. The commitment to allocate 60% of this to social housing could make a real difference. To ensure that children growing up today have the best start in life, it is vital that as many of those homes as possible are built during this Parliament. Above all, we need a new generation of council housing, built to meet the needs of those that a profit-led sector will never provide for. This will require upfront investment and difficult choices about other projects that must fall by the wayside, but we cannot ignore the human cost of delay. This is not a static problem—a building simply waiting to be repaired. Childhood does not pause. Leaving hard-working families to raise their children in cramped, mouldy accommodation with precious little space to play or learn is no way to nourish the future of our country. Shelter is clear: we need 90,000 social homes a year for 10 years to address the affordable housing crisis, and I will keep making the case to relevant Ministers on the need to frontload this funding package. This is not just the right thing to do morally; the Centre for Economics and Business Research found that hitting the 90,000 homes a year benchmark would return billions to the public purse through lower spending on temporary accommodation, reduce benefits cost, result in less crime, and raise nearly £3 billion from the improved life chances of children. By escaping the desiccated logic of the Office for Budget Responsibility and the old lie that cuts to people equal savings, we can instead invest in our young people and, in doing so, enrich the future of our nation for all of us. In my first year as the MP for North East Hertfordshire, I have enjoyed visiting schools and meeting students in Royston, Baldock, Letchworth, Standon, Weston and other places across my constituency. The students’ talent and optimism is always a powerful antidote to the cynicism and pettiness that can all too often pervade our politics.

On Friday, I visited St Katharine’s primary school, where I met young people from my constituency who emphasised two really important points: first, that they want to be global citizens and a part of wider humanity focusing on the world, and, secondly, that they care deeply about nature and want to be conservers of it. Does my hon. Friend agree that our children are at their best when they are able to play the role of global citizen and can take care of the nature on our doorstep?

I wholeheartedly agree and have heard exactly the same thing from students in my constituency. Each and every one of the children in our country deserves a safe, healthy and stable home that is genuinely affordable and does not leave families struggling to make ends meet month after month. If we give the next generation the security to thrive, they will do the rest. The true legacy of this Government will be found in the laughter, learning and achievement of the nation’s children.

I call the shadow Minister.

17:05:00

I am grateful to be closing this debate on behalf of His Majesty’s Opposition. I thank colleagues from across the House for their passionate contributions, and I am going to attempt to list them all: my hon. Friend the Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger), and the hon. Members for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff), for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury), for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed), for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour), for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed), for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), for Twickenham (Munira Wilson), for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) and for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell). I also have it on good authority that the MPs from Staffordshire hunt in a pack, and after today I can confirm that they do indeed. Before I begin my speech, I draw Members’ attention to my entry in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. Ensuring that every child, regardless of their background or circumstances, has the opportunity to thrive is something that cuts to the very heart of why many of us were drawn to politics in the first place. We know that in those crucial early years the foundations of health, learning and wellbeing are laid for life, so it is right that we ensure that those foundations are as solid as can be. I want to first reflect on the Conservative record on early years and families, starting with childcare. It was Conservative Governments who introduced and expanded free childcare entitlements, not just for parents of three and four-year-olds but for parents of younger children. It was a Conservative Government who launched the family hubs and start for life programme, investing £300 million across 75 local authorities to provide parenting and breastfeeding support to families when they need it so that problems can be addressed before they escalate. We fully recognise that stable and secure families ensure the best start in life for children. That means ensuring that support is more broadly targeted than just at the child. Family hubs are a vital part of achieving this. For 14 years, our model was to have targeted investment, early help and a determination to move away from a system where postcode determines life outcomes. Nowhere is that approach more vital than in the first 1,001 days of a child’s life—from conception to age two. The science is clear: a child’s brain develops more rapidly in these years than at any other point in their life. Attachment, stimulation, nutrition and the emotional environment during this time all have lifelong implications for learning, resilience and health. Interventions in these early days can literally change life chances, and we know that failure to act compounds over time. I pay tribute to Dame Andrea Leadsom for all her excellent work on this subject. Earlier this month, the Government published their “Giving every child the best start in life” strategy. The House will be aware that the strategy’s name, scope and substance owe much to the work begun by the Conservative Government. There is much to celebrate when a new Government build on the good work of the previous one—and as the old saying goes, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. The strategy identifies the very early years as a priority for the Government, which is welcome, but I must echo the Institute for Fiscal Studies in suggesting that this strategy is a first step, not the finished article. The Government’s approach to family hubs is a good example of what I mean by that. It is welcome that the Government are continuing the programme, with a further £69 million announced in the autumn Budget and £57 million in Start for Life funding for 2025-26. The goal of rolling out Best Start family hubs in every local authority is certainly ambitious and something to be welcomed, but there is one important point I want to make. Even with this new funding, spending on integrated early years services will be remain at less than one third of what was spent on Sure Start at its peak. Family hubs are being asked to do more, serving children up to the age of 19, but with far fewer resources per child. If this Labour Government want it to be Sure Start 2.0—and I truly hope they do—they may need to be more ambitious with their funding plans. If the Government want to build on the solid foundation they inherited from their Conservative predecessors, they must guarantee long-term investment, retain high-quality staff and ensure that hubs are universal in reach but suitably targeted in mission. Before I move on from hubs, I welcome the fact that each one is promised a SEND-trained staff member who can deliver practical and well-informed help to families navigating what is a complex system. As we in the House all know, SEND is a big issue. I am all too aware from casework in my constituency that the families of SEND children are too often left fighting against the very system that should be fighting for them. Early identification of SEND is still inconsistent, and when that diagnosis is eventually made, EHCP needs assessments and much needed support are often delayed too. Disappointingly, Ministers have refused to rule out scrapping ECHPs outside special schools, despite over 300,000 children currently relying on them in mainstream settings. That has triggered real fear among families and professionals alike. More than 110,000 people have signed a petition opposing these changes, yet to date Ministers have offered no firm reassurance that no child will lose the legal right to the support they need. I hope that the Minister will take the opportunity today to provide some clarity and reassurance to those worried parents. Looking at the Government’s approach in the round, the “best start in life” strategy contains much that the Opposition welcome in principle, such as more family hubs, the expansion of funded childcare to 30 hours a week for working parents of children from nine months old, thousands more nursery places and the development of a digital offer. However, if we are seeking to ensure that every child has the best start in life, a key ingredient must be the provision of high-quality education: the very provision that the Government’s Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill seeks to sabotage. Far from ensuring that schools can serve as a foundation for success in the early years, Ministers have led an attack on school standards by undermining the academies that have led the way on school improvement for decades. If the Government get their way, academies will no longer be able to recruit teachers without qualified teacher status from non-traditional backgrounds and will be forced to follow the same national curriculum as other schools. Those measures will risk the progress made during three decades of cross-party consensus on academies. It is nothing less than educational vandalism. If any Member of the House doubts that fact, they need only pay a visit to Labour-run Wales. After 26 years of Labour in power, Wales finds itself at the bottom of the rankings for the whole of the UK in maths, English and science. The Government cannot even bring themselves to ban smartphones in schools—something so simple yet so effective in improving a child’s wellbeing and educational outcomes. The hon. Member for Whitehaven and Workington (Josh MacAlister) introduced a Bill that would have done just that. I applaud him for doing so and for the strong cross-party consensus he built up. It is shameful that much of his work was undone by a Government who insisted on watering down his Bill and burying their heads in the sand to the harms. A Government who refuse to act against that danger give me cause for concern about their commitment to offering children the best start in life. I will conclude by making an observation on nurseries, which face extreme financial pressure because of decisions taken by the Government. The lack of compensation for the employer national insurance contribution increase is forcing nurseries and childcare providers to either hike fees, opt out altogether from offering funded places or close down entirely. I ask the Minister to ponder what use any number of policies aimed at supporting nurseries and increasing funded places will be if the Treasury is driving nurseries into the ground with tax hikes before those policies have even started.

17:13:00

I am grateful to the many hon. Members who participated in this debate on such an important subject. I will refer to hon. Members as I progress through my closing speech. It would be remiss of me if I did not mention the strong representation from Staffordshire. The passion and enthusiasm that came through in hon. Members’ contributions demonstrates the importance of early years and the Government’s plan for change. We know that we have an obligation to break down barriers to opportunity. The Government will not stand by while families, parents, carers and children are indeed struggling.

Breaking down barriers to opportunity and giving children the best start in life is one of the Government’s defining missions, so I welcome the steps that have been taken to expand free school meals, roll out free breakfast clubs and establish the child poverty taskforce. Does the Minister agree that when that taskforce reports in the autumn, it is really important that it recommends things like lifting the two-child limit, which would make such a difference to so many families?

I thank my hon. Friend for highlighting the significance of the Government’s work, the important issue of poverty, and the need to keep on making sure that the Government drive out poverty and meet the needs of children across our country. As we have set out today, our “best start in life” strategy outlines the immediate steps this Government are taking to expand and strengthen family services, to make early education and childcare more accessible and affordable for parents, and to improve the quality of early education and childcare. However, those are just the first steps in putting the early years back at the heart of how we deliver stronger outcomes for our children, our families and our society. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (David Williams) spoke about righting the wrongs of the previous Government. He spoke about the cuts to Sure Start services and youth services and a little bit about the deep-rooted cuts of the previous Tory Government. My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central (Abtisam Mohamed) spoke about Sure Start and her close connection to it. I applaud her for all her work in that area and for her campaigning work as well. My hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) also spoke passionately about meeting children’s health, physical and psychological needs, and I look forward to meeting her. I hope that Members are reassured that the long-term vision we have set out will transform life chances and give our children better opportunities than we had. We know without doubt that Sure Start worked; it raised exam results, improved early identification and boosted physical and mental health. It reached disadvantaged families and made a difference to their lives. Our Best Start service will honour its proud legacy. My hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes) spoke about Sure Start, the evidence of its success, children’s achievements and how it had been stripped away by the last Government. I could not agree more. This Government will introduce a new Best Start family service delivered through Best Start family hubs. That will be the first step towards a national family service to ensure families can get the right support for their children.

Does the Minister agree that access to the creative arts, particularly music—I speak as a musician, so I am biased—should be available to everybody and especially young people, and that such access could be provided through the Best Start family hubs? The evidence is abundant of its positive effect on cognitive ability, hard and soft skills, teamwork, and joy within life, and it could have a profoundly positive effect on our young people as they grow up.

I do not know anybody who does not enjoy some type of music. Children must have the experience of enjoying music, and I cannot imagine a family hub that does not have some type of musical instrument. This Government encourages the creative arts and music, and will continue to do so. Indeed, my own daughter is learning how to play the guitar. The hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) mentioned that every child deserves the best start in life, and the hon. Member for East Wiltshire (Danny Kruger) said that this is a cross-party issue. I could not agree more. I also reassure the hon. Member for East Wiltshire that we support, and will support, parents, including single parents, and carers. This Government want to give children the very best start in life, hence the strategy and what we are introducing and speaking about this afternoon.

Is it not the point that there should be a shared national mission to invest in young people? As was rightly pointed out by my hon. Friend the Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), the evidence is clear that £1 invested in a very young child, aged less than five, is worth £16 invested later in their life. The purpose of our work in this field in the public sector, and with partners in the voluntary sector, should be to support very young children to have the very best start in life.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right; there is nothing to disagree with there. Hubs will be open to all, with funding for these services in every single local authority. They will work with nurseries, childminders, schools, health visitors, libraries and local voluntary groups to provide joined-up support to parents in the community. Each hub will have trained professionals to support parents and children who have additional needs. A new Best Start digital service will mean that parents can instantly access all the trusted advice and guidance that they need, whenever they need it.

The Minister rightly identified that voluntary sector groups are in the mix. Many of those organisations have been rooted within their communities for many years, and they continued to deliver high-quality services even when the cuts came along. Can we please look to ensure that the work of those groups really forms part of the offer and does not get replaced, because they are rooted in the communities and often know their communities best?

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. I remember that, soon after becoming a Minister, I met many voluntary and community organisations, and one of the first things I did was to really thank them for all of the services and support they provided during really tough times under the previous Government. Some people had watery eyes as I acknowledged the significance of the work that they had been doing and that they continue to do as they contribute to the needs of our society and some of our most vulnerable children.

I am delighted to hear that each of these Best Start family hubs will have a fully trained and professional SEND co-ordinator to support families. Could the Minister say a bit more about how she envisages those co-ordinators working in partnership with local education, health and local authority partners to avoid silo thinking?

I thank my hon. Friend for the way in which he connects up the various agencies and Departments and points out the significance of working in close partnership. That is absolutely the right way forward. This Government are delivering our promise to parents, providing more support to working families than ever before. We are delivering the entitlement of 30 hours of childcare a week for working families, backed by Government funding, which we expect to reach £9 billion from next year. This will save families an average of £7,500 a year and give parents, especially mothers, the freedom and choice to work. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), I have visited many primary schools in my constituency, and I am sure many Members have done the same, but I want to encourage them to visit their new Best Start family hubs as well. Quality matters when it comes to early education and childcare. A high-quality setting is what all parents should expect for their child, but a great early years education starts with great people, and that is why we are backing the people who care for and teach our youngest children. We will raise the status of our workforce and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central mentioned, all staff matter. We will introduce a new professional register. We will train more early years teachers, because we know that their impact is significant. We will double the number of stronger practice hubs and build strong links between settings and schools, so that educators can share best practice and provide the best possible care.

When I talk with parents and guardians in Bournemouth East, they described the EHCP process as being adversarial and almost designed to exclude. They want a greater role earlier on in the design of their child’s EHCP. Does the Minister agree that that is an important thing that we should be seeking to achieve? Would she also agree that, as we take forward SEND reform, it is important to have families at the heart of that process?

Absolutely; we need to make sure that there is full consultation and involvement so that people and parents feel that their voices are being heard. My hon. Friend has pre-empted me: I am now moving on to EHCPs, which is convenient. This Government are clear that the current SEND system is difficult for parents, carers and young people to navigate and is simply not delivering the outcomes we want. While we have announced that the details of our long-term approach to SEND reform will be set out in the schools White Paper in the autumn, we are clear that any changes we make will improve the support available to families, stop parents having to fight for support, and protect the effective provision that is currently in place. We know that many parents feel the only way their child can get the support they need is through EHCPs. However, independently commissioned insights published last year showed that extensive improvements to the system using early intervention and better resourcing of mainstream schools could have a significant impact.

I am grateful for the Minister stressing the importance of support for children with SEND. At Dorset studio school in West Dorset, 52% of children have SEND—children who would struggle in mainstream education. Funding for improvements to its site was agreed in 2023, but has still not been released. Could the Minister say anything about that?

I thank the hon. Member for sharing that information. I will ask the Minister for Early Education to contact him. There will always be a legal right to the additional support that children with SEND need, and it will be protected. This Government are prepared to grasp the nettle and reform a broken system set up by the Conservatives, which, as we heard, they themselves described as, “Lose, lose, lose.” We will ensure that every child in this country gets the opportunity to achieve and thrive at school and to get on in life. We are carefully considering how to address and improve the experience of the EHCP process for families and are reflecting on what practices could or should be made consistent nationally. We are fully committed to working with families, experts and the sector to ensure that our approach is fully planned and delivered in partnership with them.

I thank the Minister for giving way; she is being generous with her time. One area of concern that parents of children who have an EHCP have raised with me is where there are multiple and complex issues—for example, there is a health issue under one criterion, an education issue under another, or a behavioural or developmental issue under the third criterion—the EHCP will only fund the primary driver of need. Therefore, children sometimes may get the support they need for one particular element of their additional needs, but not the support elsewhere. Will the Minister assure parents in my constituency and across the country that when the Government look at the review and in whatever system that may come next, that holistic view of the child and how their complex and interdependent needs are looked after are at the centre of that?

I thank my hon. Friend for raising a significant point that I am sure parents find difficult to grapple with. I will ensure that the points he has raised are passed on to the relevant Minister. We are reviewing early years SEND funding arrangements to assess how suitable the current arrangements are for supporting the needs of children with SEND. As I have already mentioned, details of the Government’s intended approach to SEND reform, including early years, will be set out in the schools White Paper in the autumn. Improving health and education go hand in hand, as alluded to by the hon. Member for Dewsbury and Batley (Iqbal Mohamed). My hon. Friend the Member for North East Hertfordshire (Chris Hinchliff) was absolutely correct when he talked about health, wealth, education and accommodation. The previous Government left no light task, and despite what the Conservatives say and how they say it, this Government are getting on with the job of fixing the foundations and putting right what is broken. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton Itchen (Darren Paffey) spoke about mental health, breakfast clubs and other areas to do with health. He also spoke about the crowning glory that was Sure Start, which was pleasing to hear. Again, my hon. Friend the Member for Redditch (Chris Bloore) spoke positively about breakfast clubs and free school meals. We know that healthier children are more able to learn and that children who achieve in education go on to live healthier lives. The change outlined in the “best start in life” strategy is firmly aligned with the three radical shifts set out in the Government’s 10-year health plan—hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention. The Best Start family hubs are an important part of the move to neighbourhood health. The hon. Member for Tiverton and Minehead (Rachel Gilmour) spoke about the inheritance of a poor school building from the previous Government. Again, I will raise that with the Minister for Early Education. My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) spoke passionately about the welfare of children, wraparound support and advice, to which the Government are committed. We are committed to achieving the best start in life for children. Let me end by saying that the hon. Member for North East Hertfordshire spoke so eloquently about wanting children to laugh, to learn and to achieve. I absolutely agree. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the matter of giving every child the best start in life.