Bridget Phillipson MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  Through today’s announcement, the Department for Education will fund support in the hon. Lady’s constituency, and I am sure that will make a big difference to the people she represents. I am grateful for her work on infant feeding, and I can give her an assurance that the support put in place will be rooted in the best available evidence right across all the interventions that the Best Start family hubs will provide. If there is more information about the work of the all-party parliamentary group that she would like to share with me, I would be happy to consider it further.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  I am delighted to hear about the experience in my hon. Friend’s constituency. I will do my very best to come and visit, but if not, I am sure one of my ministerial colleagues would be able to join him and see the services directly.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  The measures I have announced mean that local authorities that do not currently receive funding, including my hon. Friend’s local authority, will receive funding through a share of a development grant to make sure that they can get up and running from next April. In the autumn we will confirm allocations across all local authorities for the next phase. We want to make sure that disadvantaged children and families are able to access services, and we will ensure that local authorities have the clear direction to make that a reality.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  Is it not fascinating that so many Conservative Members are suddenly taking a keen interest in support for children with SEND? The hon. Gentleman blithely says, “Whatever the challenges of the SEND system—”, but they are challenges that the Conservatives left behind, and they are challenges that this Labour Government will rise to. There will always be a legal right to the additional support that children with SEND need, and we will protect it. Alongside that, however, will be a better system, with strengthened support, improved access and more funding, something that the Conservatives failed to provide in 14 years. They left a terrible mess behind—families and children were failed—and a degree of humility and understanding from any of them would take us a great deal further along the way. If they do not want to be constructive and if they continue to duck the necessary decisions, we will confront those decisions and ensure that all our children are able to achieve and thrive, something in which they showed no interest.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend has always been a really powerful voice around campaigning for childcare, high-quality early years education and better support for parents. I join her in paying tribute to our late friend Tessa Jowell, who made such an enormous contribution and without whom Sure Start would not have happened. We are all in her debt. My hon. Friend invites me to comment on matters of tax policy. She will forgive me if I do not respond directly to her, but I will ensure that her views are shared with the Chancellor ahead of any fiscal event. She is right to draw attention to the fact that this Labour Government are investing in early years education and childcare, reaching £9 billion next year. We are doubling the early years pupil premium, creating more places in school-based nurseries and ensuring that the brilliant people working in early years get the support and recognition that they finally deserve.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend for all the campaigning she has done over many years to get us to this point. It is only a Labour Government who would bring forward this kind of strategy to ensure that all our children are set up to succeed, breaking the link between background and success, and ensuring that at the earliest moments in our children’s lives, we give them the support they need. That is why we are setting out, through the strategy, the important work that Best Start family hubs will provide in terms of trained support for children with SEND, so that we are better able to identify additional needs at an earlier point. That runs alongside further funding for early years special educational needs co-ordinators, so that staff in our early years settings are better trained and better able to support families. When children then arrive at school, teachers will already be able to understand where there might be additional challenges or where extra support may be required.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  I can confirm to my hon. Friend that his local authority will benefit from the extra funding. The area is one of those not currently funded, but it will be receiving funding shortly—this year—to start the process of moving towards a Best Start family hub in the next year. We will be clear with local authorities that we want a focus on disadvantage, to ensure that the services are accessible to the families who need them the most. However, building on the great record of Sure Start, any parent or family who needs support, particularly in the early years, should be able to access it.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising that issue. Change and reform are needed to the system. That is why we are investing an extra £1 billion in support for children with SEND, and why we are investing in capital programmes to create the specialist places needed in mainstream schools, alongside delivering better mainstream inclusion. It is why we are rolling out the partnerships for inclusion of neurodiversity in schools programme—the PINS programme—across more than 1,000 extra schools. We are delivering the support around neurodivergence that many of our staff say they need. Through the PINS programme, I have seen the critical work that can be done between parents and staff—often quite small, practical changes that can make the world of difference to children’s attendance at school and, critically, lead to better outcomes for children with SEND.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  That is critical, which is why we need to bring together healthcare, education, libraries, childminders and voluntary and community groups in that endeavour to ensure that all our children get the best start in life. Like my hon. Friend, I am determined to ensure that background does not equal success. The driving mission of this Labour Government is to ensure that where you are from and the family you are born into does not determine what you achieve, and that your hard work, your aspiration and all that you do drives what you can achieve.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady’s local authority area is not currently funded through the programme and it will receive funding, including a share of a £12 million development grant, which we will confirm in the next few weeks, to start the process, ahead of opening a Best Start family hub next year. As I said earlier, we will ensure there is a trained SEND professional in every setting so parents get early and timely access to support.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  I am grateful to my hon. Friend for identifying the work that is already going on in her constituency. Although it is led by the Department for Education, the strategy that we are setting out today is the work that we will drive right across Government. We are working with colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions on access to childcare support and on routes back into work and training for parents, but also with colleagues in the Department of Health and Social Care on how we can improve access to speech and language support, health visiting support and much more besides. That is why my right hon. Friend the Health Secretary set out a direction that aligns with ours through the 10-year NHS plan.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  Yes, we will make sure that my hon. Friend’s local authority gets the support that it was previously denied. It will be able to share in a £12 million development grant, which we will confirm in the next few weeks, so that it can hit the ground running and put in place the services needed from April next year. We will then confirm the wider programme of allocations alongside it. I know how much my hon. Friend cares about ensuring that all our children get the best start in life, including children with SEND. It is only because his constituents sent him here and delivered a Labour Government that they will now benefit from Best Start family hubs and all the brilliant services alongside them.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  As the hon. Gentleman knows, I was in Northern Ireland at the end of last year, during which time I was able, as part of my work co-chairing the child poverty taskforce, to meet many charities, campaigners and parents about what they wanted to see through that work. That was important to hear, because the responsibilities that we carry through the child poverty taskforce are UK-wide. That was also a welcome opportunity for all UK Education Ministers to come together, including his colleagues in Northern Ireland. We continue to work with our colleagues right across the UK as part of that important work.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  I agree with my hon. Friend. It is this Labour Government who will once again ensure that all our children are set up to succeed. We will build on the proud legacy of Sure Start, take the best evidence of what works, and expand and enhance that for the generations of children to come, in his community and across the country.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  As my hon. Friend says, we know from research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies that Sure Start generated widespread long-term benefits in education and health, even reducing school absence and identifying support for children with SEND much more quickly. We will build on the lessons of Sure Start as we roll out Best Start family hubs. My hon. Friend is right to mention the importance of tackling entrenched inequalities within communities as part of that and ensuring that all our children are set up to succeed.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  Every time I come here to announce the positive changes that a Labour Government are bringing, whether it is free breakfast clubs, school-based nurseries or our “best start in life” strategy, what is the right hon. Lady’s response? The same confected outrage, the same negativity, and the same petty point scoring. She has no plan or vision for the future of our education system, and for giving our children the best start in life, which they deserve. The Conservatives can talk all they want, after 14 years in government, about what they put in an unsuccessful manifesto, but it came with a post-dated cheque if ever there was one. The British people rightly judge their politicians not on what they claim they will do, but on what they actually deliver, and it is on that basis that this Government will be judged. The right hon. Lady asked a number of detailed questions about what we are delivering. We are trebling investment in Best Start family hubs across the spending review period. All the detail is there for her to see in the many documents that have been published with the spending review, and in the strategy that we published today. This is additional investment that we are putting into supporting our youngest children, because this Labour Government prioritise the early years and want to make sure that all our children get the best start in life. The only policy that the right hon. Lady has is to cut budgets in state schools and hand a tax break to private schools. That is it. [ Interruption. ]

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  Yes, I can confirm that. The hon. Member is right to draw attention to the critical work of our health visitors and our speech and language therapists, who do some amazing work to support children and families, but I appreciate that they often feel overstretched and overworked at the moment. That is why we want to ensure—and I am working closely with the Health Secretary on this—that we not only support more health visitors to train and to work in the profession, but deliver improvements to health visiting to better support parents, to make it easier to access health visiting services and to ensure that more children are getting the early checks that are so important in identifying speech and language need at the earliest possible point. I have seen some brilliant work that our speech and language therapists have done on this. While some children will of course continue to have an enduring need that requires specialist intervention, I think there is more we can do in the reception year, with the Nuffield early language intervention, to identify children who might need additional targeted support, but who can make very rapid progress with that support. The evidence is clear that that is particularly the case for more disadvantaged children.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  I know how hard my hon. Friend has campaigned on this issue, both on Sure Start and on the right of all children to play. Like him, I know that access to stay-and-play, rhyme time and those kinds of opportunities for children and families are incredibly important, especially for families who simply do not have the money for extras—who do not have the money to get on a long bus trip or take their children to soft play. That is why that kind of support for families is so critical, and it is why Best Start family hubs will make sure that children have opportunities to play and socialise and, critically, that parents get time together at what can be an isolating time. That will be a central part of everything that those family hubs deliver.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend asked first about the statutory SEND override, and I know that, as Chair of the Select Committee, she takes a serious interest in this area. We recognise that local authorities will need support during the transition to a reformed SEND system, which is why we extended the statutory override in the spending review, and, as my hon. Friend knows, we have provided some detail for local authorities and will provide more. As for the digital offer, I appreciate my hon. Friend’s point about the need to give all families access to services. There are still challenges involving digital exclusion, and she was right to draw attention to them. We will provide more details about how the digital offer aligns with the NHS offer before long, but effective outreach support and community engagement are also critical. One of the key lessons that we should take from Sure Start—and the evidence for this is incredibly strong—is that it was at its most effective, and had the greatest reach and impact in respect of disadvantaged children, when there was strong engagement with communities. Through the work that the Cabinet Office has recently been leading, we have learnt of important ways in which we can ensure that more disadvantaged parents who are struggling with issues such as poverty have access to those services, and as we proceed with the wider roll-out we will be sure to take that on board as well.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  Our announcement today is about making sure that more parents and children are able to access high-quality parenting, healthcare and education services. The half a billion we are investing over the spending review period will allow us to reach half a million more children, including in my hon. Friend’s community and constituencies right across the country.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  The hubs will be key to our vision for how we better join up education and health services in the community, but they will also work with voluntary and community groups, childminders, libraries and others to bring services close to local people. My hon. Friend talked about the important links between early years settings and the start of school. We are setting out through the strategy how we will do more to better join up the support between early years settings and schools. We will use that not only as the basis for greater expertise, training and development, but, crucially, as the basis for better life chances and opportunities for children. If we can identify where children are struggling and not making the progress we would hope they were making, and share that at the start of school, it will make a really big difference.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  It is only through my hon. Friend’s election and through a Labour Government that this investment will be coming to her community. The first investment will start to flow this year, allowing her local authority to get the systems and structures in place that will enable them to open up next year. I am delighted that in the first year of a Labour Government my hon. Friend’s constituents are already starting to feel the benefits that come from having sent her to this place.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  The hon. Lady asks a number of questions and I am grateful for her broad welcome for the intent of this Government to make sure that all of our children get the best start in life. On early years, she will know that as of next year we are investing £9 billion into the system along with a near-doubling of the early years pupil premium. That goes hand in hand with the £75 million expansion grant to support the sector ahead of the September further expansion. In addition, we are working across Government, as the strategy sets out, on how we might consider simplification of funding and how we can make sure it is working as intended for both providers and for parents. I would of course be happy to discuss further issues on that with the hon. Lady. As she said, the Minister for early years education, my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), met Genevieve’s family and the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison) last week. To answer directly the question on Ofsted, from next April Ofsted will inspect new early years providers within 18 months of opening and will move towards inspecting all providers at least once every four years, compared with six years currently, alongside there being additional investment to strengthen quality assurance and inspector training to make sure that all children are safe, loved and protected. I also join with the hon. Lady in sending my condolences to the families affected.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  As a Government, we want to ensure that more brilliant people want come and work in early years, and that they can gain qualifications and training, and build fulfilling careers. We will work with the sector to do that. We will recruit more early years teachers, particularly in the areas where they are needed most, more than doubling the number of funded early years initial teacher training courses by 2028, and rolling out a new early years teacher degree apprenticeship. That goes hand in hand with consulting with the sector on introducing a new £4,500 early years teacher incentive to attract and keep early years teachers in nurseries serving some of our most disadvantaged communities.

• 7 Jul 2025 · Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life · Hansard source

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  Children will continue to receive the high-quality support that they need—I can give the hon. Gentleman that absolute and categorical assurance. Once again, I observe that Conservative Members did not show the same level of interest when they were in government. That is why we have ended up in this sorry state, with far too many children being failed by the system left behind by his party. We are determined to improve outcomes for children with SEND and to put in place better support, and that is backed up by the extra investment already going into the system. Of course, there is much more that we need to do to deliver better outcomes for all children. That is what we are working towards, and the reform that we will set out will be properly informed and shaped by the conversations, discussions and meetings that I, ministerial colleagues and officials are having with parents, groups and campaigners in order to get this right. If the Conservatives would like to be constructive about that—just for once—I would be happy to engage with them on it, but I am afraid that is not what we are seeing this afternoon.