Darren Paffey MP: speeches

Speeches

• 19 Jun 2025 · Water Safety Education · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for the very relevant point he makes. I will come on to the issue of how we can ensure that education is locally targeted. Each of the situations we face in our constituencies will be that little bit different, so it is important that on top of a compulsory expectation there are locally targeted campaigns. We would not let someone drive a car without first passing their theory test, so why do not we comprehensively and consistently teach our children about water safety before they enter the water to have fun? This is not about taking away that fun; it is about being aware of the hidden threats, and therefore having the power to do something about it. I pay tribute to Joe’s mother, Vanessa Abbess, who I am pleased is present in the Gallery today. Ness has become a tireless campaigner, sending hundreds of letters to local schools, working with the Royal Life Saving Society and the Royal National Lifeboat Institution and pushing for improved signage in Bournemouth. She brought her powerful story to Parliament earlier this week, when we established the all-party parliamentary group on water safety education. Ness has done all that in the hope that no other family should suffer as the Abbess family has. The coroner’s report was submitted to the Secretary of State in October last year. The coroner said: “An ideal opportunity to warn and inform all members of the public would be through educating children of the risks. The lack of providing education to children around these risks through the national classroom curriculum could lead to future deaths.” The report also stated that “urgent action should be taken to prevent future deaths” and that the Department for Education has “the power to take such action.” I warmly welcome the Secretary of State’s response to the coroner’s report, in which she committed to “look carefully at what more can be done to support schools to provide water safety education to all pupils,” and to “give full consideration to including a requirement that all pupils should be taught about water safety, including the water safety code.” I urge the Government today to uphold that commitment and to go further. As has become clear, we need to do more than just teach swimming. As hon. Members have highlighted, access to pools is uneven, lessons vary in quality and duration, and too many children—especially in deprived or minority communities—are being left behind. The Department for Education states: “All pupils should be taught to swim and how to be safe in and around water”. Well, yes, they should, but is saying they “should” really enough? At this point, I do not believe so—we can and we must go further. We need to mandate classroom-based water safety education in every school. I pay tribute to many people who have campaigned on this before, including Rebecca Ramsay from Chorley, who secured some concessions under the previous Government. However, she has recently said that changes are not coming quickly enough. For her son, Dylan, for Joe, for Sunnah and for too many others, I ask the Government to tackle this issue with the urgency that it deserves. The Royal Life Saving Society has already created high-quality classroom resources that are cost-effective and proven to improve children’s understanding and confidence around water. It reaches everyone—through its Water Smart Schools’ campaign, its Splash Safety at Your Pad campaign, and its lifesaving training, accreditation and awards—regardless of background or access to swimming pools. These resources offer a lesson for life. Let us not leave it to chance; let us bring those resources into the heart of our curriculum. I look forward to the Minister’s response. Although I recognise that her responsibilities lie within education, included in the recommendations are some wider points that I ask her to convey back to Government. First, there is currently no Minister for water safety or drowning prevention in the UK despite having Ministers for fire safety, road safety and other preventable public dangers, and despite Scotland and Wales having dedicated water safety ministerial roles. Why does England not have such a role? The National Water Safety Forum and the World Health Organisation have both urged the UK Government to appoint such Ministers, and I echo that call today. The coroner noted that one in four children still does not receive any swimming education, and that number has almost certainly worsened since the pandemic. Secondly, I ask the Government to commit to a national swimming and water safety strategy, based on up-to-date evidence about children’s access across this country to swimming lessons and water safety education. Thirdly, my major request is that when the national curriculum is updated, following the current review, and is then taught in every school as mandated in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, will the Government use that opportunity to enshrine water safety as a core, compulsory part of every child’s education? The point of the curriculum is not just to pass exams; it is to prepare our young people for life. If Labour’s mission is to break down barriers to opportunity, here is just about the greatest opportunity that we can offer them: the opportunity to learn and to live.

• 17 Mar 2025 · Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill · Hansard source

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  I rise to comment on Government new clauses 18 to 22 and new clause 3. I very much welcome the new corporate parenting duties and the value they add to the Bill and to the activities of authorities up and down the country. The new clauses add value because this Bill is about boosting standards in schools and creating opportunities. It is about children getting the best start in life and ensuring that there are clear protections for young people. Crucially, it is about stopping children and young people from falling through the cracks in the system. In addition to the unique identifier that this debate has considered to join up services to help children and young people; the overhaul of children’s social care, which is long overdue, starting by capping excess profits, ensuring collaboration and ensuring that every pound counts towards getting the best for children; and the measures to support kinship carers and care leavers elsewhere in the Bill, all of which are crucial, it is also crucial to strengthen what children in care can expect authorities to do to secure good outcomes for them. I previously led children’s services as a cabinet member in Southampton. That was during a time when we needed to make huge strides forward to improve how we supported children and young people. I know from that experience what rests on the services provided: they make or break opportunities for the young people looking to us for care. It is welcome that the Bill now includes accommodation in the local offer, which makes good on a commitment to guarantee care leavers a place to live. New clause 18 sets out the wider responsibilities for authorities. The reality is that the barriers faced by care-experienced young people are greater than those faced by most of their peers, and good outcomes will likely be far harder for them to secure. It is right that authorities do more in good, sensible collaboration, but what does that look like? It is couched in unfortunate language, in a sense: “parenting” is a word that pretty much everyone can relate to, and we understand “corporate”, but not in this context. We know within the sector what corporate parenting means, but it potentially draws away from how we should be thinking about it in terms of a family, rather than an institution, public service or organisation with thresholds and goals. That means a family gives love and attention to those in its care. It ensures a warm, safe place to live, echoing the comments of my hon. Friend the Member for Mitcham and Morden (Dame Siobhain McDonagh). It is about getting them in front of a doctor or dentist precisely when they need it. We know that the support does not stop when kids leave home. As a father of teenagers and a small one, I have not yet faced the moment when they leave home, but I know that if and when they eventually leave, I will not suddenly say, “You’re someone else’s issue now”. Therefore, corporate parents cannot and must not do the same. When kids leave home, parents continue to help them out. If, for example, that family has a family business, they give first dibs on a job or training opportunity to their child. That is what councils do as corporate parents. They act as guarantors and can help with university or apprenticeship costs. In short, they fight for those young people and act as one family. They do not pass the buck and say, “It’s not my problem,” and that is what corporate parenting must be about across all Government organisations and other authorities.

• 4 Feb 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Ninth sitting) · Hansard source

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  What I agree is, that if someone is not performing up to scratch, the response should not be to remove the qualification for everyone else, but to deal with that individual teacher and drive up standards within the school. That is once again, completely common sense.

• 28 Jan 2025 · Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill (Fifth sitting) · Hansard source

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  I appreciate your patience, Mr Stringer—this is not the first time I have stumbled over Committee procedure and no doubt it will not be the last. I welcome the Minister’s comments and the inclusion of clause 8, which I strongly support. I want to address the sentiment of new clause 40 as well. The extension of the requirements around accommodation, extending the Children and Social Work Act 2017, requires councils to publish that local offer. That is crucial. Many of us have served in local government; it is at that local level that these crucial services, which can often make or break opportunities for care leavers, are delivered. The clause also takes steps towards making good on the Prime Minister’s commitment to guarantee care leavers a place to live. We would all recognise, from the context of our own constituencies, that the barriers faced by care-experienced young people are numerous. The likelihood that good outcomes in life will be harder for them to achieve is simply a fact. It is absolutely right to bolster the local offer, as clause 8 seeks to do. The new provisions will further strengthen what many local authorities, including my own in Southampton, have begun to do over a number of years. As the right hon. Member for East Hampshire suggested, there are measures of good practice under local councils that we now ought to be bringing into this standardisation of the offer. In terms of a national offer, the new clause certainly has its merits and it is something good to aim for. I had the opportunity to speak to the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby), who is responsible for children and families and whose remit this issue comes under. She has agreed to meet me to explore it further, but as my hon. Friend the Minister for School Standards has already said, there is a cross-ministerial group. I really welcome the work that it is doing to take these measures forward, because building on the existing measures, which strengthen that national focus, is crucial. It says to young people with care experience that they matter. I have worked very closely with young people in care over the years, and I know that too many of them feel let down by the systems there to protect them. This is about showing that the Government get what it is like for them, are focused on acting for their good and doing so from the very top. Having that national focus goes a long way towards making those people’s journey to adulthood stronger and as smooth as possible and towards ensuring that they are fully supported to thrive.

• 16 Dec 2024 · Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords] · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to welcome this much-needed legislation. A couple of weeks ago, I visited Bitterne Park primary school, which is just across the River Itchen from Southern Water’s treatment works. I met the school’s Eco Warriors, an inspiring group of schoolchildren who are passionate about improving their environment. They told me that the stench from the treatment works sometimes makes them feel so ill that they cannot play outside at lunchtime. That is what happens when there are more than 1,000 hours of sewage dumping, as there were last year alone—a 350% increase on the year before. Those children expressed their outrage, and their desire for change, in a way that grown-ups are often less good at. Let us be clear: this is not something that our children should have to accept as normal. That is why I am campaigning for bathing water status for the Itchen, and I would like to work with Ministers to see how we can clean up the river and achieve that. This is a big local issue, and one that I am determined to try to help resolve, but—as has been made plain by the excellent contributions of other Members—there is no doubt that it is also a national issue, and that private water companies have been treating our rivers with utter contempt. Let us not forget how we got here: 14 years of Conservative failure have left us with crumbling water infrastructure and record levels of pollution. That is the legacy. Instead of addressing the crisis, Conservative Ministers buried the scale of the problem, hiding sewage data and shielding water companies from scrutiny. That is why I welcome the tough new penalties in the Bill, which will ban unjustifiable and undeserved bonuses. We have seen and heard how water companies have piled up debt and demanded bail-outs from the taxpayer, all the while paying bumper bonuses—more than £41 million since 2020—to executives who fail to meet the most basic standards of competence. Meanwhile, it is my constituents and those of other colleagues here who have paid the price—in higher water bills, and in the frustration of seeing a river that they treasure polluted by negligence. The Bill draws a line under those wasted years. That is what we mean when we say we are a Government of service, because we are not afraid to stand up to corporate interests. We are here in service of the British people. That means long-term investment in our water networks and ensuring that every penny spent benefits customers and the environment, not just shareholders. I am grateful to the groups that have campaigned to keep these issues on the agenda. Now it is over to this Government of service to finish the job and hold those responsible to account.

• 2 Dec 2024 · Grenfell Tower Inquiry · Hansard source

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  I thank the Deputy Prime Minister for her speech, and I associate myself with her words. She reminded us that we should once again remember the victims, the survivors and those left behind after the tragedy of the 72 entirely preventable deaths in Grenfell Tower. There are many lessons to be learned from this tragedy, and residents in Southampton Itchen, especially those in the 46 blocks still affected by unsafe cladding, are looking on anxiously to see if we learn those lessons. These are some of the people who know far too well and far too personally just how slow the progress has been of making all buildings safe. As this Government embark on our ambitious plan to build 1.5 million new homes, we and, importantly, those who will call those houses their homes, need to know that they are safe. Sadly, however, such peace of mind is not yet felt by many residents in my constituency, where an unacceptably high number still live in buildings affected by cladding or fire safety risks. Some remediation has happened, and that is to be welcomed, but in too many places it is not happening fast enough, or leaseholders are paying the price, as in the countless examples we have heard. They include those who live in blocks that do not meet the 11-metre threshold, and who are getting unexpected bills for tens of thousands of pounds through their letterbox. I recently held a public meeting with constituents awaiting fire safety works. Among the many who came to share their experiences, Ellie has seen her service charges soar from £1,600 a year to over £6,000, and she has no idea how she will afford it. In the same block, Stewart told me he feels as though no one cares after the same service charge hike left him and his family trapped in a property they have outgrown. Just down the road, Daniel is not only facing escalating service charges of £3,000, but his insurance now tops £4,000 on top of his rent and on top of his regular bills. James happens to live in one part of a taller development in which his building is under 11 metres, yet he is facing remediation charges of between £15,000 and £30,000. Those responsible cannot yet decide how much they are going to charge the residents, and this is simply not acceptable. Others have told me about the changes they want to see implemented, so in the time left I want to make my constituents’ views and voices heard in this place. They want a clearly defined single construction regulator that can channel efforts to drive change, and I am sure they will welcome today’s announcements. Many are stuck in unsellable flats, and they could not tell us who exactly is responsible for keeping them safe. That needs to change. They want to see a much clearer role for managing agents. What exactly are their responsibilities, and what standards will they be held to? They want to see improved regulation of insurance and service charges—again, that is touched on in the report—so they are not charged for remediation works through the back door, which is simply not fair. With an eye to the future, people want us to move away from the feudal system of leasehold, which this Government are committed to delivering. They want much better-quality housing, so they can move into places where they know they are safe. In short, people want, need and deserve a way out of this mess. The remediation action plan shows that this Government are taking these issues seriously. I would just urge Ministers, even where deadlines are set, to move even more quickly, where possible. We have begun the crucial work to put right this scandal, and we must not rest until that is done in full.

• 20 Nov 2024 · Government and Democracy Education · Hansard source

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  Those who measure trust in politics tell us, as we regrettably know, that that trust is at its lowest point in over 40 years. Part of rebuilding that trust is very much about engaging with the curriculum and ensuring that people know who we are, what we do, what the media who report on us so much do and how those institutions work. Does my hon. Friend therefore agree that the current curriculum and assessment review is a fantastic opportunity to ensure that steps to improve political literacy are built into our future education system?