Helen Hayes MP: speeches

Speeches

• 20 Oct 2025 · Post-16 Education and Skills Strategy · Hansard source

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  I thank the Secretary of State for her statement. I welcome the Government’s focus on further education and skills, which have been overlooked for far too long and are critical to the delivery of the Government’s missions. My Committee has recently undertaken an inquiry into FE and skills, and I am pleased to see a number of our recommendations reflected in the statement, particularly in the commitment to address the vortex of failure in which the current system of English and maths resits traps far too many young people. I welcome the priority of increasing the quality of further education, but there are two key contributors to quality that the Secretary of State did not mention in her statement. The first is the 15% pay gap between teachers in schools and teachers in FE colleges, which is a barrier to recruitment and retention for colleges. The second is the inability of FE colleges to reclaim VAT, a situation for which my Committee found no justification and which City College Norwich told us made the difference of a whole floor to a new building that it had recently completed. How does the Secretary of State plan to ensure that the further education sector has not only the policy framework to improve quality but the necessary resources?

• 20 Oct 2025 · SEND Provision · Hansard source

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  My Committee’s recent inquiry on SEND found that, although support from health services is critical in enabling many children with special educational needs and disabilities to access education, health is often not represented at the table and there are no effective mechanisms to hold health services to account for the vital role that they play. What engagement does my hon. Friend the Minister have with her Department for Health and Social Care counterparts to ensure that health services play their full part in supporting and enabling children’s education?

• 15 Oct 2025 · Educational Assessment System Reform · Hansard source

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  I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important debate and on his speech. Does he agree that it is an unacceptable feature of our education system that around a third of young people leave school without a recognised qualification, a grade 4 in English or maths? For many of those young people, the way that the system treats resits traps them in a cycle of demoralising continuous failure, just at the point when they should be discovering their passion—the thing they are good at—and should be preparing to get new qualifications and succeed in life? Does he agree that we need urgent work to stop that cycle of failure both upstream in schools and in post-16 education?

• 13 Oct 2025 · Education Committee · Hansard source

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  As Chair of the Education Committee, I am pleased to present to the House our fifth report of this Parliament, “Solving the SEND Crisis”. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allocating time for this statement. This inquiry was our first major undertaking in this Parliament. We chose the subject because the crisis in special educational needs and disabilities provision—SEND—is not just a challenge, but a moral imperative. Our report focuses on practical steps that can deliver an education system where every child, regardless of their needs, is given the opportunity to flourish. The crisis touches every corner of our education system, from early years to post-16 education. It affects 1.7 million children and young people, their families, their teachers and a wide range of other professionals. For too long, children and young people have been let down by a system that is fragmented, not fit for purpose and, as a consequence, often too adversarial. Our report sets out a road map for change—a vision for an inclusive, equitable and sustainable SEND system, grounded in the voices and experiences of the children and families it serves. Over eight months, we conducted a rigorous inquiry. I put on record my thanks to everyone who took part. We received over 890 written submissions and held seven oral evidence sessions. We heard from children and young people with SEND, whose courage and clarity moved us profoundly. We heard from parents exhausted by battles for basic rights, from teachers stretched beyond capacity and from professionals yearning to deliver but constrained by broken systems. We visited schools in Norfolk and learned from the inclusive model in Ontario, Canada, where children’s needs, not processes, drive support and where SEND provision is everyone’s responsibility. The evidence is stark. The number of children identified with SEND has risen by 400,000 in a decade to 1.7 million. Nearly half a million children have an education, health and care plan, and 1.2 million rely on SEND support. Behind those numbers lie stories of frustration, exclusion and unrealised potential. Parents told us about sleepless nights, navigating a maze of bureaucracy, and the impact on the whole family of having to fight constantly just for their child to be able to access education. Teachers spoke of the deep frustration they experience when they are unable to meet every child’s needs. Local authorities describe the invidious situation they face, holding the statutory responsibility for delivering for every child, but without the powers to do so, and with a funding crisis that is driving them to the edge of bankruptcy. This is not what inclusion looks like—this is a system at breaking point. Our report identifies a series of critical failures and offers practical, evidence-based solutions. First, inclusive education remains an aspiration, not a reality. A decade after the 2014 reforms, there is still no shared definition of what inclusion means. Without clarity, schools, local authorities and families are left adrift, with no consistent standard to aim for and no clear accountability for delivering it. We call on the Department for Education to publish a clear definition of inclusive education within three months, underpinned by national standards for SEND support and ordinarily available provision, backed by statutory duties and proper funding. Secondly, trust has collapsed. Parents and carers feel sidelined, blamed or forced into costly legal battles to secure their child’s rights. Last year, 95% of SEND tribunal appeals were upheld, a damning manifestation of systemic failure. We must rebuild trust through genuine partnership. This means treating parents and carers as equal partners in their child’s education, ensuring access to independent advocacy and making transparency the cornerstone of every process. Thirdly, while there are many committed, highly skilled professionals who work hard every day to deliver for children, there are some fundamental ways in which our workforce are not equipped to deliver. Teachers and support staff are dedicated but overstretched, lacking the training and resources to meet rising needs. Special educational needs co-ordinators are in short supply and are too often regarded as the sole person with responsibility for SEND support in a school. Educational psychologists are mired in assessments, preventing them from directly delivering interventions and sharing their expertise with other professionals. We propose a cross-departmental SEND workforce strategy, jointly led by the Department for Education and the Department of Health and Social Care, to invest in training, to secure the recruitment of specialists and to free professionals to focus on frontline support. Fourthly, funding is broken. The notional £6,000 threshold for SEND support, unchanged since its introduction in 2014, is woefully inadequate. High-needs deficits are spiralling, and the statutory override is a temporary plaster on a deepening wound. We urge the Government to commission a full cost-benefit analysis of inclusive education and to ensure sufficient funding in the high-needs block to deliver early intervention, which can transform lives and reduce long-term costs. Finally, accountability is failing and there is a structural misalignment of statutory responsibilities and powers. We heard time and again that health and social care partners are too often absent from the SEND table and cannot be held to account. In education, accountability is unevenly distributed, leading to an understandable over-reliance on the statutory part of the system—the education, health and care plans—because it is accountable. We also heard that local authorities do not have the powers or the funding to deliver the school places that are needed, which is contributing to their financial pressures as they are forced to purchase expensive independent school places to meet their statutory responsibilities. We recommend statutory duties for health and social care, enforceable SEND tribunal powers for health provision and a SEND lead within the NHS to drive accountability, a statutory framework for SEND support and ordinarily available provision, and better alignment between local authorities’ responsibilities and their ability to deliver the school places that are needed to meet them. We have seen what is possible. At Aylsham high school in Norfolk, we witnessed a resource base seamlessly integrated into mainstream education where every child’s needs are met with flexibility and care. In Ontario, we saw a system where support is based on need, not diagnosis, and where parents are partners, not adversaries. These are not distant dreams; they are models that could be emulated across our country. I make it absolutely clear that the statutory entitlement to an education, health and care plan should remain unchanged. That is a commitment the Government must honour. During our inquiry, it became crystal clear to us that if we build a truly inclusive and properly resourced mainstream education system, we can ease the pressure and the struggle that so many families face in securing an EHCP, because in settings that have a whole-school approach to inclusivity, the needs of more children are met without having to go through that process. Inclusive education is not just a right; it is a necessity. It benefits every child, strengthens our schools and builds stronger communities. It is also cost-effective, reducing the long-term burden on public services by investing early in children’s potential. This report is not a catalogue of despair; it is a call for action. Our 95 recommendations offer a blueprint for reform, rooted in the lived experiences of children, families and professionals. We cannot afford another decade of delay, so I urge the Government to act with urgency and ambition, to work across Departments, to listen to those at the heart of this system, to rebuild trust and to place inclusion at the core of our education system. Every child deserves the chance to thrive. Every family deserves to be heard. Every education setting deserves the tools to succeed. Let us build a SEND system that delivers not just for today but for generations to come. Let us make inclusion a reality. I commend this report to the House.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Education Committee · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right. As we made clear in our report, there are pockets of very good delivery—there are schools, local authorities and professionals across the system that are doing their best—but there is a postcode lottery in SEND, sometimes even within different schools that are very close to each other. We need a whole-system reset so that we can secure consistent delivery for all children, wherever they live.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Education Committee · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his question. It was a real pleasure to meet some of his constituents who came to Parliament to participate in a workshop and to present their findings and their recommendations to me, which were then submitted as evidence to our inquiry. I hope that his constituents will see their experiences and their needs reflected in our report, and I agree with him that part of the key to solving this enormously challenging area of public policy is better engagement with parents, families and professionals across the country. That is how we understand where change needs to take place, and it is how we build trust for the future.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Education Committee · Hansard source

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  I know that my hon. Friend has extensive experience of this area, not least through his own family experience. I am really pleased to see Ministers and the Secretary of State from the Department of Health and Social Care on the Front Bench for this statement—by accident, I think, but I will take full advantage of it. We heard time and time again from parents and from professionals working in the SEND system that health has such an important role to play in the ability of children with SEND to access education, but that health services are too often absent from the table and there are no mechanisms to hold them to account. It is nonsense that the SEND tribunal can make rulings that are binding on education, but cannot make rulings that are binding on health. As we propose in our report, that is an easy fix that would create more accountability in the health system. Our report contains other recommendations, but we need to get this right, because the consequence of not getting it right is children being locked out of education.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Education Committee · Hansard source

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  I thank the right hon. Member for his question, which is an important one. The evidence we saw in Ontario in Canada is that where parental involvement is embedded in the system, partly through statutory entitlements to participation in decisions about a child’s education, that builds much better partnership working, builds trust and confidence, and fosters collaborative relationships between parents and professionals. Those are the steps that we have seen in practice and believe can make a difference in the area that the right hon. Member raises.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Education Committee · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for her question and for her contribution to this report as a member of the Select Committee. The situation that we saw in Aylsham high was one where children’s needs were met across the whole school through a whole-school approach to inclusion. The headteacher of that school told us powerfully, “We are not a net generator of new EHCPs.” We are talking about what we have seen being delivered and what we therefore know is possible. A system that delivers whole-school approaches to inclusion can restore the EHCP to what it was originally intended to do under the Children and Families Act 2014—specifically to deliver support for the children with the highest levels of need. An inclusive approach to education can work for everyone.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Education Committee · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Member for her question, for her participation in this inquiry and for the contributions she made to our report. What we saw in Canada showed us what is possible here. We saw a system where SEND education is everybody’s responsibility in a school and across the system. We saw children with much higher levels of need than would ever be usually in a mainstream school here, with their needs being met well. There were huge benefits for the whole school community and the wider community from that approach. I hope that the Government will take seriously the recommendations that come from that experience in Ontario.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Education Committee · Hansard source

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  This is why we are concerned that there should be a definition of inclusive education applying across a number of dimensions of the system, so that we can think about buildings and the extent to which they are inclusive, welcoming environments, about the curriculum and the flexibilities that it affords to deliver for children, about the expertise within the system, and about other aspects of education as well. The hon. Lady is right to say that the policy approaches taken by schools have a bearing on whether those schools are accessible to the widest possible range of pupils; that is why it is important for the Government to set out the definition, so that everyone is clear about the basis on which we are working.

• 13 Oct 2025 · Education Committee · Hansard source

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  The hon. Member raises a devastating case, which is sadly not a unique example across the country. The pressures that families face as a consequence of this failing system cause further health complications, not least with mental health and wellbeing. He is right that there are problems with local authorities’ ability to deliver against their statutory responsibilities. We highlight in our report the broken nature of the link between powers and responsibilities—currently, local authorities do not have everything they need to enable them to deliver—but the crisis across the system also masks local authorities that are performing poorly, even by the current standard. I believe the hon. Member’s local authority is one that faces particular challenges.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Children with SEND: Assessments and Support · Hansard source

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  I will not give way again because of the time constraints. I will point to a few of the big themes that came through in our evidence, to which our report will speak. There are major problems with accountability in the SEND system. Accountability is overwhelmingly loaded on to the statutory part of the system, which means that if ordinarily available provision is not there or goes wrong, there is no recourse for parents. That problem needs to be fixed. There is a problem with how we equip teachers. There are children with SEND in every single school, in every classroom, up and down the country, but we do not routinely equip teachers to teach the children who are in front of them. The funding system is broken. There are problems about place planning, both in the inclusivity of mainstream schools and for specialist schools within the state sector. Most importantly, the trust and confidence of parents in the system is utterly broken. In seeking to solve the crisis, the Government must turn their attention to the ways in which that trust and confidence can be rebuilt, so that children across the country who deserve far better than they get at the moment can access the education to which they are entitled.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Children with SEND: Assessments and Support · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Dr Huq. I thank everybody across the country who signed this important petition, and the Petitions Committee for granting time for the debate. It is no surprise that the petition attracted such interest. Across the country, children and their families are being failed by a SEND system that the previous Conservative Education Secretary described as “lose, lose, lose”. For too many children and their parents and carers, the system is slow, adversarial and fundamentally failing to meet children’s needs. The Education Committee, which I chair, chose to focus its first full inquiry of this Parliament on solving the SEND crisis, because it is the single biggest challenge in the education system, from the early years all the way through to further and higher education. Many Members from both sides of the House heard directly from their constituents during the general election campaign, and subsequently—over and again—about the impact that the failing system has on their daily lives.

• 15 Sept 2025 · Children with SEND: Assessments and Support · Hansard source

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  My speech will turn to some of the points that the hon. Member raised. I will not give way to further interventions, because many Members want to speak and it would eat into their time. The Committee spent eight months examining evidence and hearing in person from a wide range of witnesses, including children and young people with SEND. I put on record my thanks to every person who took the time to submit evidence or who gave evidence to us in person. We also travelled to Ontario in Canada and within the UK to look at examples of good practice. We will publish our report later this week, so I cannot speak about its content today, but I am very much looking forward to sharing it with everybody. I began the inquiry with only a sense of the overwhelming difficulty of the challenge, but at the end of it I am convinced that meaningful reform of the SEND system is possible and deliverable.

• 9 Sept 2025 · Accessibility of Railway Stations: Dulwich and West Norwood · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I will come on to some of the points about the better co-ordination needed to solve some of these problems. We need an approach that enables us to join things up to understand which of our stations are most likely to secure funding because of their footfall, because they link up with particular bus routes or because they are relatively lower cost and therefore easier to deliver. The process, as it stands, is not transparent, and there is no support available for communities to prepare for it. As an example, I have been approached by residents in Dulwich in recent weeks who would like my support in moving forward a proposal for step-free access at North Dulwich station. A feasibility study would be helpful so we can all understand where lifts could be installed and the broad costs of doing so. But Southwark council has no land interest in North Dulwich station, and there are no major development sites in the local area. At a time when local authority funding is constrained, it would be helpful to have the Minister’s advice on how to move such a proposal forward. Another example of the urgent need for more joined-up preparatory support is Loughborough Junction station, currently being supported by a local community campaign called “Lift Up Loughborough Junction”. A tiny station occupying just half a railway arch, Loughborough Junction has a particularly long, steep flight of stairs up to its two platforms. It has seen an increase in passenger use compared with pre-covid levels, likely as a consequence of new nearby housing development. Through that development, some funding has been allocated towards improvements at the station, but there is at present no mechanism to decide how that is to be spent or to deliver the improvements. Delivering step-free access at Loughborough Junction station is complicated. It cannot be done within the current station’s curtilage due to insufficient space, so the station would need to expand either into adjacent arches or on to a site to the rear of the current station. The ownership of those sites is complex, with the Arch Company responsible for neighbouring arches, Network Rail responsible for the structural integrity of the arches, the train operating company Southern responsible for the station, and private land ownership to the rear. If we are to solve the problem of accessibility at the station, there must be a way of joining up those interests, undertaking feasibility work, creating partnerships that can bid for funding together and moving the project forward. As residential development in the area continues to expand, a station that already feels unsafe at peak times due to the large number of passengers will become more and more dangerously overcrowded, and disabled residents, families with young children, and frail and elderly people will continue to be locked out of rail travel. In 2018, the then Government’s inclusive transport strategy set out the aim of achieving equal access to the rail network by 2030. That is just a few years away, and we are very far away from realising that goal. In the meantime, Government policy has continued, quite rightly, to seek to deliver continued modal shift from private cars to public transport where possible, but modal shift does not happen by encouragement alone. It requires meaningful levels of Government investment to make public transport an accessible, convenient and attractive option, and accessibility is the basic minimum requirement. The Government can encourage people all they like, but if they are literally locked out of using public transport, it will not make a difference for residents with disabilities, parents who need to travel with young children, the less mobile and the elderly. I secured this debate to seek help from my hon. Friend the Minister. Is he considering the criteria for future rounds of Access for All funding so that areas such as mine, with many inaccessible stations, will not continue to be overlooked by that funding stream because we do not have the highest levels of footfall, major transport interchanges or nearby development sites. What representations is he making to the Chancellor in relation to the Budget about the overall quantum of Access for All funding, so that future rounds of the scheme can start to deliver the step change in railway station accessibility that is needed across the whole country? Is he underlining to the Chancellor that Access for All funding should be part of the strategy to support disabled people who want to work to get to work? Will the Minister consider a better approach to pre-bidding support for Access for All, on a locality basis, to help local communities and councils to understand how best to prioritise their stations for Access for All bids, and to create strong local partnerships in which multiple agencies need to be involved? May I ask for his support in relation specifically to the complex situation at Loughborough Junction station, and to the need for a feasibility study for North Dulwich station and feasibility work at Gipsy Hill station, which requires accessibility works to one platform only? Finally, can he tell disabled people in Dulwich and West Norwood, and across the country, when they can expect the equal access to the rail network that is their right?

• 9 Sept 2025 · Accessibility of Railway Stations: Dulwich and West Norwood · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right to say that the figures cannot account for passengers who cannot access a station, and I welcome her campaign for the station in her constituency. This is a national issue. The high number of stations in Dulwich and West Norwood makes it an acute issue in my constituency, but this is a problem everywhere. When I have inquired about how best to make the case for stations in my constituency, I am told to make representations to the Government and through the Access for All process. I have done so, but there is no process outside of public pressure and political lobbying prior to Access for All applications being submitted to support local communities with a more strategic approach. We need an approach that enables us to join up community views and aspirations with transport feasibility work to understand how to prioritise in a realistic way which of our stations are most likely to secure funding because of their footfall.

• 9 Sept 2025 · Accessibility of Railway Stations: Dulwich and West Norwood · Hansard source

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  I am honoured to be intervened on in an Adjournment debate by the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), and I thank him for his intervention. He is right that adequate staffing at railway stations is a really important part of making stations accessible. All too often, disabled passengers have to endure unacceptably long waits when there is a failure in communication. The railway operating companies need to continue to improve their service so that not only the stations but rail travel itself is fully accessible and disabled passengers can get the support to which they are entitled. All our stations should be accessible, and it is therefore important that the Government work to increase the funding available and make changes to the criteria for Access for All funding. Currently, the Access for All programme prioritises stations with high levels of footfall and the availability of third-party funding—usually through local development—as well as proximity to a hospital or major interchange and non-specific rail industry priorities. The majority of the 10 stations in my constituency are busy but would not rank among the highest footfall locations in the country. They do not have significant development sites in close proximity or other third-party sources of funding available. They are not next to a hospital and we cannot account for non-specific rail industry priorities.

• 9 Sept 2025 · Accessibility of Railway Stations: Dulwich and West Norwood · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention and for all his work on this important set of issues. He is absolutely right to say that full accessibility is about more than simply level access, and also that information about accessibility at different rail stations is vital to whether travellers will be able to travel, particularly if they are visiting somewhere outside their home area. I support his campaign for better information.

• 9 Sept 2025 · Accessibility of Railway Stations: Dulwich and West Norwood · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for the opportunity to bring before the House the significant issues that affect my constituents across Dulwich and West Norwood because of the lack of accessibility at our local railway stations. The Dulwich and West Norwood constituency covers part of Lambeth and part of Southwark. Unlike much of the north of those boroughs, we are poorly served by the London underground network; there is only Brixton tube station, just inside a corner of my constituency. Instead, my constituents rely on rail and buses to get to central and outer London, as well as for more local journeys. We have many stations—10 to be precise, with an 11th just outside the boundary. The stations in my constituency are Brixton, East Dulwich, Gipsy Hill, Herne Hill, Loughborough Junction, North Dulwich, Sydenham Hill, Tulse Hill, West Dulwich and West Norwood. Only three—Herne Hill, East Dulwich and West Norwood—are accessible, and only Herne Hill meets up-to-date standards of accessibility and has lifts to all platforms. The ramps at East Dulwich station are too steep, and West Norwood ticket office is not step-free, although the platforms are accessible from the street. The lack of step-free access at our local railway stations causes major problems for many of my constituents. Wheelchair users are effectively locked out of rail travel entirely at inaccessible stations. Parents and carers for small children may or may not manage to carry or drag their buggy up and down flights of stairs at their station. Even if they can, it is neither safe nor comfortable. Frail and elderly passengers are confronted with impossibly difficult climbs; there are really long flights of stairs at several stations. Loughborough Junction and West Dulwich in particular have long, steep flights of stairs that can be difficult and daunting for many passengers. The lack of accessibility at our local stations is counter to two of the Government’s strategic objectives. Inaccessible stations are a significant barrier to work for many physically disabled people, who cannot easily access employment in the wider London economy because they cannot get to work from Dulwich and West Norwood. Further, many people will not make the modal shift from private cars to public transport, as the Government want them to, while our stations remain inhospitable and inaccessible because the only way to access the platforms is via a steep flight of stairs. During every round of Access for All funding since I was first elected more than a decade ago, I have pressed for stations in my constituency to be granted funding to increase the number of step-free stations, but the previous Government failed to prioritise investment in my constituency. Herne Hill was upgraded with the installation of lifts under the Access for All programme in 2013. That is more than a decade with no further advancement in the accessibility of local rail travel.

• 4 Sept 2025 · Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Mid Sussex (Alison Bennett) for securing this important debate. The introduction of the adoption and special guardianship support fund as part of the Children and Families Act 2014 marked an important recognition of our understanding of the impact of early childhood trauma and the increasing complexity of need of children in the care system. It is a vital acknowledgment of the reality that the impact of early childhood trauma does not always end with the stability of a loving adoptive home. The fund also provides vital support to children in kinship care with a special guardianship order and to other children who have previously been looked after—for example, where family reunification has taken place. The fund has provided support to 54,000 children who have been able to access diagnosis and therapeutic support, and it is a vital source of support for families who are struggling as a consequence of early childhood trauma. It has been a lifeline. However, the fund has never been established on a long-term footing, and that has left families in a state of continual anxiety about whether the support they rely on will continue. I know that the Minister is aware of this, but the delay in announcing the continuation of the fund until the day after it had expired, despite many weeks of requests for clarity, caused unnecessary fear and anxiety for many families. I hope that she and her colleagues are reflecting on how cross-Government decision making can be done in a more compassionate and child-centred way in the future. My Committee recently published a report on children’s social care, for which we heard the concerns of parents and voluntary sector organisations about the decision this financial year to reduce the fair access limit for therapy from £5,000 to £3,000 per child. I understand that the Government have concerns in the sense that some of the services being paid for by the fund should be provided by the NHS. Will the Minister set out her assessment of the level of need, including the level per child, that the fund is seeking to meet? What work is she doing with the Department of Health and Social Care to improve access to mental health services via the NHS for looked-after children and previously looked-after children, including adopted children and those in kinship care? My Committee recommended that the Government undertake urgent engagement with families on the impact of the reduction in the fair access limit and, if evidence of negative impacts is found, that urgent steps be taken to restore the level of funding per child, so what assessment is the Minister undertaking of the impact of the changes, and what engagement is under way with families?

• 4 Sept 2025 · Early Education and Childcare · Hansard source

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  I welcome the Minister’s statement: the expansion of funded childcare hours this week; the future expansion of school-based nurseries; and confirmation of a further three years of funding for the holiday activities and food programme. My Committee is today launching an inquiry on the early years. We will examine in detail the Government’s work in this area, looking at the sustainability of the workforce, families’ access to services across the country and the quality of outcomes for children. May I therefore ask the Minister what additional work he believes is needed to ensure that children in families who are not in work—who often have the most to gain from high-quality early years education—are not left behind by the expansion of funded hours for working families? How confident is he that the significant problems in recruitment and retention of early years practitioners will be addressed to secure the workforce needed to deliver on the Government’s commitments? Finally, will the Minister join me in paying tribute to everyone in my constituency and across the country who has spent the past six weeks running holiday activities and food programmes? I know they are utterly exhausted this week, but they should know that their hard work has helped to tackle poverty and disadvantage, and to provide vital opportunities that keep children and young people safe and help them to thrive.

• 1 Sept 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  I welcome the commitment to recognising the Palestinian state later this month. That is an essential step, and there can be no further delay. Israeli Government support for illegal settlement in the west bank and the decision to build in the E1 area are strategically designed to undermine the viability of a Palestinian state. Will the Foreign Secretary therefore commit to introducing a ban on all settlement trade, including services and investments, so that money from the UK cannot be used to fund that illegal occupation, and so that the state of Palestine, which we are rightly recognising, has a chance of becoming a reality?

• 21 Jul 2025 · Middle East · Hansard source

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  Children are being starved and shot in front of our constituents’ eyes. They are watching illegal settlers systematically and strategically undermine the Palestinian state. It is not that there is a risk of international humanitarian law being broken. International humanitarian law is being broken in front of our eyes, on an hourly and daily basis. Our constituents are asking what this Government are doing to stop it, and they are asking that because it is unbearable and they can see that the current approach is not working. We were promised more action weeks ago, but today we are still not seeing more action, so what are the Government are doing to secure accountability under international law, and when will they recognise the state of Palestine?

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

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  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.