Munira Wilson MP: speeches

Speeches

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

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  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.

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

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  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?

• 14 Jul 2025 · State of Climate and Nature · Hansard source

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  The Secretary of State rightly says that British leadership matters and that the choices we make as a country will have an impact on future generations. I do not doubt his personal commitment to tackling climate change and delivering net zero, but is he sure that all his Cabinet colleagues are on the same page as him, not least the Chancellor of the Exchequer given her unwavering commitment to expanding not just Heathrow, but Gatwick, Luton, City and Stansted, despite the advice and concerns of the Climate Change Committee?

• 14 Jul 2025 · Deprived Areas: Funding · Hansard source

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  It is absolutely right that funding follows need, but may I gently urge the Minister to look at how the proposed new funding formula for local authorities affects boroughs across London, given that it does not consider housing costs, which we know are the biggest driver of poverty and deprivation in London?

• 10 Jul 2025 · Children’s Social Care · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee on this report and thank her and the Committee for their work on it. I particularly welcome the recommendations on kinship care, which mirror closely the measures in the ten-minute rule Bill that I introduced in this place three years ago and which we on the Liberal Democrat Benches have been campaigning on. I hope she will work cross-party to make sure the Government go further and faster on kinship care. I want to pick up on the Committee’s recommendations on the adoption and special guardianship support fund. She and I know how distressed the families of children who have been adopted or put into kinship care who need this support are. It is a very small amount of money—does she agree that if the fund could be expanded slightly, all children could go back to having the level of support they had before the cuts were introduced a few months ago?

• 10 Jul 2025 · Educational Attainment of Boys · Hansard source

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  Can I start by warmly congratulating the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland (Sam Rushworth) on securing this incredibly important debate and on his powerful and insightful opening speech? It behoves all of us to spend more time on this topic, so I am grateful that he has made me look into it more than I had previously. It goes without saying that our education system should enable every child to flourish, no matter their gender, needs or background, but as we have heard all too clearly already, for too long cohorts of boys have failed to thrive in our education system in the way that they should, with a widening attainment gap between boys and girls, particularly among white working-class boys. We have heard the statistics already, and I note that many of them come from the excellent report by the Centre for Social Justice, but they bear repetition because they are so shocking. Where 75% of girls are school-ready, only 60% of boys are. In GCSE exams boys achieve on average half a grade lower than girls across every subject, and at A-level girls outperform boys by an average of over a grade and a half across their best three subjects. Too many boys are quite clearly failing to reach their potential at school, and this is having severe and long-lasting consequences for our society and the economy. Since the pandemic alone, the number of young men aged 16 to 24 who are not in education, employment or training has increased by a staggering 40%. According to the Higher Education Policy Institute, men with no qualifications are nearly twice as likely as women with no qualifications to be unemployed, and if they are employed, they are more likely to work in hazardous, menial or stagnant roles. That makes men less likely to look after their mental and physical health, leading to higher rates of substance abuse, smoking and alcohol consumption, lower life expectancy, and much higher rates of imprisonment and death by suicide. It is hardly surprising that so many boys feel hopeless. Some 41% of teenagers report that they have been taught that young men are a problem for society. Tim Page, service co-ordinator at Catch22, said: “There is no trust or hope in the future, a young man from a disadvantaged background has no clear path towards making a future for themselves, the only options for hundreds of boys and young men I have worked with are crime or benefits.” I think that should make us all stop and reflect. Education is obviously vital in tackling this tragic and disturbing trend, not just to enable pupils to achieve good grades and a decent salary, but to inspire our children so that they grow up to do good and important things as part of a thriving community and society. I agree with the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland; I think it probably is time for a gender-specific strategy looking at boys in particular, but as the Chair of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Dulwich and West Norwood (Helen Hayes), pointed out, some of the wider systemic challenges facing our education system have a particular impact on boys. As the Government are considering a number of these issues, I think it would be worth looking at them through a gender-specific lens. We need good teachers to stay in our boys’ lives and to guide and encourage them, whether on career options for the future or just as good role models, yet over the past 12 years more than 40,000 state school teachers left within one year of qualifying, and just 24% of the overall teaching workforce are male and 30% of primary schools have no male teacher at all. I was thinking about this last night, actually. Both my children are at primary school. One of them will leave in the next few weeks, and by far and away the teacher that she has talked about the most in her seven years there has been a male teacher. He has only been teaching her for a day a week in year 6, but all the kids love him and look up to him. I have never heard them speak about any other teacher in such a way. It is largely a female-dominated school, and it is wonderful to see such affection for a male teacher and such a role model for all the children, both girls and boys. Many attribute the shortage of teachers—both male and female—to the conditions that teachers face and a lack of career progression. I believe that the presence of more male teachers would normalise learning as a suitable activity for men and boys and may especially help children who do not have positive male role models at home. However, as the Minister knows, schools are facing the impossible task of trying to find more money in their already squeezed budgets to cover underfunded national insurance increases and teacher pay rises. While the Government have promised to recruit 6,500 more teachers, I have yet to see how they will be able to achieve that. Some of the hopelessness that many boys are experiencing also stems from inadequate mental health support. We know that boys are twice as likely as girls to be excluded from school. Sadly, exclusion and criminal activity are too often intimately related. Those who are excluded multiple times from school are more likely to have a younger age of first conviction. Mental health researchers have noted that boys in emotional mental distress tend to use coping strategies that externalise into violence and destruction, while girls are more likely to internalise into self-harm and depression. We Liberal Democrats have long called for a dedicated qualified mental health practitioner to be placed in every primary and secondary school to help tackle mental health and behavioural concerns early. While I am glad that the Government are continuing to roll out mental health support teams in schools, I fear that those teams are really overstretched, because they are often shared between several primary and secondary schools, with perhaps half a day or a day a week of mental health practitioner time in each, meaning that children do not have consistent access five days a week to a trusted person to support them with their mental health. I hope the Minister will say something about how the roll-out can be sped up and those teams grown so that there is more coverage for each of our schools. Of course, there is a big overlap between mental health provision and special educational needs and disability provision. Boys make up over 60% of those receiving special educational needs support and over 70% of those on education, health and care plans. Those receiving SEND support are more than twice as likely to be excluded as the average boy, and more than five times as likely to be excluded as the average girl. Too many children are being forced out of school due to a failure to provide the required support for them to learn. I have heard time and again from parents and kinship carers who feel that they have been let down by the SEND system in this country and that they are having to try to educate their children with no support. That has very much driven up the number of children being home-schooled, so I hope the Minister will use this opportunity to assure parents and carers of children with SEND across the country that their rights will not be rolled back when the Government look to reform our broken SEND system. Families must be at the heart of these changes, so that all children can access the support they deserve. I urge the Minister to look at the five principles for SEND reform that the Liberal Democrats published yesterday. Finally, seriously tackling the feeling of hopelessness among young boys means looking at the online world. We have seen from research that algorithms are feeding increasingly violent and misogynistic content towards boys. With 60% of children aged eight to 10 having a social media account, it is wrong that companies can profit from addictive and harmful algorithms. We need to start taking a health approach to online safety, with tighter regulation of the tech giants and by empowering and educating young people and the adults who care for them about the online world. Crucially, we need to provide alternative spaces and activities for young people, so that they are not always glued to a screen when they have spare time. The Liberal Democrats want the digital age of consent raised, to end addictive algorithms and to stop companies trading on our children’s attention. I very much hope that the Government will not kowtow to Donald Trump and remove the digital services tax, but instead treble it, so that that money can be invested in improving our children’s wellbeing and mental health. I once again thank the hon. Member for Bishop Auckland for securing this important debate, and I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say.

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

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  Every child deserves to have the very best start in life possible, so I welcome any measures to tackle inequality and improve support for the early years and for families. I therefore welcome today’s announcements both on the hubs and around the early years workforce and helping to raise the professional status of those who work with children in the early years. That is something that Liberal Democrats have long been calling for, given the level of responsibility and expertise required in that profession. With the hubs, as we have heard there is a great opportunity to identify special needs early and provide contact time with mental health practitioners and important advice for parents. However, these changes need to go hand in hand with addressing some of the deep problems facing charitable and private early years providers, and I hope the Government will start by reversing the national insurance hike for early years and nursery settings together with reviewing the rates they pay to providers to ensure that they actually cover the costs of delivering high-quality care and early years education, because we know that many nurseries across the country are struggling. While I have the Secretary of State’s attention on early years, may I raise with her the tragic cases of Gigi Meehan in Cheadle and the children at the Twickenham Green nursery in my constituency, who were completely failed by their early years providers at the hands of extremely cruel, vicious, uncaring staff? The verdicts in both of those cases have been utterly shocking. I know the Minister sitting next to the Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Portsmouth South (Stephen Morgan), met my hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr Morrison) last week, and although the Secretary of State’s announcement did not include it, I have read in some news reports that the Government will be increasing Ofsted inspections for nurseries, something that Gigi’s parents, my hon. Friend and I are pressing for. However, over and above that, we do need to see a strengthening of the early years framework to include the use of CCTV. May I, Madam Deputy Speaker, say one final sentence and press the Secretary of State once again to put the parents and carers of children with special needs across the country out of their misery—

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

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  And rule out scrapping EHCPs—