Alison Bennett

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Harris. I thank the hon. Member for South West Devon (Rebecca Smith) for bringing this vital debate. I rise to applaud the work of Beacon House in Cuckfield in Mid Sussex, which serves people across the south-east, including constituents of my hon. Friend the Member for Chichester (Jess Brown-Fuller). I visited recently and met the incredible people who do incredible work there. Jigsaw in Burgess Hill also supports children who have been adopted. I thank the families in Mid Sussex who have taken on children in kinship care or have adopted them. That is an enormous commitment to make and is so important, as we have heard from a number of hon. Members. I also thank them for writing to me. As has been said, many of us do not know what it is like to be an adoptive parent or to take on kinship care; I certainly do not. Until a few months ago, I was unaware of the ASGSF and the vital provision it offers to families who have come forward to take on children. When considering the work provided by the ASGSF, we need to remember that we are talking about families, and because of that, a lot of what goes on is in private, behind closed doors and not very visible to the public. That is why so many hon. Members have come today from all parties to make the case for the ASGSF to be reinstated and properly funded. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson) for her work in pushing the urgent question that came the day after last year’s funding expired, which resulted in ASGSF funding being secured. Details of the changes to how the funding is allocated were released during recess, and I think we were all deeply dismayed by that. As other Members said, this money gives people the courage to offer to adopt and take on kinship children, and prevents adoption breakdowns every single day. There is a great deal of cross-party support for getting this right, which is why after this debate I am going to the Backbench Business Committee to put in a bid for a Back-Bench debate on this matter, because we share the same strength of feeling. I urge the Minister to come back with a better answer than the one that I suspect she will be able to give this afternoon, although I do not want to prejudge where she is going to go.