John Whitby

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Ms Barker. Years of austerity have stripped out much of the vital support that young families once received through—dare I say it?—Sure Start. The number of children in care has risen by 28%, the number of children in residential care homes has more than doubled, and 4 million children are living in poverty. I have been to many schools where teachers and staff bring in their own food; we know they are spending their own money to feed children in the school. It is against that backdrop that the Government are looking to pass the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill. Having been a foster carer for 25 years, a member of an adoption panel for a decade and the lead member of a tier 1 local authority, I recognise many of the problems that the Bill is trying to address and I fully support the Government’s determination to protect children. I will concentrate on just a few aspects of the Bill today. Rather than school staff having to put their hands in their pockets to feed children, we are rolling out free breakfast clubs. Of course, they will help with the cost of living by saving parents up to £450 a year and by ensuring that children get a good start to the day. Having visited a couple of our pilot schemes, I can also say that they seem to reduce the traffic chaos outside schools, as there is a steadier arrival of children at school throughout the morning. Over the coming years, local authorities will have to create more specialist places to address SEND pressures. At the moment, far too many children are being sent to high-cost private provision. The Bill enables local authorities to respond to this issue by being able—once again—to build new schools and run them themselves. As I have said already, the number of children in care has increased by nearly a third and the number of children living in residential care has more than doubled. The cost pressure of dealing with that has almost broken many local authorities, because there are nowhere near enough local authority places to accommodate such increases, so the majority of those children end up in high-cost residential placements. We know that excess profits have been made: in 2022, the largest 20 providers of children’s residential placements made over £300 million in profit, all off the back of the taxpayer. The Bill introduces financial oversight of the costs of residential care and independent fostering agencies. We must be assured that the state is not being ripped off. When those children—an increased number—have left residential care, they are going to need support. The Bill provides for the nationwide roll-out of the Staying Close programme, which increases the support for care leavers to find and stay in accommodation and get on a work-related path. I appreciate that some parents worry that creating a register of home educated children will interfere with their ability to choose how they educate their child. It is therefore important to stress that the overwhelming majority of parents who home school do so with the best interests of the child at heart: there are children who currently cannot cope in a school environment; there are children who want to be in school, but there is currently no school that can meet their needs; and there are parents who simply feel that educating at home is in the child’s best interests.