Bill Esterson
MP for Sefton Central · Labour · United Kingdom
“As the Prime Minister said on Tuesday, our energy supply and our energy security are not a question of having either oil and gas, or renewables; they are about both. It is a great pity that proper process was not followed in 2022 or 2023. [ Interruption.”
“I warmly welcome my right hon. Friend’s commitment to continuing Britain’s global leadership on climate action, including by going to COP31. I also welcome his focus on breathing space for people and businesses, but, as he said, it will take a lot more than that to deliver the growth and reindustrialisation that he is so committed to.”
“Last week the Committee heard from Claire Dykta, the director of strategy and policy at NESO, who told us: “Operational decisions are taken by authorised, trained personnel only.” Her comments were confirmed by Alastair Martin, the chief strategy officer at Flexitricity, who, in the same session, said: “I do not think the idea that the he…”
“As the Minister has just said, new nuclear is essential for energy security. It is also essential as an alternative career for workers in oil and gas.”
“Paul and Susan Robinson each worked for the Health and Safety Executive for more than 40 years. They have not been able to plan for their retirement since finishing work last year; they have been living off their savings and the small loan that they have had. They are typical of the dozens of constituents who have contacted me.”
“Hudson primary school in my constituency does a brilliant job. It is a family hub, it specialises in support for children with SEND and autism, and it has a nursery, but its building, which is 80 years old, suffers from a high water table that brings damp, mould and structural problems for the building—as does occasional flooding.”
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“Q 7 The relevant clause in the Bill talks only about adoption, but there other forms of permanence. In fact, for most children in care, the other forms of permanence are where they end up. Do you have concerns that the measure will exacerbate an existing gap in the quality—or perceived quality, at least—of adoption and fostering, residential care and kinship care? Sir Martin Narey: I do not take that view. I think the Government, certainly encouraged by me in my role of the past few years, are encouraging adoption because adoption happens to be the disposal that has been in such long-term decline. I am puzzled when people talk about the emphasis being given to adoption, as opposed to other disposals. The number of special guardianships, from a zero start in 2006, has now caught up with adoption.”
“That is where our attention should sit, but the Bill focuses on seeking to accelerate and accentuate a direction of travel to ensure the maximum benefit for children for whom adoption is the right plan. I commend to you a further focus and emphasis on the benefits of concurrent planning and foster-to-adopt approaches—particularly concurrent planning, which offers a fully fair, appropriate and transparent way to foreground children’s need for attachment, while allowing all proper support and opportunities for birth parents to demonstrate their capability to change.”
“It is an exemplar of when the care system works correctly for children for whom the risks are so great that the decision has been taken, by due process, that they need to be placed in a new, loving family. We need to guard against putting up different forms of solution for children as if they are somehow in conflict with one another. We need to aspire to ensure that the appropriate decision making is in the timescale of the child, and that children’s need for continuity of relationships and attachments is foregrounded in all those decisions and in the actuality of practice. All too often, children from the care system report repeated changes in social worker and in placement.”
“Q 8 Before I come to Dr Homden and Annie Crombie, is there anything in the Bill that will help children who are placed through other forms of permanence? Sir Martin Narey: There is nothing in the Bill that will do that. I believe, however, that the emphasis on adoption has had significant advantages for other forms of placement. The emphasis on responding to neglect means that the Government have done other things to make long-term fostering easier—the development of and financial investment in special guardianship. A lot more has happened in dealing with neglect and adoption, but adoption is still not meeting the role it could play in responding to neglect. Carol Homden: I agree with that. Adoption is not in conflict with other forms of permanence.”
“of adoption placements in Cambridgeshire were made through concurrent planning last year, with significant benefits for the timeliness and for those children’s attachments.”
“Q 9 As far as you are concerned, will the Bill’s provisions help with the challenges you have outlined? Carol Homden: It certainly will. It is not possible for very small agencies, however noble their intent, to provide sufficient opportunities for concurrent planning, which is a specialist form—for example, within a very small social work team. Having a larger base of resilient social work will allow that kind of opportunity to become normalised for more children. For example, in the establishment of Coram Cambridgeshire Adoption—the first voluntary adoption agency into which Cambridgeshire County Council has delegated its adoption functions—we simultaneously introduced concurrent planning. Twenty-five per cent.”
“Many of the voluntary organisations that work in this area provide services across more than just adoption; some do not, some are very adoption-focused, but many do. It may well make sense to think more broadly than just adoption, but there is something about specialism here that is important, and which I think we all want to see developed in relation to some aspects of adoption.”
“If regional adoption agencies work well, it could allow agencies that really specialise, or develop specialist expertise—such as some that I represent—to offer their services in a much more structured way across a wider number of local authorities, rather than it being a question of an individual relationship or a happy coming-together in the margins of a conference with a local authority making an arrangement with a particular voluntary adoption agency that has a specialism in a particular type of work. We could see those sorts of services being made available in a more systematised and structured way, which would benefit more children. To come to the earlier point that you made, I welcome the way that the Government document published to support this opens the door to arrangements that go wider than adoption.”
“Q 10 Will the Bill help with children who are sometimes regarded as hard to place—sibling groups or children with disabilities, for example? Carol Homden: In my view, absolutely; definitely. Those are the circumstances in which the principle that Annie indicated—the principle of having the widest possible range of adopters and specialist services available to provide the necessary ongoing, reliable and consistent post-adoption support—is more likely to be resiliently achieved within a larger grouping of agencies that have a common purpose. Annie Crombie: I agree with much of that. The point about scale and the specialism of adoption services is important.”
“That is not necessarily true in all cases, but I think the possibility that there may be a group of agencies doing everything that you would hope that they would be doing should be looked at. There should be something that would help local authorities and agencies to know if they are doing as well as expected.”
“Q 24 You said earlier that you wanted to clarify what the problems are that the Bill is addressing. You mentioned issues around children with complex needs; is that the primary one or are there others? Andy Leary - May: Not defined by who it is trying to help, necessarily, but I think it would be helpful if, rather than looking at the number of adoptions, for example, there were measures looking at the outcomes for the children, if at all possible, and some measure of how agencies may already be collaborating together. We did a quick survey last week of the adoption social workers using our system, and by far the majority of them commented that they felt that they were already collaborating as well as they possibly could.”
“We know that the outcomes for those children are better than if they stay elsewhere.”
“We have seen over the past 12 months or so, a significant decline in the number of children coming into the adoption system and a big increase in younger children going to special guardianship. That informs us that we are working in an environment where pathways towards permanence can be unpredictable. We have seen significant changes recently, and I think that if we had put a lot of effort into setting up regional arrangements just around adoption, we would be missing a trick. My view is that the opportunity is there at a local level to broaden this out. That would be the right thing to do. I also think that it is right to continue to improve the adoption system. As you heard from Sir Martin Narey, adoption can do things that other forms of permanence cannot in providing total long-term security and continuity for children.”
“It should not be a competition between them as to which gets the focus; not to address the same kinds of issues that exist within fostering would miss a very large part of the picture. Hugh Thornbery: The Bill itself does not tackle any issues beyond changing the infrastructure that delivers adoption. Very helpfully, and I think this has been a development in terms of Government thinking, the discussion paper, which is what we are hoping will initiate a bottom-up-led approach to this, talks about the potential to move beyond the narrow confines of adoption and think more broadly about permanence. If local areas, in thinking about taking a regional approach, were to exclude too early the broadening out to other forms of permanence, that would be a real mistake.”
“Q 25 Okay. In the last session, I think we heard the suggestion that the Bill will help with other forms of permanence, so even though it concentrates just on adoption, it will help with fostering, residential care and kinship care. Do you both agree? Andy Leary - May: For me, not to the extent that I think it could. There are still issues in adoption with children finding the most suitable placements, and they are barriers that will probably not be solved by increasing the scale of agencies. Whatever barriers and organisational issues there are within adoption, the same issues are within fostering, and to a much greater extent and affecting far more children. I do not think that we should look at one or the other.”
“For those local authorities, if they are required to form an adoption service jointly with others, that may create a separation.”
“Q 26 Do you think the Bill helps with or hinders other forms of permanence? Hugh Thornbery: Looking at the legislation, I think it forces people to think about adoption, but it does not necessarily hinder the development of a broader approach to permanence. I say elsewhere that the Government are encouraging that in the paper they produced. It is quite difficult to think about how the same degree of direction as is contained within the clauses of the Bill could be applied to wider permanence. I think it is easier to focus that direction on a document. Whether that is the right thing or not is questionable. Andy Leary - May: Could I add that local authorities that have decided to treat permanence holistically have already created permanence teams?”
“Far too little support is given post the permanency placement order, whichever order that happens to be.”
“It is important that we raise awareness but are also equipped to support those more complex children over a longer period of time. Andy Elvin: I would echo that point about support. It is not just about recruiting carers; it is about keeping them. That is with foster-carers, doctors and those family members taking children on special guardianship. Far too often the support is not there—it is not there in a timely manner, it is not there in a non-judgmental manner—and that is what we need to get right. Our job is to support the placement. Sometimes the mistake is made of thinking that the child protection task is the main task. That is 10% of the work; 90% of the work is helping that child to recover from trauma and go on to have a successful adult life.”
“In terms of bringing more people forward, the education challenge is about which children actually need placements, in comparison with where someone’s starting point might be in terms of the type of family they thought they were going to be. That is the bigger challenge for adoption agencies and fostering agencies in managing the longer-term outcomes for those children. That stage becomes more of a challenge. Alison O'Sullivan: It is important to help prospective adopters to have in view the kinds of support that are available. On the one hand, we should be being more direct about the sorts of needs that children requiring adoption may have. But in the same breath we need to be able to say, “And this is the kind of help that you could reasonably expect,” which will include financial support in some circumstances.”
“Q 34 May I pick up on the point you were just making? What needs to happen to get more people to come forward as either adopters or foster-carers? Are there issues around education, awareness and being much more honest with people, or is something else needed to increase the number of people available? Anna Sharkey: It is interesting that we have had an increase. There is the recruitment activity, which was very definitely promoted. First4Adoption was very involved in that—the education and highlighting options for people. The fact that a very different cohort of people is coming forward as potential adopters and foster carers has been significant.”
“If that is something that is coming through, then the adoption support fund is significant and the different sorts of services that are available through it are important. That is what we need to be supporting—including how it is assessed at an early stage. Alison O'Sullivan: I think that it is important that universal services are tuned into the needs of adoptive children and adoptive families. Mention was made by previous witnesses of the importance of support in school; raising awareness in schools for all adoptive children is important. The virtual school headteacher may have a role, quite a complicated one, and some discussion will take place on how effective that might be, but mental health support for children and young people is critical. I am hopeful that the “Future in Mind” paper—”
“Some CAMH services are very good, some are very overstretched, but there are also other services that are available for children. The adoption support fund is a really important development and how that pans out over the next few months will be very significant, and how those assessments work. One of the things that the Bill talks about is the responsibility for undertaking those assessments of need for children. Those need to be done so that adopters feel that they are being listened to. Certainly one of the most important messages that came out of the recent research about violence by children against their adopters was that adopters felt at last that somebody believed them and that they were being listened to.”
“Q 35 You mention the trauma—would you comment on the state of mental health services and support from child and adolescent mental health services? Andy Elvin: The biggest complaint that we get from our foster carers, the No. 1 complaint, is the lack of support from CAMHS and from other related physical health services—late assessments, long waiting lists, lack of support in an appropriate manner, lack of support in their postcode or their region—that is usually the No. 1 complaint. No. 2 is generally poor information given by the placing authority, which does not flag up some of the issues that they find they are dealing with in their home 24/7. Anna Sharkey: I would say that it is varied. We place children all over the country and it is different depending on where they are.”
“A school’s ability to represent and defend itself is not particularly enshrined within the regulations. School leaders will be wondering, “It’s all very well having the challenge, but do I have the chance to make my case or will I be rushed through a change?” I would look at strengthening those aspects, if possible.”
“Rather than the default assumption being that you will sack the headteacher and academise the school, it is now proposed—at least as written—that you will look for a credible plan of improvement within the school and look to partner the school with other good local schools or national leaders of education. Only then will you move down into forced academisation. I am not sure that that message has reached many school leaders yet. If it does, that might reassure some of the people working in these coasting and challenging schools. At the same time, some of the checks and balances have been removed or are proposed to be removed. The regional schools commissioners now have a great deal of discretion in determining whether the plan of improvement is credible and who the school should be paired up with.”
“Q 52 If having a good headteacher is the best indicator of success in a school, what would you like to see in the legislation to increase the numbers of good headteachers? Russell Hobby: We have taken the first step, which is to move away from vague generalisations of what a coasting school is to start to define what coasting schools are. One of the risks was that a lot of schools were looking over their shoulders, wondering whether they were coasting and, therefore, a lot of people were thinking, “That’s not the sort of school that I would want to go and work in” if there were extra pressures arising. In favour of the legislation and the regulations being provided, although I have my concerns around the definition, we have now got a more graduated response to those schools that are judged as coasting.”
“I am sure that businesses will tell the Minister on Twitter what they told Ernst and Young, which is that the number of regulations has gone up, not down, under this Government. Is not the reality that this Government are all talk and no action when it comes to getting rid of regulations?”
“Does the Minister agree that the best way for the Government to help councils to help homeless people is to ensure that councils can build more council houses?”
“For the avoidance of doubt, I should like to ask the Secretary of State a question about people who are already in work. Will he tell me whether cutting tax credits for people in work will help or harm the poorest children?”
“The Education Committee visited east London as part of its inquiry into the Olympic legacy for school sport in 2013, and we warned the Government then of the lack of legacy and the fall in participation in physical activity generally. In their response, the Government acknowledged that, yet we have still seen a failure. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is worrying for everyone in this country that the Government chose to ignore the advice they were given by the Committee and their own comments on that Committee’s report?”
“Does the Secretary of State’s apparent commitment to access to justice for everybody in this country mean that he will reverse the cuts made by the previous Government to that very same access to justice?”
“Since 2010 there has been a big fall in the number of apprenticeships in technical sectors, including IT and construction. Does the Secretary of State accept that if his Department is serious about addressing the need for high-paid jobs in this country, he has to do a lot more about young people’s skills?”
“It is. I think it was remarkable that the Secretary of State would not give way to my Front-Bench colleague. Adoption is the right outcome for only a relatively small number of children who end up in care. Although the measures in the Bill on adoption are undoubtedly welcome, will the Secretary of State acknowledge that, for more than 90% of those children, fostering, residential care or kinship care is the right option? The Bill says nothing about that, which raises concern that adoption is being considered the gold standard, when it should actually be only one of a range of options, which should be considered in full.”
“My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I commend him for that. He has drawn attention to the fact that, in the report, it is very clear that the Labour academies were a success—the evidence has been taken over a long enough period to make that judgment. We should rightly praise the previous Labour Government for their intervention and their selective use of academies as a school improvement measure. We took evidence from the Charter School movement that suggested that only a small number of schools should convert at a time. Does he agree that one fundamental problem is that the Government have tried to change too many things at once within the education system and have converted too many academies?”
“What is happening in the world of education to deliver great teachers? The education element of the Bill looks at making academisation easier, but it has nothing to say on the quality of teaching. That is a great pity. It has been suggested by many that the Government want all schools to become academies. Given that the term “coasting schools” is so broadly defined, it occurs to me to ask whether that is really what the Government are trying to do. By failing to define it, are they saying that they want all schools to become academies, without being quite so bold as to actually state that? If that is the intention, Ministers really ought to say so. Perhaps the Minister, in winding up, will confirm whether that is what he wants to do. From what he has said in the past, I think that is his intention.”
“Employers look to us to deliver an education system where young people can turn up at work and be ready to get going and to contribute, yet throughout the five years of the previous Parliament the Education Committee heard again and again from employers that far too often that is not happening. Young people are not coming out of school prepared for the world of work. Work experience is one example of where things have gone backwards in the past five years. The Select Committee produced a number of inquiries. On more than one occasion, it came up with evidence which has been mentioned by many Members: the most important factor in providing great education is the quality of teachers, in particular head teachers. That came up in the inquiry into great teachers, but was repeated again and again in the past five years.”
“A coasting school can be doing very well, but should be doing better, and the difficulty for Opposition Members is understanding exactly what is meant by “coasting”. Is the Secretary of State targeting schools that are already doing well but should be doing better, or is she looking at schools that are perhaps not doing so well by their children? The definition needs to be addressed in Committee. What should we be looking at today on Second Reading? I would hope that any proposed legislation on education would consider how education can deliver long-term prosperity and success for our young people and for our economy. Education is a critical factor, if not the critical factor, in determining how well young people are prepared for the wider world, in particular the world of work.”
“The hon. Member for Faversham and Mid Kent (Helen Whately) mentioned the freedoms that academies enjoy and, undoubtedly, the academies legislation provides for additional freedoms. But most of the freedoms that heads in academies have used could have been used when the school was maintained. That was the finding from the evidence that the Education Committee took. The legislation has not led to wholesale change in how such freedoms are used. Several hon. Members have talked about coasting schools, which is one of the issues of greatest contention in the Bill. The Education Committee looked at the issue of coasting schools, and we found that schools that were doing well—with a good or even an outstanding Ofsted grading—were not necessarily doing the best by their students.”
“On adoption, I mentioned earlier my disappointment with the relevant elements of the Bill, which, although there is nothing wrong with them per se, do not mention other forms of permanence for children. There is no mention of foster care, residential care or kinship placements. That is a missed opportunity. It leaves nagging doubts regarding the Government’s intentions for all children. As many as 75,000 children are in care at any one time. The Government have pulled the funding for the College of Social Work, which again leaves grave doubts about the future of the profession and its ability to support children, including those being put up for adoption. There are many questions to be answered, whether on adoption or education. I am sure we will probe them more deeply in Committee.”
“We would all say that, alongside having the very best teachers, school improvement should be a priority. The Labour programme of academies was an example of massive investment in school improvement, with many successes. The best example of school improvement over an extended period in recent years was undoubtedly the London Challenge. London schools went from being the basket case of schools in the country to being shining examples of success. That was based not on academisation, but on collaboration between teachers, institutions and local authorities. The Government, when they came into office, should have looked far more closely at the success of the London Challenge and spread it around the country, instead of being hellbent on the rapid expansion of an academy system that was not designed for the purpose it is now being used for.”
“My hon. Friend makes a very important point, which should concern us all. The Select Committee concluded that the Government should review the lessons of the rapid conversion of secondary schools to inform any future expansion. It highlighted the fact that a programme devised by Labour— as I said earlier, the Labour academies have been a great success according to the evidence presented to the Committee—for a small number of secondary schools was not necessarily appropriate for primary schools. The Government have completely failed to address that point. They acknowledged the point in their response to the Committee’s report, but did not have an answer. The international evidence suggests that the expansion of the academies programme was exceptionally fast and perhaps something we should be concerned about.”
“Like my hon. Friend, I am of course an avid reader of Tatler . The Select Committee found that schools in multi-academy trusts or chains did not have the autonomy they thought they would have, and that everything was controlled from the centre. The Government prided themselves on localism in the past five years, but if anything they reduced local accountability by removing councillors’ responsibility and involvement. Localism in its widest sense has been reduced because everything became even more centralised, either through people running multi-academy trusts, or because every one of those schools is controlled, ultimately, from the desk of the Secretary of State in Whitehall. The creation of just eight regional schools commissioners does not go very far, given that there are more than 4,000 academies—or 500 each. That is centralisation.”
“Does my hon. Friend agree that each young person needs to be offered the right opportunity, whether it be vocational or academic, and that it should be about whatever is right for the individual? Does he share my concern that, under the last Government, there was a big increase in apprenticeships for older people, but not for 16 to 19-year-olds, and does he agree that we must target that latter group if we are to address the skills issue highlighted by his proposal?”
“When the Conservative party came to power in 2010, work experience was a common feature of the work of secondary schools and that was supported by education business partnerships. The last Government removed work experience and cut the funding for EBPs. I urge the Secretary of State to reconsider the use of EBPs and to work in co-ordination with business to get work experience back into schools, because businesses value work experience and say that it prepares young people for the world of work. Taking forward the skills agenda must be a fundamental part of our efforts to address the productivity gap.”
“Since the crash, we have seen weak investment in new equipment; a lack of bank lending, despite the attempts of the Treasury to boost it—or perhaps because of those failed attempts; problems in infrastructure; and challenges and difficulties in respect of skills. All those factors have played a part in the low productivity and weak recovery that we have seen, alongside a fall in living standards, since the crash.”
“I think that business will take a rather different view if Conservative Members take us out of the EU, as some of them are hellbent on doing. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hertsmere (Oliver Dowden) and my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Brightside and Hillsborough (Harry Harpham) on their excellent maiden speeches, and you, Madam Deputy Speaker, on your election. This is the first time that I have served under your chairmanship. Government Members talk about the difficulties in oil and gas as though they are the only reason for the low productivity in our economy, but they are not the only cause.”
“That is an excellent point. The uncertainty for business, which has contributed to a lack of investment and the other problems that I have touched on, is not helped by the treatment of small and medium-sized businesses by some larger businesses in the supply chain.”
“Employee performance is linked to how well people are looked after. Yes, remuneration is important, but often it is the motivation, the way they are treated and the way that management behaves that are critical. [ Interruption. ] My hon. Friend the Member for Blaydon (Mr Anderson) behind me uses the right word: respect. That is absolutely crucial. If we want to improve productivity and compete internationally, we have to look at management as a skill, along with all the other factors that hon. Members have mentioned.”
“We just do not regard management and leadership in this country as high-quality roles. We do not treat them with the importance they deserve. There is not an automatic understanding that management and leadership are skills in their own right, and that leads to a number of problems. We need to regard them far more highly. Before I came to this place five years ago, I worked in training and development and went into a lot of large organisations. Typically, the problem was with middle-ranking management—or that was the analysis given by senior managers. We often discovered that in fact the real difficulty lay with the senior management and leadership as well. That is a real problem. The importance of having good management and good leadership should not be understated in any discussion of productivity.”