Alistair Strathern
MP for Hitchin · Labour · United Kingdom
“I think the Conservatives are being slightly cheeky in skirting the fact that the plans we inherited from them would have seen a huge cliff-edge increase in business rates. The many financial pressures that we have had to juggle since coming into government have meant that it has been challenging to balance things.”
“I am grateful for the protestations from the Front Bench. Those jobs were also crucial in starting to form my politics. In both settings, I was incredibly lucky to work with some fantastic colleagues.”
“I am very proud to have supported the Government’s jobs guarantee, and of the wider work that we are doing to ensure that employers in my community and right across the country are practically and financially incentivised to bring young people into the world of work and supported to train them up, so that those young people can benefit fr…”
“That is why, many years down the line, I am proud to be part of a Labour Government who are delivering a record expansion of workplace rights through the Employment Rights Act 2025, and why the fundamental vision of protecting workers and ensuring a minimum social contract for those working hard for their families and doing right by their…”
“Maybe it is because, much as they like to complain about the implications of our policies, they begrudgingly recognise that in the incredibly difficult circumstances that we inherited, both those choices may well have been right. I look forward to a Conservative Member proving me wrong.”
“It reflected how they felt in their communities, and how they felt they were treated at school. Putting that right requires a continued focus on curriculum reform and place-based investment, but I would like the Government to go further in embracing the recommendations of the recent review on white working-class underachievement at school…”
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“Right across the towns and villages I represent, people have seen, as the rural policing presence has declined, predictable increases in shoplifting, antisocial behaviour, farm break-ins and fly-tipping. We cannot allow that to be tolerated. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that my local police have the resources and powers they need to take those crimes seriously?”
“But just as every parent has the right and responsibility to do what is right for their child, we all have the right and responsibility to ensure that no child can be left vulnerable and fall between the cracks. This Bill does that, and I am incredibly proud to be standing with colleagues and supporting a measure that I know so many of us have called for in a variety of roles over the last decade.”
“If we read those serious case reviews and stories of what can happen to some of the most vulnerable young people when they are allowed to fall off the radar and to slip through the net, and when they are left open to exploitation and abuse by some of the most evil people in our society, we can be under no illusions as to why this measure is so important. I absolutely understand why, at first reading, those who home-school might have some concerns about it, but this is absolutely not an attack on home-schooling. The right to home-school is important, certainly at a time when inclusion and support in schools is far from what it should be for children with some of the highest needs, and it is important that that is protected.”
“No one should tolerate children starting school without the food they need to learn and to be ready for their school day, and I am glad that this Government certainly will not do so. Today, however, I want to focus on some of the measures relating to keeping some of the most vulnerable children in society safe and ensuring that they have the support they need. I am particularly pleased to see clause 24, which places on local authorities an obligation to have a register and visibility of every child off the school roll. As a former local authority lead, I know that reading serious case reviews is an important part of preparation for any role, and certainly for that one.”
“I thank those on the Front Bench for the speed with which they have brought forward the Bill so early in the parliamentary term. As a former teacher and a local authority children’s lead, I know how important so many of the measures are—an importance matched only by how overdue so many of them are too—which is why it is such a shame to see others seeking to turn the debate into a political sideshow, when it should really be an opportunity for the House to come together behind some powerful and important safeguarding measures. As a teacher who saw at first hand the importance of breakfast clubs for delivering the best start to a school day for young people, and as a local authority leader who worked to expand them, I am really excited to see that clause 21 brings forward Labour’s commitment to ensure that no child starts school hungry.”
“Today is about action and doing what is right for some of the most vulnerable young people in our society. It is about bringing forward measures that could have come before this House a long time ago, but it has taken this Government, this Minister and this Education Secretary to finally show leadership. I am incredibly proud to be supporting them today, and I am very happy to be standing on this side of the argument in the Chamber.”
“Alongside that, the important measure to cut down on some of the unnecessary costs in the system—whether they are due to hiring agency workers or to excessive profiteering by children’s homes—has to be welcomed too. We must make sure that every penny of the money we rightly spend on children’s services can go towards protecting and looking after vulnerable young people. There is so much else to welcome in this Bill, which I am sure a great many colleagues will touch on. There is definitely more to do, from tackling the crisis that we inherited in SEND provision to making sure that we have the foster carers we need to support our young people. There will be more important work for this Government to do, and I have absolutely no doubt that my Front-Bench colleagues will show great leadership on those issues over the months to come.”
“Along with many Labour colleagues and Opposition Members who have campaigned on behalf of kinship carers many times in my quite short parliamentary career, I am glad to see the important recognition of their role in this process. Kinship carers step up for vulnerable young people in their care, and it cannot be right that so many of them are prevented from supporting young people in their care by a rigid and bureaucratic care system. No kinship carer should have to sign up and become a foster carer just to look after a young person. When they have to do so, it is clear that the system is doing too little to enable what is right. That is why it is so important that the measures in this Bill recognise the importance of kinship care, start to codify it and bring in a local offer, which is welcome.”
“If done well, family group decision-making conferences make sure that there is a constellation of family involvement early in a child’s case, potentially keeping them out of the care system and making sure that all the people who can exert a positive influence on that child’s life can be brought into the process as early as possible. This is a really welcome step forward that could be transformative for the care system. Again, I look forward to working with colleagues from right across the House to make sure that we can implement this measure in the most effective way possible, working with local authorities to deliver all the benefits that family group conferences, if done well, have been shown to have.”
“I welcome the Secretary of State’s leadership, which has ensured that we have moved at pace, and I look forward to continuing to work with her and with organisations that speak on behalf of care leavers right across the country, to ensure that the Bill’s measures are implemented in the most effective and robust way possible. Those in our care would expect nothing less, and I am sure that all of us across the House will make sure that we hold ourselves to a high standard. Alongside that, it is pretty clear and fair to say that, for far too long, the care system has not recognised the value and importance of wider family networks in delivering the best possible outcomes for vulnerable young people. That is why clause 1, which brings forward the requirement for family group decision making, could be such a powerful tool.”
“Alongside that, I think colleagues across the House recognise the fact that, for far too long, children’s social care has not been doing right by some of the most vulnerable people in our society. At great cost, the system is delivering really poor outcomes for vulnerable young people. It is not providing the love and support that they need, and that love and support does not last anywhere near long enough into their adult life. No parent would expect their responsibilities to end when their child turns 18. I would not tolerate that for my child, and I am sure no one in this Chamber would, yet as a society we all too often do so for those who are in our care. That is why the Bill’s requirements around staying put, and around making sure that we have a published care leaver offer, will be so important.”
“I thank the right hon. Gentleman for one of his many interventions today. I am not sure I heard an apology for the state in which SEND provision was left by the previous Government, but I absolutely recognise the point that I think he is trying to make. If he reads the Bill, however, he will see a lot of assurances. In choosing to set the threshold as high as a section 47 assessment—a child protection assessment under the Children Act 1989—we have been incredibly cautious about where we have drawn the line. Some outside this House might even say we have been too cautious about where we have drawn the line, but it recognises the important balance that has to be struck here, for exactly the reason that the right hon. Gentleman alludes to.”
“My hon. Friend is making a powerful case for the importance of regenerating our high streets with a new modern vision for their success. Does he agree that, for them to be successful, they must be seen to be safe? That is why it is so important that this Government do not tolerate, as the last Government did, a rise in antisocial behaviour and retail crime. A strong neighbourhood policing presence is required to assure residents that our high streets really are there for them, safely, when they need them.”
“I really welcome this Government’s focus on making sure everyone can see a GP when they need one. The crisis in GP provision nationally has been exacerbated by the failure under the last Government to ensure that primary care investment has kept pace with housing growth. With such a low share of integrated care board capital funding allocated to primary care by the last Government, how can we make sure we do much better in ensuring that GP capacity expands at the same time as local growth?”
“It certainly has not been an easy first six months, but I am incredibly proud to be part of a party that is facing up to those difficult choices and that remains resolute in its resolve to deliver for people and show them, choice by choice and decision by decision, that things can get better again. We will be doing everything we can to ensure that they do.”
“I have no doubt that we will make some mistakes along the way—I certainly will—but I hope that in five years’ time, or whenever the next election is called, I will be able to go back to our electorate, talk to them about the changes we have been able to make, and show them the difference that a Labour Government have made to the health service and to the incomes of working people by designing and delivering an economy that is truly working for our communities again. For far too long, we have accepted a managed decline and a broken political settlement in this country. I have no doubt that it is not going to be easy.”
“We could not continue to tolerate a situation in which too many of my constituents were waiting too long to see a doctor, too many young people in my constituency with additional needs were waiting too long to have them met, and far too many of the very basic things for which every citizen should be able to count on their Government—border security, fixed roads, a functioning economy—simply were not happening. I am under no illusion: I know that those choices brought with them some pain. It is for us, over the next five years, to work closely with our communities to show them that those choices have been worthwhile and show them that we are using that money to good end, delivering on the things that they elected us to change. Over the next five years, that is my mission, and that is the mission of everyone on the Government Benches.”
“However difficult it is, I am glad to have the privilege of being in a party that now has to wrestle with the tough choices. We need to rebuild faith with and start fixing things for our constituents. I am glad that we are not shying away from that. It would have been easy to will away the black hole, will away the scale of the problems and introduce a Budget and reforms that tinkered around the edges of the challenges. We are not doing that. There is no doubt that this Budget was a big Budget. It was a big Budget because we needed to make some big choices. They were not easy—if they were, even the last party might have been able to make them—but we faced up to them.”
“And yes, public finances were in an even worse situation, with a black hole that was growing, as was verified by the Treasury, the Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Office for Budget Responsibility, and that would only get worse without robust action. I am as angry about those stories as anyone. I completely understand why those are frustrating things to hear. I am frustrated, and I know my colleagues are, but we would have done a disservice to our country and our constituents if we had not faced up to them and the tough choices that we had to inherit. Only the right hon. Member for Richmond and Northallerton (Rishi Sunak) knows why he called an early election, but given our inheritance, it is pretty clear that it was not because he thought that things could only get better.”
“Throughout the election period, we were under no illusions about the fact that we would be inheriting challenging circumstances, but no one could have predicted the depth of the challenges that we would inherit, with public services way beyond breaking point, far further than imagined, with prisons closer to overflowing and with our health service even more on its knees. The NHS had to advise our incoming Health Secretary that, far from expanding appointments, we should be cutting them—at a point when we had record waiting lists. It was an unacceptable inheritance, far beyond what we had been led to believe we would be picking up.”
“Throughout the election, I heard some truly heartbreaking stories of people whose health had been allowed to deteriorate to breaking point by a health service that was no longer there for them when they needed it; of families whose lives had been squeezed and narrowed beyond all recognition by cost of living pressures that were simply not of their making; and of far too many people who had lost faith in the basic ability of the state to do the simple things right—keeping our borders secure, fixing our roads and showing people that politics can be a force for good. Against that backdrop, being elected again in this fragile time for the party of Government is a deep responsibility that I and my colleagues on the Government Benches take incredibly seriously.”
“I am sure that there is a great deal that he and I would disagree about, and I am sure that that will be as true in five years’ time as it is now, but we probably both agree that for far too long, far too many politicians have taken our electorate for granted and have let people down. That is something that none of us, whatever political party we represent, should allow to continue. Although this is not the first time that I have been elected to serve my community, it feels like the stakes could not be higher.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship again, Mrs Harris, and a real privilege to serve as MP for my constituency. Over six months ago, I had the privilege of being elected again to represent the towns and villages where I live. There is no greater privilege than being an MP and getting to champion the representation and the change that politics, when done right, can deliver. In that spirit, I would like to thank the petition organiser and all those who engaged with the petition in good faith, as I am sure he and many of those here today did, for bringing this matter to our attention and for instilling the level of interest that this debate has doubtless generated outside this place.”
“I wish you, Mr Speaker, and the fantastic staff across the estate a happy Christmas. I thank the Minister for the way in which she and her team have listened to me and colleagues, who arrived in this place with real concern about the state of palliative care after years of under-investment by the previous Government. The funding announced today will be welcomed by Keech hospice and Garden House hospice, which provide fantastic palliative care for constituents in and around my area. Will she join me in thanking them for the fantastic work that their staff and volunteers do all year round to support people in incredibly difficult moments in their lives? Will she also assure them that palliative care will remain at the front and centre of the Government’s mind in the difficult work of getting health services working again?”
“Happy Christmas to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, and your team. Hitchin’s fantastic festive knitted postbox topper campaign by Sue, Karen and other brilliant local volunteers has raised thousands of pounds for Hitchin Choices, a local special educational needs and disabilities youth group. I had the pleasure of visiting the group last week and, while there, I quickly learned that I need to practise my ping-pong skills a lot more before going back. It was clear how valued the group was by the young people who attended. Will the Leader of the House join me in urging people to back this campaign, and can we have a statement from the Secretary of State about what more we can do to support such youth groups as part of our wider SEND reforms?”
“Recent damning statistics highlighted that just 2% of parents made use of shared parental leave in the past year, with uptake skewed towards the highest earners. Given the importance of breaking down barriers to equal parenting for employment, will the Minister ensure that he works with the Department for Business and Trade as part of the upcoming review to ensure that enhanced parental leave is considered, including strengthening paternity leave entitlements?”
“My hon. Friend is making a compelling case, not just for the national security implications of critical minerals, but for the welcome huge economic benefits. Given that, does he welcome the Government’s commitment to bring forward a new strategy for critical minerals security? Does he agree that that would bring benefits, not just for the regions blessed with the minerals in natural supply, but for companies such as Panther Metals in my constituency, which will be able to deliver a big part of the national supply chain in future?”
“That has created difficult choices for the authorities and heartbreaking realities for families and young people, who are travelling too far at too great a cost to access the schools they need. Some are being shut out of the transport support that they need due to their age. I welcome this debate and the possible reforms to the statutory framework. I look forward to working with colleagues right across the House to ensure that we bring about the holistic reform the area desperately needs.”
“I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock (Jen Craft) for securing this debate and for her tireless work campaigning of this issue. It is really encouraging to be joined by so many colleagues from across the House to speak about issues relating to SEND. I rise to highlight some of the shocking stories that families locally have shared with me about the challenges and pressures that special educational needs and home-to-school transport are causing for them in their day-to-day lives. It cannot be right that so many are not getting the support they need, whether they sit in or outside the statutory framework, as my hon. Friend the Member for Thurrock highlighted. In Central Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire, the rural context has been exacerbated by both authorities’ failure to appropriately place-plan at a local level.”
“I deeply appreciate the respectful way in which the hon. Gentleman is making his point, but I stand before him not sure of how any colleague in this Chamber cannot have doubts whichever way they are voting today. It feels like there are two necessary harms that we are all forced to weigh up. If the hon. Gentleman is so certain that doubt should push people one way, I am deeply intrigued to hear why that is, when it is very clear that many people will continue to suffer unnecessarily if we reject this Bill.”
“The theme of this year’s White Ribbon Day is, “It starts with men”. Does the Minister agree that it is incumbent on us all, especially men, to play our part in stamping out violence against women and girls wherever we find it? How is she working with the Executive in Northern Ireland to deliver on our shared mission and do exactly that?”
“My hon. Friend is powerfully illustrating the responsibility on all of us to step up to the needs of this moment. Parents in my constituency—at schools including William Ransom and Samuel Lucas—have been leading the way in taking further proactive action, signing up to a smartphone-free pledge to delay the age at which their young people have access to smartphones. Hundreds across the constituency have already signed up to the pledge. Does my hon. Friend agree that that underlines the strength of parental feeling on online safety and some of the wider associated issues, and that it highlights our responsibility to legislate—not just to celebrate the benefits of technology, but to do all we can to protect young people from the very real dangers it presents, too?”
“I welcome the Secretary of State’s statement and the leadership that this Government showed at COP29, recognising that with the global transition under way, the economic benefits will accrue to those who lead and shape it, rather than shy away from it and remain all too passive in the face of the economic forces that it heralds. Can the Secretary of State set out how we will ensure that we capture those benefits domestically and show the necessary leadership to drive investment, growth and opportunity to every part of the UK, so that we have a coherent economic strategy that touches every part of our nation?”
“Rural communities in towns and villages such as Holwell in my constituency, which I visited last week, often depend on buses for their day-to-day life and for getting their children to school, but all too often the reliability of these services makes it increasingly hard for families to depend on them. What new powers and funding will this Government be giving transport authorities, such as Hertfordshire and Central Bedfordshire, to ensure that they can get buses for my community back on track?”
“Residents in Shefford are fed up with the dire pothole-ridden state of Old Bridge Way. A public highway in all but legal reality, this unadopted road is now ownerless after the previous private owner transferred it to a new company that was promptly liquidated, thereby side-stepping any repair obligations. I understand that this may not be the most glamourous backdrop to suggest a constituency visit. Instead, will the Leader of the House potentially back my campaign calling on Central Bedfordshire council to act on the road and can we have a statement from the Secretary of State for Transport on how local authorities can be supported to adopt roads in such crucial parts of the public highway?”
“For too long, far too many of my towns and villages have had to endure rising levels of antisocial behaviour, such as people riding unsafe bikes through village centres, and an epidemic of shoplifting, including at my local Morrisons, whose staff I met last month. I am working closely with our local police and crime commissioner, John Tizard, to push for a more robust police response. What reassurances can the Minister give my constituents that our new strategy will ensure that a far greater priority is given to such crimes, and that those crimes will not be tolerated, as they seem to have been far too often in the past?”
“One week after I was elected, Carol and Amanda pitched up at my surgery to ask what I had managed to do so far, and what I would be doing in the next week, to take their cause forward. It should have come as no surprise, then, that one month after my re-election—albeit in a slightly different constituency—they were beating down my door again. They did so because this is a cause that matters. Kinship carers do amazing work on behalf of the young people in their care right across the country. They step up at a moment of real trauma for a young person and ensure, through love, compassion and dedication, that everything possible is done to give that young person the stability, the common identity and the compassion they need to thrive.”
“As MPs, we get to meet, I think it is fair to say, quite a wide range of campaigners, all of whom are very powerful. I have to say that some are more convincing than others, but there can be no group more powerful or moving to work with than kinship carers. I was privileged, before I was even an MP, to be grabbed by Carol and Amanda, two kinship carers in the then constituency, to talk through some of the challenges they were facing. It was impossible not to be moved by their determination to do right by the young people in their care and young people in kinship care right across the country, so we stepped forward and agreed to work together. I was soon to find that kinship carers are, rightly, an incredibly tenacious group of campaigners.”
“I beg to move, That this House has considered Government support for kinship carers. It is, as always, a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Pritchard. I start by welcoming my hon. Friend the Minister to her place. It is a real pleasure to see her in this role. Not only does she bring experience as someone who has worked in children’s social care, but her compassion and drive to improve situations for young people right across the country will be a powerful motivator to ensure that we deliver the change we have committed to as a Government, and will benefit of kinship carers in my constituency and right across the country over the coming years. I am delighted to introduce my second debate on kinship care, having held one in the immediate aftermath of the last Government strategy earlier this year.”
“They were making sure, in those difficult moments, that the young people had the stability of place, the familiar face and the retention of their identity needed in order to be as resilient as possible in the face of more traumatic circumstances than many of us will ever have to comprehend or grapple with personally. It came as no surprise, then, that the independent review of children’s social care a few years ago remarked clearly that kinship carers deliver far better outcomes than many other parts of the care sector, but are often underserved by a care network that just is not set up to fully consider them, fully recognise their needs and fully embrace the role they can play in supporting young people through that really difficult moment.”
“I thank the hon. Member for making incredibly poignant remarks, as he always does in these debates. I think I have yet to attend a debate here where he has not brought something to the table, and I could not agree more that we need to be thinking about the breadth of support that kinship carers get. I hope to touch on some of those points later in my remarks. As a former councillor and lead for children’s services, I was also privileged to work closely with kinship carers and see at first hand the impact they could have in transforming the outcomes of the young people in their care.”
“Friend the Secretary of State for Education listening so attentively to one of the kinship carers, Poppy, talking through some of the challenges she faces and what she would like to change so that kinship carers and those in kinship care across the country are finally fully supported by the Government and their local authorities.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for that powerful intervention. It highlights the breadth of support we need to be considering for kinship carers—not just the pilots that have already been announced, but some of the wider training and therapeutic support needed to ensure that they are equipped to support the young people they are taking on caring responsibilities for. This debate comes at a critical time for kinship carers across the country. They are finally having their voice heard, and we as parliamentarians owe it to them to live up to the commitments we have made over the last few years. It was fantastic at a recent reception to hear my right hon.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his powerful intervention. It is important to recognise the urgency. We have inherited a situation in which one in eight kinship carers are worried that they might not be able to carry on their caring responsibility, while thousands of other young people across the country could be placed into productive, meaningful and nourishing kinship care placements but are currently denied that by our antiquated children’s social care system.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for his powerful point. He rightly highlights that financial support is a crucial part of the package that kinship carers need. I am really excited that the Government are finally bringing forward the £44 million needed to get on with the pilots. However, it is important that we do not just put an arm around kinship carers, but provide a wider range of therapeutic support and advice. Both financial and non-financial support will be crucial.”
“Absolutely. Since they took office, we have seen from the new Secretary of State, the Minister and the Government an urgency that, finally, is starting to meet the needs of the moment, and the needs of young people in kinship care and their carers. Whether it is making sure that we finally have a kinship care ambassador to actively champion the role of kinship carers and take to task local authorities that do not always provide the support they need, as some kinship carers in the room might be able to attest to; bringing forward statutory guidance and a framework to ensure that we have more in place to recognise the values of wider family networks in planning decisions for young people, and to do everything we can to remove the barriers to placing young people in kinship care; or—”
“Absolutely. The new kinship care ambassador and the guidance for local authorities that was brought out earlier this year will be important in delivering that, as will making sure that local authorities are held to account for delivering the local offer for kinship carers. This is an incredibly important issue, and whether a kinship carer and a young person get the support they need cannot be left to the luck of a postcode.”
“I completely agree with my hon. Friend, who, with typically great foresight, has alluded to one of the points I hope to touch on later in my speech.”
“As the independent review of children’s social care rightly laid out, we are presiding over a system that is not delivering good outcomes for young people and their wider family network, at great cost to the taxpayer. That cannot be allowed to continue. It is important to me and, I can see, to everyone in the Chamber today that kinship carers are a big part of how we put that right. We know that outcomes with kinship carers are better. We know that for every thousand people we place in kinship care, the taxpayer saves £40 million, and that that cohort, being better supported, will go on to earn up to £20 million more than if they had been placed in private social care. That is simple maths—a cold, hard, brutal underlining of the scale of the opportunity we are missing if we do not do right by kinship carers.”
“I absolutely echo those sentiments. It cannot be right that young people who have gone through exactly the same level of trauma or difficulties early in their life can get very different levels of support depending on the statutory context in which they are looked after. We must consider that as part of the wider reforms to social care. It would be fair to say that there is a consensus in the Chamber today that although there are exciting announcements coming from the Government on kinship care, there is a real desire to ensure that we do justice to kinship carers in thinking about how we can go further. I am really glad that in the Budget, the Government clearly set out the need to think about children’s social care reform more widely. It has been kicked down the road for too long.”