Josh MacAlister
MP for Whitehaven and Workington · Labour · United Kingdom
“Just this Saturday, as a constituency MP, I saw the amazing impact of Kells in bringing the community together, especially children. That community building comes down to great characters, such as Peter Smith at Kells or Vince and Lana at Derwent Park Rangers, who have all been getting into schools to teach rugby league for well over 20 y…”
“The changes that we are making will address the objectives that the hon. Member set out in his questions. In closing, I place on the record my thanks to teachers, volunteers, coaches, school leaders, local clubs and national governing bodies for the work they do every day to create sporting opportunities for young people across our countr…”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank the hon. Member for West Dorset (Edward Morello) for securing this important debate on rugby in schools. When I was asked to sub in for the Minister for School Standards in responding to this debate, I knew that it would not be trying.”
“That is exactly what we are trying to do with the school sport partnerships model. We recognise that despite the funding of recent years, participation in school sport has remained fairly flat; it is well below what we need as a country in order to have a healthy population of young people who benefit from all that sport has to offer.”
“We must ensure that girls in every community have access to high-quality rugby opportunities through curriculum PE, extracurricular activity and inclusive formats that allow them to build confidence, develop skills and enjoy being active.”
“Their contribution can help schools to achieve the right balance between participation and competition. We know that those are not competing priorities, as every child should have the opportunity to participate, develop competence and build confidence through the sport.”
The complete record
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“I am blushing, Madam Deputy Speaker—the right hon. Member is very generous. There are politicians on all sides of this House who come to this place with a good cause and dedicate huge amounts of time, often behind the camera and unseen, to making real and lasting change happen. There are more of us doing that on all sides of the House than we are sometimes given credit for.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for her question, and I am delighted to extend my congratulations to Councillor Ali and the whole team at Luton, which is one of the pathfinder local authorities for the Families First programme and the changes we are trying to make. As a result of that programme, local authorities are focusing more on earlier and intensive support for families, which is keeping more families safely together. It also means that we are able to act more sharply and decisively when there are child protection concerns—those two things need to go together.”
“However, the kinship zones programme, which includes the allowance pilot—it has been supported by colleagues in the Treasury to ensure that it does not impact on universal credit, and it is genuinely non-means-tested—means that we will have a good-quality impact evaluation to assess in seven different areas what impact that has overall on the flow of families. Sometimes that flow is rightly away from the fostering system—which puts children into care even though they are living with relatives—and keeps them in the right place, which is with the people who already love them, supported through an SGO or a kinship child arrangement order. I am hopeful of the findings from that evaluation. If they are positive, I will be doing everything I can to ensure that it gets support across Government.”
“I thank the right hon. Member for his question, and for giving me the job of doing the independent review of children’s social care in the first place; I would like to think he made a good decision, but time will tell. The problem is that at the moment, the provision of support with kinship care is very uneven across the country, and it is quite hard to tell the variation in the rates of support that are offered from place to place. The same is true for allowances and fees for foster carers, so there is something to be done about transparency in the existing system.”
“I point to the type of practice done by Lifelong Links, supported by the Family Rights Group, and others, as the core work that we should see the care and leaving care systems doing. It would mean, for want of a better phrase, a “Who Do You Think You Are?”-style process, as seen on TV. This process looks back through the whole history of that child’s experience with important adults, and then gets those people back into the young person’s life.”
“Blackpool faces some real challenges, and I thank all the practitioners on the ground and the council for contending a situation where they have some of the highest rates of children in care. Blackpool is also a destination for distance placements, because of property prices. It means that many children who are in care are sent to Blackpool, which adds additional pressures. I was lucky enough earlier this week to meet Poppie, Hannah, Mackenzie and Tia. Those young people have benefited from one of the Family Finding programmes that this Government have funded called Lifelong Links. It demonstrates what should be the core purpose of the system, rather than a pilot programme or an innovation sitting on the edge of the system.”
“I welcome it when councils create local offers, which includes the example that my hon. Friend mentions of council tax exemptions or discounts. It can also include support with public transport and making bus travel free. I welcome all of that. What we are saying with this new strategy is that although all of that is important, it is second order to the bigger issue that drives a lot of that vulnerability of debt, homelessness, tragically early deaths and completed suicides from young care-experienced adults, which is that sense that they do not have people in their life who love them. I am convinced that if we can get that bit right and make that the focus above all else, everything else will become easier, and the outcomes for this important community will get better.”
“My hon. Friend and neighbour is right to highlight the leadership of Councillor Emma Williamson, who is herself care-experienced. She has brought that experience to political office in a way that is making real change happen across Cumberland. One of the things I was proudest to attend as a Member of Parliament, and as the Minister for Children and Families, was the launch of the enrichment event in my constituency last year. It is what Emma refers to as the bank of mam and dad. It is a fund that Emma and the team at Cumberland have set up to create an account with money that can go to young people who have something happening in their life. It could be to buy them a vehicle or to put down a deposit on a house. It is about having that flexibility through family finances that many of us benefit from but take for granted.”
“When I looked at the differences in the care population around the UK in the review, it was striking that the strength of civil society in Northern Ireland was one of the reasons, perhaps—this is just an idea—why communities were better able to come together around those children who might be at risk of going into care.”
“That is a great question, because it gets to the heart of how the system behaves when it finds a parent who is perhaps struggling with a substance misuse problem, or is in a violent relationship, or has mental health needs and cannot continue to look after the child by themselves, but could be an important part of that child’s life for the foreseeable future, and when there are relatives saying, “We can help. We can be part of the solution. We do not need this child to go into the care system.” There needs to be a mechanism to fund those solutions, and that is what family network support packages do. The £2.4 billion that I referred to is available to fund those family network support packages. In the kinship zones, we are expecting much higher use of those FNSPs so that we can properly evaluate things.”
“We will need to make changes to some of the statutory guidance and regulation in order to free up social workers and PAs to be able to do that, but that is absolutely the right decision. On deprivation of liberty orders, we will look really closely at the Supreme Court judgment earlier this week, but we do not expect that it will have any material impact on the Home Again programme that we are looking to roll out this summer. Finally, I would be delighted to congratulate the fostering team in my hon. Friend’s local authority. I was inspired when I saw their videos.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for her questions. We are announcing today that the Family Finding programme will be extended and taken further, and the aim is to have it rolled out across the whole of England within the next two years. The procurement for that starts today, and it will be swift. We are looking to find an organisation that will not just support us to deliver a pilot or programme that sits alongside, or on top of, existing services—as has been done over the last few years—but work with local areas to embed in the core of how social workers and PAs are currently operating the features of those sorts of models, so that this becomes completely mainstream within the next two years. That is a bold goal, but we absolutely need to help shift the time and practice of social workers and PAs.”
“It will improve mental health and bring down the number of young care-experienced people who complete suicide, and it will mean that we are lucky enough as a country to have these brilliant young people celebrated and achieving.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for getting Harlow into his question. It is a really good question to end on, because I want young people in care, care leavers and care-experienced people in this country to know that we are now working towards a common goal that is supported across the House. We will ensure that they get people in their lives who love them—not lanyard-wearing professionals, who are important, but their own tribe. We need to get that right as a country, and I absolutely believe we can, because all the examples I have shared, and all the things in the strategy, are already happening across England. It is a case of spreading and mainstreaming them. If we can do that, it will completely transform outcomes—for example, for young people not in education, employment or training.”
“Part-time students can receive carer’s allowance if they meet the entitlement conditions. I recognise the issues for a number of students finishing school and in programmes of study that are more than 21 hours. That means that many young carers who are also full-time FE students cannot claim carer’s allowance as a result of the 21-hour rule. The Minister for Social Security and Disability has taken a strong interest in this issue, including by meeting with Carers Trust, Carers UK, and the Learning and Work Institute to discuss it, and I am happy to follow up with him after this debate. How we can best identify and support young carers to combine study with their caring responsibilities where they can, including taking account of changes in the education system, will be one of our priorities going forward for this group of young people.”
“For those going into higher education, we are providing adult dependants’ grants for carers, and new maintenance grants will be available for students from low-income households. Hon. Members have mentioned the Milburn review. I have had the chance to speak to Alan Milburn specifically about concerns to do with NEET rates for care-experienced young people. When I next have the opportunity to speak to him about his work, I will raise the importance of young carers, too. A number of hon. Members have mentioned carer’s allowance. I recognise the issues around the 21-hour rule, which I appreciate can be a source of genuine frustration for young carers and their families. It is a long-standing principle that the benefits system does not normally support full-time students; rather, they are supported by the educational maintenance system.”
“The Minister for Care chairs a regular cross-Government meeting with Ministers from the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department for Business and Trade and the Department for Education to consider how best to provide unpaid carers of all ages with the recognition and support they deserve. As has been mentioned, we are preparing a cross-Government action plan for unpaid carers, which will be published later this year. It will include action specifically to strengthen further support for young adult carers. We are also committed to providing bursaries for further education students aged 16 to 19 so that young carers can seek support for essential costs, such as books, equipment and travel, to help them stay in education.”
“I recognise that that piece of work has carried over between Governments; it is a good example of important work continuing regardless of party stance and despite the colour of the Government at any given moment. That evidence is driving change. For example, the new Ofsted education inspection framework introduced last November will put a direct focus on the needs of young carers. As Ofsted can be important as a motivating force for decisions by schools, although it has limitations at times, that also means that by putting it firmly in the framework, school leaders are attending to it in the way that is needed.”
“That is why the Government are actively working to ensure that changes under way across education and social care, which apply to many groups of young people, deliberately improve outcomes for young carers specifically—be that through better inclusion in education or a focus on better whole-family support and family help through changes to the children’s social care system. We are making progress. There were a number of references to the importance of data. We are shining a light on the educational disadvantage faced by young carers by publishing, for the first time, attainment data at both key stage 2 and key stage 4 last autumn.”
“The stories of young carers, including those I have heard as a Member of Parliament, are inspiring and bring to life the challenges they face when caring for loved ones, supporting themselves and their family financially, and accessing education and training, which is the focus of this debate. This Government offer a wide range of high-quality education and training opportunities for young people so that they can get on in life and get the skills they need for a chosen career. The Government’s mission is about breaking down barriers to opportunity, which applies particularly to groups such as young carers. However, we know that group often faces more difficulties and challenges in accessing such opportunities than their peers.”
“The sacrifices they make at such a young age can be immense. Earlier this year, my noble Friend the Minister for Skills met a group of young carers at the launch of the report on the barriers to education for young adult carers by the APPG led by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow. The Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Meriden and Solihull East (Saqib Bhatti), mentioned the role of the Minister for School Standards, who also has a lead responsibility for this. I reassure Members that the issue cuts across a number of portfolios in the Department and is an interest and focus for all of us. The APPG chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow is driving important work to support young carers across the country.”
“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mrs Harris. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Chris Vince) for securing this debate, the second Westminster Hall debate he has instigated. He continues to be a fantastic champion for these young people and does a brilliant job of putting the spotlight firmly where it should be in this place. I also recognise the contribution from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who did a wonderful job of explaining the reality of what it means to be a young adult carer or young carer using personal stories, which are often what move parliamentarians the most. I fully recognise the difficulties that young carers and young adult carers face. They make an often overlooked and misunderstood contribution supporting family members and friends.”
“They make an enormous contribution to the wellbeing of their families, their neighbourhoods, their communities and the country. They deserve to be championed, and to be assured that we will support them in return for their actions. However, the system needs to improve to meet the developing needs of children and young carers. They must be at the heart of our opportunity mission. I look forward to helping to progress some of these issues in the months and years ahead.”
“My hon. Friend the Member for Harlow will do a much better job of convincing people than anyone else in this room, so I will gladly make sure that he is the focus of attention in that conversation. It is very much my intention to follow up with the Minister for Social Security and Disability and ensure that a conversation takes place. I thank my hon. Friend for raising this important matter. He has his London marathon bib sat next to him, and mine has just been delivered—on a whole range of fronts, he is raising attention and money for good causes, including this weekend. For this, for his many years of campaigning, and for his work as a teacher, we all thank him. Young carers and young adult carers often put the needs of others before their own.”
“Following a 40% drop in apprenticeship starts over the previous decade, we are now seeing them rise for those under 25, and achievement rates are also up. We want an extra 50,000 young people to benefit from apprenticeships. That is why we are introducing new grants for small and medium-sized businesses to take on apprentices, and why we have introduced new foundation apprenticeships.”
“I agree with the hon. Member about the need for high-quality careers education in schools. The Labour Government are committed to ensuring that we bring back work experience for every young person, and we will be following the standards set out by other organisations to ensure that we get good-quality careers education and support the Careers and Enterprise Company. We do not need to set up this issue as a debate or a choice between higher education and technical further education. Both need attention, and there has been under-investment and a lack of support for apprenticeships—that we can agree on.”
“Education is a devolved matter, so the one thing I can do as a Minister in this Parliament is encourage people to vote for Scottish Labour and for Anas Sarwar to be the First Minister of Scotland. The hon. Member is right to highlight the absolutely shameful record of the Scottish National party on education, not only in its approach to the curriculum, teacher training and standards, but in withdrawing from PISA—the programme for international student assessment. The lack of progress that has been made on education north of the border is shocking. This Government are taking bold steps with SMEs to ensure that we create routes to apprenticeships for 50,000 more young people.”
“This Government made changes to the apprenticeship levy and have introduced the growth and skills levy to focus the apprenticeship system where it should be focused. Most Members across the House would agree that with the apprenticeship levy—now the growth and skills levy—we needed originally to create routes for those who were not able to go to university to achieve level 4 and above qualifications. That is where this Government are focusing our attention and we will not apologise for that, because those are the young people who are missing out on opportunities at the moment and need an apprenticeship system that is focused on them.”
“As someone who represents a constituency with one of the highest proportions of young people not going to university and going through apprenticeship or technical routes, I recognise the Chair of the Education Committee’s description of the complexity of the system of applications and the timing issues. I am happy to speak to her and ensure that there is a proper dialogue between the Committee and the Department on that issue.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for making such an important point. There are a few ways to address this question. Too many of our coastal areas do not have the school standards in place to enable children to make the progress needed to access those opportunities. We need to ensure that there are real routes for young people to get into work opportunities, which is why the new deal that this Government are setting out will give a £2,000 grant for small and medium-sized enterprises taking on 16 to 24-year-olds who are new to work. There will be a new £3,000 youth jobs guarantee for hiring apprentices aged 18 to 24 who have been out of work and on universal credit for six months, and we are fully funding apprenticeship training in SMEs for young people.”
“I congratulate my hon. Friend on her efforts in campaigning for that technical excellence college. We announced 19 TECs last week, and our package of measures to create another 50,000 apprenticeships for young people will give power to the elbow of institutions such as Stafford college, so that they can continue to make progress.”
“The Conservatives’ new deal is funded by cutting opportunities in higher education. The Tory plan— [ Interruption. ] The Opposition Front Benchers’ proposal—”
“I apologise, Mr Speaker. The proposals we have set out as a Government are all about expanding opportunities so that we get young people out of worklessness and into job opportunities. That is why we have set out a new deal for young people. To put it politely, the shadow Minister’s proposals borrow from a number of the features that we have set out in our plan. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”
“We know that students and graduates have been left facing the sharp end of the cost of living crisis. That is why we are making the system fairer for students, graduates and taxpayers by capping interest rates, future-proofing maintenance loans, reintroducing maintenance grants and making care leavers automatically eligible for maximum support. With your permission, Mr Speaker, I will share that we are concerned about students affected by providers’ misclassification of weekend courses. As Ministers, we have asked the Student Loans Company to collect any overpayments through normal student finance repayments and pause recoveries of overpaid grants until at least September while we consider the next steps.”
“My hon. Friend is a vocal champion for higher education and students in her constituency. To help disadvantaged students, we are future-proofing maintenance loans by increasing them by forecast inflation every year. We continue to look for ways to make the student finance system fairer for students, graduates and taxpayers overall.”
“We take this issue extremely seriously, but the description given by the right hon. and learned Member is of her own legacy in government as a Conservative politician. She is now a Reform politician. Nowhere in her question was an apology for the appalling track record of creating the plan 2 student loans system in the first place and administering it in a way that has led to the results that she describes.”
“I like the hon. Member, but unfortunately his question was written before I gave my earlier answer. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the Tory student loans plan would cost £4 billion and “would not make an immediate difference to most graduates’ monthly repayments.””
“We are fixing crumbling schools and colleges, which are a direct consequence of under-investment in our country. Labour is investing £20 billion in the school rebuilding programme, and more than 500 schools are already in the programme, with well over half in delivery. We will select a further 250 by early 2027, and we are also launching a new renewal and retrofit programme to modernise the school estate.”
“I thank my hon. Friend for drawing the House’s attention to Simone, who is sitting in the Gallery. She is a wonderful Cumbrian, and a fantastic example of the excellence of school leaders and headteachers throughout the country. She has stewarded the school through a tumultuous few years, and with our Government support we will ensure that the new school setting is there for children who will need it in the future. Renewing our school estate is a massive challenge for the country: it is not just about building new schools, but about getting ahead of the curve so that we can modernise and retrofit existing school buildings that would otherwise have needed rebuilding altogether in 10 or 20 years’ time.”
“The RAAC crisis here in England highlighted wider issues with the legacy of the school estate that England is now having to reckon with. I believe that we are now on top of that issue, and the Government are committed to stripping RAAC out of all schools in the years to come and ensuring that we have the school estate that we need. We have learnt a huge amount through that process, and I should be very glad to connect the hon. Member with relevant colleagues in the Department for Education and with Ministers in the Northern Irish Government.”
“We are undertaking a once-in-a-generation reform of children’s social care, which includes ensuring that children in care are surrounded by enduring, loving relationships close to their communities, their friends and their schools. Creating an extra 10,000 places in foster care is my top priority as the children’s Minister, and we are now implementing an ambitious action plan to meet that target.”
“My hon. Friend is right to highlight that we need to take action on a whole range of fronts to transform our fostering system, so that we can expand it and retain the brilliant foster carers we already have in this country. That is why we are backing the plan with £88 million. We are taking action to bring local authorities together to create new end-to-end fostering hubs with clear targets. That process is currently under way, and my hon. Friend is right to highlight the really important action of the Room Makers programme. The Government will fund the extension and expansion of foster carers’ homes so that they can take in more children. That is important, because we are funding a residential care system in this country that is the size it is because we do not have the foster homes that we need.”
“Yes. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to highlight both of those issues. We are expanding and funding the Mockingbird programme so that foster carers can get wider, family network-like support when they undertake this really important role, so that they are not left isolated. We are funding that to expand it across the country. We are also undertaking a piece of research to look at the variation in fostering allowances and fees across the country, and to identify both the variation and the relationship between the amount paid and the retention of carers, to address the exact point that he raises.”
“The Secretary of State has made a written statement to the House this morning confirming the timing of the commencement of the higher education free speech complaints scheme and the regulatory conditions. The complaints scheme will be commenced from 1 September this year, and the regulatory powers of the Office for Students from 1 April 2027.”
“The OfS system in place at the moment allows for students to complain about breaches of freedom of speech. The written statement laid this morning by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is all about expanding that coverage to staff, visiting lecturers and other speakers, as well as ensuring we have a system under which the OfS can go back to institutions and hold them to account. [ Official Report , 27 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 5WC.] (Correction)”
“As I have said, at the moment students have a route of redress through the Office for Students. The Government have been focused on pulling together an enforceable regime, and it is welcome that both Labour and Conservative Members, across the House, are supportive of action to protect freedom of speech at our universities. [ Official Report , 27 April 2026; Vol. 784, c. 6WC.] (Correction)”
“The Conservatives’ legacy of almost 1 million young people being out of work and education is shameful, but we are cleaning up this mess. I am delighted to share with the House that we are introducing a new deal for young people that includes a £2,000 grant for small to medium-sized enterprises taking on 16 to 24-year-olds to work and a new £3,000 youth job grant for hiring apprentices aged 18 to 24 who have been on universal credit for more than six months. We are the Labour party, which means we are about getting young people into work.”
“I was concerned to hear that the school needed to shut last Monday— [ Interruption. ] Cheering a school closure is no laughing matter. Of course, I am thankful that the children will be back in school on Tuesday. I would be happy to speak to the hon. Member about the situation, but of course it is a legacy of the party of which he used to be a Member.”
“With that being a large feature of some of the information that services have access to, we should note that we need to design information-sharing systems that account for those kinds of malicious allegations.”
“It also makes clear that any information that could protect a child should be shared at the earliest opportunity to prevent harm. Once the Bill is passed, I will be eager to fully involve Gemma and Rachael in the early drafts of the statutory guidance that would deliver on this commitment in the Bill. There will be an implementation plan published imminently after the Bill, and I am just as eager as my hon. Friend the Member for Sunderland Central to see that the Bill is passed soon. I also want to underscore that there have been debates in this House about the issue of malicious allegations. These are often made and are a feature of the children’s social care system where we have complicated family circumstances and people coming forward with information that may not always be wholly accurate.”