Sure Start: IFS Report

(Urgent question): Thank you, Mr Speaker, for granting this urgent question. To ask the Secretary of State to make a statement on the Institute for Fiscal Studies report on Sure Start children’s centres.

The Government very much welcome the recent report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies on the effects of Sure Start. It is crucial that, in our pursuit of better outcomes for children and families and in making spending decisions, we are guided by high-quality evidence. The report gives us more of that.

The report shows very clearly that children in disadvantaged areas benefit most from services. Indeed, those in the richest 30% of neighbourhoods saw practically no impact at all. The policy framework we have in place reflects that evidence. In 2013, the Government introduced a new core purpose for children’s centres, focusing on families in the greatest need of support. While we have seen local authorities remodel services, there are now more children’s centres than at any other time prior to 2008—in fact, since Tony Blair was Prime Minister. This is at a time when the Government are making record investment in childcare, with more than 700,000 of the most disadvantaged two-year olds having benefited from 15 hours’ free childcare since its introduction in 2013. In addition, under the Government’s healthy child programme, children and families now receive five mandatory health visitor checks in the early years. The statutory framework also contains important protections so that outcomes for children and families, particularly the most disadvantaged, will not be adversely affected by the proposed changes to children’s centre provision.

The IFS concludes that policy makers must

“consider which types of services and models of provision can most effectively help this group”.

The Government agree. Indeed, we already have work under way to do exactly that. As part of our £8.5 million early years local government programme, we announced in April that the Early Intervention Foundation will look at children’s centres and other delivery models to find out what works well, so that local authorities have more evidence to help them to continue to make the best decisions for their communities.

I thank the Minister for her reply, but I think it bears little relation to reality.

Sure Start is a proud Labour legacy. It has a proven track record of transforming lives, yet it has been allowed to wither on the vine by this Government. The Institute for Fiscal Studies, in its significant report yesterday, highlighted that austerity has hit Sure Start hard, with budgets falling by two thirds. We have seen over 1,000 centres close since 2010. The report also shows that Sure Start saved the NHS millions of pounds by significantly reducing hospitalisation of children, especially those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds. There is a clear lesson here for Government: investment in early intervention saves money later on. Closing Sure Start centres is a false economy.

Will the Minister use the report as ammunition, with the Tory leadership contenders and the Treasury ahead of the spending review, for a new commitment to revitalise Sure Start? What is happening to the Government’s review on the first 1,001 critical days, which was led by the former Leader of the House, the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom)? I pay tribute to her work and her focus on this issue. Will the review be published before we get a new Prime Minister—I understand that it was ready to go—and will renewing Sure Start be central to its recommendations? Will the Government match Labour’s commitment to save Sure Start and invest £500 million in resurrecting it? Given the clear benefits of children’s centres in creating social mobility, will she properly fund local authorities so that they can do everything possible to keep children’s centres open?

The decimation of Sure Start has been a travesty. It flies in the face of all the evidence that early intervention is key to tackling disadvantage. It must be reversed.

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady. This has been a passion of hers and she has worked very hard across the House to gain support. She is absolutely right that investment in early intervention is important. I should point out that, in the first paragraph of the executive summary, the report makes it clear that

“the UK is now one of the highest spenders on the under-5s in Europe”.

Those are OECD figures from 2014. I would just say to her that what matters is to have a universal offer, but it is also about the way services are delivered. That is not necessarily always most effective through centres. They definitely have a role, but it is about services and making sure that we get the services to those who need them the most.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell), a member of the Education Committee, on her urgent question. In Essex, we have an extraordinary family hub that the Children’s Minister, the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Stratford-on-Avon (Nadhim Zahawi), has visited. It is a one-stop shop for mentoring, health support, education support and counselling services. Our manifesto commitment was to have family hubs across the country. Will my right hon. Friend commit to having such hubs and roll them out across the United Kingdom?

I thank my right hon. Friend for his comments and congratulate Essex on its work on its family hubs. The point he makes is important. It is not just about one-stop shops; it is also about ensuring that, for families who never go near family hubs or children’s centres, we can deliver services in their own homes. On the quality of children’s centres, in 2010, 68% of early years providers were good or outstanding. Today, the figure is 95%. On outcomes, in 2013, 52% of children left reception with a good level of development. Today, 72% of children do so. It is about making sure that we get the services that are appropriate for a local area to those who need them the most.

Thank you for granting this urgent question, Mr Speaker, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) for asking it.

The IFS report showed that Sure Start reduces the hospital admissions gap between rich and poor children by half. Put simply, thousands of children are ending up in hospital because of cuts to Sure Start. Sure Start was the jewel in the crown of the Labour Government, and politicians, policy makers and the public have long understood its benefits. Even back in 2010, the Conservative party pledged to recruit 4,200 Sure Start health visitors for exactly that reason. It was a Conservative election manifesto promise, but what is the reality? A cut of two thirds in funding and over 1,000 Sure Start and children’s centres have been lost since 2010.

Will the Minister join me in welcoming the report and commit to responding in detail to each of its recommendations before the summer recess? However, it should not be the IFS that marks the Government’s homework. In 2015, the then Conservative Government promised a consultation on Sure Start, but nothing has materialised. When will that work be completed and will the Minister commit to a publication deadline today? At a time when NHS budgets are stretched, should we not be investing in preventive measures such as Sure Start to keep children from ending up in hospital? Will she make that point forcefully in the spending review?

Tory leadership candidates are scrambling over themselves to make pledges to reverse their cuts, but if they are genuinely serious about social justice, now is the time to show that by pledging to reverse the scandalous cuts they have made to Sure Start.

I thank the hon. Lady for her comments. Being fixed in a dogmatic way on Sure Start children’s centres is not necessarily—[Interruption.] Perhaps she will let me finish. It is important that anything we do is evidence-based. As the report makes clear, statistically the IFS cannot necessarily be confident that the effects that it highlighted on hospitalisation are not due to chance. We need to make sure that we get the right services in the right place, in the right setting, for the families who need them most. Public Health England is currently looking at the healthy child programme, which is 10 years old. It wants to modernise that, focusing it on the first 1,000 days, and she has been involved in that. Looking at the team around the child and at solutions to make sure that vulnerable children and families get the help they need means that we need universal reach and a targeted response where it is needed most.

I, too, pay tribute to the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) for her excellent and long-standing work on early years, and I very much enjoy being a member of the Education Committee alongside her. With increasing numbers of children being taken into care, what is the Minister doing to help the most vulnerable families to stay safely together?

It is important that families who can stay safely together—the critical word is “safely”—are supported to do so. A number of initiatives are going on: I talked about Public Health England looking at the health child programme and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is looking at home learning environments. There are a number of initiatives and this involves children’s services, education and the NHS all working together—[Interruption.] The hon. Member for Batley and Spen (Tracy Brabin) is shaking her head. If she thinks differently, she should say so, but this will not be solved, and families who need help will not be helped unless we have an integrated approach to make sure that, as my hon. Friend the Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) said, families can stay safely together.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) on securing this really important urgent question, and I enjoy working with her on the Education Committee. As the former head of a school with a phase 1 Sure Start, I welcome the recent IFS report, which acknowledges the life-changing work that Sure Start centres deliver for the most vulnerable families in our most deprived areas. Can we have a guarantee that there will be a full commitment and funding from the Government to Sure Start centres and early intervention projects now and in future?

The hon. Lady has a wealth of experience in this field. I can guarantee that our interventions will be evidence-based, which is the critical thing. She talks about cuts, but as the IFS report states, the UK is now one of the highest spenders on the under-fives in Europe, so we are spending money. What matters is making sure that we get the help to those who need it most.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Manchester Central (Lucy Powell) on raising this incredibly important issue. The Minister talks rightly about evidence-based decision making. The evidence shows that in recent years, there has been a 17% increase in the number of children being taken into care and that the reduction in funding for Sure Start centres is a contributory factor. Some 655,000 referrals to children’s services—[Interruption.] The Secretary of State is muttering from a sedentary position that that is not backed up, but the correlation is very clear for all to see. It is both tragic and expensive to reduce funding for Sure Start centres, leading to the need for much more drastic and tragic intervention later. In rural communities such as mine, parents have to travel much further to a Sure Start centre. Will the Government commit to capital funding, so that local authorities can co-locate libraries, children’s centres and Sure Start centres so that they can keep performing?

I point out to the hon. Gentleman that correlation and causation are not the same thing. The IFS report, which we have very much welcomed, is cautious in making that distinction. The important thing is that we can build children’s Sure Start centres in his constituency, which, as he says, is very rural, but what has always mattered to me—I am a former Public Health Minister—is this: what about the families who do not go there?

On the eve of the election in 2010, David Cameron, who became Prime Minister, promised that Sure Start would be safe in his hands, yet here we are nine years later and over 1,000 Sure Start centres have closed, the rest have been hollowed out and two thirds of the budget has gone, and still the IFS has said that they are doing some powerful work with the poorest in our communities. Like me, does the Minister wonder what amazing achievements there could have been from these centres if they had not been decimated and savagely cut in the way that they were?

The hon. Lady has always been a champion of early years in all the work that she has done. It is not just the budget spent on Sure Start centres that matters; it is the budget coming in, and the visits from health visitors, which are so crucial—[Interruption.] The hon. Lady is shaking her head. It is not just that budget. As the report makes clear, we are the highest spender in Europe. What matters is the universal offer and making sure that we target the support to those who need it most and possibly to families who are not attending the centres—what about them?

I invite the Minister to come to my constituency and see the communities that were being served by the five Sure Starts that were closed. She can see whether they were the best off in the country—I think she will find that they were not. Surely she understands that there is a connection between those closures and the 30% increase in the number of children going into care in County Durham.