Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-99)
RT HON
RUTH KELLY
MP
2 MARCH 2005
Q80 Chairman: GPs?
Ruth Kelly: All of these various
actors looking after children want to achieve what is best for
individual children.
Q81 Chairman: That is mainly a triumph
of hope over reality.
Ruth Kelly: Of course we keep
it under review and if ever I suspected there was a problem, I
would look at this.
Q82 Mr Turner: What are the objectives
and what do you think have been the achievements of your teenage
pregnancy strategy?
Ruth Kelly: The objectives are
to make sure that teenagers' aspirations are raised, that their
potential is fulfilled and that they know what they are getting
themselves into.
Q83 Mr Turner: There is a preventive
role, is there not?
Ruth Kelly: Absolutely.
Q84 Mr Turner: It certainly goes beyond
the age of 16.
Ruth Kelly: It runs well beyond
the age of 16; I cannot remember whether it is 18 or 20.
Q85 Mr Turner: The reason I ask is because
I do not suppose you would welcome it if that were described as
a nanny state policy.
Ruth Kelly: If what was?
Q86 Mr Turner: If your teenage pregnancy
strategy were described as a manifestation of the nanny state.
Ruth Kelly: I do not think anyone
would describe trying to raise the aspirations and fulfil the
potential of every teenager as being a nanny state policy.
Q87 Mr Turner: No; good; we are agreed;
excellent. The reason I ask is because I had a fairly unproductive
exchange with the Minister for Children the other day about the
consequences on their children of parents separating, which appeared
to me to be pretty much as serious as the consequences on the
children of being born to very young mothers. The sort of evidence
we had was, for example, that children on the at risk register
are eight times more likely to be living with a father substitute
than their natural father compared with the national average.
The Minister herself acknowledged that the evidence is that if
children are brought up in a settled home with both their birth
parents it will promote better child outcomes. There is also evidence
from the Office of National Statistics that the incidence of conduct
disorder in boys in a single parent household is three times higher
than in a married household. The question is whether you regard
dealing with the cause of those consequences as just as important
as the teenage pregnancy strategy, that is prevention, or do you
merely regard it as important to deal with the symptoms, that
is reducing the pain?
Ruth Kelly: I think I agree with
you, but I am not quite sure what you are getting at so I shall
be careful about committing myself. It is sort of common sense
that you have to raise teenagers' aspirations and that the 14-19
White Paper very clearly identifies the group of children who
are currently at risk of dropping out of schools and indeed the
Not in Education Employment or Training (NEET) group includes
a proportion of teenage mums. Do I think it is important to deal
with the causes of children becoming disaffected, why some may
become teenage mums? Of course.
Q88 Mr Turner: I think you have agreed
with me, but just to make it clear. Similarly you would see it
therefore important to deal with the causes of family breakdown
as a means of preventing the undoubted damaging consequences of
family breakdown.
Ruth Kelly: Yes, but I do not
know that it is easy to identify what the causes of family breakdown
are. It is a very big question and one of the things which clearly
leads to stress on families is poverty. That is something we have
a very clear policy to tackle. Others are less clear, but in theory
obviously stable families are a good thing.
Q89 Mr Turner: Are you undertaking research
to see whether you can inform yourself better about the causes
of family breakdown as a means of prevention?
Ruth Kelly: To be honest, the
more obvious response to this is making sure that there are interesting
opportunities for teenagers and that 14-16 group is particularly
crucial and there is a set of pupils really at risk of disaffection
at the moment or playing truant and so forth. Some of them end
up involved in crime and anti-social behaviour, others become
teenage parents, though not purely that group of course; there
are lots of others who do as well. Some end up in pretty serious
difficulties later on in life. The more obvious response is to
say that we must make sure that we, as the state, provide means
of re-engaging those pupils and making sure that there is something
they feel is worthwhile for them to be doing. Often the response
will be to offer them practical areas that they want to study
or to offer them opportunities in the workplace or in the voluntary
sector, placements where they are really valued, which have status
and where we can raise their aspirations.
Q90 Mr Turner: I applaud that answer,
but it was the answer to a question I did not ask. You explained
why you are engaged in enthusing teenagers and getting them engaged.
What I am interested in is whether you see it as important similarly
to identify action which you could take to prevent family breakdown.
Ruth Kelly: I do not know that
there are simple answers. There are really difficult social issues
about changes in society, which it is not really for government
to answer. There certainly are no simplistic answers out there.
Mr Turner: I think we are agreed on that.
I have one final question.
Chairman: On Every Child Matters
and the Children's Act?
Mr Turner: I think if affects everything
the Secretary of State does.
Chairman: Briefly then.
Q91 Mr Turner: It will be brief. How
important is your faith in the decisions you take?
Ruth Kelly: I think we all approach
issues with our own personal opinions and values and I think my
values are pretty similar to the values of every other Labour
politician.
Q92 Jonathan Shaw: When you are knocking
on doors and speaking to parents and young people in Bolton West,
I wonder whether they say similar things to those in my constituency
and I expect most constituencies and that is yes, you have done
a lot for young children and families and we have seen SureStart,
we have seen Early Years and we have seen numeracy hour, literacy
hour and we heard what you are talking about in terms of Every
Child Matters, but what about youth? This has been a Cinderella
service for too long. We deal with the consequences of lack of
provision for young people within our communities. We know that
there is going to be a Green Paper at some point. Can you describe
to us what the theme of that Green Paper might be?
Ruth Kelly: I can tell you that
I agree with you that there must be things to do and places to
go for young people and if you ask parents what they care most
about in local areas, that is one of the most highly ranking themes,
really important to parents, that they think their teenagers have
some worthwhile activities in their local area. It is also important
that anything which is provided is something that teenagers want
to do. So the more they are involved in those decisions and the
decision-making process, the better. I think the extended school
provides us with a huge opportunity here. For example, the commitment
that the government has to the schools' sports strategy, which
is that there should be two hours of PE or sport available within
the curriculum, two to three hours outside the curriculum for
pupils to do outside the curriculum hours, is a really exciting
precedent. It is something we have to build on, we have to make
sure that there are activities available for teenagers that they
can undertake out of school hours and we can use the extended
school as a vehicle for that, though that is not the only place;
we also need facilities available in each local community. Those
are some of the things we shall return to and we shall set out
our proposals shortly.
Q93 Jonathan Shaw: On Every Child
Matters the department have talked about this transformation
involving whole systems approach, but we have yet to find any
serious work. We touched earlier on the cost of the implementation.
Do you even have an estimation of how much this is going to cost?
Ruth Kelly: I am sorry; "this"
being?
Q94 Jonathan Shaw: "This" being
the Every Child Matters agenda. The Chairman asked you
early on about this and you replied that there has been a 6% or
7% growth. The Chairman asked you about Peter and Paul. In much
of the work which has been undertaken by department officials
and discussions with Treasury and the local government association,
some estimation of what it is going to cost must have been made.
It surely cannot just be neutral.
Ruth Kelly: What I did say was
that there is a lot of money already in the system. There is more
investment going into the system, investment which will continue.
One of the challenges of Every Child Matters is the move
from inputs to outcomes and trying to rationalise existing arrangements
around the needs of every individual child. In fact there is quite
a lot of room for efficiency.
Q95 Jonathan Shaw: At the moment services
generally from the social services point of view are very targeted,
are very prescriptive, there are clear criteria. If we are then
going to say that services are universal, however you are going
to save money, however you are going to reach for efficiencies
and we all applaud that and we heard your comment about the 500
staff already, there is a big gap between where we have targeted
at the moment and a small percentage of children and families
receiving services, the tap just being turned on and everyone
having access to those services when and if they need them.
Ruth Kelly: That is the whole
point, is it not, "when and if they need them"? We need
a service which is tailored round the individual child and which
is there for them when they need it and at the time they need
it. We have these split up so that social services act in isolation
from the youth offending team and from the drugs workers and from
those who are involved in the teenage pregnancy strategy.
Q96 Jonathan Shaw: You are right to come
back on me. May I do the same to you? Who makes that decision
"when and if they need them"? Is it parents? In that
case it is "you can have what you want". Or is it someone
making an assessment? Are there going to be criteria or do people
make self-assessments and say their child needs this particular
speech and language service and they want it, they thought it
was available to everyone? Now you are saying there is a criterion.
There is a bit of a reality gap here, is there not? Hence the
reason why we are saying to you repeatedly that there surely has
to be some estimation of the cost, if this is the approach we
are going to take, as welcome as it is.
Ruth Kelly: We have enough funding
in the system when we turn around how the system operates to meet
the needs of every individual child, which is why schools will
be assessed on the five criteria of the Every Child Matters
agenda, which is why we are setting up children's trusts in the
way that we have and having clear leadership at the top. There
is a lot of potential for making the system work better and that
is what I want to see.
Q97 Chairman: We shall have plenty of
time to discuss that with you in the future, we hope. One thing
which does worry this Committee about the evidence—and you
will be getting this in our report—is that we have not been
very happy about the department—all departments—getting
into complex IT systems. They tend to be more expensive, more
demanding and many things go wrong. I do hope you will look at
the transcript of our evidence session, particularly with the
Information Commissioner. The ten trail blazers may be a very
interesting way to highlight this, but there is a very broad danger
that it could be enormous expenditure on a complex IT system for
every child in the country.
Ruth Kelly: I do take an interest
in these things and in my previous job at the Cabinet Office I
had the government unit as one of my responsibilities. I am well
aware of the process and shall certainly make sure that it is
implemented in a careful fashion.
Chairman: We want to turn briefly to
two subjects: higher education followed by schools. A group of
Committee members wants to ask questions on both those so we have
the last half hour for them to put some rapid questions, 15 minutes
on each. There is one particular area that we are very unhappy
about regarding the way in which particularly the Open University
(OU) has been treated financially, from having believed the assurances
from the former secretary of state and minister of state, to what
looks like a reversal of the assurances which were given on the
future funding of that institution. Helen will go into the details.
Q98 Helen Jones: As no doubt you know,
prior to the passage of the Higher Education Bill the Government
gave assurances that it would guarantee the future financial viability
of the Open University. May I ask you first of all whether those
assurances still hold?
Ruth Kelly: I met with the Vice-Chancellor
of the Open University yesterday. I discussed all of these issues
with her. I know how important the Open University is to raising
opportunities, opening up opportunities in this country. I do
think we should, the department together with the Open University,
think strategically about where it can add value, in the 14-19
context for example, in supplying the strategic subjects in another,
and that we must take a strategic look at the potential of the
Open University and see where it might go and how it might develop
in the future. We are committed to working with the Open University
to see how it might develop in the future and expand. Certainly
we want to see it a more than viable institution.
Q99 Helen Jones: If it is going to expand
in the future, it has to remain financially viable at the moment.
The latest letter from HEFCE to the Vice-Chancellor of the Open
University says that they expect institutions to increase fees
for part-time undergraduates. The Open University has given evidence
to this Committee that it does not believe that it is possible
to increase its fees much more than they already are. It is therefore
left facing a financial black hole at a time when it is catering
for exactly the kind of people the government says it wants to
get into higher education. It has a large proportion of people
in unskilled and semi-skilled jobs; it has a very high proportion
of women students, many of whom cannot move easily to other institutions.
Is that a satisfactory situation for us to be in?
Ruth Kelly: Let me say first of
all that we are the first government which has introduced any
financial support for part-time students and it is important to
recognise that when you are discussing these developments. There
was no financial support at all before 1998-99. Since then we
have introduced measures to help part-time students both through
fee waivers and part-time loans and then in 2005-06 linking fee
support to the intensity of the student's course, so becoming
more sophisticated at the same time. I read the HEFCE letter with
interest. I also actually read the press notice which went on
the HEFCE website yesterday. I think there is space for HEFCE
to consider the widening participation agenda in relation to part-time
students. I am very hopeful that they will come up with proposals
which will support institutions like the Open University.
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