UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 40-vii

House of COMMONS

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE

TAKEN BEFORE

EDUCATION AND SKILLS COMMITTEE

 

 

EVERY CHILD MATTERS

 

 

Wednesday 9 February 2005

RT HON MARGARET HODGE MP

Evidence heard in Public Questions 474 - 646

 

 

USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT

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Oral Evidence

Taken before the Education & Skills Committee

on Wednesday 9 February 2005

Members present

Mr Barry Sheerman, in the Chair

Mr David Chaytor

Valerie Davey

Mr John Greenway

Paul Holmes

Jonathan Shaw

Mr Andrew Turner

________________

 

Witness: Rt Hon Margaret Hodge, a Member of the House, Minister for Children, Young People and Families, examined.

Q474 Chairman: Good morning, Minister. Welcome to our proceedings. It is lovely to see you.

Margaret Hodge: Thank you.

Q475 Chairman: I think you and I are the only people, and a few members of the Committee, who are still the continuing strand in education.

Margaret Hodge: I think I must be the longest serving minister in education in one guise or another.

Q476 Chairman: Everyone keeps moving positions, but you are still there. That is nice.

Margaret Hodge: Thank you.

Q477 Chairman: We are very glad to see you here again. You will know why we have had a look at this area, because, as it is a new area for you, it is certainly a new area for this Committee and we have been grappling with the different acronyms and the departmental linguistics that go with the territory, but we found it immensely rewarding. We have taken a lot of oral evidence and an enormous amount of written evidence and we are going to come out with a report that we hope will be constructive and useful. This is the final session before we write up, so we would like to clear up one or two things. Would you like a couple of minutes to say anything?

Margaret Hodge: I think probably go straight in. Do you wish me to say something? I can do.

Q478 Chairman: No, I am happy to get more questions in.

Margaret Hodge: Let us go straight in.

Q479 Chairman: The first question is this. The kind of feeling which we are getting as we look at this is it is a wonderful intention, that you can have this service for children across all departments seems to be an inspirational idea. The only trouble is that when we went to look at a very similar idea coming out of a very similar tragedy in British Columbia, Vancouver, we found the idea had seemed to have petered out and it had ended up basically with a child protection policy, the Children's Commission had been abolished, the Children's Commission had gone, nobody wanted to be the Children and Family Minister, it had changed six times in as many years, and we were worried that the same could happen here if there was not enough commitment over time. Do you think that is a worry?

Margaret Hodge: I think I have got the best job in government, and I think probably a number of members of the Committee with experience in the field would concur with that. That is the first thing to say. Second, I have always said this is not a short‑term political fix, it is a long term cultural change programme, and that statement stands good. It will be two steps forward, one step backwards, because what we are attempting to do is extremely difficult. Am I confident we will get there? First of all, there is a strong political commitment right from the top of Government. There is a strong buy‑in across government, across all government departments. As I ago around the country I am constantly heartened by the enthusiasm and commitment from professionals in very different organisations, whether I talk to people in the Health Service, whether I talk to people in social care, whether I talk to people in education, whether I talk to children and young people themselves, so there is a strong commitment there, so I am feeling very positive. There are also pretty good signs out there in the field at the front‑line, where it really counts, that things are beginning to change. It is perhaps what I might have put in my initial statement, Chairman. What we are about is trying to get a reconfiguration of services for children so that we build services round the needs of children and young people, break down the traditional professional silos, build on the expertise and experience of individuals from whichever profession they emanate and create a whole by getting them to work together that is worth more than some of its parts. That is a huge cultural challenge. What we are also about is trying to get a shift in everything we do from intervention when things go wrong, when children fall through the net, to action to prevent things going wrong, so that children really can develop their potential, every child matters and every child can develop their potential. That is tough to do because the pressures are always on expenditure and intervention at the hard end. The aim of the cultural change programme is tough, but we are beginning to get the shoots, I think, of some really innovative, exciting changed practice and policies which fill me with hope, and I am also really determined to make things happen.

Q480 Chairman: Minister, no‑one doubted your determination and your vision is a fascinating and inspiring one, but delivery is something different, is it not? We have taken the point and we have read articles that you have written and speeches you have made about a long time plan, you have mentioned in other places 10 years to really change the culture, but all major policy shift needs two things: a delivery system and money, resources. The evidence that we have got on both of those worries us somewhat in the sense that here we have been having quite a conversation about one of your leading inspirations for Early Years Sure Start programme over the transfer of delivery of early approach Sure Start centrally directed by Government to independent organisations in the communities to local government, and there is a question mark over whether local government is the best delivery system for this policy, and, secondly, if the other delivery is schools, you are asking schools to be a central part of delivery at a time when schools are becoming increasingly independent under separate government policy. On your delivery side - local authorities, schools - there is a question mark in many people's mind whether they can deliver.

Margaret Hodge: Let us deal, first of all, with is local government the best vehicle for delivery. If we want to transform the way children's services are delivered to children, young people and their families, you cannot do it from the centre. We need to use the local authority infrastructure that we have to deliver that. Will they all perform well? They will probably not. I have come out of local government and worked with them in government for many years. My experience is that you will probably get ten to 15 percent doing an absolutely brilliant job, the bulk doing okay and may be ten percent at the bottom where we will have to give far greater support and, if necessary, intervene if the local authorities are failing children in their area, but I get somewhat surprised that people undermine the important democratic infrastructure that we have in local authorities. The idea that we are better at Whitehall in ensuring community participation in the delivery of programmes from Sure Start onwards seems to me just mistaken. Local authorities were much more strongly embedded in their communities. They know them much better. I do not know the 150 communities around the country that make up the Children's Services Authority. The idea that we would know that better I just think is mistaken. That is the first thing. The second thing is that we are going to be putting in place through guidance, through legislation, through our performance management system a whole range of levers, a whole range of carrots and sticks, which will ensure that, for example, Sure Start local programmes, as we develop those into Sure Start Children's Centres across the country, will be community driven, parent driven, and will retain that essence of Sure Start which has made it so successful. We can do that. You do not necessarily do it by running it from here.

Q481 Chairman: We have had research pointing out that two‑thirds of Sure Start has not been successful.

Margaret Hodge: I do not know what research you are getting there. I have not seen that.

Q482 Chairman: I am referring to research that was presented to the IPPR Conference very recently. I think Cathy Silver has been involved in research and the Audit Commission has been involved in research that suggested that only a third of Sure Start programmes seem to add value. I have to direct you to an article that I only read very recently by Anna Coote, who says the real problem is what you are doing with Sure Start is that here is a government that believes in evidence‑based policy and you have not yet evaluated properly, you really have not yet properly evaluated Sure Start, and yet you are changing it into a very different programme delivered by a different organisation.

Margaret Hodge: With respect to you, Chairman, you cannot have it both ways with one person saying there has not been an evaluation and therefore we should not move forward, and another allegation, which I have yet to see, which says that Sure Start‑‑‑

Q483 Chairman: You have seen no research that suggests that much of Sure Start does not add very much value?

Margaret Hodge: The reality is that much of the national Sure Start evidence has yet to come. I read all the evidence that comes out of our Sure Start evaluation, and much of it currently is about process, a description of the situation in the Sure Start communities and very early outcomes, and it is very positive, Chairman. What we have not got yet is the longer term evaluation which will tell us that the impact on children, on families, is transformation over time. What we have got is evidence from a number of the local programmes, which we are also evaluating, that fewer children are ending up in A&E, more mothers are giving up smoking in pregnancy, more children are being breast‑fed, children are developing their speech and language capacity better and are therefore ready to go to school, there is greater engagement in Bookstart and literacy.

Q484 Chairman: I am not disagreeing with you, and we will be happy to let you know of the research that has presented to us that suggests that there are some problems with adding value in a high percentage of Sure Start programmes. That is not to say that we do not know that the research already suggests that those containing a higher educational component are very successful indeed. I am not disagreeing on that. What we are trying to tease out from you is the delivery system. You are changing the delivery system to local authorities, you say you are happy with that, although we were given evidence that the local authority that was mostly in the firing line over Victoria Climbié has not changed its practices one iota, has not improved at all since that dreadful tragedy. You have to balance faith in local democracy with realities on the ground. On the other side, what about schools? Your government or ministry is making schools far more independent. Are you telling me that cooperation in bringing to fruition the Children Act is going to be more important than meeting standards? The schools can take much more of a broad brush approach to taking on Change for Children rather than getting high standards and the way they are confronted with that choice?

Margaret Hodge: I am going to come to back to you on Sure Start. Sure Start currently meets the needs of a third of children in deprived areas.

Q485 Chairman: That is not true, Minister. In 20 percent of the poorest wards in this country there are Sure Start programmes.

Margaret Hodge: Yes.

Q486 Chairman: A very different jump from saying it meets the needs. It is attempting to meet the needs?

Margaret Hodge: I accept that. It is attempting to meet the needs of a third of children in deprived areas. If we want to build on what we believe we have uncovered as a very successful and innovative intervention into children lives, if we want to build that nationwide and go from 500 to 3,500 Sure Start children centres, which is our ambition in a ten‑year programme, the only way in which we can deliver that effectively is through local authorities, and we have to put in place the levers, the carrots and the sticks, to make it happen. Just on Ealing, because it is Ealing to which you are referring and I saw the evidence that you had from Lord Laming, it is deeply depressing that Ealing has become a zero‑rated social services authority this year, we are looking at it very carefully, but I have to say, interestingly enough, and I have met leading members and leading officers from Ealing Council, they are failing more on their adult services and doing much better on their children's services.

Q487 Chairman: Let us go on to schools then. You made a good case. It is inevitable if you want 3,500 it is going to go to local education, or local authorities. What about schools?

Margaret Hodge: Schools are engaged in our agenda, and they are engaged because when I talk to head teachers, when I visit schools, when I talk to the various trade unions representing head teachers and others in schools, they all acknowledge that the Every Child Matters agenda is an integral part of the standards agenda. You will only achieve high standards in education if every child in your school community is ready to learn and is therefore an included child and you ensure that all aspects of that child's life are secure and the child's well‑being is there. You will only provide an inclusive society if you ensure that every child has the ability to develop their full potential, so the inclusion agenda and the standards agenda are two sides of the same coin, and schools understand that. The best of schools are doing incredibly innovative things to demonstrate that.

Q488 Chairman: Minister, the best of schools are wonderful, we know that because we take evidence from them, but a lot of the schools that gave evidence to us under admission said they were not going to take children that would not perform well because that was not good for the best school standards, and they would get a bad reputation for falling standards. They absolutely ignored any prescriptions coming from government and said, "We will only take the children that we want to take."

Margaret Hodge: As you know, we have said that by 2008 we expect the admissions code, which will ensure a properly inclusive admission practice, will be in place in every school, but let me talk a little bit about the‑‑‑

Q489 Chairman: The code is not statutory.

Margaret Hodge: It is not a statutory code, but my view is, Chairman, that schools actually will grasp this agenda. If we are wrong and if you are right to say it needs to be backed by statute to make it work, it will be.

Q490 Chairman: That is something in our report. You rejected it?

Margaret Hodge: I know it is, but we are trying to go down another route which I believe will get to us a shared end.

Q491 Chairman: Wishful thinking, Minister, a very dangerous route.

Margaret Hodge: No, I do not believe it is wishful thinking. I have often said, and I have probably often said you privately as well as I have in the Committee, I do not think legislation of itself transforms cultures and behaviour and practice.

Q492 Chairman: It helps, Minister, otherwise this Government would not have so much of it.

Margaret Hodge: Maybe this Government sometimes has too much of it, but legislation of itself‑‑‑

Q493 Chairman: You are looking for friends now, Minister!

Margaret Hodge: Let me go back to the issue about how we are going to ensure that schools do grasp the agenda that we are promoting through the Every Child Matters and the Change for Children programme. First of all, in the Ofsted inspection, in the new Ofsted inspection, the five children's outcomes are firmly embedded there as one criteria against which a school's performance and capability will be inspected. That is a pretty strong lever for them. Secondly, we are in the conversation that will take place every year between a school and the local authority, the Children's Trust, as it emerges over time, again the five outcomes which are now on the Children Act will again form part of that conversation. Furthermore, as we develop policies like our Extended Schools policies, which has been enthusiastically welcomed by, again, most schools to whom I talk, we will find that the development of multi‑agency services co‑located on a school site will grow; in fact our commitment in the Early Years and Childcare strategy is to have it there; and, again, the green shoots of change are there. Let me give you an example. Let us take Sheffield as an instance. In Sheffield two head teachers were seconded two days a week for six months to promote the Every Child Matters agenda and get schools buying into it across Sheffield. There is a one hundred percent buy‑in now right across Sheffield. In Nosley they have area‑based partnerships which are developing the children's programmes, and those are chaired by head teachers. Those are two examples of where we are getting good practice across countries.

Q494 Chairman: I absolutely agree with you; there will be some lovely green shoots out there and we welcome them. All we as the Educational and Skills Committee are doing is flagging up our concern that one policy that could end up with every school becoming a foundation school owning its own premises and all that does in some ways run counter, and then you are adding the standards, the push of standards all the time, that these two agendas might not actually fit very well together. We are only putting that on the record, Minister.

Margaret Hodge: I do not agree. I really do not agree.

Q495 Chairman: We agree to disagree on that. Mr Michael is, we know, the last on your list. What about money? What about resources? You say ten years, but we get the impression from some of your officials that it is not just a wonderful land, we get the promised land that we are going to move to, but is it one that can be achieved without real resources being devoted to it? Are there going to be real resources, the necessary resources devoted to delivery, and have you spoken to the Treasury about this and what do they say about it?

Margaret Hodge: I talk to the Treasury all the time. In fact, we have done rather well out of the Treasury, as you know, on the Early Years and Childcare strategy. I was looking at figures the other. In 1997, 1998 we were spending just over a billion pounds on Early Years and Childcare. This year I think we are over four billion. I will write to you with the accurate figures. That is a fantastic expansion in developing integrated services around the needs of children and in developing a preventative range of services to try and promote strong children. That is the agenda, Chairman.

Q496 Chairman: If you look at the Treasury's figures, they show, yes, in the next two years we have a high in educational spending and then it starts to tail off. At the very time that you are telling this Committee there are the necessary resources in order to meet with the children's agenda, is it going to be there?

Margaret Hodge: Out of this comprehensive spending review settlement, if I just look at the Sure Start budget, it does not. I cannot predict what will be in the next spending review settlement, but if we are returned to Government to meet our commitment on both Children's Centres and Extended Schools and Childcare we will need to keep growing that budget. Let me go beyond that to other areas of the budget. There has been a pretty healthy growth in the social services FSS over the period. Again I will correct myself if I am wrong, but I think it is seven percent this year, so it is a pretty healthy growth there, and we should just note that. The third thing I was going to say to you is this programme is about changing the way people work, and you do not have to change the way people work by simply adding new resources into the picture. I could take endless examples; let me take two. Think of a teenager who may be in trouble with the police. That teenager could have working with him an education welfare officer because he is probably not in school, he might well have a learning mentor, he might well have a Connexions worker trying to deal with some of the issues, he may have a drug problem, so he will have a drug action team worker, he may be in trouble with the law so he will have a YOTS team worker and he probably will have a social worker because there is a problem of whether he should or should not come into care. I have probably left out lots, but that is six professionals working with the one child. If we can reconfigure that so that we get the lead professional with real responsibility with the child backed up by the specialists where it is required, so possibly a children analyst and mental health worker, I think you can reconfigure and save resources. I know you are going to question me on it later, but the interesting thing that comes out of the trailblazer authorities that are working on sharing information, getting better mechanisms for sharing information, I had a seminar with them the other day and they strongly said to me that what they are able to do out of the protocols they are developing to get better sharing of information across professional boundaries is identifying more children, identifying them sooner and therefore intervening and saving money. The other thing I was going to say to you was the example which I often give but it is a very powerful one of a little girl I visited in a Camden flat. She was very, very severely disabled but in a mainstream school, so lots of things were going well for her. I saw her and her mother. Her mother was her main carer. She said she had had 18 separate assessments by different professionals in the previous six months. Hr mother had spent more time managing the professionals who were supposed to be caring for her rather than caring for her directly, and she was the main carer. If we can through our Common Assessment Framework which we are hoping to introduce shortly, and we have got 50 authorities ready to go on it, if we can cut that down, you can save resources which you then can distribute elsewhere. Let me give you one final example out of Derbyshire. Derbyshire now have multi‑agency teams that respond to cries for help from families where they voluntarily want to put their children in care for some reason or another. Since this multi‑agency team has been working they have reduced the number of children coming into the carer system by 20. That is a saving of a quarter of a million to Derbyshire, which they can invest elsewhere. If we are even half successful in our ambition to transform the way people work, we do not necessarily need more money; we simply really do need to use existing resources more smartly.

Chairman: Minister, I have listened to myself for too long. I will relinquish you to Val Davey, but thank you for those introductory answers.

Q497 Valerie Davey: I want to underpin some of the areas that the Chair has already touched. On you mentioned the guidance which will be available to go out to local authorities. Can you tell us on what evidence that will be based. I imagine, for example, that Pathfinder Children's Trusts are already coming up with that evidence. You have got a strategic vision - I have no doubt about that - and all the optimism you need to go with it, but what guidance are you going to give, when will that guidance come out and on what evidence will it be based?

Margaret Hodge: Much of the vision emerges from the best practice that exists in local authorities and in local communities now, so there is a lot of evidence out there. Much of the guidance is going out in draft form so that we can further consult and build into the final guidance evidence we have of what works in local communities across the country. Everything we do, is what I am saying to you, is already built on evidence of what we have as to what works. There is a lot of guidance going out as we implement the various clauses of the Children Act. In fact, I worry that we must not give indigestion to local authorities by giving them too much guidance, but it is a pretty wide programme of transformational change and therefore requires quite at lot of information to those working at the front-line as to the sort of practices they have to engage in and the sort of procedures they need to think about, but it is based, as much as we can, on best practice. The other thing I always say is I am sure we will not get it all absolutely right the first time, and I am not pretending that we will. As we continue to learn, if we then have to think again and revisit some of the guidance that we have issued to local authorities, we will do so.

Q498 Valerie Davey: I am encouraged by that and also by the fact that you are sending it out in draft. I think that does enable local authorities to contribute, but for some of them ‑ particularly let us move over to the funding ‑ the Government is sending out different messages, because the funding for education is going virtually directly to schools and it is leaving some social services with a tension. I can take you to, I am afraid, too near to home in my area a social services department which is struggling, and you will say to me, yes, they have got these very highly, very expensive young people to manage ‑ if only we had ‑ but what is the mechanism that they are going to have for bringing these budgets together to match your inclusive framework, and how are we going to get this bridging loan between the situation they are now in of some highly expensive young people to the prevention side, which you are claiming, quite rightly I am sure, will be less expensive and more beneficial to everyone?

Margaret Hodge: We are already beginning to see local authorities pooling their budgets, and they are beginning to pool their budgets across the most difficult boundary, and that is between local authorities and health, and there are huge problems in getting those budgets pooled, but we have got 27 pooled budgets across a whole range of local authorities - Barnsley, Bolton ‑ I have got the list here ‑ down to Wigan, Warwickshire, and they are working across health and local authority budgets particularly around issues of children with disabilities - that is one area where there is a lot of work being done - and around the children's mental health as well. So there is good stuff happening on there and, again, we need to build on that experience, understand the difficulties that they face when they try to pool budgets and then tackle some of those difficulties that they confront. That is the first thing to say. I think that will come over time. I am a great believer in pooled budgets, because I think nothing focuses the mind more than knowing that you have all got to decide how to spend the money together from the same pocket of money. Again, the sort of example I always use is who should pay for the wheelchair for the disabled child, and the endless rows you have between health, social care and education as to who foots that bill is never in the child's interest and is a terrible waste of human resources as people argue about it and it can have a terrible impact on the outcome of the child, so we need to push in that direction. If we move to looked after children, who are the ones that I think you were referring to, some authorities spend a huge amount of money on some individual children, sometimes inappropriately placed outside borough in very expensive residential accommodation, that is an enormous challenge which would be there whether or not we had the Change for Children programme. I think that is a traditional challenge that has always faced local authority social services departments. We are doing a number of things around that. We are looking and working with local authorities to improve their commissioning practices so that you do not get a Friday night frantic social worker with a child coming into care without any place to put the child, ringing around and ending up putting the child 200 miles away in a very expensive, inappropriate residential children's home; so better commissioning. We are doing a lot of work to try and ensure that we encourage the growth of foster carers and the growth of foster carers in authority so that you do not get children going across local authority boundaries and therefore removed from their families and their friends and no networks and no schools and all that matters there.

Q499 Valerie Davey: I can give you a good news story on that. In our area we are doing well on that?

Margaret Hodge: And we are growing adoptions. That was the last thing I wanted to say. I think we have been jolly successful as a government. We have had an increase in adoptions. I think it is a 37 percent improvement since 1999, 2000 in the number of children who are adopted from care, and that provides the stability of a loving family which will ensure that you can improve the outcomes for children.

Q500 Valerie Davey: I hear all you are saying, and it is good practice here, it is good practice here and it does not have to be the same style. How then are you going to measure this in terms of the criteria which will be expected of local authorities: because they have got draft guidance coming down which they are commenting on, they have got funding which they are desperately trying to pool, they have some youngsters already very expensive who they are trying to draw back and deal with. What will be the judgment on these local authorities and when are you going to say, "Hold on, this is not good enough?", how you going to determine that?

Margaret Hodge: We have got a pretty comprehensive performance management framework that we are putting in place. We start with the five outcomes. From those we have developed what we have called the 25 current aims which will focus action in relation to each outcome. They derive from the targets, the PSA targets that we have in Government. They translate into CPA targets for local authorities, all criteria under which Primary Care Trusts will be judged. We then have each local authority doing an analysis of its needs against those aims, developing a children's plan against those aims, having a conversation, the single conversation, which is our way of communicating with local authorities, against those aims. You have a coherence of aims across Government and across services - you have those translated into local authorities - that determines their needs assessment and their children's plan. We then have pretty tough performance assessment, both from our regional advisors, from the inspectors, and we have the joint area review at local level, which is all the inspectors coming together to see how well an areas is delivering services for children. All that gives us the framework to measure performance, and star ratings and all that stuff flows from it. If authorities fail children through the services they provide, we will intervene. We have a new power under the Children Act which mirrors the power of intervention into local education authorities and we will intervene.

Q501 Valerie Davey: The children will tell you at some stage, I am sure?

Margaret Hodge: Right throughout. You are quite right to draw me back on that. Right throughout the voice of children will be a central point.

Q502 Jonathan Shaw: You said about intervention, the government are not intervening at local authority levels any more; they have ridden away from that some time ago, have they not? Anyway, let me ask you, this example that you are putting forward, Minister, about children being placed inappropriately, it is a bit thin really when you think that there are 60,000 children in care and 56,000 of those are in foster homes? You give an example: on a Friday night a local authority place a young person in a very expensive residential home, miles away. That is just not the reality, Minister. To place a young person in a very expensive home in the independent sector - there are reports, there are panels, there are hurdles - there are all sorts of bureaucracy and criteria that have to be met before a young person is placed in one of those homes, that is the reality, is it not? Emergencies do occur and you would expect a local authority to respond. Then you are also telling us that you have not got all the solutions in Whitehall, the solutions need to be found locally. So it is a bit thin, this example. Also how do you answer? On the one hand, you are saying it is local, on the next hand you are saying locals are making inappropriate placements.

Margaret Hodge: Give us a chance before you say government does not intervene where local authorities‑‑‑

Chairman: We do not give chances in this Committee. You have sat in this seat, Minister.

Q503 Jonathan Shaw: What about the Friday night special you frequently quote. Come on, give us some evidence.

Margaret Hodge: Let me just deal with the intervention. I will come to that. I promise I will not lose that point.

Q504 Chairman: Minister, because you have sat in this chair you know that I am going to ask you soon for slightly briefer answers to questions?

Margaret Hodge: Okay. All I can do is assure you we will intervene, and there is a very interesting form of intervention currently taking place in the relationship that Kent has developed with Swindon Borough Council where Kent is basically responsible now for delivering social services care in Swindon. That might be the first example since the legislation came in, which is only a few months ago.

Q505 Jonathan Shaw: That was not between Kent and Swindon rather than the Government?

Margaret Hodge: No, that was brokered on the result of the failure and performance of Swindon Social Services, at the time. You do not like my example. I think it is a pretty real example. It is certainly an example I have talked about to my Director of Social Services locally, where you do get an emergency placement on a Friday night where the commissioning strategy in a local authority is such that you have not thought through having an appropriate block of stock purchases‑‑‑

Q506 Jonathan Shaw: It is not going to save you more money. You keep saying the way we are going to get more money is to stop these inappropriate placements. Cash is going to flow?

Margaret Hodge: No, I have not said that.

Q507 Jonathan Shaw: That is one of the examples you use?

Margaret Hodge: It is one of the examples I use. I could use lots of examples of where earlier intervention at the first sign of things going wrong would save money down the line. There are endless examples; I just tend to use that one. I was going to point you to your own Kent Social Services. I have quite a lot of dealings with Kent Social Services where they often talk about the number of children who are placed around Kent from Essex and London Boroughs inappropriately out of borough without proper notice to Kent where there are bad outcome for the children and probably greater expense than there would otherwise be for the placing local authority. There are a lot of examples of less than good best commissioning where we seek improvement. I would have hoped from your experience you would endorse our endeavour to achieve that.

Chairman: I think we can move on.

Jonathan Shaw: I wanted one or two good examples. It is about getting the evidence, is it not?

Chairman: I think I will break this up. Andrew, I will ask you to deal with inter and intra departmental coordination.

Q508 Mr Turner: Yes. Which of the other government departments do you deal with the most?

Margaret Hodge: Health, Home Office, ODPM and DCMS probably.

Q509 Mr Turner: The Office of National Statistics published a report that said that the incidence of conduct disorder in boys aged 11 to 15 in a single parent household was three times higher than in a married household. Why do you think that is?

Margaret Hodge: It reminds me, DCA is possibly the other department I should have mentioned, because I spent some time with them as well over issues about separation and divorce and those sorts of issues. The evidence always is that if children are brought up in a settled home with both their birth parents, on the whole that will tend to promote better child outcomes. I think nobody challenges that. Where that takes us in terms of public policy is much more difficult.

Q510 Mr Turner: That is where I was going to ask you to go. What are you doing about it? What lessons are you learning from it?

Margaret Hodge: I think what we learn is that we are trying to do much more than we did in the past to support parenting, and I always again have said, and you will have heard me say in the Committee when we were considering the Bill, that support for parents has been one of the most underdeveloped spheres in public policy development over time, and we are doing much more. I think, again through Sure Start, we have introduced some innovative early support for parents, which they demand, which they want, which there is a huge cry for and which when I talk to Sure Start mums and dads they welcome. We are developing information through the Parentline Plus and other telephone helplines for parents. We are looking at developing support for parents during children's transitions so that as they move from hospital to home, nursery school to primary school to Secondary school, those transition points, and then I think an area where we need to do much more work, which I have also talked about publicly over time is supporting parents during the very difficult teenage years. I think what we are learning is responding to that need for parents to have greater support in the way in which they bring up their children. It is an important area of public policy development.

Q511 Mr Turner: We have been speaking of evidence. Going back to Sure Start for a moment, what does the evidence show about the effectiveness of Sure Start in keeping families together?

Margaret Hodge: Interestingly, the strongest evidence of Sure Start in the evaluation is about that relationship between parents and children. I have forgotten how they describe it in the research evidence, but the relationship between parents and their children is warmer and stronger in Sure Start local areas than it is elsewhere, and that is quite interesting. It is a soft measure, but we are beginning to get powerful evidence, not just anecdotal evidence but powerful evidence, that those relationships, those bonds, are stronger, and that is very important in Early Days.

Q512 Mr Turner: As you know, 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 distribution. Would you say there is the same reason for that?

Margaret Hodge: Again, you will have heard me say in the past that children who go through an acrimonious separation and divorce of their birth parents or married parents, if that separation and divorce is acrimonious, their propensity to have a mental health problem is hugely heightened, and you see a similar pattern of engagement with children's adolescent mental health services as you do with children in the care system, and that is a pretty frightening reality, which is why in all the work we have done around separation and divorce we have put a lot of emphasis, as you will know, on mediation to try and ensure that, painful as it is, you minimise the pain to the children and you put the children first.

Q513 Mr Turner: Clearly there are two elements. There is the minimisation of pain and there is minimisation of separation. What about the latter?

Margaret Hodge: I always wonder exactly what you think. We do what we can to support parenting, we do what we can to ease the difficulties that parents face in relation to their children. I am not sure what the state can do. It is interesting: this is the conservative verses labour. I am not sure what you expect the state to do to sort out people falling out.

Q514 Mr Turner: I was not asking you that.

Margaret Hodge: The Tory nanny state verses the‑‑‑

Q515 Mr Turner: What I tried to get out, what I was going on to ask the Minister is about the importance of fathers.

Margaret Hodge: I agree with that entirely.

Mr Turner: And what she is doing about access for separated fathers to their children.

Q516 Jonathan Shaw: It is a cunning plan!

Margaret Hodge: This is after the Tory nanny state has failed to keep‑‑‑

Mr Turner: No, this is where the socialist nanny state has failed. The socialist nanny state appears not to believe there is a problem.

Chairman: Andrew; please.

Mr Turner: If the Minister wants to address me in those terms, I can answer her in those terms.

Q517 Chairman: The conversation has deteriorated between the two of you.

Margaret Hodge: I have now forgotten the question.

Chairman: Please speak through the Chairman.

Mr Turner: Could I ask the Minister!

Chairman: Yes.

Q518 Mr Turner: As you will know there is some concern about access of separated fathers and their children that incredibly acrimonious and lengthy court proceedings are ineffective in securing the access which children need to their fathers. What is she doing about it?

Margaret Hodge: I think there is a difference of opinion between myself and yourself on this issue. I think when separation and divorce takes place my prime concern is for the interests of the child. I come to this issue on the interests of the child, not the rights of either parent, and that is the basis on which our law is framed, that is the basis on which all our interventions are framed and that is the basis on which our policy is framed. Can I complete the answer? What I was then going to say is if you give paramount thought to the interests of the child, which I do, it is in the child's best interest to maintain a relationship with both parents at the time of the separation and divorce, where it is safe for them to do so, and the whole thrust of case law, the whole thrust of the new interventions that we have suggested through the Green Paper on separation and marital breakdown is to encourage mediation and conciliation between warring parents so that they do put the interests of their child first and they sort out between themselves a civilised way of both parents maintaining contact with their children, and that is what we are trying to do.

Q519 Mr Turner: I am sure nobody would dissent from that objective, but the fact is you published the Green Paper, you published a consultation document in the middle of last year. So far there seems to be no evidence actually either on that consultation document or to enforce existing procedures. I want to know what you are doing with the DCM to make sure existing court orders which allow children access to their fathers and sometimes to their mothers are properly enforced.

Margaret Hodge: There is a draft Bill, which I understand is starting its consideration next week. So I hope Mr Turner is a member of the committee considering that draft Bill. I do not think we can move much faster. We published the consultation paper ‑‑ I am trying to think now. We had about three months consultation; we published the result; we are now into a draft Bill.

Q520 Mr Turner: What about the enforcement of existing orders?

Margaret Hodge: That will give judges‑‑‑ We have responded to the request for judges to have a wider range of community‑based orders which they can employ to ensure the enforcement of contact orders. I am not quite sure what else you are suggesting. What are you suggesting: that we imprison more parents?

Q521 Mr Turner: They have the power nowadays. You are saying it is reasonable that they do not exercise that?

Margaret Hodge: No, I am not saying anything like that. I am not clear. They currently have powers either to imprison the parent that is refusing to comply with a contact order or they have the power to fine. Those are the existing powers. They are both rather heavy sledge hammers in relation to this particular issue and probably do not best serve the interests of the child very often. That is why we have responded by consulting on a range of other community‑based orders; that is why we have a draft Bill which I assume is being published, but the scrutiny of the draft Bill is starting today, Chairman, so it is published, it is out there, and I would suggest that Mr Turner engages with others in consideration of the Bill to see whether we have got it right. I have to say to him as well, if you get to that point of having a contact order which is not complied with, in a sense we have already failed. The whole thrust of our intervention is to try and get parents to decide between themselves in a civilised manner how best to serve the interests of the child by maintaining proper contact with both parents.

Chairman: Andrew, this has been an interesting exchange. Are you going to continue?

Q522 Mr Turner: I was going to ask a different question about incentivising schools to work better and perhaps to be more willing to admit vulnerable pupils. Do you think that financial incentives could be one of the levers you might want to use?

Margaret Hodge: Yes, it could be, but - I had an exchange with the Chairman - I hope the new admissions code for the development of the partnership structures that we hope will evolve through schools in a particular locality, the foundation partnerships, that schools will co‑operate in determining that hard to place children are distributed fairly between the schools, but we will have to wait and see. I think we all recognise the jury is out as to whether or not our new mechanisms will work well.

Chairman: Thank you, Minister. We will return to some of the other issues now.

Q523 Paul Holmes: One more question on a similar theme. You have been asked about how you can get co‑operation to implement new policies across health, across home affairs, across local government; across education. You have been asking local areas to have priorities conversations in order to achieve this. What sorts of priorities conversations have you been having, with the Department of Health and the Home Office in particular, here in Westminster?

Margaret Hodge: With Health, I have been talking about three of their documents. I signed off, with Stephen Ladyman, the National Service Framework for Children, and I think that is a very important document in setting the standards which we want all health professions to reach. I have been very closely involved in the Chief Nursing Officer's review, which is a crucially important document on the role of health visitors, community midwives, and other community-based practitioners - school nurses, those sorts of people. I have also played a strong role in developing the public health White Paper. So those have been three documents which I think could form a very firm basis for co-operation at all levels between us with our children's services responsibilities, and the Department of Health and the responsibilities they have. Beyond that, I always laughingly say that I see more of Stephen Ladyman than I do of my fellow ministers and the team in the DfES. So much so that people start talking. We do see a lot of each other, and we work together closely.

Q524 Chairman: You probably do not know who half of them are!

Margaret Hodge: It would be interesting if you had us all here, actually. We did a very interesting conference just before Christmas ---

Q525 Chairman: To introduce you to each other!

Margaret Hodge: We had a very interesting conference before Christmas, where we had DWP, Home Office, Health, and myself, at the Sure Start national conference. I thought that it provided a very good sharing of policies and ambitions for children. Home Office - we are working very closely together, for example on implementing the recommendation of Bichard on developing policies and protocols for ensuring that people are appropriate to work with children. The youth Green Paper - I am working very hard with my Home Office counterparts on that sort of issue. On things like substance misuse we have a very close working relationship. Youth crime and the youth offending teams - again, I am at the Youth Justice Board bimonthly. So there is a lot of exchange and sharing of policies, programmes and policy development, and all that sort of stuff. So it is a good, close relationship.

Q526 Paul Holmes: One of the bottom lines though will be where the money flows. Department of Health officials have given evidence to us and have said that they do not ring‑fence the money that goes to the PCT; it is up to them to allocate it. At what level will it be ensured that the money becomes available for these purposes?

Margaret Hodge: We can go down a route of ensuring commitment to this agenda through driving inputs - so through ring-fencing - or you can go down a route for ensuring commitment to the agenda by focusing on outcomes. We have chosen the latter. So if you look at health, there is a whole range of targets, outcomes, at PCT level, at Department of Health level, joined across government between ourselves and Health, which will drive activity to achieve those outcomes. That, we hope and expect, will drive resources to achieve the outcomes. So that is the way we are doing it. I do not run away from the difficulties we face in ensuring a proper commitment of resources to achieve the outcomes of the health services. We all know the pressures on PCTs and the pressures particularly on the acute‑based services, and the way that that eats up resources. What we are really asking for is, "Develop your community-based services. Develop your public health agenda". That is difficult. I will just tell you - and it is quite interesting - everywhere I go I always ask PCTs how much they spend on children's services. Often they do not know; and, if they do, it is too small a percentage of their resources. It tends to be about three per cent. So we have a way to go. I am not pretending this is easy. We have a way to go, but we are going down the road of trying to get there through an outcomes focus.

Q527 Paul Holmes: If it tends to be three per cent, what sort of level are you assuming it ought to rise to?

Margaret Hodge: I have not made that assumption, but what we are looking for, for example in CAMHS - if you look at the children's mental health service - there is a huge need to grow the service and there is a commitment to massively increase investment. If you look at the role of school nurses, again there is a commitment in the public health White Paper to grow the number of school nurses. I think that will be a pretty important part of our infrastructure, to deliver the outcomes that we want. If you look at the effectiveness of Sure Start programmes, it is the engagement of health visitors and community midwives that leads to many of the positive outcomes that I am beginning to see out of local programmes around giving up smoking in pregnancy, through to breast feeding, through to the early bonding, through to the reduction of postnatal depression - all those things. That will require a commitment. I sometimes worry - and it is an interesting issue - as we move from having a centrally funded Sure Start local programme to local authority-sponsored Sure Start Children's Centres, it is very important that those children's centres attract the mainstream funding from Health for the midwives and the health visitors, and that they are not just funded through the Sure Start route.

Q528 Paul Holmes: You were optimistic in one of your earlier comments about the early examples of pooling budgets. You said that there were 27 examples so far, I think?

Margaret Hodge: Yes.

Q529 Paul Holmes: Can you quantify what sorts of amounts of money we are talking about across those 27 examples? Are they just token examples, or are they significant amounts of money?

Margaret Hodge: I do not have that information. I can tell you the services which are being delivered through pooled budgets, but I do not have the quantum of information. I can dig around and come back to you, if we have any information that will help the Committee. The sorts of services are Barnsley Children's Health Pathfinder - all their children and young people aged 0 to 25. So they will have a big pooled budget.

Q530 Chairman: Jeff Ennis will be distraught that you have twice mentioned Barnsley and he is not here! He is on a standing committee.

Margaret Hodge: I am really sorry! To take one, Kent, disabled people and children; Medway, speech and language therapy; Newcastle, children and young people with high care needs. It goes down the list.

Q531 Paul Holmes: Perhaps you could send us some figures.

Margaret Hodge: I do not know if we have the information. If we have, we will forward it to you.

Q532 Chairman: My experience suggests that people do not really like pooling money, because they lose their link to it and so it does not look as though it is down to them. They do not get the credit for putting the resource in. That is going to be a difficulty, is it not?

Margaret Hodge: They will get credit.

Q533 Chairman: Will they?

Margaret Hodge: Yes, because they will be judged for their star rating on how well they deliver to children locally - so, yes. Hopefully - well, I am sure - they will get the job satisfaction of knowing that they are serving children better.

Chairman: Hopefully!

Q534 Paul Holmes: Just one more question on the subject of the priorities conversations and how you are talking to your counterparts at this level. How far have you talked to the Home Office about the way in which some of their policies on children, particularly thinking about asylum-seekers' children, totally contradict the idea of Every Child Matters? The Children's Commissioner for Northern Ireland, for example, who gave evidence to us, said that he had taken the Government to judicial review over the implementation of policy on asylum‑seekers' children in Northern Ireland because he thought it was totally out of the ballpark, in terms of what the policy was supposed to achieve.

Margaret Hodge: I have a meeting this afternoon with Des Brown to talk about some of the issues around the safeguarding and the well-being of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and also asylum-seeking children who come over here in families. We talk about it a lot. However, when we considered this issue in relation to the Children Act, we had to be absolutely clear that the primacy in this issue has to be the immigration control and immigration policy. If we had given, for example, the duty to co-operate and duty to safeguard to the Immigration Service, I think that we would have opened a loophole which would have enabled asylum-seeking families and unaccompanied asylum-seeking children to use those particular duties to override the immigration controls and the asylum-seeking controls. That is a difficulty and we had to face up to it. I think that we took the right route, which is that the primacy is on maintaining a fair and just immigration system but, within that, we have always to have regard to the well-being and safety of children - and we do. I work very closely with Home Office ministers and, through them, with NAS and the immigration people, social services and the police - there is a whole raft of people with whom we have to work - to ensure that children are safeguarded. We are all worried about children that are trafficked, for example. It is very, very difficult to get underneath that.

Q535 Chairman: Many of us are concerned about the abuse of children and the way they are carried around on the Tube by women begging. Is that your responsibility, Minister? Do you care about it?

Margaret Hodge: Of course. Do I personally care? Yes.

Q536 Chairman: Do you do anything about it?

Margaret Hodge: Both in the training we give to people who work with children in the Immigration Service, and in the partnerships we have established between immigration, NAS, social services and the police - and we have established those partnerships - we are ensuring that when children are here in Britain their well-being - safeguarding them - is our concern. I care about them. They come under the Children Act for as long as they can ---

Q537 Chairman: You are now talking about co-operation amongst the departments. Most Londoners, travelling on the Tube, persistently see children being abused because they are used as an appendage for begging. It has been going on for a long time. Why on earth do not the police, the transport police, and your ministry do something about it?

Margaret Hodge: Interestingly enough, the British Transport Police are covered by section 11 of the Children Act, so they have a duty to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. What appropriate action they should take in that regard is difficult. But they are covered.

Q538 Chairman: You do not think it is child abuse? Carrying small children ---

Margaret Hodge: I think that you have to be careful how you define your terms, Chairman.

Q539 Chairman: I think that hawking a child, late at night on the Tube, on the hip, in order to get sympathy for begging, is a dreadful abuse of children.

Margaret Hodge: I do not like it, but what action you would take in regard to it - you would not want to remove the child from their parent on that basis, I do not think.

Q540 Chairman: I would certainly like to investigate what is behind it.

Margaret Hodge: British Transport Police do have that duty and they would then have a duty also to co-operate with the social services department in the new world, post-Children Act. So the duty is on them. I really want also to give that reassurance to the Committee: that every child that is in Britain is covered by our duties to promote their welfare, promote their well-being, and safeguard them.

Q541 Mr Greenway: Let us change tack completely and talk about some of the practical issues about delivering this policy. How important is the creation of databases and child indices in ensuring the exchange of vital information and greater co-operation between professionals? Rather than pursue that, would it not be preferable to focus effort, first and foremost, on improving frontline employees' ability to work together?

Margaret Hodge: Of course we have to focus on frontline professionals working well together. The whole lesson we learn from the Victoria Climbié tragedy, and from every other report that I ever read on the death of a child, is that there has been a failure of the professionals to communicate with each other; a failure to work together. That is why, when I talk about building services around the needs of children, young people and their families, the principle underpinning that is to get professionals working better together. That is why locating professionals together in Sure Start Children's Centres, extended schools, multi‑professional teams, whatever it is, is so important. That is why having a common assessment framework is so important. That is why developing core competences right across all professionals, so that they have a joint understanding of language, of child development, of child safeguarding - all that is all about getting people working better together. Information-sharing is yet another tool to support better working together by professionals - nothing more, nothing less. It is a tool. It is an important tool that in the modern world we ought to employ, which will help professionals, save time, identify other professionals who are working with a child; it will help them intervene earlier in that child's life when they first spot that there are things going wrong, and it will lead to better outcomes. But it is nothing more or less than a tool; it is not an end in itself.

Q542 Mr Greenway: The legislation to create these databases was enacted before the results of the information-sharing assessment pilots were fully known. What further analysis and risk assessment do you plan to do before progressing to the commissioning and implementation stages of these databases? What is the timetable for doing so?

Margaret Hodge: The legislation provided us with a framework. In fact, one of the reasons we got into slight difficulties during consideration of the legislation was this concern which people felt that there was not sufficient detail on the face of the Act to give comfort to some of the concerns about privacy. So it is no more or less, again, than a framework. We are working towards developing the information database in a very steady, focused, staged way. We are not moving faster than we can. For example, we have now employed a number of pretty high‑powered people to support the development of the project; we have external expertise that we bring in; we are very closely monitored by the new Government review process; we keep learning from the trailblazers - I meet with them regularly; we are developing a business case. We will go slowly and steadily to make sure that we do not get another government IT project wrong.

Q543 Mr Greenway: You have anticipated, probably by the look on my face, the question that I was going to ask. Do you worry that the record of successive governments - let us be fair about this - in commissioning IT databases, which were going to be all-singing and all‑dancing, do everything for everybody, is not spectacularly good? I agree with you completely regarding your opening comment in answer to my first question: that it is when information does not get shared that something goes wrong. So this could be where the fault lies in the future, and the same kind of tragedy happens again.

Margaret Hodge: I do worry. I accept that the record is not good. All I can tell you is that we are determined to get this right. If you look, for example, at the recent media coverage on the NHS system, one of the mistakes made there was a failure to get user involvement in developing that. We are making sure that we do have user involvement. We are keeping it as simple as we can. I think the key to this is simplicity, and I am determined to have that. So every decision we take is trying to get the simplest solution. We are not trying to develop new technology. We are using well-tried and tested technology; so we are not inventing new systems. But - and let me put this to you - I genuinely think the Committee would benefit from a session with the trailblazers, Chairman. I have read a lot of your evidence, and I honestly think that you would find a seminar or something with the trailblazers really helpful. When you talk to the trailblazers, which I do regularly, we are beginning to unlock something really important. They all talk about the project supporting much better cross-professional communication and working-together. They all talk about that. They all talk about the fact that they are identifying more children with additional needs - which is interesting in itself. So we are able, through this system, to find children earlier and to respond to their additional needs, so that their development is not halted. They all talk about earlier intervention. They all talk about the same sort of thing. It is quite interesting. When I talk to professionals across the piece, at the moment we do not even share a language across the professional divides. We all use words like "assessment" in a very different way. Assessment to a social worker will be different to assessment to a teacher, to a youth worker, to a connections worker - all that sort of stuff. We are beginning to break down those barriers and boundaries. I think that the fear that has been engendered around information systems being an end in itself is false. I think that the fear that has been engendered that we are wasting time and money is false. The understanding we are getting from the trailblazers fills me with optimism that, as long as we go steadily, slowly, and every move we take we think about, re-examine, re-justify and have certainty of it - I think that this will probably be a pretty groundbreaking development, which will help us serve children's interests better.

Mr Greenway: We will move on to training, if we may.

Q544 Chairman: Before we do, perhaps I could ask a supplementary on that. How are you evaluating the evidence that has been given to the Committee by the Information Commissioner and other, leading experts? You do not have a very good track record in IT systems in the Department for Education and Skills, have you, Minister?

Margaret Hodge: Across government. We have not got a good track record. The Government does not have ---

Q545 Chairman: Let us just remain with your department. You know of a number of things we have investigated in this Committee that touch on IT. We are already writing up the e‑University saga. Individual Learning Accounts are fresh in our minds. The evidence we have is that some people estimate we have spent a billion pounds on an information system, when it is finished, that could have gone to frontline services. That is what they are saying.

Margaret Hodge: I think that the two examples you use from our department do not help your point, with the greatest respect. Both ILA ---

Q546 Chairman: Did you say that I was abusing your department?

Margaret Hodge: No - do not help your argument.

Q547 Chairman: My cold is affecting my hearing.

Margaret Hodge: Because I would say, on both ILAs and e-University, it was the policy and not the implementation.

Q548 Chairman: No, I am sorry. ILAs certainly was the implementation. Our criticisms of Capita in that respect, and the contract between your department and Capita, are still very fresh in my memory, Minister, if not in yours.

Margaret Hodge: I am not sure that it was the system.

Q549 Chairman: It was a system totally open to fraud.

Margaret Hodge: No, it was a policy which had not built into it ---

Q550 Chairman: The Information Commissioner told us he would not believe that this could be a secured system.

Margaret Hodge: Which one? Ours?

Q551 Chairman: Yes, the one you are developing.

Margaret Hodge: On the security of the system that we are developing, it will be a secure system. All I can say to him ---

Q552 Chairman: He is the expert; you are the Minister.

Margaret Hodge: No, he is not the expert in ICT system; he is the expert in information. I shall just read you a list, because I thought that you might ask it, having read his evidence.

Q553 Chairman: I hope it is not a long list.

Margaret Hodge: It is long. What we will cover is security policy definition; organisation security; asset classification and control; personnel security; physical and environmental security; communications and operational management security; systems access control. The list goes on and on. I have read about half of it to you. So we will ensure that we have a secure system. Having said that, we are working with the Information Commissioner. We do understand that he is raising concerns which we need to address, and we welcome his help, the help of his officials, and the co-operation we are having from him in developing this.

Q554 Chairman: So all of the evidence we have taken - you scoff at that really, and they are wrong and you are right?

Margaret Hodge: All I am suggesting - I think that you had evidence from three individuals - is that you talk to the trailblazers who are developing a system for us on the ground. If after you have had that balanced evidence, one argument on one side and one argument on the other side, you come to the same view, of course we will take your consideration seriously. All I can tell you is, on the ground, where these information systems are being developed, where the protocols to share information are happening, it is leading to better outcomes for children. That is the whole purpose of what we are trying to do.

Q555 Chairman: The Information Commissioner said that, in terms of the quality and security, the professionals will not use it and it will be a white elephant.

Margaret Hodge: I do not agree with him. The reason I started reading the very long list and stopped halfway through is that I think we can ensure security and, by keeping it as a simple system - as simple as we can - we will ensure that it is of the quality necessary to provide that tool which will support better sharing of information between professionals.

Q556 Paul Holmes: Some of the evidence that we have received on that was from Professor Cleaver. Professor Cleaver had undertaken an analysis of the trailblazers, I think for your department. So she had actually looked at the implementation of the trailblazers. She was saying that the advantages that were coming through the scheme were not actually from the computer project and the database, it was from getting people in local areas to talk together and getting professionals to work together. The database was irrelevant. She said, having done the analysis for your department, that this was a total waste of money. This money ought to be going into frontline services and not into a big computer system.

Margaret Hodge: I was very bemused by her evidence, because she had been at the last seminar I had with the trailblazers and was singing a rather different tune. I just have to say that to you, and I really do not understand that.

Q557 Chairman: She knew she was singing on the record.

Margaret Hodge: Indeed, and I remain bemused. I would suggest that you read her report to us to see whether there is consistency between the evidence that she gave to you in open committee and the report, which is in the public domain, of the evidence that she gave to us when she did it. But the interesting thing is - and that is why when I responded to Mr Greenway I said this - she is right to say what matters is getting professionals to work together. I completely agree with that. The whole purpose of all we are doing is to get professionals to work together. We see this as a powerful tool to enable that to happen. Mr Shaw will no doubt question this, but maybe he will accept that when he was a social worker, trying to track down all the other people who were working with a child - if you were suddenly worried about a child - might take you days. If, through having this very simple tool - and we will keep it simple - you can save time and have a swifter conversation about a child about whom you will have concerns, that is good; that is to the benefit. It will save the social worker time; it gets a better outcome for the child; it gets swifter intervention in that child's life. Of course it is not an end in itself. I have to keep saying that. We do not think we want just an all-singing, all-dancing, massive IT project. What we want is an eclectic tool to support professional work.

Q558 Chairman: Which is every child in the country on a database?

Margaret Hodge: The reason we want a universal database - there are some very powerful reasons for this and we went through the argument very carefully when we took the decision to go for a universal database. Let me just go through them. Again, the thrust of our policy intent is to move to early identification and early intervention. If you simply have a database of only those children that are at risk or in care, you have started to intervene too late. So we want a system which enables this early intervention. The second thing is, the analysis we have shows that probably - and it is quite an interesting figure - a third of children throughout their childhood and young adulthood will have an additional need. So it is a lot of children we are talking about. It will be very different sorts of needs, but a third of children at some point may require extra support and intervention to ensure that they fulfil their potential. In that, if you want to identify that third early, it makes sense to go for a universal database. Thirdly, if we do not have all children, it is very difficult to identify a particular child, it is very difficult to plan services. Think of the children missing out on education. Take that as an example. At the moment, it is terribly difficult to track those kids who are missing from education. We have got runaway projects - we have all these projects running. We do not really know them all. If we have a universal database which identifies all children, it is much easier for us to track down those children who are missing out on the universal services, which again will ensure that they fulfil their potential. The final thing I would say to you is that a universal database is much less stigmatising, and therefore much easier to operate than one that is simply focused on children who are on the at-risk register of a social services department presently in local authorities.

Q559 Paul Holmes: Clearly there is a need for you to have some positive conversations, because one week we can have you and your officials saying, "This is what we are going to do, and it works", but a couple of weeks earlier we have Dr Munro, Professor Cleaver and the Information Commissioner sitting there saying, "It's a total white elephant and bad use of the money". So there clearly needs to be some conversation somehow. But can I just press you on one particular point about funding? Apart from the few trailblazers, the local authorities which have been given £100,000 each - which amounts to £15 million across the country - for IT equipment, the actual cost is going to be a billion. Is this billion pounds going to mean you get another billion that comes from other savings you are making?

Margaret Hodge: Let me first of all say it is not to develop IT systems: it is to develop protocols for better sharing of information across professional boundaries. That is the first thing. The second thing is we are not talking anywhere near billions. It is too early to give you - we will develop a business case and share it with everybody. I am all for having a completely open development of this particular aspect of our policy. We are into the low hundreds, if anything.

Q560 Chairman: You are committed to doing further analysis and cost accounting?

Margaret Hodge: We have an estimate, but it would be too early ---

Q561 Chairman: What is your estimate?

Margaret Hodge: It is in the very, very low hundreds.

Q562 Paul Holmes: In the Health Service, it is £61/2 billion and rising.

Margaret Hodge: But, if you look at it, we have given a million to each of the trailblazers. They have all developed an IT system on the back of that, plus all the protocols which are ---

Q563 Paul Holmes: Some of which will have to be scrapped once you have a national system, because they will not all be compatible.

Margaret Hodge: If you have a learning process, you have to use the learning process and understand that that might lead to some developments that you will not pursue. I accept that. It is a difficult one to play, is it not? Either you have trailblazers from which you learn, and then you learn what works and what does not work, or you do not. I am still pleased that we invested that money in the trailblazers. And I honestly would urge you, Chairman, to have some sort of discussion with just a handful of those trailblazers. They are very different.

Q564 Chairman: I would also urge you, Minister, to tell the Committee if you have had any evaluation, from an independent source or internally, of how much this might cost.

Margaret Hodge: Yes.

Q565 Chairman: How much? "Low hundreds" is no good to this Committee.

Margaret Hodge: Very low hundreds. We are in the process of developing a business ---

Chairman: Millions.

Q566 Mr Greenway: Hundreds of millions of pounds?

Margaret Hodge: Yes. The figures that have been bandied around are absurd.

Q567 Chairman: All these smart IT companies know that this is a pretty lean contract, do they?

Margaret Hodge: That is why I am not sharing the actual figures with you at this point. But it is much, much less than you have been led to believe.

Q568 Chairman: You have not signed a contract yet.

Margaret Hodge: And we will not sign a contract until I feel certain that this is a proper investment. I can give that assurance. We have been extremely careful at each step to get validation, evaluation, and we will not move until I am certain that this is not going to be an IT disaster, but that it will be a good additional tool.

Q569 Mr Greenway: How do you intend to ensure that Every Child Matters-related training gets the priority it deserves, bearing in mind all the other pressures - not just on schools but the other services - which suggests to us that it may not get the priority it needs?

Margaret Hodge: It is a huge priority, and it is training across the piece. I talked about the core competences. We are developing these six core competences that we think all professionals working with children, right across the children's workforce, ought to have if we are to be effective in our transformational programme. Training to work in a multi‑agency context is very important. Training for new leadership. How do you run this multi-agency service, whether it is a children's centre, whether it is a multi-agency team in an extended school, or whether it is a children's services authority? So the training investment is huge. We hope, in the next couple of weeks, to be putting forward a workforce strategy, which will start putting meat on the bones of how we see the training develop. We are working, as we speak, on developing training packages around the core competences, around leadership, around emerging leaders - those sorts of things. We will prioritise it as we go along. Just remember that all the professions who are engaged in providing services for children already have large training programmes; so we will expect them to be bent towards delivering this.

Q570 Mr Greenway: But this is going to cost new money?

Margaret Hodge: Why? Not necessarily.

Q571 Mr Greenway: Why do you think not? I think the evidence to the Committee is that it will, and there are concerns as to how it will be met.

Margaret Hodge: Part of it will be changing the induction training that people have. So getting the core competences built in to training programmes. Part of it will be professional development. Part of it will come from the work of the new Children's Workforce Development Council as they develop their programmes. We are making sure that we provide resources to them, so that they can develop training packages and encourage training across the children's workforce. So there is a huge training challenge, and I accept that. I do not accept that it necessarily needs massive new resources. It needs people thinking about this as being a training priority.

Q572 Chairman: I am worried that everything seems to be done with miracle dust in this piece of legislation. It is one of the most important changes that we have had in legislative terms for many years, and it is all going to cost nothing.

Margaret Hodge: Because a lot of what we do will be a redirection of resources. Because a lot of what we do will genuinely, honestly save money and professional time across the piece.

Chairman: Minister, I hear what you say. We will now move on to the Children's Commissioner, with questions from Jonathan Shaw.

Q573 Jonathan Shaw: Tell us how you think the relationship between yourself and the Children's Commissioner for England will pan out.

Margaret Hodge: I do not think that we will always agree. I think that I will find the Children's Commissioner quite challenging - of me - on a number of issues; but I hope that we can also work together in the interests of children. I am talking to children and young people all the time. The new Children's Commissioner - we are interviewing as we speak, and so we will have somebody appointed, I hope, in the next few weeks. I hope that we will share a lot of the values and ambitions for children. I hope that we will work together, but I do not expect it always to be a comfortable relationship. Probably like the DfES ministers and Ofsted - it is that sort of relationship, probably.

Q574 Jonathan Shaw: I think it is a very important point that you have made, Minister, because there is some concern about the level of independence for this post-holder. The secretary of state, through yourself, I guess, will be able to direct this post-holder to undertake certain inquiries. The secretary of state has that power within the Act. What happens then, in your words, if this post-holder does not agree? If you say, "You have to go and look at that and report" and they say, "I don't think I should be looking at that. I need to be doing something else"? Because at the moment the other Children's Commissioners in Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, can do that.

Margaret Hodge: We had a long discussion, during the process of determining the powers and duties of the Children's Commissioner, as to whether or not the English Children's Commissioner will be more independent, less independent, more powerful, less powerful than the commissioners in the other countries in Great Britain. It is a different role. We are establishing a different animal here in England. We are establishing an animal that will not be engaged in looking at individual cases, day in, day out, because we did not want them borne down by individual caseload - which in my view other commissioners in the other nations are. However, I think that this will be a tough, strong, independent commissioner, who will make my life uncomfortable from time to time; who will report independently to Parliament; who will, I have absolutely no doubt, be interviewed by yourselves on a regular basis, and so have that accountability through Parliament to the nation; who will be able to undertake wide investigations into a whole range of activities - and I would hope would do a few each year.

Q575 Jonathan Shaw: What sorts of inquiries do you think that the secretary of state might ask the commissioner to conduct?

Margaret Hodge: The only occasion on which the secretary of state might want the commissioner to lead an inquiry is where there has been a particularly tragic set of circumstances round an individual child or a group of children, which requires a national inquiry - a Climbié-type inquiry. In those circumstances, it seemed to us that the most appropriate organisation to undertake that inquiry would be the office of the Children's Commissioner for England. So that is the only occasion. Apart from that, the commissioner will be an independent champion; will be able to initiate and conduct inquiries, of relevance to all children.

Q576 Jonathan Shaw: So that is on the one hand, and that is very helpful, Minister. You have told the Committee what type of inquiry the secretary of state might ask the commissioner to conduct. What sort of advice would the secretary of state give the commissioner when he did not want to make an inquiry? "No, I don't want to do that." In what set of circumstances might that arise?

Margaret Hodge: The commissioner has the power to hold an inquiry if he or she so chooses, and there is no way the Government can prevent that inquiry from taking place.

Q577 Jonathan Shaw: You do not ever foresee a set of circumstances where the secretary of state will direct the commissioner and say, "You will not investigate that"?

Margaret Hodge: We cannot.

Q578 Jonathan Shaw: He cannot?

Margaret Hodge: No.

Q579 Jonathan Shaw: We cannot be clearer than that. There is also some concern about the devolutions and the settlement of this. Perhaps you would like to have an opportunity to clear some of those concerns up. As you rightly said, with regard to the Children's Commissioners in the other countries in the UK, children can go directly to them, but there will be some reserve legislation, particularly in the case of Wales, so there might be some confusion there as to where children are directed if there is an issue of concern. What sort of advice are you giving the commissioners? Because they raised this themselves.

Margaret Hodge: I am not. If I were to give the commissioner advice, I would, in my view, be interfering with the independence of the commissioner. What I expect to happen is for a sensible discussion to take place between the English commissioner and the Welsh commissioner, so that they sort out systems for themselves - perhaps through a memorandum of understanding - to ensure that there is not confusion in the minds of children. I hope that two sensible people can come to a commonsense view about ---

Q580 Chairman: Will the English commissioner be on a lower table, because he is only a second-rate commissioner?

Margaret Hodge: I do not think he is a second-rate commissioner. I have always taken the view, Chairman, that our commissioner in England will be an incredibly powerful, independent champion for children. But time will tell - if we make the right appointment over the next few days, and seeing how that commissioner performs in his or her job.

Q581 Jonathan Shaw: That "time will tell" seamlessly brings me to the next question. Do you plan to evaluate the role? There have been lots of concerns from a range of different NGOs and throughout the Bill, as you rightly said, Minister. So will you put these concerns to the test? Will you evaluate the role of the commissioner? Will we be able to see if there is concern about complaints not being picked up? Will there therefore be a commitment to introduce new powers, if that is necessary?

Margaret Hodge: I always evaluate, always reflect, and always think about it. I am pretty certain here though that we have actually established a much more effective independent voice for children than the other countries have - but that is my personal view. I have been consistent in that view since we first engaged in that debate. I think that if we had established a commissioner whose main focus was looking at individual complaints, it would have been a less effective champion for children in England.

Q582 Jonathan Shaw: One final point, on the role of parents. You referred earlier on to parents being central to the way that we shape our children's services. There was an amendment to the Children Act in the Lords which was accepted there. You were really a bit of a Johnny‑come‑lately, were you not? Nevertheless, that was welcomed by people. On the issue of the Children's Centres which will now be under local authority control, one of the benefits, it seemed to me, is that the Sure Start centres, now to be Children's Centres, are being run by local parents. Those parents have been able to shape those services in accordance with their wishes and local needs. Also, and importantly, it provides a good learning opportunity for parents to take some control. Certainly some of the parents I have spoken to have benefited. They have been on a range of different courses and they have started to understand how services are delivered and how they can affect that. Is there not a danger that, in handing it over to the local authority, you will lose that autonomy; you will lose that creativity; and you will lose the very point that you have said that you are so passionate about - involving the parents? It will just become all part of the council's services, will it not?

Margaret Hodge: No, and we will ensure, both through guidance that we give local authorities and the way in which we inspect and manage the performance of local authorities, that that essential ethos of Sure Start, which is the involvement of parents in all aspects of the delivery of services for children and families in the earliest years, is maintained.

Q583 Jonathan Shaw: How many people have you got writing guidance in the department?

Margaret Hodge: Loads!

Q584 Jonathan Shaw: You tell us on the one hand that you are worried about the mountain of guidance you are giving local authorities, and then in every other sentence you say, "We are doing some more guidance. That will sort that out".

Margaret Hodge: We have a new Children Act ---

Q585 Jonathan Shaw: Why do you not leave things as they are? Then you would not have to give any guidance to anyone, and you could do the thing that you wanted to - which is to reduce guidance. Leave parents running Sure Start Children's Centres. Let them call them what they want.

Margaret Hodge: This is a whole system-change programme for children's services, based on that legislative framework that we had in the Children Act. I am afraid that, to create that whole system change right the way through, requires much more guidance than I would wish seeing occurring. This is why I keep saying it is a long-term programme; it is a long-term transformation; and we have to bring those professionals with us. Every time I get a bit of guidance, I try to cut it by half - which is my first step in trying to minimise the burden, but it is undoubtedly ---

Q586 Jonathan Shaw: It is a bonfire of guidance?

Margaret Hodge: You were probably around - were you around? - at the time of the 1989 Children Act. I assume there was a whole load of guidance that came out of that Act, and we are basically ---

Q587 Chairman: Much of which was never implemented.

Margaret Hodge: This is going to be implemented.

Q588 Chairman: To remain on that track, when you evaluate the ability of local authorities to deliver your programme, do you take into account previous work in terms of Early Years? Because that is an area where they say nice things about much of the Early Years investment of the Government.

Margaret Hodge: Yes.

Q589 Chairman: Yet Early Years partnerships have been patchy, have they not, in terms of how they involve parents and the not-for-profit sector, the voluntary and the private sector? Too often, we noticed even when we did our report some years ago, the local authority had to assert their chair - to make sure that it did not get out of their control; whereas we thought that we should have independent chairs. There was some evidence at that time that the independent chairs were better. Have you done an evaluation of that type - the Early Years partnerships?

Margaret Hodge: Much of the Change for Children Programme is built on the experience we have had from the Early Years, where we have brought professionals together across the divide, and where we are beginning - and only just beginning - to see that cultural change in the way people work on the ground with children, young people and their families. So of course we have done that. What I would say to you, Chairman, is I think that we will always have probably ten per cent of local authorities whose performance and commitment to the ethos of the Change for Children Programme causes us concern. I think that will probably always be the case. But you cannot let a government policy be driven by the performance of a minority in that way. You need to go with a broad thrust of government policy, where we know the majority will go with us, and then look at what levers you can employ to bring up the performance of those people who do not share our commitment to transforming children's services. That is why the power to intervene, the way in which we assess, star-rate, the way in which we encourage the money driver - all that sort of stuff is very important.

Q590 Chairman: I want to get on to finance for our final section, but I must say this. Evidence given to this Committee suggests that the European Network of Children's Commissioners believes that the powers you are giving the English commissioner are so weak that he or she will not be allowed to join the European Network of Children's Commissioners. That is true, is it not?

Margaret Hodge: I would like our English commissioner to join the European club, and I am sure that when we have someone in post they will sort out any concern.

Q591 Chairman: Does it not cause concern at all that they think the powers are so weak that they will not be allowed to join?

Margaret Hodge: I do not agree, Chairman. I think that we have established a very powerful, independent champion for children. The proof of the pudding will be in that record ---

Q592 Chairman: Will this commissioner have a car or a chauffeur?

Margaret Hodge: I do not have a clue!

Q593 Chairman: Perhaps if there was not a ministerial car, you would see more of the exploited children that I see used as accessories to begging on the Tube.

Margaret Hodge: There is no answer to that one!

Q594 Chairman: Join me on the Tube, and see how ordinary people work.

Margaret Hodge: I do at weekends, but I accept that ---

Q595 Paul Holmes: In all the guidance that you are in the process of writing for the roll‑out of the new Sure Start and the expansion from 500, and so on, what is the role of nursery schools in your guidance?

Margaret Hodge: We want to build Children's Centres on all existing early years' provision. For a long time, I have preached that nursery schools need to change and transform themselves into Sure Start Children's Centres. Nursery schools provide some of the most excellent early years' education experience that we have in the country, so we need to build on that excellence but provide the multi-agency support for children, going down the age range to birth. The best of nursery schools are doing that. My own view is that if the others do not, they will die. So they have to come on board the game if they wish to have a continued existence in the long term - and I want them to do that.

Paul Holmes: That is certainly consistent with your writing to the local authorities in October 2003, saying that. Are you concerned that there appears to be a trend developing of local authorities closing nursery schools down, rather than turning them into Children's Centres? For example, Slough, Bristol, Durham, Lancaster, Oxfordshire, Rochdale, have all been closing nursery schools down - some of them highly rated by Ofsted.

Mr Chaytor: Chairman, it is a Liberal Democrat council in Rochdale that is doing it, of course.

Chairman: I thought that we were not partisan!

Q596 Mr Chaytor: I thought that the Minister might like to have that information.

Margaret Hodge: Thank you. It is very helpful information!

Q597 Chairman: Minister, you have a very bad effect on my Committee, I have to say!

Margaret Hodge: I think that I have probably seen every proposal from a local authority to close a nursery school. So we have tried to put stops in the system. In the end it is their decision, but we have tried to put stops in the system to encourage their evolution into Sure Start Children's Centres. In the end, sometimes because the nursery school itself is not prepared to change, or because of the particular circumstances in a particular locality, sadly, decisions are taken to close nursery schools. I regret that. What I want to happen in policy terms is for every nursery school to become a Sure Start Children's Centre.

Q598 Mr Chaytor: Minister, in your lengthy discussions with Dr Ladyman have either of you considered the impact of the Government's policies on choice in the acute health sector on your efforts to bring about greater integration in primary care?

Margaret Hodge: Yes, there are tensions between the pressures to invest in the acute sector to meet the Health Service performance targets and our desire to expand community children‑based services, which on the whole tend to be around the public health agenda. That is why we have these three very important documents - the NSF for Children, the Public Health Service White Paper, and the Chief Nursing Officer's review. That is why we are working with those to try to ensure that appropriate priority decisions are taken at the PCT level to get us the investment we need in children's services. The Health Service has been generously funded over time. It is expanding massively. We need to ensure that some of that expansion comes into children's services. But it is not an easy road - I accept that.

Q599 Mr Chaytor: If the secretary of state is insisting that 'x' per cent of the acute commissioning is now contracted out, this will cause enormous problems for the budgets of primary care trusts, is it not? We will see a huge amount of instability in the acute sector, and this will suck resources in like never before. I just cannot see how you can expect the primary care trusts to readjust their budgets in the way you want to see them do so, whilst at the same time they will be compensating for the cost of contracting out into the private sector.

Margaret Hodge: There is a presumption there that the choice agenda will create such financial problems for the acute sector that it will draw in resources, which I am sure Health Service ministers would challenge. I am not au fait with the detail.

Q600 Mr Chaytor: The ministers have fixed this arbitrary percentage of acute commissioning ---

Margaret Hodge: Yes, but I think they would challenge your presumption as to whether that will create the sorts of financial pressures that you describe. It is something you need to take up with them.

Q601 Mr Chaytor: It is surely something you need to take up with them.

Margaret Hodge: What I do take up with them consistently is trying to put a clear bottom on the commitments, for example to expand the school nursing cohort, which is firmly stated in the public health White Paper, and which I think is really important to our agenda and to improving children's outcomes. So my drive is not to challenge the work that is going on elsewhere, but to ensure that there is a balance of expenditure, with appropriate expenditure going on children's services. And there are those targets. It is probably worth reiterating that there is a target around children's mental health services, which PCTs will have to meet. There is a target that we share with health around teenage pregnancies, which we both have to meet. There are targets around drug abuse, which we all need to meet. So there are some pretty powerful targets, which will also drive expenditure decisions over time.

Q602 Mr Chaytor: This week the Secretary of State for Health said that he would be happy for hospitals to close as a result of the choice policy. It is all very well having targets for PCTs, but if PCTs are landed with the costs of dealing with a hospital closure, they are not going to find it easy to meet their targets in the primary care area.

Margaret Hodge: There are huge pressures on PCTs. We all know that from our own local PCTs. I am not denying the tension.

Q603 Mr Chaytor: The pressures will be greater because of government policies in a different area, and it brings in the question of integration across the departments, does it not?

Margaret Hodge: What I would put to you are two issues. One is that there is an expansion of resources going into health - a massive expansion of resources in real terms. So we need to secure a share of that. The second is the question ---

Q604 Chairman: There are massive resources going into health? Could you repeat that last sentence?

Margaret Hodge: There is an expansion of resources going into the Health Service. The second is the presumption that you make - that this will put additional pressures - which is one that I am sure health ministers would challenge. That is all I can say to you, but I accept that there are tensions.

Q605 Mr Chaytor: Perhaps I could pursue the line of argument with respect to education and school admissions. The same principle is operating here, and the Government is encouraging more popular schools to expand. Surely the impact of that is likely to be felt most severely in the very 20 per cent of the most deprived wards where you are going to establish the Sure Start Children's Centres. I can envisage across the country, in some of these more deprived wards, less popular schools disappearing because of the impact of greater choice, leaving the control in the local community, whilst at the same time the Government is coming in and building a Sure Start Children's Centre. To many of our constituents, the threat of the loss of their secondary school or of their primary school will not be compensated by the building of a Sure Start Children's Centre.

Margaret Hodge: I think there is an interesting, almost philosophical, value-driven issue here. I have always believed that parental choice ---

Q606 Mr Chaytor: Do you accept that schools will close under the impact of parental choice? If popular schools expand, the other schools must start to contract.

Margaret Hodge: Let me come back, because I have always believed that choice by the user - whether it is the patient, the parent or the pupil - is an important driver for improving quality. I have always believed that. Again, I think that is a lot of the thinking behind our reform programme and it is a lot of the thinking behind the NHS reform programme. If that means a change in the configuration of institutions, so be it. It is always important to hang on to that. If we really want to raise the quality of public services, to which we are all committed, enabling user choice - which is a word we all feel more comfortable with - whether it is the patient or the pupil or the parent, is a critical driver to improving quality.

Q607 Mr Chaytor: Surely the change in the configuration of institutions is most likely to impact adversely on the 20 per cent of the most deprived wards that you wish to focus on?

Margaret Hodge: No, I do not accept that. Honestly, I just do not accept that. If there is a school that is not performing well, what you first do is pick it up through your performance mechanisms and you try and support change and support improvement, and that means you get a good local school, which is what parents want. If parents vote with their feet not to attend a particular school, i.e. they exercise their parental choice, I think that is a pretty powerful driver. I do not think that we should try in our policies to diminish that driver. I think that it is a really important way of improving quality. So I feel that - with all my long, traditional values.

Q608 Mr Chaytor: The question I am trying to raise is that the choice ---

Margaret Hodge: And it may mean change.

Q609 Mr Chaytor: Choice is not infinite. There will be parents who are left without choice. This is the logic of government policy in both health and education, it seems to me.

Margaret Hodge: But you do not retain choice by simply maintaining poor-quality services.

Q610 Mr Chaytor: Of course not. I do not think anyone is arguing that. We are trying to spell out the implications of the full-blooded choice agenda, which is now being advanced.

Margaret Hodge: I think that we differ on that one. I think choice is a good driver. It is a democratic driver.

Q611 Chairman: What is the percentage of schools in special measures that are in the 20 per cent of most impoverished wards?

Margaret Hodge: I do not know the answer to that.

Q612 Chairman: Could you find out?

Margaret Hodge: I will find out and let you know.

Q613 Chairman: Your constituency, or mine or that of any member of this Committee - whilst many of us will be in favour of choice as you are, if the knock-on was that we would cease to have schools in the most deprived areas of the communities we represent, that would be worrying to you, would it not, Minister?

Margaret Hodge: Of course. I think that is a bleak picture that he paints. If you look at the record of where standards have improved most, they have improved most in those most deprived areas where, before we came into government, the quality of the offer to the children was weakest. So our actual record may give some comfort to David's fear that it means that it is going to ---

Q614 Mr Chaytor: Without prolonging this point, I think that you are conflating the question of the schools where standards have improved most and the schools that are most popular. The two are not necessarily the same. You can have schools that are doing a very good job, with high standards, but yet which remain not popular to a sufficient number of parents for the school to be viable. That is the real issue.

Margaret Hodge: I agree, and that is why all that we are doing about the school profile and opening schools to public account is so important - so that parents make a choice based on real information. I agree with that. That is why I was so keen on all we did in the early days. Playground gossip is not a good alternative.

Q615 Mr Chaytor: Could we move on more specifically to the question of funding? The figure you gave for the increase in Early Years funding since 1997 was a 40 per cent increase - one billion to four billion.

Margaret Hodge: Over four billion.

Q616 Mr Chaytor: Can you remind us, in the next three-year spending period, how much will be allocated (a) to Early Years and (b) to the implementation of the Every Child Matters programme overall?

Margaret Hodge: Over this spending review period we are doubling the investment. It is a 23 per cent real-terms increase each year over the spending review period. So it is massive.

Q617 Mr Chaytor: From four billion to eight billion?

Margaret Hodge: Within that four billion is the nursery education ---

Q618 Mr Chaytor: We need some hard figures here.

Margaret Hodge: Can I send them to you? I do not have it with me today. I was looking at them last night. When we came in 1997-98 it was about £1.1-£1.2 billion, something like that. It is now over four in 2004-05. It is going up from 2005-08. It is doubling; but what is doubling is the Sure Start budget. In that overarching figure which I gave you I included nursery education investment as well. So I have to extricate the nursery education from the rest. But I will let you have that breakdown of figures.

Q619 Mr Chaytor: Could you give us, within that figure of four billion or whatever, exactly how much is earmarked to the development of the Every Child Matters work?

Margaret Hodge: That figure I gave you is entirely to deliver the Early Years and childcare paper that we published before Christmas.

Q620 Mr Chaytor: So in addition to that there will be a budget allocated for the development of the basis ---

Margaret Hodge: Yes, and that goes ---

Q621 Mr Chaytor: The incentives to the primary care trusts and so on.

Margaret Hodge: Yes.

Q622 Mr Chaytor: If we could have a figure for that, it would be useful.

Margaret Hodge: You can certainly have a figure for the growth in spending over this period for the children's ---

Q623 Chairman: Presumably the Treasury has crawled over this policy.

Margaret Hodge: Yes - all the time.

Q624 Chairman: Is it 3,500 Children's Centres?

Margaret Hodge: Yes.

Q625 Chairman: They have a column where it says 3,500 times - how much each, roughly? Average?

Margaret Hodge: There are two figures, Chairman. One is the capital investment that is required ---

Q626 Chairman: Which is how much?

Margaret Hodge: And, on the whole, if we build on existing infrastructure of nursery schools, schools, family centres, early excellence centres, the capital investment will be less than it was in the Sure Start capital programme. There is then some work that we are currently doing, which ---

Q627 Chairman: Could you put an average figure on how much it will cost - each one?

Margaret Hodge: No, because it really depends on where you are starting from. Anyway, because local authorities will be in the driving seat for developing those facilities, there will be a capital sum given to local authorities. I do not think the capital will be massive. It will not be like the Sure Start Children's Centres that we developed to date.

Q628 Chairman: There are a lot of centres - 3,500.

Margaret Hodge: We have 2,500 that are funded through to 2008.

Q629 Chairman: But there is still a lot of money - 3,500 centres.

Margaret Hodge: Yes. Well, there is a doubling of the budget.

Q630 Chairman: Capital cost and running costs.

Margaret Hodge: Yes.

Q631 Chairman: Can you give us those figures?

Margaret Hodge: We are now currently developing the models for the revenue funding of the Sure Start Children's Centres over time.

Q632 Chairman: So the Treasury will let you go ahead without the figures?

Margaret Hodge: No. But we are developing the model of how you then articulate that in terms of Sure Start Children's Centres in deprived areas, and those in less deprived. They will be very different.

Q633 Chairman: You know the figures, and it is a secret between you and the Treasury how much this will cost?

Margaret Hodge: No.

Q634 Chairman: You will not share them.

Margaret Hodge: No, we had some assumptions on which the budget was made. I have got the figures here, so I can come back to you on that. We had some assumptions. The details, which we need then to discuss with our local authority colleagues, are currently being worked on. They will be out in either February or early March. I am not hiding anything. We are just working out the details. We have assurances from Treasury that the revenue funding that arises from the capital commitment will be met. The figure on Sure Start, if we just take that, in 2004-05 - so that is not nursery education - is £866 million. It rises in 2007‑08 to £1.784 million [sic].

Q635 Mr Greenway: Billion?

Margaret Hodge: £1.7 billion. Nearly £1.8 billion.

Q636 Mr Chaytor: What will be the typical cost of an individual Sure Start Children's Centre? Presumably the costs will be fairly uniform.

Margaret Hodge: No, they will not. The costs will not be uniform. The sorts of services that you provide in a deprived area will be very different from the sorts of services that you provide in an area with lesser need. The sorts of services in a rural are very different from an urban - those sorts of things. But what I can assure you of - and this may be helpful to you - is the way in which we are working these calculations is very bottom-up. So if these are the services that we want Sure Start Children's Centres to be able to provide, what is an appropriate funding which will enable that to happen. They are not going to be short-changed in any way. What we have learned from the first six years of Sure Start is what works - so we are going to spread that a little bit - and what we also want to achieve is something that Mr Holmes was talking about: that the mainstream services make their commitments to Sure Start. So in areas, for example, where health visitors have been funded out of Sure Start programmes, they should be funded out of PCTs. Equally, local authorities that have not funded family workers in Sure Start programmes - they should come out of local authority budgets. So there is a bit of that going on. There are some savings that we will get because Sure Start local programmes will not have to have their own finance officer, their own human resources officer, because they are now linked into the local authority. But, bottom-up, they will be properly funded. I can promise you that.

Q637 Mr Chaytor: But if you do not have a figure for the typical Sure Start centre, or for the average cost of a Sure Start centre, how do you know you can afford 2,500?

Margaret Hodge: In part because that is the basis on which discussions with the Treasury have taken place. I can just give you that assurance. It is just that at the moment we are doing the nuts and bolts, before we talk to ---

Q638 Mr Chaytor: But beyond 2008?

Margaret Hodge: We are looking at how we employ this financial settlement to local authorities.

Q639 Mr Chaytor: Beyond 2008 there will be a further 1,000.

Margaret Hodge: Yes.

Q640 Mr Chaytor: But we do not have any figures for that yet?

Margaret Hodge: No.

Q641 Mr Chaytor: Why the total of 3,500? Do you see my point? Without any understanding of the cost ---

Margaret Hodge: It is just that Government works in three ---

Q642 Mr Chaytor: An arbitrary figure is plucked out of the air and built into the programme.

Margaret Hodge: No. Government works in three expenditure cycles, and we have not yet embarked on the next spending cycle. However, the way in which we came to 3,500 was looking at the number of children served by the current Sure Start local programmes, and looking at what that would mean if you had one in every community. I have to say to you that it is my view that some local authorities will develop more Sure Start Children's Centres, so that we will probably, over time, end up beyond the 3,500 figure, because some of their community boundaries will not make sense in the way that we have defined them. But that seems to us an appropriate figure to fulfil our ambition of having a Sure Start Children's Centre in every community.

Q643 Mr Chaytor: Could I ask one further thing? When the previous Secretary of State for Education announced, essentially, the nationalisation of school funding, bypassing local authorities, he gave any future secretary of state huge powers to influence and incentivise schools. Is the department intending to use that power to incentivise schools to co‑operate with the Every Child Matters programme? If not, would you accept that schools, particularly secondary schools, will still be driven by five A to Cs at GCSE?

Margaret Hodge: We are taking a number of steps to try and encourage schools to engage in Every Child Matters. Part of it will be incentives around funding, for instance for developing extended school services; part of it will be driven by the inspection framework and the way that schools will be inspected against the outcomes; partly we are looking at the model that we have had around school workforce remodelling. We are going to use the Pat Collarbone organisation - I cannot remember what it is called, but her organisation that has gone round promoting the school workforce remodelling - the National Remodelling Team - we are going to use them to work with schools, so that they understand the impact of Every Child Matters on their agenda. We are looking at statutory guidance again, I am afraid - another bit of guidance to go to schools. I have worked pretty hard with the previous schools minister to ensure that the new school profile that every parent will get reflects the Every Child Matters agenda. And the conversation that individual schools have with their school improvement partners annually will also cover the Every Child Matters agenda. So there is quite a powerful set of levers that we are putting into place, which we hope will encourage the change that we seek.

Q644 Mr Chaytor: So you are accepting that the existing system of performance tables does not actually help your objectives?

Margaret Hodge: As they are currently framed; but, as they will be framed with the new inspection framework, and as a school profile, that should change.

Chairman: We are running out of time, Minister. We have kept you a long time and we thank you for that. The Education and Skills Select Committee seems to be a strange zone for the Freedom of Information Act. We do not seem to be getting much information from you. You promise it, and we need it to write up our report. We really do need some figures, and we do not just need the figures for how much the Early Years programme is going to cost, but we also need what your figures are for the implementation of Every Child Matters. That is a different sum, is it not, and a different budget? You will see our concern, because we admire your passion and commitment to Every Child Matters, but the old cynics on this Committee - and I think that we all are reasonably cynical ---

Mr Greenway: No, we are not!

Q645 Chairman: We are slightly worried about where this money will be magicked from. If you could reassure us that not only do you have the programme but you have the money, and the Treasury is happy, and we can see some figures to back that up, we would be very grateful.

Margaret Hodge: I certainly will provide you with the figures - and apologies for not having them this morning. I am not hiding behind any mal-intent on that. I hope that I can convert cynics to missionaries. I think that this is an incredibly exciting programme, Chairman. It makes being in government worthwhile. I think that if we can get halfway there, in terms of the outcomes we achieve for children, it will be something we will all remember.

Q646 Chairman: We are not cynical with respect to the ambitions of the legislation. We would wish it well. Our job is to make sure that it gets there.

Margaret Hodge: You hold us to account, and that is completely appropriate.

Chairman: Thank you.