Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
BEVERLEY HUGHES
MP AND MR
TOM JEFFERY
20 NOVEMBER 2006
Q20 Rob Wilson: Is there an ideal
age for a child to start pre-school in the Government's view,
or is it simply a matter of parents' discretion?
Beverley Hughes: The EPPE research
shows that for children coming up to three, then certainly for
most children there is a real premium, and that premium is bigger
for children from disadvantaged backgrounds in terms of the difference
it can make to their progression when they get to primary school.
For children under three, I think the evidence is more equivocal;
but EPPE would say that it depends on the child's home background
pretty much for younger children. If a child is in a more impoverished
background, where they are not necessarily going to get the kind
of stimulation and rich environment at home, then for some children
it will be to their advantage to start good-quality pre-school
learning earlier. I think that EPPE are going to be producing
some further evidence around this very shortly. We are certainly
piloting at the moment in a number of local authorities offering
free part-time education, nursery education, to children who are
over two in some very disadvantaged areas. Those pilots have just
started, and we will be very closely monitoring both the take-up
and the outcomes for those children. We hope we will get about
12,000 children overall to take up that early offer because if
it does make a big difference to disadvantaged children, then
we would want to see if we could extend it.
Q21 Rob Wilson: But you would accept
that there is growing evidence that childcare for children between
the ages of nought and two, which is provided outside the family
setting, is having a negative effect on behaviour?
Beverley Hughes: No, I would not
accept that as a generality. It depends entirely. We are now talking
nought to two. It depends entirely on the quality of the setting,
the ratio of children to carers and, as I say, of the alternatives
for those children as to whether or not you could say it was an
advantage to them.
Q22 Rob Wilson: So you do not think
that by and large children between the ages of nought and two
should be cared for within the family if it is at all possible?
Beverley Hughes: I think that
is what many parents would want, and that is why we have put as
much premium on extending maternity leave and paternity leave
as we have on extending childcare for that age range, because
we want to give parents the choice. I do not agree with you that
there is an inherent disadvantage for children; I think it depends
entirely on the quality of the environment, and of course that
is what most parents would want to assure themselves of—and
they do.
Q23 Rob Wilson: Do you think though
that the Government could do more to let other members of the
family care for their children—for example grandparents—by
offering some form of financial assistance?
Beverley Hughes: No, I would not
be in favour of that—not because those family members cannot
offer good options to people—they very often do, and I know
that from personal experience—but I do not think it is our
job to get into the business, which we would be into then, of
regulating the quality of care by other family members, of getting
into those private arrangements that parents have with their own
parents or with brothers and sisters. Where that happens, and
they are happy with it, that is fine. I would not want the Government
to get involved in regulating what should be private arrangements
within families.
Q24 Jeff Ennis: Are we not missing
a trick here, Minister, on this point? If you look at the older
end of the age range, with elderly people—relatives can
claim a carer's allowance to provide for elderly parents suffering
from Alzheimer's or whatever; and the level of care that family
members provide to those elderly people is way above the care
they would get in a home. Is this not, at the other end of the
spectrum, exactly what we should be doing with younger people?
Grandparents can provide a really good, not just safe environment
but a learning environment as well for their grandchildren.
Beverley Hughes: I am sure that
is the case, and I do not doubt that, but I myself would not feel
comfortable in extending the architecture of regulation and inspection,
which I think you would have to, certainly for children under
eight, that we apply to other care settings. For that reason alone,
apart from the expenditure, I do not think that is an arena into
which Government should go.
Q25 Mr Marsden: Minister, can we
talk a little about the role of the voluntary sector in this area,
not least because there is some evidence that the expansion in
children's services is coming at the moment quite significantly
in the private sector and voluntary sector? What is your overall
view of how the voluntary sector fits into the significant expansion
of children's services that you have described?
Beverley Hughes: I am very keen
on local authorities, as they develop children's centres, and
indeed extended school provision, involving the voluntary sector
and private sector and using those high-quality services as part
of the provision. I wrote out to that effect some months ago to
local authorities to say that I wanted them to think about in
children's centre development, for example, not just using the
voluntary sector to provide childcare within a children's centre,
but to think about whether there was a voluntary organisation
in their locality that could run a children's centre in its entirety.
I think they have much to offer, and the diversity they bring
is a plus for parents. In terms of the very important point about
outreach and connecting with some of the most disadvantaged families,
then it is very often voluntary sector organisations that do that
very, very well, which have not got the associations attached
to them that some of the public sector services do in the eyes
of very disadvantaged people. Therefore, children's centres run
by voluntary organisations can be much more approachable particularly
to the disadvantaged families that we really want to connect with.
Q26 Mr Marsden: I would agree with
all of that, but what is your own Department doing on a national
basis to encourage and support in specific areas and also generally
those voluntary organisations such as Barnardo's and Early Education,
which are involved in a very, very broad spectrum of activity?
What are you doing to try and skill up those organisations and
other organisations, to do the sorts of things that you are talking
about?
Beverley Hughes: This genuinely
is a very important issue for us. I regularly meet with the leaders
of the main national charities, both individually and in groups
on a forum. We have established—my colleague, Parliamentary
Under-Secretary Parmjit Dhanda chairs jointly with the head of
NCH—a third sector forum that we have established in the
DfES now to discuss some of these issues and take them forward,
so that we can hear directly from the voluntary sector what it
is like on the ground trying to connect with local authorities
and trying to get a place both at the strategic level as well
as at the delivery level in terms of local service development.
We are also part of the wider work that Ed Miliband in the Cabinet
Office is doing to develop a comprehensive third sector strategy,
and he will be reporting on that soon. It is a very strong commitment
both within the Department and across Government that we do better
at not just mobilising the potential of but, as you say, helping
to raise the capacity of the voluntary sector so that they can
play their part.
Q27 Mr Marsden: One of the things
that is often said to us, as Members of Parliament in our own
localities when we talk to voluntary organisations is that local
councils, even when they are sympathetic to involvement, do not
always think about the practicalities of the demands that they
are placed in. I have had examples on my own patch of quite critical
expansions being demanded of organisations, and then them not
getting a regular service agreement funding even over a one-year
period sometimes. Is that an issue that concerns you; that you
are going to demand more of the voluntary sector, but unless you
can give a structured support, and unless local authorities can
give a structured support at least over a one to three-year period,
you are going to ask people to expand capacity, but short-term
budgetary decisions may pull the rug from underneath them?
Beverley Hughes: Can I ask Tom
to say something?
Mr Jeffery: I think it is true
that the role of the voluntary sector is changing, and it is to
play a more central role in children's services generally. One
of the further things we are doing is investing £3 million
over two years in a voluntary sector capacity-building programme.
That is run by the National Children's Bureau, bringing together
a consortium of voluntary sector interests. It is seeking to address
both of the things you are looking at: their engagement at a strategic
level in children's trusts in the analysis of needs and the commissioning
of services, and their capacity, often on the part of quite small
organisations locally, better to compete for contracts and play
a part as providers in children's services on a longer-term basis,
precisely as you are talking about. That consortium, that capacity-building
work, reports into the third sector forum to which the Minister
referred. We agree that building the strength of the voluntary
sector locally is a very important part of this programme.
Q28 Chairman: Are you convinced that
voluntary organisations have the management capacity to deal with
the kind of work you are asking them to do; and, secondly, have
you looked at the amount of time that people stay in post in voluntary
organisations? One of the things I have come across in the voluntary
sector is that because the wages are not brilliant and there is
not a great career structure, people often move on. What are the
implications of that for running these kinds of services if you
have a high turnover of staff?
Mr Jeffery: Those are just
the kinds of issues that the capacity-building work will be looking
at. That work is being done not just on the part of the voluntary
sector alone, but working together with local government and local
government improvement agencies, so that the issue can be seen
from both sides. The voluntary sector will need to strengthen
its capacity and develop its ability to compete for contracts
and play a part locally, but the local government side will need
to change as well. We are seeing that begin to take shape. Nobody
is pretending that this is easy. There is a sense in which, as
local government move out of commissioning some sorts of services,
there might be a decommissioning at large. I do not think that
is the case, but it is reconfiguring the way it works with the
voluntary sector, and both sides need to change to do that properly.
Q29 Paul Holmes: The expansion from
the 700 Sure Start centres to 3,500 children's centres is obviously
very welcome, but the money that has been made available means
that each one of the 2,800 new centres is being funded at about
40% of the level of set-up that the original Sure Start centres
cost. Does that mean the Sure Start centres were ludicrously expensive,
or are the new centres ludicrously cheap?
Beverley Hughes: Neither. As I
said before, I was not around formulating the policy at that time,
but as I understand it when the Sure Start local programmes were
set up and the funding decided for them, they were trailblazing,
and they were funded at a level which would enable them to buy
in any of the services that they needed from across the spectrum.
When we made the decision that this should be mainstreamed, that
children's centres should become a national network delivered
through locally elected local government, then the model was one
in which rightly—and it is underpinned in the Childcare
Act—additional services beyond education and social care—health
and employment-related services—should be provided from
mainstream public sector organisations—DWP, Jobcentre Plus,
the NHS and PCTs, because the model is about real integration
on the ground. It is about those agencies working in a completely
different way through children's centres. That is why they have
been charged in that legislation on a statutory basis with doing
so. That element of provision, which is coming from those other
sectors, to work through the children's centres is not needed
as part of the core funding because it is going to come from those
mainstream organisations. I do not know where you got the 40%
figure from. It is quite difficult to compare the funding of the
Sure Start local programmes with any individual children's centre,
or even an average, because the money for the mainstream children's
centres was allocated to local authorities on the basis of the
number of children, with some deprivation factors; and they make
local decisions about the children's centres they have and how
they fund it. The total funding, the quantum comparatively, if
you could use an average, is nothing like 40%—if you could
use an average, which, as I say, is not that meaningful, it is
much more like 66-70% of the Sure Start funding.
Q30 Paul Holmes: The first time I
asked that question quite some time ago, the suggestion was that
the Sure Start centres were often building from scratch, and that
the big saver was on capital costs, because new centres would
be expected to use existing premises. That is a different take
on the answer you have just given.
Beverley Hughes: It is not a different
take; it reflects the first sentence I gave you—that they
were trailblazing, and so they were an entirely new provision—they
were very exploratory. Many of them were starting from scratch,
and many of the children's centres coming along now are re-designated
local Sure Start programmes. Some of them are based on nursery
education classes, some are built on primary schools and so on.
It is a different ball game.
Q31 Jeff Ennis: Minister, the Committee,
and I certainly, am sold on the principle of children's centre
and integration, bringing in children, social services, education
and the health service, all under the one roof, providing the
same type of service—a fantastic concept. However, I am
just wondering whether the Department ought to be giving more
guidance—and I know it is all about horses for courses and
local input—but we had one of the early children's centres
in Grimethorpe in my constituency, and I supported that, being
attached to a local primary school, primarily because of the connection
between informal early education and informal primary education.
The more evidence we are taking on this, it appears that a lot
of the people are suggesting that children's centres should be
more stand-alone facilities rather than attached to an educational
facility or any other facility. I am just wondering what your
take is on that and whether as a department you ought to be giving
more guidance to local authorities in terms of where they should
be locating children's centres. Should they be attached to a school;
should they be stand-alone or what?
Beverley Hughes: I do think that
is very much for local authorities in conjunction, through Government
offices, with DfES, to decide, because their own local circumstances
will be very different. It is important that they consult with
parents. The arrangement of primary schools in a particular area
may or may not lend itself to having children's centres attached.
The geography or the topography may be such that in a particular
area you might want to have a stand-alone children's centre if
there is not a primary school nearby, or because it is a particularly
disadvantaged community. What I am finding is that local authorities
have an array of different kinds of plans for where their children's
centres will be. Not all of them by any means are locating all
their children's centres on primary school sites. I will write
to the Committee[1]
with an update but I guess that probably a slight majority of
them are designated on primary school sites, but by no means all.
Some are based on the old neighbourhood nursery models, some on
the early excellence centres and some are stand-alone. Some of
them are based around private or voluntary provision. There is
diversity in the way local authorities are approaching this, and
we depend on them to make the right decisions for their locality
and for their parents.
Q32 Paul Holmes: Can we ask about the
Children's Commissioner? When the Committee was in Scandinavia
it was very impressed with the Scandinavian model of commissioners.
We were equally very alarmed therefore that, for example, the
Welsh and the Northern Irish Commissioners have much less freedom
and power compared to the Scandinavian model; and the English
Commissioner, who was in the process of being established, had
even less freedom and powers than the Welsh and Northern Irish
ones. Do you think the English Commissioner has enough scope to
do the job properly?
Beverley Hughes: I do think so.
He has been in post just less than a year. We are just about to
get the first strategic plan from the Commissioner, early in the
New Year. He has obviously been very visible and very active on
a whole range of issues. I meet with him very, very regularly—not
to constrain his independence, but so that we can have a dialogue.
It would be far too early to think about changing the arrangements
we have got here. I think he is making them work very well at
the moment.
Q33 Paul Holmes: One of the concerns
the Committee expressed over a year ago when this was in its genesis
was that the English Commissioner would be answerable to your
Department, to you, not to Parliament. The Commissioner who has
now been in post has said that he thinks he should be answerable
to Parliament and not the Department. Do you agree with that?
Beverley Hughes: I think this
issue was rehearsed both at the time and subsequently. I think
that when Margaret Hodge appeared here she was asked to talk about
this at length. I think she wrote to the Committee after that
evidence because she had looked at the comparisons between the
Commissioner's Office and other non-departmental public bodies,
of which this is an example. The Commissioner reports to Parliament
but via the Secretary of State, and in fact that is the norm for
the vast majority of non-departmental public bodies, some of which
are equally sensitive and have a high measure of visible independence.
The Police Complaints Commissioner, the Commissioner for Racial
Equality—the model there is exactly the same as that for
the Children's Commissioner. Certainly at the time it was felt
it was entirely appropriate, and I do not see any argument for
this being different to some of those other departmental public
bodies, which, as I say, are equally sensitive about their independence.
They seem to work very well.
Q34 Paul Holmes: So you disagree
with the English Commissioner who feels that it is a bad arrangement
and that he should be responsible to Parliament?
Beverley Hughes: I do take a different
view, yes. I think the arrangement we have, as I say, is comparable
to that for most other similar bodies, many of which are equally
sensitive. I do not see any reason for any difference here, which
I think you would have to see in order to sustain the argument
that it is necessary to report directly to Parliament.
Q35 Paul Holmes: The Northern Ireland
Commissioner gave an example, when he gave evidence, of how he
had taken on the Government. He had disagreed quite openly with
something they were doing. If the English Commissioner has been
successful—and you thought he was in the first year—can
you give an example of one or two issues where you think he has
really stood out and made a mark?
Beverley Hughes: I think it is
early days for him, but he has certainly expressed his views that
are different to Government on a number of issues so far quite
positively—smacking would be one of them. He has expressed
a view this week on the announcement recently by Ofcom on the
proposals for food advertising around children's programmes. He
is not afraid of coming forward with different views. I think
that is perfectly fine and acceptable; it is part of his job to
be some of the grit in the oyster, as I see it. I have no difficulty
with that at all.
Q36 Paul Holmes: Are there any examples
of the Government changing what it does as a result of something
the Commissioner has said? Will you change your policy on allowing
children to be physically assaulted, for example?
Beverley Hughes: I think that
will be an ongoing debate, will it not? There are lots of people
with strong views on both sides on that issue. There is no intention
at the moment to change our policy; but he is a very important
part of the world outside government that expresses strong views
on our policy, and I would always listen to him.
Q37 Paul Holmes: So there is nothing
so far in the first year where you have changed your policy because
of the Commissioner's report or the Commissioner saying something?
Beverley Hughes: I do not think
there is anything very big such as the policy on smacking. In
a sense, through dialogue there are issues that he raises that
we would take into account in the development of practice guidance
or policy at a lower level; but there has not been anything of
that magnitude certainly at the moment, in the first year or so
of his office.
Q38 Paul Holmes: Does the Commissioner
have a large enough budget and staff to be able to undertake the
work that he wants to?
Beverley Hughes: I think so. He
has got £3 million a year; he has some very nice premises,
very well equipped—if you have not been there—very,
very child-friendly, very bright, very modern, very good view,
right on the River Thames. The signs are, in terms of his office
and the staff he has been able to appoint, that at the moment
his budget looks okay for the job he wanted to do.
Mr Jeffery: There is a lot of
interaction with the Commissioner and his office that applies
to us at official level as well as at ministerial level. The Commissioner
sits on the cross-Government Every Child Matters: Change
for Children Programme Board, which seeks to orchestrate all this
work across government, and always brings a very valuable perspective
to that board. We talk to him a lot of the time, without seeking
in any way to compromise his independence, about the day-to-day
development and policy.
Q39 Paul Holmes: At what point would
you formally review the Commissioner's work and say, "we
need to change this" or not—"we are very happy
with it"? The Committee initially suggested that after three
years you should have a formal review and see how it was going.
Do you have any ideas?
Beverley Hughes: I have talked
to the Commissioner about that. In the normal course of events
most of those bodies have a quinquennial review. We are expecting
the very first strategic plan from the Commissioner early in the
New Year, and obviously there will be an annual conversation as
normal on the basis of the annual report on the strategic plan
in a year's time—but that process continues. I am relaxed
about when we review it. If it is before the five years—if
you wanted that and we felt it was necessary, then certainly we
would do it.
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