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Children's Plan

I thank the Secretary of State for early sight of his statement. I know that it is traditional on these occasions for Opposition spokesmen to be disappointed by the contents of statements, whatever they contain, but may I genuinely say that many people inside and outside the House will be tremendously disappointed with the plan that he has put forward? After all, if we set it alongside the conclusions of the UNICEF report published earlier this year, which put Britain bottom of the league table of 21 developed countries in respect of child poverty and child well-being, today's plan emerges as a mouse of a plan to deal with what is, frankly, a mountain of a problem. Even where new policies have been announced, they are tiny in their effect: 20,000 places for two-year-olds set against 650,000 youngsters in that cohort. What we have heard today is not, by anybody's independent judgment, a serious 10-year plan for children, but a hotch-potch of reviews, recycled announcements from earlier Secretaries of State, one or two gimmicks and a unifying theme that is a belief only in top-down big government solutions. Why was there no mention in the statement of what is supposed to be the biggest ambition of the entire Government—dealing with child poverty? Is it not absolutely astonishing for a Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families to give a statement to this House in which the only mention of child poverty is backward-looking, describing what has happened up to today with nothing at all about policy for the future? Does not that indicate that Martin Narey of Barnardo's was correct to say yesterday that the Government now seem to be managing the failure to meet the 2010 target? Does it not also underline this Government's foolishness in deciding in the pre-Budget report to allocate £3.7 billion towards the reduction of inheritance tax, set alongside the £120 million—an almost trivial amount—found for child poverty? Why has the Secretary of State with responsibility for children failed to mention anything forward looking about what used to be one of this Government's great ambitions? Why do we continue to find that 1.5 million children—almost of half of whom are living in relative poverty—live in households that pay full council tax when the Government have been reviewing and reviewing that unfair tax for years and doing precisely nothing about it? On the schools agenda, why on earth do we need yet another primary curriculum review? I thought that primary education was supposed to be something that the Government had fixed in their first term in office. We now find that apparently it has not and that we need another review. What is the review designed to achieve? According to the Secretary of State, it is to allow more time for literacy and numeracy studies, but we already know that 51 per cent. of time in primary schools is spent on those two subjects. Rather than have another pointless review of primary education, why does not the Secretary of State just devolve powers to schools to make those decisions? Is it really necessary for the Whitehall screwdriver to reach into every school in the country, directing schools on how to communicate with parents and even fixing the number of graduates in early years settings? How on earth can it be right for central Government to fix those policies? Why is there nothing in the statement to target extra money on pupils through a pupil premium that would target deprivation? Why is there nothing about more freedom for schools to innovate? On the children's services agenda, will the Secretary of State tell us whether his desire to tie in children's services more closely with schools is going to mean a relocation of responsibility for those services—from primary care trusts and social services, which are not usually very good at interacting with schools, to the schools themselves? This was supposed to be one of the centrepieces of the Government and their aspirations, yet it has given us an indication of why they are so far adrift, because we have had a 10-year plan for the future of children that is entirely top down, entirely unconvincing and that will not deliver the aspirations that the Government have themselves set.