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Sure Start Children's Centres

It is a pleasure to follow the excellent speech of the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom). I was strongly tempted to intervene at the critical point near the end of her speech when she put her finger on the real problem of localism—when she talked about the pilot that did not go ahead because of the ethics of intervening with one group but not another. The issue we are debating directly concerns children's centres and the information that flowed from an inquiry of the Select Committee on Children, Schools and Families when I chaired it. That inquiry went back to March 2010 and I think that you might even have given evidence to it, Madam Deputy Speaker, wearing a different hat. Central to today's discussion is whether we should have a service that guarantees certain things for every poor child in the country or whether we should leave it up to the randomness that comes when different councils with different majorities or no majority, which may lack funding and which may be urban, suburban or rural, are left to take those decisions. I come from an old-fashioned school of thought, which I hope will come back into fashion, that believes in giving guarantees to every child in the country. Let me take the House back briefly to when I became the Chair of the Select Committee, 10 years ago. The very first inquiry was into early years. We were the first Select Committee ever to hire a psychologist, because we wanted to understand the development of a child's brain. Everything that has been said in the debate touches exactly on that. We were lucky enough to engage three special advisers to the Committee, led by Kathy Sylva, the wonderful former head of children's services in Oxfordshire. Kathy Sylva did that original research showing that by 22 months a child's brain has developed to such an extent that it is extremely difficult to compensate later for lack of stimulation during those 22 months. Members in all parts of the House—no party political points here—understand that early years intervention is critical. We must also agree that there have been some difficulties since we produced our report last March. Such a time lapse is a great advantage, because we are able to see what has happened. Many of the 3,500 Sure Start children's centres are new and had only just been completed when we finished our report, just before the general election. Some were older, but all centres need time to put down roots. When we are experimenting with social policy, especially in such an important area, we must bear it in mind that children's centres need time to respond to the local community and to change their shape and nature as demands on them are made and they become better known by good professionals working in the community. There is no doubt that the maturation process is important. As all of us in the educational world know, with the best intentions, it is difficult when national policies are rolled out. Pilots may show that something works excellently on a small scale. I have been reflecting on that. One of the few times that I failed to get a witness to come before the Select Committee was when we asked Jamie Oliver. By the time we got through his press and publicity machine, his managers and his agents, we gave up trying to get him, even to speak about school meals. We did a school meals investigation before Jamie Oliver had made his programme. Tonight there will be a Jamie Oliver programme on television about his ideal school. I learned a lesson last summer. I took my daughter, who at that time was heavily pregnant with twin boys, and my wife to a Jamie Oliver restaurant in Kingston, and it was one of the most disappointing meals that I have ever had. I had eaten in his restaurant Fifteen and I would recommend it to anyone. It is a flagship restaurant and was a wonderful experience, but when the Jamie Oliver offer is rolled out around the country, we see the difficulties that I found in Kingston upon Thames in the summer, as we have in education when we roll out children's centres. The pilot looks wonderful and we think we can roll it out in 100 or even 500 centres. The reason our Government moved from 500 Sure Start centres to 3,500 was that most of the poor families in our country live outside the 500 poorest wards.