---

Sure Start Children's Centres

I listened with great interest to my hon. Friend's passionate argument earlier, which made exactly that case. Local innovation and a local ability to respond to local events, with a national set of standards that must be met, allow money to be spent better. I come to the central reason why I support that approach—the fact that it is about outcomes, not inputs. Tight ring-fencing is all about ensuring that the inputs go to a certain area. I understand as well as anybody how easy it is to get a headline out of writing that x million pounds is going to such-and-such a project—but what matters to people on the ground is not the amount of money poured in at the top, but the outcomes delivered at the bottom. The ability to improve value for public money, get better outcomes and have innovative social groups, such as the one that my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) mentioned, is, given the extremely tight fiscal environment, vital. I therefore applaud the Government's approach in loosening ring-fencing while retaining minimum standards to allow flourishing local innovation and improve the value that we get for the hard-earned taxpayers' money that we spend on their behalf. In the context of spending more money on early years, and thus getting better outcomes, I also applaud the free entitlement to 15 hours of early years education for the most disadvantaged two-year-olds. That is another example of managing to get money from the older part of the age range to the younger part. I also strongly applaud the desire for increased qualifications in the work force and better leadership, especially through the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children's Services, to ensure that we get more highly talented people into the work. Of course, I welcome the 4,200 extra health visitors, targeted at very young age groups. I think we can all agree that the reduction in health visitors in the past few years was a mistake. Reversing that and ensuring that there is universal coverage, and more health visitors, is very valuable.