It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I rise to speak in particular to new Clause 72, which is on a similar topic to new clause 30, although arguably is not quite as simply drafted. The number of children in care is at an all-time high, and outcomes for those children remain poor. Evidence from the children’s charity Action for Children shows that children who have any interaction with social care are twice as likely to fail an English or maths GCSE than their peers. We need to change those outcomes, preferably through early Intervention.

We have spent much time in Committee discussing the Bill’s provisions on improving care for children who need to live with a foster family or in a residential home. It is important that the best possible support is available for those children who, for whatever reason, cannot live with their birth families. However, to significantly improve children’s social care, we need to radically reset the system with a much greater focus on helping families earlier on.

I welcome the Ministers’ comments in our previous debates that the Government are committed to helping children growing up in our country to get the best start in life through wider investment in family hubs and parenting support. However, as drafted, the Bill does little to do this. Only one section of the Bill, which covers family group decision making, and which we discussed right at the start, directly addresses the need for more early intervention. Unless we amend the Bill to go further, we will continue to have a system heavily balanced towards working with families when they reach crisis point, rather than one that seeks to prevent problems before they start.

As we have discussed, families in England face mounting pressures from the lingering effects of covid-19, the high cost of living and economic uncertainty. At the same time, there have been significant cuts to services to support families. I find this statistic shocking: between 2010-11 and 2022-23, spending on early help, such as family homes and children’s centres, decreased by 44%, while spending on late intervention, including children in care, increased by 57%. The skew is going the wrong way, and it does not have to be this way.

Since the late 1990s, several initiatives have been aimed at providing support to families in their communities. That includes the Sure Start centres—first established in 1997, with more than 3,500 children’s centres having been developed by 2009—and the latest family hubs, which provide support to parents from pre-birth all the way through to 18. These centres provided welcome, non-stigmatising support for families. The services they offer and have offered are varied, but often include provisions such as stay-and-play sessions, speech and language support or benefit and employment advice for parents.

While welcomed by families themselves, too often such services are seen as a “nice to have” and subject to cuts when funding is short. It is perhaps not surprising that evidence suggests that around 1,000 such centres have shut since 2009, but we know that cutting early support for families is a false economy. It does not benefit children and families, who are too often left to struggle alone, and it does not save money in the long term. In fact, spending on early intervention programmes has repeatedly been shown to be cheaper than spending later. And this is not just about the finances; it is about the wellbeing of children and families.

On money, the children’s charity Barnardo’s has calculated that spending on the Welcome to Parenthood programme offered through many of its family hubs delivers £2.44 in benefits for every £1 spent, which is good value. That is why the Bill must go further in its noble aim of reforming children’s social care. We need a much more equal emphasis given to local authorities’ obligations to support children and families early on and in their community, alongside their and our important obligations to support children who need to go into care.

My new clause will introduce a new requirement for local authorities to provide sufficient family support services, such as family hubs, for all families in their area. It will build on the provisions in section 17 of the Children Act 1989, which require local authorities to provide support services but only to children who have been assessed as in need. The new clause will broaden that provision, thus requiring local authorities to have a wider family support offer that is available to all families in the community. I do not pretend that that is a small undertaking—I recognise its scale—and it would need to be accompanied by spending allocated in the forthcoming spending review if we are to make it a reality, but as I have outlined, it is a great investment in the future of our kids.

Without sufficient access to early support, too many families are reaching crisis point. We have heard time and again from reports, reviews and inquiries that the children’s social care system must be rebalanced towards early intervention. The Bill, with the new clause, is our opportunity to do just that.