Baroness Howarth of Breckland: I am sure the Minister agrees that what is often possible in urban areas is not possible in rural areas. Will she say something about helping children in urban areas who have to travel great distances to get to school so that parents do not feel that they are being stigmatised and are doing the wrong thing? I entirely agree with encouraging walking and running and certainly our rural school...
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I find that reply singularly disappointing, as the Minister will know that any child exhibiting the kinds of problems that have been described today could be seriously ill—they could have a brain tumour or hydrocephalus. In addition, he also knows that the availability of good mental health services for young people, adolescents and those in their 20s is in serious difficulty at...
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I commend the Government for the work they are doing in education, but education alone will not improve the welfare of children. I would like the Minister to say something about what he is doing to support social workers, the people in the front line of this work, who have to pick up such cases and take them forward.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, does not the noble Baroness agree that it is a great pity that we live in a society where payday loans are necessary at all and where children are living in poverty when their parents are actually working? Will not the removal of tax credits from working parents make the situation a great deal more difficult, making them turn again to payday loans and leading them into a spiral of debt?
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, the noble Lord will be aware that I am truly grateful that this plan has been abandoned. However, has he looked at all the wealth of research on community interventions with reoffending young people? Down the generations, material has been produced on how working in a one-to-one relationship with these youngsters can change their behaviour significantly. I ask the Minister to look...
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, the noble Baroness mentioned free childcare. As I understand it, free childcare will not come into operation until 2017 for those who are working the extra hours. How will that help families immediately, who will find that they are extremely short in a working week?
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, if the noble Lord takes into consideration not only the cuts to this budget but those to other local authority budgets, he will see that this will mean a reduction in youth services, the closure of young people’s centres and a range of preventive services for children being reduced. Will that not have a cumulative effect on the general health of the nation, and certainly on the...
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, has the noble Baroness seen the recent report from the Local Government Association which says that by 2020 there will be a £9 billion funding gap and local government will have to make choices between children’s services, services for the elderly, mending roads and all the other services, including deciding whether to put out the lights in the streets? Does she accept that there...
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I spoke at length about disabled children at Second Reading and I will not repeat what I said then, so I will just make two points in support of the amendments, particularly that in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. Her amendment makes two points that take me back to our debates on the Children and Families Act 2014, when we looked at how children with disabilities and...
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I just want to speak briefly about baselines. As we are talking about quality, I wonder whether the Minister has seen the report of the Family and Childcare Trust, Access Denied, which does not talk about quality but about 38 English local authorities which failed to carry out and publish assessments of local childcare since 2012. Therefore, a large number of working families have...
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I have a very straightforward and simple question for the Minister. When I first read the Bill, I was struck by the phrase “working parents”. Do the Government really mean working parents or do they mean those with parental responsibility? One of the things the Minister will know about family construction in this country is that nuclear families, with two parents and two...
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I will be, as I usually am, brief. I am not going to make the speech that I was going to make as I think that it has already been made by other noble Lords and Baronesses. I just want to make some points that I think have not been made and, if possible, take up one or two points with the noble Lord, Lord True. I primarily want to support the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, in ensuring...
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: First, I thank the Minister for his letter, which raised a number of issues in my mind but which was at least helpful in resolving some others, and say that I support Amendment 1. I believe that I heard the Minister say in his introduction that he had had useful discussions with the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and that some of the issues that he outlined in his introduction were going to come...
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, if the Minister believes that we have had the same model since 1948, what was the House doing taking through during the last Session the health legislation that changed the structure so that the business model was around GP practices? Many GPs find that extremely onerous. They want to be doctors, not business managers. There has been significant change and not necessarily for the...
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I welcome the Government’s prevalence survey. However, does the Minister’s department have any idea at this time of the length of waiting lists and the number of children waiting for very specialist intervention from psychiatrists and psychologists? I hear from groups of people that the waiting lists are growing and the time children spend waiting is getting longer. For a child...
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I do not know where the Minister spends his time, but where I come from, in the country, you have to travel 18 miles to a hospital or a GP practice at the weekend. That is very difficult when you have groups of elderly people. In the rest of the country—even in the city where I spend my city time—GPs are now saying that practices are to be closed and people are waiting three...
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, over the years my experience in this place has been working to add principles to the face of complex Bills. This is my first experience of a Bill that is a principle with little other substance, and the contents do not even address the issues and concerns outlined in the report of the Select Committee on Affordable Childcare. The Bill does not meet the government objectives of...
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, I am sure that the Minister is aware that one of the most important parts of support for women experiencing domestic violence is having a secure place to live and to have their children. For the times when they are not able to stay in their own homes, is the Minister giving support to Women’s Aid and other organisations providing accommodation and emotional support?
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, does the Minister agree that efficiency is equally important in order to meet the targets? What is happening with the European electricity grid and developing a strategy right across Europe to share electricity at a better price?
Baroness Howarth of Breckland: My Lords, many of the houses developed through specialist housing associations have very expensive adaptations, many of them paid for by charitable donations and donors. Does the Minister not think that this is an area where there might be some protection to ensure that these houses move on to other severely disabled people when they are vacated?
