Speeches by Martin.

“How do we feed into her work?”

“Yes.”

“Brilliant, thank you. One final one from me. The Employment Rights Bill does not include any measures to strengthen employment rights for kinship carers, such as paid kinship leave. Why is this? Do you intend to introduce this in the future?”

“We have heard concerns about parents of disabled children undergoing assessment processes, focusing on child protection concerns when engaging with children’s social care, even when there is no evidence of neglect or abuse. Will you take forward the Law Commission’s recommendations, while keeping children safe, on impr…”

“I am going to ask about out of area placement. In research and in real life, we have evidence from Become that this puts children greater risk. Some 45% of looked-after children are placed outside their local authority, with 22% placed more than 20 miles from their home. Become, which has done some research, found that…”

“Thank you. That leads me quite nicely on to two other questions. First, you both mentioned various initiatives—boosting supply, reducing in-care, bespoke placements and so on. Do you think we need a national sufficiency strategy for children in social care?”

“You said you have met with children in the system and with different research companies. Do you intend to start collecting data on the proportion of children who are placed out of area?”

“From that point of view it is good to share good practice, but if we are collecting data in different ways, it will not be comparable, will it? That was what the question was. If we, as a Government, are collecting that data, looking at what the issues are of different local authorities and then using best practice, it…”

“The Bill gives the Secretary of State the power to introduce a profit cap on non-local authority providers if the other measures have not had an impact. How and when will you assess whether this is necessary?”

“There is a scheme being drawn up so that it is a fair process, because what we would not want one provider—”

“There have been concerns around the implementation of a profit cap in restricting the supply of children’s homes. How will we mitigate the risk of implementing the profit cap, including the risk of restricting the supply of homes, places and the possibility of larger companies being able to avoid a cap?”

“Thank you. Transparency and fairness have been really key in your answers there, but introducing a profit cap by regulation would reduce the detailed parliamentary scrutiny of the proposals. Will you commit to consulting this Committee on any draft regulations before they are laid before Parliament?”

“I get to talk about another fantastic group of people, which is kinship carers. It is mentioned a number of times and it is something really close to my own heart, because there is a great set of people in my city working with children in kinship care. First is just a straight question: when will the kinship allowance …”

“An additional question linked to that: we have heard calls to harmonise the patchwork of educational support so that support such as pupil premium plus and priority admissions is available to children in all types of kinship care. Will the Department be looking to do this?”

“2. What steps she is taking to support young people into employment, education or training in the Portsmouth North constituency.”

“As a former teacher, I know at first hand the importance of safeguarding and ensuring that every child has the opportunity to thrive, regardless of their background or circumstances. That is why I wholeheartedly welcome and want to talk about new clauses 18 to 22, focusing on corporate parenting. They represent a vital…”

“Each of those 1 million people is a real person, and I was contacted by a young man in my constituency who studied an early years education T-level and wanted to enter a desperately understaffed profession but has been struggling ever since to access a starter job. Being out of work while young can have a scarring effe…”

“Do you think you received the right support? What could have been done to make it right, if not? And if that support was delayed, what was the impact on you?”

“Thank you, everyone. My name is Amanda Martin, and I am an MP down in Portsmouth. I want to say thank you for sharing your experiences. I want to ask you a couple of questions and ask if you can elaborate further. The first one—and I think some of you have touched on this already—is whether the SEND support you receive…”

“Thank you. Does anyone else want to pitch in?”