Speeches by Beales.

“I wholeheartedly agree. We need action: those individuals must be punished quickly, and the court backlogs must be dealt with. The whole process must incentivise action and deterrence. When I met the couple who run the local post office in South Ruislip, they told me a heart-wrenching story of the change over the past …”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Furniss. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham Erdington (Paulette Hamilton) for securing this important debate. We have heard countless times today that, in 14 years of Conservative government, neighbourhood policing was decimated to the detriment of our to…”

“Perhaps Christine can touch briefly on the impact of Sure Start and then Rachel can answer on the role of family hubs.”

“Finally, because of time—the Chair is keen for me to be brief—what is your sense of when we are likely to have a national roll-out of vaccination of children via health visiting?”

“Alison, in your response to Andrew’s question you touched upon vaccination. I want to ask specifically about the role of health visitors in vaccination and immunisation. NHS England has launched a number of demonstrator sites and made commitments to increasing vaccinations, and increasing vaccinations as part of health…”

“The strategy from NHS England was launched in January 2024—well over a year ago. I understand from your comments that we are still at the expressions-of-interest stage for demonstrator sites. Presumably the test-and-learn phase will be at least 12 months if not longer—”

“As for the impact on the issue of the uptake of vaccines, this sounds like it will be a couple of years away from anything at scale. What do we need to accelerate the programme?”

“You made the point that we learnt a lot of lessons in the vaccination programmes during covid. Are we seeking to learn lessons that we largely already know?”

“I will do my best, Chair—thank you. I was interested in the discussion of additional core services that hubs offer. There was not a great deal of reference to special educational needs support. Christine, from the document I read about your evidence review, one of the things that stuck out was the Sure Start impact on …”

“Until the demonstrator sites. My question was, do you have a rough timeline for when a national programme will be rolled out?”

“It was worth the wait, because I got called handsome by Josh, which is the nicest thing he has ever said to me. Dame Andrea, you mentioned the Uxbridge family hub, which, as you say, is a great facility in many ways. One of the challenges that many people have reported to me is that when family hubs emerged, it seems t…”

“I do not want to become too parochial, but when you see all the youth centres and many of the libraries closed down in a place, and one hub in the town hall, that does not seem to me like a more community-based model of support. I agree with the principle of integration, but those spokes do not always seem to be there …”

“Thank you for your contribution so far. We are awaiting the 10-year plan for health to be announced very soon. In that context, where do you think the 1,001 critical days agenda sits? Specifically, we are envisaging that these three shifts will feature quite heavily in the plan: from sickness to prevention, from hospit…”

“I am getting the sense of perhaps “no”. To be devil’s advocate, in your view would the best 10-year health plan be nothing related directly to health care but simply—”

“You would lean quite heavily on the six domains, the role of destitution and inequalities in driving these outcomes from an early age. In terms of the 1,001 critical days agenda, we have talked a lot about family hubs and other early years interventions. Would your theory and evidence suggest that the best thing to do …”

“One of the challenges of Government and the nature of politics is distributing finite resources, making those trade-offs and balanced decisions. I suppose any strategy that will do that will ultimately strategise on where to focus investment. If you had to write the strategy and finance it, regarding 1,001 critical day…”

“Is there any evidence of what the most impactful prioritisation is, or is it that just doing anything is good?”

“I appreciate that the issues are complex. A lot of your domains sit in the context of the broader family that a child is born to and brought up in. Do you think that the 1,001 critical days agenda has too much focus on the child to the detriment of the familial context? A lot of your domains—the poverty, the unemployme…”

“My challenges are: are those interventions time-limited to the 1,001 critical days period, or is this about delivering an economy that delivers a living wage, or a housing system that delivers good-quality and low-cost housing? Will interventions focused on the critical 1,001 critical days period deliver those?”

“My question might be better after Josh’s question.”