Speeches by Bailey.

“It is critical to what we are doing; it is really important to what we are doing. Again, there is the new longitudinal qualitative study; continued engagement with charities and organisations like the Children’s Commissioner, who can ensure that we are speaking directly to children; and working with Changing Realities …”

“Absolutely.”

“Yes. I get lots of correspondence on this issue and I very much understand it. I assure the Committee that, in the round, all of these questions are being considered by the early education and childcare review.”

“Thank you for starting with the recognition of the huge value that both of these schemes will bring. It will be a transformational impact. The free school meals expansion takes 100,000 children out of poverty, and free breakfast clubs do not just save parents time and money, but give children a brilliant soft start to …”

“Thank you; that is a really important question. We are confident that we will see more uptake in free school meals because the threshold is now much simpler. It is much clearer for parents: if you are on universal credit, you are entitled. I am already seeing my children’s schools emailing around with this. It is going…”

“As I have said, we want everybody who is entitled to this provision to get it. The steps that we have taken are improving the eligibility checking scheme. Obviously, there are initiatives in local places, as you describe. We continue to talk to local authorities about those and work with them because we want all childr…”

“Diana may want to come in on this, but we have taken a range of measures to improve the quality of careers advice, as we know how important it is for children and young people to understand the breadth of options available to them. Of course, the DWP are also taking lots of measures to help in this regard.”

“Thank you—that is a really important question. The Government do a range of things to support children with no recourse to public funds, including access to the pupil premium, free school meals and some of the early years childcare entitlements—the early years two-year-old and the three and four-year-old universal enti…”

“That is a really important question; thank you, Damien. First of all, we have been so thrilled to be able to work so collaboratively with grassroots organisations, charities and, most importantly of all, people with lived experience of poverty. In the creation of this strategy and in its continued life, we will continu…”

“It is also possible to argue, counter to what you have said, that despite the presence of targets, if you do not have the will to act, you can still see many more children falling into poverty. There were targets present for a period of time and children fell into poverty as a consequence of decisions that the Governme…”

“Hello. I am really pleased to be here today; it is nice to see you all. I am Liv Bailey, the Minister for Early Education in the Department for Education, and I co-chair the interministerial group on child poverty with Diana.”

“No, it’s okay. We will take it in turns on different topics.”

“I absolutely accept that it is a concern, and that is why Ofsted is going to be looking at it. It is why we are boosting the training. It is why we are being extremely clear with the expectations that we have of settings. Absolutely no setting should be taking any risks at all when it comes to keeping children safe whe…”

“I would say that “many” is too far, in that the vast majority of settings are doing it right and keeping children very safe when they are sleeping. I think that that is important to say. Some of the examples that you mentioned there—the horrendous things that have happened to some of the children in settings, which we …”

“This is something that we have been working on with Ofsted recently, and we will soon be setting out measures to outline how we are going to support Ofsted to have that function across a whole of a chain. It is very important, because you have to have the ability to deal with things at a national multi-chain level, and…”

“We are actively considering on both. As I said, our position on all of these things is that we will do whatever is necessary to keep children safe. We are actively considering on both of those questions. On CCTV specifically, you will be aware that we have had an independent panel looking at this question. I look forwa…”

“On DBS checks, we continually work with the Home Office and the Disclosure and Barring Service to make sure that they are working and fit for purpose. We have also made changes to what we expect in terms of the collection of references, in terms of notifying us if you are employing family on domestic premises. There ar…”

“I do want to pay tribute again to John and Katie, Gigi’s parents, for their brilliant campaigning on this. They have bravery and courage. They have just been phenomenal. It has been a huge privilege to work with them on this question of safe sleep. We have done several things. We are updating the EYFS from September to…”

“It depends on the exact model that we set out, but it is possible.”

“We are consulting on that proposal at the moment, and we want to hear views from people about it. Part of the drive behind it is around trying to support that status and pay and conditions point, which is very important because early years teachers are doing just as brilliant a job as teachers in school settings and de…”