We promise not only to protect Sure Start schemes in Blackpool and Cleveleys, but to enhance support for parents by providing an additional 4,200 health visitors across the country – in contrast to Labour’s policy of cuts to the service.

Conservatives will scrap the unfair tax and benefits rules that say couples are entitled to more if they’re separated than if they’re married or in a civil partnership.

Yvette Cooper (out-of-her-depth, it always seems, and rather nasty with it, just like her husband, Ed Balls!) was presenting the Child Poverty Bill. An issue of concern, undoubtedly, as another 400,000 have come under Labour’s own definition of child poverty since 2004/05. Where progress was made, it seems to have consisted of moving children just beneath the poverty barrier to just above it – and engrained poverty has barely improved. Tax credits have been a fiasco, and have been over-emphasised when it is surely self-evident that ‘work’ is the only sustainable route out of poverty in the long-term.

Simply legislating to end child poverty will not make it happen. Like so much of Labour’s governing, the act of legislating is seen to be sufficient, rather than actually considering what the tools of implementation are. I question whether a Child Poverty Commission is the magic wand. Are more quangos really what we need?

But Joan’s contribution was specifically about Sure Start centres. These have become a Labour shibboleth, almost sanctified for their mere existence. Yet many, including the National Audit Office, have questioned the effectiveness of a scheme which has consumed well over £3 billion down the years. Given that level of spending, should we not be questioning whether we are getting value for money, rather than just agreeing on the ‘motherhood and apple pie’ aspects. Even Tony Blair has described Sure Start centres as a ‘disappointment’. Research has found them to have little impact on school-readiness, for example.

Labour, including in Blackpool, have accused Conservatives of wanting to shut Sure Start Centres. Let’s nail that lie now. And let me explain what will occur. Labour have already enlarged budgets, and sought to enfold the Sure Start schemes in wider Children’s Centres. This is an understandable response to many of the criticisms from the Climbie Enquiry. However, one consequence of this has been to progressively squeeze the ‘health promotion’ element of Sure Start in favour of educational progress. The Early Years Strategy contained a nonsensical 62 targets, for example, for childhood educational development! If I were more cynical, I might suggest that focusing on early years education is almost an attempt to correct faults at primary level by not actually interfering with a crotchety teaching profession. Even Norman Glass, one of the pioneers of the Sure Start programme, has expressed concern at the priority now given to education rather than health in these child-focused programmes. So we are planning to spend money focusing once again on health. We would provide more health visitors for new families with new-borns and toddlers. It is very similar to the Nurse Family Partnership in the US. Evidence has been judged strong enough to designate it as a model program for preventing child maltreatment. NFP targets low-income, first-time parents and their families during pregnancy and the first two years of the child’s life. It aims to improve pregnancy outcomes by changing health-related behaviours such as smoking and drug-taking; improve child health and development by helping parents provide more responsible and competent care for their children; and improve families’ economic self-sufficiency by helping parents to plan subsequent pregnancies and find work. The NFP emphasises program fidelity, especially that home visitors should be nurses who have received additional training in the program, as opposed to volunteers or paraprofessionals.

And Labour, to follow their own logic, want to ‘cut’ this?

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kbaXYPmjU0

One obvious discussion point was the impact of the Baby P case on social work. I expressed my concern at the strain such cases put on social workers. It is always going to be impossible to prevent every act of evil, and in seeking to prevent such an act of evil, I do fear that the pressure may be on social workers to go too far in the opposite direction. It is a difficult balance to reach, and I do not envy those with the responsibility for the task of protecting our children.

We also discussed the various challenges Blackpool’s children face. But rather than just go through all the negative facts and figures out there, we focused also on the ways in which the new Conservative council was beginning to overcome the awful legacy left by the previous Labour administration. GCSE results are improving – though it would be good to see maths and English improving faster, and everyone recognises the problems in recruiting maths teachers even. But as we also agreed, league tables do not always tell the whole story. I made clear my own belief that we have a cultural problem in this country where a good education is equated with an academic education – and that is a legacy of all post-war governments that needs overcoming.

We also considered some of the potential impact of Conservative proposals for improving discipline in schools, looked at how our plans for establishing new schools and enhancing parental choice could work in a Blackpool setting, and discussed the positive impact I believe our Pupil Premium, targeted at disadvantaged pupils, would have on the average spend per pupil in Blackpool.

It is difficult to do justice to all we discussed. I want to blog about the Building Schools for the Future programme in a few days. Indeed, we didn’t really get on to the issue of targets in nursery education, child and adolescent mental health services and the debate over setting/streaming v. mixed ability teaching. There was a lot of agreement on all sides about so many issues, and I hope I left the impression that the next MP for Blackpool North & Cleveleys will be paying more than just lip service to the mantra of ‘education, education, education’.