Children’s Social Care

I warmly welcome this statement, like all colleagues on the Government Benches and hopefully like colleagues across the whole House. I particularly welcome the comments on care leavers; it is important that we do not forget about them. When I became council leader of St Helens in 2019, services for care leavers were rated inadequate by Ofsted. I am proud to say that they are now outstanding. The credit for that goes to Councillor Nova Charlton and the whole children’s services team. The Secretary of State is more than welcome to visit St Helens to hear about the good work they do and how they do it. Will she tell me a bit more about what steps she is taking with colleagues to make sure that local government has the funding it needs to run these services? It has to be a whole council effort—if one part fails, it all falls down.