‘Reviving Sure Start is a great first step – a children’s minister should be the next’

Bridget Philipson’s revival of Labour’s hallmark Sure Start programme is a promising sign that children’s welfare is back on the Government’s radar. But while this is a step in the right direction, mixed signals remain. The Government’s hesitancy to scrap the two-child benefit cap, alongside a disturbing new report from the Children’s Commissioner on rising child poverty, tells a different story – one where children are still waiting to be truly prioritised.

So, who in government is actually speaking for our children?

A look back at recent history paints a telling picture. Under the last Labour government, we had the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) – a bit of a mouthful, perhaps, but it clearly placed children and families at the heart of government. When the Coalition took over, Michael Gove swiftly rebranded it back to the Department for Education. The signal was clear: focus on schools, not families. Gove’s main ambition? Reshaping the education landscape with academies and free schools, while Labour’s Sure Start centres – lifelines for many – were left to wither.

Today, children and families are tucked under a junior minister at the Department for Education, their voice diluted in a tangle of responsibilities that include everything from child protection and adoption to foster care, family support and parenting, unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and local authority improvement. It’s a sprawling brief with life-changing implications – yet there’s no Cabinet-level seat dedicated to championing these children. Isn’t it time we had a proper Children’s Minister?

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Back in 2004, the Children Act gave us a Children’s Commissioner – a vital role, and one currently held with conviction, as seen in the Commissioner’s recent exposé on child poverty. But advocacy doesn’t equate to power. The Commissioner has no say over budgets or policy direction – only a voice.

Sceptics might ask: does it really matter what the title is, or where it sits in the Westminster pecking order? But it does. Right now, Parliamentary scrutiny is geared towards education, rather than children’s services. Education Select Committees, Shadow Ministers, and headlines focus on school reforms, not safeguarding, or child poverty. Parliamentary debates on children’s issues are often poorly attended. When tragedies like the Marten and Gordon gross negligence manslaughter of their baby daughter Victoria break, the nation pays attention – for a moment. Then the conversation moves on.

Issues like children’s mental health, phone addiction, and online safety are bubbling over, yet young voices remain underrepresented in shaping these discussions. How can we claim to prioritise children when they barely have a seat at the table?

Countries like Norway and Denmark have long had dedicated Children’s Ministers. It’s time to stop treating children’s issues as an afterthought buried in wider departments. Our young people deserve more than a footnote in education policy – they deserve a champion. Isn’t it time we gave them one?

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