Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in Cardiff University, Cardiff Metropolitan University and the Medical Schools Council.

I start by welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady Sugg, and congratulate her. I agree with what she said about teaching. Indeed, teaching has for too long been a poor relation, and so the concepts in the TEF are to be welcomed. The problem is that teaching excellence has to be at course level. It cannot be just across the board. In one institution there can be both excellence and appalling teaching. Often, some of the best teachers turn out to be very unconventional role models, but they have a huge influence on the lives of the students with whom they interact. The problem we had with the REF was the game-playing and the problem that we might have with the TEF will again be the game-playing that can occur, and the REF is being revised.

As so many noble Lords have already said, buried in the Bill are massive constitutional changes that appear to undermine the autonomy and vigour of Britain’s universities and its research base. The current balance of power, democracy, expertise and academic freedom can seem intangible to many outside academia, but those inside do not feel that their autonomy is adequately safeguarded in the Bill.

We have heard from many speakers already how the universities here punch above their weight with very high-impact research per pound—more than any other country. If their autonomy is eroded, support for spontaneous, innovative endeavours is put at risk. Let us not forget that some major breakthroughs have appeared almost by chance. They cannot be directed; they cannot be predicted. They are wonderful products often of the cross-fertilisation of ideas, as researchers learn through interesting conversations with others and through debate with other academics. Postgraduate students, in particular, but also undergraduates benefit from being part of and observing this interchange.

I want to focus on the new super-research council—UKRI—in the few minutes that I have. Its powerful chair and chief executive—the power will be with the chief executive—will oversee the near-totality of publicly funded research in the UK. Never before in the history of British science have so few individuals been responsible for so much spending. Although the revamp of the research councils was envisaged in the Nurse review, the Bill in its present form threatens to undermine our research base and our universities, which are vital parts of the economic, political and cultural life of this country.

It was said in the briefing meetings which many of us have attended and appreciated that there would be no political involvement in individual research decisions, but what about the overall direction? It feels too dangerous to have interference even in that. To safeguard the search for evidence and academic freedom, the researchers of the future need to be developed through keeping education and research linked and integrated.

On a global scale, we must remain friendly to overseas scholars and students, continue to win research funding from outside the UK, and foster our vibrant collaborations. I hope the Government will listen to the wise words of the noble Baroness, Lady Chakrabarti, when she addressed the problem for refugees who have lived through absolute living hell and want to study here, who are extremely bright yet find yet another hurdle in front of them. That has to go.

Among universities, there is disquiet about the proposed governance of the UK research base, which appears significantly more top-down than before. Research councils will become committees and lose the protection of their autonomy that comes from their royal charters. They will not have an ex-officio seat on the board of the powerful overarching council, although the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is going to create some kind of forum, so research communities’ views can be fed in.

Sir Paul Nurse intends the new arrangement to create a powerful voice for science at the heart of government. To date, heads of autonomous funding councils, Whitehall chief scientists and even campaign groups have often worked with, and sometimes against, government to protect the research base. Now this creative tension seems to be the task of very few individuals, with a great deal of power in the chair and chief executive. UKRI can create a strategic view of promoting interdisciplinary research, but will the autonomy of research councils remain intact, not just free from politicisation but free to self-govern? The Secretary of State will have great control, approving board appointments. I know that a lot will come through in statutory instruments placed before Parliament, but they probably will not get much scrutiny as we are bowed under with the post-Brexit legislative timetable.

Research is a fast-moving endeavour. As the noble Lord, Lord Kakkar, said, we have to make sure that it is supported, providing stability through the dual support system. The Bill needs to be amended to maintain the autonomy of those determining research funding and to ensure adequate consultation.

Schools: Health and Well-being

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

We certainly do target certain types of food in schools, such as crisps, as being unhealthy. That is what the school food standards are all about. As for taxing sugar et cetera, that, I am afraid, is rather out of my ken.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

What are the Government doing about vitamin deficiency among children, given that the CMO’s report recommended the Healthy Start vitamin programme and that 40% of young children are thought to be vitamin D deficient, particularly as the deficiency may be linked to the metabolic syndrome and high blood pressure? It has even been suggested that a vitamin D supplement may improve some of the core symptoms of autism, which can create major behavioural issues in a classroom.

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness raises an extremely important point. I shall discuss this issue with the Department of Health and ensure that she receives a full written reply.

Queen’s Speech

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, in the gracious Speech it was welcome to see a commitment to seven-day working. Indeed, in my own Access to Palliative Care Bill, which has now been introduced, I have included a requirement for seven-day services. Like the noble Lord, Lord Sharkey, I welcome the noble Lord, Lord Prior of Brampton, to his position and look forward to working with him closely on this matter.

However, when we talk about seven-day services, we must not forget the nights, because disease does not respect the clock or the calendar. When patients are at home, it is the family who carry the full responsibility for whether to phone somebody and what to do, and that burden of responsibility on them can be huge, particularly if they do not have adequate social care support.

In its report, What’s Important to Me, the National Council for Palliative Care—I must declare an interest because I am taking over as its next chair—has shown just how many patients recognise that they need seven-day services. The appalling findings in the report, Dying Without Dignity, from the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman demonstrate what happens when you do not have seven-day services.

In 2010, the Royal College of Physicians called for such services, with 68% of physicians supporting the move, but physicians are already working on average 50 hours a week. So there is a need for a remodelling of what they do, decreasing bureaucratic burdens on them and ensuring that there are proper roster reviews, otherwise they will not be able to cope and the system will collapse.

An analysis from the Manchester Centre for Health Economics, published last week, looked at the additional risk of death from weekend admissions—it is not just greater on a Saturday but it is even greater on a Sunday. It costs the move to seven-day services at between £1.07 billion and £1.43 billion. Why are those deaths happening? Fewer senior staff are on duty at weekends, with fewer support services, especially in pathology, radiology and pharmacy, and there are fewer allied health professionals, who are so important. There is a higher disease burden in those admitted at the weekends as an emergency, making them less likely to respond well to treatment. The NHS was founded on a principle of equitable care. Failure to provide equity across each day of the week must be considered a failure in one of its fundamental obligations.

For patients who are at home, the need for community support becomes the mainstay of their being able to stay at home. However, they need not only carers but physiotherapy and occupational therapy to maintain their independence. Fortunately, the number of physiotherapy training places has gone back up, having dipped previously, but is not keeping pace with the demand for physiotherapy.

Social care integration is to be welcomed if we are going to use our resources widely. The emergency services, of course, already provide 24/7 cover but the winter funding put in by the previous Government did not reach front-line emergency departments. Only just over 1% of the £700 million went into those departments. The remainder was meant to cut back the pressure on the departments but that seems to have failed. There was an increase in attendances by 500,000, an increase in admissions by 7% and a doubling of delayed discharges.

In its document prescribing the remedy, the Royal College of Emergency Medicine has solutions. Through its future hospital programme, the Royal College of Physicians wants to help the Government to achieve better equitable care, and the Royal College of Surgeons is supportive. However, we must take the administrative pressures off front-line staff to free them up to do the clinical work that we need them to do.

There is a commitment to increasing GP numbers and the Prime Minister, I believe, has said that he wants one in two medical graduates to go into general practice—but how? It will not happen quickly. The time from entry to medical school to being fully trained as a GP is, on average, nine years. However, the shortfall of GPs is already 3,300 and estimated to go up to 8,000 by 2020. Sixty per cent are already providing extended opening hours and 17% are open at weekends.

A Citizens Advice report, Registering Frustration—which was issued after the start of this debate—shows that GP registration is so complex that one in 10 patients finds that it takes them more than two weeks to register; when they cannot register they are directed to walk-in centres; and one in seven GPs has felt that their only option has been to redirect patients to A&E. We should look again at the skill set of those people noble Lords might feel are the least trained and the least qualified—the care assistants and social carers—because, with better training, we will be able to empower them to provide better care.

The UK has a low doctor-to-patient ratio. We are 24th out of the 27 European nations. The Government must re-engage with those who will bring about change— including re-engaging in negotiations with the BMA—to find solutions to work patterns and to the ways that people work.

The noble Lord, Lord Giddens, is right to say that IT must be used imaginatively. We cannot just transfer lengthy paper records on to IT systems and expect that that will do anything other than increase the bureaucratic burden.

As to the threat that comes from the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, on 28 May the European Parliament’s trade committee agreed a resolution backing the TTIP for the full Parliament to vote on this month. This controversial initiative reintroduced investor state dispute settlements. It would allow corporations to sue the UK for laws protecting public health and represent a destructive force to our NHS. Can the Minister clarify what the Government’s position was in the trade committee and what it will be in a future vote on TTIP? It would be tragic if we undermined our NHS by such a move.

Early Years Intervention

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, like others, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, on having secured this debate and on attracting a large number of speakers.

I want to focus on the development of the brain. Without our brains, we cannot learn, we cannot learn language and we cannot interact. If in the next generation we do not ensure that brains are developed property, we will not break the cycle of maltreatment and failure within the social environment and every other environment in society.

It is worth noting that 90% of brain size has been acquired by the age of three, so the focus on the first 1,001 days—that is, from conception to the age of two—which has already been alluded to by other speakers, is critical. The Wave Trust has done a lot to raise awareness and to pull together the evidence in this area. The long-lasting effects of maltreatment are in the physical, socioemotional, cognitive and behavioural domains.

The consequences and costs of such maltreatment are phenomenal. As has already been said, managing it costs about £15 billion a year. As well as the physical and mental suffering of the individual and the damage to educational prospects, there are also high levels of aggression, which damages others in society. It is of note that 68% of those in the prison population have been abused or neglected in childhood. The Christie commission in Scotland estimated that 40% of public spending is necessary only because of our failure to intervene early enough. We are accumulating huge future expenditure by not looking at this very important area.

It is also worth noting that about one in five children is maltreated, the peak time being in the first year of life. Sixty-two per cent of those entering care in 2013 had been subject to abuse and neglect. In March of that year, more than 68,000 children were in care, so it is a very big problem. Five per cent of children have a diagnosable mental health condition, and 15% to 20% of behavioural problems are severe enough to cause concern. This is costing about a quarter of a million pounds per child. Interventions on parenting programmes that cover the period from birth onwards cost less than £2,000 per case. The difference in cost is phenomenal, and it seems almost madness that we have not addressed this issue on economic terms alone.

About 1 million children in the UK are suffering the long-term effects of maltreatment, with all kinds of behavioural disorders, but it is worth noting that the greatest predictor of prenatal depression is that the mother was herself abused. She has a tenfold likelihood of becoming an abuser. A third of abuse occurs when under the influence of alcohol. I urge the Government to get to grips with alcohol policy, particularly pricing and so on, because it may have a huge effect. In families with a history of domestic violence, there is a 23 times greater likelihood of abuse being perpetrated against children under the age of five. I stress the importance of domestic violence as a contributory factor.

It is worth considering briefly why this happens. As the brain develops, areas that are stimulated develop more. Those that do not receive stimulation, as the noble Lord, Lord Winston, has already pointed out, do not develop to the same extent. Therefore, even in the womb the child subject to stress develops a stress reaction, and the brain develops the ability to respond to stress. Children who have not experienced a calm environment do not develop the ability to have empathy and they cannot be expected to feel remorse for later hurting or killing somebody, because that part of their brain is not properly developed. Nor can they develop communication skills. Therefore, the child subject to hyperarousal all through those very early days and weeks will develop a state of permanent hyperarousal and response within the brain. That plasticity of the brain carries on throughout the child’s development until the age of 16, so the other educational interventions referred to by noble Lords all help in developing the areas of the brain that have not developed well.

In my last seconds I would just stress that cutting back on mental health services in the perinatal period may be the most serious adverse disinvestment that the NHS is currently undertaking.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Wednesday 5th February 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

My Lords, it has been an enormous privilege to be part of the movement across all Benches in this House to do something about controlling the use of tobacco, particularly in relation to child protection. Tobacco control has for many years been something that medicine, the discipline from which I come, has been arguing and pushing for. It is with a great sense of relief that I see these amendments before us today.

I thank everyone who has contributed to these and previous debates, but I especially thank the noble Earl for the way in which he has remained in contact, listened to discussions, been very open to suggestions and has really taken on board a rapidly changing landscape in the atmosphere of this House, which has supported these moves. I would have added my name to the other amendments had I not been so busy checking the one to which I did add my name before the time ran out.

The issue of e-cigarettes is really important; they have crept up on us rapidly. They give a bigger nicotine hit, so users say, than cigarettes and they have flavourings that are likely to attract young people. So, moves towards controlling them as well are really important. I know that the Chief Medical Officer has looked at this carefully and is concerned. I share those concerns, as do many others in my discipline of medicine. I hope that in the years ahead we will see a drop in cigarette and tobacco-related diseases presenting in our A&E departments, GP surgeries and hospitals.

[Lord Ribeiro (Con)]

My Lords, I add my appreciation to my noble friend the Minister for getting us to the point where we are today. Little did I wonder when I introduced my Private Member’s Bill way back in July 2012 that we would actually be at this position. As the noble Baronesses, Lady Finlay and Lady Tyler, rightly said, this has been a cross-party initiative right across the House. I am grateful for the conversations that I have had with my noble friend and for the way in which the Government have shifted their position both publicly and privately. That is very rewarding.

Thanks to the Tube strike today, I came in by taxi. The best way to find out what the average member of the British public thinks about anything is to ask your taxi driver. I noted that he had a no-smoking sign in his cab. I asked, “What do you think about this Bill on smoking in cars that we might be able to resolve today?”. He held up a packet of cigarettes, to my surprise, and said, “I’m a smoker. I don’t smoke in the cab, I go outside to smoke. Why would anybody want to smoke in a car with children present? Why would they?”. That was his reaction. When we know that 85% of smokers think that it is bonkers to smoke in a car when children are present, we realise that we have finally made the point that this is more about child protection—protecting young children with young lungs, who are likely to end up with long-term respiratory problems—than it is about removing personal liberties.

I hope that the Government will continue to re-energise this educational programme because it is that 15% of the public who do not recognise the importance of not smoking in cars that we need to get at. I have every confidence that the Government will do so. Legislation can always be used as a blunt instrument but it is interesting that, since the seat-belt legislation was brought in, the current compliance rate is more than 90%. Some 95% of people who clunk-click would never even think of driving off without putting their seat belts on. In years to come, I hope that people will wonder why they ever smoked in cars with children present.

Schools: Emergency Life Support Skills

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Monday 3rd February 2014 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many secondary schools teach emergency life support skills as part of their compulsory school curriculum.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, the ability to save a life is one of the most important skills that a young person can learn, and many young people take part in activities on emergency life support skills in schools. For example, in 2012, St John Ambulance provided support resources for the direct teaching of first aid to more than 500,000 young people in schools. It is for schools to decide whether, how and when pupils should learn emergency life support skills. The Government do not collect data on school provision in this area.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff (CB)]

Given that 60,000 people a year have an out-of-hospital cardiac arrest and yet three-quarters of our population are not trained to give basic cardiopulmonary resuscitation, does the Minister recognise that this is a problem? It is devastating for anyone, particularly a child, to see someone have a cardiac arrest in front of them and not know what to do. We know that immediate cardiopulmonary resuscitation will triple the chance of survival. Life-saving skills really should be mandatory in schools, as they are in other European schools. I ask the Minister to reconsider. Has the current consultation over key stage 4 curriculum content in English, maths and science considered including heart function, cardiac arrest and CPR as part of science teaching?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness is quite right to draw attention to this very important point. Emergency life-saving skills are extremely important. In addition to the St John Ambulance provision, the Red Cross and the British Heart Foundation run excellent schemes. The BHF’s Heartstart scheme has to date trained more than 3.5 million people.

The answer to her curriculum question is that I do not believe we are intending to put this in, but I will investigate that and write to her about it. With regard to particular incidents in schools, we are looking at that in the context of defibrillators to see if there is anything more that we can do.

Education: Personal, Social and Health Education

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Wednesday 24th April 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I add my sincere thanks to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for having secured this debate, which is extremely important.

Our schools are now labouring against a much bigger problem than in the past. In the days when we went to school, figures relating to society were far better. Just to quote a few, the UK now has the highest rate of family breakdown in the western world and only just over half—55%—of 15 year-olds live with both their birth parents. That is a huge social change. Children are considerably more likely to have a television in the bedroom than a father living at home. We also know from good, sound research that 80% of variability in pupil achievement is attributable to so-called pupil factors, particularly family influence, so schools are struggling against a huge backdrop of problems that children may be bringing in with them, which are not the children’s fault.

I will touch briefly on emergency first aid, which has already been covered by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and the noble Baroness, Lady Masham. I cannot but join wholeheartedly with their comments. If there was one thing that every child should learn, it would be the two hours of CPR. The children are very likely to be on the scene when the person concerned drops dead. Even though there is only a 15% chance of success, if unsuccessful, they can in their grief be consoled that they did everything they could.

I know of a woman, now in her 60s, who in her late teens found her father dead in the chair, and she has never recovered from the fact that she did not know what to do. She did not even know how to try. She just dived for a telephone and waited, and of course her father was dead. If only she had known to give him one thump on the chest, she might have felt better about the whole of her life. But it is not just about CPR. It is about coping with bleeding, choking, fractures—the real basics. Young people are the ones at risk of those; they are the ones at risk off falling of a horse, falling down a cliff face and so on.

As regards the life skills with which we are trying to equip children, they are about relationships. We are not dealing with only the nuts and bolts, if you like, of sex; we are dealing with the whole business of relating and coping with all the emotions that go on. Sadly, we have seen a rise in the number of girls reporting non-consensual sex from 28% in 2002 to 38% in 2008. Something is wrong and we cannot ignore it.

We also have to help children to cope with all those difficult emotions. EU Kids Online looked at children’s concerns on the internet and found that 22% are concerned about pornography and 18% about violent content. We know that between 1995-96 and 2005-06 there was a 66% increase in the hospitalisation of 12 to 14 year-olds from for self-harm. We have the data from the report on child well-being in rich countries and we do not do well. The United Kingdom does appallingly on teenage fertility rates. We rank badly for alcohol being drunk twice a week and children having used cannabis in the last 10 months. But we also do badly on children being involved in a physical fight and in being bullied at school at least once in the past couple of months. All of those are negative influence on children’s emotional development.

Unless we grasp the nettle, tackle this, make it part of our statutory provision and value the need to teach children all the aspects of thinking and relationships, we will continue to fail, as we seem to be doing now. I ask the Minister: where is the Government’s teenage strategy? What is happening to that group who appear to be invisible in policy?

Education Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Wednesday 13th July 2011 Grand Committee

We have a chance through this amendment to ensure that all young people learn about the importance of relationships now and in the future.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I shall speak to my amendment in this group.

First, though, I shall address a small point just raised about relationships. In new Section 85B(1)(b), perhaps we should also insert, “bereavement reactions in grief and loss”. There are some fantastic programmes that help children prepare for the inevitability of experiencing bereavement, grief and loss, which are tailored for different ages. We know that by the time children leave school, 10 per cent of them are going to be seriously bereaved, but we are just ignoring that when we talk about other aspects of development. Those children do very badly if they do not understand their emotions.

My amendment is focused on community resuscitation. In the UK we have over 30,000 out-of-hospital cardiac arrests a year, and currently fewer than 10 per cent of victims survive to leave hospital. That means that we have 27,000 sudden deaths in the community. To put that in perspective, about 12,000 women a year die of breast cancer, 3,000 people die on the roads and 270 people die from knife crime. The number of sudden cardiac arrest deaths out there is huge. It takes around five to 10 minutes for an emergency ambulance to reach someone and for every minute that passes in cardiac arrest the chance of successful defibrillation decreases by 10 per cent, so time is of the essence. Immediately administrated cardiopulmonary resuscitation, which I am now going to call CPR because it is much shorter, will prolong the time that the patient remains shockable and therefore can be put back into a normal rhythm. It increases the chance of survival by a factor of around three. If there is a defibrillator nearby, survival rates of up to 50 per cent from a baseline of under 10 per cent have been reported.

Other parts of the world have already addressed this. It is part of the curriculum in Norway, Denmark and France. The American Heart Association has advised that no pupil should graduate from secondary school without being proficient in CPR, not just learning it. In Seattle, schools have taught CPR in PE lessons for over 30 years, so now half of the population of Seattle and the surrounding area are trained. In 2009 the survival rate for witnessed cardiac arrests was 46 per cent, while ours is under 10 per cent. The difference is dramatic.

Here in the UK, the British Heart Foundation has put Heartstart into over 2,700 schools, 700 of which are secondary schools or colleges. It trains thousands of children every year. British Red Cross and St John Ambulance also run training schemes, but the trouble is that the provision is patchy. There are 3.6 million children in secondary education in England, but only around 14 per cent have any training in CPR provided by one of these organisations. It is estimated that around 3 million secondary school pupils are not trained, even though the voluntary organisations are very ready to offer this training. By contrast, a poll taken by the British Heart Foundation at the beginning of this year found that 86 per cent of teachers, 70 per cent of parents and 78 per cent of children want to be trained. There is no resistance anywhere; it is a question of making the link. The campaign has wide medical, nursing and teaching support, as well as from the charities that deal with bereavement following cardiac death.

Training and support for teachers would enable them to deliver emergency life support. Currently, the British Heart Foundation spends around £800,000 a year on teaching resources, including mannequins, school packs, teacher supply cover and so on. It is estimated that it will be necessary to increase the provision of community resuscitation development officers, who are linked with the 12 ambulance trusts in England, by around five people to ensure that every child in every school is taught. With additional resources, the models could be successfully applied across all schools. There are over 3,000 local authority maintained secondary schools in England. The amendment aims to amend Section 84 of the Education Act 2002 so that this training becomes a community requirement at the first, second and third key stages.

I know that the Government can be much more prescriptive with the curriculum for maintained schools and I hope that they might consider adopting this training because that will influence the academies to take it up. However, I am well aware that the Government cannot be prescriptive for academies. Sadly, this is not part of PSHE at the moment. First aid training in the curriculum covers some parts of emergency life support but not emergency CPR, which is what can save lives. We could go from 27,000 sudden deaths in the community to approximately half that number if we spent a few hours on training all children in CPR. It has been estimated that the training takes only around four hours. It would mean that when they come across someone who has collapsed and is effectively dead on the street, they will know what to do.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, I know that there are quite a number of people who, like me, should declare an interest in this, having been identified as a potential victim. I shall just tell my noble friend that he will have to argue very strongly against this amendment to stop me supporting it at a later stage.

Education Bill

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Thursday 30th June 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jolly]

I also support the noble Lord, Lord Storey, on Amendment 43, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, has added her name. Almost by their nature, children who are excluded can be stroppy and awkward, but what is hidden—and what they probably fight very hard to hide—is that they are really very scared and apprehensive of the whole process. There is no provision in this Bill to show that children also figure. There is no provision to ensure that they are aware of the process, to allow them to make representation themselves to the panel or to appeal against their exclusion.

This amendment calls upon those who are involved in the process to ensure that the pupil is clear about these issues—about the reasons and the evidence. The language that is used should be in the appropriate tongue or at the appropriate level to allow the pupil to be completely clear about what is happening. They should know who is going into the process. There should be no doubt for the child what is there before them.

One thing that I would like the Minister to consider, should he be minded to do so, although it is not written as part of the amendment, is that the child could have an advocate with whom they could work as they go through the process. That could be useful.

The amendment would align England with the devolved nations. It would also put England in line with Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and would meet the recommendations of the Committee on the Rights of the Child. There is an element of natural justice to it and, whatever the reasons for the exclusion, the child deserves that.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

My Lords, I hope that the Committee will forgive me for intervening briefly but the last point is very important. What has triggered the behavioural deterioration that has resulted in exclusion? These children may already have special educational needs. The behaviour may be down to bullying but sometimes it is due to abuse. Sexual abuse is particularly difficult to uncover in these children. It may also be a grief reaction to loss or bereavement, which can sometimes be delayed. One problem is that in the majority of our schools staff do not have adequate training to deal with children who are bereaved and have bereavement and loss reactions. The reactions to grief and loss in this group of children can appear to be disruptive and bad behaviour, and it can exacerbate other behaviours in the children around them. Therefore, the triggers that have set this cascade towards exclusion going are absolutely critical, and if we do not focus on them we will continue to fail children over time.

[Lord Willis of Knaresborough]

My Lords, I rise briefly to address some of the issues raised by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in Amendment 39A. His comments, which I strongly support, take us back to 1979 and the Warnock report. They take us back to why that report and the 1981 Act moved away from the categorisation of special needs and conditions associated with special needs and towards two things. The first was to look at the severest cases and to make sure that they were properly assessed with a statement of special needs, which then had to be statutorily supported in our schools. I very much supported that at the time.

The Warnock report also recognised that in 1979—not in 2011—some 20 per cent of our children had some form of special needs which should, if recognised, be supported within the school community. From that time through to when I entered Parliament, I spent most of my professional career working first in the north-east, opening the first school to look at the inclusion of children with physical impairments; and then latterly in Leeds, working to ensure that children with severe learning difficulties—mostly Down’s syndrome, hearing impairment and sight impairment—became part of the mainstream setting.

In all those cases, both in the north-east, where we did some pioneering work with NFER and then HMI, and in Leeds, the crucial factor—I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Sutherland, is not here at the moment—was training your staff. You can identify until you are blue in the face but, following that identification, you have to ensure that you translate the needs of the child into an appropriate action point, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, with the appropriate resources. This is not a massive resource issue but it is a training issue. It is a question of ensuring that people have the skills to support these children. I am sorry that the noble Baroness whose name I should remember—

Schools: Curriculum and PSHE Reviews

Baroness Finlay of Llandaff Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

My Lords, generally we are keen to ensure that the national curriculum is as little overloaded as possible because we believe that one should make space in the school day for important subjects such as financial literacy. PSHE would be another good example. That is why we are trying to simplify and reduce the burden of the national curriculum, to leave schools more discretion and time to decide on the subjects they want to teach and the best and most appropriate way to do so, knowing their children.

[Baroness Finlay of Llandaff]

How much consideration has been given to helping teachers and, therefore, children understand their emotional responses in bereavement, given that we know that 10 per cent of school children are bereaved of either a parent, sibling or close friend and that those who do not have support become victims of bullying and have a higher instance of depression, suicide, alcoholism, teenage pregnancy, and so on?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

Again, my Lords, I agree with those points. Part of what one would want to look at in the review is what support children need and therefore what support teachers need to make sure those children have the appropriate knowledge and skills.