Children and Families Bill
Lord Addington Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, I have added my name to that of the noble Lord, Lord Low of Dalston, on Amendment 155 and it is to that cause that I wish to speak. If there is one thing where I find myself at one with the Government, it is in our shared ambition to encourage young disabled people to have the highest aspirations for their lives and to be self-assured and confident about their future. More and more disabled youngsters are liberating themselves, to the extent of refusing to accept their disability as a barrier. They are self-assured, confident and determined to have a full life.
For many, the pathway to that full life is through a university education but higher education facilities are currently excluded from the new framework created by the Bill. Given that I share with the Government this ambition that disabled youngsters should have the highest aspirations, I am mystified why they should be excluded. Indeed, I am sure that I am not alone in this Committee in thinking that. Many universities already meet the educational needs of disabled young people. Surely we want to feed and encourage this.
All too often, unfortunately, disabled students, even when given first-class support at universities, find it hard to access other services that they need. A report by the Trailblazers group found that 30% of young disabled people felt that the number of places where they could study was limited because of their concerns about an all-round care package. One student named Zoe, who was at Oxford, told Trailblazers:
“My local council had never sent a disabled person away to university before. They were quite insistent that I should stay and study at my local university (ranked at 119th as opposed to Oxford, ranked first), and do a course that I had absolutely no interest in. My decision to move away was treated with complete bewilderment; there was no understanding of how my care package would be accommodated, and the idea that agency care was more expensive in the new local authority caused real problems when negotiating”.
Lauren, who graduated from Manchester in 2012 and is now doing a master’s degree at Leeds, recalled:
“My local authority would not give me the required hours straight off. We had to appeal. Luckily we started the process a year before so had enough time to do this”.
Katy, who studies at Bedford, said:
“After an argument my home county agreed to pay for my personal care but I nearly didn’t qualify for funding as their criteria for supporting people was for those whose needs were ‘substantial or severe’”.
Finally, Rupert, who is at Canterbury Christchurch, added:
“First of all, I was living in Lewisham and Lewisham Council didn’t want to tell us that they were responsible for providing and funding the care themselves. They knew they had to but didn’t inform me. We found out through other sources, so they eventually paid up”.
Disability discrimination legislation has been in force since 1995, yet disabled people still have to struggle for equal access in many areas of our national life. Young people with a disability face challenges and hurdles enough that the rest of us do not face. Amendment 155 is a step in the right direction. It is one more step in creating a level playing field for all our citizens, able-bodied and disabled, thus ensuring that all can use their talents to the full and have a full life.
Lord Addington (LD)
Sometimes higher education provides better support than further education. I must declare that I have commercial interests in a firm that enables it to be done through the DSA. The transition between the two bits of education is probably unnecessarily complex. Making sure there is a smoother connection and an exchange of education from higher to further and the other way around would enhance the system and would probably allow people to study better in both places. I am interested to hear what my noble friend has to say on this matter. This is a recognised problem of transition and has been around a long time. It will be interesting to hear the Government’s thinking on this matter.
Lord Lucas (Con)
My Lords, we have had a briefing from Universities UK on this subject, which I suspect was compiled largely by talking to registrars, who wish that the problem would go away and who feel that it is not really their responsibility. I think disability officers in universities would take a rather different attitude, which is that they are not receiving the support they need regarding health and social care from their local authorities or clinical commissioning groups, which tend to regard the itinerant student population as somebody else’s responsibility and to think that an 18-month waiting list for mental health treatment for a student is appropriate.
I think there is a wish within universities for a better connected, more responsive system, such as we are putting in place for students in FE. I understand from what various noble Lords, particularly the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, have said that there are some aspects of the system that has been put in place for younger ages that would not fit universities. We ought to look carefully at what would suit university students. We ought to do so by talking to the people in universities who have to deal with these problems. They are conscious that the system they face at the moment is not by any means as good as it might be, and not as good as the sorts of things we are putting in place through this Bill.
I hope my noble friend will allow me to come and keep her company between now and Report with some of the people who deal with this as a daily issue in higher education to see whether there are some changes, whether in guidance or the Bill—I suspect probably in guidance—that would alleviate the problems they suffer in doing well by the disabled students they have to look after.
Baroness Brinton
My Lords, my noble friend Lady Sharp is not able to be in her place at the moment so, in her absence, I am speaking to the amendment in her name, Amendment 106. This is a probing amendment intended to obtain reassurances from Ministers that the entitlements of children and young people with SEN and their families will not be weakened by the passage of the Bill or by the revision of the statutory SEN code of practice.
The local offer, as currently described in Clause 30, imposes a significantly weaker and more narrowly defined duty on local authorities than the equivalent provision in the Special Educational Needs (Provision of Information by Local Education Authorities) (England) Regulations 2001, which remain in force. These regulations set out what information a local authority must provide, including, among other things, requirements to provide information about the action that the local authority is taking to promote high standards of education for children with SEN, and what action the local authority is taking to encourage schools in their area to share best practice in making provision for children with SEN. There must also be information about the general arrangements, including any plans, objectives and timescales for: monitoring the admission of children with SEN—whether or not they have a statement—to schools in their area; providing support to schools in the area with regard to making special educational provision for children with SEN; auditing, planning, monitoring and reviewing provision for children with SEN in their area; securing training, advice and support for staff working in their area with children with SEN; and securing training, advice and support for staff working in their area for children with SEN.
The information that I have just listed is important for parents, but it also incorporates a set of important principles in relation to education for pupils with SEN: the recognition that pupils with SEN need high standards of provision; that these standards should be regularly monitored and reviewed; that teachers need training, advice and support; and that schools should collaborate to share good practice.
Clause 30 merely provides that regulations may make provision about the information to be included in an authority’s local offer. It is important that the information listed in the 2001 regulations is collected and publicised by local authorities. The local offer should carry this forward into the new framework. It is not clear that this will be the case with the loose wording of the Bill. As far as I can see, there is nothing proposed in the code of conduct which would impose these duties on local authorities. Are the 2001 regulations going to be carried forward? What is the position? I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify the situation.
Lord Addington
I shall speak to my Amendment 108A. I should probably declare again the interests I have already mentioned. I declare another interest: I am a convert to the fact that assistive technology and computing generally can transform somebody’s life because I use assistive technology for everything I send out. Without voice operation, I cannot send an e-mail unless I take a week over it, and I cannot guarantee to send it properly. This is due to dyslexia. However, there are dozens of different types of assistive-technology solutions for dozens of different types of problems. You can now get a computer which bounces light off the user’s eyes to transfer the user around the screen. This was pure science fiction a few years ago. You have to run to keep up with the ideas and even the names of the technology at the moment.
The technology allows people to act independently. I could have stuck something at the end of another list about independence. I could have added a paragraph (d) to subsection (3) to provide that when you go into adult life you get a package to go with you. You probably already do. Access to work will give you some assistance, so there is a degree of consensus around this. Getting assistive technology early is very important because it allows people independence. I hope my noble friend will be able to give me some idea about how it is being taken on. What is being done to allow people to work like this? It is great to have somebody at your shoulder who assists you all the time. Unfortunately, you cannot take them home with you or guarantee that they will be with you when you are middle-aged, so learning to use other forms of assistance is vital. I hope that we will get a positive answer there.
The idea of the expression “assessment settings” is to find out how we will integrate the use of information technology into the examination system. The noble Lord, Lord Nash, has proved himself tough, durable but human by not being here. I have had some discussions with him on this subject. The Government seem interested in making sure that you can get into the examination system properly—I will return to this subject when we reach apprenticeships—but only if you make sure that the examination that is set online is compatible with the assistive technology that is used. If you get the wrong format, the two computing systems cannot talk to each other, so you cannot take the examination. In many parts of the examination system we go back to nurse—an amanuensis or extra time. It does not take a genius to figure out that those are two fairly blunt instruments. The first removes a great deal of responsibility from you, and the other is of limited utility. Extra time has attracted a great deal of attention because people say people are getting more of it. I have always wondered how much assistance extra time is if you do not know the answer. I suspect that 25% extra time to stare at a blank page does not help very much.
However, some idea of how that is progressing in the Government’s thinking would be extremely helpful at this time, as it all ties into the important standards of education—examinations. I look forward to what my noble friend will say about this and I hope that this is the start of a positive discourse on the subject.
Lord Addington
I thank my noble friend for that offer. However, before we do that, will she consider how the whole chain needs to be put together, including the examining bodies, providers, teachers and so on? This comes from experience of a breakdown in this area.
Baroness Northover
I am very happy for us to look right across the board. We need to focus on the individual child or young person and their experience throughout the system.
Coming to Amendment 109, we can assure the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, and the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, that the term, “finding employment” in the Bill goes wider than providing support for young people in looking for jobs—important though that obviously is. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, noted, the draft code of practice refers to the local offer including information about support available for job coaches, for example, who can support young people when they are working, and the financial support available, including accessing any benefits from the Department of Work and Pensions, both when looking for work and when employed.
Noble Lords pressed harder about support to stay in employment, which is extremely important. I assure them that we are well aware of that. Preparing for adulthood is an important element in the SEN reforms. Clause 30(2) requires local authorities to include in the local offer,
“provision to assist in preparing children and young people for adulthood and independent living”.
That term is defined in subsection (3) as,
“finding employment … obtaining accommodation … participation in society”.
Support for preparing for adulthood would include the kind of support that young people can expect when they are in employment. I hope that noble Lords find that reassuring as a very important point is being made there.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said that he was pressing the case again, rightly, on speech and language communication, and the provision for children and young people. No doubt we will continue to discuss this as it is a very important area. We recognise the importance of this, and the Government are supporting the work of the Communication Trust—I expect he knows that—including through a grant of £550,000 over two years to pilot an online speech, language and communication qualification for early years practitioners. That shows our commitment. We are also providing £1.5 million to the trust to identify gaps in provision and services, which will no doubt spark more amendments from the noble Lord, to promote and extend the What Works database of evidence-based interventions and to implement the reforms in Part 3. I hope that that is an indication of the seriousness with which we treat this.
Regulation 10 of Schedule 1 to the draft local offer regulations sets out the requirement to include:
“Speech and language and other therapies, including any criteria that must be satisfied before this provision can be provided”.
The noble Lord makes a very important point about how practitioners, from health visitors to those supporting children in school, need to work together. That is one of the reasons for the local offer: to try to bring all this together so that support for these children is delivered in a much more effective way.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, asked about child development and is expecting a letter from my noble friend Lord Nash. I think that that is in train, if it has not already come out. If it has not come out, I am sure that it will speed along.
Children and Families Bill
Lord Addington Excerpts(13 years ago)
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Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)
My Lords, I declare an interest as the president of Livability, which is an organisation that cares for people with complex needs. I am very concerned about this issue because we have two colleges for young people aged 16-plus where their social and educational needs are met together. Sometimes it is quite difficult to differentiate between the two, as we found during Ofsted inspections. If young people have extremely serious difficulties that need perpetual health provision and you are trying to help those young people to learn skills—the sort of skills whereby they can sit and pick up a cup instead of screaming all day, which is how they are when they arrive—it can sometimes be difficult to differentiate between education, social care and health provision. I am simply asking that nothing in the Bill should make that even more difficult. Usually we have difficulty getting payment for the social element of these colleges, but recently we have found ourselves being given the social element without the educational element of the colleges. Some really difficult issues are emerging and I should like to stop them before they develop. I should be delighted if the noble Lord, Lord Nash, would one day visit Nash College.
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, can my noble friend give us some idea about how the Government will remove those things that are not for educational purposes in the case of a young person with complex needs or a problem that prevents them accessing the process of education? That seems to be what the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, started with. Getting some clarification now about how that process will take place will be of help. If we have a system in place that gives some degree of confidence, I think that we can probably move on from this. If not, it will be a real problem.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I shall be brief, as we are keen to clarify this point. I shall speak to Amendments 71, 72 and 73 about the circumstances in which provision that would otherwise be health or social care provision should be treated as special educational provision. In doing so, I would like to comment on a couple of the points that the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, made. If I understood him correctly, he said that we needed a child development strategy for every child. I would say that we have such a strategy in the massive reform programme that this Government have put in place for schools.
I will try to get my facts right because I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, will write to me if I do not. We have just been told by the OECD that we came bottom—joint 21st with Italy and Spain, out of 24 countries—for our school leavers, and we have just been told by Alan Milburn that we are the most socially immobile country in Europe. That is why we have a schools strategy and a massive reform programme in place. However, this Bill is about SEN. I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, about the four pathways that he mentioned. On training, which he also mentioned, I just signed a letter to him today on this point about initial teacher training and other professional development for teachers, which is founded on the teacher standards that were introduced in September 2012. Child development is an important part of those standards.
I turn to the amendments. During the pre-legislative scrutiny of the SEN provisions of the Bill, the Minister for Children and Families gave an undertaking to maintain the existing protections for parents in the new system. Clause 21(5) was added to the Bill before introduction in the other place as part of that undertaking. It seeks to replicate as far as possible the case law established under the present SEN legislation, which, in our view, makes clear that health provision such as therapies can be educational, non-educational or both, depending on the individual child and the nature of the provision. Case law has established in particular that since communication is so fundamental in education and in addressing speech and language impairment, it should normally be treated as educational provision unless there are exceptional reasons for doing otherwise. We have reflected this in section 7.9 on page 109 of the draft SEN code of practice.
I think we all share the aim of carrying the current established position through into the new system. I understand the concerns that have been expressed in this debate that the current drafting does not get this quite right. This is complicated legal territory and it has not been straightforward to find the right formulation, as evidenced by the different approaches taken by each of these three amendments. I know that various parts of the sector have sought legal advice on this issue; I understand that the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, follows the advice that the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists received, and we are currently looking at that advice. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, said that she also had received advice, and we would be delighted to look at that as well. I would welcome the opportunity to discuss this further and see what progress can be made with noble Lords outside the Committee. With that reassurance, therefore, I hope that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.
Children: Developmental Care and Autism
Lord Addington Excerpts(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Addington
My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, returns to a subject different facets of which I have heard him talk about before. Primarily, it is based on the self-evident fact that if you identify a problem early you stand a better chance of reaching a better outcome. So much for the rocket science involved in this, but it is quite obvious when you are doing that.
How do we do this? There is an assessment at about the age of two. The briefing I received referred to classical autism: those with certain patterns and conditions such as low IQ and behaviour that occurs. You are able to spot that by about the age of two. That probably fits more neatly into what the noble Lord was saying than anything else we will get across. Then, as the noble Lord again pointed out—he can feel free to shoot my foxes as there will always be another one coming along—that will not apply to everyone throughout the process, so assessing until the age of eight is another good idea. If somebody does not fit neatly into that classical band, it is not very obvious that they have a problem. For instance, if that person does not get much pre-school training, education et cetera, their problems may only manifest to a noticeable degree later on. Also, the level of training of the person observing them has to be fairly exact. As you go through the educational process, many people in the higher-functioning part of the autism or Asperger’s spectrum have problems that a teacher will observe not in the classroom but in the playground because that person will not socialise normally.
There has recently been a little splurge of information about autism in the papers. Some of it was accurate and some of it was not. Even a little test in the Times asked how far on the spectrum you were. If you got to 15 on this test, it said “Don’t worry, you are still quite normal”. I, in a dark moment on a train, took the test thinking, “I wonder how strange I will come out”. I only got 12, thought that was a bit low, went back and discovered that I should have marked myself at 10: it is one problem I do not have. But if we are going to do this, we need a way of assessing at various points where that intervention comes in. One of the classic ways for adults to be discovered on the Asperger’s spectrum is when they develop mental health problems: people who cannot cope with a normal environment.
Effectively, there are huge savings here for government. I thought all Governments were interested in savings, or should be. Let us face it, this Government will be more interested than most. That is not a position I particularly relish but it is the fact of the matter. If you get in reasonably early, you stand a better chance of being able to maintain the person throughout their education and working life. Indeed, there is a better chance of them being able to handle the bumps and bangs of relationships later on. Will my noble friend give us a rough guide as to what the level of intervention will be beyond that initial assessment at age two? If we just concentrate on autism, because other conditions will come in, exactly how much training will be required at the various stages of the education process? How much assessment is going on?
The National Autistic Society suggests that at least the SENCO in every school should have specific training in how to spot autism. Autism may not be the highest-occurring hidden condition, but it will certainly be there regularly throughout a teacher’s career. There should be better basic training so they are able to spot a condition and refer on—we do not want to create experts. They must also understand when they are given advice. Parliament is one of those places where occasionally, from a standing start, we are told, “Go and make yourself an expert”. Every person who has stood on their hind legs in this Palace has had that experience with something they had not come across. We all know that it takes time to get your head around a new problem or way of thinking. Unless that is instilled throughout the education and health services, with a basic level of understanding where one knows where to refer back to and where to refer on, you will not be able to do this. It would help if my noble friend could give us an idea of where we are on this and where we are going. This should not be a party political point or football. It should be a point of basic principle because unless you have just enough knowledge to be able to access and call in the help, you will miss this and do it late, causing secondary damage to that person’s life and costs to society.
Baroness Northover
It is planned that every two year-old will have that kind of assessment. It is extremely important not only in terms of autism, but for picking up other problems.
The noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, asked about the availability of health visitors. To support the delivery of the Healthy Child programme, we are committed to expanding the number of health visitors—he is quite right about their importance—by a further 4,200 full-time equivalents by 2015 and to develop health visiting services in order to improve health outcomes and reduce inequalities.
We recognise the pressing need for a new system of commissioning special educational needs provision, so I hope that noble Lords will be pleased to hear that the Children and Families Bill will introduce this. The provisions of the Bill will build on the new approach to commissioning introduced by the Health and Social Care Act 2012. They will introduce an integrated approach to meeting the needs of children and young people with special educational needs, requiring CCGs and local authorities to make joint commissioning arrangements and focusing on a single, co-ordinated assessment involving a range of professionals. Moreover, these arrangements can include people up to the age of 25. It is extremely important that they should go beyond the transition points that others have found to be problematic. The assessment process will result in an individual education, health and care plan. I hope that noble Lords are pleased to hear about this because it will bring together the health and education sides. The process will be focused on improving outcomes for the child. The commissioners, working together, must agree their relevant contributions to delivering the plan, and they will have to work out who is going to be responsible for the different elements.
These plans will not be developed in isolation, of course. The boards and the CCGs will co-operate with relevant local authorities and participate in their health and well-being boards. Each board will provide a forum for the effective assessment of local need, and special educational needs will be part of that so as to ensure the translation of those commissioning plans and arrangements into something that is effective. Health and well-being boards will undertake a joint strategic needs assessment and a joint health and well-being strategy for the local authority area. The CCG will draw on this in developing its annual commissioning plans. Moreover, health and well-being boards will help to ensure the accountability of CCGs by giving their opinion on the extent to which the commissioning plans take account of the local strategy and how the CCG has contributed to its delivery. Noble Lords need to bear in mind that special educational needs are in there, and they have to assess what is being provided against that.
The new arrangements will be introduced in 2014, depending on the passage of the Bill, but a number of pathfinder local authorities are working with local children and their families in piloting new approaches. As the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, will be aware, the mandate for the NHS for the next two years has indicated the particular need for improvement, working in partnership across different services in supporting children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities. In particular, it gives the NHS Commissioning Board the objective of ensuring that children have access to the services identified in the agreed care plan. I hope that that will reassure the noble Lords, Lord Maginnis and Lord Hunt.
We are also amending the Children and Families Bill to place a duty on CCGs to secure the necessary health services in an education, health and care plan. This is a significant step, and highlights how much importance we attach to ensuring that the NHS delivers the right service for children with special educational needs.
We want to ensure that CCGs and local authorities, as commissioners, and the health and care professionals who provide assessments and diagnoses are supported, particularly in relation to their education and training. The noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, is absolutely right to stress the need to link up health and education.
For the past two years, the Department for Education has been funding the Autism Education Trust to develop tiered training materials for schools, as well as national standards for provision for children with autism and a competency framework for those who work with children with autism. These are relevant points for the noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, and my noble friend Lord Addington.
The new qualified teacher standards came into effect in September 2012. These have sharpened the focus on meeting the needs of children with SEN and disabilities. The Government have also strengthened initial teacher training and continuing professional development provision through the publication of additional online training materials for teachers of pupils with the most common and complex special educational needs, including autism.
We have also highlighted the importance of having good quality data that measure the outcomes which are most important to children and young people and their families. The work of the Children and Young People’s Health Outcomes Forum has informed actions across the health and care sectors to identify the best indicators of outcomes for this group, particularly in relation to the time taken from first presentation to diagnosis. The noble Lord, Lord Maginnis, highlighted this as being a problem, particularly in the past, which we certainly do not want to have repeated; we want to address that. One element of this is ensuring the effectiveness of transition at different life stages, particularly from children’s to adults’ services.
The recent University of York report into transitions for young people with autism highlighted that we need to do much more to support young people in planning for leaving school, gaining employment and living independently, while maintaining good health. The NHS Outcomes Framework for 2013-14 includes the forum’s proposal that all data should be presented in five-year bands up to the age of 25 to enable the effective monitoring of that transition. That is quite a significant change. Here, too, I want to reassure my noble friend Lord Addington in relation to those children whose need for support does not become apparent until they are well established in school. The Government’s approach is to strengthen awareness in schools through staff training; for example, extended placements in special schools for trainee teachers. We want to ensure that needs are detected as early as possible, but I emphasise that at any point the school can request an assessment by the local authority. The education, health and care plan approach provides a basis for taking an all-round view of the children’s needs across different sectors. Of course, schools are providing additional support for many children through teaching assistants.
Lord Addington
My Lords, teaching assistants have rather a patchy record when it comes to implementing the current statementing system. For instance, there is a nasty tendency for them to become a babysitter for a child who is having trouble within the class. I suggest the Government should look at this because it is something that has been going on for years. Unless you get that person trained to at least implement the strategy across all disabilities, it will not deliver the required outcome but may simply keep the child out of the way of the teacher.
Baroness Northover
The teaching assistant may be assisting with other children while the main teacher focuses on those with particular needs. My noble friend is absolutely right that it is extremely important that the right and appropriate support is given according to what a child needs, which is why those plans I mentioned are so important.
Partnership working will be the key to making a difference. We want to work closely with partner organisations, such as the Council for Disabled Children and the National Autistic Society. However, the most significant partners, if you can call them such, will be the patients and their families. The joint arrangements for assessment will be built around the individual; it is a bespoke plan tailored to the needs of the individual and agreed with them and their family.
I am afraid I am running out of time and I will write on any points that I have not picked up. I want to emphasise, however, that clinical commissioning is built upon patient involvement particularly for this group, whose needs have not always been well met in the past. This will perhaps be the most important factor in ensuring they get the care and support that makes the difference to them.
Care Services: Abuse of Learning Disabled
Lord Addington Excerpts(13 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Addington
My Lords, this is one of those debates where I think that the general element of agreement is going to be overwhelming: we should never have got anywhere near this situation; there were structural problems which were not addressed; and, as has clearly been pointed out, there was also criminal activity. The real question that we face is: how can we minimise the chances of anything like this happening again?
Having said that there is a considerable degree of consensus, looking at exactly what happened at Winterbourne View, we probably had a perfect storm for abuse, as I think it was described in some of the briefing that I received. There was bad management and a disinterested owner, who made no investment, which meant that care workers, who were badly recruited and badly trained, were left to deal with people with what has been called challenging behaviour. To play devil’s advocate for a second, if you meet challenging behaviour—for instance, people who self-harm, are unable to communicate and occasionally lash out through frustration—and you have been trained only in basic restraint, that is what you will use. There is an almost iron inevitability about what will happen unless there is somebody alongside you telling you that there is another way. In this case, such a person was not there. Therefore, it was almost inevitable from the word go that something like this would happen. We should remember that it took less than five years for this culture to be put in place. It was not a slip; it was a fall into very bad practice, and there is no way that we can ever allow it to happen again.
I want to take up a point which my noble friend raised earlier, on the training of staff. The care and support workers at Winterbourne View should have been given better training and—something that is incredibly easy to say but apparently incredibly difficult to do—they should have been told when to call for support. As anyone who has dealt with front-line support in public service will know, getting that message across at any level is difficult.
I have had a discussion with numerous Ministers from numerous parties over many years about many issues relating to people with disabilities. I have pointed out that the people in charge need to be told that the tick-box method does not work. They will need support, and that support will differ as circumstances change. Often, the Minister or senior official has said, “Yes, we’ll do it”, but it does not happen. I have had meetings with Ministers of all Governments and have asked when they are going to implement this. The response has been, “But we said we’ll do it in legislation or in guidance”. However, it does not happen on the ground. That is clearly the situation that we have here. Therefore, we created something that was bound to go wrong—perhaps not as wrong as it did but it was bound to go wrong.
We have to bring about worker registration and make sure that these people have a responsible job where they can develop a career so that they have some stake in it, as well as a stake in making sure that their co-workers are correctly registered. We could talk about whistleblowing here. If we make sure that people have a job where they have a future and a clear duty, the chances of this happening again will go down. We can never totally remove it. Indeed, the idea for better inspections, et cetera, by those higher up are, of course, needed. We can start to take away a part of this cocktail of disaster; we can start to remove it. We can have a group of people who have a stake and who will go back in again.
I do not envy my noble friend her job, but I hope that when she replies she can give us a clear idea of exactly what process we are talking about and where it will be implemented. We must have people who are trained well enough to recognise that they need support and who are willing to ask questions. We must start to work with the situation for those with autism. The noble Baroness, Lady Browning, has been an important part of my secondary education on autism. Once we start working in that field, we need a different approach. There is always a danger that those of us dealing with a disability will think that it is like the disability we have. Probably our problems with bureaucracy are more similar than our actual on-the-ground experience. Unless our front-line workers are better trained and told that it is okay to ask for help and support, such problems will occur again. I hope that my noble friend will say that steps are being taken. We are trying to ensure not that it does not happen again but that the next time it happens we are better able to deal with it because these problems will not go away.
Olympic and Paralympic Games 2012
Lord Addington Excerpts(14 years ago)
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Lord Addington
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Doocey for giving us this opportunity to discuss the legacy of the Olympics. We will not cover all aspects of the subject today as it is too multifaceted for us to do it justice in a single debate. We shall have to look at it again and again.
The Olympics were the biggest project Britain has had to bring together and co-ordinate in peacetime, certainly in my lifetime and probably for all time. They were very successful but the idea of taking forward the legacy is new not only for the Olympic movement but for the way we look at big projects. The big sporting projects and championships that are coming up are all trying to learn lessons from the Olympics. Next year the rugby league world championship will take place here. The Commonwealth Games are coming up in Glasgow and also an event for my own sport of rugby union. When I asked representatives of those sports what they considered was the biggest lesson to be learnt from the Olympics, they replied “You should plan ahead. Once your planning is in place, other things are possible”. We should remember the amount of work that was undertaken for the Olympics.
A whole Act of Parliament was devoted to the Olympics. I remember sitting through debates on it in the Moses Room attended by the then Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Davies. Many of the subsequent points of discussion were first opened up there. Work had already been done but we looked at it again. That was the first time Parliament got involved in that. Disability access was one of the largest areas under discussion. The noble Lord, Lord Davies, is not present but I remember saying to him, “Listen, it is not about disability; it is about the Olympics. We have the disability stuff in place”. Those discussions probably helped to make the Paralympic Games such a success. We undertook the relevant work at an early stage.
Have we undertaken the same preparation as regards all aspects of the Olympic legacy? That question will be answered over the next few years. I would disagree a little with my noble friend. I probably would have spent £9 billion on the six weeks of sport but I understand that that view may not be universally held. If we are to ensure that the Olympic legacy is taken forward, we will have to embrace everything that comes from that legacy. Will all the major projects involved, inside and outside the world of sport, take this legacy forward? Do they relate to everything else that goes on?
We must remember that a legacy of involvement and participation in sport needs to apply at all levels. We have the resources to plan and prepare for the needs of the elite, to allow things to happen and to create the space for the experts to get at their subject. However, when you go slightly further down the food chain, things get more difficult. This morning I spent an hour or so with people from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Boxing who are trying to carry out a survey on the benefits of boxing. That sport has suffered from a bad reputation. However, engaging in boxing seems to discourage people from becoming involved in anti-social behaviour. There is very good anecdotal evidence on that. One of the first questions that was asked concerned how we attract funding and support for boxing. We came to the conclusion that neither the people who run boxing clubs nor the people who attend them like filling out forms. How do you attract investment in boxing? How do you encourage private philanthropists to invest in boxing and persuade them that they will get something out of it? How do you persuade government to invest in it and interact with a schools boxing programme? This is not revolutionary thinking. There is agreement on this matter. We disagree only about how it should be done. We need to involve people in boxing at the junior level and make mass participation easier. I am talking about those who do not participate in elite youth programmes.
The discussion continued on the easiest way to reach people, whether information technology was the answer and whether the Government should enable audits to be undertaken. We also discussed what people expected to get back and what it was realistic to expect in terms of a legacy. For example, you will not always get £5 back for every £1 you put in and you will not stop all anti-social behaviour straight away. Will you make it slightly better? Will you make something that grows? Will you enhance community involvement and the concept that people can do something positive? If that legacy applies to sport it will apply to just about everything else that requires participation—drama groups, arts groups and dance groups. Everybody can learn lessons here if we can only sit down and talk.
The entire Olympic experience was one where lots of different facets were brought together. Planning met sport, which met the Cultural Olympiad. We all had to talk together and be involved together. Unless we can start to take the lessons here and apply them across the board, and learn where we need to do more learning, we are going to miss some of the benefits. The Olympic experience has been a great success. Let us make sure that it continues to be so.
Equality Act 2010 (Consequential Amendments, Saving and Supplementary Provisions) Order 2010
Lord Addington Excerpts(16 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Gale
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her remarks and welcome her to her position as Minister with responsibility for equalities and women’s issues in your Lordships’ House, although obviously this is not the first time that the noble Baroness has spoken on these matters, as only last week she replied to our excellent debate on women. I am aware of her excellent record and long experience of working for the enhancement of women, and especially her record of service to women in her own party, so it is good to see her in what I regard as a very important post.
I am pleased to say that we on these Benches agree with the order. It is largely a technical instrument to ensure that existing legislation continues to work well when the Equality Act commences. As the noble Baroness said, it makes minor amendments and repeals other primary legislation relating to the Act, which brings together nine separate pieces of legislation into one single Act. That simplifies the law and reduces the burden on business by making it easier for firms to comply with discrimination legislation. It will also help many individuals to deal with difficulties that they may experience relating to any form of discrimination.
The core provisions of the Act are due to come into force in October, so it is important that we deal with these matters now. I am pleased to say that I followed the Equality Bill as it made its way through your Lordships’ House and saw it become law. We now have a strong and robust piece of legislation that will allow people to lead their daily lives in a way that shows tolerance and fairness to all. The whole of our society should welcome that. Also, I am proud that the previous Labour Government were able to produce such an Act, but of course with the co-operation of all the parties in the House.
Although this is a comprehensive Act, much guidance will need to be given by the Government Equalities Office and the Equality and Human Rights Commission. I am sure that the Minister will be able to confirm that these guidance notes will be available so that everyone can ensure that the Act is fully understood and that the publications will be there to assist all to appreciate the workings and the intentions of the Act.
A press release issued by the GEO in recent days stated:
“The first wave of implementation of the Equality Act will go ahead to the planned October timetable following the publication of the first commencement order in Parliament …. This will pave the way for the implementation of landmark provisions to protect disabled people from discrimination and tackle the gender … gap”.
That sums up the Act perfectly and is what the order is about. We on these Benches welcome the order as it is another step along the road to the full implementation of the Equality Act in the coming months. I thank the Minister again and I wish her well in her new role.
Lord Addington
My Lords, this is one of those times when there is not much to say, and I shall be quick about saying what little there is to say.
Basically, there is nothing to disagree with here. As the noble Baroness, Lady Gale, said, it carries on the previous Government’s good work in many fields. It brings everything together in one Act, or tries to. The law here, good and well intentioned though it was, was a bit like a cat’s cradle and thus occasionally became a dog’s dinner, if I am allowed to double my metaphors; there was so much legislation that crossed over. Everyone who is involved in any part of this area of the law should welcome this approach. Not only is there nothing to disagree with here, but hopefully we shall carry on in this way.
Baroness Verma
I thank the Committee for this short but quality debate. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Gale for her kind welcoming remarks. I also pay tribute to the wonderful work that she has done in this area. I assure her that there will be several pieces of guidance. Five summary guides were published on 5 July, and a further set of quick-start guides will be released over the summer.
I welcome my noble friend’s comments. We all want to ensure that we can make society as equal as possible. Wherever we find discrimination against any group that we are able to eradicate, we will do so. This piece of legislation is a tool to help us achieve that.
On that note, I hope that we shall have no problems in passing the order. The Equality Act 2010, which went through this House just a few months ago, has momentum, and I hope that with your Lordships’ approval, we will see the benefits of it soon.