Covid-19: Children

Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Brooke of Alverthorpe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Morris of Yardley for an outstanding speech based on great knowledge and experience; it is one we have had before, but they get better. I offer many congratulations to her on her birthday today. I normally speak on health issues and I was going to, but I decided against it. I look to the Minister to see whether she can make my noble friend Lady Morris have an even happier birthday than she was perhaps expecting.

It has been one-way traffic today, apart from perhaps the last speaker. We talk about ambition and I believe everybody who has spoken has done so with great ambition on behalf of our children. We have gone through what I would describe as the nearest thing to World War II. I was a child of World War II and I came from poverty; I was born in a council house with all the deprivations. I succeeded because I had a Government in power after the war with ambition and who learned lessons from World War II. Whatever disaster we have, within it there is always a lesson to be learned and a benefit to move us forward. That is what we learned after World War II, but I regret that, the more I look at government policy the more I feel that there is a lack of ambition, particularly in education. That is why I am going to speak on education.

The Prime Minister engaged a man to produce a report for him—a man who is respected, very knowledgeable and would be reasonable with what he produced. People of his stature do not go for the ridiculous; they know what life is like in politics and try to produce something that will solve the problem yet will endeavour, so far as it can, to be containable and acceptable to the Government in power. I regret that the Prime Minister has socially distanced himself from children in his response.

I regret too that the Treasury seems to be in a different place from where it should be, given the problems we face and the difficulties we have to try to resolve through money. It is not all money, that is true, but the Government concede already that more money is needed. The argument is now about the scale of it and, on balance, they have got it wrong. I therefore hope that the Minister will particularly address the remarks made by my noble friend: “It is not enough.” If we do not get more, our children will fall further and further behind.

I believe that when the Minister speaks to this House she generally endeavours to build on a foundation of working together. Again, that was what my noble friend called for. Let us join together, if we can, to try to find the way forward. I am not given to engaging in party politics; sometimes my noble friends tell me that I am not tough enough in my criticism. I do not engage in class conflict but I sometimes feel that a degree of class conflict arises when we look at education, and at the background of some individuals, where they have been educated and the cost of their education. Then I see others with my origins and from whence I come: those from council estates and deprived areas, the underprivileged and people with ill health, which we have to address. We need to have a different view.

I urge the Minister to try to be as constructive as she can in replying, to build on a foundation across the House and perhaps undertake not just to go back her department but to get a message to the Prime Minister that he needs to think again. There is an impression that, in certain areas, privilege counts, and those without it fall further behind. Covid has exposed that without any doubt in so many areas, but particularly in education. I hope the Minister will respond as positively as she can to make a happier birthday for my noble friend Lady Morris.