Children: Welfare, Life Chances and Social Mobility

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lady Massey deserves credit for securing this debate as it allows us to reflect on, consider and share best practice on the important issue of intervention in a young person’s life that can make a positive difference.

We have known for decades that the impact of bad things that happen in a child’s early years will be devastating in adult life. Physical and sexual abuse, deprivation and poverty, school exclusions and drug abuse make it inevitable that these young people will face a grim life and a bad future without support and intervention. Noble Lords have already given many examples of the consequences for young adults of enduring adverse childhood experiences. I want to look at the problem from the point of view of children for whom early intervention is particularly relevant: children with special educational needs. I am here referring to children who are on the autism spectrum.

Autism is a lifelong condition that affects more than one in 100 children and young people. Intervening early in these children’s lives to support their communication, learning and development increases the chances that they will succeed at school and make good progress with their education.

I will come back to this in a moment, but first I would like to share with the House the views, comments and experiences of one such autistic child. He is Japanese, his name is Naoki Higashida and five years ago he published a book, The Reason I Jump. It is one young person’s voice from the silence of autism. He was just 13 when he wrote it. When he was small, he said, he did not know that he had special needs; he only discovered this when other people told him that he was different from everyone else and this was a problem. He wrote:

“True enough. It was hard for me to act like a normal person. … I have no problem reading books … and singing, but as soon as I try to speak with someone, my words just vanish … Sure, sometimes I manage a few words – but even these can come out the complete opposite to what I want to say … I can’t respond appropriately when I’m told to do something, and whenever I get nervous I run off from wherever I happen to be”.


During what he describes as his,

“frustrating, miserable, helpless days”,

Naoki imagined what it would be like if everyone in the world was autistic. If autism was regarded simply as a personality type, things would be much easier and happier. That was his view, but in truth, it is not that way, and that is why early intervention in the lives of those on the spectrum is so very important.

One such early intervention for young people on the autism spectrum is the EarlyBird programme, run by the National Autistic Society. Here I should declare an interest as a vice-president of the NAS. EarlyBird is a three-month programme of group training and individual home visits for families of pre-school children. Its aim is to help parents understand their child better and how to support them, how to get into their child’s world, find ways to develop their interaction and communication skills and understand how the child behaves and reacts.

Children on the autism spectrum do not experience the world in the same way that we expect of most children who are in the early year stages of development and learning. Early intervention programmes can help these children learn and develop the skills they need, understand their environment, and reduce their levels of stress and anxiety. However, children might be able to access this intervention only if they have a diagnosis, and the length of time that many families wait for an autism diagnosis means that too few autistic children are able to benefit from the intervention of the EarlyBird programme.

I have first-hand experience of this. A family I knew waited four years for a diagnosis for their child. Their family GP really did not show a lot of interest. It just so happened that I discovered that I knew the senior partner in the practice and asked him for help. That started the progress to getting a diagnosis. That was a chance happening; no one should have to depend on chance for a diagnosis of autism.

Research by the National Autistic Society found that children wait, on average, three and a half years from the point at which their parents first seek help to the point at which they receive a diagnosis of autism. This is despite NHS guidelines stating that children and adults who might be on the autism spectrum should be assessed within three months.

Diagnosis matters. It enables a child on the autism spectrum to be better understood by their parents, teachers and others. It should also open up access to crucial help and support. The failure in many parts of our country to diagnose children promptly enough means that they miss out on early years interventions that could have long-term benefits for them. Will the Government commit to implementing the guidelines on waiting times for diagnosis so that no child has to wait years to access the help and support they need and deserve?

Schools: Exclusion of Disabled Children

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Touhig]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that disabled children are not unfairly excluded from school as a result of paragraph 4(1) of the Equality Act 2010 (Disability) Regulations 2010.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, in 2016 the House’s Select Committee on the Equality Act 2010 and Disability recommended changing these regulations. These aim to provide more protection to children whose disability means that they have a tendency to physical abuse. In response to the committee’s report, we committed to consider how the exemption around the tendency to physical abuse of other persons applies to those under 18 in the education context. We will be looking carefully at the arguments for and against changing the law, and will confirm our intentions later this year.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s reply, but I remind him that it was two years ago this month that the Government promised action on this matter. In the meantime, schools exclude pupils with autism and learning difficulties on the grounds that their behaviour may be disruptive. They do so rather than making amendments to help and support the teaching of these youngsters. Will the Government accept that the Equality Act as it stands permits discrimination against vulnerable children and should be amended soon?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, this issue is, by common consent, considerably complex. We have been looking at it in depth and giving careful thought to what would be in the public interest. We will be ready later in the year to confirm our intentions, which we will do publicly. We do not accept that discrimination exists at the moment, but I would like to take this opportunity to recognise the huge contribution that the noble Lord makes to this important area through his role as a vice-president of the National Autistic Society. I look forward to meeting him and some of his colleagues from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Autism next week.

National Autism and Education Strategy

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Wednesday 16th May 2018 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Touhig]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they are planning to introduce a national autism and education strategy; and if so, what are those plans.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in my name on the Order Paper and draw the House’s attention to the fact that I am a vice-president of the National Autistic Society.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Agnew of Oulton) (Con)]

My Lords, we welcomed the publication in November of the report Autism and education in England 2017. We are carefully considering the recommendations, including creating a national autism strategy. Some recommendations reflect existing policy, such as our funding of extensive autism awareness training for school staff, improving local accountability and providing additional funding. The report is informing our thinking about the next steps in achieving our vision for the SEND system that we will confirm later this year.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, that is a very welcome response because I think we all agree that every child has a right to a good education and to reach their full potential. The National Autistic Society supported the report of the all-party group, which was chaired by two Conservative Members of Parliament, who did fantastic work. The report said that three things are needed: teachers should have autism training, schools should know how to make reasonable adjustments for youngsters who are autistic, and councils should make provision for school places now and for the future. Given that optimistic hope and the Minister’s response, will he agree to meet with colleagues across the House so we can press it further with him?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I am very happy to meet the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, and other members of that committee so we can discuss the recommendations and try to include them in our future strategy.

Home Education (Duty of Local Authorities) Bill [HL]

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Friday 27th April 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Adonis]

My Lords, I agree mostly with what the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said about home education and I commend my noble friend Lord Soley on his Bill.

I would like to direct the attention of the House and the Minister to the issue of school exclusions, which is getting more and more serious in communities up and down the country and directly relates to home education. Yesterday in Gateshead—having addressed the north-east chamber of commerce, ably led by the son of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who I am delighted to see in his place—I met social workers and school leaders to discuss the big challenges they face. The single biggest issue that they raised with me was the problem of school exclusions, pupil referral units and what they call “off-rolling”—a term which, even as a former education Minister, I had not come across before. Off-rolling is managing people off school rolls into pupil referral units or into no provision whatever and often calling it home education. This is simply to get pupils off the rolls so that they do not engage in disruption in school—disruption which, frankly, the schools for the most part should be managing—and do not count in performance and league tables which are published for schools at the end of each academic year.

This is a big issue. To give a concrete example of what is happening in Gateshead at the moment, one of the social workers at the meeting said that the pupil referral unit in Newcastle, where many of the students from Gateshead are referred, until recently had nearly 400 pupils in it, which is almost the size of a small secondary school. Of those pupils, only 80 to 90 were formally part of the pupil referral unit; all the others had been “off-rolled” or managed into it. For the most part, they did not turn up. They were lucky if they were there for an hour a week. Indeed, it was said to me that if they did all turn up there would not be provision for them.

This is a huge social crisis which is taking place in this country at the moment. It is at the root of many of our problems, including in educational underperformance and in the criminal justice system. Many of these children, particularly adolescent boys, are basically not playing any part in schools and are being managed out of them by the age of 14 or 15. They do not get any qualifications or into a culture of learning or work—and we all know what happens to them thereafter.

The relationship with home education is problematic. As a former Minister, I was constantly being told by home educators that it was an essential social right that people should be able to home educate. I believe in principle that that is the case for people who have philosophical views on how education should be conducted—noble Lords will know of people for whom that is true—but for most people home education has nothing whatever to do with philosophical preferences about the style of education but everything to do with failure at and rejection by schools, which often happens. In some communities, particularly Traveller communities, people often do not want their kids to go to local schools because their relationship with the local schools is so poor, and the cultural issues and alienation are so great, that by the time they come, particularly, to secondary level, they do not want to play any part in the local schools.

We all change our views over time. When I was a Minister, I was worried about seeking to limit the power of schools on exclusions. This is a deeply difficult issue because nothing holds back schools and pupils more than disruptive children, and getting the balance right is difficult. My view now, after engaging in this issue for many years, is that Parliament needs to adopt a much more robust approach and that temporary exclusions should be banned. There are hundreds of thousands of temporary exclusions a year. The idea that the punishment awarded for low-level disruption in schools should be chucking kids on to the street for a day or two—as if somehow that would be an incentive for them not to misbehave in future—is one of the biggest misconceptions in the way we handle discipline in schools.

However, for serious disruption, my view is that schools should not be allowed to permanently exclude pupils unless there are issues of violence at stake which simply cannot be managed inside the school. That is not to say that seriously disruptive pupils should be able to disrupt classes. Rather like the way in which we handle special needs, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, said, schools should have additional resources for managing challenging behaviour. It may be that in some cases the provision should be outside the classroom —although, again, this should be managed properly—but getting pupils off the rolls of schools so that no one has responsibility for them at all, which is happening at the moment, is an absolute derogation of our duty as parliamentarians to see that all young people are educated. To put the euphemistic label of home education on it is to betray a generation of young people who then, in very large measure, end up on the streets, underemployed, unemployed or in the criminal justice system.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

Perhaps I may put a question to my noble friend. Is he aware that 70% of youngsters excluded from schools in England and Wales have learning difficulties, which often lead to mental health problems? We are creating a social underclass totally disconnected from society.

[Lord Adonis]

My noble friend makes a good point, but I want to remain constructive. Great though my admiration for my noble friend Lord Soley is, fundamental changes in the law rarely take place by means of Private Members’ Bills. My noble friend is working on it and this Bill may be the harbinger of great change thereafter. We are extremely hopeful and there is no one better at producing those changes than my noble friend.

I want to ask the Minister a specific question. This is clearly a steadily growing social crisis. Would he meet me and other Peers who have a keen interest in this to discuss what should be done about the specific issue of school exclusions? I see that my noble friend Lady Morgan is in her place. She played a big part in the academies movement. I hope that we can meet leaders of the academies—indeed the Minister is himself an academy sponsor—to understand the need to reconcile school autonomy in academies with responsible behaviour and ensuring that we do not throw children on to the scrapheap. If the noble Lord would agree to that meeting, I would be very grateful.

Children: Missed Education

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 15th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

Obviously, children who are missing from education are one of the highest priority categories that we have to worry about. In the integration strategy document announced yesterday, we launched a consultation on the guidance and enforcement of independent school standards—a lot of children can end up in such small schools—and guidance on unregistered schools, which will deal with similar issues.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Garden of Frognal (LD)]

My Lords, some groups particularly at risk of missing education include disabled children, those with special educational needs, young offenders and children in care. Surely these young people should be known to social services, the police, doctors or other authorities. Will the Minister tell us what the Government are doing to encourage these authorities to liaise with the education authority to ensure that these children get the education that they need and deserve for a better life?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, it is already a requirement following the issue of our guidelines in 2016 that, for any child registered as SEN, permission must be sought from the local authority to move them to home education. We are strengthening that guidance, as announced yesterday, and have indicated that we will carry out an exclusion review, which will of course begin with these vulnerable children.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Baroness; I did not see her standing up. In England and Wales, 70% of children excluded from school have learning difficulties. Many exclusions are not even officially recorded—they are soft exclusions. We are in danger of creating an underclass of young people who are lacking basic education, are alienated from society and might become criminalised. Unlike the point made by my noble friend Lady Massey, this data is known and is available. What are the Government doing about it?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, it is important first to differentiate between temporary and permanent exclusions; the ones of concern are, I think, the permanent exclusions. The figures on that have not increased dramatically in the past few years—it has gone up from 0.07% to 0.08%. However, as I mentioned in my earlier Answer to the noble Baroness, we have announced an exclusion review, which will look at many of these issues. The other point I would like to raise is that we have opened a number of alternative provision free schools over the past few years, and they are dealing with some of these issues.

Education and Society

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Friday 8th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, my noble friend Lord Murphy of Torfaen has referred to our shared educational experience at St Francis School in the Welsh mining village of Abersychan, a village of less than 7,000 people that produced several Members of Parliament, some of whom ended up in the House of Lords. Among the Members of Parliament, there was a Secretary of State for Wales, a Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, a Home Secretary and a Chancellor of the Exchequer. We may have lacked many things in our village but, clearly, we did not lack ambition.

I went on in later life to represent a former mining area. The areas of south Wales with which I am familiar experienced deprivation, with many people facing massive challenges of social change with the loss of the pits and heavy industry. The spirit of the folk who lived there was sorely tested, but for the people of my parents’ generation, and for mine too, there was a belief that education was a pathway out of poverty. We saw education as a gateway to opportunity and a better, more enriched and fulfilled life. Alas, I am not sure that spirit and belief is as widespread today. All too often, I am struck by what I call poverty of ambition. I remember visiting a primary school and the head saying that when he came there, no one expected anything from him, because no one in the village had gone to university. It was not because people were unintelligent or lacked ability—far from it. He told me a story: a few weeks before, he had told a mother of a pupil at the school that her son was heading for university. The boy was intelligent, inquisitive, confident and articulate. The mother replied: “Don’t be daft. University is not for the likes of us”. That poverty of ambition is a barrier to the advancement of working people.

In stark contrast, since I entered this House, I have been privileged to work with people who desperately want to grasp all the opportunities that education can offer. For so many of those I have in mind, people with autism, their battle has been that much harder. All too often, simply to get a statement or even a diagnosis of autism can take years. Despite the obstacles, there are many parents of autistic youngsters who will fight for their children to have all the opportunities in life that education can bring.

Last week, the APPG on Autism published a report entitled Autism and Education in England in 2017. I pay tribute to two excellent MPs: Huw Merriman and Maria Caulfield—both Conservatives—who were co-chairs of the inquiry that produced this report. In examining how the education system works for people with autism, they found that 78% of parents said that it has not been easy to get the support their child needs, 42% said that their child was refused an assessment of their needs the first time it was requested, 50% said that they waited more than a year for their child to receive support at school, and 40% said that their child’s school place does not fully meet their needs. These are not small numbers. They demonstrate that there are serious shortcomings in educating children and young people with autism in our country. I should declare an interest as a vice-president of the National Autistic Society and a vice-chair to Cheryl Gillan MP, the chair of the All-Party Group on Autism. Cheryl Gillan, the author of the Autism Act 2009, has called for a national autism and education strategy. Such a strategy should set out how autistic youngsters could be supported and what society should expect from the education system.

Why do we need a strategy? I will tell noble Lords: three years on from the introduction of significant reforms of special educational needs, children on the autism spectrum are being let down. Fewer than half of children and young people with autism are happy in school. Six out of 10 young people and seven out of 10 parents say that the main thing that would make school better for them is a teacher who understands them. I remember a mother telling me that she had not visited her child’s school for some months, whereas, in the early part of his school life, she had been there almost every week. Why the change? Her son now had a teacher who had a child with autism and who understood his problems. That is why we desperately need more teachers trained in understanding and educating children and young people with autism.

The most reverend Primate has titled this debate,

“the role of education in building a flourishing and skilled society”.

For me, education and a skilled society are two sides of the same coin. In an excellent report recently provided by the National Autistic Society, entitled I’m Not Unemployable, I’m Autistic, the NAS highlighted the problems people with autism have in gaining employment. Just 16% of autistic people are in full-time employment and a further 16% work part-time. We should not be surprised by this; I have tried to demonstrate the barriers that people with autism have in trying to get an education, let alone employment. What a waste of a life and of a talent that could enrich our country, our society and our economy. In the 21st century, this lack of educational opportunity for autistic people is a wrong that we in Britain should be ashamed of and want to put right.

I conclude by asking the Minister a few questions. Huw Merriman and Maria Caulfield have called for the Government to develop a national autism and education strategy by the end of 2019. Will the Government agree to do this? The MPs want local councils to become more effective commissioners for children on the autistic spectrum. Do the Government agree with that? The MPs argue that schools should be equipped and welcoming to ensure that autistic pupils can thrive. Do the Government agree? They urge all Ministers to show leadership and to drive forward change by making sure every child is supported in the way the law says they should be supported. Is this Minister himself prepared to take that leadership role in his own department?

As I look round the Chamber today, I see many colleagues who have bravely championed the rights of people from ethnic minorities, the rights of Christians and non-Christians to practise their faith and the rights of people to decide and define their own sexual orientation. All I ask is for each one of us, if we have the opportunity, to champion this cause too and to make a difference.

Armed Forces: East of Suez

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 9th March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

We believe that we are thinking in 21st-century terms. Let me say a little more about the build-up of our presence in the Gulf. It is very important to have a strong defence presence with the naval facility in Bahrain, HMS “Jufair” and the regional land training hub in Oman—and to have a stronger engagement with the creation of the British defence staff in Dubai. We are also building more short-term training teams to build our partners’ capacity. For example, in 2018 exercise Saif Sareea 3 will take place.

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, in his Bahrain speech the Foreign Secretary said:

“Britain is back East of Suez”.


He also said:

“We are spending £3 billion on our military commitments in the Gulf over the next 10 years”.


Yet the SDSR barely mentions it, merely speaking of “setting our vision” in the “Gulf Strategy”. When will that strategy be published? The noble Baroness, Lady Anelay of St Johns, said in March last year—almost a year ago—that it would be published in due course. When have we heard those sorts of words before? Does the Minister agree with me that a major shift in our military profile in the Middle East should be put before Parliament first and not used as a headline-grabbing speech for the Foreign Secretary on a world tour?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

When we get to the point where we want to build up our presence in the region, it is absolutely right that it is announced. It was announced as part of a speech, which is perfectly normal. Over the next decade we will spend £3 billion on defence in the Gulf region. That will very much help us build up our maritime land and air bases in Oman and give us a persistent and increasingly permanent naval defence there. Therefore, what has happened is perfectly normal.

Armed Forces: Capability

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, like others, I must commend my noble friend Lord Robertson of Port Ellen for securing this debate and for the manner in which he introduced it.

The title of the debate is most apt and highly relevant in today’s world. Change is sweeping the globe. People’s long-held views are changing, populism is in the ascendency and many political predictions have turned out to be false. However, in defence terms, we have always to be ready for any eventuality. We may be drawn into a conflict tomorrow and need to question whether we are prepared. I would like to spend a few minutes painting a picture of our defence capability as I see it.

My noble friend Lord Reid pointed out that we now have an Army smaller than the one we put in the field against Napoleon. The Navy has just 19 escorts, six of which have propulsion problems. We have no aircraft carriers and will have none until early 2020s. There are currently only seven RAF fighter squadrons, but two of those exist only by extending the life of the Typhoon until 2040. More, in an Answer to a Question from my noble friend Lord Moonie, the Government revealed that a third of our Typhoon and Tornado aircraft are in long-term maintenance and unable to fly. We have no marine patrol aircraft while the Russians increase their submarine activity around our seas. There is an overdependence on recruiting reservists and, despite millions being spent on recruitment, targets for all three services have been missed. Morale is poor. Fifty-four per cent of service personnel are dissatisfied with service life. This is made worse for the Army. A report by the National Audit Office on accommodation stated that poor housing was affecting morale, recruitment and retention.

The failings that I have identified are not the responsibility of our Armed Forces but rather the consequences of the Government’s policy of cuts, mismanagement and poor forecasting. I am sure that the Minister will dispute this, but the concerns and criticisms expressed across the House cannot be ignored and will not go away.

One thing that we can all agree on in this House it is that the service men and women in our Armed Forces are committed professionals and the best in the world. They are the best trained, the most highly motivated and very effective at what they do. But we have to make sure they remain so. That means that we have to make sure that our Armed Forces are adequately funded.

Two challenges face us: more investment and better use of current resources. Without that investment, we will not meet the challenges posed to NATO, the challenges posed by Russia—which has invested millions in modernising her weaponry—and the challenges posed by the growing sea power of China, not to mention the terrorist threat.

NATO remains the bedrock of our defence and is essential for ensuring the security of Britain and our allies at a time of increased global instability. Notwithstanding spin doctors, that is the official policy of the Labour Party. So I welcome the Government’s commitment to spend 2% of GDP on defence. However, I have to stress that that is a minimum spend. During the 13 years of the previous Labour Government, we averaged a spend of 2.3% of GDP on defence.

The second challenge is better management of our resources. HMS “Ocean”, essential to providing amphibious capability, had a £65 million refit completed in 2014 only for the Government to announce one year later that she would be decommissioned in 2018. We will now spend £60 million adapting one of our new carriers to perform its tasks. RFA “Diligence” is our only at-sea repair ship. Between 2007 and 2015, the Government spent £44 million on refits only to put the vessel up for sale last year. This is an appalling waste of scarce defence resources. We have to find more money for our Armed Forces, but we certainly have to manage better the resources that we already have.

Since this Government took office in 2010, defence has faced severe cuts. On these Benches, we think that that is enough. From the Labour Party’s point of view, my colleague, the shadow Defence Secretary, Nia Griffith, has announced a major review of defence spending. My noble friend Lord Murphy spoke about the 2% spending on defence, referring to the comments recently made by Nia Griffith. I share her concern that the present spending of 2% includes £825 million of war pensions, £400 million on UN peacekeeping and an estimated £200 million on pensions paid to retired civil servants. She said:

“Pensions are very important but they in no way contribute to … defence capabilities”.

Faced with a potential aggressor, how will the Government use pensions to defend Britain? Perhaps, like some latter-day Ethelred the Unready, they could use the pensions to buy off the threat.

I conclude my remarks by raising one major concern, which others around the House have also raised: the threat posed by a resurgent Russia—a Russia skilled in the use of cyberwarfare, because warfare is what it is, and a Russia that has one big and possibly critical advantage, as pointed out in a Times article on 22 December, written by Edward Lucas, in its President, Vladimir Putin. He wrote:

“Putin is decisive; we are not. He is willing to accept economic pain; we are not. He is willing to break the rules; we are not. He is willing to use force; we are not”.

I share Lucas’s concern that we may not be able to rely on the United States to help defend us in the future. President-elect Trump unsettles many of us—as he reassures some who are not our friends—with his pronouncements about Russia, NATO and the defence of Europe. In the past few years we have seen the Russian willingness to create problems and conflicts even on its own borders. The Russians then suggest mediation to mitigate and divert attention from the cause of the problem—Russian aggression in the first place. When they propose mediation, we in the West get excited because Russia appears to be co-operating in providing a solution—a solution to a problem that it created. We cannot secure world peace and security by pretending that an aggressor is not an aggressor and hoping that sanctions alone will be enough to prevent further incursions.

We in Britain, NATO and the West have to make it clear that the cost of aggression is a price too much to bear because, like it or not, in order to deter we have to be able to threaten. We are an island people with a proud history of defending freedoms. We are an international trading nation relying on keeping open the shipping lanes of the world to our commerce. We are on the verge of a major shift in our relations with our nearest neighbours in Europe. We face major threats from terrorists who will commit acts of war against our own people here in Britain. And we face state-sponsored cyberattacks. The phrase “We face an uncertain future” may be overused but, my God, it is most relevant today.

I readily confess to making some party political points in today’s debate because that is the right thing to do when we have such clear differences between the Government and Opposition, but I passionately believe that there is one issue that unites us all in this House: we want to continue to enjoy our freedoms and our British way of life. But to do that we have to be prepared to invest more in our defence.

Education and Adoption Bill

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, we have had a first-class debate with many excellent contributions from those who strongly support the Bill and from those who have grave doubts and do not support it. In particular, I compliment my noble fiend Lord Blunkett on a classic maiden speech delivered with style and humour. He served with great distinction in the other place and brought his very considerable talent to bear as a Cabinet Minister. We are indeed fortunate that he has come to this House, and I am sure I am not alone in looking forward to hearing him speak in future, bringing to our deliberations that special and rare insight for which he is well known.

The Bill enables the Secretary of State to intervene in so-called coasting schools, yet when it started its Committee stage in the other place the Government were so unprepared that they had to deal with the adoption part first because they had not worked out the meaning of the term “coasting”. Those of us who have just completed the Committee and Report stages of the Childcare Bill should perhaps not be surprised, as we know full well how the Government will steam ahead with a policy, even though, as in the case of that Bill, they have not yet worked out how they are going to fund it.

As I said, at the start of this Bill’s passage through Parliament the term “coasting” was not defined, but now we have it—or do we? The Minister said in his opening remarks that the whole notion of the term is now to go out to consultation. What we do have is a narrow and short-sighted definition that is exclusively data driven and takes no account of the individual circumstances of a school. However, despite the definition being so narrow, it will have great consequences for pupils, teachers and parents. This definition of coasting is likely to exclude many schools that require intervention and include some that do not. Given that the Secretary of State has tied her hands by forcing herself to intervene in coasting schools, surely we need a stronger definition that takes into account all relevant factors and not just numbers and figures. That definition should be arrived at through proper research and consultation, not through a lottery.

When my party first developed the policy of helping underperforming schools, it specifically required local authorities to consider a full range of evidence about a school in order to make a balanced and fair judgment as to whether it was underperforming. The Bill completely removes this ability to consider both performance and context, which will inevitably mean that the term is used inappropriately—whatever the term is following the consultation.

Further to giving the Secretary of State no discretion in how a coasting school is identified, the Bill also allows no discretion in the making of academy orders. This means that a school in special measures must become a sponsored academy whether or not an adequate sponsor can actually be found.

The research group Education Datalab estimates that 1,179 schools would be classed as coasting if the previous three years of data are used, including four Ofsted-rated “outstanding” schools—two primary and two secondary. However, the data also show that schools serving more affluent areas will escape the “coasting” judgment. We know that schools serving more affluent communities make better progress on average than those in more deprived communities. Progress measures are still clearly affected by socioeconomic factors and that is why, before a school is labelled as coasting, it would be unfair not to consider contextual factors. Of course, the Bill does not allow for this and we can already see how the Government’s ill-thought-out definition of coasting would lead to wrongly labelling some schools as coasting while others were left unjudged.

Unlike the requirement for the Secretary of State to take action in a failing local authority school, there is no requirement whatever for her to act similarly in a failing academy. What is more, there is a lack of evidence to support the idea that academy status will lead to school improvement—not all academies are the success stories that the Minister indicated in his opening remarks. A number of academy chains have been criticised by Ofsted, the Sutton Trust and the Minister’s own department, because it has been shown that they are performing poorly compared with local authority maintained schools. Earlier this year, 146 academies were in special measures and 619 required improvement, but the Bill does nothing to deal with this. It simply creates a two-tier system with different standards for local authority and academy-sponsored schools. The Minister painted quite a rosy picture of the success of academies. I hope he might be prompted to provide us with a little more detail—he might write to me, if he can, and put the letter in the Library.

This Bill puts enormous further power in the hands of the Secretary of State. The noble Lord, Lord True, was a bit concerned about centralisation, but, whether it has a red or a blue tinge, centralisation is, nevertheless, centralisation. The Bill allows the Secretary of State to make decisions about academy sponsors behind closed doors and removes the right of local stakeholders—and, importantly, that of parents—to consult on the future of their school. But much more than that, the whole trend of encouraging more parents to take a stakeholder interest in their children’s education is being brought to an end by this one measure. For more than three decades, in my experience, there has been cross-party agreement on the need for greater parental involvement in schools—ranging from the appointment and election of parent governors, to parents having the right to meet school governors and being encouraged to set up before and after-school clubs. Why have the Government introduced legislation to specifically take away the right of parents to say what kind of school they want to send their children to every day? To me, this seems entirely wrong and at odds with the gains we have made over the last few decades in getting parents involved. Parents are not simply being sidelined; they are being deliberately excluded by an Act of Parliament. My Lords, this is Britain—some of us still like to call it Great Britain. It is not North Korea. It is important that we allow parents to have a full and proper say in changes to their children’s education.

I now turn briefly to the provisions on adoption. The legislation supports local authorities in combining into regional adoption agencies. Although we support this aim and that of speeding up adoption rates, we need provisions in place to ensure that super-regional consortia do not squeeze out smaller and more specialised voluntary adoption agencies.

It is also important that we improve the support given to people post-adoption, particularly mental health support. I hope that there will be an opportunity in Committee to look at the actual experiences many people have faced post-adoption. In my view, society’s involvement in adoption should not come to an end at the point the adoption takes place. I know from cases that I came across when I served in the other place, and from experiences made known to me by family and friends, that there are many lessons we could usefully learn.

The Bill fails us as much in what it does not address as in what it does. My noble friend Lord Watson said that the Bill does not address teacher recruitment and retention, or the provision of adequate pupil places. The Government seem much more concerned with restructuring our education system than with tackling the real problems we face in encouraging more teachers into our schools. This will become particularly difficult under the new system proposed in the Bill: teachers are unlikely to want to join schools that may be one inspection away from academisation. I hope that, during consideration of the Bill in your Lordships’ House, we may be able to make the Government see the problems it will create. I hope there will be opportunities in Committee for us to improve it, and that the Government will take note of the common sense they hear from all sides of the House.

Childcare Bill [HL]

Lord Touhig Excerpts

Wednesday 14th October 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Touhig]

2: Clause 1, page 1, line 3, leave out “The Secretary of State” and insert “Every English local authority”

[Lord Touhig (Lab)]

My Lords, Amendment 2 continues the debate we have just had over the funding review and what it means for the delivery of the additional entitlement. It seeks to end the ambiguity in the Bill as to whether responsibility for delivering the additional 15-hour entitlement will be the duty of the Secretary of State—as currently worded in the Bill—or of local authorities. We were unable to secure a firm answer at Committee; in fact, the Minister stated:

“The Government think that it is right for the primary legislation to put the duty to secure the extra 15 hours on the Secretary of State in the first instance, to demonstrate to parents the importance we attach to providing free childcare provision and to give them confidence that the Government will deliver on their manifesto commitment”.—[Official Report, 1/7/15; col. 2114.]

We tabled Amendment 2 to gain further clarity. However, the Government have since tabled Amendment 18, which confirms that the duty falls on local authorities. If this is the case, local councils must be given the appropriate level of support to fulfil their duty. The Government have said:

“We will … look at how we can support local authorities in drawing up agreements between themselves and childcare providers (perhaps by publishing a national model agreement). In addition, we are considering what can be done to smooth out issues around payment arrangements between local authorities and providers.

A full economic impact assessment and new burdens assessment will be carried out in due course”.

The Local Government Association has said that the duty will create further cost pressures on local government and will involve the risks associated with placing additional costs on an already underfunded system. Will the Minister provide an update on what is being done to ensure that local councils will not be out of pocket as a result of being responsible for delivering the entire 30-hour package of free childcare? Again, without seeing the detail of the funding review it is impossible to see how councils fit into the delivery model. I noted from the summary of evidence submitted to the funding review that only 3% of local authorities responded. The Government have committed to an uplift in the average rate that providers receive for the entitlement. The current proposal is for this to be delivered by councils through the dedicated schools grant. The Department for Education has confirmed that decisions about the size of this rate uplift and the consequent additional funding will be made at the forthcoming spending review, which the Minister referred to in the earlier debate.

On 15 June the Government announced that they are conducting a review of the cost of providing childcare. This follows warnings from providers across the spectrum that the current system is underfunded. I know that the Minister does not agree with that, but it is what the sector tells us. It is vital the Government ensure that the funding rate covers the cost of delivering 30 hours of free childcare to a standard likely to improve children’s outcomes and deliver broader policy objectives on employment progression and social mobility—a point well made in the earlier debate.

An initial look at the government amendments in the group might suggest a concession, as expressed in Amendment 12, but, having removed subsections (4) to (7) with Amendment 12, in Amendment 18 the Government seek to recover ground by giving the Secretary of State a power, as opposed to a duty, to make regulations on how local authorities should discharge their duties. The Government could have made Amendment 18 more palatable if they had used “must” rather than “may”. The “may” in line 2 gives the Secretary of State discretion as to whether to make regulations, although it is difficult to see how the scheme can operate without the use of regulation-making powers.

So it goes on. I am sure many noble Lords will have seen the eighth report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee published yesterday, already referred to by my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch. It says,

“we are surprised and disappointed that many of our recommendations have not been acted upon. It appears to us that the amendments add very little of substance to the face of the Bill: for the most part they adjust the existing delegated powers by removing some, varying others and adding more, while re-parading many in a new clause”.

It sounds a bit like moving the deckchairs on the “Titanic”. The report also says:

“Although the changes to some delegated powers may give the House a clearer idea of how the powers could be exercised, it remains unclear how they will be exercised”.

What an indictment of a very important Bill which is welcomed all around the House.

Amendments 14 and 16 remove from the Bill the ability of the Secretary of State to criminalise parents. In new subsection (2)(h) proposed in Amendment 18, the Government use their proposed new clause to replace the power in what was Clause 1(5)(k) to create criminal offences. I agree with the eighth report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee that this is welcome and that the new power is focused only on unauthorised disclosure of official information. But the committee points out that the power is not insignificant,

“as it would enable the creation of an offence sufficiently serious to be punishable by imprisonment for up to two years”.

On Monday, the Times revealed that Facebook, a company worth billions, paid just £4,000 in taxes to the British Crown last year—around £1,000 less than the average British worker pays in taxes and national insurance. It is tax avoiders such as this that should be criminalised, not working parents, who might get a criminal record and face a jail sentence, perhaps for completing a form incorrectly when seeking free childcare.

We will come to the issue of affirmative versus negative procedures for the making of regulations later in the debate, but I believe that this is a matter that we will have to look at in much more detail. In fact, the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee said yesterday in paragraph 10 of its report:

“We draw subsection (2)(h) to the attention of the House, so that it may consider whether the requirement for affirmative procedure only on first exercise of the power affords an adequate level of Parliamentary scrutiny for regulations which create, or alter the statutory ingredients of, criminal offences”.

I hope that the Minister will note those wise words.

Also in this group is Amendment 20A, which will be spoken to by the Liberal Democrats. We strongly support it because we believe that parents on low levels of income and those with multiple jobs need the kind of flexibility that it will engender. I do not wish in any way to take away from the comments that representatives of the Liberal Democrats will make, but I want to make clear that that amendment certainly has the strong support of this side of the House. With those few words, I beg to move.

[Baroness Pinnock]

My Lords, for greater clarity in the debate we withdrew our Amendment 15 and retabled it as an amendment to the new clause in government Amendment 18. Our amendment relates particularly to subsection (2)(b) of the new clause, which is about making,

“provision about how much childcare is to be so made available for each child, and about the times at which, and periods over which, that childcare is to be made available”.

Over the course of the debate on this Bill—on Second Reading, in Committee and again today—we have consistently argued for greater flexibility in the periods of time over which the 15 hours’ additional free childcare can be offered. We have done so for a number of reasons.

Many parents, particularly women, take on two or three jobs in a week to try to make ends meet. In my role as a local councillor I had the difficult task of trying to find new accommodation for a grandmother so that she could move from her council housing to a flat nearer her daughter as the daughter got up at five o’clock in the morning to take on a cleaning job at six and at that time no other childcare was available. I know at first hand what it means for many mothers who are trying to do, for instance, a cleaning job before the school day, something for school-lunch duties in the middle of the day and then another cleaning job at the end of the day. With this Bill we have an enormous opportunity to support those mothers and help them continue in work. That is why I have made what I hope is a strong case for defining more explicitly the flexibility that we are asking for in the Bill, rather than leaving it to vague definitions.

Not only is there the difficulty in the working week for the parents I have described; for all parents school holidays can be a nightmare. This is not just because the children are at home but because these parents are trying to juggle finding childcare for their children at home in the holidays while continuing in their work. Many parents find relatives, but not all are able to find them. The definitions of flexibility that we are proposing to include in the Bill would enable that to happen and would be of great advantage to many parents. Questions from those in the sector have indicated that one facet of the Bill they would particularly like to see is what they call a stretch of the hours over a longer period, not only during a week but also over the school holidays. That would be a tremendous help to many working families. I hope that we will not lose that opportunity.

I shall listen carefully to what the Minister says when he responds to the proposals that we have made. I feel strongly, as do my colleagues, that the Bill should contain a clear definition. It currently does not. If it is not included in the Bill today, we will have to think again about how we can move forward to ensure that it does.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

I assume that is the whole point of the duty. I imagine that the answer to that question is yes.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have taken part in this very short debate. In response to Amendment 2, the Minister agreed that local authorities were best placed to deliver the additional childcare. It begs the question why the first four words in Clause 1(1) were ever in the Bill in the first place—but that is another matter. I received some reassurance on Amendments 14 and 16, although I am still not entirely convinced. However, we have done our very best to try to improve the Bill on these matters and it is time to cede responsibility for improving the Bill—certainly as far as Amendments 2,14 and 16 are concerned— to those who legislate in the other place. I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 2.

Amendment 2 withdrawn.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 3 and 23. I find this debate a little frustrating. My noble friend Baroness Pinnock is right when she says that it is not just about care, but about educational experience: for instance, the importance of play. It is not about the type of provision or the amount of time we spend talking about costs. If the Government are going to invest—and are investing—huge amounts of money, it is important that we get the quality right. The best way of guaranteeing that quality is by the people delivering it.

I am sorry to disagree with the noble Baroness, but qualifications are not—and should not be—tick boxes. Qualifications are about a body of understanding and practice that one has to go through. It is hugely important that people working with young children know about child development. Notions that one is working with children but has no understanding of how children develop are anathema to me. Yes, it is hugely important that the assistant understands the importance of play and that the setting has an understanding of some of the special needs issues. It is not about ticking boxes but making sure that people have the qualifications.

The people who used to work in nurseries were of course called nursery nurses. They were highly regarded and highly trained, and resented it when, suddenly, nursery nurses were done away with and became level 3s —or perhaps level 4s. Level 3 is not a particularly onerous qualification to get; one can do it in 12 months or over two years. I hope that we stick our mast firmly to the top of our nurseries and say, yes, we want the people working there to have the right qualifications.

Of course, there are some wonderful people working in playgroups and helping out in nurseries who do not have these qualifications, but for goodness’ sake—we asked for a commission to look at this issue, and the Nutbrown commission spent a lot of time working on this. It said, “Yes, they should be at level 3”. Should we just ignore that and tear it up? No, we should not. We should make sure that quality is at the heart of the provision. Finally, we should also make sure that the leadership of those nurseries is of the highest calibre.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for the very helpful meeting he held yesterday, when we had the opportunity to explore a number of issues that have exercised us throughout the passage of the Bill, in particular, the outline of the funding review.

Amendment 11 in this group was much in my thoughts after our meeting and the presentation. I fear that the funding review’s progress and the conclusions it will reach may well be a threat to the existing staff- child ratios, which would be a retrograde step were it to happen. Of course, because the Government, sadly, seem determined to put the cart before the horse—passing legislation through your Lordships’ House and telling us afterwards how it will be funded—I feel I have every reason to be concerned.

Amendment 11 goes to the very heart of the standard of education and childcare that parents can expect, especially those with special educational needs children. While I am the first to recognise that there are many good educators in the childcare education sector who themselves have no formal level 3 qualification—a point well made yesterday by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland—that does not mean we should not seek to do something about that and ensure that everybody has the appropriate qualification. The simple fact is that no one leaving education today will have a job for life. Everyone will have to retrain and upskill in their working lives. If we do not recognise that by ensuring that the first learning and educational experience a child receives in its life is delivered by someone who themselves has been well trained, we start at a disadvantage.

We must be bold in our ambition for our children, and Amendment 11 is surely the foundation of that ambition. That is why we on this side strongly support it.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 3, 5, 11 and 23 regarding the quality of childcare to be delivered under the Bill, staff to child ratios, the workforce, and provision for children with special educational needs. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey, Lady Tyler and Lady Pinnock, and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for highlighting the importance of high-quality childcare and, in particular, the skills and qualifications of the early years workforce, including for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

I reassure noble Lords that we all want childcare that meets the needs of working parents and their children, including those with special educational needs. I have listened carefully to the debate this evening and I completely agree with the points that have been made about the importance of the quality of childcare and its impact on child development. I reassure the House, and particularly all those who have contributed to this debate, that the quality of early education and childcare and the welfare of children remains paramount.

All childcare must be delivered in a safe, secure and welcoming way that contributes to a child’s welfare and their development. The Government believe that the extended entitlement needs to supplement and complement the current early education entitlement. It will need to provide positive and stimulating experiences for children, and staff will need to have the right skills and knowledge to deliver this care. There are a number of aspects to these amendments, each of which I will address in turn.

First, the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, seeks to extend the existing ratios for the current 15-hours early education entitlement to the 30-hours childcare entitlement and to set these out in primary legislation. All early years providers registered on the early years register must meet the early years foundation stage framework requirements for welfare and well-being, including ratio and qualification requirements.

The English childcare system has some of the tightest adult-child ratios in the world. For three and four year-olds in group provision there must be one adult for every eight children. Or, where a person with a suitable level 6 qualification is working with the children, a 1:13 ratio can be used. The existing ratios have been set out in the EYFS since 2008 and we are committed to keeping them. I would like to place on record that there are no plans to change the ratios to deliver the new entitlement. I am very clear about this. The Government consider the current approach of using secondary legislation to be the right one for ratios, as was discussed in Committee. Ratios for all providers are already set out in secondary legislation, and this allows for a quick response if changes are needed to keep children safe and well cared for. I hope I have reassured noble Lords on this point and urge the noble Baroness to withdraw her amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, this group of amendments concerns the regulations made under the Bill, which will be key to setting out the detail of the new entitlement, including who will be eligible and how it will be delivered. Therefore, I understand noble Lords’ concerns about ensuring that they have a proper opportunity to scrutinise this detail.

There was much interest in the regulations in our earlier debates in this House and in the report by the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. The committee concluded that the scope of the delegations and powers under Clause 1 as drafted were too wide. Given the importance of secondary legislation to the Bill, I am in complete agreement with noble Lords and with the committee’s report that it would be appropriate for regulations to be approved by a debate in both Houses. That is why I have brought forward these amendments, which would require regulations made under Clause 1 and extended entitlement regulations to be laid and approved by each House using the affirmative procedure. I hope this will reassure noble Lords that we have listened. I hope the Government’s amendments will be welcomed.

Amendment 27, tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, would ensure that a statutory instrument containing regulations in exercise of any power in the Bill would not be made unless a draft of the instrument had been laid and approved by each House; in other words, it would subject regulations to the affirmative procedure each time the regulation-making power was exercised. We believe it is right that initially we should deal with the regulations under the affirmative procedure, rather than the negative procedure as originally planned. However, we do not believe it is necessary to make them affirmative each time.

We need to strike the right balance between the mechanics of the affirmative process—for example, the need to find time in the parliamentary timetable for debates in both Houses, no matter how small the change—and the ability of government to respond efficiently and effectively to support delivery of the new entitlement, should this be necessary. That is why the government amendments in this group envisage that regulations made under Clause 1 and regulations made for the purpose of discharging the Secretary of State’s duty will be subject to a debate the first time the powers are exercised but that subsequent regulations made under the Bill would be subject to the negative resolution procedure.

The exception to this would be in any instances where regulations seek to amend or repeal primary legislation, or in the case of regulations seeking to update the maximum level of any financial penalty set out in the Bill, which would be subject to the affirmative procedure. This follows the precedents of parliamentary scrutiny adopted in childcare legislation or comparable education legislation. The regulations that underpin the current Section 7 entitlement have been subject to the negative procedure since they were introduced in 2008. These have been amended only four times, and each time the changes were subject to a public consultation.

We believe that our approach is the right one. As noble Lords have already heard, we have made great progress since Committee to narrow the scope and clarify the detail of what we will include in the regulations. I also reassure noble Lords that feedback from parents, providers and employers will be taken into account in the development of the draft regulations, and we will wish to draw on the expertise of noble Lords. Furthermore, we have committed to providing a full impact assessment on the extent of the free entitlement, which will be published when we undertake a formal public consultation on the draft regulations in 2016. Following the consultation, we will lay the draft regulations before the House for a full debate before they can be approved and added to the statute book.

I hope noble Lords agree that by the time they are laid, these regulations will have undergone a significant amount of close scrutiny. Therefore, I am confident that we will be able to present a set of regulations to the House that are fair and workable and remain true to the spirit of the Government’s commitment to support and reward thousands of hard-working families. I beg to move.

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I regret very much having to put Amendment 27 before the House but, frankly, the Government leave us no choice. We have seen throughout the passage of the Bill the cavalier attitude the Government have taken—not by the Ministers who have represented the Government in this House, I hasten to add, but by the Government as a whole. In support of that assertion, I quote from the 2nd Report of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee, published on 26 June, which says at paragraph 10:

“We note that the Minister said that ‘the introduction of the Bill, with a strong duty on the Secretary of State, sends a clear message to parents and providers about the Government’s commitment’. That is not, in our judgment, a proper use of legislation: the purpose of an Act is to change the law, not to ‘send a message’”.

Earlier, in paragraph 8, the committee says:

“In our view, the Government’s stated approach to delegation is flawed. While the Bill may contain a legislative framework, it contains virtually nothing of substance beyond the vague ‘mission statement’”.

Finally, in paragraph 9 of the report, the committee states that:

“We do not accept the Government’s attempt to dignify their approach to delegation by referring to a need to consult. We of course acknowledge the need for consultation as a precursor to the formation of policy; but this should in our view have followed the well-established sequence of a Green Paper setting out proposals, followed by a White Paper containing the Government’s legislative intentions, and finally the presentation of a Bill”.

There we have it—that spells out quite clearly how the Government should be presenting legislation to Parliament.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Lord Touhig]

27: Clause 2, page 3, line 17, leave out subsections (4) and (5) and insert—
“( ) A statutory instrument containing regulations under section 1 or section (Discharging the section 1(1) duty) may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.”

[Lord Touhig]

My Lords, I beg to move and wish to test the opinion of the House.

[The Deputy Speaker (Viscount Ullswater) (Con)]

My Lords, I must inform the House that if this amendment is agreed to I will not be able to call Amendments 28 and 29.