Queen’s Speech

My Lords, it is a pleasure to take part in the diverse range of debates on the gracious Speech. I shall be concentrating on the children, skills and learning Bill. I want first to emphasise the importance of ensuring that, whatever resources are spent, they benefit all our children, especially the most deprived, and develop the full range of talents that we need in our country. This Government, with their number one priority of ““education, education, education””, have already achieved considerable progress for children from deprived or chaotic backgrounds, with initiatives such as Sure Start, children's centres and so on. The Government certainly also deserve congratulations for their Children and Young Persons Act. That will ensure that a far higher priority is given to the education and well-being of looked-after children, whose lack of educational achievement has, frankly, been a disgrace under successive Governments. However, on the preventative side, there is certainly more that can still be achieved by early help and support for families. UNICEF’s report today, mentioned by the noble Baronesses, Lady Massey and Lady Walmsley, is critical of the UK’s low standing among developed nations—a view which, I know, the Government reject. Nevertheless, the report makes some telling points. Above all, we need to prevent the still-cascading waste of young people's talents. All too often this can develop into a spiral of underachievement and end in a churning life of crime. I will return to that issue later. The Leitch report has rightly been seen as pivotal in convincing the Government of the need for significant additional educational action and, in particular, the need to raise the school leaving age compulsorily to 18. Leitch demonstrated, beyond argument, the huge gap that has already opened up between the education and skills levels achieved in the UK and those of competing countries such as the USA and Germany. Leitch showed that, for the UK to improve its competitive position, it would require an increase in the percentage of people with level 4 skills to at least 40 per cent by 2020, compared with our fairly appalling 29 per cent reached in 2005. But with a number of countries on track to achieve well beyond 40 per cent by 2020, and another, the USA, already at 40 per cent, reaching that level 12 years from now will still leave the UK well behind. Indeed, just to be competitive with other countries we need to be committed to achieving a minimum of 45 per cent at that level. Those who reach back to the war years may remember the school year beginning with the confident singing of ““There'll always be an England””; equally, we might sing with even greater confidence, as our parliamentary year begins, ““There'll always be an education Bill””. There certainly has been one ever since I joined your Lordships’ House. Indeed, as has been said from these Benches, the Education and Skills Bill that we have just enacted would not make sense without the Bill for children, skills and learning foreshadowed in the gracious Speech. Your Lordships will be delighted to see that my noble friend Lord Dearing, who has so much to give to this whole field, will be speaking shortly. As noble Lords may recall, he and I have a continuing concern that far more adequate provision should be made to remedy the underinvestment of the past, which has resulted in the serious skills deficits of people already at work. Consistent with that, I particularly welcome action in the proposed Bill to respond to the needs of all our children and young people, and to see them set as learners for life early on. Full details of the new Bill are not yet published. The noble Lord, Lord Darzi, told us part of the story and I hope that we will hear a little more when the noble Lord, Lord McKenzie, replies. To that end—I hope that this is the Government’s intention—I want to see that children’s trusts are able to deliver the Every Child Matters agenda by putting the children’s trust boards on a statutory footing so that they are able to provide a closely integrated and effective service which draws all the relevant players together. I should also like to know more about what the Government have in mind for children’s Sure Start centres. I think it has already been said that they are to have a statutory basis, and perhaps that can be confirmed. Will the duties of local authorities include ensuring there is a sufficient number of these centres to meet local needs—again, I stress, especially in the most deprived areas? Then there is nursery provision—the entitlement of free education for the nought to five year-olds. Will statutory funding now be available for the private, voluntary and independent sector, the PVI, and, if so, how will it operate? As the Minister may know, when day nurseries closed at the end of World War II, there would have been virtually no nursery education for the under-fives except for that provided by the voluntary organisations—pre-school play groups, for example—but now the more generous provision has meant that many of the excellent PVI-run nurseries have either closed or are set to close unless there can be further help for them. I move on to the young people who are heading for trouble or who are, sadly, already in trouble. I start from the position of fully supporting, as have several noble Lords, the local authority’s role in securing relevant education for all those in juvenile custody, of whom there are far too many. However, there must be no doubt that ultimate responsibility for securing effective delivery of that education lies with the local authority, and in future it must have the priority that we have sometimes seen lacking in the minds of prisoners, prison staff and even prison governors. In future, there must be no question of working in the prison kitchen and getting paid for it, when acquiring basic literacy and numeracy skills and/or beginning an apprenticeship are far more essential if there is to be any hope of post-prison rehabilitation. Of course, that will not happen without clear lines of accountability and real motivation in prisons and in partnerships with local employers and the third sector. Equally, all this must be backed by a duty on local authorities to promote the individual young person’s educational attainment. As I mentioned earlier, we must be no less concerned with effective intervention before a youngster gets into trouble, and we must provide better arrangements to get them back on track. However, above all, we need to address the problem effectively in the parent schools, drawing on what I hope will be statutory behaviour and attendance improvement partnerships with the full support and active involvement of the head teachers. There must be committed ownership of this kind if they are to deliver their potential, and it must include the constructive involvement of parents. We must see that they, too, get support and encouragement in engaging in, and sharing ownership of, the problem. I agree with both Leitch and the Government that we need a demand-led education and skills system for the post-19 group. However, once an individual who has clearly been failed by our education system realises the importance of acquiring the skills that are necessary for today’s employment, we owe it to that individual to provide them either free or at the lowest possible price that we can afford, whenever they wake up to the need for those skills. With the current chaotic economic situation and rising unemployment, when the vast majority will be unable to find unskilled work, the Government should put far more resources into this kind of up-skilling. In the longer term, I hope, too, that we will be able to provide the many academic or practical courses that are being cut back for everyone but which particularly benefit older, often semi-retired people. An older generation encouraged to enjoy their retirement by either up-skilling for pleasure or acquiring the necessary skills to start a new business makes every kind of business sense. It costs far less than a bed in an old people’s home for those suffering far too early from dementia. I hope that at least, when the economic scene becomes brighter, the Government will think again about restoring and expanding the necessary resources to do this.