Queen’s Speech

My Lords, I guess that it is an unintended irony that that wonderful eulogy in favour of the British pub should precede an intervention by a Methodist minister. I say amen to the sentiments just expressed. It is no intended discourtesy to the House that I was absent for much of the middle part of the day. The various strands in my life are demanding a lot of me at the moment. I crave the indulgence of the noble Earl and the noble Baroness on the opposition Front Benches for not having heard all that they said. I trust that the fact that I heard 10 consecutive subsequent speeches will be counted to me for righteousness. I am delighted to play my part at the fag end of these discussions on the Queen’s gracious Speech. A debate it certainly is not; it seems rather a series of reflections on the speech occasioned by various hanging points on which we can put our thoughts. Certainly, it gives us an opportunity to relate fields that we would normally discuss separately. I wanted to consider health and education, but time will not allow me to do that. However, I shall refer to a health issue, largely because it is so topical this week. I am in my fifth year of membership of your Lordships’ House. During that time we have considered three Bills on assisted dying. A detailed Select Committee report has been produced and other debates have taken place in which I have taken part. The mind of this House has been made clear on each of the occasions that that mind has been tested. If there is to be any further debate, it should happen in the other place, which needs its mind tested, too. I congratulate the Government on specifically stating that this issue has no place in the end-of-life care strategy. We happen to be world leaders in palliative care and there are constantly developments in that area that will redefine the parameters within which we discuss the whole question of care for the dying. I wanted to interject that remark from what would have been a string of remarks about health, had I felt that there was time to pursue both lines of investigation. Education is where I want to dwell. I say in passing that I do not envy those who are to sum up the debate. I look forward with some eagerness to assessing their skills in commanding the heights of the summits from which people have spoken. We are heading towards the end of this Parliament and health and education will be battlegrounds as people try to get votes from the electorate. A Bill was promised in the Queen’s Speech—it is not a bad thing to remind ourselves of what was said in the pellucid prose— "““to reform education, training and apprenticeships, to promote excellence in all schools, to improve local services for children and parents and to provide a right for those in work to request time for training””." All of this is subsumed under the words, "““to further improve school standards””." Who can be against that? Although I must remark that the phrase that purports to address our needs to improve education includes a split infinitive. I say hooray for what I heard in the Queen’s Speech, but I listened to what I heard and to the interventions that have been made on education in today’s debate with some dismay. I want to share my feelings about that. I am wholeheartedly in favour of much of what I have heard. I have heard in earlier interventions that the Bill that will come before us will make good omissions from the plethora of Bills that have previously preoccupied us. So why am I a little dismayed? I have heard the proposals, and I have taken part in and listened to previous debates, as a school governor and now as the vice-chairman of a foundation trust that administers quite a significant piece of education in two inner London boroughs, Tower Hamlets and Islington. Hearing these things as a school governor, and being aware of the workloads and of the taxed minds of the teachers who have to deliver what we are so wise about, I register a cautionary note. It is said that the Government need to seek for themselves powers to ensure the delivery of what we decide. That is fair enough. We do not think that anyone else should have powers to enforce pay agreements. We have heard the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, talk about regulatory bodies accountable either to Parliament or to the Minister of State, and the setting up of an independent regulator of examiners called Ofqual—there is a whole pile of those now. There will be the QCDA, a set of initials that you cannot make a suitable memorable acronym out of, which will be a development agency for the curriculum, assessment and qualifications. We have had a summer of misfortunes in the area of examination results, so it is a good thing to tighten that up, and I am sure that the Government must do it. However, on the remark that the Government will seek to ensure that teachers have enough time to prepare for lessons, I wonder whether we have not transgressed into ground that does not really belong to government at all. Indeed, if the Government were not so active in the field of legislation, there would be plenty of time to prepare for lessons. In the area of local authorities—the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said this—holes are going to be filled that were left dug after previous legislation. Good. These are the holes. I understand that the Sure Start children’s centres will become statutory bodies. Let us rejoice about that. There will be an attempt to reform pupil referral units. If they fail or are seen to be failing, local authorities will have powers to intervene in order to achieve those reforms. There will be a strengthening of children’s trusts and an attempt to join up local services, required by law, while children’s trusts boards will be set up on a statutory basis. Once again, with recent events in mind, joining up services in local authority areas is very necessary. Local authorities will also establish young people’s learning agencies, to support them when it becomes time to implement the provisions for 16 to 19 year-olds in 2010 and 2011. All those things will happen and local authorities will have to carry them through. As a school governor, I dread the thought of yet more sets of guidelines and regulations. To fulfil one’s duties in the voluntary sector we will have to learn them, go on courses about them, give up another evening for them and miss your Lordships’ wise debates in order to be there and not here. I wish that the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, were in her place, as she has some understanding of the demands for the delivery of services that, more and more, are placed on volunteers—people who give their time and skills for the administration of various aspects of public policy. I know how hard it is to get a set of governors together for a tough, inner-city school and to feel confident that, around our table, we can give the attention that we ought to the detailed outworking of the plans and policies before us. When faced with something like 30 or 40 pages of closely typed accounts, I feel totally deskilled. I wish that the Minister, who has skills in that area, were doing it in my place and that I were summing up the debate in his. At local authority level, we will also be bringing young offenders into mainstream education. Again, I can only rejoice about that, but when I think of the demands that have been placed on schools as they have sought to accommodate disabled children and people with mental and learning disabilities, all of which is necessary—I approve of it 100 per cent—it isn’t half demanding. Bringing in young offenders now will create a heterogeneous classroom situation, which will demand such a range of skills and levels of patience, tolerance, imagination—all those things—that I wish more thought were going into what happens to empower teachers and governors who have to take what we lob to them and make something of it. I could go on, and your Lordships may think that I have. Schools are to be given powers to tackle disruptive behaviour. They are to be given powers to search pupils. Parents are to be given a more streamlined complaints procedure. I look forward to seeing the legislation before us and hearing the debates about it. I am glad that holes will be filled; I hope that that will bring to a complete circle our consideration of education for a while, to let things settle a bit and take the thinking through and to give some attention to the needs of those volunteers who give their time to school governance and those teachers who cope, year after year, with the latest raft of guidelines and outworkings from our deliberations.