Speech Therapy Services (Children)

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Cleveleys (Paul Maynard) on how he introduced the debate. I agree with everything he had to say; indeed, I think that I have agreed with everything that everyone has said thus far, so I will not repeat things. Just as my hon. Friend waxed lyrical about his experiences at school 30 years ago, with the indulgence of hon. Members I shall talk about my experiences at school 50 years ago. There I was, in a class of 56, in the east end of London, and my teacher, Miss Grey, asked my mother to come up to the school. My mother was worried, thinking her son had been disruptive, but the teacher said, ““Do you realise that your son is nicknamed Double Dutch?”” Apparently, I could not communicate with anyone—my sister used to interpret what I wanted to say to people. I could not make the sounds ““st”” or ““th””, I had a bad stutter and for three years my mother walked three and a half miles with me to a speech therapist in West Ham lane—I can now hear the violins playing. For three years, it was, literally, ““How now brown cow””, which is why I do not have a pure cockney accent. I had old-fashioned braces on my top teeth and on my bottom teeth. My hon. Friend talked about 30 years ago, but I am talking about 50 years ago and I want to tell the Minister and our Government that all those years ago, in a class of 56 in a challenging part of the country, Miss Grey—to whom, with the speech therapist, I obviously owe everything—could identify me as having those particular problems. Therefore, why is it that in 2010, with all the advances that we rejoice in, I am sitting in the Chamber this morning listening to any number of problems and challenges? I simply want our Government to give children today the same opportunity that I was given all those years ago.