Down Syndrome Bill

Baroness Blower Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Blower (Lab)]

My Lords, I rise extremely briefly to add my support to the Bill and to acknowledge that the question of “nothing about us without us” is very significant.

I began teaching in 1973, and would never have found a child or young person with Down’s syndrome in a classroom in front of me, but things have changed and moved on significantly. When I told my daughter, who now teaches a year 4 class, that I would be in the House of Lords today to hear a debate on guidance about services for people with Down’s syndrome, she said, “That will be really exciting, and so necessary”. One of the things she said to me was, “There just aren’t sufficient representations of the vast range of people that there are in our society available to us to use in our classrooms”. She is a young person who definitely wanted to go into teaching because she felt that it was important to be in a classroom with a range of people with different conditions.

I listened carefully to the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, and I share her concern that, at a time of constrained resources, there might be a tendency to say, “We have to do this; we don’t have to do that”. But I hope we are better than that. It is so important that we fund the services as they are assessed—that we fund for need, not because a particular person happens to have a particular diagnosis or condition. On that basis, even though this is a small step and there is a risk—unless we fund everything properly—that some people may feel there is privileged treatment, I wish the Bill well.

However, since some of the “relevant” bodies that appear here are school governing bodies, the providers of early years services and academy proprietors, I want to be absolutely sure that the Government will be very clear that all those institutions have a big responsibility to read, understand and follow the guidance. That is an education matter, rather than a medical one.

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Russell of Liverpool) (CB)]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, is taking part remotely and I invite her to speak.