Brexit: Impact on Universities and Scientific Research

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, I too am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Soley for initiating this important debate and getting us off to such an excellent start—the debate could not be more timely. Those of us who voted to remain in the European Union see the future uncertainty in the area of funding for universities and scientific research as one more reason to fear for the gains that this country has made over the last 20 years in becoming a global leader in research and development. Our status as a leader in research and development, as many noble Lords have said, did not come despite our membership of the EU but, in many aspects, because of it. Many of us in this House are privileged to have received honorary doctorates from universities and indeed many noble Lords are chancellors of our wonderful universities. We all know at first hand of the pressures on those universities even before 23 June—as the noble Baroness, Lady Eccles, the noble Lord, Lord Fox, and many others have said—and we are aware now of so much post-Brexit anxiety among them.

Universities across this country have a proud history of welcoming students and researchers from the EU and the rest of the world, which enhances the diversity and intellectual quality of our university courses and our research departments. It also brings much-needed economic stability and predictability to our colleges and centres of excellence. Yet the Government, in bending the crooked knee to a hard Brexit, are insisting on including foreign students among their immigration count. Do the Government not understand that, in order for the work of universities in this country to progress, foreign students and researchers are vital?

One university with which I have a close relationship is the excellent Plymouth University. Its groundbreaking work on dementia research, for instance, has been instrumental in enabling dementia-friendly communities to be set up throughout the south-west. Yet we hear this week from the Alzheimer’s Society that our role as a leading country in dementia research could well be in jeopardy as we exit the European Union. There are 850,000 people living with dementia in the UK and their number is set to rise well above 1 million by 2021. It is vital that active treatments are developed for this disease and that a cure is one day possible.

The UK has been at the forefront of the fight against dementia. David Cameron’s Challenge on Dementia 2020 stated that Britain should become,

“the best place in the world to undertake research into dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases”.

I have been personally associated with the former Prime Minister’s rural dementia groups and I know first-hand about the important work that they have undertaken. But Brexit has brought many uncertainties in this area. I ask the Minister: have the Government yet looked at the impact of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU on funding for UK dementia research? In the historically underfunded field of dementia research, EU investment is particularly critical. EU funding has become a vital source of support for that research and the loss of access to EU funding programmes could have a significant impact on major and pilot projects as well as grants for equipment for dementia researchers. What will the Government do in the long term—as noble Lords have asked—about the projects launched and funded by the EU Commission’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programmes, many of which address the issue of dementia, once we have left the European Union?

Our universities are centres of learning but also economic hubs for their towns, cities and regions. They have always been inclusive and collaborative in their ethos, with an outward-looking view of the world and its opportunities. Will the Government ensure that Brexit will not mean the end to all that?

Birmingham Schools

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

I agree entirely with the noble Lord about the great debt that we owe to Peter Clarke, one of the great investigative policemen of our time. At this precise time I cannot comment on the detail of the noble Lord’s point about the conduct of the teachers. However, I can assure noble Lords that the new trustees of Park View Educational Trust will take all appropriate action, and the National College for Teaching and Leadership will take the extensive evidence provided by Peter Clarke so that its misconduct panel can consider which individuals, if any, should be barred from the profession.

[Baroness Crawley (Lab)]

My Lords, as a former MEP for Birmingham for 15 years, and as a feminist, I have taken a great deal of interest in this matter. Can the Minister say what his department will do to ensure that the Equality Act is implemented in faith schools, free schools, academies and maintained schools from now on?

[Lord Nash]

I can assure the noble Baroness that we are extremely focused on that. We make sure that all schools, particularly when we are approving them as free schools, are thoroughly inclusive. We visit the schools, and if we see any practices that we think are inappropriate, we are very quick to draw them to the attention of the schools and make sure they are rectified. We are extremely focused on that. The noble Baroness makes a very good point.

Education Bill

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Wednesday 26th October 2011 Lords Chamber

Lord Elton: Perhaps I may distil what my noble friend has just said with the Latin phrase—“expressio unius est exclusio alterius”: if you have a list, the things that are in it matter and, by inference, the things that are not in it do not matter. Lists are very dangerous things.

Perhaps I may distil a parent’s view on the particular aspect of the amendment on which your Lordships have chosen to concentrate. I think that the parent has the best idea of when a child is ready for the various stages of his or her understanding of sex, and the best way is to answer truthfully every question when it is asked and at the age at which it is asked—sometimes wrapped up a little. I do think—and your Lordships have generally expressed a view—that to teach advanced sex, if one may call it that, in primary school is entirely inappropriate. I add my name to the list of those who admire greatly what the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, has done in Parliament for young people over many years, and I have been rather feeble in supporting her. However, what she was not asked to do was a demonstration of the material that is not only available but recommended to be used in classrooms; and recommended not only by non-government bodies but by local authorities, sometimes at an age less even than that recommended by the publisher. It was hair-raising. I hope your Lordships will understand that for that reason anything that tends to open the door to that is to be resisted.

The noble Lord, Lord Clarke of Hampstead, put it succinctly—he distilled it. He said that the inference in paragraph (c) of proposed new subsection (5C) is that this subject should be taught in all schools. It is for that reason and with great reluctance that I oppose the amendment. Its intention is good and if it could be tweaked at Third Reading to exclude that inference, I would be friendly to it.

[Baroness Crawley]

My Lords, I rise in support of my noble friends in their amendment and acknowledge their tenacity in pursuing these important and sensitive matters. It is a welcome opportunity for me to leave the substitutes’ bench, even for a brief period, in the passage of the Bill and to take part in this significant debate. A colleague said that timely substitution can often win matches. However, looking at our recent voting form, I am not going to hold out too much hope.

In Amendment 80, my noble friends Lady Massey of Darwen, Lady Gould of Potternewton and Lord Layard have called on the chief inspector to report on school policies on bullying, healthy eating, the delivery of citizenship education and the delivery of personal, social and health education, including sex and relationships education. In proposed new subsection (5D) in their amendment, they say:

“In reporting on the matters listed … the Chief Inspector must take into account the age and stage of development of the pupils”.

That is very important for us to remember in the context of our debate tonight. There is no question in the amendment of any compulsion for inappropriately aged children.

Education for Life, with a capital “L”, is crucial in our modern, complex, choice-led, resource-scarce society, but I know that the force of my noble friends’ arguments will not be lost on the Minister, who carries his brief with enthusiasm and compassion. To quote the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in Committee:

“Children may not go on to get first-class degrees but they will all have families, relationships, friends, personal finances, responsibility for their own health and safety … and jobs”.—[Official Report, 13/7/11; col. GC 344.]

Also in Committee, my noble friend Lord Layard quoted, at cols. GC 349 and 350, some revealing international evidence that personal, social and health education assisted children in their academic achievements. He said that it was not a case of either life skills or academic attainment but of both. Many noble Lords around the House are convinced by evidence such as this, by what parents themselves have said about PSHE and by the experience of PSHE in schools over recent years. I know that there has been a patchy nature to some of that teaching. One reason why my noble friends have tabled this amendment is to ensure that there is monitoring by Ofsted of the quality of that teaching and of the kind of training that must be given to those who deliver PSHE, whether it be generically through the school or as a separate subject.

Although we on these Benches welcome the end-of-consultation date for the department’s internal review of PSHE—which I believe is 30 November, as elicited through an Oral Question from my noble friend Lady Gould of Potternewton—we still have a slight suspicion that this review set out to be one that featured a certain acreage of long grass. In that context, I ask the Minister why PSHE was removed entirely from the original independent review.

We do not have a lot of time tonight. I want to say simply that we have a generation of children who face enormous and complex problems when it comes to sexual and personal health pressures. These are young people who come up against enormous problems, such as HIV infection, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, alcohol abuse, obesity and smoking—the list goes on. It cannot be the role of a responsible Government overseeing education to allow chance, discretion or benign neglect to be the official response to the bewildering array of problems that face young people. I was as shocked as I am sure many noble Lords were at the recent evidence of sexual cyberbullying and the increasing amount of cyberbullying that goes on, particularly of young girls. It is imperative that we give young girls all possible confidence to resist such pressure. How do we do that? We do it by arming them with clear and rational argument. As the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said, schools can make a difference. We also need to give young boys—here, I look towards the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and the work that he does—the confidence to act in a responsible way and to resist their own peer pressure. This is where PSHE comes in. The correct teaching of PSHE, with proper training, can only be a good thing for the next generation.

Education: Children with Diabetes

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Tuesday 1st February 2011 Grand Committee

[Baroness Crawley]

My Lords, it is a delight to follow my noble friend Lord Harrison, who is such a great ambassador for people living with diabetes. May I add my thanks to my noble friend Lord Kennedy for bringing this complex and important issue before the House with such clarity and commitment? I also welcome the informative and humorous maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Lexden. We look forward to hearing many more of them in the House.

In preparing for this afternoon’s debate, I looked at the 2008 report of the UK Children with Diabetes Advocacy Group. I found several case studies of children who have type 1 diabetes but who, beyond that, should be leading happy, fulfilling and productive lives at school. It is to our shame that that is not the experience for a large and significant group of children with diabetes across the country.

In the case studies, Matty’s mum said:

“Matty decided that he wanted school dinners this week. At the end of last term I went in and saw the cook and the dinner lady and explained that he would need to go to the front of the queue. This morning he told me that he didn’t want school dinner because the dinner lady had told him off for walking to the front of the queue and made him wait until last.”

Charlie’s mum said:

“When Charlie started reception we had a major fight on our hands with the headmaster who expected Charlie to do all his own blood testing, choose an appropriate snack and go and get it from the store cupboard – all at the age of 4 and only having been diagnosed 4 months previously!”

In case we form the impression that the fault always lies with the school or with the local authorities, the next case study will put us right. I quote the case of Anthony:

“Unfortunately, when we had a meeting with the school and our DSN, (who we thought was there to support us) made matters worse. The DSN seemed to do her utmost to discourage the school from taking on procedures such as testing, her attitude being that schools should not have to take on such levels of care. We were quite surprised and hurt at her attitude. It made us feel very much on our own in the pursuit of a good standard of care for a young child starting school”.

The obstacles were not just raised for families through PCTs in these case studies. In another study, the health and safety officer told a teenage boy with diabetes at a secondary school that he could not carry his insulin and self-monitoring equipment with him at school. This meant that if he felt unwell he would have to go a considerable distance to the school’s reception area to carry out tests, which would have put him at risk.

Obviously, as my noble friend has said, there are children with diabetes who enjoy a full school life because of the support their school gives them. But the sad little stories from desperate parents that I have quoted tell us that by no means all children have that opportunity in 21st-century Britain. Why does the Minister think that such inconsistency of policy and practice across local authorities exists, despite guidance being offered by the last Government, and what are his Government’s plans for dealing with this inconsistency? I am certainly not making a political point here, because things could not have become so much worse for this group of children during the eight months of the coalition Government. We all have questions to answer as far as these children are concerned. However, I am concerned by the scale of future local authority spending cuts, as well as by the demise of PCTs and the reorganisation of the NHS. Both these coalition Government policy commitments will throw an already complex picture for children with diabetes into sharper relief.

How does the Minister respond to Diabetes UK’s concerns, shared by this side of the House, and mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, that the changes proposed in the education and children’s Bill, which will remove the duty of schools to co-operate with local planning arrangements, together with the growth of academies with no direct link to a local authority, risk further fragmentation of services for this group of children? It would be helpful to learn from the Minister how schools are expected to fit into the new framework envisaged in the Health and Social Care Bill.

I know that the Minister, who I have a great deal of respect for, will agree with me that it is intolerable for parents and children who have this condition to be treated so differently in so many different schools, different LAs and different PCTs, under different head teachers, by different nurses and different staff. These children and young people do not deserve such a cruel lottery of treatment in their schooling. We know that all schools have a common-law duty of care. They also have a duty to promote pupils’ well-being. What does the Minister feel is the current legal framework for ensuring school support? I know that under the previous Government’s Every Child Matters policy, of which I am immensely proud, all schools were required to have a disability equality scheme. Does the Minister believe that further guidance is required?

What is the Government’s response to Diabetes UK’s recommendations? They are ably set out by the noble Baroness, Lady Young: that there should be multi-agency working across schools; that there should be proper training for staff in schools, to feel confident when dealing with children with diabetes; that there should be an individual healthcare plan for every pupil; and that there should be one full-time qualified school nurse for each secondary school and cluster of primary schools, as noble Lords have said.

I would be happy for the Minister to write to me on some of these points. As I have said, our own record in this area is not so burnished that I demand answers from him. I know that all noble Lords who have taken part in this important debate will want to see an end to the confusion, alienation and misery that too many children with diabetes and their carers are currently experiencing.

Educational Psychology

Baroness Crawley Excerpts

Monday 15th November 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

As I am sure my noble friend knows, currently educational psychologists are funded separately and the relevant money does not come from schools’ budgets. I accept his point that it is important not just to get the training right, although that is important, but that one has to look at the numbers as well. The advice we have received from the CWDC is that the numbers seem to be appropriate, but I agree that one needs to keep that very much under review.

[Baroness Crawley]

My Lords, in anti-bullying week, can the Minister say what the future prospects are for educational psychologists to carry on their work not only with vulnerable children but with their families and school professionals if the Educational Psychology Service has such a question mark over it? Can he also say what contact he has had with local authorities and schools on this issue?

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I certainly agree with the noble Baroness that educational psychologists play an extremely important role, not least in the context of anti-bullying. My honourable friend Sarah Teather, the Minister for Children and Families, has had a whole series of meetings with local authorities about these important issues. The department generally has been talking to a range of local authorities about the future arrangements for special needs education. I agree that it is vital to get those right. I certainly give her the undertaking that we will continue to keep a very close eye on it. We need to ensure that there are enough educational psychologists and that they are properly trained. I do not accept that there is a serious question mark over the future, but I do accept that we have a short-term issue about training and getting the funding from local authorities, which we have to address.