Vulnerable Children

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde]

That this House takes note of the report by the Children’s Commissioner for England, On measuring the number of vulnerable children in England, published in July.

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, I apologise to the House for not speaking from my usual place. Unfortunately, my back and the rest of me are not getting on very well together at the moment, although it is only temporary. I thank Black Rod’s office, our marvellous attendants and the usual offices for enabling me to introduce this debate from a sedentary position.

As a former trade union general secretary in the printing industry and the one face to face with Rupert Murdoch at the time of what was known then as the Wapping dispute, I became used to the harsh things that newspapers said about me over the years, especially at that time. I sometimes used strong words against them, too. So I found myself somewhat embarrassed when I told a journalist at the London Evening Standard that his series of reports on the Children’s Commissioner’s report on the number of vulnerable children had reduced me to tears. It was to the credit of the Standard that the report was given front page coverage and, following that, every night of the week brought to the attention of readers what is happening to the lives of so many of our children in England.

David Cohen’s penetrating journalism brought out so clearly this current disgraceful problem—not only in London but throughout England—the commissioner’s remit and the ghastly failure of our society today. It equates with the kind of investigative journalism into similar social failure that Charles Dickens pioneered. I hope that David Cohen’s profession acknowledges that. It is a timely reminder that, in the era of instant tweets and fake news, the pen can still be mightier than the sword. The Standard coverage and today’s debate are a good demonstration of that.

The commissioner’s report was published in July—but with little impact so far as I can ascertain—to galvanise government into action. Today gives us the opportunity to question the Minister on what the Government are doing to engage with the issues that this huge piece of research identifies and to address them. Let us hope that the Government are not so fixated and overwhelmed with Brexit that the welfare of our children does not get the attention and resource that it needs and deserves.

The Children’s Commissioner’s report draws together for the first time the numbers of vulnerable children in England. It has done this by using 12 experts, working solidly for four months, to research the numbers of children reported by the whole spectrum of all government departments, voluntary agencies and others, and for the first time bringing the numbers together to form one picture. Until this report we had separate individual figures from each government department on the number of vulnerable children in its care only. It was a fragmented, incomplete picture. Now there is no excuse and the total figures are horrific.

The detail is in the numbers, but we must not forget that every single number is a child—a child who should be able to enjoy their early years, feel safe, have a home, be free of abuse in all its forms and not have their childhood stolen from them. Yet this is happening to so many children and one cannot escape the fact that it is what the commissioner’s report reflects. It is a sad indictment of our society today.

My objective for this debate is to secure an undertaking from the Government for urgent action in at least three areas. No doubt noble Lords will have others. The first, so clearly demonstrated to be needed, is what some might call “joined-up thinking”—a common phrase but so hard to deliver in national and local government, although many have tried. It needs more than that. It needs a high-level response—the highest, from the Prime Minister. It is only by Mrs May expressing her determination that this scandal—for that is what it is—will now be solved that government departments will work together, pooling ideas and resources. Is there any chance that progress will be made? These children deserve it and they have the right to expect it.

Secondly, we know that local authorities are struggling financially, but is it widely known that the Local Government Association has produced its own analysis indicating that by 2020, there will be an annual shortfall of £2 billion in funding for children’s social care services? What does that mean? It means that the reduced funding will go on crisis interventions—emergencies rather than the earlier intervention that would help. The Children’s Society has found that between 2010 and 2016 local authority early intervention funding was reduced by 40%, with a projected further reduction of 29% by 2020. The impact of these cutbacks is already coming through, with more children in need and more being referred to social services, some 52% of them for abuse or neglect.

The most common assessment is domestic violence, at just under 50%. It is a dreadful picture of so many young lives being brutally damaged and carrying the impact throughout their adult lives. The figures are horrendous. More than 500,000 youngsters in our country are so vulnerable that the state has had to intervene. Some 670,000 children in England alone are growing up right now in what are deemed to be high-risk family situations. Sadly, many more children are just not being seen—although the Children’s Commissioner, Anne Longfield, and her team tell me that they are certainly out there.

The report contains many more figures like that, but it is the individual cases, described so well by David Cohen in his series of articles published in London’s evening paper, that bring home what the daily grind and living reality are for individual children. Noble Lords taking part in this debate have great experience and expertise in this area—far more than me—and will cover different aspects, but I should like to address two of them in the time available. The first is that of children who are carers and the second is children who are homeless or living in temporary accommodation. The commissioner’s report cites an enormous figure of 171,000 children between the ages of five and 17 who are unpaid carers. What does that mean for each of those children? It means taking daily responsibility for shopping, cooking and cleaning, as well as often ensuring that the adult they are caring for both gets and takes their medicine when they should. These young people’s childhoods are slipping away.

Young Beau is an eight year-old boy living in Richmond. He has the job of looking after his seriously ill mother because the local council has not succeeded in getting an adult carer for her. Quite apart from his domestic responsibilities, what impact is that having on Beau’s life at school and his future life? Although he is only eight years of age, he is not the youngest. The Honeypot is a charity that does great work giving respite every year for 2,500 child carers between the ages of five and 12 in one of its two homes in the New Forest and Wales. It has an outreach programme visiting children in their home, yet it gets no government funding at all for its work.

The second group I want to refer to specifically is the 119,000 children who are homeless or living in temporary accommodation. An example is a little girl of eight called Hannah. She lives with her mother and younger sister. Their father, who has an alcohol problem, has left the family, but when he was drunk he sometimes returned. When he did, Hannah knew that her responsibility was to take her younger sister upstairs to the bedroom and hide under the bed. However, that did nothing to protect them from hearing the beating their mother was getting from their father downstairs. When it was over, the little girls would see their mother’s face pouring blood. This is not drama but real life for Hannah. The police were called and eventually the mother and children were told that they would have to move, so they went to a homeless refuge. That was not the end of their nightmare; in many respects, it was just the start. Hannah’s problems increased. First, she had to change school, so she lost the teacher she knew and the friends she had made. She was not allowed to give out the new address where she was living, nor could she invite any new friends she made at school home for tea.

All too often in that situation, when a child appears different to others, the bullying starts. So we have a child who has been exposed to domestic violence, at eight years of age; she has lost her home; she has had to change school in difficult circumstances and without any preparation; and now she might be bullied. That is what the commissioner’s report is bringing into the open. It is putting the issue before the decision-makers. We are part of this process: all of us have a responsibility to do what we can in our own way.

I cannot leave Hannah just yet. I am told that the maximum stay in a domestic abuse centre is six months. At the end of six months, with her mother and sister, Hannah had to leave—or more correctly, “present again as homeless”, probably to be moved to another area, another hostel, another short-stay accommodation, another school and another scarring of her childhood experience and life chances. If the family do not accept the short-stay accommodation they are offered, they have technically “made themselves homeless” and are treated as such. Is this what we are prepared to put up with in our “civilised” society? It makes me ashamed—and I suspect it makes noble Lords ashamed, too.

I put one further question for the Minister to respond to in this debate. Will he undertake to go back to the Prime Minister and urge—plead for, if necessary—increased government efforts and resources for our children where they are needed, to ensure that local authorities work with families in homeless centres while they are there to find them alternative accommodation, rather than leave the process until the end of their permitted stay?

Sadly, these human life true stories go on. Marvellous charities are doing all they can and I am not saying that local authorities are lacking in compassion. They are not; the problem is that they do not have the resources to cope—only national government does. This is a Dickensian situation in 2017 with which we must come to terms and to which we must respond in a more considered and profound way than we have done until now.

I am indebted to noble Lords who have put their names down for the debate; they are far more experienced than me and I very much look forward to their contributions. I hope that together we can make a substantial impression and have an impact on the Government to do more than they are doing at the moment. This issue affects us as a nation; it is up to us as a nation, not just as a single party, to address the appalling circumstances of so many of our nation’s children. I am sure that the House and all Members, whatever side they sit on, will agree that it is an embarrassing disgrace to our nation.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde]

I thank the Minister for that reply. He has been a Member of the House for such a short time that I must congratulate him on quickly learning the ability to sidestep questions that Members put in debates, but I think a little longer will prove that Members are also pretty experienced at making sure that that does not last and that they come back in on those issues, as I am sure we will.

One of the key questions that the Minister did not answer was in regard to ensuring that this will be given very senior attention—that of the Prime Minister herself. I asked whether the Minister would make a submission to her requesting that. Since the Minister was not able to reply in the debate, will he write to me? It was not just from me but from a number of Members of this House.

I thank all Members who took part in the debate. I have missed the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth of Breckland, dearly. She is not with us because of ill health. She has spent a lifetime working for children’s welfare, and it was a loss that she was not with us for this debate. I hope that she will be here next time we raise this issue—because it is not going to go away; the lack of assurances that the Minister was able to give us will make sure of that. I thank everyone who took part.

The Children’s Commissioner’s report is going to become an annual one, so we will be able to watch and comment rather forensically on just how well, or not, we as a nation are doing, through our Government, for the children of England who desperately need help in so many areas. In the meantime, I close by thanking everyone.

Motion agreed.

Armed Forces: Capability

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde Excerpts

Thursday 12th January 2017 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, I join with others in thanking my noble friend Lord Robertson for this debate today and for introducing such wide-ranging coverage of the issues that we face. I was not at all surprised that he included personnel in that. As the very new chairman of the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body, I was called in by the first Defence Secretary of the new Labour Government to be told that the staging of the pay award by the Tory Government that had caused so much demoralisation in the Armed Forces for several years was going to stop. Whatever the review body recommended, our Armed Forces would get—and the Labour Government honoured that agreement right the way through.

On the personnel that we have and the capability of our Armed Forces, we can have the best policies in the world, get a real 2% defence budget, make the changes and invest, but unless we have the continuation of professional Armed Forces personnel, backed and supported by their families, we will not succeed. Part of the worldwide reputation our Armed Forces have for their professionalism, talent and whatever they bring wherever they go is because we have this concordat.

The Armed Forces have their covenant, which is welcome and has been improved over the past few years, and they have the Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body, which is independent. There is a report due out shortly but I looked at its report from last year and it makes worrying reading. I looked at the previous three as well and they make incrementally worrying reading.

What do Armed Forces personnel and their families see? They—and I—see a Prime Minister who has been in office for nearly a year and has not made one major speech on international security or defence. How are they supposed to feel about that when so much of our security as a nation depends on them and their ability? Many of them see the 2% as smoke and mirrors. They do not understand why pensions should be included in defence spending. An accountant may be able to argue that but you will never convince our people, or many of us in the Chamber today, that that is spending on defence equipment and personnel. They saw last year the announcement by the Government that from 2016, for four years, the maximum pay award they will get year on year will be 1%. Our Armed Forces people are not slow off the mark; they know what is going on and in evidence to the review body they asked why that should be imposed on them when the very people who are imposing it—MPs—are getting more than 1%. Yet we expect our Armed Forces to continue to give the commitment that they have given.

The review body is independent. It has been respected by Governments across the piece. Yet in 2010, and again last year, the Treasury quite arbitrarily, without reference to the review body, cut the commitment bonuses—the commitment to go and do the job. It is in the report. It makes worrying reading indeed. Just 14% of our Armed Forces think that morale is high. If that were a company, it would be looking at itself and at what it could do to improve it. Just 36% were satisfied with their lifestyle and remuneration package. Just under half of them were dissatisfied with the impact on their partner’s career. Many partners have to put their career in abeyance when their Armed Forces partner is serving.

Paragraph 2.14 of the report was one of the most worrying aspects. The review body said:

“One of the most powerful messages … was that personnel were losing trust in their employer”—

the MoD, the Government. So I ask the Minister: do the Government intend to maintain the 1% for the next four years? If they do, do they not agree that that will affect recruitment and retention? Will the impact that the drop in the value of the pound—£1.50 the night of Brexit; £1.20 last night—will have on the MoD budget have to be met out of the MoD budget?

[Viscount Younger of Leckie]

My Lords, as I am in charge of time management, I make a further strong entreaty that remaining speeches must conclude as the clock reaches four minutes.

Higher Education and Research Bill

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 6th December 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, the UK’s university and research sector is hugely successful, nationally and internationally. That is why so many EU and international students come to the UK. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Rock, for reminding us that so many of our universities figure in the standings globally; I also thank her for mentioning Nottingham University, where I am a member of the council.

As has not been mentioned too strongly in the debate, the sector is also crucial to our economy as a whole. We are debating a Higher Education and Research Bill but it permeates through all our lives in Britain. It is about our economy, our jobs and our future as well. So if it is successful and if we are to make fundamental change, as the Bill does, I suggest that we need to be very sensitive to the unintended consequences that may arise from it. The Bill is large and many of the details will obviously be dealt with in Committee, so I will not touch on them this evening. However, there are a number of potentially substantially damaging parts of the Bill.

Autonomy, or independence as I would call it, and academic freedom have to be two cornerstones of the Bill if it is to do its intended job. For instance, the Bill currently says that the Secretary of State shall pay due attention to academic freedom; it should say that there shall be a duty on the Secretary of State to ensure and protect academic freedom. It is also important for universities, which have been working within a framework where they have proved to be so successful, to maintain their independence to appoint their governing bodies, to set their strategies and to decide their remuneration and promotion policies. It is about the way the university itself functions. Universities already work in a very competitive area; that is certainly true on the international scene. I ask myself: would Nottingham University have had a university in China for 11 years, or another in Malaysia for 15 years, if the structure intended in the Bill had been in place? I doubt it because in those days the university had the autonomy and independence to do it. It also had the accountability to go with it, which is essential.

If universities are to continue to be successful, we have to get the Bill in good shape by making some changes to it. A number of other areas concern me. We are talking about competition as though it does not exist at the moment, when it does. One concern is the ability of an institution to award degrees from the moment when it starts to function, rather than waiting to see whether it is functioning properly. These have been termed probationary degrees. Many students, and the National Union of Students, are extremely concerned about this because of the potential impact on students who may be in a failing university. That issue is linked to the Office for Students having the authority to award or take away the title of “university”. The noble Lord, Lord Renfrew, was right to refer to universities having a royal charter. You cannot just ride roughshod over that. Those are areas of concern.

I find it astonishing that a Government who talk about a country that will work for all do not have in such an important Bill any reference to part-time university degrees. The Bill has to change to include them because the world has changed. Students have to work part-time. When I was on the Dearing committee, about 50% of students were non-traditional. If this Bill is to be fit for the future for our students and to provide them with the best accommodation, and if we are to continue to attract international students—and, I hope, students from the EU—we have to make sure that the quality of their experience and the openness of university institutions to them is underpinned by the Bill and not undermined by it.

Brexit: Impact on Universities and Scientific Research

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde Excerpts

Thursday 3rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, although it is repetitive, I too thank my noble friend Lord Soley for achieving this very interesting debate. I declare my interest as a member of Nottingham University Council. There will probably be Members in the Chamber today who attended one of the 45 events that Nottingham University organised in Parliament last Tuesday.

That touches on the point made by my noble friend Lord Judd a few moments ago—how important universities are to their local communities. Nottingham has a proud record in that regard, as it does with international students coming to Nottingham and our students going abroad, particularly to the campuses the university has had for a number of years in China and Malaysia.

Last Tuesday was a clear example of just how entrepreneurial universities are in our community today. Those 45 events were organised by the university but were supported by more than 100 companies in the area, as well as by all the MPs in and around Nottingham. It was a very successful event, demonstrating clearly the important role of the university in the community.

There may be those who say that today’s debate is a case of special interest pleading because it is about universities and funding. I do not take that view. It is about us as a nation. Universities are not separate from or outside our nation; they are an integral part of it and of what we are in many respects. As we have heard today—I will not repeat the details; I have had to throw to one side all the facts that I had as they have all been given—our universities’ success depends on attracting talent and research funding. It is about getting out more than we put in in Europe, and it is about two-way collaboration—and not just with the EU and, separately, internationally. We have good international research because we also have good, successful European research. That is assisted by the 16% of academics from within Europe and the 12% of international academics from outside Europe. Together, all those issues determine success or failure. It is like a small jigsaw puzzle: they all live together; they are all interrelated; and they all contribute to the huge success of our university sector. They are all interdependent.

I think that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was trying to be helpful when he said, “Don’t worry. The research funding you lose, we will meet”. However, it is not just a matter of money; it is about culture and expanding the boundaries of the talent that we can bring together to work in the best interests not just of Britain but of the globe—it is something from which we all benefit.

This debate goes to the heart of what the United Kingdom will be after Brexit. Do we stumble into it, as one might read from this debate? Will we have self-inflicted wounds—or what some might call “vandalism”—if we do not, as a nation, deal with this issue? We are looking desperately to the Government to show leadership and to guide us. We are not looking to them to say, “We’re not going to discuss every line of our negotiations”, or, “We’re thinking about it and will come back to you”. That is not good enough. The point made about Nissan was exactly what many of us feel. My background is in industry. Although none of us knows the details, I was delighted to hear about Nissan last week. However, with all due respect to Nissan and its importance to this country, what it contributes is only a small proportion of that contributed by our university sector to the nation’s economy and sense of well-being. Some 180 countries send students to the United Kingdom. For a little island like ours, that is a huge success. It is no good repeating the mantra, “Business will help”. Business in the UK does not generate even the average amount of research funding in Europe. In that respect, our universities are second only to those in Germany. So we cannot rely on business because it is not successful in bringing in research money.

Universities are right to ask these questions. The Government have a responsibility not to keep pushing it away but to give an answer—a whole, rounded answer—to the question: what is our position on universities for the future?

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, we are about half way through this Second Reading and it has already been demonstrated why the Government were right to start the Bill in this House. If we get it right, the practical knowledge, experience and expertise around the House will help make this a Bill that will help many thousands of children. I exclude myself from that as my expertise is not in this area. Too many children in the category we are talking about never recover from their early years. In many respects, what happens to them then marks them for the rest of their lives. It is therefore a very important Bill and we have to get it right. To get it right, it needs some changes, and this is the place to do that.

The noble Lord, Lord Lang—the respected chair of the Constitution Committee, of which I am a member—made some of the points that I was going to make as a result of our work. I will raise a number of issues in the hope that the Minister is listening and some changes can be made. As the Bill leaves open some profound areas of legislation, it cannot be good enough to meet what is required.

Clause 11 provides for a Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. Will the Minister clarify whether the panel will be able to compel the submission of material that is normally legally or medically privileged and which lawyers usually cover? Will the panel have the power to obtain that information? I gather that such information is usually obtained through a court order. The Bill does not provide for such orders, so I am concerned that the matter has been left open. I would welcome some clarification from the Minister and an indication of whether the Bill can be changed.

Clause 20 gives the Secretary of State quite enormous powers to make regulations to appoint a regulator of social workers. In fact, under the Bill as currently worded, the Secretary of State could appoint himself or herself as the regulator. I cannot believe that the Government intended that. A regulator would usually be set up not by regulation but by primary legislation. Are the Government willing to look at that and amend the Bill? Clause 36 obliges the Secretary of State to carry out public consultation on these matters but the Bill does not go on to say that the regulator will be set up by primary legislation. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that too.

Clause 34 provides that social worker regulations may create offences but does not say what the offences or penalties will be. During the passage of the then Co-operative and Community Benefit Societies and Credit Unions Bill in 2009, the Constitution Committee said it was preferable for government,

“first to decide which offences and penalties it wished to provide for”,

and then to make that part of the legislation and ask Parliament to give the power to create those new offences. That is not provided for here. Clauses 22 and 23 do not provide enough detail about how a new offence will be defined, investigated and enforced. Will the Minister give us some indication of the Government’s thinking on this and how the Bill can perhaps be amended during its passage?

There are obviously concerns about the powers being given to the Secretary of State. I have covered some of those, and I hope they can all be resolved. The House will have done a good service if we resolve these concerns and pass a Bill that is of the quality that we all want to help young children who, too often, have had an awful start to life. We will have proved that it was right to start the Bill here, where so many Members have the expertise to deal with it. I hope the Minister will listen to that expertise.

Education: Contribution to Economic Growth

Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Dean of Thornton-le-Fylde (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare an interest as a member of the council of Nottingham University. We have heard two good, interesting maiden speeches, which have been a huge contribution to this wide-ranging debate.

Economic growth is fundamental to raising living standards and to social improvement. High-quality education is critical to that growth, right throughout the education years. It is crucial that those involved in each stage of education, from school to vocational training—an area in which I recognise the substantial work of the noble Lord, Lord Baker of Dorking, who has achieved far more outside Government, some may consider, than he achieved in it—and through to universities not only talk to but work with each other in the best interests of our young people. I shall touch on those stages of education in my contribution.

Innovation drives productivity improvement and growth. This is especially true for an economy such as that of the UK, where we cannot rely on moving resources from low-productivity activities such as agriculture into higher productivity activity. Universities are critical in driving innovation. They do so in at least three ways. The first is through talent development, not only through undergraduate and postgraduate education, but in executive education and CPD. Many of our successful business leaders across all sectors demonstrate that. However, too many of our citizens are missing that opportunity, either of vocational training or of academic training in universities.

The second way that universities drive innovation is through fundamental and translational research. This helps create new products, new services and new ways of doing things. At Nottingham for instance, Sir Peter Mansfield began fundamental research on MRI, which was then licensed to transform imaging and diagnosis worldwide. Nottingham has also contributed to 3D printing, food security, satellite tracking and carbon capture, all of them important to the UK’s economy both today and in the future. We need highly educated members of our community to carry through that kind of development.

The third way I have chosen to mention—there are others—is the spinning out of new companies. Again, these are developed from the cutting edge of research, not just at Nottingham but at many of our best universities. This has been a hugely successful contribution to the UK economy. This third aspect involves academia working with a wide range of companies, many of which are household names such as AstraZeneca, BAE Systems, E.ON, the Highways Agency, GSK, Rolls-Royce, Romax, Unilever and Boots, with its home in Nottingham and its close links to the founding of the university. They help bring the best of business and academia together.

The role that universities play in the growth of our economy was clearly demonstrated this week, with the Prime Minister’s welcome trade mission to China including a number of vice-chancellors, including Professor David Greenaway of Nottingham. They have gone to a part of the world that has already been covered in this debate and where there is a driving thirst for, and a commitment to, education in a way that we have perhaps not seen. However, that brings with it a downside. There is a question about the roundedness of the individual children coming through that system—their ability to solve problems and their cognitive skills. Nevertheless, that ambition is feeding through to the numbers coming through university. We see it in the China campus that Nottingham has at Ningbo and, indeed, in Malaysia. Those students are a great challenge to us and to our economy because of that thirst for education.

The economic role that universities play in their regions and in driving new technologies has been highlighted recently by the report commissioned by the Government and produced by Sir Andrew Witty, a leading businessman in this country, who is a former student and now chancellor of Nottingham University. The report makes recommendations to the Government on the need to leverage the role that universities play in the regions, in order to be more effective. In his reply, can the Minister tell us where the Government are in their thinking on responding to that report?

In addition to their economic role, universities play a crucial part in building the social capital in the communities where they are embedded, through their contributions to school improvement, healthcare and community engagement and through their involvement in local hospitals. This includes working directly with schools at primary level—it has to start at a very young age—and involves not only academics but students themselves going into those schools as role models to say to young people, “You can do it; I have done it”.

Launched in January 2011, Nottingham Potential is working to address the mismatch between relatively low local achievement, which we have in Nottingham, and progression to level 3 study. All the projects are rooted in the national curriculum, with very strong messages about aspiration and self-esteem. It starts with activities with seven year-olds and continues right through their education. In partnership with IntoUniversity, its activities take students into schools as role models. It holds events on the university campus and aims to make youngsters think that university can be for them and that getting there is achievable. It aims to lift their confidence and horizons and, as has been mentioned, the horizons of their families. So much of this goes back to the home. The local link between the wider community and universities is important to both parties and to our future as well. It is important in breaking down the social barriers which still substantially exist in young people thinking of going to university.

A debate about the role of universities and economic growth would not be complete if we did not recognise the importance of our higher education sector as an exporter and as a contributor to soft power. It is one of the most successful parts of the UK economy in terms of overseas trade, bringing in students and fees from around the world—something like £7.9 billion in 2009. In addition, there is this soft power: the impact of having so many international students learning for their degrees and then going back to their countries. Quite a number of them end up as leaders in their own countries and still carry affection for their alma mater, which benefits the UK in the long term.

I thank my noble friend Lady Morgan for listing and obtaining this debate, and I compliment her on the content and breadth of her opening address and the very thought-provoking statistics that she gave us.