Queen’s Speech

Baroness Jolly Excerpts

Wednesday 12th May 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jolly (LD)]

My Lords, I join others in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Blake of Leeds, and the noble Lord, Lord Lebedev, on their maiden speeches. I will miss the wise words of the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Portsmouth.

We must prevent injuries in the home. The Grenfell Tower tragedy should be a watershed moment that makes us reconsider the adequacy of existing standards for the safety of all homes—not just from fire but from any injury due to flaws in building design. We know that people have been spending more time at home because of Covid, and it is expected that increased home-working will be a long-term trend. This is the moment to focus on home safety, and, given that for every single fire-related hospital admission there are 235 from falls on stairs, it is essential that stair design is included in this.

In the homebuilding industry, it has been clear for some time that stair safety is a serious issue. In 2010, an evidence-based, robustly tested code of practice for safe stairs was introduced. These stairs can be easily incorporated into new-build housing and have a huge impact. On stairs that are designed to the British standard, falls decrease by over 60%, significantly reducing admissions to A&E—so why would we not take this simple action? There is a respected evidence base and an outcome that is preferable to the status quo, so I shall table an amendment to the building safety Bill to see if we can move this on.

I would like 2021 to be the year when the Government get serious about carers, who were sadly omitted from the gracious Speech—I refer both to those unpaid carers who care for family and friends and to those who are paid for their work. Without England’s millions of paid and unpaid carers, our health and social care systems would have collapsed in the last year under the impact of Covid. A light has been shone on the importance of their work. In the first Covid lockdown, you may remember that, on Thursday evenings, we applauded the efforts of carers, NHS workers and others.

In my own area, the south-west, there are 168,000 jobs in adult social care: 145,000 of them are in the local authorities, and the remainder are in the independent sector. It will not surprise noble Lords that these are not paid very well. England’s local authorities pay more than the independent sector by just under £2 an hour. Some 17% of these jobs are zero-hours contracts, and the turnover rate is just over 35%. By contrast, in Scotland, care workers get at least the living wage, of £9.50. Again, in Scotland, free personal care has been available to those over 65 since 2002, which can include help with personal hygiene, at mealtimes, with medicine and with general well-being. It is regulated by the Scottish Social Services Council. COSLA, which is the Scottish equivalent of the LGA, has agreed to pay care workers at least the real living wage of £9.50 an hour.

Most care workers are not unionised, and, in England, they are not even regulated. Their Welsh and Scottish colleagues have a regulating body: the Care Council for Wales and the Scottish Social Services Council. A review is long overdue for care workers in England, but support for unpaid carers must not be forgotten. I would be grateful if the Minister could indicate if this could be included in the health and social care Bill.

The Prime Minister promised to sort out the care system “once and for all”. The noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean, has described the position that we are in as a “national scandal”, and a Select Committee that he chaired determined that to provide free social care to those who are eligible would save enormous pressures on the NHS and would effectively pay for itself. As such, I hope that, when we have sight of the forthcoming health and social care Bill, provision for all carers and free care for all those who are eligible will be there—but somehow I doubt it.

Education (Guidance about Costs of School Uniforms) Bill

Baroness Jolly Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 19th March 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jolly (LD) [V]]

My Lords, this must be the shortest Bill that I have debated—yet it is really welcome and should help large families and those on lower incomes. Like other noble Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, for bringing it to this House.

When I started primary school, over 60 years ago, none of us wore a uniform; it was not until we went to secondary school that we wore a basic grey skirt and a white shirt with a tie. At 11, I was proud of it, and, by the time I left, I was fairly rebellious. As my noble friend Lady Garden of Frognal has said, there is no discussion of what to put on in the morning and no comparison of who is wearing what.

A generation later, when our son went to the local village school—it was a village with quite a high level of poverty—not everyone wore the simple uniform; it was not an issue and that was just the way it was. The school to which he moved a few years later had a uniform —it is the same now as it was then: dark trousers or skirt and white polo shirt with printed motif, and a scarlet-red sweatshirt with the same motif as the shirt. Branded items are sold by the school to cover the cost, and governance of the arrangements is monitored by the school governing body. The overprinted garments are sold to cover the costs. As the noble Baroness, Lady Wheatcroft, said, neutral trousers or skirts are available at many superstores locally or from mail order outlets. Schools can use their discretion to assist families where appropriate.

The Bill would require the Government to publish legally binding guidance requiring school authorities to consider costs when setting school uniform policies. This is to be welcomed, but I wonder whether the Minister could clarify a couple of points. How is adherence to this to be checked? Would it be part of an Ofsted inspection or some annual return? Does the Children’s Commissioner have a view about the Bill? In 2015, the Department for Education made a commitment to make the guidance statutory. Why have we waited six years for it to be implemented?

The Bill is in response to concerns about the high cost of school uniforms. It was introduced as a Private Member’s Bill in the Commons. It meets a well-documented and acknowledged need. I am sure that it will have a more certain future than many Private Members’ Bills that get a Friday hearing in this place. Can the Minister confirm that issues such as branded items, sole-supplier arrangements and the availability of second-hand uniform will be covered in the guidance?

This little Bill deserves a Committee and Third Reading. Like the noble Lord, Lord Randall of Uxbridge, I hope that it will soon be on the statute book.

International Women’s Day

Baroness Jolly Excerpts

Thursday 11th March 2021 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jolly (LD) [V]]

I have a confession to make: until I came to this place I had never heard of International Women’s Day, but I am now happy to celebrate it each year none the less. Our decisions are based on our experiences, and I want to discuss this issue from a personal perspective. I went to a girls’ grammar school in the Midlands, where most of my teachers were women. I did A-levels in maths and physics and wanted to be an engineer. My teachers were hugely supportive, and it was only last year that I learned that many of them were at Bletchley Park. I was the first in our family to go to university.

After my degree I decided to get a job in engineering, but with a new mortgage there were only so many times I could take, “We do not employ women”, so I trained to teach maths and the new subject of the time, computer studies. After children and a move to Cornwall, I was appointed as a non-executive director of an NHS trust, and I never looked back. I was empowered in one teaching job by a head teacher, a man, who accepted without question my recommendation that we bought 15 mini-computers, which was a huge chunk of his budget at that time, and by another head teacher, a woman, who regularly posted in my pigeon hole ads that she had cut out of the Times Educational Supplement, which was her way of ensuring that we looked to move on. These were all the nudges I needed as a self-starter, and several jobs in the not-for-profit sector later I find myself here.

So how do we best support those who need more than a nudge? I am a great believer in networks, formal and informal. Inviting a young woman where you work to a networking meeting could be all she needs to give herself confidence. With envy, I watch my children, who, thanks to social and professional online networks, have worldwide contacts. Since Covid, as I am briefed via meetings by hugely bright up-and-coming female civil servants sitting in their homes with a laptop on a table, I wonder how I could have coped juggling a job and home-teaching in lockdown. I hope that they keep their contacts as they move from job to job. LinkedIn and similar databases have really taken off in the pandemic, and I know that many young women have found work just that way.

What have we learned from the epidemic about empowering women? What could we do better in the future? We could accommodate flexible working and working from home. We could promote online and in-person networks. We could give start-up grants to female online business and work networks. We could put more women in the boardroom. We need to look at examples from elsewhere—who does it better? We could give young women who are jobseeking a mentor and pay them the same as men doing the same job.

What makes a woman come across as empowered? A sense of self-confidence; holding her own in any situation or in front of any audience; knowing what she is about and what she wants, and doing what she can to achieve it; being approachable and personable; having a presence. We all know that she probably did not get there on her own—behind her was a mentor or two who pointed her in the right direction. I know I valued those who pointed me there, shared a few home truths and watched from afar. I try to do for others what they did for me.

Schools: Online Learning

Baroness Jolly Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, at a time when supply was massively disrupted, for the department’s commercial team to procure this number of laptops was actually quite a feat, in this climate where everyone wants a laptop. Some 350,000 were delivered in January alone. Yes, schools have been using additional resources to purchase laptops as well, which they can do from their Covid catch-up money.

[Baroness Jolly (LD) [V]]

My Lords, for those with the capacity, parental support and infrastructure, online learning is great, typically at home. What technical support will be available for families who struggle? Is there a standardised support offer, or does it vary from school to school and from pupil to pupil?

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, the temporary continuity direction makes clear to parents the number of hours a day that should be delivered by their school. However, we recognise that it is not just about devices, as the noble Baroness outlines; it is parental supervision of the education that is important. If a school is aware that for whatever reason, a child is struggling to engage with their education, it has the discretion and the guidance to classify the child as vulnerable and accept them back into the school setting. It is schools’ professional judgment that we trust.