Child Maintenance Service
Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts(3 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, I am pleased that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, is continuing his efforts to find information on and a resolution to the issue of child maintenance, and I thank him for his comprehensive introduction. It is always a great pleasure to hear the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, share his knowledge and experience, and I thank him too.
This is a vital issue affecting thousands of children and blighting some family relationships. Parental tensions, for whatever reason, affect a child’s stability and mental health. Unclear or unfair systems of support for families cause such tension. We need to ensure child-friendly arrangements for child maintenance. As the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states, the welfare of the child is paramount.
In 2019, the Social Security Advisory Committee published a report examining separated parents and the child maintenance system. It raised concerns about the formula used to calculate child maintenance. For example, the formula did not reflect the true cost of raising a child—regional variations or the age of the child are implied—and not reflecting the household earnings of the receiving parent. A paying parent may be on a low income and struggle with costs and a receiving parent may have partnered with someone on a higher income. The reduction in payments for overnight stays with the receiving parent may create perverse incentives. Maintenance payments are reduced if the paying parent has their child stay overnight but are not enough to cover the fixed costs of looking after children, including needing a spare bedroom.
I understand that the National Audit Office is carrying out a consultation to examine whether the child maintenance system is
“delivering value for money for children, separated parents and the taxpayer.”
What is the progress on this?
I have just completed a report for the Council of Europe on the impact of Covid-19 on children’s rights. I interviewed a number of people—professionals, politicians and children—to inform my concerns. There was a general consensus that family tensions could result, in the extreme, in violence against children, domestic abuse and harm to child mental health. Child poverty was one cause. All countries, of course, have different attempts to combat poverty and other family difficulties. Our situation in the UK seems particularly complex. A contributing factor to family difficulties could be arrangements for child maintenance, and it is important to get them right.
I hope that in this debate, we shall receive more information about the impact of government reforms in creating the Child Maintenance Service: for example, the charging for both parents and the notion of pushing parents to make private arrangements rather than use the CMS at all. I wonder how many parents are making private arrangements. It seems that there is no responsibility for collecting child support money unless the parents have tried a direct payment arrangement and it has failed. So what next? What do the statistics say? I realise that more are due very soon. When will we see a dynamic development plan from the DWP? Perhaps the Minister can comment.
The CMS has many problems. I will name a few and will be interested to know what the ways of dealing with this could be. First, the collect-and-pay service charges a large fee to administer payments between parents, yet evidence shows that missed payments are spiralling into millions of pounds. What can be done to prevent this?
We know that many single parents are struggling, and this has become more intense during the pandemic, Many are in severe financial difficulties. How will the department address this?
How many staff were redeployed at the beginning of the pandemic from their CMS roles? What has happened to those staff?
How is enforcement action being carried out? Are video interviews in place? If so, what is the reaction from parents? A quarter of paying parents are not paying towards their liabilities. What action is being taken to redress this?
What is the most recent estimate of current arrears owed from missed payments during the Covid crisis, and what plans will be put in place to resume reinforcements, and how? Is there a timeline for when paying parents will be reimbursed?
How will the DWP deal with staff shortages? I believe that there are now reduced assessment periods for parents. How will this affect changes in earnings, especially given the risks of unemployment, such as during Covid?
It is essential that the statutory child support body is properly funded and functioning well. Is the Minister confident that the problems I have mentioned can be resolved to the benefit of parents and children? I very much look forward to hearing her response.
Supporting Disadvantaged Families
Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts(4 years ago)
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Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
At the risk of repeating myself, the issue that the noble Baroness raises about the £20 uplift has been raised many times, and we undertake to come back to Parliament to advise on the outcome of discussions with the Treasury. On praising the work of local organisations, I have already given an absolute endorsement to faith groups—the Church of England, Jewish communities, the Salvation Army—and many other charities that I wish I could mention by name. We have seen some fantastic provision in the last three years and we want to take that learning experience into the future delivery of holiday activities and food programmes.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab) [V]
My Lords, I of course welcome the positive aspect of the Statement, but it feels to me that the Government have reacted to crisis under pressure from local government, the voluntary sector and dynamic individuals. A new report from the Local Government Association, A Child-centred Recovery, points out that children have been disproportionately impacted by the Covid crisis. The report calls for a
“cross-Whitehall strategy that puts children and young people at the heart of recovery”.
It seems blindingly clear that a cross-departmental strategy for children should be an urgent priority. Will the Minister take this forward?
Baroness Stedman-Scott (Con)
I am pleased to tell the noble Baroness that there is already a forward-looking approach that is long-term and cross-departmental, with DWP working closely with the DfE and Defra to target support to those in need. The Secretary of State set out in the other place her desire to ensure that every child has the chance to realise their full potential, and the long-term thinking in this support package will help to achieve this far more than piecemeal reform. I ask the noble Baroness to write to me if there are particular things that she would like included; I am quite prepared to make those available to the department.
Universal Credit and Child Tax Credit: Two-child Limit
Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Buscombe
My noble friend makes a good point. Although our welfare reforms—and, in particular, universal credit—are already transforming lives to lift children out of poverty and support parents into work, child development and family stability depend on so much more than financial stability and benefit payments alone. That is why the Government are, for example, helping local authorities across England train front-line practitioners to identify relationship distress, provide appropriate support and refer as appropriate.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, as the Minister said, co-ordination across government is important. The Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health suggested that having a strategy for children and young people’s health across the board would help improve effectiveness and co-ordination. Do the Government agree and what will they do about it?
Baroness Buscombe
There is no doubt that a cross-governmental strategy is incredibly important, and that is why we are working across government with our colleagues in the Department of Health and the Department for Education. We of course want to see child poverty fall and child development improve, and we remain determined to tackle this. We will look at what more can be done to help the most vulnerable and improve their life chances by tackling the root causes of poverty, ensuring that children have the best possible start in life.
Family Relationships (Impact Assessment and Targets) Bill [HL]
Baroness Massey of Darwen ExcerptsFriday 23rd February 2018
(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, and I thank him for introducing the Bill so cogently. Noble Lords may be encouraged to know that I shall not be looking at the impact of Brexit on families: I think we deserve a little Brexit relief after this week.
Families in the UK have changed significantly from when I was growing up. We are now a society with different faiths and cultures and different views on family relationships. We have more single-parent families, we have same-sex partnerships, we have more formal childcare, and so on. Families are what they are, and some families need support in their relationships.
The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, described well the thrust of the Bill, so I shall not repeat that. Of course, these issues have been debated before, notably in another place on 8 February. We have a manifesto for families, with recommendations that every government department should have a Minister responsible for families. Local authorities are called upon to set up family hubs to support families. I agree that families are at the core of communities and society. Getting it wrong for families is not only costly but painful—especially, I suggest, for children.
As the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, said, and I repeat, policymakers do not habitually consider in a systematic way how policies support family relationships. We should remember that individuals, with all their individual needs, make up families. I wish that we would concentrate more on what factors make things go right for families and people, rather than just carrying on about what is going wrong. I wish that we shared insights into what goes right with families.
Families have been high on the political agenda for many years, and rightly so. Issues such as parental leave, laws to protect children and victims of domestic violence, support for disability in families and the teaching of relationships in schools have all emerged. Trying to improve people’s lives, especially children’s lives, is not only admirable but makes economic sense—as the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, said.
I turn to the Bill, which suggests that we need to look at the impact of policies on families. I agree, but how do we do this without having a reverse effect or no effect at all? Let me briefly relate two anecdotes from my experience which taught me a lot about assessment.
I was once part of a project which looked at child impact assessment on a limited number of Bills in Parliament. Ideally, looking at the potential impact of policy is important before the impact is felt. I also suggest that it is important to include in planning assessments those on whom the impact will fall, such as children and families.
An example might be designing a family-friendly transport system. Any mother, father or grandparent—or anybody else—trying to balance two children, a pushchair and shopping knows how unfriendly transport can be, in both frequency of service and facilities. In the impact assessment project, we quickly realised that a Bill without the word “child” might still profoundly affect children. It is the same with families. Almost any policy from any policymaker in any field will affect families in practice.
The lesson here was about the need for early consultation before designing any intervention for children and families, and the need for agencies to collaborate to effect change. All of that is relevant to the Bill.
Another experience was when I served as an advisory teacher across London schools. I, and others in the same role, went into schools, usually at their request, to examine programmes of health education, offer training to teachers and deliver more effective programmes. It worked. When the role became more inspectorial, ticking boxes to say that such and such was or was not being delivered, it all fell apart.
Entities such as schools and families grow and develop from within, with support and encouragement from outside. We cannot simply judge them. People know that they are being judged and often act in ways contrary to what is intended. Families often need support, not just assessment and data. Many projects I know consult and involve families and communities thoroughly.
At the heart of all laws, policies and practice must surely be early intervention. It has often been said that most young people will become parents. They may or may not marry. What we do know is that the breakdown of relationships is common. Children can be encouraged to develop good relationships from an early age. Most, thankfully, learn this at home. Sadly, some do not and, unless there is intervention, they will continue a cycle of being ill-equipped to pass on those skills to their children. There is much excellent practice in schools, where good relationships between children and children and staff and children are encouraged and an ethos is developed in which consideration for others is paramount.
We probably all agree on what a good, functioning family might be. It begins with the parents and, usually to a lesser extent, other members of the family. Those parents have a right to be taught the skills of good parenting, inside and outside school. Most are not: most rely on instinct and example. I suggest therefore that Clause 2(b) on family formation should include the word “education”.
It is a good idea to have someone responsible within a department who has oversight of family welfare; it is also important that local authorities, which know their populations best, are enabled to do a good job. Sadly, cuts in services have affected this ability. I wonder how serious the Government are about supporting families when there are unacceptable levels of family poverty and unacceptable cuts to local services such as Sure Start, library services and recreational services. Families grow because they do things together and can afford it. The other government flagship, social mobility, is not going to happen without strong and stable families that support and encourage young people to aspire. We know that unemployment can create generations of unemployment, sometimes in very specific deprived geographical areas of the country.
I was interested in the troubled families programme, which, in phase 2, had 60 outcomes across, for example, crime, education, employment, health, domestic abuse and child safeguarding. That is all very well; these issues tear families, communities and society apart. I note that comparisons were to be made between councils, as they should be—but, on a positive note, I feel that comparisons should be about sharing good practice and not just making comparisons.
In October 2014, the Department for Work and Pensions published guidance for government departments on the family test, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, which assesses the impact on the family of every single domestic policy. But I have the impression—and I get the feeling that the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, shares it—that, despite good intentions, this task is super-complex, with nobody really pulling the whole thing together. How are the Government going to make family policies transparent to decision-makers, families and the public, and how will family policy be made a genuine concern across all departments and at a local level? What are the implications of this initiative for budgets at national and local level?
I admire the dedication shown by the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, to improving family relationships. The Bill is an honest attempt to do just that. I would like to further discuss some of the issues, such as the role of assessment, with him and others.
Poverty
Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts(7 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Buscombe
I thank the noble Lord very much for his question. I entirely agree that the focus must be on prevention. We strongly believe that it was right to replace the income-related child poverty targets, which we had until 2010, with statutory measures of parental worklessness and children’s educational attainment—the areas that can make the biggest difference to children’s outcomes. We believe that the way to help people out of poverty is through employment. A great deal of progress has been made and employment is now at a record high level. However, although record levels of employment are great, one in eight children across the UK still lives in a workless family, and we need to tackle that. A prevention unit is a great idea but the reality is that we can perform that function by working across government, as we are doing, on the strategy that we have now developed within Work and Pensions.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, the noble Baroness will know that the evidence on social mobility and what makes social mobility work is now very strong. Two of the factors are excellent childcare and excellent early years education. Why, then, do the Government not accept that and put more money into that kind of early intervention for children?
Baroness Buscombe
My Lords, we are working on our strategy for childcare because we understand that, if we are to have people in work, we have to have the right system in place supporting childcare that works for everyone. I know that colleagues across government are looking at this at the moment, improving on the support for young families that we already have. The reality is that we want to focus on prevention through getting more people into work, because we know that that increases people’s confidence and their health and well-being, and all that impacts on the child and their future levels of attainment and well-being.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, I crave three minutes to support the spirit of the amendments in this group, which recognise that progress and life chances for children depend on their physical, social, emotional and cognitive development and on other influences too. I support the view of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, that a government strategy for children should be drawn up, tracking development from birth to adulthood. As he said, we have the means to do that through government departments such as education, health and welfare working together, with help from the voluntary sector and local authorities. I remember that many years ago the noble Baroness, Lady Williams of Crosby—possibly when she was Secretary of State for Education—spoke about having level playing fields for children. She said that some children begin the race with both feet tied together. Sadly, this is still the case. Feet are tied together through poverty, deprivation, low expectation and lack of care and stimulation in the early years. We know that the gap in attainment between poor children and more affluent ones is large by the age of five and continues to grow. We have recently had strong evidence from research that a holistic approach is necessary and I support the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, in his concerns.
Baroness Meacher (CB)
My Lords, I will speak very briefly to Amendment 34, tabled so comprehensively by my noble friend Lord Ramsbotham. This amendment is of particular importance in view of the enormity of the cuts to welfare spending since the passing of the Child Poverty Act 2010. The Institute for Fiscal Studies reports that this will amount to £123 billion taken from our poorest citizens by 2016-17. The second feature of government policy the effects of which need to be monitored effectively—and would be under Amendment 34—is the conditionality and sanctions regime which undoubtedly increases the stress level of claimants very considerably.
As a panel member, along with Sir Keir Starmer and others, for an inquiry by the Fawcett Society into the impact of the Government’s welfare measures upon women, and by association their children, I found quite appalling the sheer level of errors and abuse in some Jobcentre Plus offices, affecting innocent women who only wanted, if at all possible, to gain their independence from the state. Our inquiry concluded that sanctions applied through no fault of the claimant were affecting claimants’ mental and physical health and the health and well-being of their children to a considerable degree. The Government have a duty to be aware of the consequences of their policies and to respond to the adverse effects.
I am aware that the Minister believes that injustices are limited in number, and that his department is doing its best to lessen them further. However, the inquiry made it clear to us that in fact the quality of service across the country varies very considerably. In some offices the staff were helpful and professional, and claimants certainly reported that. However, in others they were inadequately trained and could be callous and careless, with the most appalling consequences for the families affected. A typical example were mothers who, contrary to the guidelines, were required to travel three hours a day in total to and from work. They could not afford this and believed—rightly, in my opinion—that it was entirely wrong for their very young children to be in childcare for 10, 11 or more hours per day. Despite this entirely unreasonable requirement, such parents were sanctioned and then could not even feed their children. This was not an isolated problem but rather a regular occurrence in offices up and down the country.
Another often repeated story was that of a mother phoning the office to say that she could not attend an interview or required activity due to the sickness of a child, and was told that this information would, indeed, be passed on to the appropriate official. Of course, nothing was done. The mother would arrive at the post office to pick up her benefit only to find that there was nothing there. A sanction had been imposed with no information given to her. I cannot imagine the shock and utter distress of a mother in that situation. I believe that the Government may have adjusted the sanctions regime to ameliorate that problem and to make sure there is a gap between the imposition of a sanction and it taking place. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify the position this evening.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation produced a comprehensive review of international evidence on sanctions within systems in which benefits are conditional on claimant behaviour. It confirmed that sanctions strongly reduce benefit use and increase exit from benefits. However, Rowntree also finds that sanctions are generally less favourable in terms of longer-term outcomes, the well-being of children and crime rates, for example.
Every sanction which is unfairly imposed will cause extreme stress to parents, who suddenly find that they have no food for the children and no money even for the bus fare to reach a food bank, and have more debt and so forth. It should be a matter of great concern to the Government that 28% of sanctions are overturned on appeal and a higher percentage—39%—in the case of lone parents. Successful appeals soar for high-level sanctions. Fully 64% of single parents have high-level sanctions overturned on appeal. These must be just numbers to many of us but the Government have a responsibility in my view to report on the mental and physical health effects of the extraordinary hardship behind those numbers. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Welfare Reform and Work Bill
Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Kirkwood of Kirkhope (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Drake. The House owes her a debt because of the exemplary work that she has done over many months and years on the subject of kinship caring. Her speech will repay careful study, and I shall look forward to doing that when the Official Report is printed.
This is going to be a harder Committee stage in social security terms than some that we have had in the past. This is basically a Bill that reduces money but does little else of interest. However, it is a very important one. I noticed that the very mild-mannered noble Lord, Lord McKenzie of Luton, characterised it as the most wretched Bill that he had ever seen in his life. That is a considered view from a moderate man, so we need to be careful about how we take our proceedings forward.
The Bill dramatically changes the money and resources available to the social security system. I am sure that everyone understands that there is a case in periods of austerity for making special arrangements to deal with immediate and urgent circumstances. However, we need to be careful that we are not making changes that, as if by magic, get woven into the social security fabric in perpetuity. What I am most worried about—this is really a discussion for clause stand part on Clauses 11 and 12—is that the two-child limit is going into universal credit. That is a matter of great concern to me. I say in passing that the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, was contrite earlier about having been too nice to the Government. Indeed he was, but I am pleased that he has put the record straight.
The department has certainly done a very good job, because the universal credit situation could have been a whole lot worse, which would have overshadowed all these proceedings in Committee. The way we contrive to support people is important, particularly those with larger families; it is mainly ethnic minority communities which have that culture, which we know predisposes them to risk of poverty, and we need to take that into account along with everything else as we go forward.
The Minister needs to listen carefully to the case for exemptions. The Committee will be faced, certainly at the later stages of proceedings on the Bill, with deciding to what extent what the Government are trying to do is reasonable in the long term as well as in the short term. As far as I am concerned—I put it bluntly on the record and cannot make it any clearer than this—I am willing to work with the Government to mitigate some of the sharp edges of the Bill as regards the savings that they hope to make. If the Government are willing to make concessions and think carefully, which the Minister in the past has demonstrated he can successfully do, and if he is willing to go away and look at some of these exemptions we are talking about today, I would be much more disposed to decline to support attempts on the Marshalled List to vote against Clauses 11 and 12 standing part. I will approach the Bill in that way. I will not be unreasonable; I perfectly well understand the financial exigencies that we must face and the continuous battle the department has with the Treasury—it would be unrealistic not to accept that. However, the onus is on the department to look at ways of mitigating some of the changes in the Bill, because it needs to be changed.
I said at Second Reading that I wanted to pursue preventive spending. After the cases that have been made, by the right reverend Prelate and others, I find it hard to believe that a saving of £30 million would not risk a much greater public cost in other silos within Treasury spend across central government as a whole. Therefore the question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock, on whether the Government have done any work about what it would cost if we reduced the support to kinship carers in this way is important.
The situation we face as a Committee will be difficult to reconcile unless the Government are able to answer some of these questions, certainly about spending money and investing to save in future. I certainly hope that the Government will think very carefully about some of the powerful speeches that have been made, in particular on kinship carers.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, I will say a few words about kinship care. I remember the Minister speaking twice on this topic at previous Committee stages. I think that he knows the issues and is sympathetic to them—he certainly was the last time we met to discuss the issue of kinship carers. My noble friend Lady Armstrong has tabled a debate on this topic tomorrow, when I shall say much more, but this issue of adding complexity to the lives of kinship carers is important. Kinship carers deserve all the help they can get not to be landed with some other complex issue of how many children they can care for.
I recall being chair of the National Treatment Agency some years ago, where I came across quite a few grandparents who were carers—I think grandparents make up some 40% of kinship carers. The grandparents called themselves the midnight grannies, because they were often landed with children. But I am talking about complexity because they do not have the support they need. I met people who were getting no support—neither advice nor financial support from the local authority; it seemed to me to be hit or miss as to how local authorities behaved. Some grandparents had court battles about the children they were caring for. These are people in distress, as are the children. The grandparents have lost a daughter or son—they may be in prison, be dead or be using drugs and alcohol—and the children have lost their parents. So there is a lot of distress in the family, and yet these kinship carers are coping with that. One of them said to me, “I’m tired of filling in these forms when I should be reading to my grandson”. That is how it works: they have to fill in forms and go to court, rather than being able to spend time caring for the children as they would want to.
It is a complex issue and I think that we ought to be aware of that—I am sure the Minister is aware of that. Therefore, we do not want to heap complexity on these people who, after all, save the state a huge amount of money a year for each child they care for.
Children: Sport
Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Baroness Massey of Darwen
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to encourage children from the inner cities to take up sports.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, may I first ask permission from the Committee to remain seated while I introduce this debate? I am suffering not, as it might have been formerly, from a bash on the head from a hockey or cricket ball but from an unforgiving pavement in New York.
I am pleased to have secured this debate and I thank those noble Lords who are taking part, some of them former, and possibly currently, outstanding sportsmen and women, for sharing their expertise and, no doubt, their concerns that the UK must maintain a vigorous approach to fostering young people’s participation in sport.
First, let me say that I do not define sport as simply competitive sport, although that is important. Sport is also about health-related fitness, which may include walking, cycling, gym work, swimming, dance, yoga, pilates and so on. Secondly, I do not wish to confine my remarks and concerns to school sport, although I do have concerns about that. Sporting chances in the inner city may be provided by outreach from clubs who play rugby and soccer, for example, and in communities where dedicated parents and other adults encourage young people to do sport. There is good evidence that an active lifestyle can improve academic performance and health, and that working in a group or team can foster co-operative learning and endeavour. There is also good evidence that taking part in sport can help to cut down crime and fight negative, anti-social behaviour.
However, I begin with school sport, which is where many children begin to take part in sports, particularly those from the inner cities. To have opportunities to deliver sports programmes there must be a structure, particularly in the inner cities. Will this Government restore fully the school sports partnerships structure? I am aware that David Cameron has promised £150 million to cover all of England’s 17,000 primary schools, which is about £8,823 a year each. Why was this money not used to guarantee the school sports partnerships, which worked so well at a cost of £162 million a year? Those partnerships were developed under a Labour Government to rebuild sport in state schools. That £162 million funded specialist schools sport co-ordinators for two days a week and there were 450 such partnerships, reaching across all schools. The results were that, in 2009-10, more than 90% of pupils had two hours of PE a week and that 78% took part in competitive sport.
Ofsted noted that:
“Evidence … is that these partnerships had left a notable legacy in the vast majority of secondary schools and their feeder primary schools over the last four years”.
There were protests at these cuts from teachers, sports professionals and the Youth Sport Trust and there was a partial restoration of funding, with £32.5 million for each partnership for three years to support reduced school sports partnerships, but that money was not ring-fenced and half the partnerships closed. The school sport survey was also abolished but the cricket project, Chance to Shine, more about which in a minute, carried out its own survey and found that 54% of parents said that their children were doing less than two hours of organised activity in school per week—an extraordinary decline.
Without a national strategy with links to communities, health boards and the media, I fear that inner-city sport will be at risk for schools and their children. Not only will we be deprived of possible star sportsmen and women, but young people’s health and well-being will suffer. What is the Government’s strategy for young people and sport? Of course, there are initiatives. One of my favourites for many years has been the English cricket board’s Chance to Shine. I should declare an interest as a Lady Taverner, like my friend across the Room, the noble Baroness, Lady Heyhoe Flint, who, I hope, will build on what I have to say. Chance to Shine works in a strategic way with all 39 county cricket boards to deliver coaching to boys and girls in inner-city schools, not on vast playing fields but in school playgrounds and halls. In 2005, fewer than 10% of state schools played any form of cricket. Since then, Chance to Shine’s initial target of reaching 2 million children in 6,500 schools has been achieved. That is extraordinary. The programme has had structure, dedicated staff and evaluation effectiveness. As I have said already, structure and knowing what works is vital.
Chance to Shine has extended its inner-city StreetChance programme, funded by Sport England, to enable 11,000 16 to 24 year-olds in deprived areas to take part in weekly community cricket over the next three years. That includes the project Girls on the Front Foot, to empower girls through cricket. It is important that, in addition to cricket, Chance to Shine workshops also discuss with young people the dangers of gangs, gun and knife crime and drug and alcohol abuse. Fifty-four per cent of participants say that their attitude towards the police has changed for the better; and 64% say that the project helped them to avoid getting involved in local gangs. That is sport influencing and empowering behaviour in a dramatic way.
Let me mention one or two other initiatives. Noble Lords may recently have seen news of the Ebony Horse Club in Brixton in south London, opened in 2011 by the Duchess of Cornwall. The Duchess and the Queen visited very recently to review progress and unveil a plaque. The club provides a community riding club for 160 inner-city children a week, including those with special needs and disabilities. It offers, as well as access to working with horses, mentoring for children with challenges at home and school. It has nine horses, a paddock and classroom facilities for horse care classes and group work. Again, that is an example of sport going beyond the aim of fitness. The programme enthuses and empowers young people to think outside their lives and to work collaboratively.
Sport England’s Get on Track supports marginalised young people between the ages of 16 and 25 through a wide-ranging tailored sport and personal development programme. Exciting opportunities are delivered by the Youth Sport Trust’s Change4Life, based on the skills developed in a range of Olympic and Paralympic sports, encouraging young people to take part in physical activity. In Birmingham, Sport4Life UK aims to involve the most disadvantaged children not only in sport but in volunteering, education and personal development, and encourages older young people to get back into education, employment or training.
In Camden, a fencing club opened as a community youth project to offer lessons to young people aged between seven and 17. It is based in a school, Acland Burghley, using the sports hall and gymnasium and opens five nights a week. The club also offers fencing classes in primary schools in the London Borough of Camden.
I have given a few examples of sporting initiatives which work with young people, many of whom are disadvantaged and from inner cities. That is invigorating and exciting. The children who get involved are very lucky, but a youth sports strategy should not depend on luck. Again, I ask: when will the Government provide us with a coherent strategy for youth sport? A strategy which is funded, cohesive, visible and dynamic would benefit all our young people, encourage the take-up of sport and encourage the playing of sport to be lifelong, in the inner cities and elsewhere.
Atheists and Humanists: Contribution to Society
Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I am delighted that my noble friend Lord Harrison has secured this debate, which is proving to be very challenging, and I thank him for his vigorous introduction.
I shall not dwell on the growth of humanism or its many contributions to democracy and civil society—blasphemy laws, humanist weddings and other secular celebrations, educational equality and so on—nor shall I list prominent humanists and their wise or witty sayings. There are too many of them. I shall look briefly at how humanist thought has contributed to making the world a better place—all in seven minutes.
First, I will reflect on why I became a humanist. I think it was, subconsciously, when I was at school, although I was not aware then, or indeed for many years, of the term “humanism”. I studied religious education at A-level and was thrilled by the language of the Bible—Old and New Testaments—and moved by stories of self-sacrifice, pride, humility, friendship, human strength and frailty. I studied other religions as well and began to question why so many of their histories included wars, revenge, killings, verbal attacks, prejudice and bigotry, all in the name of religious faith. Others have raised this already. Of course, I have since met many people of religious faith, including in your Lordships’ House, who consistently condemn violence and preach tolerance and equality and the need to work together as human beings for a just and fair society.
During my later days at school, I began to think that I had formulated, however imperfectly, a personal code—a secular morality, if you like—which came not from a single god or gods but from curiosity about the human condition, how we function in a problematic world without being constantly shaken by hostile events and how we need the support of other human beings in our struggle to express ourselves and behave with grace and honour. It is a core of respect or appreciation for self and others. It is a belief in humanity—the knowledge that when things go wrong, someone of good will can offer support.
I also studied English and had the joy of coming across EM Forster. Passage to India was one of the set books—were we not lucky? It is not only a novel about the struggle for tolerance; it is thoughtful, provocative, humorous and full of characters struggling to find their place in the world—except perhaps the wise and profound Mrs Moore. I read EM Forster avidly and over and over. It did not register with me at the time that he was a prominent humanist and vice-president of the Union of Ethical Societies. I was simply captivated by the beautiful prose and the themes; for example, class differences in Howards End, which is prefaced by the phrase “Only connect”. A Room with a View is also about connections and Maurice explores class reconciliation in a gay relationship.
According to Forster:
“The four characteristics of humanism are curiosity, a free mind, belief in good taste, and belief in the human race”.
I can do no better than that. Apart from Forster’s novels, I also came across his book of essays, Two Cheers for Democracy, which is humorous, challenging and profoundly human. The essay “What I Believe” contains the essence of what, to me, humanism is about. Forster begins with personal relationships, saying,
“One must be fond of people and trust them if one is not to make mess of life, and it is therefore essential that they do not let one down. They often do. The moral of which is that I must, myself, be as reliable as possible … reliability is not a matter of contract … It is a matter for the heart ... What is good in people—and consequently in the world—is their insistence on creation, their belief in friendship and loyalty for their own sakes”.
Perhaps his greatest statement on humanism is:
“I do not believe in Belief. But this is an Age of Faith, and there are so many militant creeds that, in self defence, one has to form a creed of one’s own … Tolerance, good temper and sympathy—they are what matter really, and if the human race is not to collapse they must come to the front before long".
Having a creed based on such qualities is, for me at least, important. I do not think that it is in self defence, however, that people become humanists, but because of a more positive force, or forces: the force of seeking to connect with others as human beings, of caring for the welfare of others and of celebrating the human condition without the medium of a god.
I now turn to a thinker and writer I have discovered in recent years—Richard Holloway, the former Bishop of Edinburgh and Primus of the Scottish Episcopal Church, until he stood down in 2000. In the last chapter of his book Leaving Alexandria— Alexandria is his home town, north of Glasgow—he describes walking among the Pentlands and musing on the loss of religion. He says:
“Was religion a lie? Not necessarily, but it was a mistake. Lies are just lies, but mistakes can be corrected and lessons learned from them. The mistake was to think that religion was more than human. I was less sure whether God was also just a human invention, but I was quite sure religion was. It was the work of the human imagination, a work of art—an opera—and could be appreciated as such”.
I am one of those who think that one does not need to have a religion to behave ethically and morally. Holloway challenges religion as an authority, saying:
“Authority does not prove, it pronounces; rules rather than reasons; issues fatwas. It refuses to negotiate.”
Authority—in my own words—can also create dependence, which seems to be a negative force.
I believe that throughout the ages, questions about religion have been more convincing than the answers. The Sufi master and poet Hafiz, quoted by Holloway, said:
“The great religions are the ships
Poets the life boats
Every sane person I know has jumped
Overboard”.
There are clearly risks in jumping overboard. It is best to be a good swimmer, to have a reliable lifeboat or to be within hailing distance of the shore. I believe, with many humanist thinkers and doers, that the risk is mitigated by having helping hands supported by a common belief that we can solve problems and help each other. Humanism faces challenges with the confidence that it is in each other that solutions are found and that in reaching for solutions we collaborate and grow stronger. That is why I am a humanist.
Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill
Baroness Massey of Darwen Excerpts(11 years, 4 months ago)
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Baroness Barker
My Lords, it is deeply regrettable that the noble Lord, Lord Dear, chose to speak about the promotion of same-sex relationships. That brings an echo of some very bad policy from times past for some of us.
I have great admiration for teachers. One of the great things they do is to manage classrooms of 13 year-olds, who are extremely challenging. Teachers already face issues of this kind in their daily life. They already have guidance to which they refer in order to help them to do their jobs. I simply want to ask the Minister whether there is anything in this legislation that changes the existing position regarding the teaching of the subject of personal and sexual health education to children—a topic on which there have been endless debates, not least in your Lordships’ House, in great detail.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
I commend what the noble Baroness has just said about existing policies. I want to make one quick point. Teachers in schools do not usually teach in isolation. Behind them there is a school ethos and school policies developed by the staff and the governors and very often by the pupils themselves involving parents. That is the context in which teachers are teaching. The existing law will apply and I do not see any problem at all. I agree that the word “promote” in relation to these issues is a very unfortunate one. Teachers do not promote; they educate.
Lord Deben
We are in great danger of thinking about only this subject. Teachers constantly have to face this issue. I remember going to a Protestant school and being taught about transubstantiation. The teacher had a duty to explain that honestly and straightforwardly. He also had a duty to explain what he himself thought about it. I did not agree with what he thought about it. On the other hand, I was extremely well informed by how he explained it. That is what teachers are doing constantly, in all sorts of areas. That is all that is being asked.
It is right that the teacher should explain what the law is. It is right that the teacher should have to explain the arguments that led to the law being as it is. It is also perfectly reasonable—and 13 year-olds would certainly demand it—for the pupils to say, “Well what do you think about it?”. It is perfectly right for the teacher to say what he or she thinks about it, but with the proper politeness and courtesy that teaching implies.
We are making a great deal too much of this because this is the sort of thing that all teachers face all the time. The law is not being changed to make a special arrangement for this, because it is already covered. I really do not think that we should get hung up about this, because it will have to be dealt with immediately we change the law, whatever we do. That is what teachers are there for: to try to make people understand that this is what the law is and that there are arguments. Let us get the class to argue and discuss the issues. The only people who do not want that are the people who want teachers to promote one side or the other. Promotion of things does not have much place in the classroom.