Queen’s Speech

Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness McIntosh of Hudnall (Lab)]

My Lords, I was pleased to see that education had been grouped with culture in today’s debate on the gracious Speech, but I wish that I felt convinced that the Government accepted the need for them to keep equally close company in the development of education policy. That is what I want to talk about before touching briefly on two other matters. Last month, a letter from a head teacher appeared in the i newspaper, which I think would be of particular interest to the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Norwich, who is sadly not in his place—and, indeed, to the noble Lord, Lord Kirkham. I understand that, at this hour in a long debate, the call of the dinner table becomes very insistent, but I am sad that neither of them is here to hear it because it very much goes to the points that they raised. It says:

“As the headteacher of a 1,000-pupil comprehensive school in the West Midlands I have mixed emotions as I look back over the school year.

At Christmas the school choir sang in a hauntingly beautiful carol service in the local church. Following a recent charity week, my pupils presented more than £4,000 to national and local charities. My Year 8 boys have just won the English Schools’ National Under-14 Football Cup. While walking in the Shropshire hills last weekend, I met 20 of my Year 10 pupils who were trekking as part of their Duke of Edinburgh Award.

The mixed emotions I feel are delight and despair: delight that all these activities are what a school is all about, helping pupils become well-balanced young adults able to take their place in society—and despair because nothing I have described to you counts a jot in the school league tables by which all schools are measured”.

That was from a head teacher in the West Midlands.

Those words precisely encapsulate what many of us find so troubling about government attitudes to education over the past five years and about the tone of the gracious Speech in promising further legislation, with its references to “failing and coasting”. The relentless focus on testing, the slow but unmistakable downgrading of arts subjects in the curriculum, the insidious undermining of teachers—my family is full of them, so I see the effects at first hand—all contribute to a good deal of anxiety and despondency in the classroom, in the playground and at the school gate. The determination of many schools to provide, in spite of everything, a creative environment for their students, which I see, for example, when I take part in the Peers in Schools programme, is almost a miracle in the face of a Government apparently bent on draining the joy that is so essential to effective learning out of education.

Polly Toynbee, writing recently in the Guardian—I know she is a leftie, so she will be ignored by a large number of people in this House, but none the less—said:

“Research shows how the arts improve attainment in all subjects: drama improves literacy, music improves maths and early language. The arts make most difference to children from low-income families—those who get arts teaching are three times more likely to get a degree and a job … but the English baccalaureate excludes the arts altogether, leading to a sharp fall in arts subjects, especially in deprived areas. I would bet both Gove and Morgan”—

her nomenclature, not mine—

“would reject any school for their own child that had abandoned arts teaching”.

I leave that one to stick to the wall, as they say.

I want to say a brief word on mental health care. Those of us who have had mental health problems know how frightening and lonely the experience can be. Appropriate and, above all, timely intervention is essential. Parity of esteem was the key mantra of the last Government. I noticed that it was absent from today’s speech from the Front Bench. It is a fine phrase, but the problem is that fine words, as we know, butter no parsnips. I do not know why parsnips, but proverbially they butter no parsnips.

Recruitment and retention of mental health professionals is still a huge challenge. Psychiatric beds, so vital for acute mental health crises, are being closed all over the country, and access to invaluable talking cures, such as cognitive behavioural therapy, is subject to long waits and significant rationing. Most disturbing of all, services for young people are under more pressure than ever, which is particularly worrying when we hear today, for example, that the incidence of anorexia nervosa is rising sharply. Given these realities, will the Minister explain exactly how the Government intend to deliver on the promise in the gracious Speech to improve access to mental health care?

Finally, I shall say a word on the BBC. I was amused to read, immediately after the appointment of the new Secretary of State for Culture, dark threats from some quarters about how he was plotting revenge on the BBC for its partisan coverage of the election. It amused me partly because the right honourable gentleman is an experienced politician and a cultured man and I have no doubt that he will plough his own furrow without assistance from headbangers in the press or elsewhere who see the BBC as an obstacle to their interests. I was also amused because I, too, spent quite a few hours during the election campaign with my pen hovering metaphorically over the green ink bottle ready to rail at the BBC for its partisan coverage of my party. It has often been said, and well said, that if we all feel ill-used it must be getting it pretty much right.

The BBC is not just another broadcaster in a competitive marketplace. It is one of this country’s most significant cultural achievements, and we have quite a few to our name. The original mission to inform, educate and entertain—the words carefully arranged in that order—has, of course, been tested by the passage of time, the evolution of technology and societal change, but it stands up pretty well. The funding model which supports it has been challenged many times but still bears scrutiny when compared with other possibilities.

Over its long history the BBC has, of course, made many mistakes and infuriated many people, but that should neither surprise nor dismay us. However grudgingly, most people acknowledge that, with all its faults, it is a unique feature of our heritage, our future and our currency in the world. The Secretary of State should act as a critical friend, not an asset stripper, as he goes into the charter negotiations. He will not be forgiven if he gets it wrong.