King’s Speech

Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Monckton of Dallington Forest (Con) (Maiden Speech)]

My Lords, it is a great pleasure to participate in this debate on His Majesty’s gracious Speech. I declare my interests as set out in the register.

Public speaking and debating are not my natural territories. My career has been in retail, not politics—although, as my husband pointed out, there are similarities: the voter, like the customer, is always right. This is an overwhelming honour. What has struck me in my short time in this House has been the courtesy and kindness on both sides. I have been made to feel welcome, and my vast areas of ignorance on the workings of this place, and many other things besides, have been tactfully dealt with.

I thank my supporters, the noble Lords, Lord Altrincham and Lord Laming—who has given me so much wise advice over the years—as well as my noble friend Lady Fraser of Craigmaddie for her encouragement and support, and Black Rod for her pertinent advice. I thank also the clerks and doorkeepers, not just for all they have done for me—instructions on protocol and dealing with my lamentable lack of direction—but for their warm welcome to my daughter, Domenica, who has Down’s syndrome, when she came to this House for my introduction. She, or rather the charity that I started in her name, is one of the reasons that I am in this House.

My father, a hereditary Peer, was a proud Member of this place. He was a career soldier, and his last posting was as chief of staff of the British Army of the Rhine. He was also an Arabist, and he brought this expertise to the relevant committees and sat as a Cross-Bencher. However, his manifesto, in a bid to stay in this House, was not successful—“all cats to be muzzled outside to stop the agonising torture of mice and small birds” did not quite cut it. His sister, my aunt, Valerie Goulding, was an inspiration to me. She started the Central Remedial Clinic in Ireland, which devotes itself to children and adults with cerebral palsy, spina bifida and muscular dystrophy. She was made a member of the Senate by the Taoiseach for her charitable work. The author of Under the Eye of the Clock, Christopher Nolan, was one of Valerie’s patients, and it was her fierce commitment to his potential that enabled him to become an author. He wrote that he owed his success

“to Lady Goulding and her harbour of hope”.

In his gracious Speech, His Majesty made reference to breaking down barriers to opportunities. That is exactly what we do at Team Domenica for young adults with learning disabilities. Our aim is to get them into paid employment, and we have an 81% paid employment rate, against a national average of 4.8%. People with learning disabilities are the most forgotten in our society, and I feel passionately that they should have the same chances as everyone else. The world is theirs just as much as it is ours.

However, in education, the mainstreaming of children with learning disabilities is not always appropriate. My daughter spent several hours sitting in a corridor because “it was maths” or because “it was science”. What is was actually was isolating, and the silence of Domenica’s loneliness was deafening. I suggest to the Minister that the remaining schools for those with moderate learning difficulties are vital for families whose children are not confident enough to cope with mainstream education. We must not become so blinded by ideology that we no longer see or understand the individual needs of the vulnerable people in our care.

In concentrating on education and in building self-confidence, we can make a life-changing difference. If someone believes in you, you start to believe in yourself. I have seen this time and again with our young adults at Team Domenica, who have got paid jobs with the wonderful businesses in Brighton and Hove which support us so well. I have seen the transformation in Domenica’s confidence too, through belonging and being more like her sister—although she has some way to go before matching the supreme self-confidence of her late grandfather, known to his children as Jampa, but probably more familiar to your Lordships’ House as Lord Lawson of Blaby.

We need to remember that a lifelong learning disability is exactly that: lifelong. Education and support need to continue, and the process of getting an education, health and care plan needs to be much less stressful. Like others who have spoken before me today, I worry about what the effect would be of a 20% education tax on the parents of the almost 100,000 children in the independent sector who do not have an EHCP but who have special needs. Will the unintended consequence be many more parents trying to get an EHCP in a system that is already at breaking point?

I look forward to raising my voice with others in your Lordships’ House to speak up for the voiceless, and to standing up for parents, siblings and carers. No one can know where the limits of love lie—nor should we ever judge those who are sometimes struggling to cope; I have been there myself—but we need to know where the limits of state responsibility begin and end. We must ensure, at least, that it does not make the lives of parents and their children more difficult than they already are.