Schools: British Sign Language
Debate between Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne and Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
Lord Hunt of Kings Heath
I will of course give way, but I do not know why the Tories have precedence.
Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne
While welcoming the Minister’s answer, I wonder whether he would be willing to have a wider consultation, in which I personally could be involved. He may be aware that only 27,000 of Britain’s 11.5 million deaf people use sign language, and that the remainder need a whole lot more speech therapy, which includes both sorts of communication. The difficulty of sign language is that it does not create sentences, let alone paragraphs and pages, so children using it cannot enter the national curriculum. Investment in speech therapy is surely the way forward, because it enables children and young people to speak and communicate, visually and orally.