Sport: Women and Girls

Debate between Baroness Northover and Baroness Grey-Thompson

Thursday 7th March 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

My noble friend speaks from a huge amount of experience and she is of course right that it is extremely important that we develop this from the earliest age—getting children out of pushchairs, for example, and onwards. As for primary schools, she is right. I am sure that she will be reassured to know that discussions are happening at the moment about how to strengthen school sport from primary schools upwards. An announcement will be made very shortly.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

My Lords, media coverage is very important and I declare an interest as chair of the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation’s Commission on the Future of Women’s Sport. However, for elite success and media coverage we also need good participation figures and recent data have shown that mums are much less likely to take their daughters to play sport than their sons because of their own experience of sport in school. Can the Minister say what plans the Government have to insist in changing the culture around women so that they encourage their daughters to play as much sport as their sons?

[Baroness Northover]

Again, the noble Baroness speaks with huge amounts of experience and the Women’s Sport and Fitness Foundation is a crucial body in trying to take this forward. Sport England has awarded a grant to that organisation to try to identify how best to encourage women and girls to be involved in sport. The noble Baroness is absolutely right that mothers who were themselves switched off from sport are less likely to encourage their children to be involved in sport. That is one key area where we welcome insights into how best to tackle this.

Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Bill

Debate between Baroness Northover and Baroness Grey-Thompson

Monday 23rd April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Northover]

My noble friend assures me that we will review how this is working and publish the findings. I am sure that noble Lords will scrutinise that with the greatest of care. I reiterate that the operation of the system will be monitored from the very beginning. Therefore, noble Lords do not need simply to wait for the review at the end of two years to make sure that this is working in the way that we trust will assist people, as opposed to raising the concerns that noble Lords have expressed. I hope that the noble Baroness will be able to withdraw her amendment.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

I thank noble Lords who have taken part in this afternoon’s debate, in particular the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury. Not for the first time, I wish that I had trained in the law rather than doing a politics degree. I accept that my wording could be slightly better but, as the noble Lord, Lord Wigley, said, it has been improved since the last time I moved the amendment.

It seems that we are stuck in two slightly inflexible viewpoints. I wholeheartedly agree with the noble Lord, Lord Low, when he says that there is a place for a gateway. However, I also believe that there is a place for something else to help the most vulnerable. One idiosyncrasy of this system is that an individual could go into a citizens advice bureau and ask for help but be told to ring a phone number and be sent away. In an ideal situation, that person would be able to stay in the citizens advice bureau and make the call from there, and could even have that third-party support. If they are sent away, they may take that to mean that they are not eligible or that they do not understand some of the issues.

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for her comments. It is probably not the right time to debate this, but now that we have a system that can be accessed on the internet through www.directgov.com or by Skype and through phone calls—there is information coming back and forth—I wonder whether there are not almost too many options for people. Perhaps a gateway and the potential for a face-to-face interview might be the simplest way to do it.

I go back to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Phillips of Sudbury. I am sure that everyone in your Lordships’ House knows one, two, or maybe more people who would struggle to make that first contact and might drop out of the system, finding it too much to cope with, and would therefore not be able to access the help that they need. So as much as there has been some positive movement today and some very positive comments, I am not reassured that the most vulnerable would be supported through this system. Very reluctantly, I wish to test the opinion of the House.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Northover]

The noble Baroness may be right about social workers providing legal advice but I am talking about the kind of support that a social worker can give to a child in that situation. Often it is not a matter of specific legal advice but of assisting that child and steering them through the necessary procedures. There has been a running theme through a lot of this discussion that it is not necessarily legal advice that is required; it may be another form of support, which is where, for example, the CAB may be able to assist. Noble Lords have a lot of experience of organisations such as these assisting people and we should not forget that. We are looking at how best to ensure that local authorities can assist children in their care in the kind of cases that my noble friend has flagged up.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, asked about care leavers. I am glad that he was reassured by what my noble friend could tell him. I reiterate that the exceptional funding scheme will ensure the protection of the individual’s right to legal aid under the European Convention on Human Rights, as well as those rights to legal aid that are directly enforceable under European Union law. The scheme will of course encompass children leaving care, where they meet the relevant legal tests. In considering whether exceptional funding should be granted on this basis in an individual case engaging Article 6 of the ECHR, the director will consider the ability of the client to present their own case, the complexity of the issues, the importance of the issues at stake and all other relevant circumstances.

Local authorities also have a range of duties to care leavers which will not be affected by the provisions of the Bill. It is late at night but I also recognise the huge commitment in this area of the noble Earl. If he would like further discussions we are happy to do that. I hope that I have addressed the concerns of most noble Lords and would like to remind them that 96 per cent of the current funding remains in place and that the principles of need and vulnerability, which underpinned the reasons for covering the areas that we have, remain the most important ones.

I hope that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, will be reassured that children who are in need will be protected and that we will not see the concerns that she has flagged up come to fruition. On that basis, I hope the noble Baroness will withdraw her Motion.

[Baroness Grey-Thompson]

I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, for her response and all other noble Lords who have contributed this evening.

In my opening speech I did not mention clinical negligence because the issue had been eloquently argued in the previous Motion by the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, and the noble Baroness, Lady Finlay.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, raised the important issue of children in care and children leaving care. However, this will raise more issues about where the costs will move to. The hope that local authorities will pick up the pieces concerning this group of children in care or leaving care is naive. Local authorities are already under huge amounts of pressure, and pushing the costs—and potentially greater costs—on them will not help the children who we want to see receive this help.

I am also deeply uncomfortable about the role of the litigation friend and the ability of children to access an appropriate person who is able to help them through very difficult times.

I am afraid that I am still not convinced by the arguments on exceptional funding. When we debated the percentages of cases, we learnt that 13 per cent of children’s cases will be out of scope. However, information provided by JustRights shows that, contrary to misleading government claims, the 5,000 to 6,000 children covered by this amendment will not be protected by the exceptional funding scheme. The Ministry of Justice has confirmed to JustRights that its figures on the number of children affected already account for those who would receive exceptional funding. If children were automatically entitled to legal aid, the Government would avoid the cost of administering children’s applications to the scheme, as well as possible delays that would be detrimental to children’s welfare.

I am conscious of the late hour. This issue has been extensively debated in many sessions, but we should ask the other place to think again about the thousands of children who will be seriously and negatively affected if the amendment does not go through. I beg to move.