King’s Speech

Baroness Verma Excerpts

Thursday 9th November 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Verma (Con)]

My Lords, I draw attention to my interests in the register. It is a great privilege to be able to partake in this debate. I was pleased that my noble friend the Minister opened with his own personal remarks because I want to shape what I am going to say around my personal experiences.

I want to talk about hate in schools. When I was growing up in the 1960s and 1970s, it was hate because of the colour of your skin; today, sadly, most of the hate is because of the faith you belong to. It is so important to raise this because schools should be a place where children go to learn, to be happy, to have well-being and not—like as I experienced when I was a child—a place of dread. Every single day going to school was: were they going to be nice to me? Were they going to call me names? Were they going to beat me up or try to beat me up?

Sadly, earlier this year I saw a report on anti-Hindu hate in schools. Hate of any kind, for any faith, is unacceptable, but 1.6% of the population of this country is British Hindu. It is a community that does not make a noise or raise its voice against things because, by and large, it just gets on. But it was so sad when I came across parents who had moved their children several times because they had been called names, identified as non-believers, told they would burn in hell and had different types of meat chucked at them. I say this because we all have a duty of care, but local authorities were put in charge of reporting bullying or hate incidents. I worry because, when you give a local authority that authority, I do not know how much it can fairly find time to investigate. It is critical that every single child going to school feels that everyone is on their side.

After I read the report, I went out to speak to parents, and I found that this was not a small but a large problem. I have stood up and fought against discrimination all of my life, and I will fight for every faith and for every child to be able to go to school and have a safe haven, where the teachers will not stand by and allow this practice to carry on. But when I found that some parents had reported their children telling them that the teachers had not intervened to stop it, that raised some red flags. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will take this back to the Department for Education because it is critical that, in this day and age, we should respect each other’s faith and have tolerance—I do not like that word—or respect for each other’s identities, which is so important.

I know how difficult it was to go to school and the knotted feeling I had in my stomach, thinking, “Will they be my friend today or not? Will the teacher be nice to me or not?” It is not acceptable that that is still happening all of these years later. So, in his response, can my noble friend the Minister assure me that the concerns I raise will be taken to the Department for Education and the Secretary of State?

I have raised many times in this Chamber my concerns about the disadvantage that children from low-income families face, particularly those from minority communities and those, like those in my city of Leicester, where there are incredibly disadvantaged people from the white, Asian and black communities. When we talk about the digital age and all of these things being part of our lives, I do not want those children to miss out. So I would appreciate an assurance about how we work to ensure that they are part and parcel of our discussions, so that no child is at a disadvantage in being able to aspire to their full potential.

The important thing for me, like the Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, and many people who have come from the Indian subcontinent, is that this country has given us an opportunity because of education and how social mobility enables us to enjoy this country’s wealth and growth. I do not want children growing up today to miss out on those opportunities. So it is critical—I repeat this—that the parents are part of the solution. Mothers and fathers from minority communities need to be able to speak English and understand the services available to them. They cannot integrate if they cannot communicate.

I therefore urge my noble friend the Minister to make sure that my concerns are heard. Too many communities are still left behind because of inability in language skills, which then reduces all the other possibilities that those young people could have.

I am glad that there were not lots of Bills in the King’s Speech, because I want quality, not quantity; I want it to be based on delivery and not because we want to tag everything on to a Bill. However, I would like all religious places and all places with charitable status, if they are teaching children, to have Ofsted inspections, because it is critical that we know that children are not being taught in an environment that encourages hate.