Children and Families Bill

Countess of Mar Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I very much support this group of amendments and we have heard passionate speeches about this whole area. Autism and other such problems that individuals face are issues of which people are increasingly aware. Above all, it is vital that we support the noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, in what they have said. We will be creating more valuable qualified members of the community and making a life for people who have had much less of a life in the past.

If we take the point just made by my noble friend, there are many more people who have dyslexia or one of these forms of problem. We just do not know how many there may be, but I would not mind betting that if you asked everybody in this Room, there would be a lot of people who have relatives with addictions of one form or another, dyslexia, autism or whatever. I hope we can give enormous support to this. I see the noble Lord has more amendments later, and I think they need our support as well.

[The Countess of Mar (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, support the noble Lord, Lord Addington. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, hit the nail on the head when she said that she has relatives who have been to university and got degrees, with assistance, because they are dyspraxic. My granddaughter has dyspraxia. She is at the University of Lincoln at the moment and doing very well. She is getting “ones” right across the board because she is given extra time to do her written work. That has been accepted. Why do we not do it with apprenticeships? It seems ridiculous that we are putting these kids on the scrapheap. We criticise young people for not going out to work, and when they try to get qualifications, we fail them. To fail is disillusioning for these youngsters. They will not want to go to work if they think nobody wants them. The noble Lord, Lord Addington, and the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, have a very valid point.

[Baroness Wilkins]

I support this group of amendments. I am mildly dyslexic, and I assure noble Lords that in terms of daily frustration, it is a million times more frustrating than being in a wheelchair. There is a great deal of support for being in a wheelchair, but there is very little support for being dyslexic. The Government are to be admired for their commitment to apprenticeships, and it seems a tragedy that it should be undermined in this way, so I beg the Minister to accept these amendments.

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[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I shall speak to this group of amendments on the SEN code of practice for 0 to 25 year-olds. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Low, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones, and my noble friend Lady Sharp for tabling these amendments and raising this important matter. I am also grateful to all noble Lords who have spoken. I have listened carefully, and it is important that we ensure that there is a good understanding of and confidence in the code of practice. It is vital to the success of the new system. I hope I can reassure noble Lords in my response.

Turning first to Amendment 206 tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Low, we are in complete agreement with the intention behind it. I think all noble Lords would agree that if the new code of practice is going to be a useful document and one which parents, young people and professionals can work with it needs to communicate its meaning clearly and be readily available. While any document which has to describe the law accurately may contain some text which has to be read twice, the department has striven to make the draft code as easy to read as possible.

We trust that we have abided by the principles of plain English as much as possible, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Sharp for her comments, which I will pass on to all officials who have been involved in its drafting. However the draft code is currently out to consultation, and we are keen to receive suggestions for making any parts of the text easier to understand and will look carefully at any text which readers say they find difficult. Noble Lords may be aware that the current code of practice is accompanied by a Plain English Campaign Crystal Mark publication Special Educational Needs (SEN)- A Guide for Parents and Carers. We intend to publish a similar document for parents and young people along with the new SEN code of practice.

Turning to the second element of this amendment regarding the availability of the code on the internet, publication on the internet is now the department’s main method of publication, and I can reassure noble Lords that the new code will be available on the internet. We will also make sure that the code, like the consultation draft, is published in a web-accessible format, so that, for example, readers with visual impairments will have access to it.

I now turn to Amendments 207, 208 and 209 which relate to Clause 68, which is headed,

“Making and Approval of Code”.

The SEN code of practice is fundamental to the SEN framework and the noble Lord, Lord Low, is right to raise the issue of its approval, an issue which I know is of great importance to SEN organisations and many noble Lords. As noble Lords will be aware, ahead of the introduction of this Bill into the other place, the Education Select Committee carried out pre-legislative scrutiny on Part 3. One of the recommendations of the committee was that the code should be approved by Parliament through the negative procedure. We were in agreement, fully recognising the importance of parliamentary scrutiny of the code of practice, and we accepted the Select Committee’s recommendation. Indeed, we are now going further in response to a recommendation from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. We have tabled Amendments 210 and 211 to ensure that on the first occasion the new code is approved, it will be through the affirmative procedure, and for subsequent revisions, it will be through the negative procedure, recognising the significance of the new code in reflecting the new legal framework we have been debating.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I admit to being a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. Will the Minister explain why he has rejected an affirmative instrument in the second case?

[Lord Nash]

I am grateful for the noble Countess’s question. I shall explain. On 24 October, the DPRRC published a subsequent report in response to the Government’s Amendments 210 and 211 which reaffirmed its recommendation that the code should be approved by affirmative procedure on the first occasion and whenever it is revised.

We are in complete agreement with noble Lords on the importance of the SEN code of practice, particularly to parents, and I understand why the supporters of this amendment want to maintain the current arrangements for approval. I would like to set out why we do not think that this would be in the best interests of those who use the code, and why we think it vital that we keep the ultimate users of the code in mind during this debate.

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[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendment 212. I will just make a couple of short points. I, too, am familiar with the work of Jackie Hewitt-Main and have read her very inspiring book. I am a great admirer of the work that she has done in prisons. One story that she told really struck me: some young people in custody were not getting the help they needed with their dyslexia for the following reason. When they went in, they were given a form to fill in to say what sort of educational provision they wanted. They could not read it—it is a simple thing, is it not?—so they did not get any help at all. They did not get any courses because they had not ticked any of the boxes because they could not read what it said next to them. It has to be said that some prisons are very good, but the majority fall by the wayside in a very bad way.

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, that very often the reason why those young people are there in the first place is because they cannot read. They could not get a job and they could not get a driving licence because they could not read the Highway Code. They were at a great disadvantage. In the current economic situation, we have to ensure that money is spent as wisely as possible. I can think of no more effective way of avoiding reoffending and the great expense that it puts on the public purse than spending money on addressing the special educational needs of young people in custody. There really is a very good investment to be made there and we ought to be making more of it.

[The Countess of Mar]

My Lords, I will just follow up on the comments from the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley. This is when online and blended education can come in very useful, because it is not expensive, compared with person-to-person education. I hope the Minister will consider it.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

My Lords, I will briefly add to the comments in support of Amendments 213 and 214 and speak to my and my noble friend Lady Jones’s intention to oppose Clause 70 standing part.

Young people who have previously had a statement are very overrepresented in the youth justice system, making up about 18% of young offenders. About 80% of those in young offender institutions have literacy problems or dyslexia to some degree. According to the Communication Trust, around 60% have communication needs. There is a very high level of need concentrated in this population of young people. We would all agree that those are shocking statistics and that clearly, in one way or another, many of these young people have been failed up to the point in their lives when they end up in the youth justice system.

I have some sympathy with the prison system, because it has, as I say, a very high concentration of need. However, in my experience, it also the case that despite some very dedicated individuals—and there are some in the prison system—the system as a whole has never done enough to address the special needs of young people in custody. Under the system that we have at the moment, the local authorities in general—we have heard that many young people in custody have also been through the care system—and the services available in the home communities from which these young people have come, and to which most of them inevitably will return, are also let off the hook while those young people are in custody.

Successive Governments have tried to get this right, and have made some progress, but nowhere near enough. It seems that the Government are now proposing significant changes, which many of us have welcomed, in the Bill in respect of special educational need provision in the community. Surely, therefore, this is an opportunity to grasp the nettle and make that change for young people currently in custody, so that we have some real consistency across the piece for young people with special needs.

Finally, the Minister said in the annexe to his letter to noble Lords that applying these provisions to young people in custody would cause SEN legislation to come,

“into conflict with existing, comprehensive statutory provisions governing how education and support for children and young people is delivered in custody”.

In slight contradiction to that first point, he added that, in any case, the Ministry of Justice and the Department for Education are now working closely together for changes in the system to improve the provision in respect of special educational needs. Why have a different set of changes? Would these changes not make more sense? That is not least because, as I say, they would tie in the local authorities and the schools from which young people are coming, and to which they are returning, and not simply leave this as a Prison Service issue.