G8 Summit

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 13th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I, too, am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Trimble, for securing this important and timely debate. I will concentrate on the opportunities that the G8 summit offers for increased transparency through taxation and other means. Our chairmanship of the G8 is an opportunity to look at land rights, particularly for smallholders. I have been grateful for briefing meetings from the IF campaign, which has consistently raised these issues. I begin by praising the Government for the example they have set to the leaders of the developed world in their commitment to funding international development aid amounting to 0.7% of annual national income. Their example at a time of global recession must be a powerful factor in sustaining efforts which have proved so successful in saving the lives of children in the developing world.

The importance of strengthening transparency was brought home to me by visits to a sub-Saharan state made with other parliamentarians and funded by UNICEF, Save the Children and Tearfund. Our first two visits were made during the civil war of that nation. The country was blessed, or cursed, with plentiful supplies of diamonds and oil. We saw a nation where an elite of 100 families benefited from much of the vast mineral wealth while the multitude lived in squalor. The charity Transparency International drew attention in particular to the way that the Government of that country failed to share details of the deals they made with oil companies for extraction payments. British Petroleum decided to take a principled position and to make public information about payments, at some cost to its own business. My noble friend Lord Browne of Madingley was chief executive of BP at the time.

The wealth of the country went towards the healthcare of the 100 families, the education of their children in the United States and the United Kingdom, arms for the civil war, and other such areas. Meanwhile, in a large internally displaced people’s camp in the capital of that country, families had no water source and had to pay for the privilege of using tankers. This camp had been in existence for several years and simply been ignored by the authorities.

We saw homes built among giant dumps of rubbish and children playing among the refuse. We spoke to AIDS patients with no prospect of treatment. We heard of people being arbitrarily displaced from one area of the capital to make way for new, profitable developments. We also met the Minister for Health, a Mr De Almeida, a member of the 100 families, who had initiated the first national immunisation programme for children—no mean feat, given the continuing war and the lack of electricity and apparatus to chill the vaccines. So there were members of the Government who cared for the people.

We learnt that this nation was just one of many developing nations in which oil and diamond wealth allowed elites not to consult the people or even bother with their interests because they had no need of the taxes that their people might provide—no need for your taxes, no need for your votes.

I hope that I may encourage the Minister and his colleagues to push hard on the matter of tax reform and to improve transparency. Robust international agreement on these matters would reduce the power of political elites to drain the wealth of the nation for themselves, strengthen the arms of those politicians who wish to act in the interests of the people and do much to address poverty and hunger in the developing world.

We also met a women’s co-operative operating in the capital. The women had joined together to purchase food at better prices for themselves and their families. Through the work of the IF campaign, we have learnt of the importance of smallholders in the developing world in feeding the people, and I understand that most of those smallholders will be women.

I hope that the Government will also be looking for international agreements to strengthen the land rights of smallholders, thereby addressing the continuing scourge of hunger and malnutrition. In our briefings, we heard from Ricardo, a young man from a remote region of Tanzania. He was raised, as best she could, by his grandmother. He experienced malnutrition and there were no hospitals or services nearby to help to remedy the undernourishment. He suffered from kwashiorkor and other diseases related to malnourishment. Starved children suffer impairments that hinder their learning and, later, limit their capacity to work. We really need to do more to prevent hunger, and international treaties on land rights would be a good step in this direction.

I look forward to the Minister’s response. I ask him in particular how the Government will use their presidency of the G8 to push for greater transparency in land acquisitions, to ensure that corrupt deals are stopped and that people have the information that they need to hold Governments and companies to account. I also ask him whether the Government will be supporting greater transparency from Governments in developing nations so that citizens in those countries can hold their Governments to account for the money that they spend. I apologise for not giving him notice of those questions, and if he would write to me and put a copy in the Library, that would be very helpful.

Voluntary Sector and Social Enterprise

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 21st June 2012 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I, too, am most grateful to the noble Baroness for securing this important debate. I am pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Randerson, in talking about procurement.

I should like to ask Her Majesty's Government whether there is a clear evidence base for the use of a mixed market in services for the care of the elderly and of vulnerable adults and children; whether there is not an overreliance on large, private equity-based providers of care; whether more might not be made of giving third-sector care providers preferred status and promoting enduring relationships between those providers and purchasers, provided that outcomes measures are met; and, finally, whether more might not be done by Her Majesty's Government to prioritise their workforce development responsibilities.

Having sat on the board of a not-for-profit adoption and fostering agency, I know how tough the competition for placements is. I would be most grateful to be reassured that the voluntary sector is not being put at an unhelpful competitive disadvantage with regard to large, equity-funded providers. How can we maintain the smallness to which the noble Baroness referred in circumstances of competition with large, equity-based companies?

The Parliamentary Groups for Looked after Children and for Runaway Children, chaired by Ann Coffey MP and Edward Timpson MP respectively, this week launched their report into children who go missing from care, a report made possible by the support of the Children’s Society and the Who Cares? Trust. The first of its five key recommendations was that there should be:

“An independent investigation into children’s homes in England which are failing to manage and protect children who run away or go missing. This is despite spending £1 billion a year on just under 5,000 children cared for in children’s homes averaging £200,000 per child”.

I should declare an interest as I was involved with the report’s production and am an officer of the one of the parliamentary groups involved.

Local authorities now own only 24% of children’s homes and large equity-based companies are the largest providers. From the report’s key recommendations, we can see that this particular mixed market does not appear to be giving value for money and quality care outcomes. I recently met Eva Lloyd, reader in early childhood at the Cass School of Education and Communities at the University of East London. We discussed her book on the mixed market in early years provision, Childcare Markets: Can They Deliver an Equitable Service? The book is to be published on 25 June and is jointly edited by her and Helen Penn. She emphasised to me that the evidence strongly indicates that our model of mixed market for early years provision in the early years area does not give the best value for money. Indeed, we have among the most costly early years provision in the world. This may in part be because we rely so heavily on large, equity-based providers for our childcare.

I contrast this with a non-market approach and the best education system in the world. Finland tops the PISA international charts for education outcomes in literacy, numeracy and science each year. An important aspect of its service is the quality of its teachers. There are 20 candidates competing for each teacher training place. Every teacher, in primary and secondary schools, has a master’s degree qualification. Teachers are trusted. As I understand it, there is no school inspection system in Finland and very loose national curriculum guidance. The analogy perhaps is that each school is like a small enterprise, run by people who are genuinely committed and highly trained by the Government to do an excellent job and who are given autonomy.

The comparison between us and Finland is said to be flawed because our nations are so dissimilar, in particular since Finland has a far more homogeneous population. This is true, but every school class is of mixed ability and I understand there are no exclusions from school. Teachers have to work with the mix of children that is presented to them and they get these fantastic results.

The experiences I describe above lead me to wonder whether we have an overreliance on a mixed market of provision in services for the vulnerable. Should we be looking more at enduring relationships with particular providers and give preferential treatment to not-for-profit providers where they can demonstrate high quality and value for money? Should the Government’s role be more to ensure that the high-quality workforce—the teachers, early years workers, social workers and so on—is available to meet the demand for services for the elderly, children and vulnerable adults, as part of the local and national infrastructure the noble Baroness referred to in her introduction? Do we overprize our system of regulation and inspection but underprize ensuring that there is a high-quality, autonomous workforce available to meet the needs of our children and of our elderly and vulnerable adults? I ask the Minister what the evidence base is for mixed markets in social care provision providing value for money and best outcomes. I look forward to his response.

Schools: Campaigns

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 8th March 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warsi]

My Lords, as I said earlier, the position of PSHE in the curriculum is under review. It would be wrong to predict the outcome of that review and to predict where that subject would be taught. Of course, noble Lords will be aware that the responsibility for holding local agencies, including schools, to account for the effectiveness of safeguarding work relating to children rests with the local safeguarding children boards. All these boards have some sort of teacher representation, so there is ongoing contact with local child protection services and schools. Where this will be taught in the curriculum is currently under review.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, will the Minister consider looking at the services for children who sexually harm other children? There has been considerable concern in the past about the variable quality and availability of those services. Will she consider looking at that and perhaps write with her findings to noble Lords taking part in this short debate?

[Baroness Warsi]

There has been research; indeed, the NSPCC specifically looked at abuse between children and the pressures that young people face when a relationship turns abusive. Indeed, the video that I referred to—which, if noble Lords have a few moments, is worth looking at—is a very hard-hitting video that specifically highlights the pressures that can be placed upon young people when they are in relationships. That video is being played not just as a resource within schools but during primetime viewing for that particular audience on television.