Education: Disability Financing

Debate between Lord Bates and Lord Elton

Monday 10th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

Through the disability framework, we now ask a question about disability inclusion as part of all business cases. I am very happy to write to the noble Baroness with specific numbers. Our annual report was produced last week and the numbers are listed in it, as they should be. I am sure that there is more that could be done, but we can take a degree of pride from the report on what UK aid is doing for those with disabilities around the world.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, this is obviously work of great international importance. However, does the provision for our own children meet the criteria that we are recommending for international communities?

[Lord Bates]

The international standard that has been adopted by the UN recommends that between 4% and 6% of GDP should be spent on education. In the UK it is currently 5.6%. In many of the countries that we are helping most, such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, it is 2.4% and 2.2% respectively, so there is a lot more that those countries can do themselves—and, of course, there is always a need to keep spending in this country under review to ensure that we continue to maintain our standards.

Immigration Bill

Debate between Lord Bates and Lord Elton

Monday 18th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

It is one that we listed in the supply chain regulations which recently came before your Lordships’ House. A number of undertakings were given at that time to examine options for a central database and how that will be done. It should also be said that there was general agreement that we had set the threshold for the reporting of those standards at the lower end of the expected threshold, so that more companies would have to comply. That has a concomitant effect upon the size of the database which would need to be maintained in order to carry those statements of transparency in supply chains by the companies affected. I am very happy to undertake to update noble Lords on progress with that in the course of my responses.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

Before my noble friend sits down I plead the excuse of being the Minister who moved the original PACE and took it through this House. I have a sort of avuncular interest, particularly in codes of conduct. I would be most grateful if he copied me in to the correspondence about the bearing of PACE codes of conduct on these new people operating under the Bill.

[Lord Bates]

I would be delighted to ensure that the noble Lord, as a distinguished former Home Office Minister, is so copied in.

Sexual Violence against Girls and Women

Debate between Lord Bates and Lord Elton

Thursday 5th March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

I am very happy to set those details out. Up to September 2014, there were 72,977 recorded criminal offences. The number of rape prosecutions was 3,891 in the same period. There is a lot of detail behind that. I do not have the time to go into it at this point but I am happy to write to the noble Lord.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, several of your Lordships have drawn attention to the importance of early education in sex. Will my noble friend tell us what the arrangements are for the initial training of teachers in this subject, how consensus on what is appropriate at different ages is identified, and what INSET—in-service training—is also available in this?

[Lord Bates]

The guidance issued by the Secretary of State for Education sets out that age-appropriate education must be provided to young people. There are steps that could be taken to improve on that. There are a lot of examples of best practice around the country, which schools have to draw on.

Yarl’s Wood Immigration Removal Centre

Debate between Lord Bates and Lord Elton

Tuesday 3rd March 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

Children are of course not held at Yarl’s Wood but at a family detention centre, often the Cedars, which is run by Barnardo’s, where they receive education. However, I agree that it is very important that children in particular are carefully looked after in this respect.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords—

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, it has happened more than once in this and related fields that a monitoring body reports all is well, and shortly afterwards it is revealed that all is very far from well. Is it not an occasion for a rigorous examination and consideration of the methods used by the monitoring body itself? How often is that done?

[Lord Bates]

We need to look very carefully at that. We have had a report from HM Chief Inspector of Prisons and we have the independent monitoring board. I recognise that there are huge concerns, rightly so, in your Lordships’ House about the allegations which have been made and about what has been done up to this point. I also recognise that because of the limitations of time it is not possible for all noble Lords to get in. I am very happy to arrange an opportunity—perhaps in the next week—to meet with colleagues and to bring some Home Office officials so that we can hopefully provide some additional information about these very distressing concerns.

Social Mobility: Public Schools

Debate between Lord Bates and Lord Elton

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

That is a very good question and I know that many people in government—principally the Deputy Prime Minister—are focusing on how to make that more accessible through the internship programme, through ensuring broader and fairer access and through the business compact programme, where more employers are encouraged to sign up and have fairer and more inclusive recruitment policies. It has to be said that it is not just the Government having this problem. It runs right across society and is in the media, in corporations, in medicine and in the judiciary, all of which need to act to make sure that their access policies are as fair as possible to all.

[Lord Elton (Con)]

My Lords, if, as has been conclusively demonstrated, the private education system is better than the public one and provides a portal into all sorts of social and economic advantages, surely we should be trying to get more and more private education, and more and more people drawn into it from those classes which are at present excluded. The way to do that is not to cut off the funding but to increase it.

[Lord Bates]

My noble friend has great knowledge and insight in this area—and so do I. In my experience the greatest difference between our leading independent schools and the inner-city comprehensives, one of which I attended, is the level of expectations not only among the teachers or parents but, chiefly, among the pupils themselves as to what they can actually achieve. That is what we need to improve.

Sunday Trading (London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games) Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Bates and Lord Elton

Thursday 26th April 2012 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bates]

In the debate at Second Reading views were expressed on the broader issue of Sunday trading. The position that I stated in that debate was that I did not think that the economic case was at all convincing and that it did not manage to clear the retail growth review from the Treasury or clear the recent red tape review. A number of respondents did not say that this was something that they wanted to go ahead. The noble Lord, Lord Myners, who has very significant experience in this whole area, looked at the case and said that it was at least questionable, certainly ordinarily. I agree that we are talking about exceptional times. Normally the restriction on larger stores is not just a restriction on them but is to protect the smaller stores.

The noble Lord, Lord Myners, referred to Justin King from Sainsbury’s serving on LOCOG and asked whether the position was different given that Mayor Boris Johnson had put him forward. Like others on this side of the House, I am spending a fair bit of time campaigning for Boris Johnson at the moment. He has made a great priority of strengthening the high streets and supporting small business. That is essentially what this measure is about.

That point made, I turn to the amendment, which I welcome. Let us be clear what we are talking about on the date, which as it stood in the Bill was at 24 April. We were effectively going to say that the minimum notice period that had to be given under the Bill was that, two days ago, before this legislation had been passed, somebody would have had to give notice to their employer that they did not want to work on 22 July. On that point it is obvious and the Minister, who is wise in these things, has brought forward this amendment, which is very simple in its present form. I do not buy in any sense the idea that Amendment 1E, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Davies, simplifies the thing. If anything, it makes it more complicated because you almost go back to the potential for three months, with a two-month notice period then a one-month response period to come back in. You are potentially going back into this very difficult situation.

It is also worth noting a little more about which Sundays we are talking about, because we know where this argument is coming from. It is from the big stores, particularly the London-based stores and development companies that sponsored the research pointing to the benefit, to which my noble friend Lady Browning referred. In fairness, I did not mean that as a jibe. We are in a recession and we want to make money. When we have people actually coming here, we want jobs so they absolutely ought to try to make the case. I am simply pointing to the fact that there is an element of that. The impact assessment refers to the fact that there will be 450,000 visitors, but they are not going to stay for the whole period. They will predominantly be clustered around the summer Olympics rather than the Paralympics. I would wish it to be the other way round, because the Paralympics espouse to me more of what the Olympic spirit is all about, but the reality is that most of the attention will come from 27 July, when the opening ceremony takes place. Therefore, the first Sunday on which there will be the desire to celebrate sporting achievements by visiting shops for more hours, for which we accept the case because the cake will be larger, will be 29 July and not 22 July. Moreover, the Games will be going on until 12 August, which happens to be a Sunday in my diary, while on Sunday 19 August, for which liberalisation is being made, nothing will be taking place—other than a lot of people working very hard to get the site ready for the Paralympic Games to start. However, those Games do not start on 26 August; they actually start on 29 August. To add insult to injury, the dates finish on the closing date of the Paralympics themselves, 9 September. That part is absolutely right.

This is a simple adjustment. The opposition amendment makes this not simpler but more complex. Most of the visitors and the economic activity will be early on, which again is the reason for giving maximum notice to people. If they have problems, we need to make sure that that happens as quickly as possible and therefore the adjustment to two months, as proposed in my noble friend’s amendment, would seem sensible in this case.

[Lord Elton]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Myners, greatly underestimates my noble friend Lord Sassoon’s ability if he thinks that my noble friend’s excellent speech—I agree about that—at Second Reading is anything like the high point of his parliamentary career, as the noble Lord said it would be. My noble friend has a long way to go. Now he is looking at me as if he is wondering what is coming next, which is quite right.

I simply want assurance on what I think are called Pepper v Hart terms—in other words, for the guidance of people trying to work out what this law is meant to mean when they come to examine it in court. I am concerned rather along the lines that the noble Lord, Lord Graham of Edmonton, put forward. I am an inveterate opponent of Sunday opening in principle, but the House has given a Second Reading to the Bill. I accept that so what we are discussing are the means of exempting on grounds of conscience those who do not wish to be ruled by it—and of course I am in favour of that. However, throughout the Second Reading debate and in conversations thereafter, everybody has been seeking reassurance that this is not to be used as a precedent. The phrase actually used was “stalking horse”; I take it that that means a precedent. When the noble Lord, Lord Graham, made that point forcefully he got a reply from my noble friend with some information in it, but not an avowal again that this is not to be used as a precedent or that that is not the Government’s intention. All I ask is that my noble friend reiterates that assurance, so that it will be on the record in this debate as well as at Second Reading.