Education (Values of British Citizenship) Bill [HL]

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 18th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, I welcome this Bill and the change in the language. The Bill rightly calls these principles “values of British citizenship”. They are civic values. Far from being a recent invention or a fiction, as some have suggested, civic Britishness is a very real concept which is now more important than ever before.

Diversity can be a very good thing but, where there are large and disparate ethnic communities in a country, as there are now in the UK, the possibility of conflict and distrust arises. To be able to resolve any tensions which come with that demographic change, the crucial precondition is that every citizen of this country is able to participate as a citizen in the processes and institutions through which we can make decisions about social harmony, the common good and our rules of engagement. If not, we risk in academic terms losing our pluralist society and becoming plural. Instead of having a unity within which we understand our differences, we will be truly and deeply divided.

However, there is good news, as was mentioned earlier. New immigrants to the UK are proud of this country’s history and traditions. As a recent Policy Exchange research document told us this week, the majority of British people of Caribbean, Chinese, Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani heritage believe Britain to have been a force for good in the world.

We are shockingly unvigilant about defending our enduring values in this country. Other European nations, such as France, are dramatically more insistent on inculcating those civic values. Yet in our country, there are actors who continue to claim that the British values strategy and the intelligence and research on which it is based are frivolous and therefore racist. Frankly, it is not so. The evidence says otherwise: that we have a clear and identifiable problem of a small proportion of people who reject our national values, where that problem is ideological—the product of competing value systems. We need a national education strategy to combat that. We are duty bound, for the good of everyone in this country, of all backgrounds, to refuse to allow people to be isolated, ghettoised and disfranchised by the holding of some of these attitudes. We must positively enfranchise these communities. Education is a natural first point of action.

Through such a strategy, we must stress that citizenship is no small thing but rather a calling to live up to. It is certainly not a purely self-serving right. It comes with a duty to participate in national life according to our common standards and customs. That is not degrading to those isolated communities. It is dignifying. The degrading thing would be to allow ghettoisation and a parallel world to continue unchecked. I commend this strategy and the continuing emphasis on our civic values, so well reflected in this Bill.

Schools (Mental Health Professionals) Bill [HL]

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 1st March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Earl, Lord Russell, who made a sincere and moving speech. I wish him well in his endeavours, and his family for the future.

I welcome the Bill presented by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, not least because we are both members of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. She obviously has enormous expertise arising from her time with Cafcass and with Relate. However, I take a similar view to that of my noble friend Lady Berridge, in that I am not wholly convinced that new legislation is what we need. We need a holistic, joined-up, integrated and co-ordinated strategy for children and young people’s mental health, and I am not sure that new primary legislation would deliver that.

The noble Baroness was good enough to refer to the great progress the Government have made following the Green Paper, Transforming Children and Young People’s Mental Health Provision, in 2018, which gave rise to the mental health support teams. I accept that there are now 398 teams and that only a third of children are covered, but there is good progress, and we are going in the right direction. Integrated care boards also have a mandate to provide the appropriate commissioned services for children and young people in their areas. Reference is made in the 2019 NHS Long Term Plan for staffing to putting significantly more money into mental health services. That is good.

I am indebted to my noble friend the Minister for her very helpful Answer, which just got in under the wire and came yesterday, to the Question I tabled on 19 February. It talked about

“delivery of the Special Educational Needs and Disabilities (SEND) and Alternative Provision Improvement Plan, which was published in March 2023”,

which is of course a work in progress. It went on to say that the department

“is establishing a single national system that delivers for every child and young person with SEND, so that they enjoy their childhood, achieve good outcomes, and are well prepared for adulthood and employment”.

We have had heavy briefing and lobbying on this Bill. I make the point again that it is a very laudable Bill and I agree with the spirit of it. We would of course support a full national rollout of mental health support teams in all schools and a fully resourced national implementation programme to support every school, college and university. My own daughter has just gone to university, and I know that that is a big mental health challenge in terms of loneliness, homesickness, socialisation and other issues.

However, I am going to concentrate on a particular area of interest of mine. I declare an interest in that my brother, Stephen, is a professor of cognitive neuroscience at Nottingham University and has occupied that position for 20 years. He has done an enormous amount of work on human movement studies, in relation not just to Parkinson’s disease but to Tourette’s. I want to talk about a specific area of concern, children with Tourette’s. It is an acute issue, in that those children and young people fall between the gaps in provision in NHS specialised commissioning services and between mainstream and SEND education. They are often bounced around the system—the term is “service neglect”. Often, they are expelled and removed from schools and then, even if they get to the NHS, they are stuck between paediatric services, neurology services and other mainstream services. Often, they have no diagnosis. When they do have a diagnosis, it is a document that lies unused, in effect, and they do not have any follow-on care. Often, as the noble Earl, Lord Russell, made clear, parents are forced to pay for private provision. Those children often suffer isolation, school refusal and alienation. There is only one clinic in the whole country that specifically looks after children with Tourette’s syndrome and provides out-of-area referral, and that of course is Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Tourettes Action has done what it can over the years, and I am indebted to it for the help and support it has given me. In fact, I led a Westminster Hall debate 14 years ago when I served in the other place—so long ago that we had a coalition Government, and the Health Minister was Paul Burstow. That was in October 2010 and, in all fairness, there has been great improvement since but there is more to be done. Tourettes Action is involving itself in training and support, not just in schools and colleges but workplaces, where it supports employers who have employees with Tourette’s, as well as in youth centres and job centres, disability advisory facilities and prisons.

Just to recap, Tourette’s syndrome is an inherited neurological condition. It is not rare and affects one schoolchild in every 100. This is a similar prevalence to autistic spectrum disorder and paediatric epilepsy. However, unlike with the latter, there are no NICE guidelines in place for its care. Over 300,000 children and adults are living with TS in the UK and, as noble Lords will know, the key features are tics, involuntary sounds and movements. In many areas, there is currently no pathway for children or adults to be accepted into local or even regional services for the diagnosis and treatment of Tourette’s syndrome.

Specific support in schools is vital for children with TS. Children with the condition have to live with the consequences of their education. If they are not given the right support in school, to which all children are entitled, they risk ending up facing unemployment and social exclusion. Special educational needs teachers are currently not given any specific training on Tourette’s syndrome, even though TS prevalence in SEN classes is high. Tourette’s syndrome has hitherto been treated as the subject of risqué jokes and ribaldry, but for the children and young people afflicted with the condition, who are fearful of its effects on themselves—and of the understandable fear and ignorance of strangers—it really is no laughing matter. They too deserve to have a hearing from our policymakers.

I hope that my noble friend the Minister will reassure us that there is at least a commitment to develop a policy on the condition between the Department for Health and Social Care and the Department for Education, because a coherent strategy across government will not only save taxpayers’ money in the long run but help to relieve TS sufferers and their families of a lonely burden that they have carried for many years. I hope that my noble friend can address some of these issues in her response, or at least write to me at her convenience on the issues I have raised. In the meantime, I again thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for this debate and the opportunity to discuss these very important issues because, at the very least, we are all committed to improving the lives of children in our country.

Schools: Safeguarding

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Thursday 7th December 2023 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, the purpose of schools is to educate, but if there is an even important purpose it is to safeguard the children in their care. The vast majority of teachers take that seriously, but there are concerns that the education that some schools provide is actually a risk to children. We might even ask if “education” is the right word for it. When schooling is captured by an ideological agenda, it leads to poor, uncritical education, and schools can become blind to what really is in the best interest of children, or blind to the risks that they are exposing them to—especially on sexual issues.

The Sex Education Forum is a sort of trade body for the sex education industry. It downplays these concerns, but you would expect that because it is implicated in the failures that we are talking about. Safeguarding concerns should never be downplayed. Clear boundaries and transparency are key principles of safeguarding. If a concern is raised, it has to be properly investigated. The evidence must be examined, and those with the responsibility of overseeing education must not allow themselves to be fobbed off by people claiming that they can be trusted and that there is nothing to worry about. The source of the problem is third-party organisations which present themselves to schools as experts—organisations offering advice, training, teaching materials and even external speakers to come in and deliver lessons. In reality, many of them are highly partisan campaign groups with agendas that conflict with some of the duties placed on schools. Regrettably, this radicalism has been prevalent in the sector for some time. Jessica Ringrose is a board member of the Queering Education Research Institute, a professor at UCL and an adviser to the School of Sexuality Education, which provides speakers. She was a lead author on an academic paper—I just want to read a few lines from its abstract:

“In this paper we explore our experiences working as a team, who have formed an intra-activist research and pedagogical assemblage to experiment with RSE practices. We draw upon phEmaterialism theory and socially engaged, participatory arts-based research methodologies and pedagogies to explore two examples of arts-based activities that have been developed to de-center humanist, male-dominated, phallocentric, penile-oriented RSE”.


This is from a journal called Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology, and the article is entitled “Play-Doh Vulvas and Felt Tip Dick Pics: Disrupting Phallocentric Matter(s) in Sex Education”.

These people are not even pretending not to be activists. We should be much more sceptical about the materials that these organisations are producing. Ringrose’s research boasts of one example where 12 year-old girls were tasked with working in groups using sexually explicit images some had received on their phones. These organisations know that they are up to no good. I say that because the School of Sexuality Education was the organisation behind the Clare Page case. When she complained as a mum about what her children were being shown in sex education, the School of Sexuality Education told the school that it was not allowed to show the classroom materials to anyone, citing commercial confidentiality. Not being able to refer to the materials hampered her ability to effectively progress her complaint. Norfolk Council’s scheme—a Conservative council—for primary schools instructs children to make plasticine models to illustrate

“a condom catching semen from a penis”,

and gives inaccurate information about the age of consent. Six and seven year-olds in Warwickshire—a Conservative council—were asked to discuss the scenario of a girl who enjoys touching herself between her legs when she has a bath. Thankfully, that programme was withdrawn by the council, but only under the threat of legal action. On gender ideology, in addition to the excessively explicit nature of some sex education, we now have the pervasive presentation of gender ideology as a fact. A lesson plan from the group Kapow presented children with a spectrum of stereotypical male and female interests, and instructed them to match their own so-called gender identity in relation to the spectrum. Then it told them to ignore what anybody else says to them about their gender and choose their own.

This distancing of pupils from the influence of others, especially their own parents, is dangerous; it is a safeguarding issue in itself. Parents are often not aware of what is going on with their own kids in sex education. Even when they are, they are often made to feel powerless, and there seems to be a deliberate strategy to reduce the influence of parents over the education of their own children. Some brave parents submit formal complaints, but it is hard for them to get anyone to listen to them and actually change anything. If they work through all the stages of a school’s complaints process without success, and if they still have the energy to continue, they can escalate it to the Department for Education, but the department does not seem to handle these complaints well. In one case I have been made aware of, a parent has been waiting for well over a year for the DfE to respond substantially to an escalated complaint. In another, the DfE says that it received the complaint but then lost it. The parent printed it out again and posted it off two months ago—she is still waiting. Perhaps the Minister might agree to meet me to discuss these cases. It seems that the DfE is effectively disempowering parents who are courageous enough to make a stand and, while they wait for a response to their complaints, children continue to be exposed to materials that their parents regard as unsuitable and harmful. The School of Sexuality Education contributed to two of the DfE’s own RSHE training modules for teachers. I am afraid we must ask whether the DfE has not been captured and compromised itself. The situation is a mess: it is imperative that the Secretary of State and her Ministers get a grip and act urgently.

Teacher Shortages

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 6th September 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I know that the noble Lord has worked very hard in this area. We still have 81.1% of music lessons being delivered by quality—qualified; I am sure they are all quality—music teachers. That is down, as the noble Lord says, from 87.7% in 2014-15. I am delighted that the noble Lord is meeting with the Minister for School Standards to progress ideas on how we can encourage more children to be able to study music in school.

[Lord Jackson of Peterborough (Con)]

My Lords, in the last academic year, 94,900 children were listed as missing from education. The recruitment and retention of teachers is hugely important, but so is that of child welfare officers. Will the Minister recommit to the recruitment and retention of those? The issue of children missing from education has been much more prevalent since Covid, and they are vital in tackling that long-term problem.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

My noble friend makes an important point. We are extremely concerned about the specific issue of children missing from education and, more broadly, about the impact that Covid has had on school attendance. Yesterday, the Secretary of State and the Minister for School Standards met the Attendance Action Alliance, trying to address exactly these issues and learning from best practice around the country.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Monday 20th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Justine Greening]

The right hon. Gentleman is right to highlight this issue. In fact, it was the additional factor that we put into the working formula on which we are now consulting that was not in the original phase 1 consultation. There is £23 million against that, but I have no doubt that the right hon. Gentleman will have put in his own consultation response, for which we would be grateful.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

As the Minister for School Standards, my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Mr Gibb), will know, because he has visited the area a number of times, Peterborough is not only one of the fastest growing local educational authorities for student numbers, but seven in 10 of my constituents’ children in the primary sector have English as an additional language. On that basis, will the Secretary of State bear in mind in looking at future funding formulae that EAL is an incredibly important issue?

[Justine Greening]

I agree. That is part of our fair funding formula on which we are finishing consultation this week; it sits alongside additional funding for children with low prior attainment. We have to make sure that we enable all our children to catch up if that is what they need to do.

Budget Resolutions

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

1st reading: House of Commons
Tuesday 14th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Graham Evans (Weaver Vale) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this important debate and to follow the hon. Member for Clwyd South (Susan Elan Jones). Hers is a fine constituency in north Wales, an area I know particularly well because it abuts my own county of Cheshire. She will know how closely Cheshire MPs work with her and her colleagues in north Wales to benefit the wider economic zone. MPs in Cheshire and north Wales should work together for the betterment of all our constituents. I would like to think that the Budget goes some way towards enabling us to raise tax to invest in infrastructure that benefits our cross-border constituents.

Against a backdrop of global uncertainty, and as we start our negotiations to exit the European Union, the Budget takes forward our plan to prepare Britain for a brighter future. Nine years ago, the UK was one of the economies worst prepared to face the financial crisis; today, it is one of the best prepared. The OBR forecasts that the UK economy will grow by 2% in 2017. That figure has been revised up from the 1.4% forecast in November. The economy will be growing faster than every major economy in Europe, except Germany’s.

Any family could sit around the kitchen table and tell us that we cannot keep on spending more than we bring in; the same holds true for the Government. There is no magic money tree. Britain has debt of nearly £1.7 trillion —almost £62,000 for every household in the country—and we must never forget that, under Labour, £1 in every £4 that was spent by the Government was borrowed.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it ill behoves the Opposition to oppose every spending reduction over the past 10 years, including every reduction in welfare spending, yet also to make completely uncosted promises that amount to £63 billion?

[Graham Evans]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. In the previous Parliament, the Opposition opposed every single reform made by the then Government, and they have also opposed all the reforms of the current Government. They call our approach austerity; I call it living within one’s means. We have to take the difficult decisions. Judging by the £30 billion black hole in the Opposition’s counter-proposals, however, they have forgotten the mistakes of the past.

Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 7th March 2017 Commons Chamber

It is important to note that relationship and sex education falls within the scope of school inspection. Inspections will check to see that a school is providing the full statutory curriculum, and these issues can also be considered within the context of assessing the school’s leadership, the quality of teaching, pupil safety and pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development. Key elements are already covered in Ofsted’s school inspection handbook, and Her Majesty’s chief inspector will take full account of the new requirements in determining future school inspection arrangements. Ofsted is already seeking to appoint an HMI lead for citizenship and PSHE, whose role will be to keep abreast of developments in this area and oversee the training of inspectors in light of the new expectations on schools. Independent schools will also be held to account through inspectors reporting against the independent school standards.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

The Minister is making a strong case, but is he not asking us to enter into an incongruous position, as we do not yet know what the regulations will be in respect of relationship education, but at the same time he is asking the House to support removing the capacity of parents to remove their children from relationship education in primary schools? He is asking us to support something although we do not know the true details therein.

[Edward Timpson]

What I am asking the House to do is support these new clauses that maintain the right to withdraw from sex education that currently pertains, but the House will also have an opportunity under the regulatory process to scrutinise, and take part in addressing, what those regulations should look like and approve them or not, and I am sure my hon. Friend will want to play a part in doing just that.

We will commit to reviewing the statutory guidance on RSE within three years of its publication, and to a regular timetable after that, set out following our engagement process. This will help to ensure that it stays relevant as the world changes. We will also ensure that the regulations are regularly reviewed to ensure they continue to be fit for purpose. Specifying the timetable for review on the face of the Bill is not necessary as we are already under a public law duty to review the powers we take in legislation, but I can assure hon. Members, and particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Enfield, Southgate (Mr Burrowes), that the statutory guidance will make clear how regularly this guidance will be reviewed, balancing continuity for schools with the crucial need to keep content up to date.

I recognise the deep concern in the House about the safety and welfare of unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children. I should emphasise, however, that my ministerial responsibility extends only to children who are in England. The new local safeguarding arrangements that will be established through the Bill will apply to England only. I accept that other jurisdictions ought to pay equal attention to the safeguarding of children who reside within their borders, and I accept that we should share details of our plans and best practice.

The Government have committed to publishing a safeguarding strategy for unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children by 1 May 2017 by virtue of the written ministerial statement that I laid on 1 November last year. As part of this, we have been consulting local authorities about their capacity and we will set out plans to boost capacity for foster carers and supported lodgings in that strategy. We will continue to consult local authorities about their capacity to support unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children, to help us to identify those authorities that are most able to support unaccompanied children and those needing support through the national transfer scheme. To that end, we are happy to commit to updating Parliament annually on delivery against the safeguarding strategy and to publishing regular updates on the number of unaccompanied asylum-seeking and refugee children transferred to or resettled in the UK, by country of transfer.

Statutory Sex and Relationships Education

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Diana Johnson (Kingston upon Hull North) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered statutory sex and relationships education in all Government-funded schools.

I am very pleased to have secured this debate, and it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. As hon. Members on both sides of the House may know, this issue has been close to my heart for some time. I have been campaigning for improvements in sex and relationships education for several years. Actually, I think we should call it relationships and sex education, because I believe that the focus should be on equipping children and young people to establish healthy relationships and to build their self-esteem and self-worth.

One of the best examples that I have seen of great relationships and sex education was in a Catholic primary school, where children were learning about the body and about the clothing that people wear and why. The lesson looked at modesty and why certain parts of the body are special, private areas. It was done with parents being fully included in the lesson’s design, using the correct names for the parts of the body but in a safe and age-appropriate way. That is the type of age-appropriate, quality relationships education that I would like to see in all our schools and not just—sadly—in the few where a headteacher understands its importance and devotes time to it being taught well.

Under the last Labour Government, I had the honour of serving as Schools Minister during the passage of the Children, Schools and Families Act 2010. That happened in the final months before the 2010 general election and I regret that the Labour Government had left it so long to make important changes to sex and relationships education. By that time, it had become apparent that sex and relationships education in our schools urgently needed to be improved. The vast majority of parents—88%—told us that they agreed, and so too did the vast majority of children and young people. A wealth of educational specialists—the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child, Brook, the Sex Education Forum and the Terrence Higgins Trust—all recommended at that time that the legal requirements on SRE should be strengthened.

Under the Education Act 1996, only maintained secondary schools were required by law to teach SRE and even they could get away with providing it only in science lessons. Three quarters of young people told us then that consent was not being taught even once during those lessons. One in seven pupils could not recall receiving any SRE at all. The guidance on the teaching of the topic, dating from 2000, clearly needed to be updated.

To address that, we planned to teach students much broader lessons covering a lot more than just the narrow biology of sex and what fits where. We felt that students needed to learn about healthy relationships in the broadest context, about being kind and valuing themselves and the other person, about self-worth and building up self-esteem, and about how they talk to and negotiate with one another. We felt that the issue of consent particularly needed to be addressed, that it needed to be spelt out clearly that physical and mental threats were not acceptable in any relationship and that no one should have to do anything that makes them uncomfortable or frightened. We also believed that young people needed to understand about keeping safe, which is especially important for younger children at primary school, and as children got older and became teenagers, to learn about sexual assault, rape and sexual harassment, and to understand what that meant. Should the worst happen, they needed to know whom they should approach and what they could do.

We argued that all that should be taught under the umbrella of a broader subject: personal, social, health and economic education. The Education Act 1996 needed to be amended so that all taxpayer-funded schools, including primary schools and academies, should be required to teach it. We wanted it to be statutory to ensure that teachers would then be required to have the proper training that they needed to deliver the subject well.

We agreed that although parents would still be able to opt their children out of most of the lessons if they wished—it is certainly worth noting that, as the law stands, a parent can withdraw a child from sex education up to the age of 18, even though the age of consent is 16—we negotiated with religious faiths such as the Catholic Church, so that we would guarantee that every child got at least one year’s teaching in SRE before they turned 16.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

Does the hon. Lady concede that schools are currently obliged to follow section 78 of the Education Act 2002? That is about promoting

“the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society”.

[Diana Johnson]

Of course, some schools do that very well, but I want to ensure that all schools—whether academies, free schools or primary schools—provide that level of education to equip our children and young people for what life will throw at them. We need to strengthen provision. That is my issue.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward—for the first time, I think—and to take part in this important debate. I regret that I was unable to speak in the debate a couple of Fridays ago on the Personal, Social, Health and Economic Education (Statutory Requirement) Bill promoted by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). It is as well to put on record that, contrary to misinformation that circulated on social media, I did not participate in a wilful attempt to filibuster that Bill. In fact, I was a victim of the filibuster, because I did not get a chance to speak on the Bill in the four and a half minutes that were left after the previous debate, which was on the rather obscure issue of homosexual activity in the merchant navy. Anyway, I am here now.

I have a great deal of respect for the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson), who is always very sincere in her beliefs, but I think she is wrong on this issue. The correct way to introduce these proposals would be via stand-alone, bespoke primary legislation, because this is a very significant issue. I rather regret that she brought up a whole range of other issues, including the proclivities of the newly elected President of the United States. There are major societal issues lying behind some of the very regrettable attitudes to women and girls, but I do not think that we should move outside the bailiwick of what we are here to discuss, which is PSHE in schools. The hon. Lady is asking us to disregard the professional duties and conduct of teachers, governors and headteachers—interestingly, she made no mention of parents.

[Diana Johnson]

indicated dissent.

[Mr Jackson]

Well, very little mention. I stand to be corrected in Hansard.

[Diana Johnson]

I want to make it very clear that I mentioned parents quite a lot. I certainly said at the outset that the best example that I had seen was a Catholic primary school that had fully consulted with parents and designed PSHE lessons with them.

[Mr Jackson]

I think we are on the same page, then. I ask the hon. Lady to forgive me for what I hope will be my only error in this debate.

Personal, social and health education is already a non-statutory subject on the school curriculum. Government guidance from September 2013 states that it should be taught in all schools as

“an important and necessary part of all pupils’ education… Schools should seek to use PSHE education to build, where appropriate, on the statutory content already outlined in the national curriculum, the basic school curriculum and in statutory guidance on…drug education, financial education, sex and relationship education…and the importance of physical activity and diet for a healthy lifestyle.”

I agree that so much of what we want to happen should, in theory, already be happening, but I am aware that it is not.

The hon. Lady has put a strong case, but there are questions to ask about her proposal. How does she see the provisions in new clause 1, which has been tabled to the Children and Social Work Bill, sitting with the current legislation on sex and relationships education? We frequently hear calls for compulsory sex education, as if there were not already statutory requirements for schools to teach sex education. However, as I am sure hon. Members are aware, under sections 80 and 101 of the Education Act 2002, maintained schools in England and Wales respectively have a basic curriculum, which for secondary schools includes sex education. Section 403 of the Education Act 1996 sets out the detail of the sex education that governors and headteachers are required to provide and states that they

“must have regard to the Secretary of State’s guidance”

on how it should be taught. Primary schools may teach sex education if the governors think it appropriate.

The Bill that was promoted on 20 January by the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion made no specific mention of the existing legislative provisions or of how her proposals would fit in with them. That lack of engagement with the current legislation meant that her Bill would have created significant confusion—and so, I believe, would proposed new clause 1 of the Children and Social Work Bill.

I am aware that there is some concern that sex education is not required in academies in the same way as in maintained schools, since academies are not required to provide a basic curriculum. They are, however, required to teach a broad and balanced curriculum within the requirements of section 78 of the Education Act 2002, to which I referred in my intervention earlier.

For a number of years we were told that SRE was needed to combat teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, but it is now argued that SRE is needed to ensure that young people can unravel the messages of pornography. People are rightly concerned that young people are getting the wrong messages on relationships—I agree with what the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North said about some of those messages.

[Melanie Onn]

I would argue that what is particularly concerning is not the issue of pornography but the spread of overtly sexualised images that young people are exposed to daily in the form of magazines, newspapers or online adverts that pop up on gaming systems, which young people are incredibly plugged into. That exposure means that young people’s awareness, understanding and maturity are being challenged far more than ever before. Does the hon. Gentleman think that that should also be considered?

[Mr Jackson]

Yes, I do. The hon. Lady makes a very valid point and an astute observation. What we require, however, is a coherent social and moral framework that involves all parties and stakeholders, rather than what appears to be potentially quite a draconian top-down approach that would insert into separate primary legislation a provision seeking change on a long-term endemic societal issue. The objectification of young people, particularly women, and the inappropriate way in which they are treated can lead to grooming, violence against women, trafficking and all the other issues that we know of, but, in fairness, that is some distance from the specific issue of PSHE—although, of course, they are linked.

What can the Government do? We need to look at the level and explicitness of pornography and how to protect children from it, rather than merely treating the symptoms of all the material that is circulating. The Government have taken that duty seriously with the Digital Economy Bill, part 3 of which will soon be implemented. The requirement of robust age verification is not the whole answer, by any means, but it is very important, and I take this opportunity to put on record my great support for the leadership that the Prime Minister and Ministers in the Department for Culture, Media and Sport have shown on it.

A better way of addressing our concerns would be to ensure that they are properly covered in the new sex education guidance that the Minister will no doubt tell us about later. I would also be interested to hear the views of the Minister and of the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North, perhaps in future debates, on how parents fit into the model that the hon. Lady proposes for PSHE. Under the current sex education law, parents can ask for their child to be withdrawn from PSHE lessons, but proposals such as the recent private Member’s Bill do not seem to give them that opportunity.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Three more Back Benchers wish to speak; I know that the hon. Gentleman is very courteous and will want to give them all a chance to get in. If he stops speaking soon, they will each have five minutes, so I am sure he will want to bring his remarks to a conclusion.

[Mr Jackson]

I am always mindful of your charming and gracious admonitions, Sir Edward, so I will draw my remarks to a close. I would not want to prevent the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) from sharing his views with the world.

I will just conclude by saying that under these proposals—these potentially draconian measures—parents would potentially be less inclined to take responsibility for their children, teachers may be overburdened, and primary schools would be deprived of choice in the matter, which might be culturally sensitive. Sex education is a sensitive subject that requires close consultation. There is a thinly veiled attempt by some people—not the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North—to impose an ostensibly liberal agenda on the curriculum.

For all those reasons, the Government should listen to key stakeholders—not just to people who have a vested interest, but to constituents, charities, schools, governors, Members of Parliament and councillors. All their responses should be fed into the new guidance. However, we should think very carefully before disregarding the professional skills, knowledge and expertise of people at the lowest level of schools, the importance of a social and moral framework, or the centrality of parents.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

I call Ann Coffey to speak for no more than five minutes, please. Thank you.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Caroline Dinenage)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your stewardship, Sir Edward. I thank the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) for securing this important debate and for her constant and consistent engagement on the important issue of sex and relationships education and personal, social, health and economic education. I also congratulate her constituency and the whole city of Kingston upon Hull on its acclaim as the UK city of culture for 2017.

I very much welcome the opportunity to debate these important issues again. As various Members have mentioned, we spoke about them in last week’s Adjournment debate, but it is always valuable to gather and hear more views from more Members from all parts of the House on these areas of concern. I entirely share the hon. Lady’s view about the value of children and young people having access to effective, factually accurate and age-appropriate sex and relationships education. I agree with her and the Opposition spokesperson that it has to be about more than that; it has to be about healthy relationships, consent and respect for oneself and others. Those things are so important if our children are to face the challenges of the modern world. It has been helpful to hear views from Members from all parts of the House, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Mr Jackson), whose birthday it is today.

My hon. Friend the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families has already committed to come back to the House during the consideration of the Children and Social Work Bill with an update on how he intends to proceed. I have to be careful not to steal his thunder, particularly because he is as we speak on paternity leave, which is evidence, if needed, that he was definitely there for that class on which bit went where.

I reassure Members that the Government take the matter seriously. We welcome the extremely helpful input from the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull North, many other Members and the Women and Equalities Committee, and the ongoing scrutiny of the Bill. The issue is a priority for the Government.

[Mr Jackson]

The paternity leave of my hon. Friend the Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families will no doubt be interrupted by the Whips tomorrow evening for the vote on article 50. May I press the Minister specifically on the issue of continuing to allow parents to withdraw their children from some classes under any new guidance issued by the Department? Hitherto, that has been a central tenet of Government policy on this sensitive issue.

[Caroline Dinenage]

The input of parents on this subject is fundamentally important, as is the input of teachers and other professionals. The Government are fully committed to exploring all the options to improve the delivery of sex and relationships education and PSHE. We want to ensure the quality of delivery and the accessibility of teaching so that all children can be supported to develop and thrive in modern Britain.

Oral Answers to Questions

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Tuesday 28th June 2016 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Life Sciences (George Freeman)]

I will keep it brief, Mr Speaker.

The hon. Lady tabled a named day question on this matter and I have replied to explain that this is a matter for the chief executive of the Post Office, Paula Vennells. She has written a letter to the hon. Lady, which is in the House of Commons Library. For the benefit of the House, I can confirm that through the £13 million investment in our 50 Crown post offices, £440,000 has been spent on the Paisley branch. Through the Crown transformation plan, we have a Post Office that is more stable and closer to breaking even than ever. There are 11,500 branches, 200,000 extra opening hours and 3,800 branches open on Sundays. The people of Paisley have a strong and secure post office.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I commend the Ministers on the Treasury Bench for their pragmatic approach to last week’s result. I think that we are all committed to the UK becoming an outward-looking global trading nation. With that in mind, will Ministers redouble their efforts to support the Australian Prime Minister, who has said that he has instructed his officials to work with New Zealand to prepare a trade deal with the United Kingdom very shortly?

[Sajid Javid]

My hon. Friend highlights the opportunities of Brexit and we absolutely should now start embracing those opportunities; free trade agreements with many more countries is just one of them. Australia is an excellent example, and that is exactly the sort of thing we should be working on.

Education, Skills and Training

Lord Jackson of Peterborough Excerpts

Wednesday 25th May 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ms Eagle]

The first thing to say is that some of the threats are from the so-called new providers, which are untried and untested. We will have to look closely at the detail of the Bill when it is debated, and I am sure we will talk about that aspect.

By the way, I would like to acknowledge the fact that the Minister for Universities and Science has taken the place of the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, who is on his way to Mumbai to help talk to Tata about the crisis facing the steel industry in our country. It is about time. I wish the Secretary of State all the best with the work that he is doing. It is a pleasure to welcome the Minister to the Dispatch Box in his stead.

There is nothing in this Queen’s Speech on the growing funding crisis affecting schools. There is no mention of adult up-skilling, which is a particularly difficult omission. Without action in these areas, we will not tackle the critical skills emergency which is holding back our economy. Unfilled vacancies have risen 130% since 2011, with skills shortages accounting for over a third of unfilled vacancies in key industries.

[Mr Stewart Jackson (Peterborough) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady, not least for once describing me on the Floor of the House as a Eurosceptic martyr. On skills and technical and vocational education, why does she think it has taken a Conservative Government to open a new university technical college in Peterborough—it is opening in September—whereas in benign economic times we saw under Labour massive increases in youth unemployment and the young people who did not want to go to university left on the sidelines?

[Ms Eagle]

I am glad to see that despite being a Eurosceptic martyr, the hon. Gentleman is still alive and kicking and doing his thing on the Tory Back Benches. It was the Labour Government who started university technical colleges, and I am glad that he will have one in his own area. He is being rather churlish in talking about our record, when we created the university technical college concept.

The Government have a very large target for apprenticeships, but 30% of those starting do not finish the course, and 96% are level 2 or 3 apprenticeships, with very low numbers attaining higher degree level apprenticeships. I understand and recognise that level 2 and 3 are very important to attain, but even more important for the future health and wellbeing of our economy is expanding the higher degree level apprenticeships, and quickly.