Queen’s Speech

Lord Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 17th May 2022 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for her heartfelt introduction to our debate on the gracious Speech and acknowledge the committed remarks of my noble friend Lady Wilcox, a compatriot from our homeland, the lovely land of Wales. I further acknowledge her fine record of leadership in our local government. It is good to follow the speech from the noble Viscount, a masterly campaigner.

Prime Minister Tony Blair’s best speech was his shortest: “Education, education, education”. If our communities are to experience levelling up, we need ever more successful schooling for the many underprivileged children of the north. We do not know when HS2 will reach Crewe and Manchester, but we do know these children are only young once. They have but a decade to get by. As the great Lady Plowden said 50 years ago in her historic report, for the young it is “time irredeemable”.

If you strain the children, you strain the teachers. There are always consequences. RA Butler enacted his historic Education Act 1944, and for Prime Minister Attlee, a determined Ellen Wilkinson developed it. On my paper round, I read the left-leaning New Statesman, edited by mischievous poltergeist editor Kingsley Martin. He had Rab profiled under the heading, “Rab the Apostle of Inequality.”

British Labour’s guru, he of the future of socialism, CAR Crosland, put the Butler Act asunder. It was the beginning of the end of the network of grammar schools. However, it was also the end of those secondary modern school classroom networks that taught technical drawing, the entry card to the then real apprenticeships, when Britain still had a significant manufacturing base. Incidentally, Tony Crosland had his New Statesman profile with the equally insulting headline of “Mr Gaitskell’s Ganymede”.

The comprehensive came forth for equality, and perhaps Mr Blair’s next speech should be equally short: “Skills, skills, skills”. His son Euan would surely approve. As a young Minister, I asked the inspectorate, and likewise directors of education, to give more attention to the less academic, and one held regional conferences to push the issues. With the octogenarian’s glorious hindsight, I do not think it was a success. When one was dumped from office, the initiative died also.

To this day, the challenge remains. Still, thousands of girls and boys leave high school with very poor prospects. Few employers want them. The pool of real jobs for northerners—of high-class apprenticeships, pensions, security and status—diminishes. Our civilisation can put persons on the moon but we do not crack this problem, and yet we know the name and address of every girl and boy underachieving. It is very wrong. I think it is unjust and unforgiveable. We need better. Our teachers are worthy of a better salary structure and better status. If Finland can do it, Britain can. Levelling up requires a bigger, more self-confident teaching force—and the sooner the better.

Lastly, every Government since that of Mr Attlee in 1945 have expended huge sums of our national treasure on the schools service. All the same, it is clear that inequality of opportunity remains, and this is the fundamental challenge to the concept of levelling up. The great queen, Elizabeth I, Gloriana—and surely Elizabeth II is a great monarch—was told by her first Privy Council, “Your Grace, north of the Trent men know no princes but Nevilles and Percys”. The divide remains and, alas, there is no time to tell of how the tyrant Henry VIII annexed summarily my nation Wales.