Queen’s Speech
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(5 years ago)
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Lord Low of Dalston (CB)
My Lords, I hope that your Lordships will permit me a moment or two to speak in the gap. I had put my name down to speak tomorrow, Tuesday, but then found that I could not. I decided to switch my name to today’s debate but found that the list had closed. Therefore, my only recourse was to speak now, in the gap, and I hope that the House will permit me a few moments to do so.
The gracious Speech mentioned a Bill to protect the integrity of the electoral system and democracy in the United Kingdom. Earlier this year, the High Court held that current methods for making ballot papers accessible to blind and partially sighted voters—the tactile voting device and ballot papers in large print—were not effective in enabling blind and partially sighted people to vote independently and in secret. The tactile voting device helps a blind or partially sighted voter to find the boxes on the ballot paper but it does not tell them the names of the candidates or the parties they represent. Blind and partially sighted voters are therefore dependent on assistance from a family member, friend or a member of polling station staff.
The RNIB’s 2017 report, Turned Out—I declare my interest as a vice-president of the RNIB—found that only one in four blind and partially sighted voters felt that the current system let them vote independently and in secret. Fifty-four per cent of blind and partially sighted respondents felt that new accessible ways to vote, such as by telephone or via electronic or online voting systems, were needed. Only 4% felt that no changes to the current system were needed.
Therefore, the Government need to replace the current tactile voting device with a new accessible voting system that guarantees that blind and partially sighted voters can exercise their democratic right without any assistance, just as their sighted peers do. The replacement device must allow voters with sight loss to review the candidates on the ballot paper, reliably find and mark their chosen candidate on the ballot paper, and cast their vote independently and in secret.
The Government need to say when a replacement for the tactile voting device will be available. They need to give an assurance that the next general election will be the last to use the present inappropriate device and that any replacement for the tactile voting device will be introduced only following extensive consultation with visually impaired people and their organisations. They also need to ensure that a voter with sight loss can use their smartphone or magnifier to view their ballot paper at the next general election.
Access to Cash
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(5 years, 7 months ago)
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Lord Bates
I am aware of that. There is obviously the universal service obligation. This year for the first time telephone banking apps will overtake digital online as the way in which most people access their banking services, so that is another factor. However, I am aware of the concern.
Lord Low of Dalston (CB)
My Lords, Barclays and HSBC have ATMs with an audio output, which enables blind people to access their cash independently. What will the Minister do to encourage the remaining banks to increase the independence of blind people in accessing their cash independently by ensuring that all cash machines have an audio output, such as those of Barclays and HSBC? Would he be willing to write to the CEOs of the remaining banks to find out how many of their ATMs have an audio output and what plans they have to ensure that all their machines have this vital facility?
Lord Bates
I am happy to undertake to take that up with the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, who is responsible for retail banking, as well as the Financial Conduct Authority. I know that significant progress has been made on that, and I will write to the noble Lord.
Stalking Protection Bill
Lord Low of Dalston ExcerptsFriday 18th January 2019
(5 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Low of Dalston (CB)
My Lords, I crave your Lordships’ indulgence to speak briefly in the gap; I will take a slightly different tack from that which has been taken up to now.
I make it absolutely clear at the outset that stalking is unquestionably a kind of behaviour against which it is entirely appropriate—indeed, necessary—to legislate. I would not want the noble Baroness, Lady Bertin, to think that I do not regard her Bill and the case she has made for it with the utmost seriousness. But anti-stalking legislation can be abused, and it has been the subject of criticism. It has even been suggested that it might in some respects run counter to the European Convention on Human Rights. Questions have been raised about the appropriateness of a maximum sentence of five years’ imprisonment for offences that can be committed through mere negligence. Some magistrates have felt that criminalising harassment might lead to unfounded accusations from complainants who are mistaken about another’s behaviour or are even being vindictive. Prosecutors agree that it is necessary to be alive to the possibility that the putative victim may be reading more into another’s conduct than is warranted. I have had experience of this myself, when someone overreacted—to put it at its lowest—or, more likely, used stalking legislation with the willing complicity of an unscrupulous firm of solicitors, to ventilate a grudge.
When drafting legislation in this area, we need to be careful not to collude in such behaviour. As an example of what I mean in relation to the present Bill, I am particularly concerned about Clause 1(4)(b), which states that a risk associated with stalking,
“may arise from acts which the defendant knows or ought to know are unwelcome to the other person even if”—
I emphasise—
“in other circumstances, the acts would appear harmless in themselves”.
This weights the scales too much in favour of the complainant as against the defendant. It is not enough for the complainant to allege that the defendant knew or ought to have known that the acts complained of were unwelcome. There ought to be a test of reasonableness. The complainant should have to show not just that the defendant knew or ought to have known that the acts complained of were unwelcome but that they knew or ought reasonably to have known that they were unwelcome, and it was reasonable for them to be so.
I will be anxious to move amendments in Committee to make sure that the Bill gets this balance right. However, I would be glad to hear from the Minister that she takes the force of my argument and will give sympathetic consideration to accommodating it as the Bill progresses.
Education: Disability Financing
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(7 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Low of Dalston
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the #CostingEquity report on disability responsive education financing, published by the International Disability and Development Consortium, which outlines the steps and resources necessary to deliver the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 4 on inclusive education.
The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)
My Lords, we welcome the IDDC’s report. Disability has been underprioritised in the past and, as a result, insufficient global resources have been allocated to education. We recognise the challenge and are steadily taking steps to scale up our own response and encourage others to do more.
Lord Low of Dalston (CB)
My Lords, I am very grateful for that Reply. The Minister will be aware that more than 32 million children with disabilities in low and middle-income countries are out of school and denied an education. That is why 40 NGO leaders have endorsed a joint call to action to invest in disability-inclusive education, in which they have agreed to make education for children with disabilities in developing countries a top priority and to urge donors to increase funding for inclusive education and make disability inclusiveness a necessary criterion for accessing funding for all education programmes and projects. Can the Minister assure the House—and from his Reply I am very hopeful that he can—that the UK Government will follow the same approach and support these recommendations?
Lord Bates
I am very happy to give that assurance, and I pay tribute to the noble Lord for his work on the steering group of this very valuable report. We are still digesting a lot of its conclusions—but, undoubtedly, the one that we should focus on is that 90% of children in the developing world with disabilities are not in school. Clearly, that is contrary to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and to at least goal 4—and probably goals 8 and 10—of the sustainable development goals. It is something that we are committed to responding to, and I will be very happy to speak to the noble Lord afterwards to outline some of the thoughts that we have in this area about what we hope to bring forward in response to the report.
United Nations Sustainable Development Goals
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(7 years, 6 months ago)
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Lord Bates
The 0.7% was a commitment made in 1970 and it was first brought in under a Conservative-led Government—and it has been sustained under a Conservative Government. What we have said is that the 0.7% commitment was never in doubt and will remain continuously. But we are absolutely committed to saying that we want to look very carefully at where and how that money is spent, to ensure that every single penny given goes to the people who are most in need. That is our commitment and we will stand by it.
International Development (Official Development Assistance Target) Bill
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Low of Dalston (CB)
Perhaps the noble Lord might be able to help me and in so doing, I hope, help the House. I understand very well the argument that he is making. He has put it very clearly that he is against hypothecation of any proportion of GNI for any particular purpose. However, I am not quite clear on how this amendment assists that argument. If the noble Lord objects to the hypothecation of 0.7% of GNI for development aid, it matters not whether it is “the” target or “a” target; it is still a target. This amendment would not get rid of that hypothecation.
Lord MacGregor of Pulham Market
My Lords, there are two themes to all our amendments: hypothecation is one and the other is value for money et cetera. This is not the most important amendment to deal with hypothecation but it happens to be the first. That is the point. A lot of the other amendments—which I hope we can deal with much more swiftly because we will have dealt with the general arguments—are more designed to ease the target so as to deal with problems such as, for example, having in one given year to go on spending to meet the target when it might have been better to spread that over a few years. We have other amendments on those themes to deal with that problem. This is not the most important amendment but it happens to be the one where we can make the general case.
Global Development Goals
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(9 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Low of Dalston (CB)
My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord McConnell, on securing this debate, which could not be more timely given the stage we have reached in the negotiations towards a new set of development goals to replace the millennium development goals in 2015. I declare my interests as president of the International Council for Education of People with Visual Impairment and vice-chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Global Education for All. I would like to focus on what role Ministers are playing in ensuring that the post-2015 framework secures a good quality education for all and leaves no one behind by including and prioritising children and adults with disabilities.
I would like to start by commending Ministers on the way in which they have so far championed the concept of “leave no one behind”, which was such a powerful part of the report produced by the UN high-level panel co-chaired by the Prime Minister. I add to this a strong welcome for DfID’s new disability framework, which was launched last week at an event I chaired. I believe this will help to keep driving this agenda forward as it relates to disability. I also welcome the fact that the Government have maintained their commitment to spending 0.7% of gross national income on overseas aid. I look forward to supporting the Private Member’s Bill on this issue, which I hope will shortly reach this House.
The UK’s commitment to 0.7% has enabled us to become a leading donor to support education for the most marginalised children and young people in the world. Between 2011-12 and 2014-15, DfID will support 11 million girls and boys in school and a further 1 million of the most marginalised girls to receive a basic education. Education is fundamental to ending the poverty, discrimination and exclusion faced by disabled people in developing countries. Yet it is estimated that in most countries disabled children are more likely to be out of school than any other group of children. In Nepal, it is estimated that 85% of all children out of school are disabled. In Ethiopia, less than 3% of disabled children have access to primary education. In some countries, being disabled more than doubles the chance of never enrolling in school. Disabled children are also less likely to remain in school and transition to the next grade. The exclusion of disabled children not only denies their human right to education but makes it impossible for the world to reach the millennium development goal of universal primary education, which was due to be achieved next year. Fifty-eight million children of primary age are still out of school around the world, and progress has all but stalled. It is estimated that disabled children may make up over one-third of the out-of-school population.
Disability has long been neglected as a niche area of development, deemed by many to be too complex or too small an issue to be core to development efforts. The millennium development goals failed to mention disability at all, yet we now know that disabled people make up an estimated 15% of the global population—approximately 1 billion disabled people. Disability is both a cause and a consequence of poverty. Fully 80% of disabled people live in developing countries, and the UN calls them “the world’s largest minority”.
The ongoing negotiations towards post-2015 development goals, to replace the millennium development goals, therefore represent a unique opportunity to reverse the neglect of disabled people by ensuring that the new framework explicitly includes disability as a core issue, and that the framework leaves no one behind, by measuring the achievement of targets by whether they are being achieved for all, including marginalised social groups such as disabled people, girls and women, the poorest or those living in vulnerable locations.
Last week, as we have heard, the UN Secretary-General published his synthesis report, The Road to Dignity by 2030: Ending Poverty, Transforming All Lives and Protecting the Planet. I would be grateful to hear the Minister’s comments about this crucial report and the extent to which she feels it lays the groundwork for successful intergovernmental negotiations next year—in particular, whether the Secretary-General has done enough to push forward the “leave no one behind” principle, which was somewhat lacking from the UN open working group’s final report.
With regard to education specifically, I am also conscious that twin negotiations are happening in parallel next year with the Education for All process, led by UNESCO, and other negotiations on education as part of the main post-2015 sustainable development goal negotiation. There is thus a real risk of confusion, duplication and mismatch between what these two negotiation processes come up with. What is the UK’s position on that? What do the Government want to see happen? The obvious answer is that what the two processes produce in terms of education, goals and targets should become one and the same thing, but that is not what happened last time with the Education for All goals and the millennium development goals. Millennium development goal 2, on universal primary education, was only one of the Education for All goals that covered secondary education, adult literacy, quality of education, early childhood and so on, which has resulted in a lot of focus on primary education but much less on other areas of education. I would welcome hearing the Minister’s views on these negotiation processes and how the Government are ensuring that the goals, targets and indicators agreed reflect the need to ensure both that all people get a good quality education and that no one is left behind from development and aid efforts.
After months of deliberation, the open working group outcome report includes 17 proposed goals, including one on inequality. However, many countries are pushing for these to be reduced to possibly between 10 and 12, so that the goal on inequality is thought to be at risk. Oxfam has estimated that seven out of 10 people now live in countries where inequality is growing fast, so I strongly support the retention of a goal on inequality and I very much hope that the Government will as well.
Children and Families Bill
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(11 years ago)
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The Countess of Mar (CB)
My Lords, about a fortnight ago I forwarded to the Minister an e-mail I had from a young man who is autistic, questioning the fact that this Bill prevents local authorities from funding university education for SEN young people. I asked the Minister for clarification. Would it be possible to get that today? Are local authorities still able to fund young people to go to university or has the Bill blocked that funding?
Lord Low of Dalston (CB)
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 155 in my name. Clause 38(3) sets out the types of institution that may be named in an education, health and care plan. Ministers have stressed the importance of a joined-up approach and that a system that goes from nought to 25 will improve the lives of children and young people with special educational needs. I was therefore a bit surprised to see that higher education institutions were omitted from the list. That means that if a young person with a special educational need decides that they wish to pursue a university education, they must do so without the support of an education, health and care plan.
Disabled young people and those with special educational needs need all the support they can get to go to university. Disabled graduates are much more likely to get a job than those without a degree. In 2012, 71% of disabled graduates were in employment compared with only 42% of disabled non-graduates. Yet disabled young people are less likely to go on to higher education than their non-disabled peers: in 2009-10, it was 33% of disabled as against 41% of non-disabled young people aged 19.
Lord Low of Dalston
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 102 in my name. These amendments would specify that local authorities must publish information about the provision both within and outside their area “which is”, rather than “it expects to be”, available,
“at the time of publication for children and young people who have special educational needs”.
I have received a number of briefs that make the case for these amendments with considerable rhetorical flourish. However, the matter can be put much more simply.
The amendments simply require a local authority to call a spade a spade and to set out in the local offer what actually is the case, rather than what it “expects to be” the case, which is much more slippery and imprecise. Expects when? On what does the fulfilment of the expectation depend? Parents, practitioners and the special educational needs and disability sector are concerned that the language of expectation rather than actuality could easily be used to let local authorities off the hook and slide out of delivering what they had appeared to promise.
I should like to make a couple of other points. We should be clear about who the local offer covers and who it does not. Independent research by the University of Bath, to which we have already referred in these proceedings, has shown that 25% of disabled children and young people do not have a special educational need and as such will not be entitled to an education, health and care plan or to access the local offer because it is only for those with a special educational need. It is not clear how these 400,000-odd children and young people who have a disability but not a special educational need will secure the support they need if they are not entitled to access an education, health and care plan or the local offer.
Finally, I underline the importance of the local offer including provision which exists to meet the needs of children and young people with special educational needs outside the authority’s own area. This can be especially important in the case of those with particularly severe disabilities, who need to know about the full range of services, often consisting of highly specialised provision not available in the local area.
There is a concern that local authorities will provide information on provision available in only their own area. This is not the same as providing all the relevant information about what is available to meet special educational needs, including provision out of the local authority’s area. If out-of-area providers are routinely left off the list, it will undermine young people’s ability to access the provision which best meets their needs, as well as potentially threatening the viability of highly specialised but vital services.
Young people and families cannot be expected to find all this information about what may be of help to them for themselves without assistance. Local offers should be robust, accessible and effective in promoting choice. I therefore hope that the Minister will give serious consideration to accepting these amendments. I beg to move.
Baroness Wilkins (Lab)
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 104, which returns to the issue of funding. The amendment would require local authorities to include information about funding for SEN provision within their local offers.
I set out at the last meeting of the Grand Committee the concerns of the National Deaf Children’s Society, RNIB, Sense and many other charities that local authority spending cuts will fatally undermine this Bill. In her reply the Minister undertook to propose to her “far more significant” noble friend that their department might discuss this matter with the organisations concerned. I look forward to hearing whether any progress has been made.
In her reply to me in Grand Committee, at column GC 545, the Minister assured me that the Government were not cutting services for deaf children and set out the funding situation. However, we know from the National Deaf Children’s Society Stolen Futures report that many local authorities are already cutting support services for children with SEN. The society found that 29% of local authorities will be cutting specialist support services for deaf children this year.
The Government have argued that the Bill will improve transparency and accountability and that it is this which will enable parents to ensure that their local authority provides the services that their children need. However, on looking at the Bill and at the draft regulations and guidance underpinning it, nothing that I can see would require local authorities to be more transparent about the funding. If the local offer is intended to bring together all the relevant information about SEN provision in one place, in a way that is easy to understand, accessible and improves accountability, surely it must include information about funding. Without that parents will be powerless.
The local offer must give parents clear information about how much funding has been allocated by the authority to support children and young people with SEN; it must allow and empower parents to compare local authority spending; and it must allow parents to identify if cuts have been made from year to year. There is a clear need for transparency. The National Deaf Children’s Society had great difficulties in extracting reliable information about funding of specialist support services for deaf children from the local authorities.
In 2012, 49 local authorities—nearly a third—did not respond to freedom of information requests on budgets for deaf children’s services within the legal deadline. One local authority did not respond until six months later, and only after the Information Commissioner’s Office intervened. Its response confirmed a cut to the education service for deaf children. However, as this was not disclosed until so long afterwards, parents were denied any opportunity to legally challenge this decision before it had been implemented.
This is the battle that the parents and charities must face. If the Government were to accept this amendment and require local authorities to publish information about funding in the local offer in an easy and accessible way, it would certainly give parents and charities real leverage to get the services that they need.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, before I respond to the amendments in this group, I should like to say a few words about the intention of the local offer. The Lamb inquiry into special educational needs and parental confidence highlighted how,
“good, honest and open communication … underpinned by written, publicly available information”,
was key to the development of positive working relationships. It emphasised the need for parents to be able to access the information they need, when they need it and in ways that are convenient to them. The Bill responds to that need. The local offer, introduced by Clause 30, has two fundamental purposes: first, to provide clear, comprehensive and accessible information on provision available to support children and young people with SEN and their parents; and, secondly, to help make provision more responsive to local needs. Paragraph 5.1 of the draft SEN code of practice makes this crystal clear.
To be effective, the local offer must be a collaborative venture. We are requiring local authorities and schools, colleges and others providing services to work together in developing it through the duty in Clause 28. Crucially, we are requiring local authorities to involve local parents of children with SEN, and children and young people with SEN, in developing and reviewing the local offer. The local offer should enable local people to see what services are available, how they can be accessed, who provides them and where to go if things do not work out. It will also improve local accountability by making services more transparent and more responsive. I have to say that my discussions with pathfinders have been encouraging in this regard.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, raised the question of disabled children in the local offer. We had a full and helpful debate on disabled children without special educational needs and I gave an undertaking to consider the issue with help from noble Lords. I would be delighted to discuss this further with the noble Lord before Report.
Many noble Lords have spoken to the amendment and Amendment 102, both of which are in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Low, the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones, and my noble friend Lady Sharp. I would like to address both amendments together. I can assure noble Lords that the local offer will not be a speculative document or wish list—or, as the noble Lord, Lord Low, said, an opportunity to be “slippery”. It will not be about what the local authority would like to be available. It will be what the local authority expects will actually be available.
The local authority does not have control of all the services set out in the local offer and can therefore set out only what it expects to be available from these services. This will be based on consultation and collaboration with providers, including schools, post-16 institutions and health providers. If the local offer includes only the support that is currently available, families will not be informed about what provision the local authority expects to become available in the near future, possibly from new innovative practices. We want parents and young people to have confidence in the information in the local offer. We intend the local offer to be robust and effective, and I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Storey for his positive remarks in this regard.
My noble friend Lady Brinton made a passionate case for a strong national framework for the local offer in order to provide constancy. The local offer regulations set out in chapter 5 of the draft code of practice provide that framework in some detail, and we will return to this point.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, talked about minimum standards and setting out duties for the provision of services in the local offer. We will return to these issues later and I will not speak about them now.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, made the point about provision outside a local authority’s area. I agree with him that the local offer should include details on such provision. Clause 30(1)(b) delivers this by requiring a local offer to include provision outside the local authority’s area for children for whom it is responsible.
I am not clear why the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, thinks that the detail being in the code and regulations makes it harder for parents to challenge it. The code is recognised as the Bible for the system—as my noble friend Lord Storey said—and having the information and guidance clearly explained in there will be more accessible to parents than the legal language of the Bill.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, for tabling Amendment 104. The Government currently publish information on local authority expenditure on special educational needs services under Section 251 of the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009 but, as the local offer will include services from a wide range of public, voluntary and private agencies across education, health and social care, it would mean a substantial additional bureaucratic burden for local authorities to collect this funding information. I hope noble Lords will agree that the focus of the local offer should be on the services provided and whether they are responsive to local need. We want that to be the focus of local authorities’ efforts, rather than gathering funding information from a range of other agencies.
Amendment 107—tabled by the noble Baronesses, Lady Howarth and Lady Massey, and my noble friend Lady Sharp—highlights the importance of ensuring that parents and young people who want support in managing a personal budget know where to find it. I can provide reassurance on the important issue of personal budgets—a key feature of our reforms. Clause 49(7) on personal budgets and Clause 36(9) on assessment would require local authorities to provide information, advice and support in relation to the management of direct payments and the education, health and care assessment plans. Clause 30(1) makes clear that local authorities must include in their local offer sources of information, advice and support for children and young people with SEN and their parents. The code of practice clarifies that this should include information on,
“the option of having a personal budget, who is eligible, how to ask for one and what information, advice and support is available for securing and managing a personal budget”.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, asked about support for families in managing personal budgets. Personal budgets can include provision for support in managing them. This can, where needed, include personal assistance and key worker support. Some families in our pathfinder areas report their satisfaction with this aspect of personal budgets. I have a quote here: through a personal budget someone’s 11 year-old son,
“has been able to swim and have a PA to attend social activities … with his classmates, doing things that ordinary”,
11 year-olds “take for granted”. I had a conversation with a pathfinder on this issue, the help they were getting from a PA and how that had changed substantially the mother’s life.
The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, made the point about including education for life. Of course, we expect the local offer to include information about educational provision in the broadest sense. The code specifies that this must include information about support in preparing for adulthood and other transitions, as well as the support provided by schools and the universal and specialist services.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, for tabling Amendment 110. The local offer covers a wide range of public, private and voluntary organisations. These will vary from area to area. Subjecting these agencies to a legal duty may inhibit their involvement when we want the local offer to be as comprehensive as possible and include the full range of services that can support children and young people with SEN and their parents. The local offer will improve accountability of local services in three key ways: first, children and young people with SEN and their parents will be directly involved in developing and reviewing it; secondly, it will make clear how and where they complain or appeal where they are unhappy with their support; and thirdly, regulations will require local authorities to publish comments from children and young people with SEN and their parents on the local offer, including comments on the quality of the provision available and its response to them. These requirements will give a strong impetus to local authorities and those providing support to respond to local needs. In view of this, I do not believe further duties are necessary.
I hope I have reassured noble Lords that these amendments are not necessary and that noble Lords feel able to withdraw them.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I am grateful to all those who have spoken and to the Minister for his comprehensive reply. This is the first of a number of groups of amendments that deal with the local offer. It is clear that the concept of the local offer has given rise to a good deal of concern on the part of parents and professionals. Noble Lords have already had a lot of points to make about it, and clearly there will be a lot more. I do not propose to say much more about it now, because there is a good deal of this debate still to go, and I imagine that we may well want to come back to something more focused on Report.
I just note one observation that the Minister made. I was glad to hear him say that he would be happy to meet us on the question of whether local offers could extend to disabled children as well as those with special educational needs. That is a welcome sign of movement on the part of the Government and holds out the hope that we may be able to get closer together on that issue. I very much welcome that and appreciate the Minister’s having said it. He will not find us at all unready to take up that offer.
In order that we get on to the debates which are to ensue on later groups, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Low of Dalston
“( ) A local authority’s local offer shall be subject to inspection by Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission.”
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, the amendment is in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. I shall speak also to Amendment 114, which is also in our two names and is in similar terms to Amendment 112 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones.
The amendments are about introducing a degree of accountability, consistency and quality control into the local offer. These ideas have already been broached but the amendments seek to take the discussion further and perhaps anchor it even more firmly. I imagine that I am not alone in having received extensive briefings from concerned parents, practitioners and policy experts from organisations such as the Special Educational Consortium emphasising the importance of accountability in the new system.
The local offer will provide a great deal of information for children, young people and their families to enable them to know what is available and help them to exercise choice, but we cannot expect those the information is intended to benefit effectively to police the system by assuring its quality and by providing the necessary checks that like is being compared with like, and so on. Of course local offers will not all be the same. I understand that the Minister will not want to overprescribe the form and content of local offers, thus removing the scope for innovative development and responsiveness at the local level.
However, in the introduction of new systems such as this, it would be rash not to build any element of accountability or quality control into the process. The amendment therefore seeks to have both Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission involved in reviewing local offers to make sure that they provide an accurate picture of the services available to young people and their families so that they have access to accurate and quality information. This would ensure that the services provided by all providers were described and assessed on a comparable basis. Under current arrangements there is no parity between providers, which all have different audit and inspection arrangements, thereby making it difficult for young people and their families to make like-for-like comparisons of services included in the local offer.
I shall not say any more about this but leave it to the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to expand on the questions of accountability and inspection from all his vast experience of these matters, should he wish to do so. I am sure the Committee will be greatly benefitted if he does.
Amendment 114 is in similar terms to Amendment 112 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones. The amendments seek to establish a minimum level of provision that local offers should contain. This should not be seen as overprescriptive but simply as providing a measure of reassurance that local offers will be, as I said in relation to Amendments 101 and 102, robust, accessible and effective, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said, consistent. Accountability must be at the heart of these reforms and these characteristics are a precondition of accountability. I hope the Minister will agree that local offers can still be responsive to local needs while meeting minimum standards and exhibiting the qualities of robustness, accessibility, effectiveness and consistency.
It is noteworthy that the Education Committee in another place, in its pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill, took the view that the local offer needed strengthening. It said:
“The weight of evidence received by our Committee clearly supported minimum standards and we recommend that the Pathfinders be used to inform what should constitute minimum standards for Local Offers, particularly to address the provision that will need to be made available in schools to support pupils with low to moderate SEN without EHCPs. We also recommend the establishment of a national framework for Local Offers to ensure consistency, together with accountability measures by which they can be evaluated”.
It seems that that committee is very much on the same page as the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, and me here.
In summary, these amendments are about ensuring two things: first, not only that parents and their children have access to information about the services available to them but also that there is a quality assurance mechanism in place that gives them a means of holding the local authority to account; and, secondly, that the local offer has some guaranteed substance that families can rely on. I beg to move.
Lord Ramsbotham
My Lords, I take up the offer made by my noble friend Lord Low to say a little a bit about the quality assurance I have in mind. Noble Lords may remember two extremely good safeguarding reports produced by the joint inspectorates involved in education, health and the criminal justice system, one in 1999 and the other in 2003. Those came about in the balmy days before the then Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gordon Brown, axed what had been the Social Services Inspectorate and became the Commission for Social Care Inspection. The role of social care responsibility for children was then taken on by Ofsted and that of adult social care by the Care Quality Commission, which was instigated by the reforms that had to follow the axing of the Social Services Inspectorate. I have always regretted strongly that although this House was able to preserve Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Prisons we were unable to preserve the Social Services Inspectorate. Frankly, we have been reaping the wind ever since.
My feeling about what we are talking about here is that we need something akin to the inspections for the safeguarding of children carried out by the joint inspectorates. They were led by someone with overall responsibility but able to call on the quality assurance addition of the inspectors of particular elements of the system. In this case, we have healthcare and education but also other things including the local offer, how that is made and so on. That is why I laid this false trail, as it were, to the Children’s Commissioner. I suggest to the Minister that in thinking about the quality of what we are proposing—and what the Government are very definitely interested in introducing—the assurance on that is carried out by those best able to do it working together, rather than giving it to any one person, because there are so many aspects to it. Quality assurance is absolutely essential and must be objective and consistent in every part of the country where local offers are handled.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, I thank all noble Lords who have spoken in what has been a wide-ranging and thoughtful debate. It has certainly given me plenty of food for thought. I also thank the Minister for her response.
At the beginning of the debate we were going along quite nicely and there was a lot of agreement on four propositions: first, that the local offer is a statement of expectation, not provision; secondly, that the local offer is essentially a statement of information on education, health and social care provision; thirdly, that 25% of children and young people with a disability do not have a special educational need and therefore would not be able to access the local offer; and, finally, that the local offer is not enforceable. Therefore, while parents are given information about provision there is no requirement on the authority to make the provision.
Then the debate widened. I want to avoid saying that the rot set in with the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, because, as I will make clear, the contributions from her, my noble Friend, Lady Howarth and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, towards the end of the debate added a considerable element of richness and sophistication to the discussion, and we need to take them on board. The noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, was worried that there was an anti-local authority spirit in the amendments, and she and others were concerned that the thrust of the amendments was too prescriptive. I want to be clear that there was no intention on my part or anyone else’s to be anti-local authority or to manifest a down on those authorities. Anyone who is familiar with the educational work of local authorities, especially in the field of special education, knows the vast amount of good work that they do. I am very happy to put that on record.
On whether the amendments are prescriptive, I should say that this would not be the first time that there was guidance from the centre on the implementation of policy locally. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, who I think has a background in local government—she was leaning to embrace the local authority perspective—got it absolutely right when she said that it would be too risky to dispense with guidance entirely when implementing a wholly new system of this kind. We have to strike the right balance as regards central guidance. The noble Lords behind these amendments had no intention of talking in terms of dictation. What we had in mind was essentially guidance—a framework within which local authorities can introduce their local offers. There is a balance to be struck and we need to get the balance right.
I very much respect the reservations that have been expressed. These amendments may not have got the balance quite right and I welcome the request for Ofsted to examine this issue, consider this debate and come up with proposals, which the Minister told us about. In this debate, we have identified the dimensions of a discussion which needs to be pursued further. Thanks to the contributions from the noble Baronesses, Lady Eaton and Lady Morris and my noble Friend Lady Howarth, we have the parameters within which we need to carve out a legislative formula that will enshrine the balance that we are seeking and do justice to the desire for local responsibility and the need, identified by most noble Lords who spoke, for some guidance which can be seen as helpful, especially when introducing new legislation such as this.
We have identified the parameters within which I hope it will be possible to identify a formula that we can live with and that will stick in the legislation for years to come. I hope that we will be able to have a discussion with Ministers and the department on these issues, basing ourselves on this debate which has identified the parameters of discussions within which we need to forge a legislative formula. I hope that we can pursue those discussions after today and come back with something that we can unite around on Report. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Low of Dalston
Lord Low of Dalston
This is beginning to feel a bit like hard work. I shall speak also to my Amendment 126, which is in this group. I am not quite sure why it is in this group but it is, so I shall speak to it. Clause 33 provides that a local authority is not required to secure the education of a child or young person with special educational needs in a maintained nursery school, mainstream school or mainstream post-16 institution where it is incompatible with the provision of efficient education for others. This reproduces the wording of the current legislation relating to school education but is not present in the current learning difficulty assessment guidance that covers learners moving to and within post-16 provision. It has been put to me that subsection (2)(b) should be deleted to ensure that colleges and post-16 institutions continue to make the necessary adjustments to include disabled applicants. This includes making adjustments to provisions, criteria and practices, and the provision of auxiliary aids and services.
In the context of post-16 education, the retention of subsection (2)(b) could undermine students’ existing rights and protections under the Equality Act, and provide an excuse for colleges to exclude learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities on the grounds of cost or inconvenience to other students. In other words, it would interpose a hurdle that does not exist at present in relation to post-16 education. Furthermore, there is an inconsistency in that those learners without an education, health and care plan cannot be refused a place on these grounds. The implication is that a disabled person with a plan potentially has fewer rights than one without. It is not quite clear why subsection (2)(b) is needed when the Equality Act is clear on the requirements around reasonable adjustments.
These arguments clearly have force so far as post-school education is concerned but, thinking about it, they have just as much force as regards school education. In any case, in a Bill which introduces a unified approach for all those aged nought to 25, it seems clear that the language should be consistent across the whole age range. It therefore seems only right to delete subsection (2)(b) altogether, which is what Amendment 123A would achieve.
The purpose of Amendment 126 is to protect a child or young person with a special educational need and ensure that they get the education and support best suited to them. The provision contained in Clause 34(9) would allow a special school, academy or free school to admit a child without a statutory assessment of their needs and without an education, health and care plan. Currently, any child who has special educational needs but who does not have a statement must be educated in a mainstream school. The change that Clause 34(9) would bring about undermines a long-standing consensus that children and young people should be placed in special schools only where this has been identified as being the most appropriate placement, following a statutory assessment process, and where it is in line with the wishes of the parent.
The draft code of practice suggests that an individual professional, such as an educational psychologist, could provide a report to support a child’s admission to a special academy or free school. This could constitute a diminution in parents’ rights to express a preference for a particular school in the full knowledge of the nature of their child’s needs, as assessed by a range of professionals. Inclusion of this provision seems to devalue the assessment and planning process which sits at the heart of the Government’s reforms. It seems obvious, too, that any head teacher would want as much information as possible about a new child or young person with a special educational need to be sure that the school could meet their needs.
There is also concern that a placement agreed in this way without an assessment and a plan would provide parents and carers with no entitlement to an annual review or any right of appeal. This provision would also make it easier for those head teachers who are reluctant to accept a child or young person with a special educational need to try to persuade parents that their child would be better off in a special school, thus undermining the principle of inclusion we were talking about last week. Therefore, it seems clear that the process of admission of children and young people with special educational needs to special schools should continue to be based on assessment, as at present. It would be dangerous to dispense with that, as I think would be the result of Clause 34(9). I beg to move.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, in welcoming the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, to the Committee, now that she has been able to get away from her previous commitments, I offer her an apology. I had undertaken to make it clear when I moved Amendment 101, which she put her name to, that she wished her support for it to be placed on the record. I am afraid that I neglected to do that, so perhaps I may be permitted to rectify that omission now.
I thank all those who have spoken. This debate has enriched in detail the one we had about inclusion last week. It is clear from the interchange between the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, and my noble friend Lady Howe that we have got our amendments in a bit of a tangle at one or two points, so we may have some work to do to sort them out. I am sure, however, that in the course of the further discussions which the Minister promised we should be able to do that. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, for her support for my amendments. I agree with her that placement in a special school as provided for by Amendment 124, if it is in the interests of the child, makes sense—provided that that is the conclusion of a proper process of assessment. I hope that she would accept that.
We had two particularly valuable speeches from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, and my noble friend Lady Howe. I wish that I had made them myself in moving the amendment. I must find out where they get their briefing from. However, those contributions have enriched the debate that we had last week in detail and will clearly feed into the further discussions that we are to have.
Finally, I thank the Minister for his careful exegesis of the law as it is enshrined in the Bill. This will provide a helpful background to the further discussions he has promised us, and which I am sure it will be important for us to have before Report. I conclude by hoping that this debate, like last week’s, will feed into those discussions but, with that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.
Children and Families Bill
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Lord Low of Dalston
“( ) If the education and care provision referred to in subsection (1)(a) and (b) is deemed insufficient to meet the needs of children and young people under subsection (2), a local authority must—
(a) publish these findings;(b) involve those consulted in subsection (3) in producing an action plan to revise the education and care provision referred to in subsection (1)(a) and (b);(c) review and report on progress against its action plan;(d) revise the local offer accordingly.“( ) Regulations must make provision about—
(a) criteria to be used by local authorities in assessing whether the education and care provision referred to in subsection (1)(a) and (b) is sufficient under subsection (2);(b) the information to be included in an authority’s action plan;(c) how an authority is to involve children, young people and families in the production of, and assessment of progress against, its action plan;(d) imposing time limits on implementing the revision of the education and care provision referred to in subsection (1)(a) and (b) deemed insufficient.”
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, the Support and Aspiration Green Paper, published in 2011, contained the aspiration that it would be as good as its name and would make the system of provision less adversarial and give children, young people and their parents greater clarity about their rights. It clearly stated that local authorities would have to set out a local offer which parents could rely on. However, parents and special education professionals are concerned that the Bill will not put an end to the battles faced by families which the Green Paper so clear-sightedly analysed as a major blot on the system and pledged to end. They also worry that it fails to put in place appropriate accountability mechanisms in order to ensure that local authorities deliver the support that families need.
The Government’s intention to put children, young people and their parents at the heart of the system, and Ministers’ oft-repeated desire to ensure that the services outlined in the local offer are responsive to families’ needs, are commendable. The key to this is accountability: if families with disabled children and children with special educational needs are not able to hold local agencies to account for the delivery of the services in the local offer, they will have no way of ensuring that the services they need are available.
The Bill makes some useful moves in this direction. Clause 27 states that local authorities must consult children and young people with special educational needs and their parents when reviewing education and care provision in the local offer. Clause 30 requires local authorities to publish comments about their local offer from children with SEN and their parents, as well as the authorities’ responses to those comments. However, I am concerned that, while publishing the comments is a start, it will not of itself ensure that local offers are responsive to local needs. Local agencies will be under no obligation to act on the comments and to make the improvements parents want to see. Parents will still have to battle with local authorities for the services they need.
The amendment places the onus on local authorities to improve the service, rather than leaving children, young people and their parents to fight for their rights themselves. It would require local authorities, after publishing comments on the local offer, to involve young people and parents in producing an action plan to revise the education and care provision outlined in the local offer; to review and report on progress against the action plan; and then to revise the local offer accordingly. This would help to ensure that local support is responsive to local need.
Without this amendment, which is aimed at driving up the quality of local services, I fear that little will change for families, and the opportunity to transform the lives of hundreds of thousands of disabled children and children with special educational needs will be missed. Parents will still feel that they have to battle through the labyrinths of bureaucracy the Green Paper spoke about for the support they and their child need. I therefore hope that the Government will adopt this amendment, which will ensure that the local offer will be something parents can indeed rely on. I beg to move.
Lord Touhig (Lab)
My Lords, I add my support to the noble Lord, Lord Low, on Amendment 98A, to which I have added my name. I shall also speak to Amendment 99, in my name and the names of my noble friend Lady Hughes and my noble friend Lady Jones.
The noble Lord, Lord Low, has outlined the objectives of Amendment 98A, which requires local authorities, where services that they provide have been found insufficient, to involve parents and young people in producing an action plan, to revise the education and care provision in the local offer and to review and report on progress against the action plan.
I look across the Room. I believe that the Minister has spent most of his life working in business. I am sure, therefore, that he would see the merits of this amendment; if he ran a business that was in danger of losing a major customer, he would want to find out why and then to put in place an action plan to deliver what the customer wanted, thereby keeping the business. Amendment 98A does just that. The provider of the service is required to engage with the user to ensure that what is provided is what is needed. That seems sensible to me.
I turn to Amendment 99. Clause 27 requires local authorities to keep education and care provision under review. While that is welcome, in the view of the Opposition it is insufficient. Amendment 99 would require local authorities to assess whether there was sufficient funding in place to be able to secure these services for all the children and young people who needed them. If they found that they lacked the wherewithal, they should consider jointly commissioning services with neighbouring local authorities where appropriate.
These are difficult economic times and there has been huge pressure on local authority spending and budgets. Whether or not services are secured and available should not depend on whether a particular local council can afford the level of provision needed to meet the needs of children and young people in its area. Therefore, collaboration strongly commends itself.
I am sure that I am not alone in believing that accountability is the key to these reforms. Parents, children and young people should be able to rely on the services provided by the local authority and render it accountable when that provision is not met. That seems fair and proper, and our amendment requires local authorities to consider working together and sharing services with neighbouring authorities. I believe that that already takes place in a number of London boroughs. I know that in my part of the country, Wales, a lot of collaboration is now taking place between local authorities that are sharing the ability to provide services across a number of boroughs.
Importantly, Amendment 99 would not constrain local authorities to work with others but would merely require them to consider doing so in the interests of improving services for children and young people. The amendment was dismissed in the other place, where the Minister said that the decision for spending on children and young people with special educational needs must remain one for the local authority. We would certainly agree with that, but nevertheless Amendment 99 highlights a problem and seeks to find a solution. If the Government recognise that there is a problem but do not want to accept this amendment as a solution, will the Minister explain how they will ensure that local authorities deliver the services that young people and children need and that they are accountable for providing those services? In other words, if the Government do not like our solution, what is their solution to a problem that we all recognise exists?
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, it seems clear that this amendment has touched a nerve. People have spoken with real passion and feeling about the need to put more beef into the local offer in ways such as I have set out in the amendment: through a process of review, revision of provision, development of an action plan through consultation, reporting against the action plan, leading on to the revision of the local offer.
All those who have spoken, and I am grateful to them for their comments, have been very much in support of the Bill’s aspirations but have been concerned that the provisions in it at the moment may not be adequate to deliver those ambitious aspirations for the children and young people whom we are concerned about and whom the Bill deals with.
I am grateful to the Minister for her reply. There was plenty of detail in it. I would like to read it, if I may, and measure it against the aspirations that we have in the amendment. It may be that what the Minister has set out will meet the concerns of those who developed it. However, this has touched on something, and I have a sense that we may be brewing something more focused that will reflect the anxieties and concerns that have been raised around the Committee when we come back on Report. For now, though, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Overseas Aid: Post-2015 Development Agenda
Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Northover
This report is remarkable. Many people felt that it would be very difficult to secure something as focused, streamlined and effective as this one is, following on as it does from the previous one, which was negotiated almost in isolation. Many different groups and organisations from countries across the globe have been involved, which is a good omen for taking this forward. However, the noble Lord is absolutely right to say that it is going to need a lot of work, and this Government will be putting that work in to ensure that what is finally proposed is as strong as this initial report.
Lord Low of Dalston
My Lords, the Prime Minister is much to be congratulated on the report of the high-level panel, which he co-chaired, given its emphasis on no one being left behind and the recommendation that targets should be considered achieved only if they are met for all the relevant income and stakeholder groups. Given all of that and the fact that progress towards the current millennium development goals has been limited by the great increase in global inequalities, will the UK Government press for a stand-alone goal on equality in the post-2015 framework?
Baroness Northover
The noble Lord is right about how this proposal emphasises leaving no one behind and that targets can be considered achieved only when they are met across all social and income groups. That is essential in tackling inequality. It seems to us that challenging inequality runs as a thread through the whole report.