Children and Families Bill

Debate between Lord Northbourne and Lord Ramsbotham

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

My Lords, I have not put my name to an amendment, and I shall speak only for a brief moment to make one point. I have been disappointed that no noble Lords have mentioned the other children in these schools, because the attitude of the other children is exceedingly important, both for the children who are suffering from disability and SEN and for those who are not. I remember having an all-party group in this Room, where a head teacher had brought four or five of her girls. It was a school for children with mobility problems. It became apparent as one listened to them that the whole school was committed to caring about these children, and this self-evidently makes a huge difference. Would the Minister consider putting something in his guidelines to address this problem?

[Lord Ramsbotham (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, have not tabled any particular amendment, but I was minded to contribute by the tone of the Minister’s Amendment 241A, and what has been said about that. I entirely endorse all the positive things that have been said about what is happening, and the remarks about the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and my noble friend Lord Northbourne. I want to concentrate on the other children, as well, because this is all concentrating on one very small part of the population of the school.

I refer the Committee to Clause 19, on which the initial contribution by my noble friend Lord Low was made. It is headed, “Local authority functions: general principles”, and the next line says, “Local authority functions: supporting and involving children and young people”. Paragraph (d) refers to,

“the need to support the child and his or her parent, or the young person, in order to facilitate the development of the child or young person and to help him or her achieve the best possible educational and other outcomes”.

It does not differentiate between any of the children; we are talking about all our children.

When we are considering this Bill, special educational needs are mentioned—but if you look at the numbers with those needs, you can see that it comes to about 2.8% of our children. Another 16% are subject to school action and school action plus, which means that 81.2% of our population are not being considered by what we are doing. That worries me.

I declare two interests, one as chairman of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Speech and Language Difficulties. We have just done a report on the link between social disadvantage and speech, language and communication needs. That follows work that I did as Chief Inspector of Prisons and, later, on the number of people in young offender institutions who were found to have speech, language and communication needs. Clause 19(d) seems to require a duty for every child to be prepared to be able to engage with education so that they can get their best possible educational and other outcomes. That of course includes all those who have problems in gaining that entry into education. It may be that there is a physical or a mental problem. Later, I want to introduce something that has come up in my second context, as chairman of the Criminal Justice and Acquired Brain Injury Group, which is doing a huge amount of work on neurodisability. That is different from learning disability, which tends to be associated with congenital conditions, whereas a neurodisability can result from all sorts of other things, including acquired brain injury and the neurodevelopment of a child.

I come to my second question for the Minister. Surely what we are talking about here comes under the overall umbrella of child development. We are talking about the problems of child development for a particular group at this moment, in this group of amendments. However, when I look at the overall conduct of child development, I am mightily confused about where the Government stand on this. Who is the Minister for Child Development? If you look at what comes later in the Bill, on the 0 to 25 pathways, you can see that only one organisation is responsible for someone from 0 to 25. That is a local health and well-being board, which has nothing to do with the Department for Education or the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, or whatever it is called, and nothing to do with the Home Office, the Ministry of Justice or the Department for Communities and Local Government. It is a healthcare organisation.

If you look at the start of the journey for child development, the early years foundation stage, that, too, is the responsibility of the NHS, which is responsible for doing the assessment on which the judgment is made as to whether a child has a learning difficulty, a learning disability or whatever. I therefore endorse entirely what the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton, said about oversight and what my noble friend Lady Howarth said about the need to have the details here. We are talking about things that concern us greatly, not just today but for tomorrow.

We must be concerned about what the Government’s plan is for the oversight and the conduct of all these things that we are talking about. I do not know whether everyone has read in detail the code of practice that came out. It is full of sentences that start, “Local authorities must…”, but there is no indication of how that “must” is to be overseen, who is to do it, who is to fund it or what the “must” is—there are just lots of “musts”. My experience as a soldier is that unless someone is actually responsible and accountable for making things happen, nothing will happen.

Judging by the content of the amendments, we are going to hear masses of good sense and good advice, all based on experience, which will make our children better. What worries me is that all that will go nowhere unless the Government have an overall construct for the oversight and introduction of all the things that we are going to talk about. I would be very grateful to hear from the Minister exactly where the Government stand on delivering that.

Offender Rehabilitation Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Northbourne and Lord Ramsbotham

Wednesday 5th June 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, said that the language which is used must be understandable. However, it seems to me that a word in the Bill is very confusing. It states that the relevant period is for “rehabilitation”. I am not awfully good at the English language but rehabilitation suggests to me going back to a golden age before the offence was committed. In fact, the life of probably the vast majority of these offenders was hell before the offence was committed. We should be looking for something better than rehabilitation—something more like habilitation.

[Lord Ramsbotham]

I support the amendment so ably moved by the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, and, in so doing, declare two interests, one as chairman of the All-Party Group on Speech and Language Difficulties and, secondly, as a vice-president of the Centre for Mental Health, which has the privilege of hosting the follow-up work being done by the noble Lord on his excellent report, which he mentioned.

My concern over this issue was heightened by a paragraph I read on page 9 of the White Paper, which describes how the Ministry of Justice will put in place a system which will give providers sufficient grip to make sure offenders engage with the rehabilitative services. I am not certain that “grip” is the right word to use in connection with these people.

The noble Lord rightly mentioned his concern about the training and education of the supervisors who do not, of course, come from the probation service but from a whole host of providers yet to be realised. He mentioned the Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act, during the passage of which my noble friend Lord Rix and I met with the chairman of the Queen’s Bench Division to discuss how offenders could be made aware of these issues during the judicial process. We were most particularly concerned about the increasing incidence of police taking action without going to court, and making certain that offenders have the necessary representation on the part of responsible adults who can interpret matters for them. This issue needs to be looked at.

That allows me to make another observation about the White Paper. Although it is acknowledged that many of these offenders have mental health problems, including learning disabilities, there is no mention of commissioning mental health services for them, which gives the probation service a problem. With the emergence of a new commissioning process under NHS England and of health and well-being boards, it will be important for the probation service to be associated with those boards to make certain that the proper support is available, not just in relation to the subject raised by the noble Lord, Lord Bradley, but in relation to all aspects of mental health problems experienced by offenders.