Covid-19: Children

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Thursday 17th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, in thanking my noble friend Lady Morris for making this debate possible, I take the opportunity to wish her a very happy birthday. I shall risk embarrassing her by saying a little more about why the House should not be surprised by how she set out with remarkable clarity both the challenges and the opportunities we face in respect of our children’s post-pandemic future.

By way of background, in 1997, I was fortunate enough to be invited to serve in your Lordships’ House and, a few months later, offered a role in the then Department for Education and Employment. My job spec, as drafted by the new Secretary of State, David Blunkett, now my noble friend Lord Blunkett, was to go around the country visiting as many schools and meeting as many school principals and teachers as possible in the hope of discovering why we had inherited such a serious recruitment and retention crisis. It was my good fortune to find myself working alongside the then relatively junior Minister in whose name today’s debate is being held. I should like to take just a few moments of my contribution to place on the record what a total joy it was over the following five years to work with, and eventually for, my noble friend Lady Morris; in many respects, they were the best of my life. I am eager not to sound like a character from “The West Wing” but, as many in this House will know from personal experience, my noble friend Lady Morris remains one of those political figures who offers a relatively apolitical person such as myself a reason to believe that politics continues to hold up the possibility of being a genuinely honourable profession and, at its best, offers the opportunity to obtain total integrity while fulfilling a desire, in that overused phrase, to make a difference.

Thanks to the support of my noble friend, I believe that I was able to engage with and come to understand and admire the teaching profession in ways that few outsiders can ever have experienced. Our comparative success was not achieved through massive wage increases; it was done by working to instil trust and professional pride back into an army of talented people, many of whom had forgotten why they had become teachers in the first place. They placed an unusual degree of trust in the Minister, who had been one of them, and that trust was repaid a hundredfold.

For many recent Members of the House, this may sound like ancient history, but as so often in history, the wheels have turned and, for a variety of reasons, much of that hard-earned trust has evaporated and morale in the teaching profession has returned to a new low ebb. Every one of us who has a child, a grandchild, a niece or a nephew at school understands the enormous debt we owe teachers in both primary and secondary settings, who have helped to navigate the nation’s children through a previously unimaginable 15 months. I should like to think that this is a country in which there would be an outpouring of gratitude for the profession, but I fear that, under cover of the pandemic and its attendant distractions, something very different is being attempted.

One characteristic of authoritarian states is to promote policies and practices in terms that are precisely the opposite of their intended effect. So it is, I believe, with the document published last week by the department entitled Delivering World-Class Teacher Development. This policy, if pursued, will have the effect only of diminishing the confidence and competence of an entire profession. I stress “profession” because many in our House have devoted a great deal of their lives to promoting and protecting it. I do not for one moment attach blame for this misadventure to the noble Baroness, Lady Berridge, for whom I have a great deal of respect, but the proposals in this document can be interpreted not only as an attack on academic freedom but as an ideologically driven attempt at social engineering—a form of social engineering whereby the Government can decide from whom, how and from where they wish the next generation of teachers to emerge.

This House has always defended the principle of academic freedom as being, along with the independence of the judiciary and a free and responsible press, something worth dying in a ditch for. That being the case, once they have studied them, many in this House are unlikely to approve of these proposals. I beg the Minister to use her good judgment and take this document back to the department for a wholesale rethink before the entire education world comes to understand its underlying purpose and all our children are made to suffer for a clearly clumsy and ideologically driven misjudgment.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

2nd reading
Tuesday 15th June 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Puttnam (Lab) [V]]

My Lords, I congratulate the Government on bringing forward a Bill to address an area which, for more years than I care to remember, has resisted every attempt to implement a coherent long-term employment policy. I am no fan of Dominic Cummings but, during his recent evidence to the Select Committee, he was precisely on the money in pointing out the lamentable record of successive British Governments to learn lessons from countries such as Norway, Finland and New Zealand —the noble Lord, Lord Storey, added Germany and Switzerland—which have successfully created well-thought-through skills and apprenticeship programmes. These policies have allowed many of them to race past us in offering appropriate pathways and opportunities for skilling and reskilling those for whom higher education was either unavailable or simply not all that attractive.

I have never been able to establish whether this is as a result of arrogance or ignorance but, either way, many sectors of our economy have been allowed to atrophy as a result of inattention and neglect. This has not been for lack of announcements, speeches or data; it is more to do with an inexplicable failure to follow through, fund and deliver. This Bill, if enacted with imagination and commitment, could prove a watershed. If the Government are serious about levelling up, they can be credited for at least giving themselves the legislative opportunity to prove it.

The Bill has the potential to become a vehicle for broadening and deepening apprenticeship schemes, for example by taking account of the mobility of freelance employment, but that should be the beginning of its ambition, not the end of it. While I broadly agree with the employer-led concept, a potential Catch-22 situation needs to be considered, whereby established incumbents find themselves favoured over those wishing to take advantage of new business opportunities, most especially in areas with diminishing growth prospects. I am sure the extension of things such as maintenance provision, as a counterbalance to embedded regional inequalities, is something the Minister will want to touch on in her response.

While well-intentioned, I am concerned that this Bill and the White Paper on which it is based are nowhere near imaginative enough in their interpretation of what future employment patterns might look like. Regrettably, when it comes to implementation, we invariably seem to find ourselves working from a 10 year-old playbook. I cannot have been the only person dumbfounded that “creativity”, having featured in the Secretary of State’s introduction, failed to reappear in either the Bill or the Skills for Jobs White Paper that preceded it. When she responds, could the Minister please explain this omission or possibly tell me that I need my glasses tested?

Creativity is an entirely sustainable asset—one the UK has proved to have in abundance. In my judgment, it will prove the great differentiator among ambitious, competitive nations in the digital world. Surely it needs to be incorporated into every aspect of the way that we think about skills and training for the future. For example, far too little thought has been given to how we cultivate greater agility in the workforce by encouraging transferrable skills across sectors. The White Paper described the need to develop

“higher-level technical skills in Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths”.

Of course, STEM and digital skills should be at the forefront of how we plan for the future, but they have to walk hand in hand with creativity if we are serious about developing a truly successful economy.

A good example of this thinking comes from Demis Hassabis, the founder of the AI company DeepMind. He put it this way:

“Some of the most interesting areas of science are in the gaps between … subjects… What I’ve tried to do in building DeepMind is to find ‘glue people’, those who are world class in multiple domains, who possess the creativity to find analogies and points of contact between different subjects. Generally speaking, when that happens, the magic happens.”


The successful growth of companies such as DeepMind should serve as a warning regarding the dangers of a purely employer-led focus, because history suggests that incumbents are a lot less likely to spot where the next big opportunity will come from.

I find it unsurprising to learn that, in 2018, the US National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommended that education in these subjects should include the humanities, arts, crafts and design. That recommendation has now been rolled out right across North American universities. For example, 100% of undergraduates at MIT, one of the world’s leading technical institutes, study the arts, humanities and social sciences. In fact, those subjects now account for 25% of their overall class time.

Collaboration between a variety of talents and skills has to be the right way, possibly the only way, to ensure the success of a balanced competitive workforce—the kind of workforce that the Bill seeks to create. There will also be an overwhelming need for departmental collaboration. Can the Minister assure the House that the transition of support from the DWP into this new skills framework will be made as uncomplicated as possible? It will need to be if the Government’s levelling-up ambitions are to be fully realised.

Finally, on this vital issue of collaboration, the idea that improved provision for further education can be resourced only at the expense of higher education is to totally misunderstand the challenges of the global economy. Far from being in competition for resources, these two sectors should be encouraged to move in lock-step, as never before. This point was powerfully made by the noble Lord, Lord Willetts, and I completely support what he said. In my view, ensuring a successful partnership between further and higher education represents exactly the type of approach that is needed to make this legislation a success. I do not see this as a political Bill so, given a thoughtful Committee stage and a listening Government, we have the opportunity to send a valuable and uncontentious piece of legislation for ratification in another place.

Trade Bill

Lord Puttnam Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 13th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[The Minister of State, Department for International Development (Lord Bates) (Con)]

My Lords, I add my thanks to all noble Lords who have contributed to this short but very profound debate. In particular I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hain, for moving the amendment. I think the whole House recognises the important role he played while Secretary of State to help that process gather ground into fruition. It has been a proud part of successive Governments that we cherish and nurture that hard-won peace. It is why we said right at the outset in the future relationship White Paper that the prime objective would be that,

“the UK and the EU meet their commitments to Northern Ireland and Ireland through the overall future relationship: preserving the constitutional and economic integrity of the UK; honouring the letter and the spirit of the Belfast (‘Good Friday’) Agreement; and ensuring that the operational legal text the UK will agree with the EU on the ‘backstop’ solution as part of the Withdrawal Agreement will not have to be used”.

That was very much at the heart of our objective. We are absolutely committed to the Good Friday agreement and that part of it.

I do not take the point the noble Lord, Lord Bruce, made about division out of context, but I am sure he would recognise that the whole thrust of the Government’s and the Prime Minister’s negotiations, and what the withdrawal agreement is about, is seeking to secure the type of border arrangements that my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay referred to and that the noble Lords, Lord Hain and Lord Alderdice, and the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, and others seek to work towards. Peace on the island of Ireland between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, and the Good Friday agreement—the partnership between the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland in this context—surely must be the red line above all red lines that we need to preserve.

That is why there is the amendment in the EU withdrawal Act making that explicit, which the noble Lord, Lord Kerr, was instrumental in securing. That has been a key part of what Her Majesty’s Government have done when engaging in negotiations on these matters, which was brought to fruition in the withdrawal agreement. Were the withdrawal agreement passed yesterday in another place, we would not need this amendment or this discussion. These are matters for the extremely unwelcome event of no deal.

Some specific points have been raised, which I will try to address. I hope that will help noble Lords in deciding what to do with this amendment. The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, said that this has been emerging over 12 months—an increase of 480 in the current position with the EU. The Government have had to find a way of ensuring that there is no border, from the UK perspective, in the spirit of the Good Friday agreement. Any checks that must be carried out for non-revenue purposes will be done away from the border. HMRC is very familiar with carrying out such checks on that basis.

My noble friend Lady Altmann asked how the plan works to supply work with suppliers. These are unilateral measures—they are not for goods moving from Northern Ireland to the Republic of Ireland, which would be subject to the EU’s common external tariff and single market rules. The only way to avoid a hard border is to commit to entering into discussions with the European Commission jointly to agree long-term measures to avoid one.

The noble Lord, Lord Purvis, asked whether there will be a border in the UK. The Government do not intend to construct infrastructure at the Northern Ireland land border. We will also not carry out any new checks on goods moving from Northern Ireland to Great Britain. HMRC will assess the risks and take a risk-based approach to investigating allegations of breaches of those rules. The noble Lord also asked about the status in terms of the WTO—whether it breaches the MFN model. We are confident that the policy is in line with our WTO obligations, taking into account the unique set of social, political and economic circumstances of Northern Ireland. In developing our policy alongside WTO rules, we have also had to take into consideration a broader set of our international obligations, including those under the Good Friday agreement. Furthermore, as we have set out, these arrangements are strictly temporary. The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, asked us the meaning of “temporary” in this respect; it is a period up to 12 months.

I will come to the point raised by my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay, because it is material to what we have been discussing today. He made the important observation that the amendment as worded seeks an agreement between the UK and the Government of Ireland. Of course, because the Irish border is, as he rightly said, a border between the United Kingdom and the European Union, it would need an agreement with the EU. I think that is the point my noble and learned friend was making. In that context, the way in which the amendment is currently worded would be unlawful because it refers to the Government of Ireland as opposed to the EU.

The noble Lord, Lord Hain, said that this amendment does not put the Government in a straitjacket. It would seek to limit flexibility—no “facilitations”, for example, would rule out future technologies, which is something the EU has specifically agree to look at as a priority once the withdrawal agreement has been agreed. In terms of EU imports into Northern Ireland, not across the land border, the answer to the question of whether tariffs apply is yes. The waiver applies only to goods moving from Ireland to Northern Ireland. This is a temporary measure that would need to be implemented.

The noble Lord, Lord Kerr, asked about potential arbitraging in terms of pricing. Many things affect the price of cars, in terms of tax and currencies, and an individual car from Dublin, driven across to Belfast, would be exempt from the 10% tariff. It would not necessarily be cheaper, but these measures would be temporary. Surely this breaks most favoured nations status, which I have addressed.

I hope that noble Lords will feel that I have addressed a number of the points that were raised. I thank all noble Lords for raising these matters and assure them once again that this has been absolutely up front and central, at the heart of the Government’s strategy to preserve that hard-won peace and that special relationship. This is something that needs to be there only in the event of no deal, which we are all working tirelessly to avoid. I invite the noble Lord to address the point on the wording regarding the Government of Ireland and the European Union, which, on our reading, means that if the amendment were passed, it would be unlawful. If he could address that specifically, I am sure that it would be helpful to all noble Lords.

[Lord Puttnam (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for giving way. I have been waiting for a voice to appear during this debate—and it has not. That is the voice of the people of the Republic of Ireland. I live there and would like to get across to your Lordships the incalculable level of anxiety that has been caused to the people of the Republic of Ireland by our apparent indifference about what happens, for example, in the event of no deal. I cannot stress that enough. When noble Lords decide how they wish to vote—I am sure that it will go to a vote—I beg them to consider my neighbours, in particular, as the noble and right reverend Lord, Lord Eames, mentioned, small farmers on both sides of the border who are terrified about what will happen should we, by some ridiculous accident, crash out. I beg the Minister to try to add the voice of the people of the Republic of Ireland to this debate, because they do have a voice in this.

[Lord Bates]

I recognise that and know that the noble Lord is passionate about the Republic of Ireland—as he said, he resides there. There is a fundamental point here: that anxiety would not be necessary if the withdrawal agreement, which was agreed in December, had been passed in the other place last night. That must be the best solution to remove the anxiety to which the noble Lord refers. He also alludes to a very important piece of work, which needs to start immediately—namely, rebuilding those friendships and links, and that partnership, which have served us so well in recent decades, to ensure that the progress that has been made has not been lost. That needs to start immediately. As I say, I take on board very much the point that he has raised.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Berkeley of Knighton (CB)]

My Lords, I will depart for a moment from the beauty of facts to perhaps more abstract philosophy. We have heard about the movement of people with respect to the creative industries; there is an important point to make here. I look back over a career that has taken me from being a chorister at the Royal Academy of Music to working at the BBC and the Royal Opera House, working with orchestras, dancers and singers. In each of those cases a very important contribution was made by the movement of people.

I believe that one of the most important aspects of intellect and civilisation—I am sure many Ministers on the Front Bench would aspire to these things—is curiosity. To experience the best aspects of curiosity, you need freedom of movement, freedom of ideas and the freedom to travel. I am privileged in the way my life has been staggeringly enriched by the movement of people, whether it is my ability to go to a concert in Vienna next month where my music will be played, and another in Budapest, or people coming here to perform. These are people from whom I have learned so much, people such as György Ligeti or Witold Lutosławski, with whom I studied. This movement of ideas and curiosity is vital to the intellectual and cultural health of our nation.

[Lord Puttnam]

My Lords, I had no intention of entering this debate other than to support the amendment. However, I must make a point to the noble Lord, Lord Hodgson, because he raised it. What we heard from him is all too familiar. When my mother’s family came to this country 120 years ago as Jewish immigrants from Russia, exactly the same charges were being made about a flood of Jewish immigrants arriving in this country and, potentially, destabilising it and making it a more difficult place to live. Does any noble Lord in this House think that that generation of Jewish immigrants did anything other than contribute massively to the wealth and prosperity of this country? This absurd argument is trotted out every 100 years—mostly from his Benches, I am afraid—yet it is always fallacious and, frankly, very upsetting and quite disturbing.