Lord Ramsbotham
Main Page: Lord Ramsbotham (Crossbench - Life peer)
Lord Ramsbotham (CB)
My Lords, like other noble Lords, I congratulate and salute my noble friend Lady Howe on bringing forward this Bill again. I salute her particularly on its clarity and simplicity, which is a welcome relief after some of the legislation that the House has faced in recent months. I am delighted that her persistence has been matched by her refusal to be discouraged by what was, to be quite frank, a rather lacklustre and low-key response from the Government to the Bill of last year. That persistence has been rewarded by the involvement of the Prime Minister, which she mentioned, and by the initiatives that have been taken by some service providers. I have been reading with interest those from BSkyB and Mobile Broadband Group. However, as the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay, has just said, it is not enough for some of them to take this line: all must comply if we are to get anywhere. I also thank James Tobin for his excellent and very helpful Library Note. We are lucky in the way that the Library produces these marvellous documents for us.
I want particularly to concentrate, as I did last year, on one aspect of this issue, which stems from my belief that the only raw material every country has in common is its people, and woe betide any country if it does not do everything it can to identify, nurture and develop the talents of all its people. If it does not, it will only have itself to blame if it fails. I mention this in connection with my noble friend’s comments about the importance of helping parents to parent and of empowering them so that they are aware of the tools that are available to help them develop the talents of their children. One aspect which has caused me most distress in recent years is the increasing inability of our children to communicate, either with each other or with anyone else. During the consideration in Grand Committee of the Children and Families Bill, some very chilling figures were produced showing the number of people who have speech, language and communication needs. I mention this because there is no doubt that the lifestyle where children are dumped in front of the TV, or given computer games or some other electronic means of alleged entertainment, none of which involves parental engagement, is damaging their ability to communicate, leading to the lack of a life skill. That is not helped by the fact that parents do not seem to understand the damage that is being done to a child’s development by their being exposed to all this stuff which comes to them at the flick of a switch or a button. It prevents them being ready for education when the time comes. As last year, I hope that the Minister will look seriously at this issue, not just in the terms of the Bill but of the long-term development of the talents and welfare of our children, because that is a national responsibility.
I like the simplicity and clarity of this Bill in that all the proposals in it are designed to prevent such damage and allow the short, medium and long-term development of our children to take place. I am therefore delighted that we are here today. I am only sorry that we did not process the Bill last year rather than being here and hoping that it happens now.