Schools: Citizenship Education

Lord Suri Excerpts

Wednesday 29th June 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I understand that the context of the society in which we currently live, and of some of the issues around the world, make citizenship and that really strong grounding in our values as a nation incredibly important. On the noble Baroness’s specific points, evidence of citizenship education is considered at every inspection; whereas, if it were part of a national curriculum subject inspection, it would not be inspected in quite the same way. I point the House to the reforms that we have made to professional qualifications for teachers, particularly in relation to leadership, where there is a renewed emphasis on building a strong school ethos, leading in terms of behaviour and culture, and building character.

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, citizenship education is vital to the development of skills and understanding to nurture pupils to play a responsible role in society, and for their own betterment in real situations. Citizenship became a statutory national curriculum subject in England in 2002; 20 years on, how have the Government improved the national curriculum to deal with an evolving society?

Vulnerable Children

Lord Suri Excerpts

Thursday 14th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, this debate speaks to a wider issue in our politics. Our politicians often willingly and unthinkingly use nebulous terms. When the time comes for serious legislative lifting, those terms that action has been predicated on are not useful. “Vulnerable” is one of those words—it is used regularly—and another is “support”. “Support” can mean financial payments, a statutory duty or subsidy—indeed any number of things—while “vulnerable” also appears to have no clear definition, or nothing that policymakers here and in another place can drill down into. Without a clear definition, we will find our objectives unending. Once we have attempted to solve one problem, another lobby will say we have not fixed another.

My party’s manifesto at the last election committed to supporting,

“vulnerable children for whom the state acts as a parent”.

That seems to be one clear indicator of what a vulnerable child is, namely that the state is a surrogate. But some children are in gangs, or have severe mental health difficulties. If the state is not involved in their lives, they may well slip through the gaps. I believe an easier solution can be found to maintain the promises made to vulnerable children and families in the manifesto. We ought to scrap the use of the word “vulnerable” and say what we mean when talking about specific groups. After all, every child is vulnerable, which the report correctly alludes to.

Reading the report, I got the impression of the authors trying to grasp a slippery rock. With 32 different categories, no one policy could hope to address all the problems facing the children discussed. This is a direct result of lazy thinking. To make the point, a politician may well promise to help vulnerable children, thinking of mentally unwell youths, but the people to whom they talk may take that to mean absent children or young carers.

Furthermore, the way that the machinery of government works is not compatible with the regular use of the word “vulnerable”. For the Department of Health, it may encompass children who have substance-abusing parents or who suffer from mental illness. For the Department for Work and Pensions, it may cover children aged 16 to 18 who are not in employment, education or training. I propose that we ask every department to come up with the children it has contact with whom it considers vulnerable. That would be a strategy led by policymakers, not one foisted on them by a nebulous term. After they have produced that work, they can develop their own strategies. Perhaps some would wish to attach that duty to one of their Ministers, as someone to take the lead on the strategy. Then we would be able to refer to a strategy to help teenage parents or a strategy to help care leavers or any other group and address the issues of vulnerable children overall.

The report alludes to the aim that,

“we as a society need to know who these children are, how many they are, and what their different outcomes are, if we are to have any hope of beginning to address their needs”.

There is no reason for departments not to come up with definitions and work together to help categories of vulnerable children while staying within that stated aim. Will the Minister consider this course of action?

A Manifesto to Strengthen Families

Lord Suri Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, it is a real pleasure to speak in this important debate. As a Conservative, I have always considered the family to be the building block of society. My deceased friend the former Prime Minister who sat in this place had it right when she said referred to there being no such thing as society, only people and their families. We owe it to subsequent generations to keep the twin pillars of family life secure, so that we may inherit resilient communities.

All too often, in this House and the other place, we can lose sight of what holds this country together. We focus on policies that may make sense individually, but not the holistic sum of what we have passed. I remember some years ago the former right honourable Member for Witney saying that all policies would be vetted before they were announced. This vetting was to include a robust breakdown of the effect on families. Sadly, I never saw much evidence of that protocol being continued or respected, and it appears to have died a death in the Cabinet Office.

That is not to say that the Government are not aware of the problem. I supported the marriage tax allowance when it first came before us, but the depth of the policy has been lacking. Rarely do I cite the serving right honourable Member for Doncaster North, but he was right when he said that departments shape priorities and priorities shape outcomes. I understand the current pressure on government jobs, with all the new departments, and that it is an inopportune time when so many big events are coming down the track. But there is ample precedent for additional responsibilities being attached to Ministers, as this manifesto recommends.

Portsmouth received a Minister responsible for its well-being, following job cuts as navy shipbuilding moved to Scotland. This model worked well because the needs of the city cut across many departments, even if the Minister was not always of Cabinet rank. The Minister for Women and Equalities has always been of Cabinet rank, including when the current Prime Minister held it. Ministers can champion a cause in Cabinet and bring the cross-departmental focus that these policies need. In justifying the creation of a Minister for Women, the then Government argued that the lesser role of women held growth back and that there was a pressing need to address the lack of equality across systems in the public and private sector. All that holds true for the shocking state of family breakdown in our country today.

I feel that more hard facts need to be brought to bear on this debate. The most compelling statistic in all this is that, of all the parents who are still together when their children reach the age of 15, 93% are married. Children from broken homes are 2.5 times more likely to be in long-term poverty, and 44% of children in lone-parent families live in relative poverty—nearly twice the figure for children in two-parent families. If we do not support the family and marriage, we are condemning youngsters to a life more likely to be spent in poverty. The Government’s own statistics show that only 1.6p is spent for every £100 of social harm that is caused by family breakdown. More needs to be done to tackle the associated price tag of £47 billion a year. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Farmer and his assistant for doing the important work of collecting the facts and making the case in his manifesto.

Educational Attainment: Boys

Lord Suri Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, this is an important debate, especially now that we have entered into the last few years of our membership of the EU. Creating an excellent education for all—academic or technical—is key to keeping Britain competitive in days to come. Our human capital is one of the greatest assets that commerce can nurture and safeguard, and the current situation for boys is simply not good enough. I am glad of the widespread realisation that the demise of technical education was an error. My tireless noble friend Lord Baker and his university technical colleges have gone some way towards stemming that decline, on which I congratulate him.

I pay tribute to the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield, for his work in ensuring that many more schools can have greater autonomy. I have always advocated the devolution of spending when it is reasonable to think that funds can be spent more effectively. On average, poor boys start school with a basic literacy level 15 points behind their female counterparts. The gap narrows to 10 points for wealthier households. This figure represents a significant and unnecessary loss of talent. This deficit can dog young men for the rest of their educational careers and have obvious negative impacts on their real careers and prospects.

The solution is not targeted support for boys but a better scheme to bring good educational reforms to parts of the country that have been left behind. Teach First has been an excellent initiative, and bringing more young and highly motivated people into the workforce to become positive role models and great teachers is an excellent idea.

The real change will come from a fairer school funding formula. It is time for funding to shift away from schools with high results and falling percentages of pupils on free school meals. It should move to schools in serious decline and need. London has been a real success story, and higher funding has undoubtedly helped, but London’s schools are now on the whole some of the best performing in the country, while free school meals have dropped by some 10 points. Support has worked, but some schools must be gradually moved off higher funding when there are others that are plainly more deserving. This will be politically painful, as redistribution always is, but it is absolutely necessary to our future.

Real attention must also be shown to former industrial towns, such as Rotherham and Wigan. The former Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central referred to his constituency as a place,

“without a culture of formal education”.

That kind of attitude could be allowed to slide in a town where jobs for life could be found in a local factory, but the decline in manufacturing has been disproportionately hard on young men. There still exists a skills gap, especially in engineering and other technical subjects. The answer is to make technical education an attractive prospect and to remove the stigma attached to it. Primarily, this can come through greater investment in such subjects, across all schools, and not just restricted to specialist schools.

Brexit: Gibraltar

Lord Suri Excerpts

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, this report made for fascinating reading. So often in the debate that has engulfed this place and another place, we are told of the importance of keeping a soft border on the island of Ireland. However, Gibraltar is, as the Under-Secretary of State in DExEU said, “part of the British family”. I was gladdened to see the Under-Secretary travel over to Gibraltar recently to restate his commitments.

Ensuring the softest possible border between Gibraltar and Spain must remain a priority of the Government, and I am pleased to see them take it seriously. The Spanish Government have used Brexit as another opportunity to call for joint sovereignty over the Rock, but I repeat again the words of the Treaty of Utrecht, which cedes to the Crown,

“the full and entire propriety of the town and castle of Gibraltar, together with the port, fortifications, and forts thereunto belonging; and he”—

the Catholic king—

“gives up the said propriety to be held and enjoyed absolutely with all manner of right for ever”.

This report covers a number of important points. I welcomed the submission by the Government that EU funding commitments would be guaranteed by the Treasury until 2020. However, given that the final deal, if there is one, will come into force at roughly the same time, I would wish to see a more long-term commitment, perhaps until 2025, in order to start, post Brexit, with a clearer base and offer more certainty.

As I have called for before in relation to arts funding here, this report is refreshingly clear on the risks faced by Gibraltar especially from any cliff-edge removal from the single market. This should further focus minds on the importance of having a short-term transitional deal, about which both the Secretary of State for DExEU and the Prime Minister have signalled in favour. The fundamental point is that Gibraltarians were given a vote in the referendum and are being brought out despite being the most pro-remain voting district. The ultimate responsibility for ensuring that Gibraltar does not suffer lies with the Government. If its access to the single market is limited and prosperity is threatened, the Government should be prepared to further open up the British single market to ease financial pressure. In any case, the vast majority of Gibraltar’s business in the single market is with the UK.

The border with Spain is already fairly hard, given that Gibraltar is out of the Schengen zone and the customs union. It should be borne in mind that people having the freedom of movement to work in industries such as financial services and online gaming remains an abiding concern. If Spain were to make it harder for Spanish citizens to go to well-paid, secure jobs in Gibraltar, that would be an act of extreme pettiness, but it should not be ruled out. However, it would be surprising, given the ameliorating tone that Spanish diplomats and their Prime Minister have taken, calling for “calm” and “good negotiations” with reference to Article 8 of the Treaty on European Union.

Overall, I welcome the assurances given by the Government on funding and keeping sovereignty with the Crown, and I think that the focus of this report on negotiating as a single state with no bilateral Spanish talks is sensible, as is the rejection of a microstate-style status. The Government ought to bear in mind their responsibility to Gibraltar, and I have all confidence that they will.

Teachers: Academies and Free Schools

Lord Suri Excerpts

Monday 12th September 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for securing the time for this important debate. Before I commence my speech, I express my appreciation for the valuable contribution by my noble friend Lady Finn.

Given the nature of recent events, the question of teachers in our schools is a critical one. This debate is part of a broader theme on one of the Government’s flagship priorities, the devolution agenda. I am delighted to see that the new Cabinet and Prime Minister feel that this is a policy platform that deserves to be held on to, and I look forward to working with the Secretary of State for Education and the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to make sure not just that this happens but that it is properly carried out.

There has been an immense amount of anger directed at the specific measure we are discussing. The National Union of Teachers has, not unsurprisingly, referred to teachers without teaching qualifications as “cheap alternatives” on its website, and the former Shadow Secretary of State for Education referred to unqualified teachers as a “policy without justification” in the other place.

I feel that such criticisms are unfounded and do not stack up with the complex reality of the new schools ecosystem that this Government have been ushering in since 2010. Pushing power down and out to governors, head teachers and parents has been an unqualified success, with 1.4 million more pupils in good and outstanding schools compared to 2010 and a 16% rise in good and outstanding schools over the same period.

When responsibility is placed in the hands of those we can trust to run our education system, hemming them into a restrictive pool of employees is not sensible. A number of new academies find that forcing prospective applicants to go through a teaching qualification can turn the brightest applicants off and cut selections down, stripping away significant numbers of applicants.

My noble friend Lord Baker has thrust forward the pioneering university technical college scheme, and his trust is to add 11 more schools by 2018, taking the total to 50. These schools are plugging the yawning skills gap that has held back economic growth in Britain since the 1980s. They are training the young engineers, scientists and researchers that Britain’s high-value service sector needs to grow. If we are to leave the EU, as the Prime Minister has said we will, these youngsters will become ever more critical to safeguarding our economic future. In order to provide the best technical education, these schools need to attract the best talent from our universities and firms. For a young graduate who may have offers from, say, Rolls-Royce or Pfizer, having to go through the route of getting another degree may turn them off the profession altogether. Surely noble Lords will see the foolishness of such a move.

I will finish on this point. I never attended school in Britain, nor did I receive my formal education here, but since coming to this country I have been fortunate enough to see the world-class education that some of our private schools offer and what makes them so attractive as a service to overseas clients. Being able to hire incredible people from the worlds of science, business and academia sets these schools apart. This Government have taken this strategy and offered it to academies with less-privileged pupils.

A crucial plank of building a country that works for everyone is making sure that all pupils can benefit from the same opportunities. Why deny a child in Etchinghill the same opportunities as a counterpart at Eton? It makes no sense if you are trying to make sure that equality of opportunity is more than a pithy soundbite. We must support the current policy of the Government because it is the real, egalitarian approach.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Suri Excerpts

Tuesday 14th June 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in favour of this Bill. The Bill ties up some very important loose ends when it comes to the protection of vulnerable children and the contact they come into with the state, especially when leaving care. One important anomaly which has been resolved is that the Bill gives prospective adopters with whom the child is placed the same rights as birth parents in care proceedings. This has been a persistent issue in care proceeding cases, and has given the impression that children and prospective adopters are somewhat less than a family. I am glad that this has been resolved.

Another important proposal is that social workers will be required to factor in harm previously suffered, or likely to be suffered, for children involved in care proceedings. This will have to be part of their permanency assessments and plans. Of course, for almost every social worker, this is already happening. For a child taken into care because of a violent or abusive upbringing, it is a critical factor. Enshrining the principle in law is an important step in codifying the pathway that leads to a secure future for caregivers. In this and the other place, senior Members have been pushing for increased devolution of services. I firmly believe that this is a sensible agenda to take forward. It gives power to those who know best how to use it and shifts decision-making further down the impact chain to the people directly affected.

Both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Education have spoken about giving the higher-performing children’s services academy-style powers. I am glad to see that there was a wide-ranging consultation with eight high-achieving “partners in practice” to write the Bill. Legislation without consultation provides the worst law. The Bill allows the Secretary of State to modify the way statutory duties apply to a local authority in regard to the 1970, 1989 and 2004 Acts. This is a sensible development. Some of the legislative burdens on children’s services are outdated and irrelevant. Allowing high achievers to request an opt-out from regulatory burdens that do not provide a tangible benefit is just common sense. Furthermore, the flexibility to find different ways of working can yield lessons for government and further reform to make services more impactful.

As with all devolution, this must go hand in hand with more robust oversight. In this vein, I support the new child safeguarding practice review panel, to be established by the Secretary of State. It will identify serious child safeguarding cases in England that raise complex issues of national importance, and review them if necessary. It is my hope that any cases that arise which involve institutional failings are written in consultation with the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse led by Dame Goddard. Joined-up, cross-inquiry thinking is always more effective than individual reviews.

Finally, I welcome the positive development, loaned from the Children and Families Act 2014, of the local offer. Requiring local authorities to make care leavers aware of services is an uncontentious and sensible proposal.

Queen’s Speech

Lord Suri Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, I have lived in three different continents. Having been involved in Asian, African and European societies, I see a plethora of differences between the cultures and communities that inhabit those places. However, in all three of those countries, Kenya, India and the UK, we were bound by a common respect and shared institution. That is, of course, the monarchy, spread all over the world via the Commonwealth. Sitting in this House yesterday, listening to Her Majesty’s speech, I marvelled at the extraordinary longevity and perseverance that she has gifted not just to this country but to the numerous other nations and territories around the world that are proud to call her their head of state. I was only 17 when she said her famous words:

“I declare that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service”.

It is often said that politicians do not keep their promises. No one can dispute that in the case of Her Majesty, in 63 years on the Throne, she has kept herself wholly removed from the political fray, no matter what some of the less reputable tabloids would suggest. In doing so, she has ensured tremendous stability in these islands and kept us moving on steadily and happily.

I was pleased to see a substantial shake-up of prison legislation in the Queen’s Speech. I have served as a magistrate and was a member of the board of visitors of Her Majesty’s Prison Pentonville. I have seen into the real heart of our criminal justice and prison system. Reform has been long overdue. Significant manifesto changes have been postponed or cut down by successive Governments worried of being seen as soft on crime. The Prime Minister is right when he says that we should not “tolerate persistent failure”, and I wholeheartedly agree. We should never accept mediocrity in any institution that receives vast amounts of public money, and, furthermore, is essential for holding together the fabric of our society.

As a businessman, I think that the best way for shareholders to see the problems in a company is to open up the books. The Lord Chancellor appears to have taken a similar approach in requiring prisons to release their data on education, reoffending and inmates’ employment on release. From what we already know, we have some of the worst records of any major developed country and we need to get it right, not just from a societal perspective but from a hard-headed perspective. We cannot afford to waste the hidden talent that lies in many of the young people that our prison system breaks. The people that know best how to make offenders into happy, productive members of society again are those who work with them every day.

I eagerly anticipate the results of the six prisons that are to be devolved a huge amount of power. I hope that they will manage to improve some of the more dire statistics on reoffending and self-harm, but they will need robust and strategic oversight, given the delicate nature of the work they are doing. I look forward to getting the actual Bill so that I can scrutinise the provisions made for effective oversight.

The Coates review into prison education was also published yesterday, and it was good to see an embrace of new technologies to lower reoffending rates. One of the biggest issues that I saw at Pentonville and that I took into account as a magistrate was the effect of prison time on the family lives of young men. There is an intriguing section in the report that recommends that prisoners be allowed to use video calls to stay in touch with their friends and family. When I suggested this, many said that if it was that important their family and friends could come to visit them in person. However, that does not take into account the immense inconvenience and personal anxiety that comes to many people when they enter prison on visits. The technology is there. It is cheap, easy to oversee and represents a positive forward step. I hope that the trial is successful and rolled out across the UK. I am sure that the Minister will look into it and see further improved results.

There were noticeable omissions from the Queen’s Speech yesterday. Apart from an announcement of superfast broadband for rural areas, which will help some small businesses, the offering to business was not as significant as it has been in the past. However, the biggest thing that the Government and the Prime Minister can do right now is to campaign heart and soul to stay in the EU. We send 45% of all our exports, about 12% of our entire economy, into the EU. I am not prepared to sit by and see the institution which has brought enormous prosperity to Britain and secured peace on the continent after two terrible wars be brought down by populist politicians. Leaving the EU would be an act of economic self-harm. Those who want us to leave keep saying that we would have a fantastic deal, with no guarantee. Our closest neighbours and allies have our interests at heart and we theirs, and, in this increasingly macho world, collaboration will be required to maintain European and western influence in the world. How will we deal with air pollution and with multinationals that do not pay tax, if not with our European allies? I have been told that we can go and engage with the Anglosphere, with NATO and the WTO, but not a single friendly country has recommended a vote to leave—not one.

The Queen’s Speech contained measures intended to help working people to succeed and improve their lot. The worst thing that we could do to them, as a country, is to hammer them with Brexit, just as we crawl out of the recession.

Childcare Bill [HL]

Lord Suri Excerpts

Tuesday 16th June 2015 Lords Chamber

[Lord Suri (Con)]

My Lords, it is a noteworthy effort of the Government that, within a few weeks of being in office, they have embarked on discharging their duties and, in that context, I welcome this Bill. The Childcare Bill is important because we promised it to the people of the country; hence it is an issue that must be dealt with. Although it means spending more right now, investing further money into this policy has many long-term socioeconomic benefits. Childcare is, primarily, a parental responsibility and in difficult circumstances the Government provide the necessary assistance. A child is the foundation and future of our human race and its survival is of the utmost necessity. It is, indeed, the great determination of working parents to have jobs and maintain childcare alongside.

The current help of 15 hours of childcare for working parents is not enough and providing more is merited. The contribution of working parents plays a multi-faceted role towards the development of our country. Implementing the Bill will improve our financial security; more people working for longer hours means more money is coming into the country. Looking at the bigger picture, it will allow hard-working parents to support their families without the worry of paying large amounts of money for childcare, which they may not be able to afford without this Bill.

Providing parents with accessible childcare gives them the option to work more and, perhaps, receive better jobs and a better income for their home. This increases the number of people who are able to have a more stable and comfortable life due to financial security: free childcare aiding the reduction of families’ overall expenses. Having both parents working is beneficial to the child’s upbringing and to see both mother and father working allows present and future generations to know that both women and men can have successful careers while raising a family. Clearly, the more people that Britain has working, the better. The Bill will help more families to work and improve the economy, and will be especially beneficial to children of households where a single parent is the sole provider for their family.

Entitlement to education is also a key aspect of the Bill. Providing children with early education, right from the age of two, allows for the gap to be narrowed between those who are disadvantaged and those who are not. This narrowing of the development gap will allow the younger generation to be more educated and hence, in the future, more people will be able to work with better-paid jobs.

Implementation of the childcare policy will help to deal with the increasingly ageing population in Britain, which is causing a 4:2:1 ratio within families—everyone in the new generation will have to look after their elders in the previous generations. This dependency ratio is unbalanced and each person will have to work to provide an income to cover six others. The childcare policy is likely to encourage couples to start a family and hence aid the creation of a more youthful and educated population. It was this Government’s constructive planning and foresight to include childcare in their electoral commitment. We must support this Bill to ensure that it is put into practice and I hope to see it go through very soon.