Children: Parenting for Success in School

Lord Winston Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Winston]

My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield. Against the conventions of the House, I stood up and moved across the Chamber during his maiden speech. However, frankly, he spoke with such gravitas and assurance that I assumed he was not a maiden speaker.

If, immediately after birth and before it is three weeks old, a kitten is blindfolded for merely three weeks, Dr Mower at Children’s Hospital Boston has shown that it will remain blind once the blindfold is removed. The plasticity of the brain cannot compensate for the loss as a result of damaged stimulation.

We have in our brain around 100 billion neurons, which have up to 2,000 connections, and we learn by making more connections as we grow. Most of those connections are made in childhood. However, your Lordships’ brains will be altered in their anatomy permanently as a result of sitting through this debate because, hopefully, you will have learned something—even if it is only to go to sleep. A new-born baby has a brain of about 370 grams, and by the time he is 15 or 16 it will be around 1,450 grams in size. That colossal growth occurs mostly during childhood—and what happens in the first three years of life is of crucial importance, as other speakers have already said.

In 1998, Gordon Brown, when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, set up the Sure Start programme as a result of concern about child poverty. The programme, which was not greeted enthusiastically by the scientists at the time—indeed, there was some scepticism about its value—certainly did not show massive advantages immediately. However, as time has gone on, it is now clear that the Sure Start programme—which is, admittedly, quite expensive but is devoted mostly to children in the most deprived parts of the United Kingdom—has been of massive benefit. It has made a big difference to social cohesion, social responsibility, the reduction of crime in the affected families and to better parenting. It is, quite clearly, a very good programme.

Although there was original scepticism, a recent publication by Dr Melhuish, Dr Belsky and Dr Barnes, of Birkbeck College, shows on a proper basis that the original programme—in my view, it should have been the subject of a controlled trial from the start, but was not; that was a mistake by the Labour Government—has undoubtedly proved to be of great benefit. It is important that we recognise that today.

The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, mentioned many things with which I agree, but he referred, in particular, to the question of the self-esteem of children. There is overwhelming scientific evidence that children who are not rewarded, who lack self-esteem, grow up to be deprived as adults. They are much more likely to be depressed and to show various psychiatric disturbances, and they will tend to pass those problems on to their children, as the noble Lord has said. For this reason, I hope the Minister will assure the House that the Government will continue to protect the Sure Start programme, which, though expensive, has been a clear indication of the value of a properly run programme in these areas.