Youth Participation: First World War Commemorations

Debate between Paul Maynard and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 6th March 2013 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alan. I thank the Minister for his time.

It probably does not take me to alert the House and the nation to the fact that we are rapidly approaching the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of world war one, which will unfurl four years of solemn remembrances of different events. None of us would disagree that it is important that we remember and commemorate, but equally important is how we commemorate and what we do as part of the commemoration. That matters as part of our sense of national identity.

For our close allies such as Canada, Australia and New Zealand, sites such as Vimy ridge and Gallipoli are not just sites of memory or commemoration, but part of a national story, not of constitutional development so much as the birth of real nationhood—of real people losing their lives on the battlefield. That is why nations truly came into being; it is not just that they received a constitutional charter.

I pay tribute to what the Government have already announced as part of the commemorations of world war one, to the work of my hon. Friend the Member for South West Wiltshire (Dr Murrison), who has chaired a group, and to the Minister’s work. I pay particular tribute to the notion of spending of £5.3 million on sending children to visit the battlefields, not least because my own constituency is a hotbed of school travel—bizarrely, it is our one growth industry. I know that it is a particular pleasure to the WST school travel trust and the school travel forum.

I went on such a journey for the first time last autumn. I studied history at university and I have studied the period, so I have always wanted to go and see what I had been studying. I had never been; I have driven past quickly on the motorway, if ever at all.

What the visit brought home to me was that the work of the Imperial War Graves Commission is the one of the greatest publicly funded pieces of civil art ever undertaken in the history of humanity. We do not fully appreciate that in this country. The work of Sir Edwin Lutyens, Sir Herbert Baker and Sir Reginald Blomfield is testament to the ability of architecture to inspire emotion and encapsulate complex feelings. Even to this day, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission is one of the best run and best presented of our public bodies.

It is hard not to feel a sense of hopelessness when standing at a memorial such as the one at Thiepval—those grand Indo-Saracenic arches. All the schoolchildren were running around and making noise. Then the rain started to fall and they all scattered to the shelter of the visitors centre. I was left in the silence of a Somme morning—misty and cloudy—and I had a real sense of the tragedy of the loss of 20,000 people in one day. It is hard to imagine just how many people that is, but that is what occurred. At a time when we are once again debating what should be in our history curriculum, 1 July 1916 rarely seems to feature as a focal point for our national story, yet I believe it should be at the heart of what we think about when we study history.

I was fascinated and inspired by Thiepval, but I also visited some of the Canadian sites at Beaumont-Hamel and Vimy ridge, to which I referred earlier. The reason why I secured today’s debate is to promote a Canadian idea that we could learn from. Visitors to those two Canadian sites are greeted by a young Canadian student, who is there for four months, and explains what is available to people of all ages, what they could do on their visit, why the location is there and what it means to Canadians.

There is an interesting contrast with Thiepval. We have put great effort into an excellent visitors centre there, which I cannot praise highly enough, but on arrival, people are not greeted by a young person or someone who can explain to them why the place matters. For visiting schoolchildren, being welcomed by someone of their own age group would connect them more to what they are about to see; it is not just a theme park, but something that someone of their own age thinks is sufficiently important that they are spending a long time there welcoming people.

The scheme might also benefit more elderly visitors, who often visit battlefield sites. Perhaps it is unfair to cite reported speech, but we often hear criticisms such as, “Oh, the children run around. They don’t show respect. They don’t understand what they are coming to see.” I do not think that that is true, but such a scheme would encourage older generations to think that what they had done in world war two and indeed in world war one was not in vain, because younger generations were still explaining it to their children and their children’s children.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way on an important educational and historical issue. The first world war is important in Northern Ireland. The 36th (Ulster) Division suffered and gave greatly at the battle of the Somme. In Northern Ireland, we have tried to bring both communities together on the back of the story about the battle of the Somme. There were Ulster divisions, but there were also Irish divisions that died and fought together in the first world war. It is a good historical issue.

The Bowtown community group in Newtownards try to educate young people on the estate about the importance of the first world war and to bring together other communities, so that nationalists and Unionists can look at what happened in the first world war together.

[Paul Maynard]

I am sure that the hon. Gentleman’s observation is replicated in all our constituencies, up and down the country. Everywhere we look, we can find examples where we utilise world war one as a means of communicating across generations.

It would be naive of me to pretend that the Canadian model is cost-free. As we approach the Budget, cost considerations become all the more important. The cost of the Canadian scheme is roughly £400,000 per annum, of which about three fifths are salaries for the guides. University students are subsidised for four-month stays at the two sites. The Canadian Government own accommodation in Arras where students can lodge, and air fares are refunded on the successful completion of the course. The Veterans Minister, Steven Blaney, wrote to me:

“Without a doubt, the student guides’ enthusiasm serves as an inspiration to the many school and other tour groups that visit Vimy and Beaumont-Hamel each year, as well as to their peers when they return to Canada.”

That is an angle that I have not yet touched on. Once someone has served the four-month internship, they can return home and spread the message of what they have done. That is doubly welcome.

We have an eminently sensible opportunity to build on what the Government are already doing with the National Citizen Service—a chance to recruit young people who are between A-level and university or other employment to spend a set period of time at one of the major memorials to the missing, to welcome visitors, explain the facilities and the opportunities available and to try to connect each visitor with their own experience of what they are about to see. What connects them to the location?

Speech Therapy Services (Children)

Debate between Paul Maynard and Jim Shannon

Wednesday 3rd November 2010 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard]

I agree entirely. The hon. Gentleman has anticipated my next point. Speech and language therapists are there not just to help children, but to help the entire children’s work force understand that communication needs to be the golden thread running through everything they do. They need to be equipped to train staff, teachers and others who work with children, as well as the children themselves. I ask the Minister to confirm that she will do all she can to ensure that we recruit more speech and language therapists to meet the unmet needs that are out there.

The better communication action plan made a specific commitment to universal screening as part of the healthy child programme. Many major bodies, including the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists, which I suspect has managed to get many supporters to attend the debate, wants to see that occur at age two and five, in advance of the reading assessment. What steps will the Minister take to ensure that that aspect of the action plan is taken into account?

Another important aspect that is often overlooked is that when we discuss children’s speech therapy we often think of those aspects that are what I describe as being high incidence, but low need. In other words, many children face communication difficulties, such as language delay, but their support needs are actually quite low. There is a much smaller group, which has much more complex needs, but the incidence of that need is relatively low. That poses a particular problem in commissioning. I wonder what the Minister’s views are on how we balance those two competing aspects, because where there is low incidence but high need, it is often more of a health intervention, rather than an educational intervention, that is required.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Just this last year, I witnessed what I can only describe as the transformation of a young boy from being unable to communicate to being able to talk quite clearly within a matter of months, so I have seen at first hand the work that can be done. One of our concerns, which is shared by many people who look after young boys and who try to train them, relates to the financial provision. In relation to the comprehensive spending review cuts that have been made and how they will affect provision, does the hon. Gentleman agree that the front-line service of speech therapy should be retained and that people should know that the moneys are there for young people?

[Paul Maynard]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I agree entirely. That is why we say continually that the most vulnerable are those that really should be protected, and front-line services will be protected.

Whenever we try to abolish quangos in particular, we can always find one saving grace in every quango that gives us a justification for keeping it. With Becta, which provides educational technical equipment, one of the saving graces was the work that it did in the augmentative and assistive communication sector—AAC for short, to save me a bit of time. Can the Minister confirm whether the funding that was originally to go through Becta to the AAC sector will still go to it to fund not just the specialist provision of AAC equipment, but the leadership roles in the sector? That is another part of the better communication action plan that I hope will be continued throughout the year of speech, learning and communication in 2011. Will she also commit to re-examining the issues of provision in the AAC sector? She may not be aware of the problems facing the ACE—Aiding Communication in Education—centre in Oxford, which faces closure as a result of some of the changes in that charity and the funding of the wider sector.

Will the Minister support the proposals from the communication champion, Jean Gross, for a new AAC commissioning model that reflects the differences between high incidence, low need, and low incidence, higher need, which are crucial to a proper appreciation of the sector’s needs?

I said that I did not want continually to go in for shocking statistics, but let me give just one, which is that 55% of children in the more deprived areas arrive at primary school with some form of language delay. That does not necessarily mean that there is anything going on; it just means that they are delayed in the formation of basic skills. That happens for a range of reasons, but often it can be something as simple as mum and dad not talking to them when they were babies.

Booktrust, a charity of which many hon. Members may be aware, does fantastic work in more deprived areas just by handing out bags of books to young mums to encourage them to read and by saying to young dads, “It’s a good thing to sit down with your young child and read them a story. Don’t just watch the football match. Read “Peppa Pig” or whatever children’s literature you happen to have to hand; it helps your children.”

Can the Minister confirm, in light of the CSR, that the very important funding that Booktrust receives from the Government, which allows it to access £4 of private funding for every £1 of Government funding, will continue in order to help us to deal with that language delay and gap in the most deprived areas? That is just one example of the philosophy of early intervention, which is gradually receiving unanimous, all-party support as a principle. What it means in policy terms often varies greatly, but the principle of early intervention is now accepted by all in the House, I hope. It allows us to escape the departmental silo thinking that has bedevilled public policy formation in this country for far too long.

How does the Minister think that the pupil premium, which both coalition parties advocated pre-election, will benefit children requiring speech and language therapy at the moment? In particular, does she agree on the importance of appropriate diagnosis and that improving the quality of diagnosis might lead to fewer children being diagnosed as having special educational needs? Does she recognise that one goal of speech, language and communication therapy must be to take pupils off the SEN register because their language delay has been dealt with, the gaps have been filled and they are now able to participate fully in society? I ask that because there is a particular problem with stigmatisation.

Even 30 years ago, when I had speech therapy, I was taken out of my primary school and transported down to the village health centre. I was regarded as different—special—because I had to be taken out. That was 30 years ago; one would like to think that things had moved on. Unfortunately, the stigma is still there. I urge the Minister to ensure that more and more services can be delivered in the school setting and do not require the pupil to be stigmatised, or made to look different or special.

Let me explain one way of doing what I have described. At Fleetwood high school, in the constituency of Lancaster and Fleetwood, which neighbours mine, children with special educational needs are dealt with under the same umbrella as those who come under the gifted and talented scheme. There is not such a difference between them as one might think, because very many people with special educational needs, and in particular speech and language needs, are also very gifted and talented young men and women. The two are very often the same group. I urge the Minister to consider how such an approach can reduce stigmatisation.

I warmly welcome the ambition of the forthcoming Green Paper to equip parents to have more choice in and more say over how their children are treated by the “system”. One of the grave frustrations of so many parents whom I meet in my advice surgeries—and, I am sure, those whom other hon. Members meet in their surgeries—is that when they take their children to the office of the relevant public organisation and sit down to have a discussion about their child’s needs, they immediately find that there is a form before the public servant in front of them and they are then forced somehow to adjust their child’s needs to fit the existing boxes on the form. If their child’s needs do not quite fit, there is a problem; they do not quite get the tailored support that they need.

Can the Minister make any suggestions about how we start to change the tick-box culture? I think that this is the most crucial question in public policy at the moment: how do we get away from a situation in which services are designed for people to fit into and move to a situation in which services are designed to fit around the needs of the individual? That is important.