Schools Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Whitaker

Report stage & Lords Hansard - Part 2
Tuesday 12th July 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, in supporting Amendment 62, I underline what an important need it fulfils. That is why such a large number of professional and charitable organisations also support it.

Many children with sensory impairments require a whole range of specialist education services, which need to be provided by healthcare professionals—for instance, speech and language therapists are needed, as many young children who have sensory impairments also have speech, language and communication needs. This includes those who are deaf, deafblind and visually impaired. Many come from areas of social disadvantage and start school with language difficulties. The life chances of all these children are severely curtailed.

I have some recent information where local data shows massive inequalities in accessing clinical speech and language therapy services during the last year and the year before. Digital is not enough; you need the actual professional people. Of course, I quote again that poor language outcomes are a significant determinant of poor social mobility. I noted that when my noble friend Lord Watson moved an amendment about more help for young people whose sensory impairment is accompanied by speech, language and communication needs, his plea for extra support did not get any kind of response from the Government. It is absolutely vital that the specialist education services that are required to compensate for sensory impairment and to develop the spoken language and communication skills of all children and young people are going to be provided, so I urge the Government to accept this amendment.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise very briefly to offer Green group support for all these amendments. Most of them have already been powerfully covered. I particularly echo the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brinton. I am sure I am not the only noble Lord who has received very distressed and distressing emails from many parents who have found themselves in similar situations to the ones that she outlined where they know and have medical advice that says that it is unsafe for their children to go to school, yet they are still coming under extreme, undue pressure to put their children into an actively dangerous situation.

The structure of these things is that we have not yet heard the introduction to Amendments 114 and 115 in the names of the noble Baronesses, Lady Chapman and Lady Wilcox. In a sense, I want to continue a conversation with the Minister that I started on 29 March in the debate on the schools White Paper about mental health. These amendments particularly draw attention to the elements about how children’s mental health is affected by their schooling. I hope to hear a positive response from the Minister to both these amendments, which are about collecting essential information. I would like to hear a response from the Government that acknowledges that mental health in schools is an issue that cannot be addressed by simply saying, “We’re going to increase the exam marks” because that focus on exam marks is very much part of the problem.

Health and Care Bill

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Whitaker

Lords Hansard - Part 1 & Report stage
Monday 7th March 2022 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I warmly but very briefly support these proposed innovations in fortifying and enhancing health, not least in their application to the treatment of dementia. Will the Minister consider the work of Arts 4 Dementia, whose aim is empowerment through artistic stimulation, and which promotes social prescribing of arts and well-being activity at the onset of dementia, including through its seminal report, A.R.T.S. for Brain Health?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to offer support from the Green group for both these amendments. In Committee, I spoke extensively on the issues around creative health, and I will not repeat any of that. I just note that, looking at the Government’s response, I get no sense that they have got the point that this is not an additional “nice to have”—something that is done after you have done the medical stuff—this has to be a core part of allowing people to get well again, and keeping people well.

On Amendment 184ZB, it is interesting that the Covid pandemic has seen a really large increase in private medical provision, such as testing on our high streets, et cetera. Now that they are there, those businesses will be looking out for different procedures to keep them going, and it is really important that we have full transparency about the advice that people are getting at those kinds of places.

Skills and Post-16 Education Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle and Baroness Whitaker

Committee stage
Tuesday 6th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP) [V]]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the very clear introduction to this group from the noble Lord, Lord Lucas. Having listened to his explanation, I rather regret not having attached my name to his amendment, as the noble Baroness, Lady Garden of Frognal, did. He really has nailed the key problem with this Bill and the reason for many of these amendments: the Government’s focus on employers, presumably existing employers, fails to explain how a local skills improvement plan can actually help an area to improve. By focusing on potential students, Amendment 1 really helps us to think about how people might also want to get the skills to be part of communities, to run community groups, to be involved in cultural activities or to be voters or parents. All of these are areas in which people might want to improve their skills. It would also help communities that are subject to the Government’s levelling-up agenda, which are often lacking in social capital. We are talking about skills that pretty well every community is short of. Any community group that any noble Lord has ever known has had to find a treasurer—someone who is prepared to take on doing the books, even if there is not much money in those books. These are skills that every community needs, but they might not actually be a business need.

However, I shall speak chiefly to Amendment 2, which is in my name. It tries to get at another aspect of the Bill addressing the so-called economy by adding in to consult in the skills improvement plans

“potential employers, start-up businesses and the self-employed.”

Looking at recent figures from the pre-Covid time, there were 5 million self-employed in the UK, up from 3.2 million in 2000. They are a very major part of our workforce and, if they are running a business, what they may need to help them find work, and improve the work that they find, is not necessarily going to be reflected by the employers in a town. I think here of a very old-fashioned term, perhaps—the “company town”.

A few years ago, I visited Barrow-in-Furness where the top employer, by a scale of many thousands, is of course the shipyards. The next two biggest employers, of around 1,000 each, are the largest supermarket and the local hospital. Barrow-in-Furness, as I said when I was there, clearly needs to diversify its economy and develop things such as local food-growing and tourism businesses, through all kinds of objectives. How are those three top employers going to provide advice on the skills needed for that?

At the moment, the Bill feels really half baked. I am in a difficult position in speaking before many of these amendments have been explained, but I support the sentiments behind them all. I shall pick out a couple briefly. As the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, said about the two amendments in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Whitaker—particularly, perhaps, Amendment 81, which has broad support—the focus on the attainment gap is crucial. There are many people whom schooling has failed in the past; they need support with the right kind of courses, the right way to improve and lift their skills, not just for their jobs but for their lives.

I also particularly support Amendments 20 and 21, both of which address, in different ways, distance learning. We are not going to be able to put into every village and town every course that might be of use to everyone. It is crucial that we have, in the Open University, a very successful and important structure; something that people can use to advance their knowledge, as well as their skills, and get into the practice of lifelong learning. That is such a crucial skill that we are going to need for the coming decades. The number of amendments tabled to this clause really shows that the Government need to go away, having listened to today’s debate, and think about how they can improve not just the Bill, but their thinking about how we provide the skills needed for a very different age.

[Baroness Whitaker (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 11 and 81. I also support the first three amendments spoken to, and I am grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Lucas, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, for my amendments. I declare interests as a fellow and former chair of the Working Men’s College, chair of the education department’s stakeholders’ group and other relevant interests as in the register.

The rationale of my amendments is that this potentially most useful Bill will not have the national impact it might, unless more provision is made to get a very large number of young people and others to the starting block. Amendments 11 and 81 are designed to do just that. I am most grateful for the support of the noble Lord, Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth, the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham and the noble Baroness, Lady Greengross. The reason they are not speaking is entirely due to the complexity of arrangements, which I fervently hope will be simplified in September. They all tried to put their names forward. I also thank the Association of Colleges for its helpful advice.

At Second Reading, I set out the fact that more than one-third of young people in secondary school do not achieve the requisite GCSE grades in English and maths to qualify for entry to the further education and training so enticingly proposed in the Bill. I asked the Minister what provision had been or could be made for this very large number who, for various reasons, among which lack of innate ability has not been cited, could not access the educational opportunities in the Bill. She was not able to give me an answer, nor did one appear in the letter she helpfully sent to Peers after Second Reading, and nor have I had a reply to a request I made to her team for an answer. As this is unusual for the noble Baroness, I conclude that there is no answer and there are no such comprehensive arrangements in place.