Queen's Speech

Baroness Howe of Idlicote Excerpts

Thursday 3rd June 2010 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, first, I offer my warm congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Hill, on his ministerial appointment and on his inspiring opening speech. I also congratulate him and the new coalition Government on the extent to which, like their predecessor Government, they recognise the importance of education as the gateway to a better life for the individual and for the country. That is certainly the case for those from deprived backgrounds. I also commend the new Government’s commitment, particularly in the almost impossible financial circumstances that they have inherited, to continue to pursue the previous Government’s goal of ending UK child poverty by 2020 as well as to continue with free nursery education for pre-school children. Against that background, I shall spend my few minutes on the importance and cost-effectiveness of the earliest possible intervention and support for deprived children and children with special needs.

We should all applaud the previous Government’s important and brave initiative, Sure Start. It is brave in the sense that its value cannot be fully assessed until the children who have benefited from it reach adulthood. Its value has already been seen by our new Government, and, I suspect, especially championed by Education Secretary of State Michael Gove. The Government have committed to continuing Sure Start and to taking it back to its original purpose of early intervention, with an increased focus on the neediest families.

What I particularly admired about the early days of Sure Start was the practical development of an equal partnership between the local community and professionals, whereby each different area had slightly different priorities, thus reflecting local needs. This, I hope, is what our new Prime Minister means by his emphasis on the big society, whereby the responsibility for social cohesion is left increasingly to well run local government in partnership with its own communities. Equally, however, we must make sure that sufficient extra resources and leadership, including adequately resourced third-sector leadership, are concentrated in helping to improve lives and expectations in the most deprived communities.

A commitment that should certainly help the aim of early intervention is the plan to provide more than 4,000 extra health visitors. During my 20 years’ chairmanship of a London juvenile court—in the days when magistrates, probation and social services really did work together—it was always the health visitors who had that early knowledge of which families were likely to need extra support if trouble was to be prevented.

The new Government’s plans to academise a vast range of schools and to increase variety and independence from local authorities are inevitably controversial, but will the Government guarantee, and if so how, that the proposed and certainly welcome significant premium for disadvantaged children directly advantages these children? I hope that the noble Earl will tell me when he replies. Today, only 27 per cent of children who are eligible for free school meals currently get five good GCSEs, compared with the national average of 54 per cent—indeed, 40 per cent of the same group currently fail to get a single grade C pass at GCSE—so the Government will need to satisfy us that those who teach such children in future will be of the necessary calibre to bring them to the required standard.

I declare my interest as president of the National Governors’ Association. I note to my surprise and clearly to that of the association that the role of school governors is hardly mentioned in the coalition’s programme for the government of these schools. Yet it is surely the school governors who will be ultimately responsible for whether such changes are made, and for consulting those in the locality who will clearly be most affected by this. The noble Lord, Lord Griffiths of Burry Port, made that very point rather well. One concern certainly needs an answer: will academies be required, as is clearly desirable, to have at least a proportion of governors from the local area, including some parents?

I end on my earlier theme. My enthusiasm for extra resources and early support for children from deprived backgrounds is in essence practical. First, such a young person will have a more equal opportunity to develop their skills and abilities fully and to lead a full and satisfying life in their community.

Secondly, since the cost of each prison place is £45,000, if just one juvenile can be deterred from a potential life of crime, we will save the taxpayer the considerable sums involved when such individuals become serial offenders.

Thirdly, we must hope that the cycle of deprivation which Keith Joseph emphasised some 37 years ago will at last have been broken in such families. The appalling facts are that 63 per cent of boys with a convicted parent go on to offend, and children of prisoners are three times more likely to show signs of delinquent behaviour. Of course, not all these attempts will succeed, and of course some violent offenders must be imprisoned, but the Prison Reform Trust statistics starkly remind us that, when Ken Clarke was Home Secretary in 1992-93, the prison population stood at almost 45,000. Today, it is about double that at 85,000. There are surely more productive ways of spending our money.